“Do not be afraid,” he said softly. “As long as these walls are standing, nothing here will harm you.”
Eyes closed, she tried to breathe. It felt as if there weren’t enough oxygen.
“Come,” he said.
Cassie opened her eyes to see the bear walking down the shimmering hallway. For a second, she didn’t move. She looked back over her shoulder at the outside world, and then she took a deep breath and followed the bear.
The corridor widened into a golden and glowing banquet hall. The faceted walls glittered so brightly with candlelight from the chandeliers that Cassie saw sparkles when she blinked. Translucent, the cathedral ceiling glowed like stained glass. She looked around her in wonder. Carved birds and animals decorated the walls and ceilings. Buttresses arched over statues. A banquet table stretched the length of the hall with thronelike ice chairs on either end. It looked like… She tried to think of places to compare it to, and failed. It was as if every beautiful ray of light, every beautiful shape of ice that she had ever seen, were here all at once.
“We have had a long journey,” the bear said, suddenly behind her. Startled, she spun to face him. “You must wish to eat.”
When she turned back to the banquet hall, the vast table that had waited in silent splendor now overflowed with food. Fruit cascaded from ice crystal bowls. Steam rose from blue-white dishes. Breads were piled in pyramids. She breathed in a hundred spices. “I don’t understand,” she said. She saw no waiter and no chefs—nothing to explain the sudden appearance of a feast.
“It is food,” he said gently. “You eat it.”
As if to demonstrate, the polar bear swallowed an entire loaf of bread. She shook her head. The act was so incongruous with his fierce appearance. “Bears don’t eat bread,” she said. “You’re a carnivore.”
“We all have flaws,” he said.
Was that a joke? Did he have a sense of humor? She stared at him. “This can’t be real,” she said.
He nosed a throne. “Please. It is yours.”
Backing away, he let her approach it. Her throne. Taking off her mittens and gloves, she touched the curled arms of the ice throne. “It’s not cold,” she said. It was an ice castle. Either she should have been cold, or the ice should have been melting. But she was as warm as she would have been inside the station. “Nothing even drips.”
“It cannot melt,” he said. “Not so long as I am here. I will not allow it to melt.”
She jerked her hand back. “What do you mean ‘allow it’?” She said. “Ice doesn’t ask permission.”
“It is part of being a munaqsri,” he said.
“Moon-awk-sree,” she repeated. It sounded Inupiaq.
“Yes,” he said.
“Your word for ‘talking bear’?” she asked.
“It means ‘guardian,’” he said. “We are the caretakers of souls. Every living thing needs a soul, and everything that dies gives up a soul. Munaqsri are the ones who transfer and transport those souls.”
Cassie stared at him again.
“Altering molecules. That is one of the… ‘powers,’ for lack of a better word, that nature has given us so that we can fulfill our role,” he said. “On the ice, I use it to reach my bears. Here, I use it for the shape of my home, the food on the table, the warmth in your body.”
She felt as if she were spinning in a centrifuge, dizzy with the sparkling light of the chandeliers, the smells of spices, and the strangeness of the bear’s words. “You transfer souls,” she repeated. “Others like you—other munaqsri—transfer souls.”
“We are the unseen way that life continues,” he said.
“Scientists should have seen you,” she objected. “How can you be… transferring souls… and no one has noticed? How can you be here in a castle and no one has noticed? How can you be a talking bear—” She stopped when she heard her voice crack.
“People have seen us before,” he said. “Munaqsri sightings have inspired many stories. Have you heard stories of werewolves and mermaids? Sedna and Grandmother Toad? Horus and Sekhmet?”
“Stories, not science,” Cassie said. Like the story of the Polar Bear King and the North Wind’s daughter.
“You are correct. The stories are not accurate,” he said. “Sedna, for instance, appears in stories as a mermaid goddess, but in truth she is the senior munaqsri of the Arctic Ocean. She oversees all of the munaqsri in that region, like the Winds oversee the munaqsri of the air.” He paused. “Your family has explained none of this?”
“There’s no such thing as mermaids,” she said. “And I don’t believe in magic.” She knew as she said it that it was a ridiculous thing to say. She was talking to a bear in his magical castle in a part of the Arctic that could not exist.
“We are not magic,” he said. “We are part of nature. We are… the mechanism by which life continues. Everything we do—transform matter, move at high speeds, sense impending births and deaths—is part of nature’s design to enable us to transfer souls from the dying to the newborn.”
“I don’t believe in souls,” she said as firmly as she could. “A brain is a collection of chemical reactions. Complex neurochemicals.”
“As you wish,” he said mildly.
She wished she were home where she belonged and where things made sense. Or did they make sense only because Dad and Gram had lied to her? Would the world still make sense after she met her mother?
When she didn’t touch the food, the polar bear barked at the table, and the dishes melted. Pooling into colored water, they spread across the table to form a lacy tablecloth. Breads and soups disappeared like bubbles popping. Cassie backed away.
“Come,” the bear said. “You must be weary after our long journey. I will show you to the bedroom. Perhaps you should rest while I arrange for your mother’s release.”
She couldn’t imagine sleeping now, here. But she followed the bear out of the bright splendor of the banquet hall into the blue silence, deeper into the castle. She clung to his words like a lifeline: arrange for your mother’s release.
The bear’s paws were soundless on the ice. Silence wrapped around her as the hallway narrowed and the castle darkened. In the shadows, the bear loomed impossibly huge.
Candlelight danced across animal faces on golden walls. Blank, icy eyes stared at Cassie. She shrank back from them. All her instincts screamed at her to run back into the light. Deep blue, the ice surrounded her. She felt entombed. Was this how her mother felt in the troll castle? She fell to the ground and was captured by trolls. Cassie tried to picture her mother in a castle, and failed. What had her mother’s life been like? What was her mother like? Cassie wished she could remember her. She would be as much a stranger as… as the bear. Suddenly, the idea of meeting her mother was terrifying.
The bear halted at the foot of a staircase. Amber candlelight licked his fur. His eyes were inscrutable shadows. He seemed feral in the darkness. “You will find the bedroom at the top of the stairs,” he said. “You may wish to bring a candle.”
She fetched a candle from a wall sconce. Even the wax was ice, and like everything else, it wasn’t cold.
He rumbled, “I hope that you will be happy here.”
She didn’t intend to stay long enough to be happy or unhappy. Just long enough to ensure her mother was free, and then she would demand that the bear return her. But for now, she said nothing. She simply clutched the candle and stared at him.
He retreated into the blue shadows, and then she was alone. She lifted the candle higher so that the light fell shimmering onto the stairs. “Just until she’s free,” Cassie whispered. And then she shivered, even though it wasn’t cold.
CHAPTER 5