Behind a dark-hued tapestry at the end of a dimly lit hall on the top floor, I found a door. The door opened onto a small, winding staircase, which was not lit. I went and got a candle, and climbed the stairs. At the top, which must have been the highest point of the castle, I found a tiny window. I could see little through it—just the sky and a lone tree branch—and could open the thick glass pane only about an inch. But the opening gave me the faintest taste of fresh air, as well as a sense of night and day beyond that which was provided by the lamps and candles of the castle. I visited that window nearly every day.

Another place I went each day (other than the weaving room) was the room I called the library. Most of the books were in Fransk, a language I knew because my mother had taught it to me as a child, though I was not fluent.

There were also books in Latin, which I knew very slightly from our family bible, and I even found two books written in Njorden. One of them, to my delight, was a book of the old stories like the ones Neddy used to tell me, the ones with Freya and Thor and Odin and Loki.

The white woman and man kept things in the castle running smoothly. They provided me with delicious, nourishing meals. They kept lamps and fires lit in the rooms I used, and tidied up after me and the white bear (whose only bad quality I could see was his shedding; I'd occasionally come across tufts of white fur stuck to the edges of furniture). They did all this without my seeing them, except for now and then, and those times they would always hurry away. The door to the kitchen was kept locked, and the few times we came face-to-face, the language difference made it impossible to understand each other.

The white bear visited me daily as I worked the loom. Usually it was in the afternoon and he would lie on the rug near me. I took to talking to him, though he rarely responded. I would tell him of my family, of life on our farmhold, and of the places I had explored beyond the farm. I would also tell him stories, both from my memory of the ones Neddy had told me and those from the Njorden book I had found.

I didn't know what he thought of my chatter, but I came to believe he liked the sound of my voice. If I was in a quiet mood, he would raise his head expectantly, as if waiting for me to start talking.

I grew used to his presence, and his sheer immensity no longer distracted me. A wordless communication developed between us. I could read his mood by the way he held his head, the small sounds he made, and even the way his fur lay on his body. Much of what I understood about him I saw in his eyes, those deep, expressive black eyes. I sensed something almost human in him, a thin, wavering strain of thought and feeling that was decidedly nonanimal. I believed it was where his limited ability to speak came from.

I wondered if at one time he had been either all animal or all human, and then those two elements of him were mingled, though clearly the animal in him had become the stronger and that was why words were so difficult.

There were times I sensed he hated that nonanimal flicker inside him, wished he could obliterate it altogether. And there were times I felt he clung to it for dear life. There were also a few times that I felt that this barely perceptible flicker was the only thing that kept him from ripping me to shreds or devouring me whole.

On one occasion I was coming out of my room on my way to the loom. I had just bathed and my face was flushed from the heat of the water I had bathed in. The white bear was standing just outside the door, and I nearly ran into him.

I heard a low growl coming from deep in his throat, and I glanced up into his eyes. To my horror they were blank, almost unrecognizable, with a terrible hunger in them. I stepped back, my heart thudding in my chest. He bared his teeth, something he'd never done before, and the growl grew louder. He took a step forward.

Without thinking I darted backward into the room, slamming the door behind me.

Desperately my hand scrabbled for a key or lock, but there was none. I pressed my back against the door, knowing how futile the effort was, given the enormous strength of the white bear. Batting down a door would be child's play to him. I heard a scratching sound on the door, then a sudden unearthly roar, like that of a creature in indescribable torment.

The roar echoed for a moment, then all was still. I waited a very long time before venturing out of my room again.

After I finished the weaving of the meadow from home, I moved on to a design from one of the stories I'd read in the Njorden book. It was a harsh tale about the trick Loki played on Idun, the guardian of the golden apples that ensured immortality to the gods. My weaving depicted Idun in the place the terrible giant Thiassi had taken her—a cavernous hall lit by columns of fire that burst from the earth.

When I was finished I was well pleased. I had intended both pieces as wall hangings, inspired by the tapestries on the walls of the castle. But though there was no fault or mistake in either, when I gazed at them side by side I began to feel dissatisfied with both. The first was lovely to look at, but it had no feeling to it. It was a pretty scene, remote and at a distance. The second piece had an anger to it that made me feel unsettled and unhappy.

I decided to take a rest from weaving to work on another kind of project instead. So I set about repairing my torn cloak. It was the last thing Neddy had given me, and if I was ever allowed to return home, I would need my "compass." Strangely, I gave no thought to making a new cloak. The old one was a link to my life back home, and I didn't want to break that link despite the lie that was woven into it.

Using the castle's good, strong thread and sharp needles, I quickly mended the cloak. And the white bear watched me, as he always did. When I came to the part of the wind rose where Father had hidden the truth, I felt tears prick my eyes. I thought of my father, of the pain I must have caused him with my anger. He may have been wrong to go along with Mother's lie, but he had done so reluctantly. I remembered the name that Father had called me in his heart. Nyamh. And more tears fell.

"You are sad," came the deep hollow voice.

I jumped a little, because the bear had not spoken to me in a week or more. But then I nodded, wiping my face with the edge of the cloak.

"Why?"

And the words came tumbling out as I told the white bear the whole tale of the birth-direction lie. When I was done, we were both silent. Then he said, "Rose ... Nyamh ... East ... North ... West ... South ... You are..."

I laughed a little. "I am all of the directions?"

He nodded.

"Are you saying you think the whole birth-direction superstition is nonsense?"

"No." He sounded definite, but when I asked him to explain what he meant, he did not answer but lay with his eyes shut, as though the small amount of speaking he had done had worn him out.

I sat watching him, confused but no longer sad. Again, despite his size and despite the fact that he had taken me from my family and home, I felt stirrings of sympathy for him.

"Is Sara well?" I blurted out.

He opened his eyes halfway. "Yes." The word was expelled from his chest like an arrow pulled from a wound. And then he left the room.

I thought of Sara as I finished mending and cleaning the cloak. I was relieved to hear that she had recovered. And I believed it to be true; for some reason I could not imagine the white bear lying.

I took my mended cloak to my room, folded it neatly, and stored it in my pack from home. Then I returned to the weaving room and began to think about what I wanted to make next on the loom.