His laugh was a familiar and welcome soft rumble that washed over her, and then he was serious again. “All munaqsri travel alone. We must avoid detection—”
“All munaqsri miss delivering souls,” she interrupted. “You’ve told me that yourself. I can help. Maybe we won’t make all the births, but we can improve the odds.”
He nodded slowly.
Cassie felt her shoulders unknot. He wanted to save the cubs badly enough. He’d agree. Together, they could save bears.
“You are certain you wish to do this?” he said. “It is not without risk. Once outside these walls, if I am not touching you, I cannot magic you. If we are separated…”
“I’ll have my gear,” she said, patting her pack. “If necessary, I can survive an entire week on the ice with this equipment.” All her training, her skill, her education, had led to this. She’d be directly helping the polar bears instead of writing papers and securing grants. If he agreed.
Swinging his massive head over the documents, he studied the maps, the files, the lists of numbers. “If this helps… all polar bears will thank you. I thank you.” He leaned his head against her stomach, and she wrapped her arms around his neck. In a lighter voice, he added, “It is, though, quite unnatural.”
“So says the talking bear,” she said.
His fur shook as he laughed again. “I had no one to mock me for days.”
“Vacation’s over,” she said. “Cassie’s home.”
Softly, he said, “You have no idea how happy that makes me.”
She felt her cheeks warm. She felt as if she could float to the ceiling. “Romantic,” she said.
He covered his muzzle with his paw, miming embarrassment.
Cassie opened another binder. She wanted to show him everything. “Look, here are all the current tagging numbers from the Polar Bear Specialist Group of the IUCN.”
“Come,” he said, nudging her with his nose. “We have a long day ahead of us tomorrow.”
Cassie grinned. Out on the ice, together. Leaving the IUCN binder, she walked alongside him, past the carvings in deep blue ice and up the staircase lit by candlelight. “You know I had a number all picked out for you: A505, Alaskan ID.”
“A505,” he repeated.
“I think you’d look nice with a tag. Just like an earring.” She tugged on his furry ear. She couldn’t get enough of touching him. It reminded her that he was real. “Not to mention the green ink on your gums. Very attractive.”
As always, he waited in the hall while she prepared for bed. Once she slid under the covers, she blew out the candle. Everything descended into darkness, and she heard the pad of bear paws and then the footsteps of a man. The mattress sank as he climbed into bed beside her.
For the first time in five nights, she slept well.
Cassie woke first. Her cheek lay against his bare chest, smooth and human. Her arm was draped across his stomach. She lay there for a long moment, feeling him breathe. Her husband. She reached up in the darkness and lightly touched his face. Her fingers traced his chin and lingered over his lips. She’d never kissed him. She wondered what it would be like.
She felt him stir, and she pulled her hand away quickly. She rolled to her side of the bed. “Ready to patrol?” she asked him.
She felt the sheets shift and the mattress rise as he stood.
“We’re going together, right?” she asked.
Cassie felt a wisp of wind in her face. When he spoke, it was with his deeper, polar bear voice. “Of course, O Intrepid Leader.”
She grinned.
Cassie heard the door open. She waited until she heard it click closed before finding her flashlight and turning it on. She dressed quickly in full expedition gear—Gore-Tex pants, mukluks, all of it—and then she met Bear at the front archway to the castle. Soon, she was riding him across the ice.
The Arctic spread before them, blue-shadowed and as broad as the Sahara. Cassie leaned over Bear’s neck as the wind slapped her face. This was wonderful. This was magnificent. This was… far too slow. She shouted a dog sledding call into his ear: “Mush, mush, mush!”
“Very amusing,” he said, but he sped into a blur. She whooped as the deep night-winter blue stretched into a single sheet of ice and sky. Yes! She was flying! The midday moon hung low and fat on the southern horizon. She waved to it.
Bear leaped over a pressure ridge. Laughing, Cassie grabbed his fur and clamped her thighs around his middle to keep from falling off. She loved this! They should have done this months ago.
She squinted into the dark whiteness. She saw the aurora borealis curling around the fringes of her vision, green and white flashes. According to Inuit legend, the northern lights were the dancing spirits of the dead. Cassie wondered if that was where the unclaimed souls went, the ones munaqsri missed, the ones that should have gone to newborns. Don’t be ridiculous, she told herself. The aurora was caused by electrically charged particles from the sun hitting the upper atmosphere, not floating souls. The souls went… She had no idea where missed souls went. She supposed they could go to the aurora. Bear had said once that they were lost. Maybe eventually, she’d have enough data to map paths for deaths as well as births. Wouldn’t that be something? But she shouldn’t get ahead of herself. First she had to see whether her plan would work at all.
The first route Cassie had planned took them down into Lancaster Sound to Hudson Bay and then east to Davis Strait. At the opening to the sound, Bear shouted that he felt a call. Cassie hung on as Bear leaped and crashed through pressure ridges and over creaking ice pans.
Bear braked without warning, and Cassie flew into his neck. “Hold on,” he told her. “We’ll take it slow this first time.” Gripping his neck fur, Cassie opened her mouth to ask what he meant.
He walked into a snowbank.
Snow melted like a mirage around them. Cassie shuddered as it slid through her. A few seconds later, she felt warm wet air on her face. Half her body was within the bear’s den; the rest was immured in the hard-packed snow. She listened to the sow pant in the darkness. She’d never been so close to a birthing polar bear in the wild. She didn’t think anyone ever had. This was amazing, she thought. This was impossible.
This was the power of a munaqsri. This was why he had power: to reach the bears as they were born or died. All the magic existed to make this moment possible.
“It is time. It is coming,” Bear whispered.
“Can’t see,” she whispered back. Suddenly, she could. She saw white: fur and ice. Bear, she guessed, had altered her eyes. He’d changed her body, in the same way he did when he kept her warm on the ice.
Bear inched forward and laid his face next to the sow’s stomach. Cassie wiggled closer too. “Do you have the soul?” she whispered.
“Watch,” he said. Bear opened his mouth, and a shadow fell like a drop of water. It sank into vast mounds of fur. Cassie didn’t breathe. A tiny wet shape, the cub, slid out of its mother and squirmed. In a soft voice, Bear said, “And that is how we make babies.”
“It’s… a miracle.” She had no other word for it. Bear created miracles.
The cub mewled. Blind, it wormed through its mother’s fur, and the sow licked it with a tongue that covered it in one swipe.
Silently, Bear retreated. They slid through the solid snow. Cassie felt as if she were being smothered, and she fought to stay calm. Bear would never hurt me, she told herself. She gasped in air as they emerged. Her muscles shook. “Are you all right?” Bear asked.
“Love the night vision,” she said. “Hate the walking through walls.” She took a deep breath to calm her racing heart.
Hands shaking, she took out her GPS: latitude 63° 46’ 05” N, longitude 80° 09’ 32” W. She marked it in a notebook, then tucked pencil, notebook, and GPS back into her inner layers. “We should head toward Churchill next. There are a couple mothers overdue west of Hudson Bay.”