East of the Sun and West of the Moon 2 page

when the whiteout cleared. She needed to be on flat ice for him to rescue her. I have to at least try to

make it possible for him to find me, she thought. This is smart, she told herself, not crazy. Giving up

was for the crazy. As she’d once told Bear, she didn’t give up.

Cassie kept walking, listening for the familiar crackle of breaking ice. Around her, the whiteout

gradually—very gradually—dispersed. She caught glimpses of the bears—still out there, still

following. Let them, she thought. She didn’t have the strength to fear them anymore. She shuffled

across the ice with her eyes only on the next step. When she finally remembered to look up, she could

see fifty feet. Beyond, the world was swallowed by snow.

The storm had pulled the ice apart at the seams.

Leads, riverlike cracks, crisscrossed the ice. A dense haze rose off the open water. New

pressure ridges had been born, and others had caved. She stared at the landscape. She hadn’t

imagined the damage would be so severe. She had been lucky to find a solid floe. Another few feet

and… Very lucky.

It took Cassie several minutes to work up the courage to move on. She stepped across a lead

onto the more fractured ice. In some leads, the water had frozen into a smooth road. She followed

one, watching for mouse gray thin ice. Elastic, the ice bent under her weight. She scrambled forward

as the ice fractured behind her. Plates of ice tilted like seesaws under her. The ice made faint grating

sounds beneath her. It was so hard to focus. Bear wasn’t here to save her from freezing or drowning,

she reminded herself; she had to save herself. “Don’t miss,” she whispered.

Cold permeated her. Her blood felt sluggish in her veins. She placed her foot down, and a plate

of ice shot up. Cassie dove forward and grabbed for the top. Her feet slid out from under her and

dangled over black water.

All around her, the polar bears watched.

Squinching her legs up, she forced the plate to tilt. Cassie dove for the next pan of ice. Her legs

splashed into the water as the plate leaned in the opposite direction. Ice tore her Gore-Tex pants as

she, with a burst of adrenaline she did not know she had, hauled herself out of the water.

She forced herself to stand. The cold… It burned. It sliced. She heard her father’s voice in her

head yelling out instructions. Shedding her pack, she dropped into the snow and rolled as if

extinguishing a fire. Snow absorbed the water on her legs. Her pants crinkled as the outer layer froze.

She had to move. It will dry if you move, Dad’s voice told her. Shivering uncontrollably, Cassie

lifted her pack and walked on across the ice. Wind pushed right through her. She wished she were at

the castle. She wished this were over. No, she wished it had never begun. She would have given

anything, done anything, to have everything back the way it had been. Bear, where are you? She

missed him so much that it hurt, like a fist squeezing her stomach. Or was that the cold? Or the

hunger?

She missed him with every single cell of her body. It didn’t matter how he felt about her.

Whether he loved her or not didn’t change how she felt about him. She loved him independent and

regardless of whether he loved her. She wished she had realized that sooner. If she had, she’d never

have switched on that flashlight. She’d be with Bear right now.

She kept walking mile after mile, hour after hour. She became coated in snow. Her face mask

molded to the shape of her face, stuck to her skin, and her parka and pants were plastered with a

sheen of solid ice. A chunk of it had wormed around her hood. Rivulets of ice water ran down her

neck. She had a crust of ice between her parka lining and the down. Her parka felt like a straitjacket.

Hoarfrost coated her goggles. Creeping cold infused her joints. It hurt to walk. Hell, she thought, has

nothing to do with fire. Jeremy was right: Hell is frozen.

She could have frostbite, she knew. She could be slowly freezing to death. Killed by the ice she

loved. She kept moving, mostly from habit now rather than conscious choice. Cassie picked her way

through the chaos of ice, birthed by the storm and the pull of the moon on the tides. The low sun

lengthened the mounds and made the spaces between them dark blue and cold. She shivered in the

shadows. She could think of nothing but how cold she was. And Bear. Always Bear. Seeing a patch

of warmer gold ahead of her, she tried to hurry toward it.

Instantly, her empty stomach cramped. Clutching it, Cassie lost her balance. She fell forward.

She tried to catch herself, but she felt as if her arms were moving in slow motion. She collapsed

forward before her arms were half-raised.

She needed to stand. Keep moving. Must keep moving. Not moving meant death—how often had

Dad told her that?

She heard the familiar creaking from deep within the ice. It sounded like a ghost, a tired and sad

murmur. She imagined it was speaking, but she could not understand the words. With her pack like a

turtle shell weighing down on her, she crawled forward. Her elbows shook. She inched across the

frozen waves.

Enough, she thought. The ice was flat enough. She could rest here. Spread full-length, she would

be more visible from the air, from Max’s plane, than if she were standing. It made sense to lie here.

She closed her eyes. Rescue me, Max. Dad. Bear. Bear.

A voice inside her whispered he was not coming. She was never going to see him again. She

didn’t have the strength to cry.

Snow drifted over her.

Cassie basked in warmth. Pillows pressed around her, and it was as dark as a womb. She

cuddled the cushions. Her cheek squashed against them, pressing her face mask into her. Half-thawed,

the fleece soaked her skin. She itched to tear it off, mask and skin. She wormed into the pillows. She

was comfortable at long last, and no stupid face mask was going to—

A cramp squeezed her left leg.

That half-woke her. Her thigh was wedged between the pillows at an awkward angle. She

shifted again and sniffed: sour sweat. Must not be dead yet, she thought vaguely. Soon maybe. She

turned her face so that the rim of her goggles was not digging into her cheekbones, and she drifted

back to sleep.

She dreamed about Bear. She dreamed that he lay beside her in his polar bear form, warm fur

pressed against her and hot breath on her cheek. Cassie woke again. Fuzzy-eyed, she blinked at the

warm darkness.

She wasn’t dead. The realization rushed through her, and she wanted to cry or shout. She wasn’t

dead! Thank you, thank you!

She tested her muscles. They still worked. Cassie pushed at the pillows, and her mittens sank

four inches, but with mitts, gloves, and liners, she could not feel the texture.

The pillows breathed.

Cassie recoiled, and the sudden movement turned her empty stomach upside down. She felt the

world pressing in on her as if she were again trapped in a sleeping bag in a storm. “Let me out!” she

shouted. She elbowed the warm darkness and wriggled upward.

She squirmed out of the press of fur and emerged in a sea of polar bears: sleeping bears as far

into the misty white as she could see. Blackness swam up over her eyes and then retreated. The bears

were still there when the dizziness passed. “Oh, my,” she murmured.

At the sound of her voice, a dozen bears raised their heads. She swallowed. Expressionless,

another dozen bears also turned to look at her. As one, the mass of bears—bears, not pillows—

shifted, freeing her. Her legs shook, and the wind bit into her.

They had kept her warm while she slept. The bears had saved her life. “Oh, my,” she repeated as

her knees caved. Bears rolled back to support her as she slid to the ground.

Cassie turned her head—and stared directly at the nose of a polar bear. He huffed at her. She

ogled back. “You’re bears,” she said. “You aren’t even magical bears.” She didn’t understand. The

fog in her brain wouldn’t lift. She couldn’t think. Why had the bears saved her?

A bear prodded her with his muzzle.

“What? Don’t eat me.” Her words were slurred. She leaned backward and felt another bear

behind her. This one pushed in the middle of her back. “What do you want?” Another push. Did they

want her to stand? She tried to make her brain function. Was she dreaming? She didn’t feel like she

was dreaming. She hurt too much to still be asleep. Wincing, Cassie lurched to her feet.

Had Bear sent them to save her?

The bears parted, uncovering Cassie’s pack.

“I can’t,” she said. Her eyes felt hot, near tears. The bears were helping too late. She didn’t have

the strength to go on. “I’m tired. I’m hungry.” She mimed chewing. “You know, hungry?” She made

sucking noises.

Obligingly, a female bear rolled, exposing four round nipples. Cassie licked her cracked lips.

Lolling her head, the bear looked at her. Half-falling to her knees, Cassie knelt and crawled to the

sow’s stomach. She looked over at the bear’s face, and the bear placidly closed her eyes.

Cassie pulled off a mitt and her face mask. Taking a deep breath, she touched the nipple. It felt

as firm as a thumb. She squeezed it, and milk welled at the top: life. When the bear did not maul her

—in fact, did not move—Cassie leaned in and held her tongue catlike under the milk. She squeezed

hard, and the milk squirted onto her tongue. It was oily, tasted of seal. Rich and thick, it clogged her

throat.

She managed three swallows, then had to rest, leaning her head against the sow. She drifted into

sleep and woke a few seconds later to swallow more milk. She alternated, drinking and sleeping,

until she felt human again.

I’m going to live, she thought as she lay against the mother bear. From beyond the ends of the

earth, Bear had found a way to save her. And somehow, she thought, I’m going to find a way to save

him.

CHAPTER 19

Latitude 84° 42’ 08” N

Longitude 74° 23’ 06” W

Altitude 3 ft.

Squinting into the sun’s glare, Cassie scanned the softening ice. In the twenty-four-hour sun,

icicles dripped into melt pools. The constant drip sounded like the second hand on a clock. Heading

toward Ward Hunt Island, she’d traveled with the bears for three weeks, stopping only to drink bear

milk and eat the strips of seal and fish that the bears had brought her. Often the bears had carried her

while she slept so she wouldn’t lose time. But it hadn’t been enough.

I’m not going to make it, she thought.

She tried to ignore the knot of fear that lodged inside her rib cage. Sweat pricked the back of her

neck underneath the flannel and wool. Everywhere, the ice was splintering. In five-foot-wide cracks,

the ice was packed mush that moved with a hollow sound. Murres and gulls wheeled overhead,

diving for cod in the widening cracks. She was not going to make it to land before the ice receded

from the shore. Not going to make it, her mind whispered over and over. Not going to make it.

Summer was coming.

Facing a stretch of thin ice, Cassie mounted one of the bears. With giant paws like snowshoes,

he walked across the green-gray ice. It wobbled in waves. Holding her breath, she watched the frost

patterns for cracks. She stayed mounted as the bears continued to plod over thin ice and alongside ice

rivers.

Five days later, Cassie and the bears reached the end of the ice.

Ahead of them, ice tossed in the waves, and then crumbled into semifrozen gruel. The slush

undulated. Eventually, it dispersed into open ocean. Miles and miles of open water lay between her

and land.

Cassie stared at the water. It was over. She was too late. She was stranded on the pack ice. All

her grand resolve to reach the ends of the earth… All she’d done was reach the end of the ice.

The sun sparkled like golden jewels on the ice and the water. Blinking fast, she focused on the

dancing waves. She knew better than to cry in the cold. Her father had taught her that years ago. And

did he also teach you to quit? she asked herself. Was it to be a family tradition to fail to reach the troll

castle? Like father, like daughter? “Snap out of it,” she whispered. “You aren’t dead yet.” She had

options: Max could still come, or… She could not think of a second option.

Hoping for inspiration or a miracle, she looked around her at the army of polar bears. An arctic

fox, diminutive beside the behemoths, trotted among them. Light as a cat, he didn’t have to worry

about weak ice, she thought. If she were the size of the fox, maybe the bears could have swum her

across any open water without drenching her. Cassie looked at the glittering black water and

shuddered. As Dad would have said, it was death water: In fifteen minutes, the muscles would seize,

consciousness would fade, and death would come. As things were, without a munaqsri to warm her,

she’d freeze if she tried to swim.

So all she had to do was find herself another munaqsri. Problem solved.

She snorted at herself. Like it was so easy. Billions of people spent their lives without seeing a

munaqsri or even knowing they existed. Of course, she did know they existed, even if they moved too

fast to see, but unless she just happened to know of an imminent birth or death…

The answer came so quickly that she nearly shouted out loud. If she were present at a creature’s

death… Cassie slid off the polar bear, her eyes fixed on the arctic fox. She’d seen foxes dogging the

polar bears for weeks now. Arctic foxes were scavengers, living off the remains of bear kills. But

with so many bears together, every kill was thoroughly stripped—there were few remains. She felt

her heart race, thudding against her rib cage.

Somewhere on the ice behind them, there had to be a starving arctic fox.

“We’re going back,” she said, slapping the bear’s shoulder. “Come on. Back the way we came.”

If she could find another munaqsri, he could help her off the ice. Even better, he could take her to

Bear!

Cassie trudged north through her sprawling polar bear army. The bears milled around the ice and

watched her with their black, inscrutable eyes. She stroked their fur as she passed, trying to reassure

them. “I’ll save him,” she said. “I promise I’ll bring your king home.”

After five hours of walking, she saw a small dusty white shadow, nearly yellow against the blue-

white ice. Loose snow swirled like fast-moving clouds around it. The shadow raised its head as she

approached—it was an old fox. He was so thin that she could see his ribs pressing up through his fur.

Poor thing, she thought. If the polar bears hadn’t banded together, he might have had a chance at one

more season, but he hadn’t been able to compete with all the bears.

Shedding her pack, she knelt on the ice beside the fox. He laid his head back down and closed

his eyes. His breathing was labored. She watched his ribs jerk up and down, his breath a harsh huff

against the hiss of the wind.

Behind her, Cassie heard the soft puffing of bears. She saw them out of the corners of her eyes,

blurred by the frost on her goggles. “Just a little longer,” she promised them. And then she’d be off the

ice and on her way to Bear… if this worked.

It had to work. The fox munaqsri had to come, didn’t he?

No one would come when a polar bear died, she thought. Their souls would… She didn’t know

what would happen to their souls. And with no one to transport the souls to the newborn, then these

bears, these beautiful bears, would be extinct in a generation. No soul, no life.

Bear had risked all of them to marry her. He’d trusted that she’d respect his one and only

request. And she hadn’t. Cassie hugged her stomach. Even through all the layers, she could feel the

slight bulge. This… what he’d done… didn’t excuse the damage she’d done, however unintentionally,

to all these beautiful bears. She had to reach Bear.

The fox shuddered, and his ribs sank down, down, as if folding into his fur. They didn’t rise

again. “Munaqsri!” she called.

She saw nothing.

“Fox munaqsri!” Cassie said. “I need to talk to you on behalf of the bear munaqsri!” He had to

be here. She had no backup plan.

“You know the polar bear?” a voice said. Suddenly, a second arctic fox perched beside the dead

fox. Spiking his fur, the fox arched his back like a cat. “You tell him I blame him for the fate of my

foxes. While his bears herd, my foxes are starving.” His muzzle curled back, and sunlight glinted on

sharp incisors. “I will bring my complaints to the Arctic overseer—” With his thick white fur and

delicate snout, he looked like a cross between a Pekinese and a Persian cat, hardly anything

threatening. But he was an angry fluff ball with the power of a munaqsri.

Cassie scrambled to her feet. “Wait, listen! Bear… the bear munaqsri… is in trouble. I need you

to speed me to the troll castle, east of the sun and west of the moon.”

The effect of her words was instantaneous. He switched from furious to distressed in an

eyeblink. “He has forsaken his bears? Oh, my foxes!” The fox tilted his head back and yowled. “My

foxes will starve! No one has ever returned from there. He will never return!”

The fox’s cries sliced into her. She clapped her hands to her ears. “Yes, he will!” Cassie

would bring him back. She would fix everything. “I can bring him back!”

His howl died in yet another split-second mood change. Now silent, the fox stared at her. “Who

are you?” he asked finally.

“Cassie Dasent,” she said. She couldn’t read the expression on his fox face. He’d already gone

from furious to distressed to contemplative in less than thirty seconds. Please, let him help her.

“You are not a munaqsri,” he said.

“I’m the wife of the polar bear,” she said.

“Interesting taste,” he said.

Cassie gritted her teeth. Now he was mocking her? Her husband was missing, suffering with

trolls; the polar bears and arctic foxes were in danger of extinction; and she was stuck on the ice, at

least four months pregnant, with summer rapidly approaching. “I didn’t trek here from beyond the

North Pole to be insulted by something cuddly,” she snapped. “It’s your choice, Fluffy: Help me and

help your foxes, or don’t help me and watch them die.”

Fluffy licked his nose. Cassie held her breath. She’d either reached the erratic munaqsri or

utterly antagonized him.

“I cannot take you there,” he said finally. “The castle is east of the sun and west of the moon. It is

beyond my region. I cannot leave the ice. Another munaqsri is responsible for foxes on land.”

“Then help me find another munaqsri,” Cassie said. There had to be a munaqsri who could cross

from the ice to the land. Quickly, she scanned the ice, the sky, and the sea.

Out in the ocean, a whale lifted its spiral tusk. Slow and stately, a second horn rose out of the

water. As if in an ancient ritual, the two narwhals crossed their unicorn horns. “Call a whale,” she

said.

“A whale will not help you,” he said. “You are not a munaqsri, and they will have no interest in

the fate of the polar bears or of my foxes.”

One problem at a time, she thought as she lifted her pack onto her shoulders. “Just do it. Please,

Fluffy?”

The ocean buckled at her feet. Screeching, seabirds recoiled from the water. For an instant, their

bodies blackened the sky. “He comes,” the fox said.

Cassie stumbled as waves rocked the ice. Inches from the ice edge, a dark smooth curve as large

as a submarine rose out of the water. And then it kept rising, larger and larger. As Cassie stared, the

bowhead whale lifted its mouth above the swirling waves. Its maw gaped open, and Cassie saw

fringed plates of baleen, enormous sheaths that filled the whale’s mouth. Algae, barnacles, and

seaweed clung to the dripping sheaths. No ordinary whale could have been this huge.

The colossus shut its mouth, and waves swelled onto the ice. Cassie scrambled backward as

freezing water splashed her mukluks. Behind her, the ice cracked. She looked over her shoulder to

see a split in the ice widen from the stress of the waves. On either side of the split, her polar bears

waited, shoulder to shoulder—her beautiful bears. Seeing them gave her strength.

“I need your help,” she said to the whale.

“You are not a munaqsri.” His voice pounded like a drum. She shuddered as each syllable hit

her ears.

“My husband is,” she said. “He’s the polar bear munaqsri.”

Rising higher in the water, as massive as a monster from a myth, the bowhead drummed, “He

may be, but you are not. You have no ties to us.”

The ice rocked as if in an earthquake. Spray and wind hit her face. She spread her legs to keep

her balance and held the shoulder straps of her backpack. He didn’t care if he drowned her, she

realized. Looking up at the leviathan, she said, “I’m tied to him. We made vows.”

“We are all bound by our promises,” he intoned.

Cassie pushed her hair out of her eyes and squinted up at the bowhead. He eclipsed the sun.

“Please. You have to help me reach the troll castle.”

“Nothing living ever goes there,” the bowhead said.

“Then take me across the ocean,” she pleaded. “Just to the shore. I’ll find the way myself from

there. But please, help me off the ice!”

“I do not help humans.”

“The bears will die if I don’t save their munaqsri,” Cassie said. She couldn’t fail. Her beloved

bears would vanish from the face of the earth. “Help me for their sake.”

The bowhead drifted against the crumbling ice. Cassie flailed as the ice rocked. “The bears are

not my concern,” he said.

He had to care about something! She cast around for another idea, and she hit on inspiration.

“I’m carrying the Bear’s child,” she said. “One of you. A future munaqsri.”

The bowhead sprayed water from his spout. Screaming, Cassie threw her gloved hands over her

head and ducked as it rained ice-cold seawater. “You risk a munaqsri,” the bowhead boomed. “It

cannot be allowed.”

Beside her, the arctic fox hissed and growled. “You hold a species’ future inside you, and you

undertake this quest? You seek death.”

Oh, no, she’d made it worse. “But I have to save—”

“I cannot allow you to endanger a future munaqsri,” the bowhead said.

“Nor I!” Fluffy said.

“You must stay on the ice where you belong.” With that pronouncement, the bowhead

submerged. A vast wave of water surged in his wake.

Cassie scrambled away from the wave. “I’ll die if I stay!” She would die, the bears would die,

the foxes would die. Bear would be trapped in the place that had made Gail scream.

“The bears will care for you until the child is born,” Fluffy said. “And when he is grown, the

bears will have their new king. My foxes shall live, and all will be as it should.”

She shook her head. Her throat felt choked. She had to make him help her. She couldn’t lose her

one chance at Bear. “Bowhead!” she shouted at the waves. Could he still hear her? Please, let him

hear her. The glittering black waves still churned in his wake. Cassie called to the deep, “You want

your precious child to live? Then keep its mother alive!”

She ran and dove into the Arctic Ocean.

CHAPTER 20

Latitude 84° 10’ 46” N

Longitude 74° 22’ 53” W

Altitude -32 ft.

Cold seared her skin. Knives sliced her bones. She kicked the water. Thirty feet down, she shed

her pack. It sank. I’m not dying, she thought. This isn’t the end. She saw the surface: golden green.

Clawing the water, she swam toward it.

She could not feel her hands. She had no arms. No legs.

Numb, she burned. Her lungs screamed.

Golden green turned black.

Fifteen minutes. Death water.

It hurt to die.

And then it didn’t hurt. Cassie was cocooned in currents. She swept through silver fish and

translucent jellies. Cod eddied around her body, and comb jellies grazed her with their rain-bow

cilia. Light—green—hung in the water like dust in air.

She looked down at a garden of brilliant orange starfish and golden sea anemones. Was this

heaven? Small lobsters crawled over rocks. Crabs with spider legs scrambled over mud to hide in

soft strands of algae. She looked upward. Belugas undulated through the green light. The water filled

with the sounds of their chirps and whistles. She watched them swim, singing, overhead. No one’s

heaven had lobsters and off-pitch belugas. It would even be odd for a hell. She smiled and tasted salt.

She was underwater. Alive.

But how? She’d hoped the bowhead munaqsri would save her, but she didn’t see him. He would

have to be touching her to save her. Oddly, no one was touching her. So who was keeping her alive?

And warm? And not in pain? “Hello? Anyone?” Her words burbled in the water.

The tide carried her through strands of algae. Soft ribbons of green brushed against her. The

algae coated the loose ice overhead and the floor below so that they looked like an overgrown lawn.

Cassie eyed the dustlike krill. “Hello? Do any of you talk?”

No shrimp answered. At least she wouldn’t have to hold a conversation with something almost

microscopic. She nearly laughed at the image, but then the sea darkened. Cassie looked up; the

bowhead blocked the sun. He looked as if he could swallow her entire universe. Cassie shrank from

the living eclipse, acutely aware how much she didn’t belong here. She was alive only by someone

else’s decision. What if whoever it was changed its mind? The bowhead passed over her, and in his

wake, sunlight flooded the water. She didn’t want to be down here a second longer. She swam toward

the sun.

Current slammed against her, sending her tumbling sideways. Her hood fell back and her hair

swirled. She tried again, aiming diagonally upward.

Fish swarmed her. Cod, their silver bodies streaking in the slanted light, surrounded her. She

could not move her arms without slapping them. The fish butted their heads against her, pushing her

down and then propelling her through the water. She flailed like a windmill, and the fish scattered.

As the water cleared, she saw a shape—it was coral, a city of coral, rising out of the muddy sea

floor. Teeming with fish, the city was an organic Manhattan. In its own way, it was as grand as Bear’s

castle.

She heard a laugh. Cassie spun in the water. “Who’s there?” she called. Really, it could be

anything from the pink crustaceans to the comb jellies.

It was a mermaid.

Perched on a salt-encrusted rock, the mermaid had codlike scales on her tail that spread into

silvery skin at her navel. Her human skin rippled in soft wrinkles, like a bloated drowned body. She

laughed in streams of air bubbles.

Without thinking, Cassie said, “You’re mythical.”

The mermaid’s laugh grew wilder and harsher. It sounded like waves breaking.

Date: 2015-12-18; view: 645