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“Grass and leaves,” he said, smiling.
The Witch winked.
And so, the Prince left her, having found a Quest after all. He chased its tail into the high mountains tipped with snow like wise men’s beards, and down to the sea, laid before him smooth as a dress. He did not mind the difficulty of the terrain, being, after all, a soldier, though it was more tedious than he had thought a Quest would be.
For instance, he had not guessed how much of the body of a Quest was simply walking. He walked until three pairs of shoes were ruined, cursing his lack of a horse. He stomped over every imaginable landscape from dank fen to pleasant farm to alpine ice. And yet, no one greeted him in the villages through which he passed. No one shouted with great joy that the Prince had blessed their village with his presence—what an honor to have you, Sire!—no one insisted he feast at their table—only the best of the harvest for you, Sire!—no one begged to be regaled with a song of his adventures—oh, do tell us of the terrible Witch, Sire!
In fact, no one took much notice of him at all—innkeepers were surly, tavern-women taciturn and rather getting on in years, milkmaids were unfriendly, wide-calved, and attached firmly to the flanks of their cows. After a time he looked not very different from the lowest peasants—covered in grime, face sour as a priest on Tuesday, and entirely without well-made shoes. All in all, it was nothing like what he had been led to expect.
One evening as the sun was counting up the day’s gold in the west, Leander ducked into a seaside tavern in the north part of the country with a peculiar sign above the door—a great fist strangling a fish. He laid a few coins on the bar and rested his burning feet against the damp floor. He sucked down a bitter, watered-down ale that tasted of leather and warm bile. It was a filthy place, with dozens of dark, cowled faces peering out from what seemed like far more than four corners. At least in this, he had found, the tales were accurate: Disreputable strangers abounded, as numerous as whitecaps on the sea.
The bartender was a great hulk of a man who looked as though some giant had simply dropped an armful of limbs into a heap. He brandished a thick rag like a sword, and the rusted iron of his eyes dared anyone to order a drink. His hair was the color of sandy shoals that trapped the hulls of ships; his hands were the size of well-wrought drums. He smelt of lamp oil and brine.
He glanced at Leander under his heavy eyelids and said nothing as the young Prince grimaced at his mug. He didn’t mean to turn up his nose at the house brew, but the stuff was so foul his face contorted without consulting him. The bartender scowled and spat. But Leander had gotten quite tired of his brusque reception in these wretched little towns. He glared at the barkeep.
“Do you know who I am?”
The slab of skin behind the counter studied the wood grain of his bar. “Yes,” he grunted, “but you’ll not get a better ale on account of it.” The Prince rolled his eyes.
“That is not why I asked, good sir. It is,” he struggled for the right word, “fine as the water of the wells at my own house. But all I have met have been rough with me since I set out for the Dismal Marshes, and I have very little time to find what I seek. If only the townsfolk would be kind to me, would smile and bow and point out the way like the markers on the dusty road. But they will not. I guessed you knew me, yet you said nothing of it, nor offered yourself as helpmeet. Why?”
The man shrugged, and his body seemed to quake like the shifting of continents. “I know some things. Some things the common folk don’t. They likely don’t know you from the King’s cows. And if they did—” The tavern-keeper’s eyes glinted like the hull of a ship in morning light. “Your father is less than loved here. They’d like to take their taxes out of your hide, if they could manage it. They’d like to take back the babies that disappear into the tower of that sorcerer. Barring that, they’d like to kill you as payment for them. I’d not stop them, myself. Best if you don’t make yourself known. You’re awfully far from home. What does your name mean here besides a foreign tyrant? Not to mention, it isn’t the habit of us peasants to be helping strange travelers. I’d rather have a dog with your pedigree, catch my meaning? And that’s more words than I’ve said to a customer in a month, so take them well and get on your way.”
The abashed Prince picked at his mug. He was becoming used to humility, to being shown that he was a fool. This alarmed him, of course, but this was hardly the place to show his courage and breeding.
“Will you tell me, at least, how to find the Dismal Marshes? I fear I have become quite lost. And,” Leander gulped like a caught trout, “is it possible you know of a cobbler with a good pair of boots to sell?” The barman glanced over the ale-stained bar to peek at the princely toes poking out of the Prince’s ruined shoes like worms out of a bait-sack. He grunted again.
“Once, when I was a young man, I went to the Marshes. I’ll tell you the tale, if it’ll clear you from my chairs.”
The great-shouldered man straightened like a child reciting lessons, and when he spoke his tale, his voice became deep as the sounding of the sea on stone, and his words lost their slur. The Prince was transfixed, for by now he had become an excellent listener.
“My name is Eyvind. No reason for you to have heard it…”
IN MY YOUNGER DAYS I WAS A BEAR. This is nothing to gawk at. Bears are quite common in my country, which lies as far to the North as the deserts lie to the South. All my land was covered in snow, and peopled with a proud tribe of pale-furred bears, who governed it well and wisely. When we moved over the ice we were like a wave that is gone before the foam touches the shore.
I was one of the white bears, and I was very happy. I loved a she-bear, and she was the finest of all our fishers. She could dip a silky paw into the rushing glacier melt and seize twenty salmon at once, holding them up like a bouquet of wildflowers. Her eyes were large and dark and they danced like the lights that often painted the night sky. She was a novice astrologer, but she could already read the Stars as easily as letters. When she stood on her haunches she was taller, even, than I.
In the Land Where the Snow Does Not Melt, the hours of our days were simply filled, with fishing and hunting, with the rearing of cubs, with watching the Stars. My people were always very great astrologers, though rarely consulted by you folk. Once in a very great while a Versammlung was held—a Congress of the Bears.
And so a Versammlung was called the day I and several other young bears were to announce our chosen mates. Such things are dependent on the Star-motion, and the Congress must be consulted. Seal fat was laid out like a glistening carpet with great slabs of salmon, pinker than a cub’s paw in the first hour of his life. Hundreds of white foxes had been killed in honor of the Star-gods, and I had made a cloak of their fur for the offering.
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nbsp; A Versammlung is something to see. The bears come across the glaciers like blocks of living ice, and their eyes flash brighter than a glimpse of seal flesh in the cold water. By the time they had all arrived, the Stars had already begun to shine in through the curtain of sky. I bowed before them. It always pays to be polite when one is asking for a favor. Besides, I was sure that they would approve my choice—she was after all the pride of the Land Where the Snow Does Not Melt.
“The Stars whisper on their sky-floe,” one bear began.
“Bless them in their cloud-hunt,” I answered. All these things are ritual—no one says a word that has not been spoken a thousand times before, a thousand thousand times, and even the first of those was a repetition of words that came before.
At this the rest settled in, ripping into the seal flesh with great relish.
After all had eaten and were rolling back on the snow, a great, woolly bear came forward. I knew him; he was called Gunde, quite the fiercest of us.
“The Stars whisper, brother. A great horror has occurred far away to the South. The red summer fire which is called the Harpoon-Star told me. One of his sisters—murdered. A Snake-Star, beautiful and green, and she is dead.” The bears sent up a terrible howl of mourning, piercing as a bone-needle. I shivered.
“We weep for our sky-aunt; we mourn for the flesh that vanishes. It is a wicked omen. The shape of the Stars is confused—the signs of the Black Seal and the Caribou-Beset-by-Wolves are conjunct. The Great Paw is in retrograde. We have taken the augurs. You may not take a mate in this dark time, which must be a time of grief for all who still love the Stars. We are sorry, brothers.”
I howled, long and low as a buried horn. How was it right that a death in the forest could deny me my heart on the ice? I dredged the frost with my claws.
