It wasn’t smoke, Cassie realized, it was trolls. The air was thick with trolls. In the squirming cloud, she saw traces of eyes and teeth, fur and feathers, arms and tentacles. Strobelike color flashed, like a surreal discotheque, and she panicked. “Don’t touch me!” She slapped at them. It felt like pushing through rain. She realized she had felt this waterair before—when the trolls had taken Bear, back before the castle had melted.
Hundreds of trolls pressed their flimsy forms against her, only to dissipate like mist. She thought of her mother, imprisoned here for years, and knew it was hopeless to have come here without a clear plan. She wanted to screech like the aspen. Bear was almost in reach. She couldn’t have come so far only to fail.
“Follow me,” the troll princess said. Through the wispy shapes, she shone iridescent. She bobbed like a floating Japanese lantern.
Gritting her teeth, Cassie elbowed trolls out of her way. The trolls melted, as insubstantial as ghosts, as soundless as wisps of cloud. It was an eerie silence. The only sound was her own breathing. The trolls did not breathe. Shuddering, she hugged her stomach. Her uncles had been right: This was no place for living things. All her instincts were screaming at her to run away, but she kept going, deeper into the trolls.
Her heart sank as she followed the princess farther into the castle and through more and more trolls. Who was she to think she could go up against this—whatever “this” was? She was just a human. She didn’t have any magic.
Her stomach squeezed, and she had to stop. Clutching her stomach, she panted. Trolls swarmed her. She felt their light, damp touch on her neck and on her face. Colors teased the corners of her eyes.
Trolls thinned in front of her, and Cassie pushed sweat-streaked hair out of her eyes. She was standing before a dais of basalt. Filling the dais was the troll queen. Unlike the wisps all around her, the troll queen seemed as solid as a granite mountain. A thousand eyes coated her body like rivets.
Cassie straightened her shoulders and tried to stare back into the queen’s splintered gaze. She hadn’t let Father Forest or the winds see her fear; she wasn’t going to let this queen see it either. Even if her rescue mission was doomed.
In unison, the eyes blinked. “We have no need for another human,” the queen said in a voice like a hive of bees. “Why have you brought her to us?”
The troll princess floated to the dais. She was now a purple orb with a distorted humanesque face. She whispered to the queen.
With her thousand eyes, the queen scrutinized Cassie. “Interesting.” She closed half her eyes, and those eyes hardened into silver plates.
Cassie lifted her chin and summoned her courage. This was what it had all been for—all for this moment. She would face down a troll queen. She would not take no for an answer. She would wring Bear out of her, if she had to. “I’m here for my husband. And you cannot stop me.”
“Very well,” the queen said.
Cassie’s jaw dropped open. “Excuse me?” She must have misheard, or at least misunderstood. “You’ll let me… He’s free to go?”
“Convince him to make my daughter a baby, and he is free.”
Cassie opened and shut her mouth. “Can I talk to him?”
“Of course,” the queen said.
Cassie’s head spun. All he had to do was sleep with the troll princess, and he would be free? She bit her lip. Had he refused because he loved Cassie too much, or had he refused because he had not loved Cassie enough?
All around her, the trolls rustled. It sounded like wind in autumn leaves.
Out of the trolls, Bear came. Soundless, his paws padded on the stone. Cassie dug her fingernails into the palms of her hands. Her knees shook. Two feet in front of her, he stopped. His black eyes were unfathomable.
Cassie could not speak. She stretched her fingertips and touched his muzzle. His fur was as soft as she remembered. She buried her hand in his pelt. He nuzzled her hair. She threw her arms around his broad neck. “Good to see you, Your Royal Ursine Highness,” she whispered.
“You came for me.”
“Just in the area,” she said. “Thought I’d say hello.”
Bear dipped his head to Cassie’s abdomen. He pressed his furry face to it. Cassie stroked his ears. “He… she… is moving,” Bear said. He looked at her. “Can you forgive me?”
Cassie swallowed a lump in her throat. “Yes. You?”
“Yes,” he said.
She smiled, and then she hugged her stomach again as a contraction robbed her breath.
“My bears should have taken care of you,” he said, concern in his voice.
When she could breathe again, she answered, “They did.” It seemed like years ago that she’d been on the ice.
“Good,” he said. They were silent for a moment. Cassie wished she could find words—there was so much she had wanted to say. As she’d crossed the ice, the tundra, and the forest, she’d imagined this moment over and over, but this wasn’t how she’d pictured it, with thousands of trolls looking on.
“I missed you,” he said simply.
She flushed and looked down at her pregnant self, speckled with blood and dirt. “Hardly the movie star rescuer.”
“You are beautiful,” he said.
She snorted.
“You have a beautiful soul.”
“Nice euphemism.”
“On an island of trolls, it is a compliment.”
She glanced over at the troll queen. Spikes sprouted from her head and tail, outgrowths of the eye plates. “So,” Cassie said conversationally, “is she going to skewer us?” Her voice cracked on the last word.
He touched her cheek with his wet nose and whispered in her ear, “Tell me the plan. I am ready.”
She wanted to cry. So close! “Find the castle, find Bear… That’s as far as I got. You have any ideas?”
“I cannot do as they ask. It is not possible,” he said. “They have no bodies. Otherwise, I would have been home to you in an instant.” Home to you—the words sounded like music.
Of course, he couldn’t impregnate a woman who had no body. He couldn’t even magic her molecules—she had no molecules. “Besides, I’d be jealous.” Her voice caught again.
“She cannot help us,” the troll queen said. Cassie gripped his fur—no! She could not be losing him again. The troll princess drooped blue, and the queen stretched a tentacle to stroke her, as if to comfort her. It moved through the princess’s body as if through water. She retracted the tentacle, and for an instant she was translucent. The queen, Cassie realized, was as shapeless as the other trolls. Bear was right—none of them had bodies. It was all an illusion. The queen’s eyes fixed back on Cassie. Pulsing orange now, she said, “Remove the human. We have no need of her.”
The trolls descended on them. “No!” Cassie shouted. Hundreds of trolls slid between Cassie and Bear and, crowbarlike, wedged them apart. She couldn’t lose him a second time! “No, stop! Please!”
Bear was shouting too. She fought against the trolls. Each one she pushed back was replaced by a dozen more. It was like fighting ocean waves. Trolls flowed into her.
Her stomach contracted, and for a second, Cassie lost ground. “No! Please, anything you want! Bargain with me! Anything!”
“No, Cassie! Save yourself!”
She shouted at the queen, “Tell me: What do you want?”
Surrounded by shadowy shapes, the queen writhed on the dais. “Life,” she hissed. Instinctively, Cassie clutched her stomach.
“Do not do it!” Bear said.
“You have life?” Wingless, the queen rose into the air. “You have life in you?”
What did that have to do with anything? Cassie looked down at her stomach and thought of her long journey here—it had to do with everything.