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The Land of The Midnight Sun 5 page

packed her belongings. All was silent around them. There was no wind, no creak of ice, no nothing. It

felt as if the castle were holding its breath.

“Do you plan to return?” Bear asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. She couldn’t look at him.

“How can you not know?”

“I just don’t.” All she knew was the idea of staying made her miserable and the idea of leaving

made her just as miserable.

“So I must wait like a good little puppy dog while you decide our future?”

Cassie couldn’t answer that. Instead, she focused on pulling on her Gore-Tex and flannels over

her clothes. She was heading back out into a world where she’d need all her layers. She had a

memory of herself, age eight, being dressed by her father in so much fleece and down that she

couldn’t lower her arms. When she got back to the station, she’d see her father again. She tried to

imagine that conversation. How was she going to explain why she hadn’t returned sooner?

Bear growled, low in his throat, making the hair on the back of her neck prickle. “I have been a

fool,” he said. “I believed you cared about me.”

Cassie frowned at him as she zipped her parka. “It has nothing to do with you. It’s me.” He

was… sweet. And fun. But this wasn’t about him. It was about her—who she wanted to be, what she

wanted her future life to be.

“Of course it ‘has to do’ with me,” he said. “It is my life you speak of.”

“And my life,” she snapped back. “You want me to sacrifice my career, friends, family, a mother

I have never even met.” Granted, after the first few weeks had passed, she hadn’t missed her mother

at all. Ruthlessly, she pushed that thought aside. “I can’t do that.” She’d worked so hard—late nights

studying for Dad’s pop quizzes, long treks chasing bears, weekends cleaning equipment, all so she

could someday earn an official staff position, a future she’d just tossed away to do what? Be Bear’s

companion? Play in the topiary garden? Dance in the ballroom? It wasn’t enough.

“You do not belong there anymore,” he said. “It is your past. You cannot go back. This is your

home now.”

Cassie shook her head. This wasn’t her home; this was Bear’s castle. Her eyes swept over the

ice rose bed and the seabird wardrobe and the shimmering walls and golden door. She did know

every curl of ice now, every rainbow reflection. She loved the shimmering sheen of the ice, the

soothing wind outside, and all the memories she now had of everything here. But it’s not home, she

told herself firmly. She had to remember that. Home was the station.

“You belong with me,” he said. “We are one.”

“No, we’re not. You’re out being munaqsri, and I’m…” She felt like… like a pet, kept at home

until he was free to play with her.


“Should I let the polar bears be stillborn? Is that what you want me to do? Let their souls drift

beyond the ends of the earth? I have responsibilities. You know that I do.”

“I know!” This was hard enough, and he was making it worse. It reminded her of how she’d

come here—by being blackmailed with a bargain she hadn’t been able to refuse. But that wasn’t fair.



The bargain to save her mother had been her own idea. And after that, Cassie had chosen to stay. At

least, she’d thought she’d had a choice. She’d believed him when he’d said she wasn’t a prisoner.

What if… He wouldn’t force her to stay. He wasn’t like that. “If you really cared about me, you’d let

me go.”

He turned away from her. “Go,” he said. She exhaled a breath that she hadn’t realized she’d

been holding. He added, “I will stay here and pace like a bear in a zoo until you return to me.”

Cassie sat down hard on the bed as the anger and frustration drained out of her. “I didn’t

mean…” Didn’t mean what? To leave? But she did mean to leave. From the beginning, she had meant

to leave. She just hadn’t meant to hurt him. And she hadn’t meant to care if she hurt him.

Bear sighed. “If you wish it, I will take you home.”


CHAPTER 10

 

 

Latitude 70° 49’ 23” N

Longitude 152° 29’ 25” W

Altitude 10 ft.

Cassie hadn’t remembered the station being so ugly. She’d always thought it resembled a

sideways soup can, but she’d never noticed what an old soup can it had become. Its metal walls were

pockmarked with the red-brown stains of decades of rust. The shed walls were worse. The whole

complex was incongruous with the pristine ice desert. After all the years she’d walked in and out of

that dented, rusted door without ever looking at it, seeing it now felt… strange.

She dismounted from Bear, but her hand stayed on his neck. He turned his head to look at her

with his soulful eyes. “It looks different, that’s all,” she said, in answer to his unspoken question.

“You are different,” he said. “This place is not your home anymore.”

“Don’t be melodramatic,” she said, taking her hand off his neck. “This is hard enough as it is.”

“I do not want leaving me to be easy.”

“Well, it’s not, so stop it.” He subsided, and she went back to staring across the station

compound. Skidmarks from a Twin Otter crossed in front of the shed and headed behind the station.

 

 

under her face mask now that she wasn’t touching Bear. Cassie closed the gusset on her hood.

“Are you afraid?” Bear asked gently.

“Like hell I am,” Cassie said. Ridiculous to be nervous about meeting her own mother. This

should be the best day of her life.

But her feet wouldn’t move. All she had to do was walk to the door and open it, and there she’d

be—her mother. “You could come in with me,” Cassie said.

Snow drifted across the doorstep in silence.

“I know you do not want that,” Bear said finally.

She nodded. She didn’t know what had made her say it.

“Raise the station flag and I will come for you,” Bear said.

No more thinking, she told herself. It was time to do this. Shouldering her pack, Cassie marched

briskly across the lit snow. Closer, she heard the generator humming—a comfortingly familiar sound,

like the welcoming whine of a family dog—and she slowed to a stop in front of the door.

Behind her, she heard Bear rumble, “I love you.”

Suddenly, going inside seemed easier than staying outside. Without looking at Bear, she pushed

the door open. The smell of unwashed bodies hit her in a wave, and she reeled backward from the

sourness. Steeling herself, she stepped into the entryway and closed the door behind her. Breathing

shallowly through her face mask, she opened the second door.

And she was home.

Cassie stood in the second doorway and blinked, her eyes adjusting to the barrage of color:

orange life vests, red parkas, bright blue packs, green and purple climbing ropes. Slowly, as the

colors resolved into familiar shapes, she started to relax. Heaps of gear, stacks of files, rats’ nests of

clothes on top of and around the desks and file cabinets… She knew this mess. Cassie stripped off her

outer gear. She could hear voices in Owen’s workshop. She left her pack and gear on her desk and

crossed to the half-open door.

The scene was very familiar: Max and Owen stood at the workbench. They were muttering over


a chunk of engine. Leaning against the door frame, Cassie watched them. Max and Owen. Her two

pseudo-uncles. She used to play in here while they muttered over some hunk of metal, exactly as they

were doing now. She felt a grin tugging on her lips. “Nice toaster,” she said lightly.

Owen dropped the clamp.

“You should be more careful with that equipment,” she teased. “Treat it like a baby.”

Max whipped off his goggles, reverse raccoon mask underneath. “Cassie? Lassie!” He leaped

over a sawhorse and scooped her up into a bear hug. Max! She’d missed him! She hugged him back

fiercely. “Look at you, Cassie-lassie!”

Owen was frowning at her. “Cassie?” he said.

“It’s me. In the flesh. Good to see you.” She meant it. It was very good to see them, surprisingly

good. She’d focused so much on her parents that she hadn’t thought about what it would be like to see

the rest of her family. “Good to be home.” She threw open her arms and inhaled the smell of home:

stale winter. She coughed.

“Cassie… we didn’t know if you were alive or dead, lassie,” Max said.

“Your mother always believed you lived,” Owen said.

Your mother. Cassie felt her heart stop for an instant. Bear had done it. Her mother was here.

Alive and here. Cassie hadn’t realized that up until this moment, there had still been doubt, lurking.

But hearing it from prosaic Owen’s lips, here in the unmagical, ordinary station… When her heartbeat

resumed, it felt loud, like a timpani under her skin, and her voice sounded far away to her ears.

“Where is she?”

Max grinned broadly. “Come on, Cassie-lassie.” He draped his arm around her shoulder and

shepherded her out the door. “I want to see the expression on their faces when they see you.”

Cassie let herself be led. She didn’t feel her feet touching the floor. She barely saw where she

was walking. Their faces, plural, when they see you. Max propelled her through the research lab to

the kitchen. He released her as they entered.

There was only one person in the kitchen.

Her father was sitting at the table with his head bent over his notebook. A pot simmered on the

stove behind him. For a long moment, she stared at him, feeling her insides tumble, unable to sort out

what she was thinking or feeling.

After months with Bear, her six-foot-five father looked small and fragile. Gray streaked his hair,

and his neck sagged beneath his mountain-man beard. She had forgotten his gray. She stared at him,

trying to match this man to her memories. How had she ever found him intimidating? She wanted to

cross to him and push his hair out of his eyes. He looked so… human.

Max cleared his throat, and Dad glanced up from his papers.

“Hi, Dad,” she said.

He looked stunned, as if she had dropped from the sky into the kitchen. Recovering, he shot out

of his chair. The chair clattered backward to the floor behind him. In two large steps, he was in front

of her. He crushed her in a hug. “Oh, my little girl,” he said.

He hadn’t called her that in years. Cassie swallowed a lump in her throat. “Where’s Mom?” The

word tasted strange in her mouth.

His face split into an enormous smile. Still holding her shoulders, he called, “Gail! Gail, she’s

home!” He squeezed her shoulders. “Gail!”

Cassie heard footsteps from the hall behind her. Her mother’s footsteps, running. Cassie’s back

muscles tensed. The footsteps stopped at the doorway, and her father released her. But Cassie

couldn’t turn around. Her feet felt glued to the linoleum. She had dreamed of this too often for too


long. What are you afraid of? she challenged herself. Turn around.

No, I don’t want to.

Tough, she told herself. Turn the hell around.

Slowly, she turned—counter, cabinets, wall, Max, Owen… “Gail,” Dad said to the woman in

the doorway, “this is Cassandra. Cassie, this is your mother.”

Green eyes. For a long moment, Cassie had no other coherent thought. She stared at her mother’s

eyes and felt as if her brain were spinning like a coronal aurora. Cassie did have her mother’s eyes.

But the resemblance ended there, at the eyes. Gail was short compared to Cassie, maybe five-

foot-five. She had black hair, not red. Instead of sharp cheekbones, she had soft baby-doll cheeks.

Decked out in a red blouse and jeans, she looked nothing like Cassie, except the eyes.

“Mother,” Cassie said, testing it.

Her mother swallowed and fluttered her hands as if she weren’t sure what to do with them, as if

she were surprised that she had hands. “You can call me Gail, if it makes you more comfortable,” she

said, her voice quivering.

Her mother was a stranger named Gail. “Gail,” Cassie said. She had not pictured using her

mother’s first name. Cassie attempted a smile. “Very punny. North Wind’s daughter. Gale.”

Her mother sparkled at her with a smile out of a Crest commercial. “It’s short for Abigail.”

Inanely, Cassie wondered where her mother had found lipstick up here. It was as red as Red

Delicious apples, and as inappropriate as cotton jeans in fifty-below. “Oh,” Cassie said, continuing

to stare. Her mother seemed smaller than she’d been in her daydreams.

The smile faded, and Gail twisted her hands. “Could I… Would it be all right if I hugged you?”

“Maybe,” Cassie said. Was it? “Yes.”

Gail took a step toward her and awkwardly held out her arms. Cassie took a matching step

forward. Her mother smelled like pine trees, like wild air. Her arms felt bony around Cassie’s back.

Cassie placed her hands on her mother’s shoulder blades. She was hugging a stranger. This close,

Cassie could feel the gulf of every year, of every minute.

Her mother said in a soft voice, “My baby. My little girl.”

And something inside Cassie broke. She felt it give, like a sagging spruce under the weight of a

winter’s ice. All of a sudden, Cassie’s cheeks were wet. Water filled her eyes, and she couldn’t see.

She buried her face in the sharp shoulder of her pine-scented mother. Her mother’s arms started to

shake. “My baby, my baby.” Gail’s voice cracked. She was crying too.

Something had to happen next. Cassie had never thought beyond the first hello. But now the first

moment was over and Cassie didn’t know what to say to this woman, this stranger, her mother.

Owen—Owen, of all people—came to her rescue. She hadn’t even realized that he and Max

were still in the room. “How did… How did you escape?” Owen asked.

Gratefully, Cassie turned to him. “No escape. I asked to leave, and Bear brought me home.”

“Just like that?” Gail said, surprise in her voice.

Cassie thought of Bear outside the station. I love you, he’d said. “Just like that,” she lied.

“But munaqsri promises can’t be broken—,” her mother began.

“It doesn’t matter,” Dad cut her off. “She’s here now. She’s free.”

Yes, it did matter. Munaqsri promises. Her mother—Gail, she corrected—was right. Cassie had

made vows, promises, to a munaqsri. He could have made her stay if he had wanted. But he had

chosen to let her go, even though he loved her—or maybe, she had the sudden thought, because he

loved her?

“We won’t ever let him take you again,” her father said.


“Oh, no, it’s not like that,” Cassie said quickly. “He’s not like that. We’re… friends,” she

finished, for lack of a better word. Until the birth season had begun, he’d been her constant

companion. They’d talked and laughed and spent every second together.

“Friends? With the monster who took you from your family? With the monster who kept you from

us for months? Cassie, we thought you might be dead.”

Cassie flushed. She should have at least tried to send word. But she’d never even thought of it. It

was her fault that they’d worried. “He’s not a monster,” she said. He’d said he loved her… Stop

thinking about that. She was here with her mother, her mother, who was alive and here.

“What you did…,” Gail said. “It was very brave. Thank you.”

She didn’t know about “brave.” She’d liked it at the castle. She’d skated in the ballroom,

designed new sculptures for the topiary garden, lost chess games. Her mother was waiting for her to

speak. “I couldn’t leave you… there,” Cassie said. There, in a troll castle. It still sounded

implausible. Gail fluttered her hands, obviously uncomfortable. She had a debutante’s fingers, long

and slender, with pristine nails and smooth skin. For eighteen years with trolls, she did not seem the

worse for wear. “What are trolls anyway?” Cassie asked—the question came out harsher than she’d

intended.

“Cassie, your mother doesn’t like to talk about it,” Dad said.

Gail shook her head. “It’s all right, Laszlo,” she said. To Cassie, she said, “There truly were

trolls, and I truly was trapped in their castle.”

Cassie glanced away, unable to keep looking at those familiar-yet-foreign green eyes. She hadn’t

meant to snap like that, not at her. At Dad, maybe, who had left his wife trapped in an impossible

castle, leaving it to Cassie to save her.

“Trolls are… difficult to explain. It is an inadequate name,” Gail said. “They have no shape, no

physical bodies. Their queen is chosen from those who can hold a shape for the longest, but still…”

Her voice faltered. “It’s an island of wild spirits.”

“How did Bear free you?” Cassie asked. Bear had never told her. She had never asked. She had,

in fact, avoided every subject related to her mother, including trolls and the winds. Now she wished

she had asked everything.

Gail shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said. “One night, I went to sleep, and when I woke, I

was on the ice and the Polar Bear King was carrying me home.”

Silence fell over the kitchen. It was impossible not to hear Gram’s voice as Cassie looked at her

mother, the North Wind’s daughter, free from the troll castle. And so, the Bear carried the North

Wind’s daughter to her human husband…

On the stove, bubbles spilled over a saucepan, and the burner hissed. “Ack, beans!” Dad

swooped down on the saucepan. With a look of relief flashing over her face, clearly eager for the

distraction, Gail dove away from Cassie and slid a bowl under Dad’s elbow; he drained the beans

into it. Gail took the saucepan, and he took the bowl—saucepan to the sink, bowl to the table. It

looked like a dance, a well-rehearsed dance, one that didn’t include Cassie.

She thought of dancing with Bear in the ballroom and then firmly pushed the thought away.

“Where’s Gram?” Cassie asked. “Is she back in Fairbanks?”

“I flew her back about a month after you left,” Max said. “She waited a month, in case you

returned.”

Cassie had never meant to worry Gram, either. She owed a lot of apologies.

“Cassie,” Dad said, “the others don’t know about the… everything.”

She blinked. “How can they not know?” Max and Owen knew. Granted, they had known


Cassie’s mother from before, and the others hadn’t, but still. Her mother had come back from the

dead. Surely, they must have noticed.

“Story was that we only thought she was dead,” Max said with relish, “but really she was in a

coma and no one knew who she was, and one day she woke up. As soon as she was released from the

hospital, I flew her here to surprise your father.”

Cassie gawked. That was the stupidest story she’d ever heard. “They believed that? What soap

opera did you plagiarize?”

Max shrugged and looked embarrassed.

“We decided it was best,” Dad said, “to attempt to preserve normalcy. For your mother’s sake.”

Before Cassie could respond, the two researchers Scott and Liam tumbled into the kitchen.

Cassie realized with a shock that it had been such a long time since she’d even thought about them that

she’d almost forgotten what they looked like.

Scott saw her first. He grinned. “Cassie?” He thumped her on the back. “Good to see you.

How’ve you been? What’s for dinner?” Scooping beans into a bowl, he straddled a chair.

Liam shook her hand. “Missed a great season,” he said. “How’s Fairbanks?”

She shot her father a look. If he’d claimed Gail had been in a coma, what had he said had

happened to Cassie? “It’s good,” Cassie said. Dad nodded approvingly.

Jeremy stomped into the room. “Liquid nitrogen would freeze at this temperature.” After

shucking his gloves, he went for the beans. Mouth full, he nodded casually at Cassie, as if she hadn’t

been gone the whole migration season. “I know, I know, I’m still here,” he said.

“He owes me three more months,” Dad said as he handed Cassie a bowl of beans.

With beans squashed on his teeth, Jeremy said, “And then I’m outta this icebox. Beautiful, balmy

L.A. Changing my concentration to Amazon jungles.”

Gail teased, “You’ll complain of sunburn in L.A., and you’ll melt in the Amazon.” She smiled at

Jeremy with her full-teeth smile. Cassie felt her heart suddenly squeeze. Her mother was strangers

with her daughter and friends with that newbie, that cheechako, who wasn’t even family and couldn’t

track a polar bear in a zoo? Cassie stirred her beans, not hungry.

Jeremy wagged his spoon. “Mark my words: Hell is frozen. I should never have chosen Arctic

research. But I’m man enough to change.”

Cassie searched for something innocuous to say. “So… how are the bears?”

Scott’s face lit up. “Earmarked a hundred twenty-six. That’s thirty-two more than they got at

 

closest thing to a football rival the Eastern Beaufort station could have. “Not that we’re counting,”

added Max as he sat on his stool and helped himself to rice and beans.

“Course not,” Cassie said. “You visiting, or back on staff?”

Grinning even more broadly, Max said, “We got the grant. Two years’ worth.”

 

 

got his equipment—brand-new computers. Very snazzy.”

Max was back! And they’d gotten the grant! And she’d missed it. “That’s wonderful!” she said,

as enthusiastically as she could. Really, it was wonderful news. She’d wished for Max to come back

for years. Cassie grinned at her former babysitter. “What’s the grant for?”

“Denning behavior,” Dad answered. “All five polar bear nations are participating, but we are

the ones who will be combining the data.”

“Laszlo had us out poking sticks into dens till we got Max back on staff. Scouting the ice with

headlamps. Your kind of stuff, kiddo,” Scott said. “Sorry you missed it.” So was she.


Jeremy gave a visible shudder. “Insanely suicidal.”

“You didn’t get eaten,” Dad said.

“Pure luck,” Jeremy said. “Glad that’s over with.”

She’d missed all of it. Well, she was back now, and she wasn’t missing anything else. Out of the

corner of her eye, Cassie watched Gail perch on a stool and smooth her napkin across her lap. I’m

home now, Cassie thought, and I’m staying.

Cassie shot upright in her bed. What the hell was that? “Bear?” she said. A woman was

screaming. It took Cassie several seconds to remember where she was, and several more seconds to

remember what other woman was in the station.

Her mother was screaming.

Cassie chucked off her comforter and ran out her bedroom door. She made it to outside her dad’s

room as the screams subsided to sobs. “It’s all right,” her father was saying. “You’re here. You’re

free. It’s over. It’s all right. They won’t take you again.”

“You don’t know that.” Her mother’s voice, broken.

Cassie pushed through the door. “Mom? Gail?” She halted in the doorway. Her mother was

curled against Dad and was weeping on his shoulder.

Dad raised his head, and the expression was so raw that Cassie had to look away. “Nightmare,”

he said to Cassie. “She’ll be all right. You go back to bed.”

Cassie took a step toward the door. She wanted to retreat. She didn’t know what to do with her

mother weeping like that and her father looking so… so… stricken, so helpless. Every crease in his

face was a deep shadow. His eyes looked like smudged holes. “Are you sure?” she asked.

“Go ahead,” he said. He pressed his face against her mother’s hair, and she could tell that to him

she was already gone. Cassie backed out the door and closed it behind her. She hesitated in the

hallway. She could hear her father’s voice clearly through the door.

“Same dream?” he said.

Cassie couldn’t hear the reply.

“Blame me,” he said. “I failed you. I should have saved you. Blame me. Hate me. But don’t be

afraid. You don’t have to be afraid. It’s over. It’s all over. You’re home.”


CHAPTER 11

 

 

Latitude 70° 49’ 23” N

Longitude 152° 29’ 25” W

Altitude 10 ft.

Cassie threw herself into data processing. For five days, she transferred several thousand

latitude and longitude measurements into minuscule triangles on a topographical map, one triangle per

den. She finished late on day five, and then stepped back to survey her work. She wrinkled her nose.

Anyone could have done this—a kid, a monkey, Jeremy.

“Good,” Dad said behind her. “How many do we have?”

Cassie counted. “Forty-one on eastern Ellesmere, maximum distance twelve and a half miles

from shore, twenty-eight within five miles.” Bear could be there now, distributing souls. “Baffin

Island, twenty-three near Cape Adair.”

Her father took notes. “Foxe Basin?”

“Bear must have visited a number of these by now,” she said. It was the height of birth season.

Had any of the cubs been stillborn? Some must have been. If he were in Karaskoye More and he felt a

call in the Chukchi Sea, he might not make it even at superspeeds. She thought of Bear alone in his

castle, mourning the cubs he’d failed to save.

Dad’s pencil paused. “Cassie, you don’t need to think about him anymore. You’re safe here.”

Not again. She forced herself to smile and say in an even voice, “He’s not dangerous. He’s

sweet.” And fun and funny.

“It’s a common psychological reaction for people to identify with their kidnappers,” he said.

“But you’re home now. We won’t let him take you again.”

Dad was so stubborn. “You know what Bear did one time? I woke up with a sore throat, and he

brought me breakfast in bed.” More like a feast, really. Pancakes, waffles, cereals. She’d never had

anyone bring her breakfast in bed. “And then the rest of the morning, he told me stories so I wouldn’t

have to talk and I wouldn’t be bored.” He’d even acted some of them out. Even with her sore throat,

she had laughed a lot. “Does that sound so terrible?” She hadn’t laughed like that since she’d returned

to the station.

“You don’t need to tell me,” he said. “Whatever happened, you’re safe now. You’re with people

who love you.”

Bear loves me, she thought. “He’s not a monster,” she said.

Gail poked her face into the room. “It’s after midnight. Would you two workaholics come to

bed?” She smiled with all her teeth.

“Do you want to call it a night?” Dad asked kindly, as if talking to a child.

Cassie sighed. One more argument wasn’t going to convince him. “All right.” She deposited her

papers onto her desk, and she trotted after Dad and Gail.

At the door to her bedroom, Dad paused. “Good work today, Cassie.”

She wasn’t sure of that. Bear did more to help the polar bears in one jaunt across the ice than she

could do in one year of drawing triangles on maps.

“Night,” Gail said. She didn’t try to hug or kiss Cassie. After the first few awkward nights, they

had let that drop in a tacit acknowledgment of the gulf between them.

Managing a halfhearted wave, Cassie backed into her bedroom and closed the door behind her.

She heard her parents’ voices receding, and then their door shut too.


Cassie flopped down onto the bed. Yellow fluorescent light reflected on the photographs that her

younger self had taped to the cement walls. She rolled onto her stomach to look at the shrunken


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