Ice (16 page)

Cold permeated her. Her blood felt sluggish in her veins. She placed her foot down, and a plate of ice shot up. Cassie dove forward and grabbed for the top. Her feet slid out from under her and dangled over black water.

All around her, the polar bears watched.

Squinching her legs up, she forced the plate to tilt. Cassie dove for the next pan of ice. Her legs splashed into the water as the plate leaned in the opposite direction. Ice tore her Gore-Tex pants as she, with a burst of adrenaline she did not know she had, hauled herself out of the water.

She forced herself to stand. The cold . . . It burned. It sliced. She heard her father’s voice in her head yelling out instructions. Shedding her pack, she dropped into the snow and rolled as if extinguishing a fire. Snow absorbed the water on her legs. Her pants crinkled as the outer layer froze.

She had to move. It will dry if you move, Dad’s voice told her. Shivering uncontrollably, Cassie lifted her pack and walked on across the ice. Wind pushed right through her. She wished she were at the castle. She wished this were over. No, she wished it had never begun. She would have given anything, done anything, to have everything back the way it had been. Bear, where are you? She missed him so much that it hurt, like a fist squeezing her stomach. Or was that the cold? Or the hunger?

She missed him with every single cell of her body. It didn’t matter how he felt about her. Whether he loved her or not didn’t change how she felt about him. She loved him independent and regardless of whether he loved her. She wished she had realized that sooner. If she had, she’d never have switched on that flashlight. She’d be with Bear right now.

She kept walking mile after mile, hour after hour. She became coated in snow. Her face mask molded to the shape of her face, stuck to her skin, and her parka and pants were plastered with a sheen of solid ice. A chunk of it had wormed around her hood. Rivulets of ice water ran down her neck. She had a crust of ice between her parka lining and the down. Her parka felt like a straitjacket.

Hoarfrost coated her goggles. Creeping cold infused her joints. It hurt to walk. Hell, she thought, has nothing to do with fire. Jeremy was right: Hell is frozen.

She could have frostbite, she knew. She could be slowly freezing to death. Killed by the ice she loved.

She kept moving, mostly from habit now rather than conscious choice. Cassie picked her way through the chaos of ice, birthed by the storm and the pull of the moon on the tides. The low sun lengthened the mounds and made the spaces between them dark blue and cold. She shivered in the shadows. She could think of nothing but how cold she was. And Bear. Always Bear. Seeing a patch of warmer gold ahead of her, she tried to hurry toward it.

Instantly, her empty stomach cramped. Clutching it, Cassie lost her balance. She fell forward. She tried to catch herself, but she felt as if her arms were moving in slow motion. She collapsed forward before her arms were half-raised.

She needed to stand. Keep moving. Must keep moving. Not moving meant death—how often had Dad told her that?

She heard the familiar creaking from deep within the ice. It sounded like a ghost, a tired and sad murmur. She imagined it was speaking, but she could not understand the words. With her pack like a turtle shell weighing down on her, she crawled forward. Her elbows shook. She inched across the frozen waves.

Enough, she thought. The ice was flat enough. She could rest here. Spread full-length, she would be more visible from the air, from Max’s plane, than if she were standing. It made sense to lie here. She closed her eyes. Rescue me, Max. Dad. Bear. Bear.

A voice inside her whispered he was not coming. She was never going to see him again. She didn’t have the strength to cry.

Snow drifted over her.

* * * * *

Cassie basked in warmth. Pillows pressed around her, and it was as dark as a womb. She cuddled the cushions. Her cheek squashed against them, pressing her face mask into her. Half-thawed, the fleece soaked her skin. She itched to tear it off, mask and skin. She wormed into the pillows. She was comfortable at long last, and no stupid face mask was going to—

A cramp squeezed her left leg.

That half-woke her. Her thigh was wedged between the pillows at an awkward angle. She shifted again and sniffed: sour sweat. Must not be dead yet, she thought vaguely. Soon maybe. She turned her face so that the rim of her goggles was not digging into her cheekbones, and she drifted back to sleep.

She dreamed about Bear. She dreamed that he lay beside her in his polar bear form, warm fur pressed against her and hot breath on her cheek. Cassie woke again. Fuzzy-eyed, she blinked at the warm darkness.

She wasn’t dead. The realization rushed through her, and she wanted to cry or shout. She wasn’t dead! Thank you, thank you!

She tested her muscles. They still worked. Cassie pushed at the pillows, and her mittens sank four inches, but with mitts, gloves, and liners, she could not feel the texture.

The pillows breathed.

Cassie recoiled, and the sudden movement turned her empty stomach upside down. She felt the world pressing in on her as if she were again trapped in a sleeping bag in a storm. “Let me out!” she shouted. She elbowed the warm darkness and wriggled upward.

She squirmed out of the press of fur and emerged in a sea of polar bears: sleeping bears as far into the misty white as she could see. Blackness swam up over her eyes and then retreated. The bears were still there when the dizziness passed. “Oh, my,” she murmured.

At the sound of her voice, a dozen bears raised their heads. She swallowed. Expressionless, another dozen bears also turned to look at her. As one, the mass of bears—bears, not pillows—shifted, freeing her. Her legs shook, and the wind bit into her.

They had kept her warm while she slept. The bears had saved her life. “Oh, my,” she repeated as her knees caved. Bears rolled back to support her as she slid to the ground.

Cassie turned her head—and stared directly at the nose of a polar bear. He huffed at her. She ogled back. “You’re bears,” she said. “You aren’t even magical bears.” She didn’t understand. The fog in her brain wouldn’t lift. She couldn’t think. Why had the bears saved her?

A bear prodded her with his muzzle.

“What? Don’t eat me.” Her words were slurred. She leaned backward and felt another bear behind her. This one pushed in the middle of her back. “What do you want?” Another push. Did they want her to stand? She tried to make her brain function. Was she dreaming? She didn’t feel like she was dreaming. She hurt too much to still be asleep. Wincing, Cassie lurched to her feet.

Had Bear sent them to save her?

The bears parted, uncovering Cassie’s pack.

“I can’t,” she said. Her eyes felt hot, near tears. The bears were helping too late. She didn’t have the strength to go on. “I’m tired. I’m hungry.” She mimed chewing. “You know, hungry?” She made sucking noises.

Obligingly, a female bear rolled, exposing four round nipples. Cassie licked her cracked lips. Lolling her head, the bear looked at her. Half-falling to her knees, Cassie knelt and crawled to the sow’s stomach. She looked over at the bear’s face, and the bear placidly closed her eyes.

Cassie pulled off a mitt and her face mask. Taking a deep breath, she touched the nipple. It felt as firm as a thumb. She squeezed it, and milk welled at the top: life. When the bear did not maul her—

in fact, did not move—Cassie leaned in and held her tongue catlike under the milk. She squeezed hard, and the milk squirted onto her tongue. It was oily, tasted of seal. Rich and thick, it clogged her throat.

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.