Ice (7 page)

The silence stretched, broken only by the tinkle and clink of the serving dishes as they jostled across the table. Cassie tried to picture her mother at the station, sitting down to a meal. She imagined her with Cassie’s favorite mug, as Owen flipped pancakes, and she pictured herself at age four at the table beside her. Again, Cassie’s eyes felt hot.

She tried to think of a question, an innocuous question, that would let her get some modicum of control back. Making her voice as cheerful as she could manage, she said, “So . . . what were you like as a young cub?”

“Very humanoid,” he said dryly.

She almost smiled. He really did have a sense of humor.

“My childhood . . .” He paused and regarded her as if weighing how he should answer. “My childhood was many years ago,” he said finally. “I am older than I appear, several centuries older.” Several centuries? She tried to digest it. “You don’t seem so old.”

“Thank you,” he said.

Several centuries?

“I had a good childhood, a human one,” he continued. As Cassie filled her plate, he told her about growing up straddled between his father’s mountains and his mother’s Norway. His mother, he said, had been an ordinary human, and she had raised him as a human. He had played with the other village children and had gone to lessons with a tutor. His mother had had hopes he would pursue law. Weekends he’d spent with his father learning about all the things not in his tutor’s books—

learning about magic and the responsibilities of the munaqsri, learning how a munaqsri used his power to fulfill his responsibilities.

“Your turn,” he said when he’d finished.

“What?” she said, startled.

“You tell me about your childhood,” he said.

She hesitated, but she couldn’t think of any excuse why not to. Besides, for some reason that she didn’t explore too closely, she wanted to talk about it.

She told him about Max and his planes, Gram and her story, and Owen and his gadgets. She told him about how different things were for her compared to, say, Owen’s niece in Fairbanks, whose life consisted of makeup and movies. “First time I ever saw a movie,” Cassie said, “I was four—my first trip to Fairbanks. I was terrified.”

“I find nothing so strange about that.”

“It wasn’t a horror movie. It was Mary Poppins.” When she had first seen Julie Andrews float through the air with her umbrella, she had screamed, and Dad had shoved popcorn at her to quiet her. “I managed to calm myself until the scene where the children jump into a chalk painting.” She had thought the sidewalk had swallowed them, and she had proceeded to scream herself hoarse.

They swapped stories as Cassie devoured honeyed breads, delicately spiced fish, a raspberry tart.

Eventually, they fell silent.

She shifted on the ice throne. She hadn’t meant to talk so much. He was just so easy to talk to. She didn’t like how . . . comfortable she’d felt. He was supposed to be the Polar Bear King, and now when she looked at him, he looked like an overgrown stuffed animal or the Coca-Cola polar bear.

Abruptly, she stood up. “Is there more to the castle?” she asked.

“You do not need to rush,” he said. “You have a full week.” She frowned. “What do you mean?”

“You asked at least seven questions; you owe me at least seven days,” he said. “It is not a lifetime, but it is a beginning.”

“I never agreed to your bargain,” she objected.

He blinked at her. “You are correct,” he said, surprise in his voice. “You did not.” They looked at each other for a moment. Then the Bear King focused on the table, and the dishes began to disappear. She jumped as her plate popped like a bubble. Her silverware dissolved into the ice. The frost tablecloth withered. “Stay one week,” he said, “and then decide. Only one week. You waited eighteen years for your mother. Wait one week more.” She thought of all the memories she’d just spilled, all the moments she’d lived believing her mother was dead and gone. And now . . . Cassie looked away from the Bear King’s brilliant black eyes. She didn’t want to think about this. “Show me more of the castle,” she said.

He led her to a grand ballroom with pillars reaching up into arches and the roof open to a pale, cloudless sky. The northern lights wafted over and the deep blue floor mirrored the ribbons of light with shimmering perfection. Staring up at the sky, Cassie walked into the ballroom and slipped. She landed smack on her butt.

The Bear King bounded over to her. “Are you all right?”

“Fine, fine, fine.” Her tailbone felt bruised. He bent his neck down to help her, and she automatically shied away. She stood on her own.

“I never noticed it was slippery,” he said, an apology in his voice.

“You have bear paws,” she said. “I need crampons on this floor. Or ice skates.” She shuffled over to a pillar. Outside the ballroom, through the arches, she could see the sculptures of the topiary garden glittering with reflections of the night aurora. It was so beautiful her breath caught in her throat.

She had an idea. She didn’t stop to think about whether or not it was a good idea. Sitting down fast, she unstrapped her mukluks. She wiggled her toes within three layers of socks.

The Bear King hovered near her. “Are you hurt?”

Cassie used the pillar to stand. “Not yet.” She pushed off. In socks, she skated across the ballroom. It made a perfect ice rink. Whooping, she crashed into the opposite pillar. Clutching it, she called to the Bear King, “Your turn.”

He looked aghast.

She laughed out loud. She felt better already. “Too undignified for you, Your Royal Ursine Highness?”

“Munaqsri are not royalty. I am merely Bear.” Spreading all four paws wide, Bear skidded across the ballroom on his stomach. With his legs splayed out, he spun a hundred eighty degrees to a stop.

Laughing, Cassie shoved away from the pillar and slipped to the center of the room. She smashed into Bear.

“Yikes, sorry,” she said, disentangling herself. What was she doing? He wasn’t her friend; he was a magical soul-transferring polar bear.

“Stand still,” he told her.

She tensed but obeyed. She shouldn’t have started this. She was supposed to be on her way home, not—Before she could complete the thought, Bear pushed. She careened across the ballroom.

Laughing, she caught herself on a pillar.

She looked back at the polar bear, sobering. One week, he’d asked for. Was that such an awful price for all the wonders she’d seen? “One week,” she said. “I’ll stay for one week.” EIGHT

Latitude 91° 00’ 00” N

Longitude indeterminate

Altitude 15 ft.

ONE WEEK SLID INTO TWO and then three and then four, and so on. As the days passed, it became easier and easier for Cassie to find excuses to delay returning to the station and facing whatever (or, more accurately, whoever) waited for her there. She hadn’t forgiven Dad for the heavy-handed way he’d tried to ship her off to Fairbanks, or for the way he’d lied to her for her entire life. As for her mother . . . Cassie wanted to see her, but every morning, she woke up and said, “Just one more day, and then I’ll go home.” And every night, she went to bed alone and dreamed of bears and ice.

As the weeks went by, she stopped thinking about home at all. One afternoon when they’d finished carving ice roses into the pillars of the ballroom (Bear carving and Cassie directing), they lay in the center of the floor admiring their handiwork.

“Why does this castle even have a ballroom?” she asked. “Did any Bear King ever hold a ball? Were there waltzing walruses? Say that ten times fast. Waltzing walruses . . .” Beside her, Bear pushed himself up onto his hind legs. Standing, he was loosely humanoid—if one ignored that he was thirteen feet tall. He held out his paw. “May I have this dance?” Cassie grinned at him. “Delighted, Your Royal Ursine Highness.” She put her hand in his. Her hand was minuscule in his vast paw. “Don’t fall on me,” she ordered. She could not reach his shoulder so she settled for putting her other hand on his forearm. Her fingers sank deep into creamy white fur.

Gently, he guided her across the ballroom. His paw covered half her back. They danced in silence.

Across the topiary garden, deep amber sunlight filled the horizon. Warm orange spread across the ice. It was . . . The word that popped into her mind was “romantic.” He spun her. She felt dizzy staring up at his fur.

I’m happy here, she realized. Thinking that, she felt as if she were on the edge of a sea cliff. “We need music,” she said, trying to break the mood.

“I could sing for you.”

“You sing?”

“No,” he said.

She grinned. He dipped her backward. I’m happy here because of Bear, she thought. She glimpsed the golden light, and a tear welled in her eye. He pulled her upright. “Sun,” she said quickly to explain the tear.

“It is the last of the light,” Bear said.

Startled, she stumbled over her feet. He steadied her. How could she have stayed here for so long?

What did Dad think had happened to her? And Gram? And her mother. She shook her head. She didn’t want to think about her mother right now, not during the end of the light. She always loved the last glimpse of the sun’s rays before the long polar night.

“Come with me,” Bear said. He dropped down onto all fours and trotted out of the ballroom.

“Don’t you want to watch?” she called after him.

“Don’t you want a better view?” he called back.

Grinning, Cassie chased after him. She had only been up in the spires a few times. Bear disliked the narrow stairs. One of his predecessors had designed them for humans, not bears, and it embarrassed him, he’d told her, to waddle up them. She’d teased him about that for days, but she didn’t tease him now. Today felt different somehow. Maybe it was the loss of light. Maybe it was the dancing.

Bear squeezed into the stairwell and climbed up the spiral stairs. Emerging onto a balcony, Cassie walked to the delicate bowed railing. “Careful,” Bear said.

She ignored him and leaned over the ice railing. “Look at that,” she breathed.

The Arctic sprawled before her. Gold and silver, it looked like vast riches. The sky, enormous, glowed blue. Streaks of rose clouds faded into deepening blue, staining the ice azure.

“Do not turn around,” he said—it was a human voice, softer and thinner. She may have heard it only once, but still she recognized it instantly. Her back straightened, tingling. He put his arms around her waist. It felt perfectly natural to lay her hands on his. She did it without even thinking about it. Both facing the horizon, they watched the last drop of gold melt into blueness, and then he released her.

When she turned around, he was a bear again.

“Bear . . . ,” she began. Her back felt cold now. Wind blew her hair into her face. She brushed it away from her eyes.

“I look forward to tomorrow,” he said. It was the same phrase he said every night before he left her.

Where did he sleep? She’d never asked. Maybe he went onto the ice or out into the gardens or into one of the other glittering rooms. He’d told her once that she slept in his room. “Stay with me,” she said.

He looked at her. Cassie saw the twilight sky reflected in his black bear eyes. She felt her face blush.

Tonight was . . . different. She just didn’t want it to end. That was all. “I mean, you don’t have to leave,” she said. “It’s okay. I trust you. You can sleep in your room again.” She added quickly, “Just sleep.”

He regarded her silently for a moment longer. She shifted from foot to foot and began to wish she could swallow the words back out of the air. Maybe she should have thought first before she’d made the offer. It would change things, if he stayed. She knew that instinctively, but she shied away from thinking about how they’d change.

“As you wish,” he said.

He waited for her to lead the way. She brushed past him as she left the balcony, and she laid her hand on his back, intertwining her fingers in his fur. She’d touched his fur a thousand times before, but this time she pulled her hand away. He wasn’t just a bear. She remembered his human arms around her waist and his breath on her neck. This was the first time since that first night that he’d turned human.

Outside the bedroom, she had him wait in the corridor while she changed into her flannels—and then changed again into the silken nightshirt that she’d found on her first night in the castle. She told herself she was just being polite. The nightshirt had been a gift. She climbed under the covers. “All right. I’m decent now.”

The polar bear padded softly into the room.

Cassie tucked the sheets around her body as he approached the bedside table. She could still change her mind, she knew. If she asked him to leave, he would. But that felt . . . cowardly. This was Bear, after all. And she’d only invited him here as a friend. Friends could share a bed.

She wished she’d stuck with the flannel.

He breathed on the candle. It flickered and died with the scent of waxy smoke. Now the room was so black that it looked thick. Bear (now human, she guessed from the sinking of the mattress) climbed into the bed beside her. She remembered the last time he’d climbed into bed with her—on their wedding night. “Touch me and it’s back to the axe,” she said.

She heard him sigh. “I would never hurt you, not intentionally, not ever. You should know that by now.”