Ice (10 page)

* * * * *

Something had to happen next. Cassie had never thought beyond the first hello. But now the first moment was over and Cassie didn’t know what to say to this woman, this stranger, her mother.

Owen—Owen, of all people—came to her rescue. She hadn’t even realized that he and Max were still in the room. “How did . . . How did you escape?” Owen asked.

Gratefully, Cassie turned to him. “No escape. I asked to leave, and Bear brought me home.”

“Just like that?” Gail said, surprise in her voice.

Cassie thought of Bear outside the station. I love you, he’d said. “Just like that,” she lied.

“But munaqsri promises can’t be broken—,” her mother began.

“It doesn’t matter,” Dad cut her off. “She’s here now. She’s free.” Yes, it did matter. Munaqsri promises. Her mother—Gail, she corrected—was right. Cassie had made vows, promises, to a munaqsri. He could have made her stay if he had wanted. But he had chosen to let her go, even though he loved her—or maybe, she had the sudden thought, because he loved her?

“We won’t ever let him take you again,” her father said.

“Oh, no, it’s not like that,” Cassie said quickly. “He’s not like that. We’re . . . friends,” she finished, for lack of a better word. Until the birth season had begun, he’d been her constant companion. They’d talked and laughed and spent every second together.

“Friends? With the monster who took you from your family? With the monster who kept you from us for months? Cassie, we thought you might be dead.”

Cassie flushed. She should have at least tried to send word. But she’d never even thought of it. It was her fault that they’d worried. “He’s not a monster,” she said. He’d said he loved her. . . . Stop thinking about that. She was here with her mother, her mother, who was alive and here.

“What you did . . . ,” Gail said. “It was very brave. Thank you.” She didn’t know about “brave.” She’d liked it at the castle. She’d skated in the ballroom, designed new sculptures for the topiary garden, lost chess games. Her mother was waiting for her to speak. “I couldn’t leave you . . . there,” Cassie said. There, in a troll castle. It still sounded implausible. Gail fluttered her hands, obviously uncomfortable. She had a debutante’s fingers, long and slender, with pristine nails and smooth skin. For eighteen years with trolls, she did not seem the worse for wear.

“What are trolls anyway?” Cassie asked—the question came out harsher than she’d intended.

“Cassie, your mother doesn’t like to talk about it,” Dad said.

Gail shook her head. “It’s all right, Laszlo,” she said. To Cassie, she said, “There truly were trolls, and I truly was trapped in their castle.”

Cassie glanced away, unable to keep looking at those familiar-yet-foreign green eyes. She hadn’t meant to snap like that, not at her. At Dad, maybe, who had left his wife trapped in an impossible castle, leaving it to Cassie to save her.

“Trolls are . . . difficult to explain. It is an inadequate name,” Gail said. “They have no shape, no physical bodies. Their queen is chosen from those who can hold a shape for the longest, but stilll. . .” Her voice faltered. “It’s an island of wild spirits.”

“How did Bear free you?” Cassie asked. Bear had never told her. She had never asked. She had, in fact, avoided every subject related to her mother, including trolls and the winds. Now she wished she had asked everything.

Gail shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said. “One night, I went to sleep, and when I woke, I was on the ice and the Polar Bear King was carrying me home.”

Silence fell over the kitchen. It was impossible not to hear Gram’s voice as Cassie looked at her mother, the North Wind’s daughter, free from the troll castle. And so, the Bear carried the North Wind’s daughter to her human husband. . . .

On the stove, bubbles spilled over a saucepan, and the burner hissed. “Ack, beans!” Dad swooped down on the saucepan. With a look of relief flashing over her face, clearly eager for the distraction, Gail dove away from Cassie and slid a bowl under Dad’s elbow; he drained the beans into it. Gail took the saucepan, and he took the bowl—saucepan to the sink, bowl to the table. It looked like a dance, a well-rehearsed dance, one that didn’t include Cassie.

She thought of dancing with Bear in the ballroom and then firmly pushed the thought away.

“Where’s Gram?” Cassie asked. “Is she back in Fairbanks?”

“I flew her back about a month after you left,” Max said. “She waited a month, in case you returned.”

Cassie had never meant to worry Gram, either. She owed a lot of apologies.

“Cassie,” Dad said, “the others don’t know about the . . . everything.” She blinked. “How can they not know?” Max and Owen knew. Granted, they had known Cassie’s mother from before, and the others hadn’t, but still. Her mother had come back from the dead.

Surely, they must have noticed.

“Story was that we only thought she was dead,” Max said with relish, “but really she was in a coma and no one knew who she was, and one day she woke up. As soon as she was released from the hospital, I flew her here to surprise your father.”

Cassie gawked. That was the stupidest story she’d ever heard. “They believed that? What soap opera did you plagiarize?”

Max shrugged and looked embarrassed.

“We decided it was best,” Dad said, “to attempt to preserve normalcy. For your mother’s sake.” Before Cassie could respond, the two researchers Scott and Liam tumbled into the kitchen. Cassie realized with a shock that it had been such a long time since she’d even thought about them that she’d almost forgotten what they looked like.

Scott saw her first. He grinned. “Cassie?” He thumped her on the back. “Good to see you. How’ve you been? What’s for dinner?” Scooping beans into a bowl, he straddled a chair.

Liam shook her hand. “Missed a great season,” he said. “How’s Fairbanks?” She shot her father a look. If he’d claimed Gail had been in a coma, what had he said had happened to Cassie? “It’s good,” Cassie said. Dad nodded approvingly.

Jeremy stomped into the room. “Liquid nitrogen would freeze at this temperature.” After shucking his gloves, he went for the beans. Mouth full, he nodded casually at Cassie, as if she hadn’t been gone the whole migration season. “I know, I know, I’m still here,” he said.

“He owes me three more months,” Dad said as he handed Cassie a bowl of beans.

With beans squashed on his teeth, Jeremy said, “And then I’m outta this icebox. Beautiful, balmy ll.A.

Changing my concentration to Amazon jungles.”

Gail teased, “You’ll complain of sunburn in ll.A., and you’ll melt in the Amazon.” She smiled at Jeremy with her full-teeth smile. Cassie felt her heart suddenly squeeze. Her mother was strangers with her daughter and friends with that newbie, that cheechako, who wasn’t even family and couldn’t track a polar bear in a zoo? Cassie stirred her beans, not hungry.

Jeremy wagged his spoon. “Mark my words: Hell is frozen. I should never have chosen Arctic research. But I’m man enough to change.”

Cassie searched for something innocuous to say. “So . . . how are the bears?” Scott’s face lit up. “Earmarked a hundred twenty-six. That’s thirty-two more than they got at NPI.” National Polar Institute was one hundred fifty miles west, near Prudhoe Bay, and it was the closest thing to a football rival the Eastern Beaufort station could have. “Not that we’re counting,” added Max as he sat on his stool and helped himself to rice and beans.

“Course not,” Cassie said. “You visiting, or back on staff?” Grinning even more broadly, Max said, “We got the grant. Two years’ worth.”

“It’s joint with NPI and the Chukchi Sea guys,” Liam said. “But Max is back on staff, and Owen got his equipment—brand-new computers. Very snazzy.”

Max was back! And they’d gotten the grant! And she’d missed it. “That’s wonderful!” she said, as enthusiastically as she could. Really, it was wonderful news. She’d wished for Max to come back for years. Cassie grinned at her former babysitter. “What’s the grant for?”

“Denning behavior,” Dad answered. “All five polar bear nations are participating, but we are the ones who will be combining the data.”

“Laszlo had us out poking sticks into dens till we got Max back on staff. Scouting the ice with headlamps. Your kind of stuff, kiddo,” Scott said. “Sorry you missed it.” So was she.

Jeremy gave a visible shudder. “Insanely suicidal.”

“You didn’t get eaten,” Dad said.

“Pure luck,” Jeremy said. “Glad that’s over with.”

She’d missed all of it. Well, she was back now, and she wasn’t missing anything else. Out of the corner of her eye, Cassie watched Gail perch on a stool and smooth her napkin across her lap. I’m home now, Cassie thought, and I’m staying.

* * * * *

Cassie shot upright in her bed. What the hell was that? “Bear?” she said. A woman was screaming. It took Cassie several seconds to remember where she was, and several more seconds to remember what other woman was in the station.

Her mother was screaming.

Cassie chucked off her comforter and ran out her bedroom door. She made it to outside her dad’s room as the screams subsided to sobs. “It’s all right,” her father was saying. “You’re here. You’re free. It’s over. It’s all right. They won’t take you again.”

“You don’t know that.” Her mother’s voice, broken.

Cassie pushed through the door. “Mom? Gail?” She halted in the doorway. Her mother was curled against Dad and was weeping on his shoulder.

Dad raised his head, and the expression was so raw that Cassie had to look away. “Nightmare,” he said to Cassie. “She’ll be all right. You go back to bed.” Cassie took a step toward the door. She wanted to retreat. She didn’t know what to do with her mother weeping like that and her father looking so . . . so . . . stricken, so helpless. Every crease in his face was a deep shadow. His eyes looked like smudged holes. “Are you sure?” she asked.

“Go ahead,” he said. He pressed his face against her mother’s hair, and she could tell that to him she was already gone. Cassie backed out the door and closed it behind her. She hesitated in the hallway.

She could hear her father’s voice clearly through the door.

“Same dream?” he said.

Cassie couldn’t hear the reply.

“Blame me,” he said. “I failed you. I should have saved you. Blame me. Hate me. But don’t be afraid.

You don’t have to be afraid. It’s over. It’s all over. You’re home.” ELEVEN

Latitude 70° 49’ 23” N

Longitude 152° 29’ 25” W

Altitude 10 ft.

CASSIE THREW HERSELF INTO data processing. For five days, she transferred several thousand latitude and longitude measurements into minuscule triangles on a topographical map, one triangle per den. She finished late on day five, and then stepped back to survey her work. She wrinkled her nose. Anyone could have done this—a kid, a monkey, Jeremy.

“Good,” Dad said behind her. “How many do we have?”

Cassie counted. “Forty-one on eastern Ellesmere, maximum distance twelve and a half miles from shore, twenty-eight within five miles.” Bear could be there now, distributing souls. “Baffin Island, twenty-three near Cape Adair.”

Her father took notes. “Foxe Basin?”

“Bear must have visited a number of these by now,” she said. It was the height of birth season. Had any of the cubs been stillborn? Some must have been. If he were in Karaskoye More and he felt a call in the Chukchi Sea, he might not make it even at superspeeds. She thought of Bear alone in his castle, mourning the cubs he’d failed to save.

Dad’s pencil paused. “Cassie, you don’t need to think about him anymore. You’re safe here.” Not again. She forced herself to smile and say in an even voice, “He’s not dangerous. He’s sweet.” And fun and funny.

“It’s a common psychological reaction for people to identify with their kidnappers,” he said. “But you’re home now. We won’t let him take you again.”

Dad was so stubborn. “You know what Bear did one time? I woke up with a sore throat, and he brought me breakfast in bed.” More like a feast, really. Pancakes, waffles, cereals. She’d never had anyone bring her breakfast in bed. “And then the rest of the morning, he told me stories so I wouldn’t have to talk and I wouldn’t be bored.” He’d even acted some of them out. Even with her sore throat, she had laughed a lot. “Does that sound so terrible?” She hadn’t laughed like that since she’d returned to the station.

“You don’t need to tell me,” he said. “Whatever happened, you’re safe now. You’re with people who love you.”

Bear loves me, she thought. “He’s not a monster,” she said.

Gail poked her face into the room. “It’s after midnight. Would you two workaholics come to bed?” She smiled with all her teeth.

“Do you want to call it a night?” Dad asked kindly, as if talking to a child.

Cassie sighed. One more argument wasn’t going to convince him. “All right.” She deposited her papers onto her desk, and she trotted after Dad and Gail.

At the door to her bedroom, Dad paused. “Good work today, Cassie.” She wasn’t sure of that. Bear did more to help the polar bears in one jaunt across the ice than she could do in one year of drawing triangles on maps.

“Night,” Gail said. She didn’t try to hug or kiss Cassie. After the first few awkward nights, they had let that drop in a tacit acknowledgment of the gulf between them.