The Land of The Midnight Sun 3 page

“Others like you—other munaqsri—transfer souls.”

“We are the unseen way that life continues,” he said.

“Scientists should have seen you,” she objected. “How can you be… transferring souls… and no

one has noticed? How can you be here in a castle and no one has noticed? How can you be a talking

bear—” She stopped when she heard her voice crack.

“People have seen us before,” he said. “Munaqsri sightings have inspired many stories. Have

you heard stories of werewolves and mermaids? Sedna and Grandmother Toad? Horus and

Sekhmet?”

“Stories, not science,” Cassie said. Like the story of the Polar Bear King and the North Wind’s

daughter.

“You are correct. The stories are not accurate,” he said. “Sedna, for instance, appears in stories

as a mermaid goddess, but in truth she is the senior munaqsri of the Arctic Ocean. She oversees all of

the munaqsri in that region, like the Winds oversee the munaqsri of the air.” He paused. “Your family

has explained none of this?”

“There’s no such thing as mermaids,” she said. “And I don’t believe in magic.” She knew as she

said it that it was a ridiculous thing to say. She was talking to a bear in his magical castle in a part of

the Arctic that could not exist.

“We are not magic,” he said. “We are part of nature. We are… the mechanism by which life

continues. Everything we do—transform matter, move at high speeds, sense impending births and

deaths—is part of nature’s design to enable us to transfer souls from the dying to the newborn.”

“I don’t believe in souls,” she said as firmly as she could. “A brain is a collection of chemical

reactions. Complex neurochemicals.”

“As you wish,” he said mildly.

She wished she were home where she belonged and where things made sense. Or did they make

sense only because Dad and Gram had lied to her? Would the world still make sense after she met her

mother?

When she didn’t touch the food, the polar bear barked at the table, and the dishes melted.

Pooling into colored water, they spread across the table to form a lacy tablecloth. Breads and soups

disappeared like bubbles popping. Cassie backed away.

“Come,” the bear said. “You must be weary after our long journey. I will show you to the

bedroom. Perhaps you should rest while I arrange for your mother’s release.”

She couldn’t imagine sleeping now, here. But she followed the bear out of the bright splendor of

the banquet hall into the blue silence, deeper into the castle. She clung to his words like a lifeline:

arrange for your mother’s release.

The bear’s paws were soundless on the ice. Silence wrapped around her as the hallway

narrowed and the castle darkened. In the shadows, the bear loomed impossibly huge.

Candlelight danced across animal faces on golden walls. Blank, icy eyes stared at Cassie. She

shrank back from them. All her instincts screamed at her to run back into the light. Deep blue, the ice

surrounded her. She felt entombed. Was this how her mother felt in the troll castle? She fell to the

ground and was captured by trolls. Cassie tried to picture her mother in a castle, and failed. What had

her mother’s life been like? What was her mother like? Cassie wished she could remember her. She

would be as much a stranger as… as the bear. Suddenly, the idea of meeting her mother was

terrifying.

The bear halted at the foot of a staircase. Amber candlelight licked his fur. His eyes were

inscrutable shadows. He seemed feral in the darkness. “You will find the bedroom at the top of the

stairs,” he said. “You may wish to bring a candle.”

She fetched a candle from a wall sconce. Even the wax was ice, and like everything else, it

wasn’t cold.

He rumbled, “I hope that you will be happy here.”

She didn’t intend to stay long enough to be happy or unhappy. Just long enough to ensure her

mother was free, and then she would demand that the bear return her. But for now, she said nothing.

She simply clutched the candle and stared at him.

He retreated into the blue shadows, and then she was alone. She lifted the candle higher so that

the light fell shimmering onto the stairs. “Just until she’s free,” Cassie whispered. And then she

shivered, even though it wasn’t cold.

CHAPTER 5

Latitude 91° 00’ 00” N

Longitude indeterminate

Altitude 15 ft.

As the bear had said, Cassie found a bedroom at the top of the stairs. She pushed open the door,

a thick slab of opaque turquoise ice. She held the candle inside.

“Oh, wow,” she said.

Everything looked as if it were doused in diamonds: wardrobe, washbasin, table, bed. The

canopy bed arched fifteen feet into the air and was made of shimmering ice roses, interwoven like

lace. Posts at each of the four corners were carved like narwhal tusks. Cassie touched one of the

smooth curves. Like all the ice in the castle, it felt as warm and dry as wood. On the bed itself,

feather mattresses were heaped as high as her waist, and pillows were stacked as high as her neck.

Coming inside, she put the candle on a bedside table. She shed her pack and opened the

wardrobe. A nightshirt fluttered from a single hanger. Cassie fingered the silk. Was it for her? Why

would the bear want her to wear… She pushed the thought aside and closed the wardrobe.

She sat on the edge of the bed and thought of Gram’s story, the only link to her mother that she

truly had. Once upon a time… All she knew of her mother was a fairy tale.

She leaned back into the pillows and tried to imagine her mother, the daughter of the North

Wind. Without intending to, she fell asleep. She dreamed of a dark-haired woman and a polar bear

bargaining in the snow-swirled Arctic. When Cassie looked closer, she saw the woman had her own

face.

Several minutes or hours later, Cassie woke in darkness to a scraping sound. Automatically

reaching for her bedside light, she remembered in the same instant that she was not home in her bed,

she had no matches for the candle, and her flashlight was in her supply pack. She shot bolt upright.

“Who’s there?” she asked. Her ears strained, listening.

She heard nothing.

The bear had told her that nothing within these walls would harm her. Could she trust him?

“Overactive imagination,” she told herself. She lay back against the pillows.

She felt the mattress sink beside her.

Yanking the sheet, she leaped out of bed. “Get out!”

“Do not be alarmed,” a voice said. She didn’t recognize the voice. It was male.

Dammit, she should have found her flashlight when she’d first woke! Her heart pounded as she

backed to the wall. Inching along it, she crept toward her pack. She rounded the washbasin, and a

hand touched her arm. She elbowed backward with all her strength. She felt him double over. “Don’t

touch me,” she said.

“I will not hurt you,” he puffed.

She kept moving toward her pack. Where was it? She had thought it was this corner. Her foot hit

something solid—the pack. “One scream and you’ll have a thirteen-foot predator at your throat,” she

warned him. Feeling for the pack, she knelt. Where was the bear? Why had he let this stranger in

here? It occurred to her that she knew very little about why the bear wanted her here.

“Do not be afraid, beloved,” he said. “It is our wedding night.”

Oh, God. “You are not a polar bear,” Cassie said. “I didn’t marry you.” She loosened the top

flap of the pack.

“I am Bear.”

“He’s much furrier. Less human.” Unsnapping the buckles on her pack, her hand brushed across

wood. Better than a flashlight, she thought. She grinned wolfishly as she pulled the ice axe out of its

loop. She gripped the handle and stood. “Do I look like an idiot?”

“You look beautiful, even with an axe.”

He could see her in the dark? She tightened her grip. Her heart thudded, but she kept her voice

steady. “Just evening the odds.”

“You can trust me. I am not your enemy. In your heart, you know that.”

“One step closer and I swear I’ll swing.”

He put his hand on her shoulder. “I do not believe you will.”

Cassie swung.

She felt a rush of air—he’d leaped backward.

“Out,” she said. Brandishing the axe, she advanced on him in the darkness. She heard him

retreat. She heard the door open and shut. Her heart beating in her throat and her breath quick, she did

not lower the axe. Her hands were sweating, and Cassie realized to her horror and embarrassment

that she was crying.

CHAPTER 6

Latitude 91° 00’ 00” N

Longitude indeterminate

Altitude 15 ft.

Cassie woke goose-bump-coated. “Stupid heaters,” she muttered. She bet Owen was tinkering

with his motheaten computer instead of fixing the heaters. “Owen!” she called. She flung up an arm

and thumped the wall. It felt smooth and chilled, and that jolted her into alertness. She wasn’t in the

station, she remembered, and Owen couldn’t hear her.

She snapped upright and fumbled for her flashlight. She’d left it on the nightstand after evicting

her unwelcome visitor. Her heart pounded so hard that her hands shook as she turned the flashlight on.

Cassie swept the light’s beam across the room. The light danced over the ice. Carvings of

seabirds glistened on the wardrobe, as if the birds had frozen midflight. She’d used the wardrobe to

block the door. It had worked. She was safely alone amid the crystal beauty.

She exhaled, her shoulders collapsing and her heart finally slowing down from a gallop. How

could she have fallen asleep again? Outside this room was the man who’d wanted a “wedding night.”

Outside this room was the polar bear she’d married. Outside this castle was her mother. Cassie didn’t

know which of those three was more terrifying.

But I’m not going to cower here, she thought. She’d never hidden from anyone before, and she

wasn’t going to start now.

Leaning her back against the wardrobe, she threw her weight into it. The wardrobe grated on the

ice floor. She grunted as it slid the final inch. She wondered if the man had heard it. Cassie gripped

her flashlight, testing its weight as a weapon, and stepped out into the hall.

Nothing happened. She was alone.

Silent and blue and beautiful, the crystalline hallway felt peaceful. Shining her light down the

hall, she saw several doors, shadows in the glistening golden walls. She wondered what was on the

other side of them. How did a—what was the word? Munaqsri. Did he really transport souls? Were

there stashes of souls in those rooms?

Cassie took a step toward the first door and then stopped. She wasn’t here to explore.

Remember the man, the polar bear, my mother, she thought. She had to find the bear and insist he take

her home. She glanced backward over her shoulder and headed down the stairs.

She found the bear in the banquet hall. Seeing him, she halted in the archway. The Bear King had

a seal on the table. His muzzle was stained red, and blood speckled the banquet table, brilliant scarlet

against the white ice. He wiped his muzzle with his paw, as if embarrassed by his table manners.

“Excuse me,” he said. “I had thought you were resting.” Gore now covered his paws as well as his

muzzle. Cassie was suddenly aware of her own blood and the fragility of her skin. Those teeth and

claws could tear her as easily as paper.

She focused on the caribou sculpture in an alcove behind him, instead of on his jaws. “Earlier,”

she said, forcing her voice to sound steady and strong, “a man entered my room.”

“I know. It was I.”

“You?” She felt all the blood drain out of her face. But… but she was sure the intruder had been

human: He’d had hands.

“I did try to tell you,” he said mildly. “You swung an axe at me.”

She stared at him, and he licked a bit of gore off his snout. “You can be human? How… Why…”

“I wanted to surprise you,” he said. “Remember, I told you that I can alter matter. We can take

the shape of the species that we care for, but it is not our only shape or even necessarily our original

shape. I am not always how you see me now. I thought you would be pleased.”

Pleased? “You turned human, and you climbed into my bed.”

“It is our bed,” the Bear King said. “Husbands and wives share a bed.”

Looking at his massive and bloody paws, she felt sick. Husbands and wives… No. She wasn’t

sleeping with a stranger. Especially a magic-bear stranger.

Every fiber in her wanted to run out of the banquet hall. Stay calm, she told herself. “I fulfilled

my end of the bargain,” she said. “I married you. Now I want a divorce.”

“I frightened you,” he said. “I am sorry. It was not my intent. Please, give me another chance. I

will be charming.”

She looked at him with blood matted in his fur and seal pieces clinging to his muzzle. “You can

be the Casanova of polar bears,” she said. “I’m not staying.”

“Do not judge me so quickly,” he said. “You have only just arrived.”

Cassie looked down at the seal carcass. It was a mangled mess. He ate like a polar bear and

spoke like a man. She couldn’t judge him. He was too far outside the realm of possible for her brain

to know how to judge.

“You are like nothing I have ever known,” he said. “You are brightness. You are light. You are

fire. I come from a world of ice.”

She shivered. He sounded like he really meant that. No one had ever said anything like that to

her before. She felt unbalanced. “Oh?” she said. “You know what fire and ice make?”

He looked at her with his inscrutable bear eyes. “Tell me.”

“Lukewarm water,” Cassie said. “I want to go home.”

“I need you,” he said. “I need you for my wife.”

No one had ever said that to her either. She swallowed.

“Why?” She said. “Why me? Why a human wife at all? Why not a bear?”

“Because I do not wish my children to be cubs,” he said.

For a second, Cassie could not breathe. Children.

“Only the children of munaqsri can choose to accept the power and responsibility, and we need

more munaqsri with human intelligence. We are spread too thin; our regions are too large. We lose

too many souls, and species dwindle.”

She didn’t know what he meant by regions or losing souls, and she didn’t care. “You married me

to breed me?”

“Of course it is not the sole reason—I meant what I said about your brightness and light—but our

children were a prime consideration.” He sounded so calm. She couldn’t believe how calm he

sounded. Our children?

“You want a human incubator.” Cassie felt nauseous again. She clutched the edge of the banquet

table. “Count me out. Absolutely not.”

“You agreed,” he said.

“Not to kids.” She wasn’t ready to be a mother. Especially to furry children. “You’re a bear.

You aren’t even bipedal.”

“I can be,” he reminded her.

“Kids were not part of the bargain,” she said. “Deal is off.” Turning sharply, she walked out of

the banquet hall.

She made it to the corridor before her nerve broke and she ran.

Crossing through the crystal lattice archway, Cassie slowed. She couldn’t run all the way home.

She was thirteen hundred miles from home—thirteen hundred plus one if the bear was to be believed.

She couldn’t reach home on her own. She needed the bear to take her there.

Cassie looked back at the castle. Its soaring spires and elegant arches glowed as golden as

dawn. A sculptor had carved delicate lines of icy leaves on the ice walls. More roses, carved to petal

precision, curled around the window arches. It was so beautiful that it made her feel an ache inside

that she couldn’t describe.

Why did such a place have to come with a bear husband?

She walked farther, rounding the corner of the castle, and halted in her tracks. “Oh, wow,” she

breathed. Spread before her was a topiary garden of ice. Hundreds of sculptures sparkled in the

liquid light of the low sun. Hedges, flowers, apple trees, figures of dragons and mermaids and

unicorns. With her breath caught in her throat, Cassie touched a leaf on an ice rosebush. She could see

veins traced on the thin folds of ice petals.

She walked down paths between ice griffins, frozen fountains, and trees with glittering glasslike

fruit. She ducked under a trellis of grape leaves. She’d never seen anything like this. It was the

Garden of Eden in ice. Who had created this? She turned to look back at the castle—

— and saw the Bear King standing two feet away from her, silent between the roses. She jumped

backward. “Don’t do that,” she said.

He said nothing, and she was aware of sweat forming in her armpits. She lifted her chin and met

his stare.

“I did not think you were the kind to give up without trying,” the Bear King said.

“I don’t give up,” Cassie said automatically. She thought about it for an instant and then

repeated, “I don’t give up.” He’d seen her stubbornness firsthand. She had tracked him until she was

nearly out of fuel, despite knowing she was disobeying station rules. That chase felt like it had

happened a lifetime ago.

“It is not an easy thing to have your world turned upside down,” he said. “I do not blame you for

not being strong enough to accept what you have seen here, or not being brave enough to want to see

more.”

She winced—two insults in one breath. She was not leaving because she was weak or cowardly.

Was she?

He added, “I had thought that you would have the strength for this. It is not your fault that I was

wrong.”

That was not… Wait. “Are you daring me?”

He considered it. “Yes,” he said.

“You think it’s a joke?”

“I think you are frightened,” he said.

“Like hell I am,” she said.

He lumbered toward her between the crystalline shrubbery. His fur brushed ice leaves, and they

tinkled like crystal. She retreated, bumping into a statue of a mermaid. “I can show you a new world,”

the Bear King said. “I can give you wonders that you cannot imagine, that you do not know exist, that

you cannot yet comprehend.”

“I comprehend enough,” Cassie said, inching around the statue, away from the bear. “You want

me to mother your children. Your cubs.” She heard the pitch of her voice rising, and she stopped. I’m

not afraid, she repeated like a mantra. I’m not.

“I will wait until you are ready,” he said.

“I’ll never be ready.”

“I can wait beyond never.”

Cassie shivered and hugged her arms, even though she wasn’t cold. Her breath was condensing

into miniature clouds, but she felt just as warm as she’d felt inside the castle. How long did he intend

to keep her here? How long was “beyond never”?

“You have nothing to fear from me,” he said gently.

“Then take me home.” Home. Home to a mother she’d never met and a father who had lied to

her.

“You have stepped into a larger world, Cassie,” he said. “Why do you wish to throw it away so

quickly? You have barely glimpsed it.”

Involuntarily, she glanced again at the castle with its soaring ice turrets and crystalline ivy. If he

was real, then all she knew of the world—all she knew of science and the rules of the universe—was

false. Half of her wanted to explore every inch of this place. The other half wanted to turn back the

clock and redo the day before.

He padded closer to her, and this time she didn’t retreat. “You can return to your ‘research’

station and pretend all is the same as before. But it is not the same, and it will never be the same. You

cannot erase what you now know. Your world has changed.”

He was right. She couldn’t go back to pretending none of this existed, especially with her mother

there to prove that it did. His gaze burned, and she had to look away. She watched the sun dance in

the topiary garden. Lemon and pink, the sculptures winked in the light.

“Do you like it?” he asked. He sounded oddly hesitant.

“It’s beautiful,” she admitted. “Impressive sculptor.”

“The castle itself was complete before my tenure here,” he said. “I have concentrated on the

gardens.”

A polar bear artist? Staring at his massive paws, she could not imagine him creating anything as

beautiful and delicate as the ice topiaries. His paws were designed for killing seals, not shaping

roses.

“I sculpt every day except in polar bear birth season,” he said. “During the heart of winter, I

must patrol the ice near the denning sites. My munaqsri skills—the speed, the ability to sense an

impending birth or death, the ability to transform the physical world—make my work possible, but

they do not ensure success. I cannot risk being late for a birth for the sake of my gardens.” He

hesitated, and then added, “Or even for spending time with you.”

“I won’t still be here then,” she said as firmly as she could.

“We shall see,” said the Bear King.

CHAPTER 7

Latitude 91° 00’ 00” N

Longitude indeterminate

Altitude 15 ft.

With ice leaves tinkling in his wake, the Bear King walked back toward the castle. “You have

questions,” he said over his shoulder. “I have answers. Shall we bargain? For every question I

answer, you remain one day in my castle.”

“You like bargains, don’t you?” she called after him. “How do I know you keep them? How do I

know my mother is home?” He rounded the corner. “Hey, come back!” She hurried after him.

The Bear King waited for her by the grand entrance, flanked by shimmering pillars. “A munaqsri

cannot break a promise,” he said. “It is the way that nature ensures we fulfill our roles. It is the price

of our power.” He walked inside. She followed him and was again surrounded by iridescent

sculptures. “The winds brought your mother to the ice while you slept,” he said. “I carried her to your

research station before you woke.”

She halted. She felt as if she couldn’t breathe. The ice frescoes blurred, and she blinked rapidly.

Her mother was in the station, walking through the rooms Cassie had walked through, sitting in the

kitchen, brushing her teeth in the bathroom, doing all the little things that Cassie couldn’t imagine her

mother, mythical person that she was, doing. Just thinking about it made Cassie feel as if the ice had

cracked open under her feet. “Was she… Was she all right?”

“She was well,” he said.

Cassie wanted to ask more: what he’d said and what she’d said, what she looked like, what she

sounded like. But Cassie’s throat clogged, and the bear was still walking away from her. “Where…

Where are you going?” Her voice cracked.

He looked over his shoulder at her. “I wish to show you what you will leave behind if you return

home. Come.”

Cassie followed him. He led her up spiral blue staircases and into rooms that looked as if they

were carved of diamond. She saw a music room with a translucent grand piano and an orchestra-

worth of violins and cellos. The strings of the violins were impossibly delicate strands of ice. She

wandered down a hall lit by iridescent chandeliers and lined with mirror-smooth ice. In a sitting

room with frost-edged sofas, she marveled at a chessboard with carved ice pieces the size of her

hand, each sculpted into the shape of an Arctic animal.

He was right. She had never seen a place like this. She had never imagined any of this existed.

What else had she not imagined?

Her mother, home.

Maybe if I take a little time, she thought, a couple of days maybe… just look at this place. Think

of the secrets here, the knowledge. A bear who turns into a man, ice that doesn’t melt, a hidden castle

—She could study any one of these mysteries for years. Plus, think of the progress in polar bear

research she could make, the questions she could ask and he could answer.

“Your mother,” she said, asking the first question that popped into her head, “is she a munaqsri

like you?”

“No,” he said.

Cassie turned to face him. He was sitting by a frozen fountain, images of fish midleap carved

into the frozen streams of water.

“My father is a munaqsri,” he said. “He is a… The simplest term is ‘overseer.’ There is a

hierarchy of munaqsri. There are munaqsri who care for the souls of a particular species, as I do, and

then there are senior munaqsri who care for all the munaqsri of a particular region, such as the wind

munaqsri. My father is responsible for the munaqsri of a mountain range in Scandinavia. I have not

seen him since I became the caretaker of the polar bears.”

His face was turned away from her, as if he studied the frozen tumbling water. She tried to

imagine what he’d been before he’d become the Bear King. “You weren’t always a bear?”

“A child of a munaqsri must choose to accept the power and the responsibilities,” he said. “He

or she is then assigned to a species by an overseer.”

“So you chose to become a munaqsri? You had a choice?” She didn’t know why that question

was important to her, but it was.

“I was needed,” he said. “Everything in the world—bears, birds, insects, rivers, seas—requires

its own munaqsri to facilitate its existence. Most species require several. Humans, for instance, have

hundreds. Beetles, even more. Polar bears need only one, due to the small population size. But still,

there is a shortage of munaqsri. Children of munaqsri are rare, and the world desperately needs all of

us.”

That didn’t sound like much of a choice.

In a quiet voice, the Bear King said, “I did resent my father for my non-choice. Being a

munaqsri… We keep the world functioning, but we are not truly a part of it.”

Life at the station wasn’t exactly ordinary either. Cassie shook her head. She couldn’t believe

she was empathizing with him. Could they actually have things in common?

“You must be hungry,” he said abruptly, as if he’d said too much.

The Bear King led her down another spiral staircase, back into the banquet hall. At his

command, the table sprouted another feast. It opened like a flower, bowls of fruit unfolding like

petals. A stalk shot into the air and bloomed into a tray of breads. It detached and floated toward

Cassie. Staring at it, she retreated.

“Do not be alarmed,” he said. He sounded amused.

The tray shook as if impatient, jostling rolls. She stiffened and took a croissant. She wasn’t

“alarmed.” She just had never eaten levitating food before. He took a muffin with his massive paw.

Gingerly, Cassie sat on the ice throne. The throne dwarfed her. Her toes brushed the floor. She

was suddenly aware of how small and powerless she was inside this pristine perfection.

Date: 2015-12-18; view: 722