The Land of The Midnight Sun 6 page

images of snowdrifts and mountaintops. She leaned over and smoothed the crumpled corner of one

photograph. She had scrawled: “Lomonosov Ridge 89° N.” She remembered it: the fierce jumble of

ice blocks, the expanse of sky, the burning cold. “Oh, Bear, what are you doing now?”

She threw a rolled sock at the light switch, and it bounced off. Third sock, she got it. In the

darkness, she missed Bear more. She knew she shouldn’t. She was home now. She had her life back,

plus her mother. So why wasn’t she happy?

Tossing beneath her comforter, Cassie thought about her life in the castle, how she’d never

gotten tired of the afternoons they’d spent in the garden, of the evenings they’d spent playing chess

(even when he’d won three out of four games because she’d never had a backup plan), or of the late

nights when they’d drunk hot chocolate in the dark and he’d made up stories just for her. She

remembered how he had laughed the first time she’d slid down the banister, and how he had cried

when that first cub had been stillborn. How many more stillborns had he had to face alone? If only she

could find a way to be with him and help the polar bears.

Cassie sat up in bed—she was on the verge of an idea. She could feel it. Bear missed births

because he did not know where and when they would be. But she had access to the precise denning

dates for hundreds of expectant bears.

Cassie threw off her comforter and hurried to Owen’s workroom. She clambered over boxes and

engine bits to the new computer. After yanking the protective cover off, she hit the power button. She

paced as it booted. Births were not random. She could predict them—or at least their likelihood.

Cassie perched on the desk chair and clicked to the denning file.

“Let me do that,” a voice said.

Cassie jumped. Owen was two feet from her elbow. How on earth had he heard her from back in

the sleeping quarters? “Do you have a baby monitor on this thing?”

“You’re not exactly light-footed.”

She relinquished the desk chair. “Be my guest.” He sat, and she leaned over his shoulder. “I

want an extra column on the denning sites spreadsheet.” He inserted the column. “Mmm. Okay. Now

put in a formula to add two months to each of the denning times to account for the final stage of the

gestation period.” He did. “Can you print a page?” she asked.

“It’s going.”

The printer whirred, and Cassie hovered over it. “Slow.”

“Ink-jet. Leave it be.”

“You think I’m going to break every piece of equipment, don’t you?”

Owen shrugged.

“I am not a klutz,” she said.

“Excitable,” he said.

She yanked the page out before it finished, blurring the ink. Pacing, she scanned it. “Label that

column ‘Predicted Birth’ and sort the data by date and location. Date first. Please.”

He made the adjustments and printed. After grabbing the pages, Cassie perched on a stool. She

chewed on her lower lip as she read. Could this work?

Owen cleared his throat. “The grant said nothing about predicting births,” he said. “Up to your

father, but I doubt we can change the basic premise now.”

“Uh-huh.” She barely heard him. Dates overlapped for disparate locations, but it was not

impossible. If he had a route that took him from Hudson Bay… It would be a challenging project to

determine the route and to update it, adjusting probabilities, on the fly. It would need someone with

training and skills…

Owen waited for a response. Cassie smiled at him. “Can you print a few more files for me?”

Cassie rolled her sleeping bag and stormproof bivy sack into the bottom compartment of her

backpack. She was packing full expedition gear this time, in preparation for trips out on the ice. She

added freeze-dried food packets, oatmeal flakes, nuts, dried fruit. If her plan worked, she’d be out on

the pack ice every day—just like she’d always wanted.

As she packed, Dad hovered beside her. Flushed, his face looked like angry lava. He leveled a

finger at her. “You’re not going. And that’s final.”

Cassie examined her MSR stove and tested the fuel pump. She wasn’t going to fight with him.

“I won’t let you ruin your life.”

“It’s my choice to make.” She kept her voice calm. She didn’t know when she’d see Dad again.

She didn’t want to leave angry.

He gripped her arm. “Cassie, I only want what’s best for you.”

Cassie yanked out of his grip. Turning her back on him, she packed quickly with practiced skill

—heavy items braced by clothing. “I know I’m not making the choices you would, but—”

Red nail polish flashing, Gail wrung her hands. “Cassandra, you don’t have to go. You fulfilled

my promise. He has no hold over you.”

She shook her head. She wasn’t going back because of promises or because of Gram’s story or

to save her mother. “I want to return to him,” she said.

Owen wordlessly handed Cassie a stack of printed data. She thanked him and packed it.

Scanning her desk, she found an ice screw. She added it to a side pocket.

“Cassie.” Dad dropped his voice low. “He’s not even human. You told me yourself you don’t

know what he looks like when he isn’t a bear. You don’t know what he is.”

She was not going to fight with him.

Without a word, she marched through the lab to the bathroom. She slammed the door behind her

and shoveled her toothbrush, deodorant, and shampoo into the bag. “I know perfectly well what he

is,” she said through the door. “He’s Bear, and he’s my husband.” She rooted through the cabinets

until she found one more item: birth control pills, left by an intern who’d worked at the station prior

to Jeremy. She packed the pills and zipped the bag.

Flinging open the door, she added in a low voice, “And isn’t all this a little hypocritical coming

from the man who married the North Wind’s daughter?” His jaw fell open, and she brushed past him.

“Owen,” she called, “do you have the rest of those maps?”

“Just a minute here, young lady…” Dad strode after her.

Max emerged from his bedroom. “What’s going on? Cassie-lassie?” He followed Cassie and

Dad back to where Gail waited. “What’s she doing?” Max asked.

“Ruining her future,” Dad said.

“Following my future,” Cassie corrected. Owen handed her another stack of maps, and then,

with a quick glance at Cassie’s father, retreated across the room.

“You have a future here,” Dad said. “You have family and friends here. You’re giving up

everything to be with this ‘husband.’ You’re giving up college. You’re giving up your goals. What

about your plans to be a professional tracker? You always said that’s what you wanted.”

Cassie put on her hat and zipped her parka. Sweat heated in her armpits. “I shouldn’t have

expected you to understand. After all, you left your wife in a troll castle.”

“Dammit, Cassie, I did that for you! You’d been born. I had to keep you safe! I couldn’t go

traipsing off to the ends of the earth. I had to be a father to you!” He thumped a desk with his fist for

emphasis. Papers scattered, and Owen jumped. “Do you think it was an easy choice?”

It hadn’t been a choice; it had been cowardice. Why else had he lied to her all these years,

leaving it to Gram to finally tell her? Shame was a powerful motivator. She knew he wished he had

rescued Gail. She’d heard the regret in his voice that first night when she’d eavesdropped on her

parents. She slung her pack over her shoulder.

“I forbid it.” Dad blocked the exit. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”

Cassie turned to her mother. “You talk to him.”

“But I don’t…,” Gail began.

“History is repeating itself,” Cassie said. “Your father didn’t want you to leave either.”

Startled, Gail looked at her husband.

“It’s not the same thing at all,” Dad protested. But Cassie could see her mother understood. It

was the same. Cassie watched her mother’s face as her father blustered. Every night, her mother woke

screaming, afraid she would be imprisoned again. Would she let her daughter be kept somewhere

against her will? Cassie didn’t know her well enough to be certain, but she was betting not.

Gail touched his arm with her red fingernails. “Laszlo, let her go.”

Aghast, he turned to her. “Do you know what you’re saying? You want to send our only child,

our baby girl, back to the mercy of a bear?”

Gail lifted her chin and did not back down. Max, wide-eyed, looked back and forth among the

three of them like he was watching a convoluted Ping-Pong game. Owen ducked behind the doorway

of his workshop. Dad broke first. Lowering his eyes, he said, “Cassie, please, don’t do this. It isn’t

safe. It isn’t smart. You’re rushing in again. Wait for a while and then decide. Don’t leave so soon.”

Gail reached toward Cassie and then let her hand fall. “Cassandra… Cassie… I was just getting

to know you.” Cassie looked at her mother. What could she say? That no matter how much time she

spent here, it wouldn’t be enough to bridge the lost years? Cassie couldn’t say that. Better just to

leave.

“Stay with us,” Dad said. “We’re your family. This is your home. Please, think about this. Think

of what you’re giving up.” Max’s eyes were overbright, and Gail had tears in hers.

Looking at them, Cassie started to blink fast. Her eyes felt hot. “Tell Gram I’m sorry I didn’t get

to see her.”

She went outside quickly—before she could change her mind, or have it changed for her. Silence

slammed down on her as she closed the outer door. She inhaled deeply, and cold bit her throat.

Feeling her way along the perimeter of the station, Cassie raised the U.S. flag in the blinding white

darkness of an Arctic blizzard.

CHAPTER 12

Latitude 79° 48’ 44” N

Longitude 153° 37’ 58” W

Altitude 6 ft.

As Bear carried her north, Cassie laid her cheek against the soft fur of his neck. She breathed in

his scent—sea salt and damp fur. Above, the northern lights played between the stars as Bear ran

across the endless ice. She thought of the last time Bear had carried her away from the station. Same

ride, but now she knew what waited at the end of it.

Or at least she hoped she did. What if Bear rejected her plan?

After many hours, they reached the castle. Cassie saw the spires, luminous in the light of the

moon. Bear slowed to a walk, his paws crunching on granules of ice.

“We’re home,” Cassie said softly.

Bear paused, and she knew he’d heard her. She wrapped her arms around his broad neck, and

then she dismounted and walked through the shimmering castle gate with her hand resting on her

Bear’s back.

She led him to the banquet hall and removed her pack. She unzipped it and began to pull out

maps, binders, and notebooks and pile them on the banquet table. Frost curled around a map as she

unrolled it. “Can you tell the table not to eat this?”

Bear focused on the table, and the frost retreated. “What is all this?” he asked.

Cassie took a deep breath. Time to see if she truly had a future here. For all her fine words to

Dad, Bear could squash everything without even knowing he was doing it. If he was unwilling… I’ll

have to convince him, she thought. She pointed to a section of the map. “Here’s the coast. And here

are this season’s dens. One bear per triangle.” Cassie flipped open a three-ring binder. “This is a

record of the denning dates with the predicted dates of birth, which I can use to plot routes for you

that will bring you closest to the most likely births at any given time for the rest of the birth season.

Predictive modeling. We can use it to change the odds.”

Bear furrowed his broad forehead.

She plunged on. “Eventually, with enough data points, I should be able to be precise… within an

order of magnitude, of course.” Thanks to Owen, she had printouts of all the files from all the

cooperating research stations. It wasn’t a complete record of the full bear population by any means,

but it was a start. “Look,” she said, “I’ve already plotted a preliminary course. We can test it out

tomorrow.”

She watched him, waiting for his reaction and trying to read his glass black eyes.

“You wish to come with me out onto the ice? Out to the births?”

“I have to,” she said firmly. “For this to work, we need to record more data, and you can’t do

both jobs. Besides, you won’t know what data we need.” She tried a grin. “And you won’t have

opposable thumbs.”

His laugh was a familiar and welcome soft rumble that washed over her, and then he was

serious again. “All munaqsri travel alone. We must avoid detection—”

“All munaqsri miss delivering souls,” she interrupted. “You’ve told me that yourself. I can help.

Maybe we won’t make all the births, but we can improve the odds.”

He nodded slowly.

Cassie felt her shoulders unknot. He wanted to save the cubs badly enough. He’d agree.

Together, they could save bears.

“You are certain you wish to do this?” he said. “It is not without risk. Once outside these walls,

if I am not touching you, I cannot magic you. If we are separated…”

“I’ll have my gear,” she said, patting her pack. “If necessary, I can survive an entire week on the

ice with this equipment.” All her training, her skill, her education, had led to this. She’d be directly

helping the polar bears instead of writing papers and securing grants. If he agreed.

Swinging his massive head over the documents, he studied the maps, the files, the lists of

numbers. “If this helps… all polar bears will thank you. I thank you.” He leaned his head against her

stomach, and she wrapped her arms around his neck. In a lighter voice, he added, “It is, though, quite

unnatural.”

“So says the talking bear,” she said.

His fur shook as he laughed again. “I had no one to mock me for days.”

“Vacation’s over,” she said. “Cassie’s home.”

Softly, he said, “You have no idea how happy that makes me.”

She felt her cheeks warm. She felt as if she could float to the ceiling. “Romantic,” she said.

He covered his muzzle with his paw, miming embarrassment.

Cassie opened another binder. She wanted to show him everything. “Look, here are all the

current tagging numbers from the Polar Bear Specialist Group of the IUCN.”

“Come,” he said, nudging her with his nose. “We have a long day ahead of us tomorrow.”

Cassie grinned. Out on the ice, together. Leaving the IUCN binder, she walked alongside him,

past the carvings in deep blue ice and up the staircase lit by candlelight. “You know I had a number

all picked out for you: A505, Alaskan ID.”

“A505,” he repeated.

“I think you’d look nice with a tag. Just like an earring.” She tugged on his furry ear. She

couldn’t get enough of touching him. It reminded her that he was real. “Not to mention the green ink on

your gums. Very attractive.”

As always, he waited in the hall while she prepared for bed. Once she slid under the covers, she

blew out the candle. Everything descended into darkness, and she heard the pad of bear paws and

then the footsteps of a man. The mattress sank as he climbed into bed beside her.

For the first time in five nights, she slept well.

Cassie woke first. Her cheek lay against his bare chest, smooth and human. Her arm was draped

across his stomach. She lay there for a long moment, feeling him breathe. Her husband. She reached

up in the darkness and lightly touched his face. Her fingers traced his chin and lingered over his lips.

She’d never kissed him. She wondered what it would be like.

She felt him stir, and she pulled her hand away quickly. She rolled to her side of the bed. “Ready

to patrol?” she asked him.

She felt the sheets shift and the mattress rise as he stood.

“We’re going together, right?” she asked.

Cassie felt a wisp of wind in her face. When he spoke, it was with his deeper, polar bear voice.

“Of course, O Intrepid Leader.”

She grinned.

Cassie heard the door open. She waited until she heard it click closed before finding her

flashlight and turning it on. She dressed quickly in full expedition gear—Gore-Tex pants, mukluks, all

of it—and then she met Bear at the front archway to the castle. Soon, she was riding him across the

ice.

The Arctic spread before them, blue-shadowed and as broad as the Sahara. Cassie leaned over

Bear’s neck as the wind slapped her face. This was wonderful. This was magnificent. This was… far

too slow. She shouted a dog sledding call into his ear: “Mush, mush, mush!”

“Very amusing,” he said, but he sped into a blur. She whooped as the deep night-winter blue

stretched into a single sheet of ice and sky. Yes! She was flying! The midday moon hung low and fat

on the southern horizon. She waved to it.

Bear leaped over a pressure ridge. Laughing, Cassie grabbed his fur and clamped her thighs

around his middle to keep from falling off. She loved this! They should have done this months ago.

She squinted into the dark whiteness. She saw the aurora borealis curling around the fringes of

her vision, green and white flashes. According to Inuit legend, the northern lights were the dancing

spirits of the dead. Cassie wondered if that was where the unclaimed souls went, the ones munaqsri

missed, the ones that should have gone to newborns. Don’t be ridiculous, she told herself. The aurora

was caused by electrically charged particles from the sun hitting the upper atmosphere, not floating

souls. The souls went… She had no idea where missed souls went. She supposed they could go to the

aurora. Bear had said once that they were lost. Maybe eventually, she’d have enough data to map

paths for deaths as well as births. Wouldn’t that be something? But she shouldn’t get ahead of herself.

First she had to see whether her plan would work at all.

east to Davis Strait. At the opening to the sound, Bear shouted that he felt a call. Cassie hung on as

Bear leaped and crashed through pressure ridges and over creaking ice pans.

Bear braked without warning, and Cassie flew into his neck. “Hold on,” he told her. “We’ll take

it slow this first time.” Gripping his neck fur, Cassie opened her mouth to ask what he meant.

He walked into a snowbank.

Snow melted like a mirage around them. Cassie shuddered as it slid through her. A few seconds

later, she felt warm wet air on her face. Half her body was within the bear’s den; the rest was

immured in the hard-packed snow. She listened to the sow pant in the darkness. She’d never been so

close to a birthing polar bear in the wild. She didn’t think anyone ever had. This was amazing, she

thought. This was impossible.

This was the power of a munaqsri. This was why he had power: to reach the bears as they were

born or died. All the magic existed to make this moment possible.

“It is time. It is coming,” Bear whispered.

“Can’t see,” she whispered back. Suddenly, she could. She saw white: fur and ice. Bear, she

guessed, had altered her eyes. He’d changed her body, in the same way he did when he kept her warm

on the ice.

Bear inched forward and laid his face next to the sow’s stomach. Cassie wiggled closer too.

“Do you have the soul?” she whispered.

“Watch,” he said. Bear opened his mouth, and a shadow fell like a drop of water. It sank into

vast mounds of fur. Cassie didn’t breathe. A tiny wet shape, the cub, slid out of its mother and

squirmed. In a soft voice, Bear said, “And that is how we make babies.”

“It’s… a miracle.” She had no other word for it. Bear created miracles.

The cub mewled. Blind, it wormed through its mother’s fur, and the sow licked it with a tongue

that covered it in one swipe.

Silently, Bear retreated. They slid through the solid snow. Cassie felt as if she were being

smothered, and she fought to stay calm. Bear would never hurt me, she told herself. She gasped in air

as they emerged. Her muscles shook. “Are you all right?” Bear asked.

“Love the night vision,” she said. “Hate the walking through walls.” She took a deep breath to

calm her racing heart.

Hands shaking, she took out her GPS: latitude 63° 46’ 05” N, longitude 80° 09’ 32” W. She

marked it in a notebook, then tucked pencil, notebook, and GPS back into her inner layers. “We

should head toward Churchill next. There are a couple mothers overdue west of Hudson Bay.”

“As you wish, O Glorious Leader.”

She snorted. “Cute.”

That night, Cassie lay beside Bear. “You awake?”

“Don’t kick me,” he said into his pillow.

She smiled and reached over in the darkness to touch his human shoulder. “It’s going to work,”

she said. “That cub’s birth proved it.” She had a place here, not just as Bear’s wife. She had a future.

“Yes,” he said. She felt him shift. He was facing her now, she guessed.

“We’re a team now,” she said.

“Yes,” he said.

She reached out again, and her fingers touched his smooth cheek. She wondered briefly what

he’d look like in the light. Not that it mattered. He was her Bear. Cassie shifted closer.

He stilled, like a polar bear by a hole in the ice, but she was hyperaware of how human he was

right now. She felt him waiting. He said nothing. Cassie tilted her head up, and in the darkness, she

kissed him. Not moving his body, as if afraid she’d flee, he kissed her back, soft and sweet.

CHAPTER 13

Latitude 83° 35’ 43” N

Longitude 123° 29’ 10” E

Altitude 4 ft.

As light returned to the southern Arctic, Cassie and Bear spent more and more time out on the

ice. Every day under the blue-purple-pink sky, they patrolled the snowbanks of Alaska, Canada,

Siberia, Greenland, and Norway. Every evening under the eyes of Bear’s ice carvings, Cassie refined

her maps and plotted their route for the next day. And every night in the dark, she kissed her husband

until she fell asleep, curled in his arms. She’d never been happier.

One afternoon, when they were north of the Laptev Sea, Bear said, “I feel a call.”

Fumbling for her notes, Cassie opened her mouth to ask which direction.

“Hold tight,” he said. “There’s little time.”

Flattening herself, she held on to his broad neck as he sprang into superspeed. Ahead, she saw

blue blackness—ocean water. He lunged forward into the black waves. Under the waves, water

soaked into her parka. It seeped through her face mask and around her hood. But instead of cold, the

water was as soft as air. She grinned. She loved Bear’s magic.

On Bear’s back, she burst out of the water. He paddled toward shore. Head and shoulders in air,

Cassie clung to his wet fur. On the other side, he scrambled onto the ice and ran.

She heard the thrum of a helicopter.

Up ahead, in the distance, on ice stirred by the wind from a helicopter, a lone bear ran toward a

ridge of ice. The bear’s flank was streaked in red.

“Hold on!” Bear called. “We can’t be seen!”

She wrapped her arms tightly around his neck, and Bear impossibly increased speed. Around

them, the world streaked into a blur of white and blue.

It slowed for only a fraction of a second. She saw a flash of red on creamy white as Bear sank

his teeth into the throat of the wounded bear. Bear yanked, and Cassie saw a streak of silver—and

then Bear was running again.

Behind them, the bear crumpled, and the helicopter landed, kicking snow into the air. She saw it

all in a fraction of an instant before they rocketed away.

“Bear, the poacher!” Cassie yelled. “Stop him!”

Bear vanished in between ice blocks. He didn’t slow until they were miles north. When he did

stop, he swallowed the streak of silver—the dead bear’s soul—whole.

Cassie shouted, “That bear didn’t have to die! We could have scared the poacher off, and you

could have healed him, magicked his cells.” It was a waste. That beautiful polar bear… How could

Bear have done that? Let that bear, one of his bears, die!

“Yes,” he said.

She choked down words she’d been going to say. Yes, he could have saved the bear. “You’re

the Angel of Death for polar bears.”

“It is necessary. If I do not claim the soul, a munaqsri from another species will. If no munaqsri

does, the soul will be lost. Without souls to give the newborns, the species will become extinct.”

He had prevented her from having hypothermia; he could have healed that bear. He could heal

all the bears, all the time. But then where would the souls for the newborns come from? Those bears

would be stillborn. She shook her head. All the implications…

“You knew my responsibilities.”

But it was the first time she had witnessed this part of it.

“Cassie?” he said, concern in his voice. “Does this change things?”

He had such enormous power. Did that change things? She took a breath. It was his job. He

existed to transport these souls, not to choose who lived and who died. That’s what she had bought

into—the continuation of the species, not the saving of individuals. Really, was it so much different

from what a researcher did, studying without interfering?

Leaning forward, she laid her cheek on his neck. “It doesn’t change things,” she said. “You’re

my tuvaaqan, my soul mate.” She’d never had a chance to use that Inupiaq word before. She tasted it

on her tongue as she said it. “We’re a team. Right?”

He nuzzled her hand with his cold nose. “We are a team, tuvaaqan,” he affirmed. “I love that I

can share this with you. I have never shared this with anyone. Thank you.”

She threw her arms around his wide, furry neck. “You know, there’s something else we’ve never

shared, husband,” she said very softly, and her heart beat faster. “We never had a proper wedding

night.”

In the dark bedroom, Cassie unzipped her parka and pulled off her gaiters and mukluks. She

heard Bear slough his bear fur in the familiar rush of wind. He was a man now, she knew. She

grinned in the darkness. She had expected to be nervous, but she wasn’t. This was Bear.

She slid off her Gore-Tex pants and pulled off three layers of socks.

She stripped off her wool sweater.

She removed her flannel shirt.

“How many layers do you wear?” Bear asked in his human voice.

“Some of us don’t have blubber,” she said, and took off her wool pants, her long johns, and her

silkweights.

“Do you want to call me when you are done?”

“Cute,” she said. She located him by listening to his breathing. She managed not to stub her toes

on the wardrobe or the washbasin. Standing in front of him, she reached her fingers up to touch the

bones of his cheek. She laid her hand on the side of his face and felt his eyelashes brush her skin. He

blinked, and it felt like the brush of butterfly wings. Now she felt a twinge of nerves. For the first

time, she was grateful for Bear’s insistence on darkness. She could be bold in the dark. She could be

beautiful in the dark.

“Are you certain this is what you want?” Bear asked.

Date: 2015-12-18; view: 632