Page 101 of Echo North
My heart jolts. What if every second we stay here a year spins away down below us? What if any hope of seeing my father again is already gone?
“That is—” Hal’s eyes flick up to mine. “That is if I can come with you. I … I don’t wish to presume—”
“Of course you’re coming,” I snap.
He nods.
I stride away from the Wolf Queen’s bower, and Hal follows. His gait is uneven, his left leg dragging a little behind him as he walks, and I think of that day long ago when I failed to free him from that trap, of the scars we both will always bear. I am broken forever in two. How can I still want to love him, knowing what he did, even if he did it because of the Queen? How can I forgive him?
I want to. But I don’t know how.
If you hadn’t lit that lamp, I would have been free. But—but she would have taken you instead. That was the deal. The only way to break my curse. Your life for mine.
The wood is quiet as we walk, but not like before. There are birds singing in the trees, a flash of a deer’s white tail, a squirrel nibbling a nut on a fallen oak.
The red flowers are gone. In their place grow tangles of honeysuckle and peonies and twists of wild roses, and they make the wood smell sweet. A track still winds between the trees, but it’s no longer paved with stones. I think it must be a deer path.
The ground slopes gradually downward as I follow the path, and Hal comes at my heels. Part of me wants to tell him to walk beside me, but the other part, the part that’s raw with hurt, can’t quite bear it. We saved each other, but I’m not sure that’s enough.
We walk in silence. Leaves fall softly all around us. The trees shift to the stately, ancient pines I remember from my ascent, and suddenly we’re at the edge of the mountain. The path I followed up here winds back down to the plain. I wonder if Ivan is there, waiting for me. He must be—he was just in his Wind form, breaking the Queen’s power. And yet somehow I already know he’ll be gone.
Our climb down takes about an hour, maybe less, and the whole time Hal says nothing to me, and I say nothing to Hal. An awful numbness creeps into my heart. What if we can’t get past what happened on the mountain? Hal’s confession. The Wolf Queen’s truth. The scars that run deeper than the lines in my face.
We reach the bottom before I’m ready: there’s no camp, no Ivan, no sign that anyone has ever been here before. Somehow I knew it would be this way.
Blood pounds in my ears and I try to fight the panic. “Please not a hundred. Please, God, not a hundred.”
“Echo?” Hal lays a hand on my shoulder and I look up to meet his glance.
I don’t shake him off, but I don’t pull him close, either. “Ivan was supposed to meet me here. To wait for me. He’s a storyteller I hired as a guide, only he’s actually the North Wind, or used to be, and his brothers are the ones who helped us, back … there.” I wave vaguely up the mountain. “He promised he’d wait for me three weeks.”
“Then that’s all we know. Three weeks have passed. That doesn’t mean a century.”
I don’t know how Hal can be so calm, but I nod, my throat constricting. “He would have left me something. A note. A sign.”
We search the ground by the path, lifting rocks and digging through bushes. The landscape is overgrown by tangles of briars and underbrush, and I’m ready to give in to despair when Hal finds it: a notch carved into the side of the mountain, an oilskin-wrapped package wedged inside.
Hal hands it to me mutely, and I sit down with my back to the rock and unwrap the oilskin. A book stares up at me, the titleEcho Northstamped in gold on the cover. For a moment all I can do is stare.
Hal stands nearby, watchful but not prying, and somehow his presence bolsters me enough to open the book to the title page:Echo North: the story of a girl and a monster and how her love saved them both, as told by Ivan Enlil.
Ivan did it, then. He took me at my word, adopted my story as his own, gave it an ending. I didn’t expect it to end like this, though: printed words on cream pages.
My heart pounds dully in my throat as I skim through the book, passing my eyes down the pages, reading snatches of my life told in Ivan’s lyrical prose. It’s much more fantastic than what I actually lived: book-Echo is scarred in a fierce battle with her stepmother, who is also the enchantress responsible for cursing Hal. The enchantress is a Troll Queen and Hal’s a bear, and book-Echo literally rides on the backs of all four Winds to get to the Troll Queen’s fortress.
I read the ending Ivan wrote for me, all the while feeling Hal’s quiet gaze fixed on my face: book-Echo climbs up to the Troll Queen’s fortress, where she finds Hal chained in a high tower. To free him, Echo must complete three impossible tasks. First, to sew a blanket without needle or thread. Second, to make love fit in a box. Third, to clean Hal’s shirt from where the oil dripped, without using soap or water. Echo completes the tasks, with the help of magical creatures she met on her journey. The Queen goes into a rage, but book-Echo chains her in the tower in Hal’s place, and hummingbirds and the giants and the Winds pull the tower to the ground. Book-Hal, a prince, takes book-Echo to his kingdom and they are married and live happily ever after.
I glance up at Hal, who’s still watching me, his face blank, his manner reserved. I swallow around the lump in my throat and lower my eyes back to the book. I turn the last page and find what I’ve been waiting for: a letter addressed to me on two sheets of crisp paper folded in half.
I open the letter, trying to calm my raging heart.
Dear Echo,
I waited for you the three weeks we agreed on—to be truthful, I waited four. But time runs differently in the Wolf Queen’s domain, and I know that you are most likely well, that you might be there even still, locked with her in combat, freeing your white wolf from her spell. I am sorry I had to leave you, but so it was.
Isidor and Satu are well. Satu has grown tall and brown and merry, and her favorite stories are the ones I tell of you. It is she who demanded I write them down, print them in a book. And I did, with a few liberties I hope you will forgive. The book has made me enough profit to buy a proper house and fine gowns for Isidor. It is a funny thing for a Wind to worry about providing for his family, but it is so, and it is you who has made it possible.
I wrote you an ending, as you wished me to, but Satu has never been easy with what really happened on the mountain. So this year, for her tenth birthday, we have made the journey back here, to see if you had yet come down. But there was still no sign of you, and after a week of waiting, I finally convinced Satu that we must return home again. She swears she will come every year or two, and one day climb the mountain herself, to rescue you if she is able. I am very loathe to lose her, also, to the Wolf Queen, so you will understand my reluctance ever to let her do so.
