The Land of The Midnight Sun 2 page

she was supposed to believe he’d objected to Gram telling her the truth?

She wished she’d caught that bear. If she had, they could’ve run tests on him, taken a blood

sample, even tagged him with an ID and tracked his movements. She could have proved he was

ordinary.

Maybe she still could. If she called their bluff, they’d have no excuse to force her to Fairbanks.

Without waiting for second thoughts, Cassie tiptoed out into the hall and then cut through the

research lab. The fluorescents were off, but the computer screens glowed green. She heard hushed

voices from the direction of the kitchen. If she were quick enough, no one would even notice she had

left her room. She exited the lab, closing the door softly behind her, and then flicked on the light of the

main room.

Someone stirred. “Whaa…”

Cassie froze. It was Jeremy. He’d fallen asleep at his desk again. “Go back to sleep,” she

whispered.

“Mmmuph,” he said, closing his eyes.

She held her breath. He was the newbie—the cheechako, to use Max’s native Inupiaq. Dad and

Gram wouldn’t have told him anything, she assured herself. If she acted normal, he wouldn’t be

alarmed, and he wouldn’t fetch her father. She moved slowly to her desk and pulled on her Gore-Tex

pants. The pants rustled, and Jeremy’s eyes popped open again.

Jeremy peered at her blearily. “Where are you going?”

“Repair work,” she lied. “Nothing to worry about.” She shoved her feet into her mukluks and

secured her gaiters over them.

“Don’t know how you can stand it out there,” Jeremy said. “It’s a wasteland. An ice desert. At

least you’re getting out, eh?”

Her fingers faltered as she fixed her face mask. “Who told you that?” she asked, trying to keep

her voice calm and casual. She pulled the hood up over two wool hats—almost ready. She felt as if

her insides were shouting, Hurry, hurry!

“That plane guy, Max, said you were going to undergrad.”

“Max talks too much,” she said. “I’m not going anywhere.” She Velcroed the throat gusset of her

hood shut and then fetched her emergency kit. The small pack held a flashlight, her ice axe, extra

flannels, and a few food rations. With this, she could search the pack ice for several days, if that’s

what it would take.

“Just because this is all you know, it doesn’t mean this is all there is,” he said. “Don’t you want

a normal life? You’ve never lived outside this station. You’ve been homeschooled your entire life.

Don’t you want to get out there, meet kids your age, do what normal people do?”

She loved the ice. She loved tracking bears. “This is home,” she said shortly.

“I thought this would be my home. Coming here was my dream, you know, for years. But now…

Hey, whatever, dreams change. Nothing wrong with that. I’m applying for a nice, cozy postdoc back

at UCLA.”

—could force her to leave her life here. “I’ll just be a minute,” she said as she opened the inner door

and shut it behind her.

For a brief second, she debated staying inside and trying to talk sense into Dad and Gram, but

words had failed to convince them before. No, she thought, if I don’t act now, I’ll be on a plane to

Fairbanks in three hours. she couldn’t let that happen. She opened the outer door and stepped out into

the Arctic.

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.

CHAPTER 3

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 believed 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.

CHAPTER 4

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.

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

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.

But it wasn’t a real wedding. It was only words. She didn’t have to mean them. She just had to

say them, and she would accomplish what no one else—her father, her grandmother, no one—had

been able to accomplish: She’d bring her mother back! “Do you…” She halted. “What’s your name?”

She turned to look at him. His massive head was inches from her shoulder. Instinctively, she flinched.

She couldn’t do this. He was… She didn’t know what he was: magic or monster, predator or rescuer.

“You may call me Bear,” he said.

“Bear,” she repeated. She was marrying a creature simply called Bear to save a woman she’d

never known.

That was the crux of it: a woman she had never known. Cassie had never known her mother. All

she had to do was say a few words, and she could change that. Her mother would live again.

Looking into his black eyes, she began. “Do you, Bear, swear by the sun and the moon…” After

this was done, she would demand to go back. He didn’t want an unwilling wife. She knew Gram’s

story. He’d said so himself to her mother, I would not have an unwilling wife. He wouldn’t refuse

Cassie. She’d divorce him as quickly as she’d married him. “The sea and the sky…” She could

divorce him, right? Her voice faltered. She felt a roaring in her ears.

“The earth and the ice,” he prompted.

“The earth and the ice,” Cassie said. It was almost done. What did it mean to marry the Polar

Bear King? Her eyes flicked to the door—the crystal lattice shimmered like a thousand stars in a net

—and then back to the bear.

“To be my beloved husband from now until your soul leaves your body,” he encouraged her.

“And you’ll bring back my mother?” she said.

“Yes,” he said. “Our vows are void if I fail.”

Cassie closed her eyes. She had to do it for her four-year-old self, who had believed with all her

heart that her mommy was in a troll castle. “Fine. Let’s finish this. To be my beloved husband from

now until your soul leaves your body?”

“I do,” he said.

She thought she heard a sound like a bell, but she didn’t hear it in her ears. She heard it inside,

as if it were resonating in her rib cage. Her knees wobbled.

“Do not be afraid,” he said softly. “As long as these walls are standing, nothing here will harm

you.”

Eyes closed, she tried to breathe. It felt as if there weren’t enough oxygen.

“Come,” he said.

Cassie opened her eyes to see the bear walking down the shimmering hallway. For a second, she

didn’t move. She looked back over her shoulder at the outside world, and then she took a deep breath

and followed the bear.

The corridor widened into a golden and glowing banquet hall. The faceted walls glittered so

brightly with candlelight from the chandeliers that Cassie saw sparkles when she blinked.

Translucent, the cathedral ceiling glowed like stained glass. She looked around her in wonder.

Carved birds and animals decorated the walls and ceilings. Buttresses arched over statues. A banquet

table stretched the length of the hall with thronelike ice chairs on either end. It looked like… She tried

to think of places to compare it to, and failed. It was as if every beautiful ray of light, every beautiful

shape of ice that she had ever seen, were here all at once.

“We have had a long journey,” the bear said, suddenly behind her. Startled, she spun to face him.

“You must wish to eat.”

When she turned back to the banquet hall, the vast table that had waited in silent splendor now

overflowed with food. Fruit cascaded from ice crystal bowls. Steam rose from blue-white dishes.

Breads were piled in pyramids. She breathed in a hundred spices. “I don’t understand,” she said. She

saw no waiter and no chefs—nothing to explain the sudden appearance of a feast.

“It is food,” he said gently. “You eat it.”

As if to demonstrate, the polar bear swallowed an entire loaf of bread. She shook her head. The

act was so incongruous with his fierce appearance. “Bears don’t eat bread,” she said. “You’re a

carnivore.”

“We all have flaws,” he said.

Was that a joke? Did he have a sense of humor? She stared at him. “This can’t be real,” she said.

He nosed a throne. “Please. It is yours.”

Backing away, he let her approach it. Her throne. Taking off her mittens and gloves, she touched

the curled arms of the ice throne. “It’s not cold,” she said. It was an ice castle. Either she should have

been cold, or the ice should have been melting. But she was as warm as she would have been inside

the station. “Nothing even drips.”

“It cannot melt,” he said. “Not so long as I am here. I will not allow it to melt.”

She jerked her hand back. “What do you mean ‘allow it’?” She said. “Ice doesn’t ask

permission.”

“It is part of being a munaqsri,” he said.

“Moon-awk-sree,” she repeated. It sounded Inupiaq.

“Yes,” he said.

“Your word for ‘talking bear’?” she asked.

“It means ‘guardian,’” he said. “We are the caretakers of souls. Every living thing needs a soul,

and everything that dies gives up a soul. Munaqsri are the ones who transfer and transport those

souls.”

Cassie stared at him again.

“Altering molecules. That is one of the… ‘powers,’ for lack of a better word, that nature has

given us so that we can fulfill our role,” he said. “On the ice, I use it to reach my bears. Here, I use it

for the shape of my home, the food on the table, the warmth in your body.”

She felt as if she were spinning in a centrifuge, dizzy with the sparkling light of the chandeliers,

the smells of spices, and the strangeness of the bear’s words. “You transfer souls,” she repeated.

Date: 2015-12-18; view: 662