Sun and Moon, Ice and Snow - Jessica Day George [66]
“Then all the help I can offer you is to carry you to the west wind.”
“Thank you.”
A huff of air blasted her hair straight back. “Will you still thank me later?” The form on the stone throne shivered. “No matter. We shall blow to the home of my brother.”
The lass sent Vongóður home at last. Rollo melted into the twisted trees and returned with feathers around his muzzle a few minutes later.
“You have some fine birds in your forest,” he complimented the east wind.
“I did,” the east wind replied.
“Sorry,” the lass said, hunching her shoulders in embarrassment. She gave Rollo a hard look.
“We can’t all live on bread and love,” he said.
“‘Love’? What do you know about love?”
“It’s at the heart of every story,” Rollo said with authority. “If humans could avoid falling in love, you would never get yourselves into any trouble.”
The lass closed her eyes for a long minute. Was she in love with the prince? Maybe. She had loved the isbjørn, in a way. And in a different way she loved her brother Hans Peter and wanted to help him. So it was for love that she was doing all this. But would she be happier if she just went home?
Could she live with herself if she did?
She opened her eyes. “Can we leave now?”
Being carried on the back of the east wind was a very strange experience. The writhing mass of twigs and leaves and wind and feathers and ice swooped down from its throne and lifted her high off the ground. She had not yet shouldered her pack, but when she looked back she saw that it and Rollo had been gathered up as well. Her wolf alternately howled in fear and growled to show how brave he was as they ascended. Up in the air the east wind gathered itself, a wolf the size of a ship running over the treetops.
The lass hovered, suspended, atop the wolf wind of the East. She stretched out her arms and leaned back, feeling it cradle her. It was like riding on the back of the isbjørn, only better. Now she truly was flying, free of the ground. She laughed.
The east wind surged forward, and the laugh was ripped from her throat. Beneath them trees whipped the sky and crops lay down. They passed over mountains and hills, whistled down fjords and over the sea. At one point the wind rose until it was swallowed up in clouds, churning and driving them like egg whites swirled with a wooden spoon. More ocean lay beneath them when the clouds dissipated, then beaches and forests and fields of wheat.
And then nothing.
Dirt. Sand. Cracked, dry ground on which the only growing things were scrubby little bushes that looked half-dead. The earth was red and the rocks were raw and jagged.
And then they were smooth.
As fantastical as the forest of the east wind had been, the west wind’s palace of living rock was stunning. Red and purple and gold stone had been twisted and shaped like clay. Great arches passed overhead, pillars, caves, hollows as smooth as a worn wooden bowl, filled with purple shadow that looked like water as the sun set. There were mounds of rocks like pillows, like mushrooms and beehives.
The east wind slowed here, and the lass was able to gape at the formations of stone as they passed over and around them. Soon they came to an open space like a great shallow bowl. Dozens of little whirls of sand and grit spun merrily about in the bottom of the hollow.
The wolf wind set the lass down and shrank until he was only slightly larger than an isbjørn. The stone bowl was blazingly hot, like being inside an oven. The lass shucked off her parka and boots and still sweat poured down her face, plastering her disarrayed hair to her neck. Rollo was panting, and he danced in place to avoid burning his paws.
The little funnels of grit danced together and became one giant spinning pillar of wind and sand. A dry, rasping voice issued from it.
“My brother East, what have you brought me?”
“A human who is looking for the palace east of the sun and west of the moon,” the east wind replied. “Have you ever blown that far?”
“Never!” The spinning