CHAPTER 12
Latitude 79° 48’ 44” N
Longitude 153° 37’ 58” W
Altitude 6 ft.
As Bear carried her north, Cassie laid her cheek against the soft fur of his neck. She breathed in his scent—sea salt and damp fur. Above, the northern lights played between the stars as Bear ran across the endless ice. She thought of the last time Bear had carried her away from the station. Same ride, but now she knew what waited at the end of it.
Or at least she hoped she did. What if Bear rejected her plan?
After many hours, they reached the castle. Cassie saw the spires, luminous in the light of the moon. Bear slowed to a walk, his paws crunching on granules of ice.
“We’re home,” Cassie said softly.
Bear paused, and she knew he’d heard her. She wrapped her arms around his broad neck, and then she dismounted and walked through the shimmering castle gate with her hand resting on her Bear’s back.
She led him to the banquet hall and removed her pack. She unzipped it and began to pull out maps, binders, and notebooks and pile them on the banquet table. Frost curled around a map as she unrolled it. “Can you tell the table not to eat this?”
Bear focused on the table, and the frost retreated. “What is all this?” he asked.
Cassie took a deep breath. Time to see if she truly had a future here. For all her fine words to Dad, Bear could squash everything without even knowing he was doing it. If he was unwilling… I’ll have to convince him, she thought. She pointed to a section of the map. “Here’s the coast. And here are this season’s dens. One bear per triangle.” Cassie flipped open a three-ring binder. “This is a record of the denning dates with the predicted dates of birth, which I can use to plot routes for you that will bring you closest to the most likely births at any given time for the rest of the birth season. Predictive modeling. We can use it to change the odds.”
Bear furrowed his broad forehead.
She plunged on. “Eventually, with enough data points, I should be able to be precise… within an order of magnitude, of course.” Thanks to Owen, she had printouts of all the files from all the cooperating research stations. It wasn’t a complete record of the full bear population by any means, but it was a start. “Look,” she said, “I’ve already plotted a preliminary course. We can test it out tomorrow.”
She watched him, waiting for his reaction and trying to read his glass black eyes.
“You wish to come with me out onto the ice? Out to the births?”
“I have to,” she said firmly. “For this to work, we need to record more data, and you can’t do both jobs. Besides, you won’t know what data we need.” She tried a grin. “And you won’t have opposable thumbs.”
His laugh was a familiar and welcome soft rumble that washed over her, and then he was serious again. “All munaqsri travel alone. We must avoid detection—”
“All munaqsri miss delivering souls,” she interrupted. “You’ve told me that yourself. I can help. Maybe we won’t make all the births, but we can improve the odds.”
He nodded slowly.
Cassie felt her shoulders unknot. He wanted to save the cubs badly enough. He’d agree. Together, they could save bears.
“You are certain you wish to do this?” he said. “It is not without risk. Once outside these walls, if I am not touching you, I cannot magic you. If we are separated…”
“I’ll have my gear,” she said, patting her pack. “If necessary, I can survive an entire week on the ice with this equipment.” All her training, her skill, her education, had led to this. She’d be directly helping the polar bears instead of writing papers and securing grants. If he agreed.
Swinging his massive head over the documents, he studied the maps, the files, the lists of numbers. “If this helps… all polar bears will thank you. I thank you.” He leaned his head against her stomach, and she wrapped her arms around his neck. In a lighter voice, he added, “It is, though, quite unnatural.”
“So says the talking bear,” she said.
His fur shook as he laughed again. “I had no one to mock me for days.”
“Vacation’s over,” she said. “Cassie’s home.”
Softly, he said, “You have no idea how happy that makes me.”
She felt her cheeks warm. She felt as if she could float to the ceiling. “Romantic,” she said.
He covered his muzzle with his paw, miming embarrassment.
Cassie opened another binder. She wanted to show him everything. “Look, here are all the current tagging numbers from the Polar Bear Specialist Group of the IUCN.”
“Come,” he said, nudging her with his nose. “We have a long day ahead of us tomorrow.”
Cassie grinned. Out on the ice, together. Leaving the IUCN binder, she walked alongside him, past the carvings in deep blue ice and up the staircase lit by candlelight. “You know I had a number all picked out for you: A505, Alaskan ID.”
“A505,” he repeated.
“I think you’d look nice with a tag. Just like an earring.” She tugged on his furry ear. She couldn’t get enough of touching him. It reminded her that he was real. “Not to mention the green ink on your gums. Very attractive.”
As always, he waited in the hall while she prepared for bed. Once she slid under the covers, she blew out the candle. Everything descended into darkness, and she heard the pad of bear paws and then the footsteps of a man. The mattress sank as he climbed into bed beside her.
For the first time in five nights, she slept well.
Cassie woke first. Her cheek lay against his bare chest, smooth and human. Her arm was draped across his stomach. She lay there for a long moment, feeling him breathe. Her husband. She reached up in the darkness and lightly touched his face. Her fingers traced his chin and lingered over his lips. She’d never kissed him. She wondered what it would be like.
She felt him stir, and she pulled her hand away quickly. She rolled to her side of the bed. “Ready to patrol?” she asked him.
She felt the sheets shift and the mattress rise as he stood.
“We’re going together, right?” she asked.
Cassie felt a wisp of wind in her face. When he spoke, it was with his deeper, polar bear voice. “Of course, O Intrepid Leader.”
She grinned.
Cassie heard the door open. She waited until she heard it click closed before finding her flashlight and turning it on. She dressed quickly in full expedition gear—Gore-Tex pants, mukluks, all of it—and then she met Bear at the front archway to the castle. Soon, she was riding him across the ice.
The Arctic spread before them, blue-shadowed and as broad as the Sahara. Cassie leaned over Bear’s neck as the wind slapped her face. This was wonderful. This was magnificent. This was… far too slow. She shouted a dog sledding call into his ear: “Mush, mush, mush!”
“Very amusing,” he said, but he sped into a blur. She whooped as the deep night-winter blue stretched into a single sheet of ice and sky. Yes! She was flying! The midday moon hung low and fat on the southern horizon. She waved to it.
Bear leaped over a pressure ridge. Laughing, Cassie grabbed his fur and clamped her thighs around his middle to keep from falling off. She loved this! They should have done this months ago.
She squinted into the dark whiteness. She saw the aurora borealis curling around the fringes of her vision, green and white flashes. According to Inuit legend, the northern lights were the dancing spirits of the dead. Cassie wondered if that was where the unclaimed souls went, the ones munaqsri missed, the ones that should have gone to newborns. Don’t be ridiculous, she told herself. The aurora was caused by electrically charged particles from the sun hitting the upper atmosphere, not floating souls. The souls went… She had no idea where missed souls went. She supposed they could go to the aurora. Bear had said once that they were lost. Maybe eventually, she’d have enough data to map paths for deaths as well as births. Wouldn’t that be something? But she shouldn’t get ahead of herself. First she had to see whether her plan would work at all.