“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.
Steam rose from the dishes, and her stomach rumbled. She licked her lips, her mouth watering. She’d never seen so much food before. And it all looked good. She shook her head at herself. The impossible had happened, was currently happening, and her reaction was hunger. Maybe she was adjusting to all the strangeness. Or at least her stomach was. She reached for a steaming dish of carrots in a white sauce.
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.”