THE LETTER FROM ROSE arrived just after the fall harvest.

Dear Neddy,

I am writing to tell you that I am safe and well and no longer living at the castle with the white bear. It is a long story and one I hope to tell you at the end of my journey. But I made a wrong choice, one that hurt someone very badly, so I must now undertake a journey to afar distant land—one that lies east of the sun and west of the moon.

Because you are cleverer than me, you will have already figured out that there is no such land. Nevertheless, I go there. It seems right somehow that I should journey to a place that does not exists it is where Mother always feared I would end up.

And please tell Mother the candle worked all too well. But tell her, too, that the choice to use it was mine and I do not blame her.

Just as the blame is mine, the journey, too, is mine, and I must undertake it alone. So do not try to come to me. I need to set right the wrong I have done, and when I have I will return home. Trust me, Neddy, and try not to worry.

Tell Father I love him. And tell Mother and Sonja and Willem and Sara that I miss them and hope that we will all be reunited before too long.

My love to you, Neddy.

Your sister, Rose

Rose

DURING THE NEXT FEW days the weather stayed fair. Thor continued to lie where he was while I brought him food and ale—mostly ale. He finally had me roll the cask over and set it beside him so that he could refill his own cup.

I had my doubts that ale, especially in the amounts he was consuming, was a particularly healing drink. But at least he had decided to live, and he had the constitution of an ox. Each day he gained in strength. The gray pallor was gone and the wound on his forehead was healing.

Thor was soon sitting up and, on the second day, even stood for a few minutes, leaning on a makeshift crutch I had fashioned from a splintered deck board.

As he lowered himself back into a sitting position, I asked, "Do you think it possible that Gest and Goran could have survived?"

Thor snorted, then took a long draught of ale.

"But they might have gotten hold of something to float on. They were good swimmers, and perhaps there was land..." I gazed out over the endless expanse of water. "Well, isn't it possible?"

"Anything's possible," Thor said. After refilling his cup he leaned back, eyes closed.

"I had a son once," I heard him say.

"You did?" I said stupidly. I had never pictured Thor as having any kind of life outside the ship, especially not a family.

"Egil was his name. Died at the hands of a band of thieves and murderers. Along with his mother. My wife." His voice had softened slightly as he said wife.

When he opened his eyes, they were laced with bitterness. "It is possible they would have lived if I had been there to protect them. But they died. Like Gest and Goran. And like I would have if you'd left me alone."

"Well, I couldn't leave you alone. And you saved my life, sticking me under the deck boards the way you did. 'Twas only common courtesy to return the favor."

Thor suddenly threw his head back and laughed. It was a full-throated reckless sound, and I liked the sound of it, even though I knew he was drunk.

"May I commend you on your manners?" he said.

I laughed, too, and there was some sort of softening between us. After that, if we were not exactly friends, at least Thor did not act as though I were not there.

Later that day I asked Thor if he had any idea where we were.

He finished the ale at the bottom of his cup, then looked up at me with something like a smile on his face. I thought he might even laugh again. "Hafvilla, "he said.

"Where?"

"Hafvilla. 'Tis a word in the old language," he explained. "The Vikings used it when they found they were hopelessly lost."

"I think we have been heading mostly west, since the storm," I said, attempting to be helpful.

With a shrug he refilled his cup.

"Is there any way we can rig up a new mast?" I asked, trying a different tack. "I mended the sail."

"Well, aren't you the clever seamstress?" he responded unpleasantly.

"Thor..."

He shrugged again, gazing critically around the knorr. "We might fix something up—not as tall, of course, but enough to catch a little wind."

"If you tell me what to do ... I am stronger than I look."

"Are you indeed?" Thor replied with a trace of skepticism, looking me up and down.

"And I want to learn, all that you know—about sailing the knorr, how to navigate, everything..." I said in a rush.

He was silent for a time, then he turned and stared at me, as though considering me in a new light. "You don't fancy floating around on the sea forever with a drunken old sot, eh? Well, maybe I will teach you. I'm not much good as a captain, am I?" he said, gesturing at his bound-up leg and arm. "And my ale supply will run out sooner or later."

"Sooner, I should think," I retorted.

"You'll need to pay close attention. I'll not say things twice. And I am not a patient man."

That was an understatement. Thor was ill mannered and ill tempered, and how much of either depended on where he was in his drinking. If he'd had too little, he was impossible; if too much, he was careless and impossible.

Still, he managed to cram a great deal of information into a short span of time. His knowledge of the ship and of the sea was impressive, and it was obvious how much he loved it all, which made up for his gruffness. He instructed me as I repaired the steering oar and then rigged up a short mast from deck boards. He taught me about the rigging, and even explained to me the smallest details of how the knorr had been built.

Finally he launched into the subject of navigation.

"There are as many ways to find your way as there are sailors. Smell the different flavors of a stretch of coast, listen for the curve of the shore, taste the air," he said to me.

He explained how to read the stars, the sun and moon, the tides, the weather, fish and bird life, and even water temperature, color, and texture. And then with great solemnity, he showed me how to use his highly prized leidarstein.

Much of what he taught me had a practical simplicity to it, but taken altogether it was overwhelming, and there were times that I despaired of remembering it all.

By the end of the first two days of Thor's instruction, my hands were raw from handling the rigging, my back was sore, and my head ached from all I'd been trying to absorb. I recalled my previous ocean crossing—the simple, dreamlike trip through the sea, wrapped in a sealskin and carried like a baby in the mouth of a white bear. And I realized how much more complicated life is without the benefit of magic. Rubbing linseed oil into my blistered hands, I thought wistfully of how magic lets you skip over the steps of things. That is what makes it so appealing.

But, I thought, the steps of things are where life is truly found, in doing the day-to-day tasks. Caught up in the world of enchantment as I had been at the castle, it had been the routine things I had missed most, which was why I had set up that laundry room and insisted on doing my own washing. But I had missed so much. Sitting at the table back home and peeling potatoes with my mother and sisters in a companionable silence. Feeding the chickens, their urgent feathery bodies crowding my legs, and looking up to see Neddy coming back from the fields. Going on one of my long exploring walks, having a blister come up on my heel but at the same time stumbling upon a fox den and catching a brief glimpse of a mother fox nursing a brand-new litter of kits. And though I might have wished away the blister, slowing down to favor the pain in my heel was part of how I came to see the kits.