But it wasn’t a real wedding. It was only words. She didn’t have to mean them. She just had to say them, and she would accomplish what no one else—her father, her grandmother, no one—had been able to accomplish: She’d bring her mother back! “Do you . . .” She halted. “What’s your name?” She turned to look at him. His massive head was inches from her shoulder. Instinctively, she flinched. She couldn’t do this. He was . . . She didn’t know what he was: magic or monster, predator or rescuer.
“You may call me Bear,” he said.
“Bear,” she repeated. She was marrying a creature simply called Bear to save a woman she’d never known.
That was the crux of it: a woman she had never known. Cassie had never known her mother. All she had to do was say a few words, and she could change that. Her mother would live again.
Looking into his black eyes, she began. “Do you, Bear, swear by the sun and the moon . . .” After this was done, she would demand to go back. He didn’t want an unwilling wife. She knew Gram’s story. He’d said so himself to her mother, I would not have an unwilling wife. He wouldn’t refuse Cassie. She’d divorce him as quickly as she’d married him. “The sea and the sky . . .” She could divorce him, right? Her voice faltered. She felt a roaring in her ears.
“The earth and the ice,” he prompted.
“The earth and the ice,” Cassie said. It was almost done. What did it mean to marry the Polar Bear King? Her eyes flicked to the door—the crystal lattice shimmered like a thousand stars in a net—and then back to the bear.
“To be my beloved husband from now until your soul leaves your body,” he encouraged her.
“And you’ll bring back my mother?” she said.
“Yes,” he said. “Our vows are void if I fail.”
Cassie closed her eyes. She had to do it for her four-year-old self, who had believed with all her heart that her mommy was in a troll castle. “Fine. Let’s finish this. To be my beloved husband from now until your soul leaves your body?”
“I do,” he said.
She thought she heard a sound like a bell, but she didn’t hear it in her ears. She heard it inside, as if it were resonating in her rib cage. Her knees wobbled.
“Do not be afraid,” he said softly. “As long as these walls are standing, nothing here will harm you.”
Eyes closed, she tried to breathe. It felt as if there weren’t enough oxygen.
“Come,” he said.
Cassie opened her eyes to see the bear walking down the shimmering hallway. For a second, she didn’t move. She looked back over her shoulder at the outside world, and then she took a deep breath and followed the bear.
The corridor widened into a golden and glowing banquet hall. The faceted walls glittered so brightly with candlelight from the chandeliers that Cassie saw sparkles when she blinked. Translucent, the cathedral ceiling glowed like stained glass. She looked around her in wonder. Carved birds and animals decorated the walls and ceilings. Buttresses arched over statues. A banquet table stretched the length of the hall with thronelike ice chairs on either end. It looked like . . . She tried to think of places to compare it to, and failed. It was as if every beautiful ray of light, every beautiful shape of ice that she had ever seen, were here all at once.
“We have had a long journey,” the bear said, suddenly behind her. Startled, she spun to face him. “You must wish to eat.”
When she turned back to the banquet hall, the vast table that had waited in silent splendor now overflowed with food. Fruit cascaded from ice crystal bowls. Steam rose from blue-white dishes. Breads were piled in pyramids. She breathed in a hundred spices. “I don’t understand,” she said. She saw no waiter and no chefs—nothing to explain the sudden appearance of a feast.
“It is food,” he said gently. “You eat it.”
As if to demonstrate, the polar bear swallowed an entire loaf of bread. She shook her head. The act was so incongruous with his fierce appearance. “Bears don’t eat bread,” she said. “You’re a carnivore.”
“We all have flaws,” he said.
Was that a joke? Did he have a sense of humor? She stared at him. “This can’t be real,” she said.
He nosed a throne. “Please. It is yours.”
Backing away, he let her approach it. Her throne. Taking off her mittens and gloves, she touched the curled arms of the ice throne. “It’s not cold,” she said. It was an ice castle. Either she should have been cold, or the ice should have been melting. But she was as warm as she would have been inside the station. “Nothing even drips.”
“It cannot melt,” he said. “Not so long as I am here. I will not allow it to melt.”
She jerked her hand back. “What do you mean ‘allow it’?” She said. “Ice doesn’t ask permission.”
“It is part of being a munaqsri,” he said.
“Moon-awk-sree,” she repeated. It sounded Inupiaq.
“Yes,” he said.
“Your word for ‘talking bear’?” she asked.
“It means ‘guardian,’” he said. “We are the caretakers of souls. Every living thing needs a soul, and everything that dies gives up a soul. Munaqsri are the ones who transfer and transport those souls.”
Cassie stared at him again.
“Altering molecules. That is one of the . . . ‘powers,’ for lack of a better word, that nature has given us so that we can fulfill our role,” he said. “On the ice, I use it to reach my bears. Here, I use it for the shape of my home, the food on the table, the warmth in your body.”
She felt as if she were spinning in a centrifuge, dizzy with the sparkling light of the chandeliers, the smells of spices, and the strangeness of the bear’s words. “You transfer souls,” she repeated. “Others like you—other munaqsri—transfer souls.”
“We are the unseen way that life continues,” he said.
“Scientists should have seen you,” she objected. “How can you be . . . transferring souls . . . and no one has noticed? How can you be here in a castle and no one has noticed? How can you be a talking bear—” She stopped when she heard her voice crack.
“People have seen us before,” he said. “Munaqsri sightings have inspired many stories. Have you heard stories of werewolves and mermaids? Sedna and Grandmother Toad? Horus and Sekhmet?”
“Stories, not science,” Cassie said. Like the story of the Polar Bear King and the North Wind’s daughter.
“You are correct. The stories are not accurate,” he said. “Sedna, for instance, appears in stories as a mermaid goddess, but in truth she is the senior munaqsri of the Arctic Ocean. She oversees all of the munaqsri in that region, like the Winds oversee the munaqsri of the air.” He paused. “Your family has explained none of this?”
“There’s no such thing as mermaids,” she said. “And I don’t believe in magic.” She knew as she said it that it was a ridiculous thing to say. She was talking to a bear in his magical castle in a part of the Arctic that could not exist.
“We are not magic,” he said. “We are part of nature. We are . . . the mechanism by which life continues. Everything we do—transform matter, move at high speeds, sense impending births and deaths—is part of nature’s design to enable us to transfer souls from the dying to the newborn.”
“I don’t believe in souls,” she said as firmly as she could. “A brain is a collection of chemical reactions. Complex neurochemicals.”
“As you wish,” he said mildly.
She wished she were home where she belonged and where things made sense. Or did they make sense only because Dad and Gram had lied to her? Would the world still make sense after she met her mother?
When she didn’t touch the food, the polar bear barked at the table, and the dishes melted. Pooling into colored water, they spread across the table to form a lacy tablecloth. Breads and soups disappeared like bubbles popping. Cassie backed away.
“Come,” the bear said. “You must be weary after our long journey. I will show you to the bedroom. Perhaps you should rest while I arran
ge for your mother’s release.”
She couldn’t imagine sleeping now, here. But she followed the bear out of the bright splendor of the banquet hall into the blue silence, deeper into the castle. She clung to his words like a lifeline: arrange for your mother’s release.
The bear’s paws were soundless on the ice. Silence wrapped around her as the hallway narrowed and the castle darkened. In the shadows, the bear loomed impossibly huge.
Candlelight danced across animal faces on golden walls. Blank, icy eyes stared at Cassie. She shrank back from them. All her instincts screamed at her to run back into the light. Deep blue, the ice surrounded her. She felt entombed. Was this how her mother felt in the troll castle? She fell to the ground and was captured by trolls. Cassie tried to picture her mother in a castle, and failed. What had her mother’s life been like? What was her mother like? Cassie wished she could remember her. She would be as much a stranger as . . . as the bear. Suddenly, the idea of meeting her mother was terrifying.
The bear halted at the foot of a staircase. Amber candlelight licked his fur. His eyes were inscrutable shadows. He seemed feral in the darkness. “You will find the bedroom at the top of the stairs,” he said. “You may wish to bring a candle.”
She fetched a candle from a wall sconce. Even the wax was ice, and like everything else, it wasn’t cold.
He rumbled, “I hope that you will be happy here.”
She didn’t intend to stay long enough to be happy or unhappy. Just long enough to ensure her mother was free, and then she would demand that the bear return her. But for now, she said nothing. She simply clutched the candle and stared at him.
He retreated into the blue shadows, and then she was alone. She lifted the candle higher so that the light fell shimmering onto the stairs. “Just until she’s free,” Cassie whispered. And then she shivered, even though it wasn’t cold.
FIVE
Latitude 91° 00’ 00” N
Longitude indeterminate
Altitude 15 ft.
AS THE BEAR HAD SAID, Cassie found a bedroom at the top of the stairs. She pushed open the door, a thick slab of opaque turquoise ice. She held the candle inside.
“Oh, wow,” she said.
Everything looked as if it were doused in diamonds: wardrobe, washbasin, table, bed. The canopy bed arched fifteen feet into the air and was made of shimmering ice roses, interwoven like lace. Posts at each of the four corners were carved like narwhal tusks. Cassie touched one of the smooth curves. Like all the ice in the castle, it felt as warm and dry as wood. On the bed itself, feather mattresses were heaped as high as her waist, and pillows were stacked as high as her neck.
Coming inside, she put the candle on a bedside table. She shed her pack and opened the wardrobe. A nightshirt fluttered from a single hanger. Cassie fingered the silk. Was it for her? Why would the bear want her to wear . . . She pushed the thought aside and closed the wardrobe.
She sat on the edge of the bed and thought of Gram’s story, the only link to her mother that she truly had. Once upon a time . . . All she knew of her mother was a fairy tale.
She leaned back into the pillows and tried to imagine her mother, the daughter of the North Wind. Without intending to, she fell asleep. She dreamed of a dark-haired woman and a polar bear bargaining in the snow-swirled Arctic. When Cassie looked closer, she saw the woman had her own face.
Several minutes or hours later, Cassie woke in darkness to a scraping sound. Automatically reaching for her bedside light, she remembered in the same instant that she was not home in her bed, she had no matches for the candle, and her flashlight was in her supply pack. She shot bolt upright. “Who’s there?” she asked. Her ears strained, listening.
She heard nothing.
The bear had told her that nothing within these walls would harm her. Could she trust him? “Overactive imagination,” she told herself. She lay back against the pillows.
She felt the mattress sink beside her.
Yanking the sheet, she leaped out of bed. “Get out!”
“Do not be alarmed,” a voice said. She didn’t recognize the voice. It was male.
Dammit, she should have found her flashlight when she’d first woke! Her heart pounded as she backed to the wall. Inching along it, she crept toward her pack. She rounded the washbasin, and a hand touched her arm. She elbowed backward with all her strength. She felt him double over. “Don’t touch me,” she said.
“I will not hurt you,” he puffed.
She kept moving toward her pack. Where was it? She had thought it was this corner. Her foot hit something solid—the pack. “One scream and you’ll have a thirteen-foot predator at your throat,” she warned him. Feeling for the pack, she knelt. Where was the bear? Why had he let this stranger in here? It occurred to her that she knew very little about why the bear wanted her here.
“Do not be afraid, beloved,” he said. “It is our wedding night.”
Oh, God. “You are not a polar bear,” Cassie said. “I didn’t marry you.” She loosened the top flap of the pack.
“I am Bear.”
“He’s much furrier. Less human.” Unsnapping the buckles on her pack, her hand brushed across wood. Better than a flashlight, she thought. She grinned wolfishly as she pulled the ice axe out of its loop. She gripped the handle and stood. “Do I look like an idiot?”
“You look beautiful, even with an axe.”
He could see her in the dark? She tightened her grip. Her heart thudded, but she kept her voice steady. “Just evening the odds.”
“You can trust me. I am not your enemy. In your heart, you know that.”
“One step closer and I swear I’ll swing.”
He put his hand on her shoulder. “I do not believe you will.”
Cassie swung.
She felt a rush of air—he’d leaped backward.
“Out,” she said. Brandishing the axe, she advanced on him in the darkness. She heard him retreat. She heard the door open and shut. Her heart beating in her throat and her breath quick, she did not lower the axe. Her hands were sweating, and Cassie realized to her horror and embarrassment that she was crying.
SIX
Latitude 91° 00’ 00” N
Longitude indeterminate
Altitude 15 ft.
CASSIE WOKE GOOSE-BUMP-COATED. “Stupid heaters,” she muttered. She bet Owen was tinkering with his motheaten computer instead of fixing the heaters. “Owen!” she called. She flung up an arm and thumped the wall. It felt smooth and chilled, and that jolted her into alertness. She wasn’t in the station, she remembered, and Owen couldn’t hear her.
She snapped upright and fumbled for her flashlight. She’d left it on the nightstand after evicting her unwelcome visitor. Her heart pounded so hard that her hands shook as she turned the flashlight on.
Cassie swept the light’s beam across the room. The light danced over the ice. Carvings of seabirds glistened on the wardrobe, as if the birds had frozen midflight. She’d used the wardrobe to block the door. It had worked. She was safely alone amid the crystal beauty.
She exhaled, her shoulders collapsing and her heart finally slowing down from a gallop. How could she have fallen asleep again? Outside this room was the man who’d wanted a “wedding night.” Outside this room was the polar bear she’d married. Outside this castle was her mother. Cassie didn’t know which of those three was more terrifying.
But I’m not going to cower here, she thought. She’d never hidden from anyone before, and she wasn’t going to start now.
Leaning her back against the wardrobe, she threw her weight into it. The wardrobe grated on the ice floor. She grunted as it slid the final inch. She wondered if the man had heard it. Cassie gripped her flashlight, testing its weight as a weapon, and stepped out into the hall.
Nothing happened. She was alone.
Silent and blue and beautiful, the crystalline hallway felt peaceful. Shining her light down the hall, she saw several doors, shadows in the glistening golden walls. She wondered what was on
the other side of them. How did a—what was the word? Munaqsri. Did he really transport souls? Were there stashes of souls in those rooms?
Cassie took a step toward the first door and then stopped. She wasn’t here to explore. Remember the man, the polar bear, my mother, she thought. She had to find the bear and insist he take her home. She glanced backward over her shoulder and headed down the stairs.
She found the bear in the banquet hall. Seeing him, she halted in the archway. The Bear King had a seal on the table. His muzzle was stained red, and blood speckled the banquet table, brilliant scarlet against the white ice. He wiped his muzzle with his paw, as if embarrassed by his table manners. “Excuse me,” he said. “I had thought you were resting.” Gore now covered his paws as well as his muzzle. Cassie was suddenly aware of her own blood and the fragility of her skin. Those teeth and claws could tear her as easily as paper.
She focused on the caribou sculpture in an alcove behind him, instead of on his jaws. “Earlier,” she said, forcing her voice to sound steady and strong, “a man entered my room.”
“I know. It was I.”
“You?” She felt all the blood drain out of her face. But . . . but she was sure the intruder had been human: He’d had hands.
“I did try to tell you,” he said mildly. “You swung an axe at me.”
She stared at him, and he licked a bit of gore off his snout. “You can be human? How . . . Why . . .”
“I wanted to surprise you,” he said. “Remember, I told you that I can alter matter. We can take the shape of the species that we care for, but it is not our only shape or even necessarily our original shape. I am not always how you see me now. I thought you would be pleased.”
Pleased? “You turned human, and you climbed into my bed.”
“It is our bed,” the Bear King said. “Husbands and wives share a bed.”
Looking at his massive and bloody paws, she felt sick. Husbands and wives . . . No. She wasn’t sleeping with a stranger. Especially a magic-bear stranger.