Sun and Moon, Ice and Snow - Jessica Day George [76]
“Actually, it’s far too late,” she told him gently.
It was something that she had only realized as they were walking along the walls of the palace. The north wind had blown itself out to bring them here. And then . . . what? She supposed that when it was rested, it would go back to its own lands. She and Rollo were stranded. Perhaps, if she were able to free the prince, he would know the way back. Perhaps he could change into a bear again, and carry her.
Perhaps. Perhaps not. It was too late to worry about it. She would just have to move forward, she told herself. But at the same time she was racked with a deep longing to be riding her isbjørn across the snow plain, heading toward the ice palace and a rich supper.
“Well, can I at least have something more to eat?” Rollo sat on a snowbank and looked around with a disgruntled expression.
“Yes, I suppose,” the lass said. She plumped down beside him and rummaged in her pack. “An apple?”
He sneezed in distaste. “Isn’t there any meat at all?”
“There might be.” She rummaged some more. Her fingernails clicked against something hard, and she pulled out the bottle of apple jelly. “Oh, look!” She held it up to the weak light. The golden jelly blazed, and the refracted light from the crystal jar cast bits of rainbows on the snow around them.
“I’d still rather have meat,” Rollo said.
“Well, I might like some apple jelly on a bit of bread,” the lass said. “It’s not always your stomach that concerns me.”
She unwrapped a bit of bread and unstoppered the jelly with a flourish.
“What’s that?”
The rasping troll voice scared the blood out of the lass’s face. Her hands went numb, and the little jar of apple jelly fell to the ground and rolled away. A few golden globules scattered across the snow, freezing almost instantly.
“I said, what is that? Are you deaf?”
Slowly the lass turned around. The window behind the lass was opened wide, and the Princess Indæll herself leaned out of it. Today she wore peach silk, and it reminded the lass of a similar dress she had worn in the palace of ice. It made her shiver. Of course, she had not had an enormous, greenish gray bosom to pour into the bodice.
“It’s apple jelly, Your Highness,” the lass said when she could breathe. She bent over and picked up the little jar before any more could spill out. Taking great care, every movement seeming weighted with importance, she replaced the golden stopper and held up the jar so that the troll princess could see it.
A pointed purple tongue darted out of the princess’s wide mouth, and she licked her heavily made-up lips. “Did you . . . make . . . that yourself?”
“I helped the aged woman who did,” the lass replied. “I peeled apples, and she put them in the pot with the spices.”
“Ah!” Another lick. “And the jar?”
“I do not know where it came from.”
A shadow passed over the troll’s face. “A pity. But still.” She reached out one hand. Her fingers were twice as long as the lass’s and her pointed nails were gilded. “Give it to me.”
“Very well, Your Highness,” the lass said, but she made no move to hand the jar over. She had just had a sudden insight into the trollish character: they were jealous! They were jealous of humans, who could make things, when apparently they could not. The clothing, the dancing from the night before . . . the lass now saw them for poor attempts to copy human society.
Indæll grew impatient. “Give it to me now!”
The lass feigned surprise. “But, Your Highness, I was waiting for your offer.”
“My offer?”
“In the human world, no one ever gives another person something for free! We pay each other, with gold or goods or . . . other things.”
“Hmm.” The princess was plainly intrigued. At the same time, though, her long fingers flexed on the windowsill, making dents in the gold surface, as though she yearned to simply reach out and grab the jar. “Very well. What do you want?”
“I want to visit the human prince,” the lass said promptly.
Indæll’s eyes narrowed. Her wide, thick-lipped mouth drew down. “You!