Book 5:
East, by Edith Pattou
Summary:
In a Norse family down on its economic luck in the sixteenth
century, Rose is the eighth child born to a superstitious mother. A few times
while she grows up, she sees a white bear in the woods, and it saves her life
once. Later, when Rose is in her late teens, the family is about to be ejected
from their farm and one of the daughters is very sick and near death. The white
bear appears and says that if Rose goes with him their other daughter will get
better and their economic troubles will end. After a week of family debates and
considerations, Rose agrees.
She goes to live with the bear in a castle in a mountain,
and by this point the reader has been able to gather that the bear was once a
French prince but a troll princess captured him. To punish his daughter for her
actions, the Troll king put a spell on the boy, and certain conditions had to
be met before either the bear to be turned back into a boy or the princess (now
queen) to earn the boy. Rose is unaware of this, but she knows something is not
right about the bear. She tries to befriend him, keep herself busy, and also to
befriend the two people – actually trolls – who keep the castle running. The
bear watches her weave, listens to her try to learn to play instruments, and in
man form sleeps in the same bed as her every night, although Rose is unaware
for certain that it is him.
After about a year of living with the bear, Rose becomes extremely
homesick, and is allowed to go home for one month. True to his word, her sister
is healthy and the family is returned to economic success. Rose does not trust
her mother completely because of some of her actions due to her superstitions,
but accepts a gift from her the day before she leaves to return to the bear. One
night, curiosity overwhelms her, so Rose uses the gift: candle and flint that
will shed light on any darkness. It works, and Rose sees the bear’s true form:
after so many years of being under an enchantment, he is a young man. But
because Rose has seen him, it also fulfills a condition, and the Troll queen
can now come and collect him, and he is now a human again all the time.
Rose feels awful, and wants to set things right, so she
decided to go after him. She journeys up past the coldest parts of the north
and eventually reaches the Troll kingdom. She infiltrates the castle by
pretending to be a “softskin” servant, and works in the castle while making a
plan and finding Tuki – one of the trolls who served in the mountain castle –
again. During the wedding of the Troll queen and the former white bear, Rose
intervenes in a way that causes him to be married to her, not the queen, and
then the Troll castle to be destroyed. They, along with some of the captured
humans, journey back down south.
They meet up with Rose’s father and one of her brothers, and
in the night the former white bear disappears. Rose understands that he needs
to figure out who he is now that he’s no longer a white bear, but she goes
after him anyway because she knows now that she truly loves him. She finds him
at the castle in the mountains, where he has learned that his name is Charles.
Charles and Rose get married, and live happily ever after.
