Mud dripped down Cassie’s legs, and the runoff turned a Mississippi brown. Father Forest had told her she would find fresh clothes in the bathroom closet, so she rinsed all her long johns and silkweights. Even considering the knockout tea, which (she had to admit) had provided much-needed sleep, he was proving to be a generous host. She felt like a hotel guest, or what she imagined a hotel guest would feel like—she’d never been one. Cassie sanded her skin with pine-scented soap. Wow, she had missed being clean! She scrubbed her hair. Grass clumps plopped onto the shower floor. She noticed one was seaweed.
She shook her hair and splattered the walls. Father Forest should be nominated for sainthood, she thought. She finally felt human again. First thing she would ask Bear to do when all this was over would be to resculpt the bathroom. She imagined herself and Bear rebuilding the castle side by side.
Glorying in her daydream and in the water, Cassie stretched. And she felt a fluttering in her stomach.
Her hands flew to her curved stomach. She felt the fluttering a second time. It was like wings inside her abdomen. Cassie grabbed the shower wall as her knees caved.
Oh, no. No, no. How could she have a baby? She huddled against the bark wall of the shower. Her hair stuck to her skin as water streamed over her. She wasn’t ready to be a mother!
She had so cleverly avoided thinking about it too much. But the baby wasn’t waiting for her to adjust to the idea. Every day, it marched closer to birth.
She forced herself to take a deep breath. She had to keep calm. Bear would help her. She wasn’t going to be alone. He’d know what to do with a baby—a munaqsri baby. Once she and Bear were together again, they could face this.
Cassie got to her feet and dried herself with a towel made of woven ferns. It fell apart on her skin. All she had to do was find Bear in time and it would all be fine. With Father Forest’s help, it would all be fine.
Cassie pulled the clothes out of the cabinet, and the clothes unfolded into a dress with a leaf green blouse and a shapeless bark brown skirt. Cotton underwear fell onto the floor. She stared at the dress. No one who was going to be trekking across a boreal forest wore a dress. Cassie searched the cabinet for other choices. She found only doll-like slippers. The slippers were worse than the dress—they would shred in the forest. What was Father Forest thinking?
Cassie glanced at her wet clothes, now hanging on a branch towel rack. She didn’t have much choice. If she didn’t want to be naked, she’d have to wear the dress. She put it on and scowled down at herself. “Ridiculous,” she said.
She pulled on her old mukluks and found Father Forest outside, waist-deep in ferns. He raised his head as she stepped on a singing stone. He beamed at her. “Sleep well?”
“Completely rested and ready to go,” she announced. “Thanks for the hospitality.” She decided not to say a word about the dress. It was probably all he had. His gnome pants would have been knickers on her. She shouldn’t be ungrateful after all he was doing for her and Bear.
He screwed up his face like a prune. “Not now!”
She’d felt the baby move; she didn’t want to wait another minute. “Why not?”
Father Forest waved at the yard of fronds. “The ferns are ready to seed.”
She was waiting for ferns? She had not crossed the entire Arctic to be delayed by ferns. “Bear is waiting for me,” she said.
“Ferns cannot wait,” he said.
Clenching her teeth, she reminded herself that he had fed and clothed her. A little yard work was a fair trade. “Fine,” she said through her teeth. “Let me help.”
He smiled with eyes crinkling like Santa Claus’s. Kneeling, he demonstrated how to pluck the seeds from the undersides of the ferns, scatter the seeds around the yard, and smooth pine needles over them. He acted like a child showing off a new toy. “Gravity and wind will do that, you know,” Cassie said.
“You are so innocent,” he said fondly. “It’s really charming.”
She scowled. “After the ferns, we go to Bear.” Bending over the ferns, she scraped the seeds with her short fingernails. She tossed them into open patches.
“Good, good,” he said, watching her.
It was as pointless as plucking autumn leaves. Cassie scraped and tossed, scraped and tossed, as fast as she could. Bear was waiting for her. She pictured him pacing in a cage while trolls prodded him and laughed. She hated the thought of him trapped and helpless. She scraped so fast that she shredded the tender leaves.
Whistling to himself, Father Forest leisurely bent over the ferns, picked the seeds one by one, examined each one in the low angled sunlight, considered the full yard, and placed the seeds individually on the ground. Cassie wanted to shake him. She had to bite her lip to keep from shouting at him to move.
Cassie worked through lunch and dinner. Father Forest came and went, tottering off to do munaqsri business (or, she thought, scratch his elbow for an hour or two). She stretched her back, wincing, as he sniffed the roses that curled around the cottage windows. He peeled back the petals until the roses were in full bloom. The old man, she decided, was a kinnaq, a lunatic. But as long as he brought her to Bear, she didn’t care. She finished with the ferns. “Now can we go?”
Father Forest arranged the petals like an artist. “All the seeds?”
She surveyed the yard. “Yes.”
He gestured to the forest. “And those?”
Cassie looked over her shoulder at the expanse of boreal forest beyond the picket fence. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
He left her looking out at the forest.
Cassie felt the baby shift inside her again, and she automatically placed her hands over her stomach. If she cooperated, this kinnaq would help her find Bear. Sedna had said he’d help her. Even the owl had said she could rely on him to do what was best.
For the first time, she wondered exactly what “best” meant.
She turned back to the cottage. Silent and peaceful, it looked like a painting. The amber light of the permanent sun warmed the roof. She didn’t want to spend another night without Bear. Father Forest would simply have to understand.
She marched into the cottage and through the kitchen. She found him lounging in a wooden rocking chair in the living room. He looked up as she entered. “Finished already?”
“I want my husband back,” she said.
“And I want my tea,” he said. “Come, have tea with me, and we will talk.” He tottered into the kitchen and fetched the kettle.
“Bear needs rescuing,” she said as evenly as she could. Rescuing Bear was more important than tea or ferns or showers or sleep. Rescuing Bear was more important than anything else in the world. She followed Father Forest to the kitchen. “It’s not that I don’t appreciate your hospitality, but every second Bear is in that troll castle is a second too long. Please, try to understand.”
He poured two cups of tea. “Won’t you have some?”
She wanted to scream in frustration. Instead, she gritted her teeth and tried to smile. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were delaying me on purpose.”
He shuffled to a root chair and sat. Not looking at her, he stirred his tea. “You cannot travel with that child inside you. It risks too much.”
Cassie froze. She had to have heard wrong. “Excuse me?”
“I am sorry to disappoint you.”
She opened and shut her mouth twice before saying, “I don’t understand. You have to help me. You were supposed to help me. The mermaid said… Munaqsri are supposed to be good. You’re supposed to do what’s best.”
“I do want what is best. You cannot be allowed to risk a future caretaker.” Perched on the root chair with his feet dangling above the floor, he looked like a wrinkled child.
She clenched her fists. “I don’t care about the risks. I have to try!” Her father hadn’t tried, and look what had happened: She’d grown up without a mother, and Gail screamed at night.