Long and long times past and far, far to the north where the night-lights cascade across the sky like sheets of particolored silk and where the sun will shine the whole night through, there lived a furre named Kar. She was grace, her walk as easy as song and her gaze as gentle as snow on your fur. She was beauty, her voice as bright as a newborn star. She was nobody’s girl.
      In her village, many furres courted her with kindness and sincere promises. Suitors from far away would often come and serenade her with romance and wondrous tales. But she refused them all. Kar said she was too free to be weighed down by marriage. The villagers said she was too aloof and her ways too strange.
      One autumn as the geese began flying overhead – great arrows pointing the way of escape from winter’s cold – a handsome furre arrived in her village. He never spoke as he went about his business, but his deep black eyes whispered in Kar’s heart of needs she never knew she had wanted. “That is the furre I shall marry,” she thought to herself, and when the stranger left Kar’s village, she followed.
      He set an easy pace as they crossed the stubbled fields outside the village, but Kar could not catch up to him and her breath quickened from hurrying. When they came to the forest, he dropped down on all fours and ran like a stream through the trees, and still Kar chased after him. Then as the forest came to an end at the skirts of a fjord, he turned into a great white bear and sped across the floe in loping strides, his massive paws thumping the ice like a distant drum. Kar could no longer feel her legs from running so hard, yet her feet rose and fell on their own to match the bear’s pace.
      Closer and closer she always seemed to draw. Farther and farther he ran ahead. They soon came to a wide break in the ice and Kar thought surely he would stop. But the bear dove into the freezing water, clambering out the other side without seeming to slow.
      Kar leaped into the sea behind him. The frigid water crushed her breath and as she came to the far side of the break she clutched at its crumbling edge, too heavy to pull herself out.
      “Wait!” she cried out. “Oh, wait for me, please!”
      But the bear continued on and Kar began to sink. Then a thousand little fishes darted about her, their silvered bodies flashing like tiny scissors. They bit at her clothes until the shreds of fabric fell away and Kar sank yet further still. She came to rest on the muddy floor of the sea where a thousand little crabs scuttled around her and snipped at her flesh, until only bones remained.
      She was much lighter now without clothes or flesh and she floated up to the surface. Her hands scraped on the ice as she pulled herelf from the waters, her feet rattled as she began to walk.
      “Oh, I should never have followed that furre,” she moaned, and clattered as she fell to the ice. The wind wrapped around her and snow covered her over as she dreamed of being home by a fire with blankets piled up to her chin.
      When she woke, she was in her bed and thought that she’d had a nightmare, but as she rose from her bed she saw her feet... her legs... her fingers. She was still bones, a skeleton girl.
      Skeleton Girl sat outside in the shadows of her porch and watched the furres as they began their day of chores and play. She sat outside everyday. Her house was far away from the others and no one came to visit. Skeleton Girl was alone, her skull as bare as rock and her mouth as dry as sand. Skeleton Girl was terribly lonely.
      One day, two brothers stood in the lane by her house, wondering who might live there.
      “Come share the warmth of my home,” she he called to the furres. “I will cook a fine meal for you, and you can provide fine company for me.”
      But when the brothers came closer they saw that she was a skeleton and ran from her in disgust. Fearfully, they told their father what they had seen and demanded that he do something about such a horror. The old furre listened quietly, then picked up the lyre he had made from a tortoise shell he had found by the sea and went to Skeleton Girl’s house. Skeleton Girl, though, had fled from the brothers in shame and would not answer his knock.
      “Aren’t you going to invite me in?” he entreated. “You can provide shelter against this cold, and I will play a song for you.”
      When at last Skeleton Girl relented and asked him in, the old furre sat down on a pillow and blew out the candle. In the darkness he called for her to dance for him as he played his lyre.
      “But how can I dance when I am only bones?” she asked
      The old furre answered by beginning to sing. Tentatively at first, Skeleton Girl jigged awkwardly to the old furre’s music, but she was soon caught up in its beckoning magic. Forgetting her shame and loneliness, she danced and danced, her toes and heels striking a joyful rhythm on the wooden boards. Clickety-clickety, clickety-clack.
      The old furre smiled and turned his song to follow her dancing. Then in the darkness of her dance, the old furre’s limbs filled with renewed strength and his fur grew sleek and black. In the darkness of his music, Skeleton Girl’s frame moved with renewed grace and her bones grew flesh and beauty. In the light of their harmony, the two became lovers.
      When they walked through the village the next morning, not a furre recognized them, not even the old furre’s sons. And so the couple walked on... right out of the village and down onto the beach. There the couple laid the tortoise shell lyre at the edge of the waves, then laughing and singing with their arms draped around each other and their cheeks warmed by their touch, they jumped into the lyre and disappeared into each other’s dreams.