If she’d had some warning of all of this… Bear’s bargain had stranded her alone on the Arctic ice pack. He should have known that she’d encounter a storm at some point in her trek. If he’d found some way to hint at the truth… He could have found some oblique way to warn her. Had he tried and she’d missed it? As she hiked across the ice, she played through her memories—and with each moment she relived, she missed him more until it felt like an aching wound.
Two hours later, the wind howled through the pressure ridges, kicking snow into the air. She was pelted with ice particles. After every other step, she wiped her goggles. Cassie tried to calculate how far she’d hiked. The layer of ice around her collar made it difficult to move her head. Not far enough, she thought.
More ice particles hit her, and she staggered backward. Arms over her face, she pushed through the wind, away from the leaning ice towers. It was tempting to hide in the shelter of one of the mammoth ones, but the ice around them was weaker. She needed the thick stuff if she did not want to end up underneath waves. Wind-driven snow stung like BBs. Visibility was low. Cassie stumbled over the rubble.
She hit flat ice. Leaning into the wind, she forded across it. She knelt down and dusted the surface snow away so she could see the base ice. Green-blue-brown, it seemed like old, thick ice. Please, let it be old, thick ice. “It’s coming, guys,” she called to the polar bears. “Better batten down the hatches.” Her voice shook. She saw only a half-dozen bear shapes in the swirling snow. Please, let me survive this, she thought.
Fighting the wind, Cassie set up her sleeping bag. Stiff with ice, it did not want to unroll. She swore at it and flattened it with her full body weight. Hands aching, she tied it with spare straps to her pack and anchored it all with an ice screw.
Momentarily, the wind died, and she saw the storm. It sounded and looked like a cloud of hissing bees. “Oh, Bear,” she whispered, “how could you do this to me?”
The boiling mass disappeared behind a wall of white ice shards. Cassie wiggled into her sleeping bag. She secured the zippers. Coming closer, the storm roared like a 747. Cassie prayed, and the storm hit.
CHAPTER 17
Latitude 87° 58’ 23” N
Longitude 150° 05’ 12” W
Altitude 8 ft.
The world fell apart.
Like an angry god, the wind punished the ice. It tore the ocean open, and it slammed it shut. Plates of ice rode over one another, jutting into the black sky. The ice screamed.
She curled inside her fragile cocoon. Black in the false night, her world had shrunk to six feet by two. The ice underneath her shook. Clenching her teeth, she hugged herself into a ball, as if that would hold the ice together.
She heard thunderous grinding as if the ground were being squeezed. Her heart beat in her throat. Sweat chilled her flesh. Any second, the ice could split and she could be dropped into the ocean. She could disappear without a trace. Dad, Gail, Gram… they would never know what had happened to her.
The wind slammed into her sleeping bag. She skidded in a circle around the single ice screw. Clockwise, with the screw. Cassie rolled inside the sleeping bag. She clutched at the nylon sides. Like a sail in irons, the nylon flapped. Wind whipped under her, and Cassie bounced on the ice. Slamming down hard, she hit her elbow, then her knee, then her hip.
A banshee scream, the wind shifted. She skidded again. Counterclockwise, loosening the screw. Soundless against the howling, she yelled. She pushed against the confines of the sleeping bag. “Let me out of here! Please, let me out!” Shrieking, she started to cry.
Inside a prison, Cassie was tossed back and forth, bruising with each roll. Outside, the storm boiled.
Seconds, minutes, hours later, the storm howled north, the ice fell silent, and the air was full of snow. Cassie, knotted inside her sleeping bag, whimpered.
Fitfully, she slept. She dreamed she was entombed in ice. Seven-foot trolls chased Bear, and she could not move. She screamed, but her throat did not work. A troll touched Bear, and he dissolved. She screamed again, soundless, and the troll turned toward her. Its face was a grotesque mask of moving shadows. She woke screaming, in blackness and in sweat.
Out! She had to get out! Cassie fumbled for the zipper to her sleeping bag. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t think. Out, out, out! Cold streamed in as she squirmed out.
She crawled into surreal whiteness. She could see nothing: no color, no shadow, no ground, no sky. “Help me! Someone! Anyone!” she called.
Surrounded by the false white night, she was utterly alone. Cassie felt around her. She found the strap she had used to tie herself to her pack. She shook the ice off it and pulled the pack toward her. At least she had not lost it in the storm. She hugged it as if it were a teddy bear, while snow seeped into her fleece.
It was the cold drip down her neck, more than anything else, that convinced her she was still alive. Her survival instincts kicked in as she started shivering, and she crawled back inside her sleeping bag.
She lay there for several hours, imagining her joints locking and her muscles stiffening like a corpse in rigor mortis. She pictured herself turning into the sculpture that Bear had carved… She closed her eyes, and she could see Bear leading her by the sleeve to the center of the garden, and her following, laughing, until she saw what it was he wanted her to see: the sculpture of her. He’d carved it for her, a late birthday present. Carved it from memory, a perfect likeness. Said it was the heart of the garden. And he’d proceeded to serenade her. Artist he was; singer he wasn’t. Remembering how she’d laughed, Cassie felt like crying.
He’d loved her, hadn’t he?
Did it matter anymore if he had? The sculpture was gone now. Bear was gone.
“Stop it,” she said out loud. It would kill her—the cold, the hunger, the exhaustion, her own thoughts. She felt like the storm had seeped inside her and was now tearing through her brain, her heart, her everything.
With an effort, she pushed her thoughts away and lay in her silent prison and listened to her heart beating like the sound of steady footsteps that were always the same distance away.
She lost track of time. At some point, her bladder demanded that she go outside. She emerged into the whiteout. Snow spat into her face. Visibility was still zero. She could not even see her feet. She felt her way to the end of the sleeping bag and squatted under her parka. She did not dare go any more than a foot from the sleeping bag. She could almost hear Dad’s voice telling her it was too dangerous to move in a whiteout. She’d heard stories of people lost in whiteouts five feet from their tent, and inside the solid whiteness, she believed it.
After crawling back into her sleeping bag, she lay listening to the wind. She wondered about Bear. What was it like for him in the troll castle? What were the trolls doing to him? Gail had screaming nightmares of her time there.
He’d risked so much to marry her. He had to have cared about her. Cassie thought of the way they used to talk late into the night until they were both falling asleep midsentence. She thought of how they’d worked side by side on her maps and numbers, devising better routes for patrolling. She thought of how he’d held her at night, stroking her hair, and whispering to her. And now he was trapped like her mother had been because she’d turned on a single flashlight.
Hours later, she checked on the conditions again. In some ways, they were better. The snow had thinned enough for her to see the red blur that was her pack, though she still could not see her full sleeping bag. From her waist down, the bag disappeared into the white as if it were an apparition. In some ways, though, conditions were worse: Thinner snow also reflected more sun. The white glare hurt, and she blinked back tears. Her eyes felt pierced by sand—the first symptom of snow blindness.