In appearance the softskins are very different from us, but we are able to move among them easily because of our arts, and they don't even know we are there.

Urda takes me tomorrow to see softskin folk. I can hardly wait!

I cannot sleep. The most amazing thing has happened. I actually met one of the softskin folk! A boy. I touched his skin and it was as soft as they say— softer! And his voice ... it was like a ... I don't know. Like the song of the creatures they call birds that we heard on our journey south, yet odder and more beautiful.

In Huldre I have seen the softskin servants only from a distance, for they do the most menial work in the kitchen and stables. (Troll servants wait on the royal family.) And our softskins are dull and broken from living long in Huldre. So I had not known what they are truly like. Urda had told me they are ugly and their voices sound awful—thin and watery— but she was wrong.

Urda fell asleep; because she is old she is always sleepy, and she drank plenty of slank with the picnic lunch we had. So I wandered off by myself I moved through the grass, which was green and soft when I bent down and ran my fingers across the tops of the thin stalks. I felt almost di^yfrom all the smells that filled my nose. Sweet and thrilling they were. And the changeable feel of the gentle wind on my skin. So different from the hard and constant wind in Huldre.

Then I saw some children playing in the distance and thought I would use my arts to get closer without being seen, but abruptly their game ended and they all went away.

Except there was one boy who came back.

"Would you like to play?" he said, holding up a round red object.

Because of my arts, I could understand his words, but still I could only stare. What had happened to my breathing, I wondered. Then the round thing came flying at me and I ducked.

His mouth curled up, showing even more teeth,and he ran to get it. "It is a hall" he said. "I'll teach you how to catch it."

And his words and the curling-up mouth made me feel strange inside, warm and melty, like taking a gulp of slank on an empty stomach. "Show me," I said eagerly in his language.

And there came a surprised look on his face. "Have you been ill? Your voice is..." he started but stopped.

After that I didn't speak again, but I began to understand about throwing and catching the thing he called a ball.

I hope you didn't think I was teasing you," he said. I didn't understand the word teasing, but he went on. "Your voice is fine," he said. Still I kept silent, and we continued to throw the ball, back and forth.

Then I heard the sound of someone calling, and he said he had to go, that his servants were looking for him but perhaps we could play again another time.

I watched him run down the mountain toward a large building. He moved quickly, with grace.

When I went back Urda was searching for me, still groggy from her nap. I told her I had taken a walk. I decided I wouldn't tell her about the boy. The next day I would make her take me there again. And I would make sure she drank even more.

Rose

THE WHITE BEAR HEADED due south of the farm, keeping to the woods and away from the places where people lived.

It was a frosty, clear night, and the stars shimmered against a black sky. Usually, looking up at the stars on such a clear night filled me with a breathless pleasure, no matter how often I gazed at them. But that night I was hardly aware that there was a sky.

Riding a bear was nothing like riding a horse. First of all, the bear was far larger, and I could not ride with both legs straddling his back, the way one does with a horse. At first I didn't move at all but stayed frozen in the position I had been in when I had landed on the broad back—sort of a crouch, my legs tucked under me. When he first began to move, I instinctively grabbed hold of the great ruff of fur at the back of his neck to keep from sliding off.

But after a few hours I grew stiff. I had the feeling we would be traveling for a long time, so I got bolder and began to shift my body, trying to find a comfortable position. I finally settled with one leg dangling down and the other bent under me. I didn't need to use my legs to hold on. Despite his enormous speed, the white bear's gait was surprisingly smooth and his back so broad that as long as I kept a firm hold on his thick fur, I was in no danger of falling off.

The white bear's fur was extraordinary. It was as soft as rabbit's fur, yet much thicker and longer. When I burrowed my hands into it—which I only worked up the courage to do after we had been riding a long time and my fingers were numb with cold—my hands and forearms disappeared up to my elbows. And the fur was so warm. It took only moments for my fingers to thaw. My legs, too, stayed warm, nestled in the deep fur.

But the rest of me—my face and upper body—was cold, and I was very glad of my cloak. I thought of Neddy finding pins and carefully lining up the torn edges, and my eyes blurred with tears. Better not to think about Neddy.

I thought instead of the beast upon which I was riding. I remembered the imaginary companion of my childhood. How many times had I imagined myself riding a magnificent white bear through the night?

He moved faster than I would have thought possible for such a large animal, and by daybreak we had journeyed far, into country I had never seen before. The land was heavily forested; there were fewer and fewer evergreens, more broad-leaved trees. We were still heading south.

Though the journey lasted seven days, the white bear stopped only once.

During that time I must have been in some kind of trance—or maybe it was an enchantment or spell. For those seven days I neither ate nor drank, nor slept. The strangest thing was that I didn't feel any different, except extremely aware and alert. It all seemed very natural; I was drinking it all in—the vivid greens of unfamiliar plants, the distant call of a strange bird, even the approaching smell of the sea.

When the white bear did stop, it took me by surprise, and I found myself slipping off his back and landing quite hard on sand. Catching my breath, I sat up and gazed around me. We were on a remote stretch of brown sand and waves were breaking not twenty feet away. It was dawn, and over my right shoulder the sun was just beginning to rise. Considering the direction we had been traveling, I guessed that this must be the southern reaches of Njordsjoen, the North Sea. And even though there was an enormous white bear not two feet from me, I felt a thrill of wonder. My grandfather had sailed this sea, and my great-grandfather before him. I had always promised myself that one day I would come to Njordsjoen, although I never could have imagined it happening quite like this.

Out of the corner of one eye, I saw the bear fiddling with something small and dark, and then he pulled at it with his great paws. Like taffy, whatever it was began to lengthen and grow.

I watched, dazed and fascinated, and then suddenly he came toward me, and before I knew what was happening, I was being encased from head to toe in some kind of soft, pliable covering. It was brown and smelled of fish and musk, and I thought maybe it was a sealskin. Then he pulled it up over my eyes and I felt myself being patted all over, as if I were a bairn being checked to see that my blankets were snug on a cold night. Suddenly I felt a pressure on the back of my neck and shoulders, a clamping down. I was being lifted and we were moving forward. Then the light and sound changed, became dimmer and muffled, distant.