Ice

by Sarah Beth Durst

  Cold seared into her, slicing her, and her face mask instantly frosted. She took a deep breath of night air. It felt brittle and sharp in her throat, as if the air were filled with shards of glass. This was exactly what she needed to clear her mind. The piercingly cold air soothed her, as it always did.

  Standing within the station floodlights, she faced out toward the blue darkness. Silence surrounded her. “Polar Bear King!” she shouted into the silence. “I’m coming to find you! Do you hear me?”

  She waited for a moment, listening. Snow drifted over her feet. Rubbing frost from her goggles, she scanned the darkened ice fields. Wind blew surface snow over the moonlit snowbanks and ridges. Blue shadows oscillated over the ice.

  Cassie shook herself. She hadn’t honestly expected the so-called Polar Bear King to answer, had she? That was crazy. Kinnaq, she remembered—that was the Inupiaq word for lunatic.

  Just because she had let her overtiredness make her (for an instant) want to believe in a magical polar bear, that did not mean she was snow-crazed. Just because she’d wanted Gram’s story to be real and her mother to be alive, it didn’t make her crazy. She’d find that bear and prove to Gram, Dad, and herself that he was ordinary. Cassie marched toward the shed with the snowmobiles—

  —and a shadow rose over her.

  Towering over her, the bear was immense. He blotted out the stars. In the station light his fur was luminescent, his silhouette glowing as if he were some Inuit spirit-god, Mashkuapeu himself. Suddenly, the Arctic didn’t feel big enough. It collapsed down to just her and the polar bear.

  He opened his jaws, and she glimpsed white canines and a black tongue. A massive paw came down toward her, and she dodged. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a glint drop from the polar bear’s claws. As the glint hit the snow, the bear twisted, dropped to four paws, and retreated to the edge of the station floodlights.

  Cassie looked down at her feet, at the snow where the bear had stood. Dusting snow blew into the concave curves of his tracks. In the curve of a paw-print lay a silver needle with an orange tail, the tranquilizer dart.

  THREE

  Latitude 70° 49’ 23” N

  Longitude 152° 29’ 25” W

  Altitude 10 ft.

  SHE WAS ONLY A FEW YARDS FROM THE DOOR. If she lunged, she could be safely inside with solid metal between her and the bear. But she had called to him, and he had come. The tranquilizer dart that she had shot on the sea ice now lay in front of her. Impossibly, inexplicably, the bear had brought it back to her. She felt light-headed, and she knew she was shaking. She raised her eyes to look at the bear.

  He was a mass of shadows at the edge of the station floodlights. She could make out the shape of his muzzle and the hunch of his shoulders. “Cassandra Dasent,” he said. His voice was a soft rumble.

  She felt as if her heart had stopped beating.

  He spoke.

  It was hard to breathe, and she felt dizzy. He’d said her name. She was certain she’d heard him say her name. But real polar bears did not speak. They couldn’t. Their mouths weren’t shaped for it.

  “I will not hurt you,” he said.

  He didn’t have the right vocal cords. His muzzle couldn’t move like lips. His tongue couldn’t form words. “Polar bears don’t talk,” she said flatly. “You aren’t real.”

  “Do not be afraid,” he said. He stepped into the circle of light from the station floodlights, and she automatically took a step backward. Her heart thudded faster as he came toward her. His paws were silent on the ice.

  “Wake up,” she whispered to herself. “Snap out of it.” Cassie dug her fingernails into her palm inside her glove. It hurt, but she didn’t wake, and the bear didn’t disappear.

  He halted directly in front of her. Up close, she could see he was huge. His shoulders were even with hers, and his muzzle . . . On four paws, he was as tall as she was. They were eye to eye. “You’re a hallucination,” she said. Her voice sounded thin and weak to her ears. “A mirage, a sun dog.”

  “No. I am not.”

  She flinched as she felt his breath hot on her frozen face mask. Oh, God, that felt real. That could not have been her imagination. “I don’t believe in talking bears,” she said—a whisper.

  “You are Gail’s daughter,” he said. His voice was soft, gentle even.

  “You’re a scientific impossibility,” she said. She could not be seeing this, hearing this. The universe had rules, and they did not allow for talking bears, especially talking bears who knew her mother’s name. She swallowed. No one had ever referred to her like that, as her mother’s daughter.

  “You called to me,” he said softly, inexorably. “I have watched you for a long time, waiting until you were no longer a child, waiting until you knew me. A few hours ago, you did not know me, but now you called to me. Your family told you who I am?” It was a question. She almost missed it, caught in the slow rhythm of his voice.

  “They told me fairy tales,” she said. She thought of Gram: Once upon a time, the North Wind said to the Polar Bear King . . . Fairy tales and lies. But which was the lie?

  “Believe them, beloved.”

  Beloved?

  “No,” she said. No, she wouldn’t listen to this. She wouldn’t believe. Believing meant Dad had lied to her. Believing meant her mother had bartered her off before she’d been born.

  But believing also meant her mother hadn’t died in the storm that had flattened houses in Barrow, Alaska, and buried half of Prudhoe Bay.

  “Doubt your family, then, but believe your own eyes and ears.”

  Her eyes told her he was an Ursus maritimus; her ears told her he was talking. Cassie squeezed her eyes shut. “You don’t exist.” She was deluding herself. Her senses were betraying her and making her believe something she’d given up believing more than a decade ago: that her mother was still alive. Cassie opened her eyes. The bear was still there.

  “I am the polar bear,” he said, “and you are my bride.”

  “No,” she said—no to him, no to this, no to everything.

  His expression was unreadable. “Your mother made a promise.”

  This was cruel. Simply cruel. “My mother is dead. Killed in a blizzard after I was born.” She felt her heart twist as she said it.

  There was silence for a moment. Snow swirled around them—around Cassie and the giant polar bear—like in a snow globe. “Is that what you want?” the bear asked.

  So softly that her voice barely carried beyond her face mask, she said, “No, of course not.” All her life, she’d wanted a mother. It was a hole inside her that nothing had ever filled. Not Dad. Not Gram. Not Max. Not any of the station staff who had come and gone.

  “The North Wind did not kill her. He blew her to the trolls. For that, he has never forgiven himself.” The polar bear’s voice was a low rumble that rattled in her bones. Part of her wanted more than anything else to believe him. But she couldn’t let herself. Fact was fact; gone was gone. It didn’t matter how badly she wished it weren’t. “And I regret that the Winds found her, despite my best efforts.”

  “Your best wasn’t good enough,” she said. She knew the words of the story: Bring me to my love and hide us from my father. If the story was true, then this polar bear had failed Cassie’s mother. If he’d done what he’d promised, Cassie would have had a mother.

  “I did all I could.”

  “Your promise is invalid,” she said. “You’ve no right to be here.”

  “The promise holds,” he said in the same calm, impossible voice. “The North Wind would not have found her if it were not for his brother.”

  He talked about the winds as if they were sentient. She squeezed her eyes shut. “You should have hidden her from him, too,” she said. “You failed.”

  “I cannot leave the Arctic. I have responsibilities that I could not neglect,” he said. “I had to hide her in the ice. I am sorry.” For the first time, she heard a hint of emotion. That was almost as disturbing as the speech itself. He bel
ieved what he was saying. He believed her mother was alive.

  “’Sorry’ doesn’t help,” she said. She tried to sound strong, but her voice betrayed her and cracked. Her heart beat so fast and loud that it thundered in her ears.

  “If I could make it right, I would.”

  Would he? Could he? “Would you free her from the ‘trolls’?”

  His great jaws opened and shut, as if she had struck him speechless. She nearly smiled—she had flummoxed him. She’d turned the tables on the creature that was turning her world upside down. “You do not know what you are asking,” he said finally.

  Oh, yes, she knew very well what she was asking: an impossibility. “Bring my mother back from the dead.” She felt light-headed as she said it.

  “She is not dead.”

  “That should make it easier.”

  “I have responsibilities that I cannot risk.”

  Without stopping to think, she said, “You free her from the trolls and I will marry you.”

  For a long moment, he was silent. The northern lights filled the sky behind him. With his brilliant white coat and black unreadable eyes, he looked majestic and wild. Wind stirred his fur. “Is that a promise?” he asked at last.

  Suddenly, it didn’t seem like a dream. It didn’t seem like a hallucination. It seemed real, overwhelmingly real. She put her hand on the station wall to steady herself. Her fingers were numb inside her mittens and gloves, and she felt her disbelief cracking as if her words had shattered it. Her mother . . . My mother is alive? And she had the opportunity to save her. Her head reeled. “Yes,” she said.

  “Climb onto my back,” he said, kneeling in front of her.

  She stared at him as the word “yes” rang in her head. Yes, she’d said. Yes, her mother was alive. Yes, Cassie would save her.

  “I will carry you home,” he said.

  She tried to read his inscrutable black eyes and failed. Her throat felt dry. She started to speak, swallowed, and then tried again. “Home?”

  He inclined his massive head, and she shivered. “Your mother will be returned to the Arctic once our bargain is complete,” he said. “I will arrange it after we arrive.”

  Wind whipped into her. Ice crystals pelted her parka. Gulping in burning air, she tried to nod as if she understood.

  “Climb onto my back,” he repeated.

  If her mother was alive, then she had been a prisoner for years and no one had rescued her. Dad had not rescued her. Dad had pretended she’d died. He’d kept this all a secret from Cassie.

  Suddenly, she wanted to climb onto the bear’s back and ride as far away from the station as she could. She put her hand on his back and swung her leg over. She steadied herself. Oh, God, she was on a polar bear.

  “Hold tight, beloved,” he said.

  She gripped the bear’s neck fur as he carried her away from the only place she’d ever called home.

  FOUR

  Latitude 76° 03’ 42” N

  Longitude 150° 59’ 11” W

  Altitude 5 ft.

  THE BEAR BOUNDED THROUGH THE SNOW. Cassie clutched his thick fur and clenched her teeth as the impact jarred her bones. Snow spewed out in waves.

  “Are you afraid?” the bear shouted to her.

  “Like hell I am.”

  “Keep tight hold of my fur, and then there is no danger,” he said.

  Impossibly, he increased speed. Blurring into white, the frozen sea rushed beneath them. She squeezed her eyes shut, and then opened them. Don’t think about the bear, she repeated to herself. Just focus on the ride.

  The bear raced across the ice. Shadows streaked. Stars stretched into the comet tails of time-lapse photography. Faster and faster. She felt like she was flying. She was moving faster than a snowmobile, faster than Max’s Twin Otter. Wind buffeted her face mask, and she laughed out loud. She wanted to shout at the top of her lungs, Look at me! I’m faster than wind! Than sound! Than light! She felt as if she were light. She was an aurora streaking across the Arctic.

  He ran on and on.

  Eventually, as the stars faded and the sky lightened, she fell into a numb rhythm. Her pack bounced, bruising her shoulders rhythmically. She rode in silence, except for the harsh whistle of wind.

  Several long hours later, Cassie heard ice crunch under the bear’s paws. Granules crackled in the monumental Arctic silence. She straightened and thumped her muscle-sore thighs. The bear had slowed and was simply walking now, across the shimmering frozen sea. The earth was painted in white and blue streaks of ice, reflecting the sky and the low, pale sun.

  Squirming inside her parka, Cassie fished her GPS out of her inner pocket. She pressed the on button, and the signal flashed. She moved it back and forth, trying to get a clear reading. The longitude fluctuated wildly: 0° to 180°, as if she were at the North Pole. Worse, the latitude said 91°. This reading didn’t make sense. There couldn’t be a satellite over a location that didn’t exist. She shook the GPS, but the abnormal reading stayed. Cassie stared at it, and her heart started to thump faster. Either the GPS was malfunctioning or . . .

  Or here was empirical proof that the impossible was real.

  Cassie leaned forward and cleared her throat. “Excuse me. . . . Um, where are we?”

  “One mile north of the North Pole,” he said.

  Obviously, the GPS was broken, and the bear was wrong. Or lying. But she didn’t need either the GPS or the bear. She knew at least a half dozen low-tech ways to find south. All she needed to do was head in that direction, and she’d find the station. Everything was under control. She might be deep in the ice pack, but she was alive and well. She wasn’t even cold.

  She should have been cold. Her breath was condensing into crystals on the rim of her hood, but she felt hot. Her armpits were damp, and her neck itched from the many layers. It didn’t make sense. The air had to be cold enough for five-minute frostbite. It was even cold enough for a fata morgana. Dead ahead was the most magnificent example of the Arctic air’s mirages that Cassie had ever seen.

  Cassie squinted at the castle as the bear carried her toward it. She’d never seen such a beautiful mirage. Spires soared above her. They shimmered in the bending light. At the tips of the spires, the ice curled into the semblance of banners, frozen midwave. She waited for it to shrink to its normal proportions: an ordinary ridge or an outcrop of ice that had been stretched by a trick of the light.

  But it did not shrink or stretch. It shone like a jewel in the sunlight. Cassie felt her gut tighten. It had to be an iceberg frozen in the pack ice—it was as white as a moonstone, while the sea ice encircling it was a brilliant turquoise—but she had never heard of an iceberg in such old ice, except near Ellesmere, on the opposite side of Canada. She studied the GPS, which continued to display its nonsensical reading. Even at the phenomenal speed the bear had traveled, she could not have crossed the thirteen hundred miles to the North Pole. . . . Could she have?

  No. It simply wasn’t possible. There had to be another explanation, a rational and scientific explanation. She slid the GPS back into her parka.

  Looking up again, she saw a blue wall of ice around an opalescent castle. “Oh,” she said faintly. It was not a fata morgana. She tilted her head to see the banner-crowned spires that rose behind the wall.

  “Welcome to my castle,” the bear said.

  There couldn’t be a castle in the Arctic. The whole expanse had been covered by satellite photography. Someone would have seen a castle.

  It was, she thought, beyond beautiful.

  The polar bear brought her through an archway of blue ice into the castle grounds. Ornate turrets and overhanging arches glittered above her. Before her, a great door, a twenty-foot crystal lattice, tinkled like a thousand champagne flutes clinking in a toast as it swung open. The bear carried her inside.

  Inside . . . took her breath away. She was inside a rainbow. Chandeliers of a million shards of ice danced colors over the foyer. Ice frescoes covered the walls, swirling with sapphire and emerald
reflections. Frozen ruby red roses wound up columns. GPS forgotten, impossibility forgotten, Cassie lowered her face mask and pushed back her hood. Strangely, her cheeks stayed warm. Lifting her goggles, she squinted at the sparkles. She had never seen anything so magnificent. Her imagination could not have created this. She slid off the bear’s back and walked over to the wall. It was too vivid, too detailed to be a hallucination. She reached toward it and stopped an inch away.

  What if it wasn‘t real?

  “Are you going to free my mother now?” She asked.

  The bear was behind her. “Once we have made our vows, I will see to it,” he said. “I cannot contact the trolls directly—they are beyond my region—but I will send word with the wind.”

  She couldn’t tear her eyes from the rainbowed ice wall. “Vows?” She said.

  “Do you, Cassandra Dasent, swear by the sun and the moon, the sea and the sky, the earth and the ice, to be my beloved wife from now until your soul leaves your body?”

  Until my soul leaves my body. Until death, he meant. His beloved wife until death. Cassie swallowed hard. “Is this . . . Is this how we complete the bargain?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  He said it so matter-of-factly. Yes, this will fulfill the bargain. Yes, this will bring your mother back to life.

  Cassie took a deep breath and laid her mittened hand on the ice wall. It felt solid and real. All at once, she couldn’t help but believe: Her mother was alive and about to be rescued. All she had to do was say the word. So simple, so easy. “All right. I do.”

  “You must say the vows back to me now,” he said.

  Somehow, that seemed worse. She couldn’t really marry him. Years from now, she was supposed to marry some researcher, some scientist who loved the Arctic as much as she did. She sometimes daydreamed about starting her own research station, where she and her future husband would lead expeditions together. Or maybe she wouldn’t marry at all. Like Gram, she’d be an old lady with a dozen suitors. Regardless, she was not supposed to marry a talking bear.