East of the Sun and West of the Moon 1 page

CHAPTER 15

Latitude 91° 00’ 00” N

Longitude indeterminate

Altitude 15 ft.

Cassie woke cold. Shivering on the silken sheets, she massaged the lump on the back of her

skull. For several seconds, she wondered why she had slept on top of the sheets, why she was cold,

and why her head ached. Then she heard the dripping.

She leaned down from the bed and picked her flashlight up off the floor, then shined it on the

bedpost. The post glistened with a fresh sheen of water. Droplets ran down the spiral. The canopy

dripped as if it were crying. It cannot melt. Not so long as I am here.

Bear was gone.

The bed was melting.

“Oh, no,” she said.

Cassie vaulted out of bed; her bare feet hit ice. Cold shot up her legs, and she grabbed the

bedpost. It was a wet icicle. She snatched her hand back. Cold! She ran to her pack and shed her

nightshirt. Limp on the floor, the silk soaked in meltwater. Cassie bundled on flannels and wools. She

could have woken with hypothermia. She could have woken with hypothermia and a concussion. I

could have not woken at all, she thought.

She heard a sudden snap like a rifle shot—the snap of cracked ice. That sounded like it came

from a wall, she thought. And then she heard a sound like a thousand windows breaking.

Oh, God, it wasn’t just the bedroom that was melting. It was the castle. The castle was melting.

She had to get out of here—out of the bedroom, out of the castle, out into the Arctic.

Out into the Arctic, but… She didn’t have a choice, she told herself. She had to leave now. Heart

thudding faster, she pulled on her full gear: parka, mukluks, gaiters. She’d kept her pack prepared for

her trips with Bear, so it took only a few precious seconds to lift the pack onto her back—but with

each second, the shotgun sound of cracking ice crescendoed. Securing the pack, she hurried into the

hall.

In the hall, it was worse. Cracks raced through the ice walls. Meltwater ran in rivers. Run, run,

run! her mind shouted at her. Cassie skidded down the hallway, and the flashlight’s beam swept over

dripping walls and ceiling. Gripping the wet banister, she sidestepped down the waterfall stairs.

Rumbling shook the floor. Please, don’t let it collapse, she thought. With the ceiling and the spires,

thousands of pounds of ice were above her. Catching her balance at the bottom of the stairs, she ran

through the banquet hall.

Chandeliers clanked as the banquet hall shook. Shards fell and splashed into an inch of water. A

caribou sculpture toppled. Chunks of ice scattered across the banquet hall. Cassie shielded her face.

A chandelier plummeted from the ceiling. When the chandelier crashed down, shards flew like

shrapnel.

Cassie ran through the water. Faster, faster! Her pack pounded on her back. Frescoes peeled

from the walls, and statues tumbled from alcoves. She dodged chunks of falling ice.

Buttresses shook. Pillars crumbled. Overhead, the vaulted ceiling fractured. Plumes of ice filled

the air in a thick haze. She sprinted for the crystal lattice gate as the floor heaved. She scrambled over

the cracks.

The splintered gate rained daggers of ice. Covering her head, Cassie plunged through it. Ice

spikes hit her arms and her neck. Screaming, she burst out the other side. Her pack slammed her

tailbone.

Outside, the topiary garden melted. Faces ran into puddles. Limbs fell. Undercut by running

water, the sculptures collapsed. Cassie ran for the outer wall. Half of it had fallen.

It was as if a giant were ripping the castle apart. With deafening cracks like an iceberg calving,

spires split from the walls and crashed to the ground. Cassie fell forward as the ground bucked. Keep

moving, she thought. Must keep moving! She splashed in meltwater, and then she scrambled to her

feet while, Jericho-like, the walls came tumbling down.

She scrambled over the remnants of the blue outer wall. Behind her, she heard gushing, like a

dam released. Run! A mammoth waterfall crashed down from the parapets. It drowned the topiary

garden.

Snow cycloned, and ice pelted her face and arms. Cassie stumbled as the ground shook. Again,

she was knocked down. Ice chunks rained down on her like a meteor shower. On her knees, she

crawled. She inhaled snow, and tears poured from her eyes as the ice pelted her.

And then suddenly, it was still.

Curled on the ground, Cassie panted. Her muscles were as tense as fists. She heard running

water. Ice tinkled. She tried to open her eyes and could not. The tears had frozen her eyelids shut.

Dammit, she had to see! What had happened? The castle, her home… Was she still too close?

She couldn’t run if she couldn’t see which direction to run.

She yanked off her gloves and spat on her fingers. She rubbed the warm saliva on her eyelids.

Eyelashes broke. Her hands stiffened in the cold. She scraped until she could crack her eyes open.

She blinked furiously and shoved her chilled hands back into the gloves and mitts.

She was surrounded by white. Snow hung in the air, and it was impossible to distinguish

between ground and sky. The world was devoid of color. It was as if she had fallen into a bowl of

milk. Securing her goggles, she stood and squinted into the whiteout. Where was the castle? Had it

fallen? What about the gardens? Slowly, the snow-choked air thinned.

And the polar bears came.

One by one, the white bears walked ghostlike out of the snow. Through the blurred air, they

appeared to drift. Close by—too close—one brushed past her. She stiffened, wanting to scream, not

daring to scream. Bears were all around her, emerging from the white. She was surrounded, engulfed.

As the snow settled, she saw hundreds coming from all directions. Soon she could see the

gardens, now a wasteland of icy spikes. Sniffing the snow, the polar bears wandered through the

wreckage, trampling the remnants. Cassie swallowed, a lump in her throat. All of Bear’s beautiful

sculptures… And then she saw what was left of her home.

The castle was gone. The buttresses were ice boulders; the walls were icebergs. She began to

shake. She could have been crushed. If she had woken a few minutes later… if she had run a little

slower… She could have been killed. As long as these walls are standing, nothing here will harm

you, Bear had said once. The walls were no longer standing. Her home was destroyed.

And Bear was gone.

She’d lost him. She’d truly lost Bear.

Cassie felt icy knives twisting in her gut. Her husband was gone, her home destroyed, she was

thirteen hundred miles north of the station, and she was surrounded by polar bears.

More bears came. All around her, the ice was thick with them. Cassie was squeezed between

dozens—up to her neck in bears. Fur pressed against her, and the stench of their dead-seal breath

made her head pound. In every direction, all she could see was the curve of their backs like waves in

a cream white ocean. She was drowning in a sea of polar bears.

Surrounded by predators, she felt short of air. Bears did not gather like this. It wasn’t natural.

Run, her instincts screamed. “Keep calm,” she whispered to herself.

Inches from her, a polar bear swung his head toward her face. He poked her parka with his

muzzle. She smelled his breath as he snuffled her face mask. “Don’t eat me,” she said. Her voice

cracked.

At the sound of her voice, other bears turned to stare at her.

Shivers walked up her spine.

Cassie heard a bear huff. More bears turned their heads, and then more. Hundreds of blank,

black eyes bored into her. Don’t move. Just don’t move, she thought. Her skin crawled, and her feet

started moving despite her. All the bears were watching her now. She heard the crunch of her mukluks

and the breathing of thousands of bears. Don’t run, she thought, but her feet retreated faster and faster.

The bears parted like the Red Sea. She backed through them, out of the press of bears and onto open

ice, and then she turned and ran. Her pack slapped her back. Wind pounded her face. Leaning into the

wind, she ran across the frozen waves.

In an unnatural herd, the polar bears followed.

CHAPTER 16

Latitude 88° 51’ 42” N

Longitude 151° 25’ 50” W

Altitude 10 ft.

Overhead, the sky was palest blue, almost white from the reflected ice. There was not a single

bird or plane. Cassie checked the GPS: 88° 51’ 42” N and 151° 25’ 50” W. For five days, she had

trekked across the frozen waves. She should have been rescued by now.

“C’mon, Max,” she whispered as she looked again at the sky. “Save me.” Low on the horizon,

the permanent sun pricked the corners of her eyes.

Why hadn’t he come?

The low sun rolled along the horizon as she continued on. The afternoon’s white glare increased

as the sun passed due south. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of polar bears still plodded behind her. She

felt prickles on her spine as she thought about them, her silent white shadows. Dad and his team

should have noticed the absence of so many polar bears by now. They should have sent Max in his

plane to investigate. He should have followed the signals from the bears’ tracking collars—any signal

from any bear—and they should have led him directly to her.

By evening, the sun was to her right. Ice crystals sparkled in a halo around the sun and in gold

sheets around Cassie. The powdery mist cut visibility even more. She forced herself to concentrate on

the ice in front of her. But even with all her concentration, she stumbled over invisible frozen waves.

She had no depth perception in the glare of infinite whiteness. Her remaining eyelashes were icicles,

framing her view of the world. Her nostril hairs had also frozen. She exhaled through her nose to keep

it warmer. Her Gore-Tex pants rustled as she stumbled along. It was the only sound in the emptiness

besides the huffing of the bears.

Even if all the collars had malfunctioned at once, someone would have had to notice that

hundreds of bears had disappeared. For miles, the ice fields were clogged with bears, yet in five

anywhere else.

Maybe they all thought it was an equipment malfunction. No station would risk a Twin Otter this

far north on an equipment malfunction. And none of them would admit to the others that they had lost

track of this many bears. It would be weeks before Dad would swallow his pride and contact NPI.

But she had only one week’s worth of food supplies, and she’d already used five days’. If she

stretched the freeze-dried food packets and cut her rations in half… she might have four, at most five,

days left.

Dammit, Dad should know better, she thought. He knew about munaqsri. He knew

impossibilities could happen. But if Dad didn’t send a plane soon… She sucked in air, and the air

burned. She had to stay positive. Someone would come.

She hiked for two more days before she reached the Lomonosov Ridge. Still no Max. Still no

plane. Still no rescue. She camped in the shadow of ice monoliths, leaning towers and half-fallen

pinnacles of ice, and she ate a dinner of half rations.

In the morning, Cassie scrambled out of her sleeping bag as her stomach forced last night’s

dinner into her throat. She clapped her hands over her mouth. She could not lose the nutrients. Bits

spurted through her fingers. Warm, the oatmeal chunks steamed on the ice. She swallowed hard and

clenched her teeth. Hold it in, she told herself. Come on, hold it.

Her own body had never worked against her before. She felt as if she were being sabotaged

from the inside. She swallowed back bile and patted loose snow on her forehead. With a baby

growing inside her, she’d need more food, not less. She might have even less time than she’d thought.

How could Bear have done this to her?

Shakily, she stood. She looked out across the wasteland of ice. Brilliant in the morning light, it

made her eyes water to look at it. The sky was a startling blue, and the horizon was lemon yellow.

She wiped her hands on her pants and then found her gloves. Her hands had chilled fast. Her mouth

was sticky, and her head was light. Exposed to the frozen air, her cheeks had begun to stiffen. She

warmed them with her mitts before putting on her solid-ice face mask. The polar bears, she noticed,

had returned. Expressionless, they watched her. She told herself to keep ignoring them.

She shoved her sleeping bag into her pack. It crackled, and she could feel lumps of ice in the

down. She wished she had a little of Bear’s warmth magic. She remembered all the rides across the

ice. She had been able to leave her hood back and her coat open, and the arctic wind had felt like a

summer breeze on her face. She remembered snowball fights in the castle ballroom, where she’d used

her bare hands without any chill—Stop it, she told herself. She had to concentrate on surviving. Stay

focused. Be strong. Keep moving. The farther south she went, the better the odds that Max would find

her. After that, she could think about Bear.

Cassie hefted the pack onto her sore shoulders and fastened the waist strap. She’d have to pick

her route carefully today. The ice around her was shattered. She could hear the low grumble of the

tides deep beneath her. Picking an ice boulder, Cassie climbed it. On top, she scanned the landscape.

The ice did not improve for at least ten miles. She automatically wrinkled her face to prevent

frostbite as she checked the sky. Clouds were beginning to mar the brilliant blue. The clouds reflected

the patchy ice below: bright white over thick ice and gray over thin.

She checked the horizon, and her heart went cold. Wind slapped into her, but she didn’t move.

Squinching her eyes, she stared at a smudge darkening the distance. Was that… Yes, yes, it was.

The winds were bringing a storm.

Oh, no. Please, no.

Maybe it would veer. Maybe she was wrong.

She didn’t think she was wrong.

She had no choice but to continue on. Fine packed snow plugged the paths between pillars of

ice. At times, she had to slog through it and trust that she would hear the cracking of ice underneath

fast enough to jump to safety. She tried to keep to the exposed ice, listening for the telltale crinkling

sounds as the ice throbbed underneath her. She climbed over a pile of ice rubble and looked again to

the south. The clouds looked like a writhing mass of bruises. The storm was coming.

She wondered, as she looked across the shattered ice, if she was looking at her own death. She

remembered Gram’s voice: With the strength of a thousand blizzards, the North Wind swooped down

onto the house that held his daughter, her husband, and their newborn baby. She could be swept away

by her mother’s winds.

If she’d had some warning of all of this… Bear’s bargain had stranded her alone on the Arctic

ice pack. He should have known that she’d encounter a storm at some point in her trek. If he’d found

some way to hint at the truth… He could have found some oblique way to warn her. Had he tried and

she’d missed it? As she hiked across the ice, she played through her memories—and with each

moment she relived, she missed him more until it felt like an aching wound.

Two hours later, the wind howled through the pressure ridges, kicking snow into the air. She

was pelted with ice particles. After every other step, she wiped her goggles. Cassie tried to calculate

how far she’d hiked. The layer of ice around her collar made it difficult to move her head. Not far

enough, she thought.

More ice particles hit her, and she staggered backward. Arms over her face, she pushed through

the wind, away from the leaning ice towers. It was tempting to hide in the shelter of one of the

mammoth ones, but the ice around them was weaker. She needed the thick stuff if she did not want to

end up underneath waves. Wind-driven snow stung like BBs. Visibility was low. Cassie stumbled

over the rubble.

She hit flat ice. Leaning into the wind, she forded across it. She knelt down and dusted the

surface snow away so she could see the base ice. Green-blue-brown, it seemed like old, thick ice.

Please, let it be old, thick ice. “It’s coming, guys,” she called to the polar bears. “Better batten down

the hatches.” Her voice shook. She saw only a half-dozen bear shapes in the swirling snow. Please,

let me survive this, she thought.

Fighting the wind, Cassie set up her sleeping bag. Stiff with ice, it did not want to unroll. She

swore at it and flattened it with her full body weight. Hands aching, she tied it with spare straps to her

pack and anchored it all with an ice screw.

Momentarily, the wind died, and she saw the storm. It sounded and looked like a cloud of

hissing bees. “Oh, Bear,” she whispered, “how could you do this to me?”

The boiling mass disappeared behind a wall of white ice shards. Cassie wiggled into her

sleeping bag. She secured the zippers. Coming closer, the storm roared like a 747. Cassie prayed, and

the storm hit.

CHAPTER 17

Latitude 87° 58’ 23” N

Longitude 150° 05’ 12” W

Altitude 8 ft.

The world fell apart.

Like an angry god, the wind punished the ice. It tore the ocean open, and it slammed it shut.

Plates of ice rode over one another, jutting into the black sky. The ice screamed.

She curled inside her fragile cocoon. Black in the false night, her world had shrunk to six feet by

two. The ice underneath her shook. Clenching her teeth, she hugged herself into a ball, as if that would

hold the ice together.

She heard thunderous grinding as if the ground were being squeezed. Her heart beat in her throat.

Sweat chilled her flesh. Any second, the ice could split and she could be dropped into the ocean. She

could disappear without a trace. Dad, Gail, Gram… they would never know what had happened to

her.

The wind slammed into her sleeping bag. She skidded in a circle around the single ice screw.

Clockwise, with the screw. Cassie rolled inside the sleeping bag. She clutched at the nylon sides.

Like a sail in irons, the nylon flapped. Wind whipped under her, and Cassie bounced on the ice.

Slamming down hard, she hit her elbow, then her knee, then her hip.

A banshee scream, the wind shifted. She skidded again. Counterclockwise, loosening the screw.

Soundless against the howling, she yelled. She pushed against the confines of the sleeping bag. “Let

me out of here! Please, let me out!” Shrieking, she started to cry.

Inside a prison, Cassie was tossed back and forth, bruising with each roll. Outside, the storm

boiled.

Seconds, minutes, hours later, the storm howled north, the ice fell silent, and the air was full of

snow. Cassie, knotted inside her sleeping bag, whimpered.

Fitfully, she slept. She dreamed she was entombed in ice. Seven-foot trolls chased Bear, and she

could not move. She screamed, but her throat did not work. A troll touched Bear, and he dissolved.

She screamed again, soundless, and the troll turned toward her. Its face was a grotesque mask of

moving shadows. She woke screaming, in blackness and in sweat.

Out! She had to get out! Cassie fumbled for the zipper to her sleeping bag. She couldn’t breathe.

She couldn’t think. Out, out, out! Cold streamed in as she squirmed out.

She crawled into surreal whiteness. She could see nothing: no color, no shadow, no ground, no

sky. “Help me! Someone! Anyone!” she called.

Surrounded by the false white night, she was utterly alone. Cassie felt around her. She found the

strap she had used to tie herself to her pack. She shook the ice off it and pulled the pack toward her.

At least she had not lost it in the storm. She hugged it as if it were a teddy bear, while snow seeped

into her fleece.

It was the cold drip down her neck, more than anything else, that convinced her she was still

alive. Her survival instincts kicked in as she started shivering, and she crawled back inside her

sleeping bag.

She lay there for several hours, imagining her joints locking and her muscles stiffening like a

corpse in rigor mortis. She pictured herself turning into the sculpture that Bear had carved… She

closed her eyes, and she could see Bear leading her by the sleeve to the center of the garden, and her

following, laughing, until she saw what it was he wanted her to see: the sculpture of her. He’d carved

it for her, a late birthday present. Carved it from memory, a perfect likeness. Said it was the heart of

the garden. And he’d proceeded to serenade her. Artist he was; singer he wasn’t. Remembering how

she’d laughed, Cassie felt like crying.

He’d loved her, hadn’t he?

Did it matter anymore if he had? The sculpture was gone now. Bear was gone.

“Stop it,” she said out loud. It would kill her—the cold, the hunger, the exhaustion, her own

thoughts. She felt like the storm had seeped inside her and was now tearing through her brain, her

heart, her everything.

With an effort, she pushed her thoughts away and lay in her silent prison and listened to her heart

beating like the sound of steady footsteps that were always the same distance away.

She lost track of time. At some point, her bladder demanded that she go outside. She emerged

into the whiteout. Snow spat into her face. Visibility was still zero. She could not even see her feet.

She felt her way to the end of the sleeping bag and squatted under her parka. She did not dare go any

more than a foot from the sleeping bag. She could almost hear Dad’s voice telling her it was too

dangerous to move in a whiteout. She’d heard stories of people lost in whiteouts five feet from their

tent, and inside the solid whiteness, she believed it.

After crawling back into her sleeping bag, she lay listening to the wind. She wondered about

Bear. What was it like for him in the troll castle? What were the trolls doing to him? Gail had

screaming nightmares of her time there.

He’d risked so much to marry her. He had to have cared about her. Cassie thought of the way

they used to talk late into the night until they were both falling asleep midsentence. She thought of how

they’d worked side by side on her maps and numbers, devising better routes for patrolling. She

thought of how he’d held her at night, stroking her hair, and whispering to her. And now he was

trapped like her mother had been because she’d turned on a single flashlight.

Hours later, she checked on the conditions again. In some ways, they were better. The snow had

thinned enough for her to see the red blur that was her pack, though she still could not see her full

sleeping bag. From her waist down, the bag disappeared into the white as if it were an apparition. In

some ways, though, conditions were worse: Thinner snow also reflected more sun. The white glare

hurt, and she blinked back tears. Her eyes felt pierced by sand—the first symptom of snow blindness.

She crawled back inside. Admit it, she thought, your plan has failed. Max had not rescued her,

despite all the polar bears. He certainly wasn’t coming now, when she was lost in a whiteout. He had

failed her. Dad had failed her—just like he’d failed Gail. And just like Bear had failed her,

abandoning her one mile north of the North Pole. Or like she had failed Bear, betraying his trust after

he had pleaded with her never to look at him.

The look in his eyes…

She had to escape the ice. But there wasn’t an escape.

The closest land was Ward Hunt Island at 83° N and 75° W. Too many miles, her mind

whispered. Too many miles and too little food. All the possibilities played through her mind:

starvation, dehydration, freezing, drowning. Curling into a ball, she hugged herself. “Oh, Bear,” she

whispered, “I’m sorry.” Hours passed.

CHAPTER 18

Latitude 87° 58’ 23” N

Longitude 150° 05’ 12” W

Altitude 8 ft.

Enough waiting.

Enough fear.

Enough of the damn whiteout. She was not going to continue to lie here, obsessing over Bear,

until death or insanity claimed her. Whether he had meant to betray her or not, staying here wouldn’t

help.

She was an Arctic explorer, dammit. She could survive this. She had her goggles to prevent

snow blindness and her GPS to keep her from going in circles, for as long as the batteries lasted. She

had her own skill and Dad’s training to keep her from falling through the ice. Even with the risks, it

was still her best shot at survival. She had to get further south for there to be any chance of Max (or

any other pilot) spotting her, and she didn’t have enough food left to wait for the whiteout to lift. I’m

going, she thought. Joints as stiff as wood, Cassie put on her gear inside the sleeping bag, and then she

crawled out.

Standing, she felt dizzy. Her knees shook and she sat down hard. She was weaker than she’d

thought. The half rations and forced inactivity had taken a toll. Cassie waited until her vision cleared.

Visibility was at five feet, maximum. Moving slowly, she wrapped an extra silkweight long

underwear around her goggles to cut down on glare, and then she tried to roll her sleeping bag. She

had sweat into it, and it had frozen. It fought her for each bend. Finally, she forced it into a squashed

polygon and secured it to her pack. She lifted the pack onto her back. The straps cut into her

shoulders. Numbly, her hands tried to buckle the waist belt. The belt was encrusted in ice. It took her

three tries.

Then she walked into the snow-choked air.

Within minutes, her stomach hurt and even her bone marrow felt cold. The dryness of the air

sucked moisture from her mouth, and she felt frostbite prickles in her cheeks under her frozen face

mask. She shouldn’t be out walking in a whiteout. Only idiots went out in whiteouts. Kinnaq, her mind

whispered—lunatic. But if she stopped here, in the ice rubble, then Max would never see her even

Date: 2015-12-18; view: 558