Maybe they all thought it was an equipment malfunction. No station would risk a Twin Otter this far north on an equipment malfunction. And none of them would admit to the others that they had lost track of this many bears. It would be weeks before Dad would swallow his pride and contact NPI. But she had only one week’s worth of food supplies, and she’d already used five days’. If she stretched the freeze-dried food packets and cut her rations in half… she might have four, at most five, days left.
Dammit, Dad should know better, she thought. He knew about munaqsri. He knew impossibilities could happen. But if Dad didn’t send a plane soon… She sucked in air, and the air burned. She had to stay positive. Someone would come.
She hiked for two more days before she reached the Lomonosov Ridge. Still no Max. Still no plane. Still no rescue. She camped in the shadow of ice monoliths, leaning towers and half-fallen pinnacles of ice, and she ate a dinner of half rations.
In the morning, Cassie scrambled out of her sleeping bag as her stomach forced last night’s dinner into her throat. She clapped her hands over her mouth. She could not lose the nutrients. Bits spurted through her fingers. Warm, the oatmeal chunks steamed on the ice. She swallowed hard and clenched her teeth. Hold it in, she told herself. Come on, hold it.
Her own body had never worked against her before. She felt as if she were being sabotaged from the inside. She swallowed back bile and patted loose snow on her forehead. With a baby growing inside her, she’d need more food, not less. She might have even less time than she’d thought. How could Bear have done this to her?
Shakily, she stood. She looked out across the wasteland of ice. Brilliant in the morning light, it made her eyes water to look at it. The sky was a startling blue, and the horizon was lemon yellow. She wiped her hands on her pants and then found her gloves. Her hands had chilled fast. Her mouth was sticky, and her head was light. Exposed to the frozen air, her cheeks had begun to stiffen. She warmed them with her mitts before putting on her solid-ice face mask. The polar bears, she noticed, had returned. Expressionless, they watched her. She told herself to keep ignoring them.
She shoved her sleeping bag into her pack. It crackled, and she could feel lumps of ice in the down. She wished she had a little of Bear’s warmth magic. She remembered all the rides across the ice. She had been able to leave her hood back and her coat open, and the arctic wind had felt like a summer breeze on her face. She remembered snowball fights in the castle ballroom, where she’d used her bare hands without any chill—Stop it, she told herself. She had to concentrate on surviving. Stay focused. Be strong. Keep moving. The farther south she went, the better the odds that Max would find her. After that, she could think about Bear.
Cassie hefted the pack onto her sore shoulders and fastened the waist strap. She’d have to pick her route carefully today. The ice around her was shattered. She could hear the low grumble of the tides deep beneath her. Picking an ice boulder, Cassie climbed it. On top, she scanned the landscape. The ice did not improve for at least ten miles. She automatically wrinkled her face to prevent frostbite as she checked the sky. Clouds were beginning to mar the brilliant blue. The clouds reflected the patchy ice below: bright white over thick ice and gray over thin.
She checked the horizon, and her heart went cold. Wind slapped into her, but she didn’t move. Squinching her eyes, she stared at a smudge darkening the distance. Was that… Yes, yes, it was.
The winds were bringing a storm.
Oh, no. Please, no.
Maybe it would veer. Maybe she was wrong.
She didn’t think she was wrong.
She had no choice but to continue on. Fine packed snow plugged the paths between pillars of ice. At times, she had to slog through it and trust that she would hear the cracking of ice underneath fast enough to jump to safety. She tried to keep to the exposed ice, listening for the telltale crinkling sounds as the ice throbbed underneath her. She climbed over a pile of ice rubble and looked again to the south. The clouds looked like a writhing mass of bruises. The storm was coming.
She wondered, as she looked across the shattered ice, if she was looking at her own death. She remembered Gram’s voice: With the strength of a thousand blizzards, the North Wind swooped down onto the house that held his daughter, her husband, and their newborn baby. She could be swept away by her mother’s winds.
If she’d had some warning of all of this… Bear’s bargain had stranded her alone on the Arctic ice pack. He should have known that she’d encounter a storm at some point in her trek. If he’d found some way to hint at the truth… He could have found some oblique way to warn her. Had he tried and she’d missed it? As she hiked across the ice, she played through her memories—and with each moment she relived, she missed him more until it felt like an aching wound.
Two hours later, the wind howled through the pressure ridges, kicking snow into the air. She was pelted with ice particles. After every other step, she wiped her goggles. Cassie tried to calculate how far she’d hiked. The layer of ice around her collar made it difficult to move her head. Not far enough, she thought.
More ice particles hit her, and she staggered backward. Arms over her face, she pushed through the wind, away from the leaning ice towers. It was tempting to hide in the shelter of one of the mammoth ones, but the ice around them was weaker. She needed the thick stuff if she did not want to end up underneath waves. Wind-driven snow stung like BBs. Visibility was low. Cassie stumbled over the rubble.
She hit flat ice. Leaning into the wind, she forded across it. She knelt down and dusted the surface snow away so she could see the base ice. Green-blue-brown, it seemed like old, thick ice. Please, let it be old, thick ice. “It’s coming, guys,” she called to the polar bears. “Better batten down the hatches.” Her voice shook. She saw only a half-dozen bear shapes in the swirling snow. Please, let me survive this, she thought.
Fighting the wind, Cassie set up her sleeping bag. Stiff with ice, it did not want to unroll. She swore at it and flattened it with her full body weight. Hands aching, she tied it with spare straps to her pack and anchored it all with an ice screw.
Momentarily, the wind died, and she saw the storm. It sounded and looked like a cloud of hissing bees. “Oh, Bear,” she whispered, “how could you do this to me?”
The boiling mass disappeared behind a wall of white ice shards. Cassie wiggled into her sleeping bag. She secured the zippers. Coming closer, the storm roared like a 747. Cassie prayed, and the storm hit.
CHAPTER 17
Latitude 87° 58’ 23” N
Longitude 150° 05’ 12” W
Altitude 8 ft.
The world fell apart.
Like an angry god, the wind punished the ice. It tore the ocean open, and it slammed it shut. Plates of ice rode over one another, jutting into the black sky. The ice screamed.
She curled inside her fragile cocoon. Black in the false night, her world had shrunk to six feet by two. The ice underneath her shook. Clenching her teeth, she hugged herself into a ball, as if that would hold the ice together.
She heard thunderous grinding as if the ground were being squeezed. Her heart beat in her throat. Sweat chilled her flesh. Any second, the ice could split and she could be dropped into the ocean. She could disappear without a trace. Dad, Gail, Gram… they would never know what had happened to her.
The wind slammed into her sleeping bag. She skidded in a circle around the single ice screw. Clockwise, with the screw. Cassie rolled inside the sleeping bag. She clutched at the nylon sides. Like a sail in irons, the nylon flapped. Wind whipped under her, and Cassie bounced on the ice. Slamming down hard, she hit her elbow, then her knee, then her hip.