So all she had to do was find herself another munaqsri. Problem solved.
She snorted at herself. Like it was so easy. Billions of people spent their lives without seeing a munaqsri or even knowing they existed. Of course, she did know they existed, even if they moved too fast to see, but unless she just happened to know of an imminent birth or death…
The answer came so quickly that she nearly shouted out loud. If she were present at a creature’s death… Cassie slid off the polar bear, her eyes fixed on the arctic fox. She’d seen foxes dogging the polar bears for weeks now. Arctic foxes were scavengers, living off the remains of bear kills. But with so many bears together, every kill was thoroughly stripped—there were few remains. She felt her heart race, thudding against her rib cage.
Somewhere on the ice behind them, there had to be a starving arctic fox.
“We’re going back,” she said, slapping the bear’s shoulder. “Come on. Back the way we came.” If she could find another munaqsri, he could help her off the ice. Even better, he could take her to Bear!
Cassie trudged north through her sprawling polar bear army. The bears milled around the ice and watched her with their black, inscrutable eyes. She stroked their fur as she passed, trying to reassure them. “I’ll save him,” she said. “I promise I’ll bring your king home.”
After five hours of walking, she saw a small dusty white shadow, nearly yellow against the blue-white ice. Loose snow swirled like fast-moving clouds around it. The shadow raised its head as she approached—it was an old fox. He was so thin that she could see his ribs pressing up through his fur. Poor thing, she thought. If the polar bears hadn’t banded together, he might have had a chance at one more season, but he hadn’t been able to compete with all the bears.
Shedding her pack, she knelt on the ice beside the fox. He laid his head back down and closed his eyes. His breathing was labored. She watched his ribs jerk up and down, his breath a harsh huff against the hiss of the wind.
Behind her, Cassie heard the soft puffing of bears. She saw them out of the corners of her eyes, blurred by the frost on her goggles. “Just a little longer,” she promised them. And then she’d be off the ice and on her way to Bear… if this worked.
It had to work. The fox munaqsri had to come, didn’t he?
No one would come when a polar bear died, she thought. Their souls would… She didn’t know what would happen to their souls. And with no one to transport the souls to the newborn, then these bears, these beautiful bears, would be extinct in a generation. No soul, no life.
Bear had risked all of them to marry her. He’d trusted that she’d respect his one and only request. And she hadn’t. Cassie hugged her stomach. Even through all the layers, she could feel the slight bulge. This… what he’d done… didn’t excuse the damage she’d done, however unintentionally, to all these beautiful bears. She had to reach Bear.
The fox shuddered, and his ribs sank down, down, as if folding into his fur. They didn’t rise again. “Munaqsri!” she called.
She saw nothing.
“Fox munaqsri!” Cassie said. “I need to talk to you on behalf of the bear munaqsri!” He had to be here. She had no backup plan.
“You know the polar bear?” a voice said. Suddenly, a second arctic fox perched beside the dead fox. Spiking his fur, the fox arched his back like a cat. “You tell him I blame him for the fate of my foxes. While his bears herd, my foxes are starving.” His muzzle curled back, and sunlight glinted on sharp incisors. “I will bring my complaints to the Arctic overseer—” With his thick white fur and delicate snout, he looked like a cross between a Pekinese and a Persian cat, hardly anything threatening. But he was an angry fluff ball with the power of a munaqsri.
Cassie scrambled to her feet. “Wait, listen! Bear… the bear munaqsri… is in trouble. I need you to speed me to the troll castle, east of the sun and west of the moon.”
The effect of her words was instantaneous. He switched from furious to distressed in an eyeblink. “He has forsaken his bears? Oh, my foxes!” The fox tilted his head back and yowled. “My foxes will starve! No one has ever returned from there. He will never return!”
The fox’s cries sliced into her. She clapped her hands to her ears. “Yes, he will!” Cassie shouted. Her mother had returned. If Bear could rescue Gail, then Cassie could rescue Bear. She would bring him back. She would fix everything. “I can bring him back!”
His howl died in yet another split-second mood change. Now silent, the fox stared at her. “Who are you?” he asked finally.
“Cassie Dasent,” she said. She couldn’t read the expression on his fox face. He’d already gone from furious to distressed to contemplative in less than thirty seconds. Please, let him help her.
“You are not a munaqsri,” he said.
“I’m the wife of the polar bear,” she said.
“Interesting taste,” he said.
Cassie gritted her teeth. Now he was mocking her? Her husband was missing, suffering with trolls; the polar bears and arctic foxes were in danger of extinction; and she was stuck on the ice, at least four months pregnant, with summer rapidly approaching. “I didn’t trek here from beyond the North Pole to be insulted by something cuddly,” she snapped. “It’s your choice, Fluffy: Help me and help your foxes, or don’t help me and watch them die.”
Fluffy licked his nose. Cassie held her breath. She’d either reached the erratic munaqsri or utterly antagonized him.
“I cannot take you there,” he said finally. “The castle is east of the sun and west of the moon. It is beyond my region. I cannot leave the ice. Another munaqsri is responsible for foxes on land.”
“Then help me find another munaqsri,” Cassie said. There had to be a munaqsri who could cross from the ice to the land. Quickly, she scanned the ice, the sky, and the sea.
Out in the ocean, a whale lifted its spiral tusk. Slow and stately, a second horn rose out of the water. As if in an ancient ritual, the two narwhals crossed their unicorn horns. “Call a whale,” she said.
“A whale will not help you,” he said. “You are not a munaqsri, and they will have no interest in the fate of the polar bears or of my foxes.”
One problem at a time, she thought as she lifted her pack onto her shoulders. “Just do it. Please, Fluffy?”
The ocean buckled at her feet. Screeching, seabirds recoiled from the water. For an instant, their bodies blackened the sky. “He comes,” the fox said.
Cassie stumbled as waves rocked the ice. Inches from the ice edge, a dark smooth curve as large as a submarine rose out of the water. And then it kept rising, larger and larger. As Cassie stared, the bowhead whale lifted its mouth above the swirling waves. Its maw gaped open, and Cassie saw fringed plates of baleen, enormous sheaths that filled the whale’s mouth. Algae, barnacles, and seaweed clung to the dripping sheaths. No ordinary whale could have been this huge.
The colossus shut its mouth, and waves swelled onto the ice. Cassie scrambled backward as freezing water splashed her mukluks. Behind her, the ice cracked. She looked over her shoulder to see a split in the ice widen from the stress of the waves. On either side of the split, her polar bears waited, shoulder to shoulder—her beautiful bears. Seeing them gave her strength.
“I need your help,” she said to the whale.
“You are not a munaqsri.” His voice pounded like a drum. She shuddered as each syllable hit her ears.