Ice

  She managed three swallows, then had to rest, leaning her head against the sow. She drifted into sleep and woke a few seconds later to swallow more milk. She alternated, drinking and sleeping, until she felt human again.

  I’m going to live, she thought as she lay against the mother bear. From beyond the ends of the earth, Bear had found a way to save her. And somehow, she thought, I’m going to find a way to save him.

  NINETEEN

  Latitude 84° 42’ 08” N

  Longitude 74° 23’ 06” W

  Altitude 3 ft.

  SQUINTING INTO THE SUN’S GLARE, Cassie scanned the softening ice. In the twenty-four-hour sun, icicles dripped into melt pools. The constant drip sounded like the second hand on a clock. Heading toward Ward Hunt Island, she’d traveled with the bears for three weeks, stopping only to drink bear milk and eat the strips of seal and fish that the bears had brought her. Often the bears had carried her while she slept so she wouldn’t lose time. But it hadn’t been enough.

  I’m not going to make it, she thought.

  She tried to ignore the knot of fear that lodged inside her rib cage. Sweat pricked the back of her neck underneath the flannel and wool. Everywhere, the ice was splintering. In five-foot-wide cracks, the ice was packed mush that moved with a hollow sound. Murres and gulls wheeled overhead, diving for cod in the widening cracks. She was not going to make it to land before the ice receded from the shore. Not going to make it, her mind whispered over and over. Not going to make it.

  Summer was coming.

  Facing a stretch of thin ice, Cassie mounted one of the bears. With giant paws like snowshoes, he walked across the green-gray ice. It wobbled in waves. Holding her breath, she watched the frost patterns for cracks. She stayed mounted as the bears continued to plod over thin ice and alongside ice rivers.

  Five days later, Cassie and the bears reached the end of the ice.

  Ahead of them, ice tossed in the waves, and then crumbled into semifrozen gruel. The slush undulated. Eventually, it dispersed into open ocean. Miles and miles of open water lay between her and land.

  Cassie stared at the water. It was over. She was too late. She was stranded on the pack ice. All her grand resolve to reach the ends of the earth . . . All she’d done was reach the end of the ice.

  The sun sparkled like golden jewels on the ice and the water. Blinking fast, she focused on the dancing waves. She knew better than to cry in the cold. Her father had taught her that years ago. And did he also teach you to quit? she asked herself. Was it to be a family tradition to fail to reach the troll castle? Like father, like daughter? “Snap out of it,” she whispered. “You aren’t dead yet.” She had options: Max could still come, or . . . She could not think of a second option.

  Hoping for inspiration or a miracle, she looked around her at the army of polar bears. An arctic fox, diminutive beside the behemoths, trotted among them. Light as a cat, he didn’t have to worry about weak ice, she thought. If she were the size of the fox, maybe the bears could have swum her across any open water without drenching her. Cassie looked at the glittering black water and shuddered. As Dad would have said, it was death water: In fifteen minutes, the muscles would seize, consciousness would fade, and death would come. As things were, without a munaqsri to warm her, she’d freeze if she tried to swim.

  So all she had to do was find herself another munaqsri. Problem solved.

  She snorted at herself. Like it was so easy. Billions of people spent their lives without seeing a munaqsri or even knowing they existed. Of course, she did know they existed, even if they moved too fast to see, but unless she just happened to know of an imminent birth or death . . .

  The answer came so quickly that she nearly shouted out loud. If she were present at a creature’s death . . . Cassie slid off the polar bear, her eyes fixed on the arctic fox. She’d seen foxes dogging the polar bears for weeks now. Arctic foxes were scavengers, living off the remains of bear kills. But with so many bears together, every kill was thoroughly stripped—there were few remains. She felt her heart race, thudding against her rib cage.

  Somewhere on the ice behind them, there had to be a starving arctic fox.

  “We’re going back,” she said, slapping the bear’s shoulder. “Come on. Back the way we came.” If she could find another munaqsri, he could help her off the ice. Even better, he could take her to Bear!

  Cassie trudged north through her sprawling polar bear army. The bears milled around the ice and watched her with their black, inscrutable eyes. She stroked their fur as she passed, trying to reassure them. “I’ll save him,” she said. “I promise I’ll bring your king home.”

  After five hours of walking, she saw a small dusty white shadow, nearly yellow against the blue-white ice. Loose snow swirled like fast-moving clouds around it. The shadow raised its head as she approached—it was an old fox. He was so thin that she could see his ribs pressing up through his fur. Poor thing, she thought. If the polar bears hadn’t banded together, he might have had a chance at one more season, but he hadn’t been able to compete with all the bears.

  Shedding her pack, she knelt on the ice beside the fox. He laid his head back down and closed his eyes. His breathing was labored. She watched his ribs jerk up and down, his breath a harsh huff against the hiss of the wind.

  Behind her, Cassie heard the soft puffing of bears. She saw them out of the corners of her eyes, blurred by the frost on her goggles. “Just a little longer,” she promised them. And then she’d be off the ice and on her way to Bear . . . if this worked.

  It had to work. The fox munaqsri had to come, didn’t he?

  No one would come when a polar bear died, she thought. Their souls would . . . She didn’t know what would happen to their souls. And with no one to transport the souls to the newborn, then these bears, these beautiful bears, would be extinct in a generation. No soul, no life.

  Bear had risked all of them to marry her. He’d trusted that she’d respect his one and only request. And she hadn’t. Cassie hugged her stomach. Even through all the layers, she could feel the slight bulge. This . . . what he’d done . . . didn’t excuse the damage she’d done, however unintentionally, to all these beautiful bears. She had to reach Bear.

  The fox shuddered, and his ribs sank down, down, as if folding into his fur. They didn’t rise again. “Munaqsri!” she called.

  She saw nothing.

  “Fox munaqsri!” Cassie said. “I need to talk to you on behalf of the bear munaqsri!” He had to be here. She had no backup plan.

  “You know the polar bear?” a voice said. Suddenly, a second arctic fox perched beside the dead fox. Spiking his fur, the fox arched his back like a cat. “You tell him I blame him for the fate of my foxes. While his bears herd, my foxes are starving.” His muzzle curled back, and sunlight glinted on sharp incisors. “I will bring my complaints to the Arctic overseer—” With his thick white fur and delicate snout, he looked like a cross between a Pekinese and a Persian cat, hardly anything threatening. But he was an angry fluff ball with the power of a munaqsri.

  Cassie scrambled to her feet. “Wait, listen! Bear . . . the bear munaqsri . . . is in trouble. I need you to speed me to the troll castle, east of the sun and west of the moon.”

  The effect of her words was instantaneous. He switched from furious to distressed in an eyeblink. “He has forsaken his bears? Oh, my foxes!” The fox tilted his head back and yowled. “My foxes will starve! No one has ever returned from there. He will never return!”

  The fox’s cries sliced into her. She clapped her hands to her ears. “Yes, he will!” Cassie shouted. Her mother had returned. If Bear could rescue Gail, then Cassie could rescue Bear. She would bring him back. She would fix everything. “I can bring him back!”

  His howl died in yet another split-second mood change. Now silent, the fox stared at her. “Who are you?” he asked finally.

  “Cassie Dasent,” she said. She couldn’t read the expression on his fox face. He’d already gone from furious to distressed
to contemplative in less than thirty seconds. Please, let him help her.

  “You are not a munaqsri,” he said.

  “I’m the wife of the polar bear,” she said.

  “Interesting taste,” he said.

  Cassie gritted her teeth. Now he was mocking her? Her husband was missing, suffering with trolls; the polar bears and arctic foxes were in danger of extinction; and she was stuck on the ice, at least four months pregnant, with summer rapidly approaching. “I didn’t trek here from beyond the North Pole to be insulted by something cuddly,” she snapped. “It’s your choice, Fluffy: Help me and help your foxes, or don’t help me and watch them die.”

  Fluffy licked his nose. Cassie held her breath. She’d either reached the erratic munaqsri or utterly antagonized him.

  “I cannot take you there,” he said finally. “The castle is east of the sun and west of the moon. It is beyond my region. I cannot leave the ice. Another munaqsri is responsible for foxes on land.”

  “Then help me find another munaqsri,” Cassie said. There had to be a munaqsri who could cross from the ice to the land. Quickly, she scanned the ice, the sky, and the sea.

  Out in the ocean, a whale lifted its spiral tusk. Slow and stately, a second horn rose out of the water. As if in an ancient ritual, the two narwhals crossed their unicorn horns. “Call a whale,” she said.

  “A whale will not help you,” he said. “You are not a munaqsri, and they will have no interest in the fate of the polar bears or of my foxes.”

  One problem at a time, she thought as she lifted her pack onto her shoulders. “Just do it. Please, Fluffy?”

  * * * * *

  The ocean buckled at her feet. Screeching, seabirds recoiled from the water. For an instant, their bodies blackened the sky. “He comes,” the fox said.

  Cassie stumbled as waves rocked the ice. Inches from the ice edge, a dark smooth curve as large as a submarine rose out of the water. And then it kept rising, larger and larger. As Cassie stared, the bowhead whale lifted its mouth above the swirling waves. Its maw gaped open, and Cassie saw fringed plates of baleen, enormous sheaths that filled the whale’s mouth. Algae, barnacles, and seaweed clung to the dripping sheaths. No ordinary whale could have been this huge.

  The colossus shut its mouth, and waves swelled onto the ice. Cassie scrambled backward as freezing water splashed her mukluks. Behind her, the ice cracked. She looked over her shoulder to see a split in the ice widen from the stress of the waves. On either side of the split, her polar bears waited, shoulder to shoulder—her beautiful bears. Seeing them gave her strength.

  “I need your help,” she said to the whale.

  “You are not a munaqsri.” His voice pounded like a drum. She shuddered as each syllable hit her ears.

  “My husband is,” she said. “He’s the polar bear munaqsri.”

  Rising higher in the water, as massive as a monster from a myth, the bowhead drummed, “He may be, but you are not. You have no ties to us.”

  The ice rocked as if in an earthquake. Spray and wind hit her face. She spread her legs to keep her balance and held the shoulder straps of her backpack. He didn’t care if he drowned her, she realized. Looking up at the leviathan, she said, “I’m tied to him. We made vows.”

  “We are all bound by our promises,” he intoned.

  Cassie pushed her hair out of her eyes and squinted up at the bowhead. He eclipsed the sun. “Please. You have to help me reach the troll castle.”

  “Nothing living ever goes there,” the bowhead said.

  “Then take me across the ocean,” she pleaded. “Just to the shore. I’ll find the way myself from there. But please, help me off the ice!”

  “I do not help humans.”

  “The bears will die if I don’t save their munaqsri,” Cassie said. She couldn’t fail. Her beloved bears would vanish from the face of the earth. “Help me for their sake.”

  The bowhead drifted against the crumbling ice. Cassie flailed as the ice rocked. “The bears are not my concern,” he said.

  He had to care about something! She cast around for another idea, and she hit on inspiration. “I’m carrying the Bear’s child,” she said. “One of you. A future munaqsri.”

  The bowhead sprayed water from his spout. Screaming, Cassie threw her gloved hands over her head and ducked as it rained ice-cold seawater. “You risk a munaqsri,” the bowhead boomed. “It cannot be allowed.”

  Beside her, the arctic fox hissed and growled. “You hold a species’ future inside you, and you undertake this quest? You seek death.”

  Oh, no, she’d made it worse. “But I have to save—”

  “I cannot allow you to endanger a future munaqsri,” the bowhead said.

  “Nor I!” Fluffy said.

  “You must stay on the ice where you belong.” With that pronouncement, the bowhead submerged. A vast wave of water surged in his wake.

  Cassie scrambled away from the wave. “I’ll die if I stay!” She would die, the bears would die, the foxes would die. Bear would be trapped in the place that had made Gail scream.

  “The bears will care for you until the child is born,” Fluffy said. “And when he is grown, the bears will have their new king. My foxes shall live, and all will be as it should.”

  She shook her head. Her throat felt choked. She had to make him help her. She couldn’t lose her one chance at Bear. “Bowhead!” she shouted at the waves. Could he still hear her? Please, let him hear her. The glittering black waves still churned in his wake. Cassie called to the deep, “You want your precious child to live? Then keep its mother alive!”

  She ran and dove into the Arctic Ocean.

  TWENTY

  Latitude 84° 10’ 46” N

  Longitude 74° 22’ 53” W

  Altitude -32 ft.

  COLD SEARED HER SKIN. Knives sliced her bones. She kicked the water. Thirty feet down, she shed her pack. It sank. I’m not dying, she thought. This isn’t the end. She saw the surface: golden green. Clawing the water, she swam toward it.

  She could not feel her hands. She had no arms. No legs.

  Numb, she burned. Her lungs screamed.

  Golden green turned black.

  Fifteen minutes. Death water.

  It hurt to die.

  And then it didn’t hurt. Cassie was cocooned in currents. She swept through silver fish and translucent jellies. Cod eddied around her body, and comb jellies grazed her with their rain-bow cilia. Light—green—hung in the water like dust in air.

  She looked down at a garden of brilliant orange starfish and golden sea anemones. Was this heaven? Small lobsters crawled over rocks. Crabs with spider legs scrambled over mud to hide in soft strands of algae. She looked upward. Belugas undulated through the green light. The water filled with the sounds of their chirps and whistles. She watched them swim, singing, overhead. No one’s heaven had lobsters and off-pitch belugas. It would even be odd for a hell. She smiled and tasted salt. She was underwater. Alive.

  But how? She’d hoped the bowhead munaqsri would save her, but she didn’t see him. He would have to be touching her to save her. Oddly, no one was touching her. So who was keeping her alive? And warm? And not in pain? “Hello? Anyone?” Her words burbled in the water.

  The tide carried her through strands of algae. Soft ribbons of green brushed against her. The algae coated the loose ice overhead and the floor below so that they looked like an overgrown lawn. Cassie eyed the dustlike krill. “Hello? Do any of you talk?”

  No shrimp answered. At least she wouldn’t have to hold a conversation with something almost microscopic. She nearly laughed at the image, but then the sea darkened. Cassie looked up; the bowhead blocked the sun. He looked as if he could swallow her entire universe. Cassie shrank from the living eclipse, acutely aware how much she didn’t belong here. She was alive only by someone else’s decision. What if whoever it was changed its mind? The bowhead passed over her, and in his wake, sunlight flooded the water. She didn’t want to be down here a second longer. She swam tow
ard the sun.

  Current slammed against her, sending her tumbling sideways. Her hood fell back and her hair swirled. She tried again, aiming diagonally upward.

  Fish swarmed her. Cod, their silver bodies streaking in the slanted light, surrounded her. She could not move her arms without slapping them. The fish butted their heads against her, pushing her down and then propelling her through the water. She flailed like a windmill, and the fish scattered.

  As the water cleared, she saw a shape—it was coral, a city of coral, rising out of the muddy sea floor. Teeming with fish, the city was an organic Manhattan. In its own way, it was as grand as Bear’s castle.

  She heard a laugh. Cassie spun in the water. “Who’s there?” she called. Really, it could be anything from the pink crustaceans to the comb jellies.

  It was a mermaid.

  Perched on a salt-encrusted rock, the mermaid had codlike scales on her tail that spread into silvery skin at her navel. Her human skin rippled in soft wrinkles, like a bloated drowned body. She laughed in streams of air bubbles.

  Without thinking, Cassie said, “You’re mythical.”

  The mermaid’s laugh grew wilder and harsher. It sounded like waves breaking.

  Cod nibbled at the mermaid’s hair. Made of kelp, her hair drifted around her face like Medusa’s snakes. Cassie noticed the mermaid had no fingers, and a memory tugged at her, one of the local stories. This was the creature who had spawned the Sedna stories, the Inuit sea woman whose father had chopped off her fingers. “You’re Sedna,” Cassie said. Months ago, Bear had mentioned Sedna as the overseer of the Arctic Ocean.

  With a flick of her fin, the mermaid rocketed toward Cassie. Instinctively, Cassie shielded her face, but the mermaid veered around her and circled her in a jet stream of bubbles. “I have heard of you as well,” Sedna said. “You are the girl who was forced to marry the polar bear to save your mother from the trolls.”

  “No one forced me,” Cassie said. “I chose to save her.” And now she was choosing to save him, whether he loved her or not. “I need to reach the castle that’s east of the sun and west of the moon. Will you help me?”