Ice

by Sarah Beth Durst

  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.

  It was so like Bear to ask. She felt her nervousness dissolve like sugar in water, and she smiled at him in the darkness. “Yes,” she said simply.

  She slid her arms around him. Her cheek against his chest, she felt his heart beat. It was as steady and as gentle as waves in the ocean. She felt the curve of his shoulder blades as his arms surrounded her. His hands covered half her back, cradling her. She burrowed against his bare chest. Leaning down, he kissed her neck.

  Her skin tingled as he kissed her, and all thoughts ran out of her head. She felt the chill of the ice room, the warmth of his breath, and the touch of his hands. It was all that existed in the world.

  Around them, the ice was silent.

  FOURTEEN

  Latitude 91° 00’ 00” N

  Longitude indeterminate

  Altitude 15 ft.

  CASSIE CLUTCHED THE EXQUISITELY carved ice toilet. Dammit, not again. For more than three months now, she’d endured random waves of nausea. Every time she thought she was well again, it reared its ugly . . . Uh-oh. She gritted her teeth as her stomach rose into her throat, tasting like rotten peanuts. Sweat pricked her forehead.

  Bear padded into the bathroom. “Cassie, are you all right?”

  She spat into the toilet. Her throat burned. “Ow.”

  Cassie leaned her head against the rim of the crystalline bowl. It was smooth and cool. “I’m never eating again,” she said. Clearly, she’d had too many magical feasts. She had a potbelly now that pressed against the elastic waist of her pants.

  Bear touched her damp hair with his nose. “Breathe deeply. Fighting it will only make it worse.” She felt his hot breath on her scalp. It made her itch.

  “Stop hovering.” Like shooing a fly, she swatted the air in front of him.

  “It will pass soon.”

  “It better.” Oh, too much motion—her insides flopped, and she felt for the toilet. Her stomach squeezed as if it were ejecting a lung. Empty, she collapsed backward. “Can’t you magic me? Transform my sick molecules?”

  “I do not wish to interfere,” he said. “Your body is reacting naturally.”

  “Reacting normally for botulism.”

  Bear blinked his glassy black eyes at her. “You are joking. You must know the cause of this—your daily nausea, your changing shape.”

  Cassie clung to the ice rim of the toilet. When he put it that way . . . But no, she’d been careful. She’d been smart. “I can’t be. It’s not possible.”

  “Because of the chemical imbalance?” Lying down, he curled around her like a giant cat and laid his head on her lap, as if to reassure her. “I know. I fixed it. All is well now.”

  “You fixed it?” Cassie felt dizzy. She was . . . no. She tried to remember her last period and couldn’t.

  “It was simple. All I needed to do was adjust the hormone levels,” he said, clear pride in his voice. “It was no harder than keeping your body w
arm or protecting you in the Arctic water.”

  Cassie threw herself forward and vomited with all her strength, as if she could expel the fetus inside her. Bile scratched her throat, and she sank backward again, diaphragm sore from pushing. She dug her fingernails into her curved stomach. She sucked in, but it would not flatten. It was as firm as a muscle.

  He’d retreated from her as she’d vomited, and he now stood beside her, casting a massive shadow over her. “Are you . . . You are not happy?”

  “How could you do this to me?” He had deliberately altered her molecules to impregnate her without asking her, without telling her. “That ‘chemical imbalance’ was deliberate. I’m on the pill.”

  “Deliberate? You caused . . .? But how . . . ,” he said. He swung his head low, an agitated polar bear. “You were willing. I asked if you were certain. You said you were. I thought you understood.” She felt like she was drowning. His words drowned her. “You knew from the beginning: I must have children. This was the reason I sought a wife. There must be more munaqsri. This child—a future munaqsri—is desperately needed.”

  “I thought you . . .” She felt as if her insides were shaking so hard that they’d fly apart. “I thought you loved me. For me. Not for . . .”

  “I do love you,” he said. “You are my tuvaaqan, my wife, the mother of my—”

  “You used me,” she said. “You didn’t even ask me. You just . . . ‘fixed’ me.” She had trusted him. She had believed they were a team.

  He padded closer to her. “We are going to have a baby,” he said. “We are going to bring life into the world. Do you not see how wonderful it is?”

  “Just . . . leave me alone.” Cassie pushed his chest, hands sinking into fur, and he backed out of the bathroom. She shut the door in his face and locked it. Back against the door, she slid to the floor. Her nausea threatened like a tidal wave. She wanted to rip her internal organs out of her. Heart included.

  Through the door, he said, “I love you.”

  She retched on the floor and then cried.

  * * * * *

  He had to reverse what he had done. It was that simple. He could manipulate her molecules; he could fix this. Ice crunched under Cassie’s mukluks as she walked through the topiary garden. If he could fix a “chemical imbalance” and keep her warm in the Arctic, he could put everything back the way it had been.

  She found him between the rosebushes. Facing the permanent sun, he did not turn as she came up behind him. She swallowed a lump in her throat. He could do it, yes. But would he? She didn’t know. She felt as if he had turned into a stranger, hidden behind black eyes and cream fur. Looking down, she studied the roses. Amber and violet in the low sun, each petal and leaf twinkled with Bear’s reflection.

  “You shot at me,” he said. “Do you remember? You shot at me with your tranquilizer gun, and I still married you. Did you ever wonder why?”

  She hadn’t, until now.

  “Because you shot at me. Because you chased me, before you knew what I was, before I dared reveal myself to you. You were so stubborn, so single-minded, so strong. Without a second’s thought, you risked your life chasing me, all for your work, for your father, for his station, and for the polar bears,” Bear said. She stared at him, but he wasn’t finished. “And afterward? You were so courageous that you would marry a beast to save a woman you had never met. So great-hearted that you could care about a ‘freak of nature.’ So intelligent that you could be my partner, my teammate, my tuvaaqan. These are the reasons I love you. It is not because of your ovaries or chromosomes; it is because I know, out of all the world, that you are my match.”

  Cassie lifted her hand toward him. She wanted to bury her fingers in his fur and press her face against his neck. But she stopped an inch short of touching him. She desperately wanted to believe him. She’d thought he was her match too. She’d thought he was her tuvaaqan. Maybe he still was. It could all be a misunderstanding. “If it’s me you love, then take this creature out of me,” she said.

  He shook his heavy head. “You do not know what you are asking,” he said. “It is not a ‘creature.’”

  Who knew what kind of thing was growing inside her? It wasn’t human; it was half-munaqsri. Thanks to Bear’s “quirks,” she didn’t know what that meant. She hugged her arms across her chest. “How can I believe you? You won’t even let me see you.” For the first time in months, she wondered what the darkness hid from her.

  “It is a child, and the world needs it.” He turned to face her. “Once you understand how important this child is, you will be as happy as I am. You have to trust me. All will be well. Give it time. You will see.”

  Cassie tried to read his inscrutable bear eyes, but all she saw was her own reflection, distorted to a reverse hourglass. “How pregnant am I?”

  “You are due in the fall, after the equinox.”

  He’d known for at least three months. Months! He must have “Fixed” her during the polar bear birth season, maybe even the first time they’d slept together. She felt sick and dizzy all over again. He’d lied to her. He’d used her.

  “You will be a mother,” he said. “We will have our own miracle.”

  She didn’t know how to be a mother. “I am too young to have a baby,” she said.

  “And I suppose I am too old?” He looked out across the ice fields. In a soft sad voice, he said, “I had believed this would make you as happy as it has made me. Perhaps I deluded myself. I had hoped . . . once it was real, inside you, you would be happy.”

  She had been happy. She’d been happy with everything exactly as it was, or as she’d thought it was. “You were wrong.”

  “I did not intentionally hurt you. You know I would never do that. I am not some monster, Cassie. You know me.”

  Wind rustled the ice leaves. Cassie shivered, and the sun continued to circle the horizon.

  * * * * *

  You know me. Clutching the sheets to her chin, Cassie listened to him breathe. She felt a tight ache inside her chest. Did she know him? She’d thought she did. But now . . . Had he truly used her, or was it all a misunderstanding, as he’d said? Was he the man she thought he was? Was he a man at all?

  Loud, her heart beat staccato as she knelt on the mattress. She cupped her hand over the flashlight. She had a right to know who he truly was and what was inside her, didn’t she?

  She switched on the light. Her hand, covering the beam, glowed pink. Bear was now a shape in the semidarkness. She saw his chest rise and fall. Gathering her courage, she pointed the flashlight toward the ceiling and removed her hand. The beam hit the ice canopy, and light reflected in a thousand directions. Rainbows swirled over the bed.

  And she saw Bear.

  Like a polar bear, his skin was black and his hair was creamy white. The flashlight shook in her hand, and the beam danced over his muscles. He was beautiful, as perfect and as ageless as a Michelangelo statue. Looking at him, she could not breathe.

  He looked like an angel, or a god.

  She wanted to touch him and feel his familiar skin and know this godlike creature was her Bear. Now that she had her wish, she didn’t know what it meant that he was so beautiful. Seeing him did not answer anything.

  She wanted to breathe him in and swallow him whole. She wanted to wrap herself around him. She wanted to feel he was real with every inch of her skin. Leaning over him, she brushed his lips with hers. Bear opened his eyes. “Cassie, no!”

  Cassie dropped the flashlight. It hit her thigh and fell to the floor. Shadows spread across Bear, the bed, and the room. “Ow! Bear, don’t do that!”

  From the floor, the flashlight cast giant shadows on the ice walls. Bear’s shadow stretched as he pulled himself to full height. Instinctively, she flinched. He looked like an angry god. “I told you never to look at me. You should have trusted me!”

  Rising to her knees, she put her hands on her hips. “Trust you?”

  As quickly as it had come, the anger seemed to drain out of him. He sank down
on the bed and put his face in his hands. “Oh, Cassie.”

  Disconcerted, she opened and shut her mouth. He seemed truly upset. But what was so terrible about her looking at him? He was beautiful. He was perfect.

  “Cassie, my Cassie.” He raised his head. He looked like he was going to cry. What was wrong? He cupped her cheek in his palm. The look in his eyes . . . Wow, she was looking into his eyes. His human eyes. His hand was warm and soft on her cheek.

  “Bear?” she said uncertainly. She didn’t like the look in his eyes, that lost look.

  She felt mist touch her skin. She brushed her arm automatically, but it was dry. He released her face and took her hand. He ran his thumb over her fingers, pausing on her ring finger. “I have to leave you now,” he said.

  He had to what?

  Clearly, she’d heard him wrong. She looked at his expression, and she felt her heart squeeze. She hadn’t heard him wrong. She started to shake her head. He couldn’t leave!

  “Please, listen, Cassie,” he said before she could speak. “It was the bargain to free your mother. You could never see my human face. Or know the reason why you could not. Cassie, it was the only way to free your mother. It was the only way to marry you.”

  “You and your stupid bargains.” She tried to sound cold and angry but her voice betrayed her. “Did you expect me to be telepathic?” She was blinking furiously now. Oh, God, what had he promised? What had he risked? What had she done?

  Bear said as if quoting something, “All ties between us are snapped, and I must marry the troll princess.”

  She shook his shoulders. “You are not leaving,” she said. She was crying. She knew it and she couldn’t stop it. This was absurd. Troll princess! “I will not let the trolls take you.”

  “That’s my Cassie.” He buried his fingers in her hair. “But you cannot fight this. I must keep my promise. It is the price of being a munaqsri.” She heard rustling like wind in leaves.