Echo North(82)

“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 title Echo North stamped 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.

I hope that when you do, one day, come down from the mountain (and I do not doubt that it will happen), I am still living, and you find us, and tell Satu the real ending to your story.

Many blessings to you, child. And may the Winds be with you always.





Ivan

I read the letter twice, then fold it up again and tuck it back into the book. Hal paces over to me, his eyes fixed on mine.

“It’s been ten years. Ten years since I climbed the mountain, maybe more.”

He nods, and I stare at him as the world blurs before me. Hal takes my hand. “Then it’s past time we got you home,” he tells me gently.



THE BEGINNING OF OUR JOURNEY home is much like my travels with Ivan, minus the singing and without so much ice. The hard grip of winter has eased from the land with the Wolf Queen’s defeat, and there is life everywhere we go: deer on the plain, foxes in the caves, badgers and rabbits and pheasants amidst the scrub and rocks.

Hal and I don’t lack for food. We hunt, we eat, we walk. But that’s all we do. We speak very little beyond the necessities of making and breaking camp, and we sleep on opposite sides of the fire every night. I miss him, I crave his company. He’s here and yet not here, close by but unreachable.