“No, Cassie!” Bear snapped his teeth and swiped with his claws, but the trolls still blocked him.
She’d do what she had to do to save her Bear. That’s what she’d done all along, all for him. Wasn’t it? With her arms wrapped around her stomach, she looked at her love and wondered—had she done it for him, or for herself?
The troll queen, body spreading like ink, flew above her. “We will keep you, then, and we will have your child!” she exulted.
Cassie felt the damp touch of trolls on her stomach. She swung her hand out to ward them off and struck only empty air. “Your princess promised my freedom!”
The troll princess shrank into a ball. “I didn’t know!” she wailed.
Growing like some mythical god, the queen filled the cavernous room. The trolls thickened around Cassie and Bear. Through wisps of gray, the queen throbbed orange and green. “Your baby for your king. It is our bargain.”
Cassie looked down at her bulging stomach. Here was her chance for the two things she’d wanted when she’d begun this journey: her Bear and no baby. Except that it was not that simple. It hadn’t been that simple for a while now. “There must be something else you want,” she said.
“We make no other offer,” the queen said.
Cassie stroked her stomach and almost felt dйjа vu, though it wasn’t her memory she was feeling. She knew this moment. This had been her mother’s choice when she’d faced down the North Wind. This had been her father’s choice when he’d honored Gail’s sacrifice and stayed with the newborn Cassie. Cassie hadn’t understood it before. She hadn’t understood them. But she did now—the horrible frustration her father must have felt, having to make that choice, this choice. All at once, she forgave him; she forgave them both. How could she give up her baby? But how could she lose Bear? She needed him. She loved him.
“Do not do it, Cassie,” he said. “Leave me. Please, I beg you.” She heard the words: If you love me, let me go.
She loved him enough to leave all she had ever known, to turn her world upside down, to come to this place beyond all known places, to risk her life, to almost die.
Did she love him enough to let him go?
Yes, she did.
The queen pulsed brighter. “What is your answer?”
Bowing her head, Cassie said a single word: “No.”
CHAPTER 31
Latitude indeterminate
Longitude indeterminate
Altitude indeterminate
Hissing, the trolls rolled over them. One troll was a drop of water, but hundreds of thousands were a tidal wave. More trolls flooded between Cassie and Bear. No, wait! She wasn’t ready yet! She hadn’t said good-bye.
Bear blurred behind trolls as if underwater. Muscles straining, he pushed at the tide. Cassie skidded backward. “At least let me say good-bye! Please!” She heard him call her name, and the trolls hissed louder. “Bear, I love you!” she yelled. Could he hear her? Please, let him have heard her. He’d never heard her say it. “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!” For everything! she wanted to say—for not trusting him, for endangering their baby, and most of all for failing to rescue him. She had proved to be her father’s daughter to the end. She had found her limit, the line she would not cross, the cliff she would not leap off. Bear was now a white smudge behind the gray shadows. “Bear!”
Her stomach seized.
For an instant, she lost her breath, and the trolls swept her up. She sailed backward and rammed into a wall. Her face smushed sideways against stone. “You’re crushing me!” Crushing the baby!
The walls melted, and Cassie spilled into the white room. Catching her balance, she ran toward the throne room, but the troll princess sealed the wall shut again with a word, separating Cassie from the other trolls and from Bear. Shouting, Cassie pounded on the wall until another contraction crushed the breath out of her. She felt wet run down her inner thighs. “Oh, no. God, no,” she said. “Not now. Not here.” Not without Bear. Not stranded on a troll island.
A pulsing orb, the troll princess said, “You truly have life in you?”
“Let me out of here,” Cassie said. “Make the door appear.” She had to get to her grandfather. He had to take her home.
The troll princess floated across the room and said, “Open,” the magic word. The stone melted into the wooden door. Battered, it hung open, and Cassie heard the crash of waves. She bolted outside.
Sea air hit her face. “Grandfather!”
Black clouds swarmed.
“Grandfather, help me.” She doubled over as another contraction racked through her. Walking made the contractions worse. “Grandfather!” she screamed.
Fascinated, the troll princess oozed over the rocks. “Is this pain?”
Cassie slipped on seaweed as another contraction snatched her breath. She caught herself on a tree. Her arms and legs shook. “Please, Grandfather!”
He did not answer, or he did not hear. Wordless, the wind stirred the sea, and swells smashed into the shore.
The troll princess asked, “What is it like to feel pain?”
She had to keep calm. Calm. Calm. Cassie took deep breaths.
The princess sighed. “I wish I could feel pain.”
Another contraction followed fast on the heels of the last. This was not a false alarm; she knew it. “Bear!” Breaking waves drowned her cry.
Contractions crashed on top of each other like a relentless sea storm. Cassie gasped for air. She flailed with pain. Her hands hit the rocks. She did not feel them. She yelled like an animal.
She didn’t know how long it lasted—hours, minutes, days. Contractions came and went. She was caught inside them. The world outside her body ceased to exist. She couldn’t think of a time before this and couldn’t imagine a time after. It was just the pain, the rocks, and the sea. And then, like in the eye of a storm, the pain eased, and Cassie needed to push. She spread her skirt and squatted. Push. Veins jumped out on her neck, and sweat popped out on her forehead. Her lungs whooshed. Push. She was exploding. She wanted to climb out of her skin. It hurt to push, and it hurt not to push. She felt herself stretching. She would burst. More than anything, she wanted the baby out. She pushed.
A nervous-looking man perched on the rocks.
Cassie saw him. “Jamie! Help me!”
The troll princess darted behind him. He did not see her. “Are you all right?”
With clenched teeth, she said, “Catch the baby.”
Jamie inched backward. “But…”
“Please!”
Gulping, Jamie knelt beside her on the rocks. “I can see the top of its head!” He looked up at Cassie. “It has hair.”
She inhaled. “Soul ready?”
“No one has died today. I have no souls,” he said. “I’m sorry, but it will be stillborn.”
She had to push now. She resisted. “Like hell it will!”
“I told you, I am short on souls.”
Pain hit. “Take mine!”
“Munaqsri don’t kill.”
She had to push! She howled. Her whole body wanted the baby out of her. But she would not let it. Not without a soul. “I want my baby!”
At Cassie’s yell, the princess floated in closer.
“What is that?” Jamie scrambled back across the rocks.
Lifting her sweating head, Cassie looked at the troll princess. She was a troll from east of the sun and west of the moon, which was, Cassie had been told again and again, beyond the ends of the earth, where no living thing ever went.
The phrase tickled a memory: Is that what you want me to do? Let their souls drift beyond the ends of the earth? Beyond the ends of the earth? Here?
Yes, here. On an island of trolls… Trolls have no shape, no physical bodies, Gail had said. It’s an island of wild spirits. An island of wild spirits… an island of trolls… beyond the ends of the earth. Not for living things. Nothing living ever goes there. In a flash, Cassie understood: Trolls were souls. He won’t make me a baby, the troll princess had said. It is not possible, Bear had said. They have no bodies. The troll princess didn’t want to have a baby; she wanted to be a baby. “Here’s your chance,” she said to the troll princess. “You want to live?”