by Jessica Daw
I ignored the isbjørn’s comment, looking straight at him without any answering smile, if his could even be counted as a smile. “Do you require a time to rest, or shall we set off immediately?”
Those enormous sloped shoulders twitched strangely. A shrug? Who was this cocky shifter? “I’m prepared to leave now. Are you ready?” His deep voice made picking out individual words a difficult task, let alone the tone, but instinct told me he was challenging me.
Feeling like a dog with its hackles raised in the face of, well, an isbjørn, I lifted my chin haughtily. “Of course I am. Show me to your sleigh.”
The growling was most certainly a laugh that time, and I could have sworn it was a mocking laugh. “There will be no sleigh, Princess.” I didn’t like the way he said my title, like it was an insult.
“How do you intend to travel then?”
“You’ll ride. I’ll run. Appropriate for a fine lady such as yourself, hmm?” Watching his mouth as he spoke was very strange. He had thin black lines for lips, and they seemed too loose for speech. The words didn’t always quite match with the movements his mouth did make. Powerful mage indeed, I thought, then immediately was annoyed at myself for thinking that. Obviously he was a powerful mage, he was standing in front of me with the body of a polar bear.
Besides which, he had informed me that I would ride. “My horse?”
He shook his massive head, though the gray eyes stayed fixed on me. “Me. I am much faster than a horse.”
I hadn’t realized I’d begun to hope until he crushed it. Of course Rune hadn’t been brought here. I tried to swallow the disappointment and move forward, but it burned my throat. August had more or less told me that I had no chance of regaining my position. This whole façade seemed pointless. Abruptly, I decided to push the point. “I want my horse.”
“Helena, now is not the time,” August said in a warning voice.
“The Council trusting me to the hands of a nameless stranger for a year to save face. The least they could do is allow me my horse. I am Bound to stay with this isbjørn. Send my horse if you wish me to go quietly.” My voice was steely. I may not be calm enough to be queen, but I could certainly make demands like royalty. August owed me this much.
“And how do you propose I get the horse to you?” August asked, mouth thin with anger at my last-minute rebellion.
“I don’t know where I’m going, how could I make any suggestions?”
“We can stop in Edeleste for the horse,” the isbjørn rumbled. I couldn’t tell if he was amused or annoyed. “If we can leave without further delay,” he stipulated.
“You don’t need to acquiesce to her demands,” August told the isbjørn.
“Don’t fear, I shan’t be controlled by her. I agree to this request because it is no great burden to me and it will save me the trouble of finding her a mount. Rest assured that I will follow your instructions, as well as use my best judgment.” The isbjørn inclined his head. A bow.
“Let’s go,” I said, walking towards the isbjørn.
I felt a hand on my shoulder. Turning, I saw Dagmar had tears in her eyes. I hadn’t realized that I’d leave Dagmar behind, though it was obvious that she could not also ride on the isbjørn to an undisclosed location. “Time to bid farewell, isn’t it?” she said, her usual brusque manner slipping.
Tears sprang to my eyes too. “I wish you could come,” I whispered.
“As do I, my lady. Behave yourself, hmm? Prove yourself. You can do it, if you’ll just choose too.” She whispered too but the silence in the hall was heavy with the listening ears of our audience.
I didn’t want to admit how little I believed that. Instead, I threw my arms around my faithful maid that had been with me constantly since childhood. She was sturdy as ever, shorter than she seemed when she glared at me. She hugged me back, arms tight around me.
Too soon, I had to leave that security and walk towards the isbjørn. I didn’t hesitate, climbing on his back as if he were an overwide horse. There was a saddle, after a manner, fabric with a few pockets for whatever it was that shifter-isbjørns carried around. “Goodbye, August. Send my regards to Mother.” August’s jaw pulsed, and he made no reply to my words.
“Don’t forget your pack!” Dagmar called, running to my side and handing it to me.
“Thank you,” I said, my voice entirely warmer than it had been when I’d addressed August.
She nodded, wiping a tear from her cheek.
“Grab hold of my neck. You’ll have to lean forward.” The isbjørn’s voice rumbled through my whole body, sending my heart racing. I was seated on an enormous isbjørn. This was insane. I leaned forward, wrapping my arms around his neck.
“Keep her safe,” August called as the doors opened, as if he couldn’t help but speak the words. I rejected the instinct to try and process the words, shutting them out of my mind with a resounding mental slam. A burst of snow escaped into the hall, carried by frigid wind. I freed one hand from the isbjørn’s neck to pull my hood up, and the wind immediately ceased to sting my face. Bless whoever had made my parka with such a good protective spell.
Before I could wrap my mind around what was going on, we were racing into the starless night.
I had never moved so quickly, as if I were riding the wind, if the wind were warm and solid beneath me. The road ahead of us was nothing but a dim blue blur. I had no idea how the shifter kept the course straight with the snow swirling all around us, and I didn’t particularly care. I pulled my hood off, just for a moment, to feel it all. In an instant my hair flew behind me, loose and tangled and filled with the wind and perfect cold.
Too soon I had to pull my hood back on, the chill of the night too harsh for the exposed skin of my face and neck. I strained to keep my head up, even with my arms wrapped around the isbjørn’s neck, finally settling for resting my head sideways atop his neck, watching the askew forest blow past me.
It could have been minutes or hours when he slowed, still forest-bound. We’d arrived at the outer gate of the palace at Edeleste.
“As we are not expected, I think it best if we do not appear as a beast and a girl.” I felt like I was holding a thundercloud when he spoke with my ear leaning against his spine.
“What do you suggest?” I asked, voice coming out softer than I’d intended.
“I cannot allow you to go unattended. Dismount, please.” I slid out of the makeshift saddle obediently. “I will stand behind you. I must request that you do not look, or this whole scheme will come to naught. Do you understand?”
“Are you going to demanifest?” My heart sped up, curiosity flooding me.
“I see no other alternative. Will you do exactly as I say?”
I briefly weighed my options. He had been kind to allow me to retrieve my horse. I decided to be kind in return. “I will, but at this time of night, no one will be near the stables.” It almost killed me to admit it.
“Are you certain? I do not enjoy being shot at, especially by those who should be friends.”
A somewhat strangled laugh came from me. “Have you been shot at before?”
He growled too low for me to figure out if he was muttering something or simply growling.
“I’ll lead and signal you forward if it’s safe. How long does it take you to demanifest if there’s a problem?”
“A few seconds. You’re quite certain there won’t be guards?”
“Do you think I would have offered if I thought there was any other solution?” I was getting impatient. “As long as we have no ill intentions, we’ll be fine.”
“I won’t be able to actually enter the stables, though, not as an isbjørn. Frightens the animals.”
I snorted another laugh. “You should be able to see me from the door. Do you have any other questions or can we go?”
He snorted too, but it wasn’t a laugh, something derogatory. “Lead the way, Princess.”
I did so, walking forward without hesitation. The gate I usually used to ride away with Rune w
asn’t far from where the isbjørn had stopped. It looked forbidding at that hour, but usually it was a pretty little wrought iron thing. I spoke the words to open it, resting my hand on it. I felt a jolt, working magic, a rush through my veins. It was the first time I’d worked magic intentionally in ten years.
Despite my assurances to the isbjørn, I was hyper-alert for any guards or wandering servants or nosy nobles. No one interrupted us, however, likely not interested in venturing beyond warm beds and fires that stormy night. Everything was deeply silent, a silence I could almost breathe.
The stable loomed in front of us abruptly, its shape blurred by the thickly falling snow.
“I’ll be quick,” I said, then slipped inside.
It was warm there, familiar and safe. Still dark, but my eyes made out the outlines of the stalls despite that. My feet knew their way to Rune’s stall. He nickered softly when he saw me. “Hello, Rune,” I breathed. “Ready to go riding?” I opened the door to his stall and saddled him quickly, then led him out to where the isbjørn waited for me. He blended with the snow, but I could see his eyes.
“Thank you.” My voice was scarcely audible, despite the quiet of the night.
The isbjørn shook his head, an impatient twitch. “Follow me.” He led the way back to the gate, and I followed after I closed the stable.
Once outside the palace walls, the isbjørn turned to me. “I’ll need to enchant him if he’ll be able to keep up. He needs more energy than he has. If you want to take him, I’ll need to use some of yours, as I have none to spare.”
“My energy?” I asked disbelievingly. It wasn’t so different from the years of Dagmar siphoning my energy from my iron cuffs, but it was strange to think of the isbjørn taking it.
“Are you willing?” he persisted.
“Of course I’m willing, but—”
“Hold still.” He began speaking in a different language, Nyputian, if I wasn’t mistake. That had been Espen’s preferred language for magic too. I understood a few words, but not enough to know what he was doing. He paced around me, making marks in the snow with his claws, and then around Rune, who looked nervous but seemed to recognize that this wasn’t a natural isbjørn. He’d always been a smart horse.
Then I felt my heart speed, my breath fast and shallow, as if I’d been sprinting, running for hours. This was entirely different than having the built-up energy removed from my cuffs. The trees arching overhead seemed to spin around me and I thought I might faint, but I didn’t, staying upright as my heart kept beating. The isbjørn stood between Rune and me, chanting rhythmically, as my heart kept going faster and faster. I started thinking I should protest when it felt like my heart would burst through my chest. I tried to open my mouth but quickly realized I had no control over my body.
Fortunately, before I could become afraid, I was released. I fell like a puppet with its strings cut, knees giving out like they were made of paper. I caught myself on my elbows, the snow softening the impact.
“Sorry,” the isbjørn grumbled. I was too breathless to reply, panting like a dog, completely overheated but too exhausted to pull my stupid hood off.
Rune, on the other hand, was stomping and snorting like he was possessed.
“Can you climb up?” the isbjørn asked, folding his legs so it would require minimal effort. I felt like any motion would cause my heart to burst, but I didn’t want to show weakness in front of the isbjørn. I dragged myself onto his back, collapsing once I got there. “Don’t use energy transfer spells unless they’re absolutely necessary,” he said while I settled into the same position as before, my left ear resting on his neck, arms wrapped around him.
“Stupidest advice ever. And I’m not sure I’ll be able to hold on.” My voice was weak, not even a whisper.
He seemed to hear me, as he chuckled a bit and then said, “I won’t let you fall. Just hold on for a moment.” I did so, weaving my fingers into his fur. Which, in turn, began weaving itself around my fingers, my arms. My eyes hardly stayed open long enough to see that.
When I woke, the sun was already setting on a second day. We raced through frosted emerald forests and across winding silver rivers and shimmering diamond snow as we ran north. I didn’t move, didn’t speak, simply stayed still, hands woven through his fur. I felt the isbjørn’s power like my own, felt myself to be an extension of him and of the world around me, something great and vast where my little concerns and flaws and pains meant nothing, all swallowed up in a vast, unending expanse of magnificence.
We ran into a second night, more stars than a person could count in a lifetime glittering fiercely against the midnight blue of the sky. Fatigue overtook me again sometime in the night and I slept for a few hours.
Dawn was breaking when we arrived.
The castle, like most old fortifications, was set on a hill. More of a cliff, really, I saw as the isbjørn ran parallel to the edge. Snow was at least four feet deep here, the land plain and flat leading up to the cliff. The castle itself was tall and narrow and spiked and wintry gray, stark against the lightening sky.
“That’s it?” I asked incredulously, the first words I’d spoken since the energy transfer.
“What did you expect?” he asked in return, his voice rumbling all through me.
“Somewhere pleasant, maybe?” I was cramped and tired and further from home then I’d ever been in my life, and I was going to live in a giant, ugly rock. My mood wasn’t great.
A huffing snort—laughter. “Sorry to disappoint, princess.”
“I don’t want to stay in an ugly old castle,” I said shortly.
“Too late.”
The isbjørn was obviously no gentleman, so I would not behave a lady. Mouth tight, I viciously broke my hands from the fur that bound them and promptly fell off him and onto my rear. He roared, more in annoyance than pain, as I pulled his fur out with my gloves. I didn’t move, sitting in the snow, my spine still feeling the jolt of my fall, my arms folded. As I sat there, I realized I was hungry, hungrier than I could ever remember being. It made me even more irritable.
He came back, looking as incredulous as I’d felt a moment earlier. “What’s your plan, princess?”
“Stop calling me princess.”
“Then what’s your plan, Lena.”
“My name is Helena,” I said. My preferred nickname was not for him.
“Helena, then. What do you intend to do?” The sarcasm irked me beyond reason.
“My plan is to wait here until you find somewhere better for us to stay. And unless you bring me something to eat, I am going to starve to death very soon.”
The fur above his eyes twitched, as if he were raising his eyebrows. “That’s your plan?”
“Do you still plan on making me live there?” I asked, jerking my chin toward the stupid spire of a castle.
“I do.”
“Then yes. That’s my plan.”
Taking two, three, four deliberate steps toward me, he stood towering over me in all his animal glory, eyes staring straight into mine. “Do you know something, Lena? I have permission to do with you as I saw fit, as long as you’re safe. Your father gave me guardianship over you until the time you are returned to him. Do you know what that means?” He spoke softly, deliberately, a grin curling his thin, black lips, his long teeth flashing.
I pinched my mouth shut.
“It means that unless you can overpower me, you are going to go to that castle.”
He was right and I knew it, mentally hurling all the curse words the stable hands had taught me at him. That didn’t mean I had to make it pleasant for him. The last suggestion of social politeness was gone, and all my breeding left me. I spat in his face.
He jerked back, then glowered at me. Without further warning, I was gripped by magical fingers and thrown over his back like a sack of flour, his spine digging into my stomach. I realized, belatedly, that since he was my guardian, my wards preventing people from working magic on me were ineffective against him, and ran through my ment
al curse words again as we set off at a pace that was now painful to my head and body in my unfortunate position. Just to make sure he knew I wasn’t happy, I pounded my fists as hard as I could against his side until we reached the castle and I was unceremoniously dumped off him into the snow.
I twisted into an upright position, though I still sat, my arms folded around my middle, and gave him my best glare.
Turned out he had a pretty good glare too. “Here titles don’t matter. Birth doesn’t matter. Only you and I are here and I care about neither of those. Here, you are going to discover what it’s like to live without privilege. If you want to eat, you cook. If you want to bathe, you haul the water. If you want a fire, you find wood and you light it. If you want a clean dress, you wash it, and if you want a new dress, you make it. Do you understand?”
I was angry enough that I spat in his face again.
He snarled and lunged toward me, stopping barely an inch from my face. “And if you spit on me again, you’ll be locked in your room until I see fit to release you.”
I stood, and was only a few inches taller than he was on all fours. My legs shook from hunger and exhaustion. I inwardly commanded them to steady. “I’m to have my own room, then? I was expecting to sleep in the kitchen by the fireplace.” Rune pulled up beside me, trotting very slowly, surprising me, but I still wasn’t going to back down. I leaned against Rune to disguise my weakness.
“I have known many more deserving than you who sleep in worse conditions than that.”
“More deserving than me? More fortunate—at least they don’t have to live with a selfish, unfeeling isbjørn. Show me where I can find food.”
Those gray eyes narrowed, and I suspected that was what isbjørns looked like when they were about to kill a helpless baby seal. Without a reply, he led the way up the worn castle stairs, opening the door with a single Nyputian word I didn’t recognize, then through unlit narrow corridors lined with glassless slits of windows, paved with rough, uneven stones. Wind howled through the slits, making me ache for an hour earlier. I led Rune behind us, hooves clattering on those stone floors, as the isbjørn hadn’t indicated anywhere else for him to stay and I wasn’t going to leave him in the snow.