About This Quote

The story of the trolls and the white bear is a well-known fairy tale. The trolls were not monsters at all, but creatures that lived in the mountains and had been peaceful neighbors to the people of Niflheim. They had offered to help them in their fight against the Giants, but they only knew how to fight with sticks and stones, and the humans were too small and weak to use weapons made of metal. Then Rose found a magic sword in a mountain cave, and for a while it was a great help to the people of Niflheim, but they soon found out that it was very sharp and needed to be held carefully or it would cut their fingers off. The white bear was the best friend of Rose.

It had been born in Niflheim, but when Rose came there she took it along because she thought it would be safer there than on her own. It was a tame bear at first, but later, when she went north with Soren's ship, it learned many strange tricks from its new friends. People's tongues were getting long enough to reach around their mouths by then, but this did not stop them from talking too much about what they had seen or heard or done.

The bear did not mind being talked about so much because he did not have much to hide from people who were not bad-hearted enough to hurt him. The bear liked being with Rose because he always knew just what she wanted him to do. He could do things that ordinary bears could not do, such as running faster than any human being could run or making himself invisible when he wanted to keep quiet. He also taught Rose magic like that which he had learned among his new friends in Niflheim; how to make herself invisible at will or make herself grow big or small; how to melt into thin air; how to fly; how to change herself into other creatures; how to make herself grow wings like those of birds; or even how to make herself like something else entirely, like turning into an old man or an old woman for instance.

Source: East

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