Momentarily, the wind died, and she saw the storm. It sounded and looked like a cloud of hissing bees. “Oh, Bear,” she whispered, “how could you do this to me?”
The boiling mass disappeared behind a wall of white ice shards. Cassie wiggled into her sleeping bag. She secured the zippers. Coming closer, the storm roared like a 747. Cassie prayed, and the storm hit.
SEVENTEEN
Latitude 87° 58’ 23” N
Longitude 150° 05’ 12” W
Altitude 8 ft.
THE WORLD FELL APART.
Like an angry god, the wind punished the ice. It tore the ocean open, and it slammed it shut. Plates of ice rode over one another, jutting into the black sky. The ice screamed.
She curled inside her fragile cocoon. Black in the false night, her world had shrunk to six feet by two. The ice underneath her shook. Clenching her teeth, she hugged herself into a ball, as if that would hold the ice together.
She heard thunderous grinding as if the ground were being squeezed. Her heart beat in her throat. Sweat chilled her flesh. Any second, the ice could split and she could be dropped into the ocean. She could disappear without a trace. Dad, Gail, Gram . . . they would never know what had happened to her.
The wind slammed into her sleeping bag. She skidded in a circle around the single ice screw. Clockwise, with the screw. Cassie rolled inside the sleeping bag. She clutched at the nylon sides. Like a sail in irons, the nylon flapped. Wind whipped under her, and Cassie bounced on the ice. Slamming down hard, she hit her elbow, then her knee, then her hip.
A banshee scream, the wind shifted. She skidded again. Counterclockwise, loosening the screw. Soundless against the howling, she yelled. She pushed against the confines of the sleeping bag. “Let me out of here! Please, let me out!” Shrieking, she started to cry.
Inside a prison, Cassie was tossed back and forth, bruising with each roll. Outside, the storm boiled.
Seconds, minutes, hours later, the storm howled north, the ice fell silent, and the air was full of snow. Cassie, knotted inside her sleeping bag, whimpered.
* * * * *
Fitfully, she slept. She dreamed she was entombed in ice. Seven-foot trolls chased Bear, and she could not move. She screamed, but her throat did not work. A troll touched Bear, and he dissolved. She screamed again, soundless, and the troll turned toward her. Its face was a grotesque mask of moving shadows. She woke screaming, in blackness and in sweat.
Out! She had to get out! Cassie fumbled for the zipper to her sleeping bag. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t think. Out, out, out! Cold streamed in as she squirmed out.
She crawled into surreal whiteness. She could see nothing: no color, no shadow, no ground, no sky. “Help me! Someone! Anyone!” she called.
Surrounded by the false white night, she was utterly alone. Cassie felt around her. She found the strap she had used to tie herself to her pack. She shook the ice off it and pulled the pack toward her. At least she had not lost it in the storm. She hugged it as if it were a teddy bear, while snow seeped into her fleece.
It was the cold drip down her neck, more than anything else, that convinced her she was still alive. Her survival instincts kicked in as she started shivering, and she crawled back inside her sleeping bag.
She lay there for several hours, imagining her joints locking and her muscles stiffening like a corpse in rigor mortis. She pictured herself turning into the sculpture that Bear had carved. . . . She closed her eyes, and she could see Bear leading her by the sleeve to the center of the garden, and her following, laughing, until she saw what it was he wanted her to see: the sculpture of her. He’d carved it for her, a late birthday present. Carved it from memory, a perfect likeness. Said it was the heart of the garden. And he’d proceeded to serenade her. Artist he was; singer he wasn’t. Remembering how she’d laughed, Cassie felt like crying.
He’d loved her, hadn’t he?
Did it matter anymore if he had? The sculpture was gone now. Bear was gone.
“Stop it,” she said out loud. It would kill her—the cold, the hunger, the exhaustion, her own thoughts. She felt like the storm had seeped inside her and was now tearing through her brain, her heart, her everything.
With an effort, she pushed her thoughts away and lay in her silent prison and listened to her heart beating like the sound of steady footsteps that were always the same distance away.
She lost track of time. At some point, her bladder demanded that she go outside. She emerged into the whiteout. Snow spat into her face. Visibility was still zero. She could not even see her feet. She felt her way to the end of the sleeping bag and squatted under her parka. She did not dare go any more than a foot from the sleeping bag. She could almost hear Dad’s voice telling her it was too dangerous to move in a whiteout. She’d heard stories of people lost in whiteouts five feet from their tent, and inside the solid whiteness, she believed it.
After crawling back into her sleeping bag, she lay listening to the wind. She wondered about Bear. What was it like for him in the troll castle? What were the trolls doing to him? Gail had screaming nightmares of her time there.
He’d risked so much to marry her. He had to have cared about her. Cassie thought of the way they used to talk late into the night until they were both falling asleep midsentence. She thought of how they’d worked side by side on her maps and numbers, devising better routes for patrolling. She thought of how he’d held her at night, stroking her hair, and whispering to her. And now he was trapped like her mother had been because she’d turned on a single flashlight.
Hours later, she checked on the conditions again. In some ways, they were better. The snow had thinned enough for her to see the red blur that was her pack, though she still could not see her full sleeping bag. From her waist down, the bag disappeared into the white as if it were an apparition. In some ways, though, conditions were worse: Thinner snow also reflected more sun. The white glare hurt, and she blinked back tears. Her eyes felt pierced by sand—the first symptom of snow blindness.
She crawled back inside. Admit it, she thought, your plan has failed. Max had not rescued her, despite all the polar bears. He certainly wasn’t coming now, when she was lost in a whiteout. He had failed her. Dad had failed her—just like he’d failed Gail. And just like Bear had failed her, abandoning her one mile north of the North Pole. Or like she had failed Bear, betraying his trust after he had pleaded with her never to look at him.
The look in his eyes . . .
She had to escape the ice. But there wasn’t an escape.
The closest land was Ward Hunt Island at 83° N and 75° W. Too many miles, her mind whispered. Too many miles and too little food. All the possibilities played through her mind: starvation, dehydration, freezing, drowning. Curling into a ball, she hugged herself. “Oh, Bear,” she whispered, “I’m sorry.” Hours passed.
EIGHTEEN
Latitude 87° 58’ 23” N
Longitude 150° 05’ 12” W
Altitude 8 ft.
ENOUGH WAITING.
Enough fear.
Enough of the damn whiteout. She was not going to continue to lie here, obsessing over Bear, until death or insanity claimed her. Whether he had meant to betray her or not, staying here wouldn’t help.
She was an Arctic explorer, dammit. She could survive this. She had her goggles to prevent snow blindness and her GPS to keep her from going in circles, for as long as the batteries lasted. She had her own skill and Dad’s training to keep her from falling through the ice. Even with the risks, it was still her best shot at survival. She had to get further south for there to be any chance of Max (or any other pilot) spotting her, and she didn’t have enough food left to wait for the whiteout to lift. I’m going, she thought. Joints as stiff as wood, Cassie put on her gear inside the sleeping bag, and then she crawled out.
Standing, she felt dizzy. Her knees shook and she sat down hard. She was weaker than she’d thought. The half rations and forced inactivity had taken a toll. Cassie waited until her vi
sion cleared. Visibility was at five feet, maximum. Moving slowly, she wrapped an extra silkweight long underwear around her goggles to cut down on glare, and then she tried to roll her sleeping bag. She had sweat into it, and it had frozen. It fought her for each bend. Finally, she forced it into a squashed polygon and secured it to her pack. She lifted the pack onto her back. The straps cut into her shoulders. Numbly, her hands tried to buckle the waist belt. The belt was encrusted in ice. It took her three tries.
Then she walked into the snow-choked air.
Within minutes, her stomach hurt and even her bone marrow felt cold. The dryness of the air sucked moisture from her mouth, and she felt frostbite prickles in her cheeks under her frozen face mask. She shouldn’t be out walking in a whiteout. Only idiots went out in whiteouts. Kinnaq, her mind whispered—lunatic. But if she stopped here, in the ice rubble, then Max would never see her even when the whiteout cleared. She needed to be on flat ice for him to rescue her. I have to at least try to make it possible for him to find me, she thought. This is smart, she told herself, not crazy. Giving up was for the crazy. As she’d once told Bear, she didn’t give up.
Cassie kept walking, listening for the familiar crackle of breaking ice. Around her, the whiteout gradually—very gradually—dispersed. She caught glimpses of the bears—still out there, still following. Let them, she thought. She didn’t have the strength to fear them anymore. She shuffled across the ice with her eyes only on the next step. When she finally remembered to look up, she could see fifty feet. Beyond, the world was swallowed by snow.
The storm had pulled the ice apart at the seams.
Leads, riverlike cracks, crisscrossed the ice. A dense haze rose off the open water. New pressure ridges had been born, and others had caved. She stared at the landscape. She hadn’t imagined the damage would be so severe. She had been lucky to find a solid floe. Another few feet and . . . Very lucky.
It took Cassie several minutes to work up the courage to move on. She stepped across a lead onto the more fractured ice. In some leads, the water had frozen into a smooth road. She followed one, watching for mouse gray thin ice. Elastic, the ice bent under her weight. She scrambled forward as the ice fractured behind her. Plates of ice tilted like seesaws under her. The ice made faint grating sounds beneath her. It was so hard to focus. Bear wasn’t here to save her from freezing or drowning, she reminded herself; she had to save herself. “Don’t miss,” she whispered.
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.
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