Ice

by Sarah Beth Durst

  “You are not leaving,” she said even more fiercely.

  He pressed his lips on her forehead. “Take care of our baby.”

  “I’m not letting you go.” The false wind snapped her hair. It whooshed between them and circled around them.

  “No choice,” he said. “It has already begun.”

  Dammit, no! She was not losing him! “Then I’m coming with you!”

  “You cannot.”

  “Then I’ll follow!”

  He shook his head sadly. “I will be taken to the castle that is east of the sun and west of the moon. You cannot follow me there. It is beyond the ends of the earth.”

  “I’ll find you.” Sheets fluttered around them like breaking waves.

  Bear gripped her. “No! It is too dangerous.”

  “Not for me,” she said. “I find polar bears, remember? It’s what I do.” She’d chased him once; she’d chase him again.

  The tide of wind was a roar, and Bear had to shout, “You will die before you reach it! Promise me you will not try!”

  “I will find you!” She was not losing him. Not now, not like this.

  Swarming faster, the water-wind swept Bear off the bed. He hung in the air like an angel ascending. “If you love me, let me go. Please, Cassie, keep yourself safe, keep our baby safe.”

  She jumped to her feet and wrapped her arms around his waist. “No!”

  “Cassie, promise me! Think of the baby!”

  She didn’t want a baby; she wanted him! She couldn’t lose him! Pulled upward, he slipped through her arms. She squeezed his knees as the wind lifted him higher. His head reached the canopy, and the ice melted around him like meringue. His shoulders passed through it, then his chest, his waist, his thighs. Cassie’s head hit the canopy—solid. “No! Come back!” His knees slipped through her arms. She clutched his ankles. “No!”

  He disappeared through the canopy, and Cassie fell. She bounced on the silken sheets, and her head smacked backward into the bedpost.

  Everything went black.

  PART TWO

  East of the Sun and West of the Moon

  FIFTEEN

  Latitude 91° 00’ 00” N

  Longitude indeterminate

  Altitude 15 ft.

  CASSIE WOKE COLD. Shivering on the silken sheets, she massaged the lump on the back of her skull. For several seconds, she wondered why she had slept on top of the sheets, why she was cold, and why her head ached. Then she heard the dripping.

  She leaned down from the bed and picked her flashlight up off the floor, then shined it on the bedpost. The post glistened with a fresh sheen of water. Droplets ran down the spiral. The canopy dripped as if it were crying. It cannot melt. Not so long as I am here.

  Bear was gone.

  The bed was melting.

  “Oh, no,” she said.

  Cassie vaulted out of bed; her bare feet hit ice. Cold shot up her legs, and she grabbed the bedpost. It was a wet icicle. She snatched her hand back. Cold! She ran to her pack and shed her nightshirt. Limp on the floor, the silk soaked in meltwater. Cassie bundled on flannels and wools. She could have woken with hypothermia. She could have woken with hypothermia and a concussion. I could have not woken at all, she thought.

  She heard a sudden snap like a rifle shot—the snap of cracked ice. That sounded like it came from a wall, she thought. And then she heard a sound like a thousand windows breaking.

  Oh, God, it wasn’t just the bedroom that was melting. It was the castle. The castle was melting. She had to get out of here—out of the bedroom, out of the castle, out into the Arctic.

  Out into the Arctic, but . . . She didn’t have a choice, she told herself. She had to leave now. Heart thudding faster, she pulled on her full gear: parka, mukluks, gaiters. She’d kept her pack prepared for her trips with Bear, so it took only a few precious seconds to lift the pack onto her back—but with each second, the shotgun sound of cracking ice crescendoed. Securing the pack, she hurried into the hall.

  In the hall, it was worse. Cracks raced through the ice walls. Meltwater ran in rivers. Run, run, run! her mind shouted at her. Cassie skidded down the hallway, and the flashlight’s beam swept over dripping walls and ceiling. Gripping the wet banister, she sidestepped down the waterfall stairs. Rumbling shook the floor. Please, don’t let it collapse, she thought. With the ceiling and the spires, thousands of pounds of ice were above her. Catching her balance at the bottom of the stairs, she ran through the banquet hall.

  Chandeliers clanked as the banquet hall shook. Shards fell and splashed into an inch of water. A caribou sculpture toppled. Chunks of ice scattered across the banquet hall. Cassie shielded her face. A chandelier plummeted from the ceiling. When the chandelier crashed down, shards flew like shrapnel.

  Cassie ran through the water. Faster, faster! Her pack pounded on her back. Frescoes peeled from the walls, and statues tumbled from alcoves. She dodged chunks of falling ice.

  Buttresses shook. Pillars crumbled. Overhead, the vaulted ceiling fractured. Plumes of ice filled the air in a thick haze. She sprinted for the crystal lattice gate as the floor heaved. She scrambled over the cracks.

  The splintered gate rained daggers of ice. Covering her head, Cassie plunged through it. Ice spikes hit her arms and her neck. Screaming, she burst out the other side. Her pack slammed her tailbone.

  Outside, the topiary garden melted. Faces ran into puddles. Limbs fell. Undercut by running water, the sculptures collapsed. Cassie ran for the outer wall. Half of it had fallen.

  It was as if a giant were ripping the castle apart. With deafening cracks like an iceberg calving, spires split from the walls and crashed to the ground. Cassie fell forward as the ground bucked. Keep moving, she thought. Must keep moving! She splashed in meltwater, and then she scrambled to her feet while, Jericho-like, the walls came tumbling down.

  She scrambled over the remnants of the blue outer wall. Behind her, she heard gushing, like a dam released. Run! A mammoth waterfall crashed down from the parapets. It drowned the topiary garden.

  Snow cycloned, and ice pelted her face and arms. Cassie stumbled as the ground shook. Again, she was knocked down. Ice chunks rained down on her like a meteor shower. On her knees, she crawled. She inhaled snow, and tears poured from her eyes as the ice pelted her.

  And then suddenly, it was still.

  Curled on the ground, Cassie panted. Her muscles were as tense as fists. She heard running water. Ice tinkled. She tried to open her eyes and could not. The tears had frozen her eyelids shut.

  Dammit, she had to see! What had happened? The castle, her home . . . Was she still too close? She couldn’t run if she couldn’t see which direction to run.

  She yanked off her gloves and spat on her fingers. She rubbed the warm saliva on her eyelids. Eyelashes broke. Her hands stiffened in the cold. She scraped until she could crack her eyes open. She blinked furiously and shoved her chilled hands back into the gloves and mitts.

  She was surrounded by white. Snow hung in the air, and it was impossible to distinguish between ground and sky. The world was devoid of color. It was as if she had fallen into a bowl of milk. Securing her goggles, she stood and squinted into the whiteout. Where was the castle? Had it fallen? What about the gardens? Slowly, the snow-choked air thinned.

  And the polar bears came.

  One by one, the white bears walked ghostlike out of the snow. Through the blurred air, they appeared to drift. Close by—too close—one brushed past her. She stiffened, wanting to scream, not daring to scream. Bears were all around her, emerging from the white. She was surrounded, engulfed.

  As the snow settled, she saw hundreds coming from all directions. Soon she could see the gardens, now a wasteland of icy spikes. Sniffing the snow, the polar bears wandered through the wreckage, trampling the remnants. Cassie swallowed, a lump in her throat. All of Bear’s beautiful sculptures . . . And then she saw what was left of her home.

  The castle was gone. The buttresses were ice boulders; the walls were icebergs
. She began to shake. She could have been crushed. If she had woken a few minutes later . . . if she had run a little slower . . . She could have been killed. As long as these walls are standing, nothing here will harm you, Bear had said once. The walls were no longer standing. Her home was destroyed.

  And Bear was gone.

  She’d lost him. She’d truly lost Bear.

  Cassie felt icy knives twisting in her gut. Her husband was gone, her home destroyed, she was thirteen hundred miles north of the station, and she was surrounded by polar bears.

  More bears came. All around her, the ice was thick with them. Cassie was squeezed between dozens—up to her neck in bears. Fur pressed against her, and the stench of their dead-seal breath made her head pound. In every direction, all she could see was the curve of their backs like waves in a cream white ocean. She was drowning in a sea of polar bears.

  Surrounded by predators, she felt short of air. Bears did not gather like this. It wasn’t natural. Run, her instincts screamed. “Keep calm,” she whispered to herself.

  Inches from her, a polar bear swung his head toward her face. He poked her parka with his muzzle. She smelled his breath as he snuffled her face mask. “Don’t eat me,” she said. Her voice cracked.

  At the sound of her voice, other bears turned to stare at her.

  Shivers walked up her spine.

  Cassie heard a bear huff. More bears turned their heads, and then more. Hundreds of blank, black eyes bored into her. Don’t move. Just don’t move, she thought. Her skin crawled, and her feet started moving despite her. All the bears were watching her now. She heard the crunch of her mukluks and the breathing of thousands of bears. Don’t run, she thought, but her feet retreated faster and faster. The bears parted like the Red Sea. She backed through them, out of the press of bears and onto open ice, and then she turned and ran. Her pack slapped her back. Wind pounded her face. Leaning into the wind, she ran across the frozen waves.

  In an unnatural herd, the polar bears followed.

  SIXTEEN

  Latitude 88° 51’ 42” N

  Longitude 151° 25’ 50” W

  Altitude 10 ft.

  OVERHEAD, THE SKY WAS PALEST BLUE, almost white from the reflected ice. There was not a single bird or plane. Cassie checked the GPS: 88° 51’ 42” N and 151° 25’ 50” W. For five days, she had trekked across the frozen waves. She should have been rescued by now.

  “C’mon, Max,” she whispered as she looked again at the sky. “Save me.” Low on the horizon, the permanent sun pricked the corners of her eyes.

  Why hadn’t he come?

  The low sun rolled along the horizon as she continued on. The afternoon’s white glare increased as the sun passed due south. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of polar bears still plodded behind her. She felt prickles on her spine as she thought about them, her silent white shadows. Dad and his team should have noticed the absence of so many polar bears by now. They should have sent Max in his plane to investigate. He should have followed the signals from the bears’ tracking collars—any signal from any bear—and they should have led him directly to her.

  By evening, the sun was to her right. Ice crystals sparkled in a halo around the sun and in gold sheets around Cassie. The powdery mist cut visibility even more. She forced herself to concentrate on the ice in front of her. But even with all her concentration, she stumbled over invisible frozen waves. She had no depth perception in the glare of infinite whiteness. Her remaining eyelashes were icicles, framing her view of the world. Her nostril hairs had also frozen. She exhaled through her nose to keep it warmer. Her Gore-Tex pants rustled as she stumbled along. It was the only sound in the emptiness besides the huffing of the bears.

  Even if all the collars had malfunctioned at once, someone would have had to notice that hundreds of bears had disappeared. For miles, the ice fields were clogged with bears, yet in five days, she had not heard a single engine from the Eastern Beaufort Sea Research Station or from anywhere else.

  Maybe they all thought it was an equipment malfunction. No station would risk a Twin Otter this far north on an equipment malfunction. And none of them would admit to the others that they had lost track of this many bears. It would be weeks before Dad would swallow his pride and contact NPI. But she had only one week’s worth of food supplies, and she’d already used five days’. If she stretched the freeze-dried food packets and cut her rations in half . . . she might have four, at most five, days left.

  Dammit, Dad should know better, she thought. He knew about munaqsri. He knew impossibilities could happen. But if Dad didn’t send a plane soon . . . She sucked in air, and the air burned. She had to stay positive. Someone would come.

  She hiked for two more days before she reached the Lomonosov Ridge. Still no Max. Still no plane. Still no rescue. She camped in the shadow of ice monoliths, leaning towers and half-fallen pinnacles of ice, and she ate a dinner of half rations.

  In the morning, Cassie scrambled out of her sleeping bag as her stomach forced last night’s dinner into her throat. She clapped her hands over her mouth. She could not lose the nutrients. Bits spurted through her fingers. Warm, the oatmeal chunks steamed on the ice. She swallowed hard and clenched her teeth. Hold it in, she told herself. Come on, hold it.

  Her own body had never worked against her before. She felt as if she were being sabotaged from the inside. She swallowed back bile and patted loose snow on her forehead. With a baby growing inside her, she’d need more food, not less. She might have even less time than she’d thought. How could Bear have done this to her?

  Shakily, she stood. She looked out across the wasteland of ice. Brilliant in the morning light, it made her eyes water to look at it. The sky was a startling blue, and the horizon was lemon yellow. She wiped her hands on her pants and then found her gloves. Her hands had chilled fast. Her mouth was sticky, and her head was light. Exposed to the frozen air, her cheeks had begun to stiffen. She warmed them with her mitts before putting on her solid-ice face mask. The polar bears, she noticed, had returned. Expressionless, they watched her. She told herself to keep ignoring them.

  She shoved her sleeping bag into her pack. It crackled, and she could feel lumps of ice in the down. She wished she had a little of Bear’s warmth magic. She remembered all the rides across the ice. She had been able to leave her hood back and her coat open, and the arctic wind had felt like a summer breeze on her face. She remembered snowball fights in the castle ballroom, where she’d used her bare hands without any chill—Stop it, she told herself. She had to concentrate on surviving. Stay focused. Be strong. Keep moving. The farther south she went, the better the odds that Max would find her. After that, she could think about Bear.

  Cassie hefted the pack onto her sore shoulders and fastened the waist strap. She’d have to pick her route carefully today. The ice around her was shattered. She could hear the low grumble of the tides deep beneath her. Picking an ice boulder, Cassie climbed it. On top, she scanned the landscape. The ice did not improve for at least ten miles. She automatically wrinkled her face to prevent frostbite as she checked the sky. Clouds were beginning to mar the brilliant blue. The clouds reflected the patchy ice below: bright white over thick ice and gray over thin.

  She checked the horizon, and her heart went cold. Wind slapped into her, but she didn’t move. Squinching her eyes, she stared at a smudge darkening the distance. Was that . . . Yes, yes, it was.

  The winds were bringing a storm.

  Oh, no. Please, no.

  Maybe it would veer. Maybe she was wrong.

  She didn’t think she was wrong.

  She had no choice but to continue on. Fine packed snow plugged the paths between pillars of ice. At times, she had to slog through it and trust that she would hear the cracking of ice underneath fast enough to jump to safety. She tried to keep to the exposed ice, listening for the telltale crinkling sounds as the ice throbbed underneath her. She climbed over a pile of ice rubble and looked again to the south. The clouds looked like a writhing mass of bruises. T
he storm was coming.

  She wondered, as she looked across the shattered ice, if she was looking at her own death. She remembered Gram’s voice: With the strength of a thousand blizzards, the North Wind swooped down onto the house that held his daughter, her husband, and their newborn baby. She could be swept away by her mother’s winds.

  If she’d had some warning of all of this . . . Bear’s bargain had stranded her alone on the Arctic ice pack. He should have known that she’d encounter a storm at some point in her trek. If he’d found some way to hint at the truth . . . He could have found some oblique way to warn her. Had he tried and she’d missed it? As she hiked across the ice, she played through her memories—and with each moment she relived, she missed him more until it felt like an aching wound.

  Two hours later, the wind howled through the pressure ridges, kicking snow into the air. She was pelted with ice particles. After every other step, she wiped her goggles. Cassie tried to calculate how far she’d hiked. The layer of ice around her collar made it difficult to move her head. Not far enough, she thought.

  More ice particles hit her, and she staggered backward. Arms over her face, she pushed through the wind, away from the leaning ice towers. It was tempting to hide in the shelter of one of the mammoth ones, but the ice around them was weaker. She needed the thick stuff if she did not want to end up underneath waves. Wind-driven snow stung like BBs. Visibility was low. Cassie stumbled over the rubble.

  She hit flat ice. Leaning into the wind, she forded across it. She knelt down and dusted the surface snow away so she could see the base ice. Green-blue-brown, it seemed like old, thick ice. Please, let it be old, thick ice. “It’s coming, guys,” she called to the polar bears. “Better batten down the hatches.” Her voice shook. She saw only a half-dozen bear shapes in the swirling snow. Please, let me survive this, she thought.

  Fighting the wind, Cassie set up her sleeping bag. Stiff with ice, it did not want to unroll. She swore at it and flattened it with her full body weight. Hands aching, she tied it with spare straps to her pack and anchored it all with an ice screw.