Ice

by Sarah Beth Durst

  “We are not supposed to make exceptions, but for twenty-five thousand . . . With that many souls, I would never have another stillbirth.” She heard wonder in his voice.

  She looked up at him for the first time without the haze of pain. The munaqsri was a thin Inuit man with a caterpillar-fuzz mustache. He looked young—maybe Jeremy’s age—but that didn’t mean anything with munaqsri. He had shaved his hair so short that his scalp was visible. He should have transplanted it to his upper lip instead, she thought. His sparse mustache (plus the khakis, shirt, and tie) made him look more like a kid at his first job interview than a caretaker of the human race.

  “The souls,” he prompted. “Where are they?”

  He had to be a new munaqsri. That would explain why he’d miscalculated and let her see him. She thought of stories of people who saw angels before they died. Perhaps more people saw munaqsri than anyone knew. “I can’t promise the souls will be unclaimed forever,” she cautioned. “Their munaqsri is out of his region, but he could come back at any time.”

  “Is it likely?” he asked.

  She grinned. “I have been told it’s impossible.” It was as impossible as a talking bear, as impossible as running hundreds of miles in minutes, as impossible as her being alive, as impossible as birth. Cassie hugged her stomach. “Ever heard of a castle that’s east of the sun and west of the moon?”

  He shrugged. “If it were anyone’s region, it would be mine. I’m assigned all the obscure locations.”

  Oh, wow, had she finally had a stroke of good luck? Cassie felt like singing.

  “But it won’t become my region until a human has been born or has died there.” He scanned the trees. “Now that I think of it, this is the first time I have ever been here. Very nice.”

  “Mmm,” she said noncommittally. If she had her way, she was never going to see another tree as long as she lived. “So you can’t go east of the sun now?” It had been too much to hope for. Not being dead was enough of a gift. Besides, it didn’t matter that he couldn’t reach the troll castle. Her grandfather could. The munaqsri helped her stand, and she dusted herself off. Dirt stuck to the caking blood. She looked like she had been in a train wreck, but she felt like she could race up a mountain. “Do you know the North Wind?”

  “What does he have to do with the souls?”

  “Do you know him?” she pressed.

  “Only in passing.” He frowned, clearly unhappy with her change of subject.

  “Could I get his attention from a mountain?”

  “Twenty-five thousand souls, you said.”

  Cassie took a deep breath and said in a rush, “Take me to a mountain, and I’ll tell you which species is missing its munaqsri.” She knew she was asking a lot. After all, he had already saved her life.

  He scowled. “You’re trying to trick me.”

  Cassie shook her head vehemently. “I promise I’ll tell you at the mountain.”

  “You promised before.”

  She glanced up at a gathering horde of chattering squirrels. Were they spies? “I’ve learned to be meticulous about promises to munaqsri. You assumed.”

  “You’re going to destroy my reputation,” he said.

  “You don’t have a reputation,” she said. “No one knows munaqsri exist.”

  He shifted uncomfortably. “The other munaqsri . . . They talk. Most wouldn’t have saved you. But I need those souls. . . . I hate being helpless at births.”

  Cassie thought of how Bear had reacted when a cub had been stillborn. She’d picked the best possible enticement for a munaqsri, she realized. “Think what it will do to your reputation if the other munaqsri find out you saved me without learning about the souls,” she said. As if to emphasize her point, orange and gold leaves rustled. A lithe figure of twigs and leaves scurried across the branches. The human munaqsri glanced at the birch-man, and Cassie’s heart thumped in her throat. Quickly, she added, “But I wouldn’t worry about them finding out. No one will know but you, me, and the entire boreal forest of North America.”

  “This is extortion,” he said.

  “Pretty much, yes,” Cassie said. She tried to sound nonchalant. “Now, do you want those souls or not?” Please, say yes.

  He laughed and held out his hand. “You are something,” he said. “I’ll warn you: I’m fast.”

  Cassie took his hand. Her heart sang. “Trust me. I can handle it.” On healed feet, she climbed out of the streambed over her own bloodstains. Squirrels chittered insistently. She saw trees writhing up over the munaqsri’s shoulder. Bark melted together. She had to go now. The human munaqsri turned to look, and Cassie leaned heavily onto his hand to distract him. She saw a blur between the spruces and said, “Come on. Impress me.”

  Flashing her a grin, the human munaqsri yanked her through the trees. Branches broke in rapid succession, sounding like a string of firecrackers. “Impressed?” he called back to her.

  The trees were in motion behind them. “Not yet,” she said.

  He increased speed. Spruces flashed within inches. She yelped as a branch whipped her ankle. “Ow!” With the munaqsri touching her, the gash healed instantly.

  “Trust me!” he said.

  “Keep my limbs attached!”

  Swerving like a fighter jet, he flew through the forest. She felt wind rush over her ears, and she wondered what happened when a munaqsri made Mach 1. Now would be a great time to test it. “Faster!” she said. She could not see distinct trees now—only dark shadow flashes. Fallen leaves showered in cyclones behind the munaqsri and Cassie. Only then, at impossible, dangerous speeds, did she begin to feel safe.

  He stopped suddenly, and she shot forward, catching herself before she hit the rock slope. The munaqsri steadied her, and she saw the mountain rising up in front of her. “You did it,” she breathed. She was on a mountainside above the tree line. She wanted to dance. Free of the forest!

  “Twenty-five thousand,” he reminded her.

  “No promises about the souls’ munaqsri,” she said. “He could return.” She wanted that clear. When Bear came back, she didn’t want this man who had saved her life to feel cheated. She owed him that much at least.

  He nodded hurriedly. “Tell me.”

  “Polar bears,” she said.

  “Arctic is my territory!” He turned to face north, as eager as a greyhound poised to run. “You’re sure?”

  Cassie smiled wryly. “I’d stake my life on it.”

  “I thank you. Newborns thank you,” he said. “Good luck reaching the wind. What do you want with him anyway? He’s reported to be . . . difficult.”

  “It’s personal.” Cassie shrugged as if it were a minor issue.

  “Well, try not to kill yourself again. I won’t save you twice.”

  “Understood,” she said, and glanced up the slope. Snow speckled it, and the peak was shrouded in clouds. Oh, my.

  He patted her stomach. “See you again soon.” With a wink, he started across the mountain. She watched as each stride lengthened into ballerina leaps. She called after him, “Hey, do you have a name?”

  He paused midstride. “I’m a munaqsri.”

  “Before then,” she said. “Come on, I know you’re new.”

  “It’s not supposed to be obvious.” His cheeks lit up in a blush. “It’s Jamie. Jamison Ieuk.”

  “Very appropriate,” she said. Ieuk meant “man” in Inupiaq. It was no different from Bear asking to be called Bear. “I’m Cassie.”

  He mimed tipping a hat. “Pleasure meeting you.”

  “Pleasure being saved by you,” she said. She watched as he blurred into nothing. There was no trace of his passage. It was as if he had vanished. Cassie looked out across the vast forest of green, brown, and gold, and felt her heart soar. He had brought her hundreds of miles closer to Bear. Really, munaqsri were the only way to travel.

  *****

  With the sun on her back, she was soon sweating. She kicked her bare toes into the loose gravel to keep her footing. Above her, Dall
sheep perched on rocks as they grazed on white heather and saxifrage. She watched them leap from rock to rock.

  “Show-offs,” she said. She waved her arms at them. “Clear the way!” Inside her, the baby punched as if in emphasis. She grinned and patted her stomach. It was odd—she felt like she had a teammate now. She wasn’t doing this alone anymore. Her baby was going to rescue its father. “Out of the way, sheep! Baby on board!”

  The sheep scattered.

  As the slope steepened, Cassie used her hands. She felt as agile as a giant tortoise. She placed each foot carefully and then steadied herself with handholds. Her abdomen grazed the rocks.

  She felt the baby squirm. “I promise I will never make you climb a mountain again, if you behave yourself this time,” she said to her stomach. “Just stay in there awhile longer. Okay, kiddo?”

  Grunting and panting, she clambered onto an outcropping. She rested on the ledge and cooled her face with crusted snow. Above the tree line, she could see across the valleys. Larches, leaves brilliant gold, shone like candles against the dark spruces. She wondered how high she’d have to climb for the North Wind to hear her. She held a hand out to feel the wind. “Wind munaqsri? Grandfather! Hello?”

  No answer. She had to climb higher.

  Cassie continued to inch up the mountainside. She repeated to herself with each step: You may not be able to climb this mountain, but you can make it one more foot. The sun passed behind the mountain, and she climbed, shivering, in shadows. She paused to call again with still no luck.

  An hour later, the slope steepened. Continuing to climb, she jammed her fingers into a crack. Searching with her foot, she found a foothold. She pulled herself up. Feet braced, she reached for the outcropping. She stained the rocks with specks of blood from her scraped fingers. Swinging her leg up, she beached herself onto the ledge. Cassie leaned against the mountainside and panted. Below her, the trees were pick-up sticks and the wild sheep were dots on distant rocks.

  High enough, she decided.

  Back pressed against the mountain, Cassie got to her feet on the ledge. Wind whipped her hair into her face. She pushed it behind her ears, and she looked across the landscape. The height made her head spin. She could see hundreds of miles of forest. It stretched into the horizon. A flock of Canada geese flew beneath her. Pressing one hand on her stomach, she breathed deeply. She bet her baby would be born loving heights. Or with a deep-seated fear of them.

  She closed her eyes to stop the dizziness. Time to see if it had been worth all the effort. Filling her lungs with wind, Cassie shouted, “North Wind! Grandfather!”

  She felt wind on her face. It did not speak.

  She shouted again: “I am Gail’s daughter! I need to talk to you!”

  He was out there somewhere, she was certain. But where? Was he all the wind, or only a piece of it? She wished she’d asked Gail about her family. She knew nothing about the wind munaqsri, except the fact that they were her family and they oversaw the munaqsri of the air. She hoped that was enough. It had to be. “I’m your granddaughter! Please, answer me! Grandfather! Uncles! Wind!”

  Cassie shouted until her throat was raw. “Answer me! Please!” She could feel the wind—her hair and skirt flapped, and snow and gravel tumbled down the mountain—so why didn’t he answer her? “Grandfather! Uncles! Munaqsri! I know you exist! Talk to me!”

  Rock cracked. It split from the mountainside. She swallowed her scream as a chunk of rock collapsed inches from her outcropping. It tumbled, stirring other rocks. A mini-avalanche crashed down the side of the mountain. Shaken, she looked at where the rock had split.

  A single eye stared at her.

  It was an enormous eye. It looked like a curved, yellow mirror embedded in the rock. She saw her reflection, covered in dirt and blood, stomach bulging like a fun house distortion. She stared, transfixed. The eye blinked with an eyelid of granite that slid down like an avalanche and then up again. It was part of the mountain. Rocks were scales. Boulders were nostrils. She looked at the ledge behind her. She was clinging to its claws.

  Open, the dragon’s mouth was a cavern. If he yawned, peaks would crumble. Dirt plumed as he spoke. “You called for a munaqsri.”

  “I, uh, meant to call the wind munaqsri,” Cassie said. Judging from his six-foot eye, this munaqsri could have crushed the bowhead whale.

  “You are wasting your breath shouting for my wind cousins,” he said. “They will not hear you. You are too earthbound to catch their interest.”

  Now she learned this? After that climb? “What do I do?”

  “Whatever you want.” The dragon shrugged. Snow and rocks sloughed off the slope. With a thunderous sound, the mass slid down the mountain. Cassie watched it cascade beneath her in a billowing cloud. Below, trees snapped like toothpicks.

  Cassie swallowed. “Can you help me?”

  His rock eyelid slid over his eye. She waited, but it did not reopen. It looked indistinguishable from the other rock faces again. “Um, excuse me?” Cassie said politely.

  He did not answer.

  “Mr. Mountain?”

  No answer. She pressed her lips together. She had not come this far to be intimidated by a bunch of rocks with eyes . . . even very large dragon eyes. She—correction, they: Cassie and her baby—were not going to be dissuaded. She wasn’t alone in this. She drew courage from that. Steeling herself, Cassie thumped on his claw. “Answer me. Please. How do I get the winds’ attention?”

  He opened one eye and regarded her with his giant pupil. “There is one way.”

  “Tell me,” she said.

  The dragon laughed. Rocks danced off the mountain. She flattened herself against the slope and covered her ears as the rocks crashed. “You won’t like it,” he said.

  “Tell me how! I am not afraid!” She pounded his claw with her fist. “Tell me, dammit!” He fixed his great eye on her and said one word:

  “Fall.”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Latitude 63° 26’ 00” N

  Longitude 130° 19’ 53” W

  Altitude 4325 ft.

  CASSIE PEEKED OVER THE EDGE. FALL?

  On the mountainside, the rocks looked like rows of serrated knives. Automatically, her hands cradled her stomach. She’d already tumbled down a cliff once. “It’s not a vertical drop,” Cassie protested. “I’d roll down the mountain, not fall through the air. It won’t work.”

  “I can fix that,” the dragon said. He shifted his weight. Beneath her ledge, the mountain crumbled. Avalanche! She clung to the dragon’s claw and screamed. The grinding stopped. Irritably, he said, “Please don’t scream.”

  She inched to the edge and peered over. Wind whipped her hair against her cheek. Below her, the slope was gone. The mountain went straight down for a quarter mile. Cassie scrambled back against his claw. Her heart pounded fast. She was aware of how thin her skin felt and how breakable her bones were.

  What’s wrong with me? she asked herself. Only a few months ago, she had dived into the Arctic Ocean. How was this any different? Looking over the edge again, she swallowed hard. The dragon’s tail, a string of granite, curled in the air. It was different. She wrapped her arms tighter around her stomach. Everything was different.

  How far would she go for Bear? Where was the limit? Was there a limit? She wasn’t risking just herself anymore.

  The baby kicked against her hands, and she felt her skin roll like an ocean wave. “Are you up for this?” she asked her stomach. Another kick. It felt as if the baby were urging her onward. Cassie smiled. How far would she go to give her baby its daddy? East of the sun and west of the moon, of course. “C’mon, kiddo,” she said. “Let’s go find your daddy.”

  Cassie placed her toes on the lip of the ledge and looked out across the boreal forest. Wind whipped her hair so that it slapped her cheeks and forehead. She brushed it back. Her baby wouldn’t grow up like she had, missing a parent she’d never known. “Can you call the wind munaqsri?” she asked the dragon.

  “You truly
intend to do this?” For once, he did not sound condescending. He sounded curious. “What possible reason could you have for hurling your soft, tiny body from me?”

  She had a hundred reasons: because Bear had carved a statue of her in the center of the topiary garden, because she could always make him laugh, because he’d let her return to the station, because he won at chess and lost at hockey, because he ran as fast as he could to polar bear births, because he had seal breath even as a human, because his hands were soft, because he was her Bear. “Because I want my husband back,” Cassie said. And, she added silently, because my baby deserves to know him.

  “Please call the winds.”

  “Very well,” he said.

  And then the dragon roared to the sky. Wind whipped faster and faster around the mountain. Dust and rocks tumbled down the slope. Cassie shielded her face.

  “Now!” the dragon cried.

  Holding her stomach, Cassie jumped. Sound tore from her throat. “Grandfather! North Wind!” She plummeted down, spiraling through the sky. The green and gold swath of forest rushed toward her. “Wind munaqsri!” Air rushed past her as loud as a scream.

  Suddenly, wind slammed into her from two directions. Squeezed, Cassie spurted up in the air. She arched over the dragon’s mountain and spun like a stray leaf, tossed by wind. Snowcapped mountains spiraled below her. Oh, she was going to vomit. “North Wind!” she cried.

  “Poor child. She doesn’t know her north from her south.” A voice swirled around her, sweeping under her and beside her. It seemed to be coming from everywhere.

  Streaks of cloud whipped past her. One of Gail’s uncles? “South Wind?” Cassie called.

  “Let her fall.” A second voice rushed past Cassie’s ears. “She is nothing to us.”

  Suddenly, she sank. She tried to scramble, to grab anything solid. Clouds slipped through her fingers as cool mist on her skin. “I’m your niece! I’m Gail’s daughter!” Below her, the Yukon River wound like a blue ribbon through the mountains—so tiny, so far down. “Please don’t drop me!” A gust rolled her, and she screamed as she tumbled through the air. Wind rushed past her ears as loud as her own scream.