In the hall, it was worse. Cracks raced through the ice walls. Meltwater ran in rivers. Run, run, run! her mind shouted at her. Cassie skidded down the hallway, and the flashlight’s beam swept over dripping walls and ceiling. Gripping the wet banister, she sidestepped down the waterfall stairs. Rumbling shook the floor. Please, don’t let it collapse, she thought. With the ceiling and the spires, thousands of pounds of ice were above her. Catching her balance at the bottom of the stairs, she ran through the banquet hall.

Chandeliers clanked as the banquet hall shook. Shards fell and splashed into an inch of water. A caribou sculpture toppled. Chunks of ice scattered across the banquet hall. Cassie shielded her face. A chandelier plummeted from the ceiling. When the chandelier crashed down, shards flew like shrapnel.

Cassie ran through the water. Faster, faster! Her pack pounded on her back. Frescoes peeled from the walls, and statues tumbled from alcoves. She dodged chunks of falling ice.

Buttresses shook. Pillars crumbled. Overhead, the vaulted ceiling fractured. Plumes of ice filled the air in a thick haze. She sprinted for the crystal lattice gate as the floor heaved. She scrambled over the cracks.

The splintered gate rained daggers of ice. Covering her head, Cassie plunged through it. Ice spikes hit her arms and her neck. Screaming, she burst out the other side. Her pack slammed her tailbone.

Outside, the topiary garden melted. Faces ran into puddles. Limbs fell. Undercut by running water, the sculptures collapsed. Cassie ran for the outer wall. Half of it had fallen.

It was as if a giant were ripping the castle apart. With deafening cracks like an iceberg calving, spires split from the walls and crashed to the ground. Cassie fell forward as the ground bucked. Keep moving, she thought. Must keep moving! She splashed in meltwater, and then she scrambled to her feet while, Jericho-like, the walls came tumbling down.

She scrambled over the remnants of the blue outer wall. Behind her, she heard gushing, like a dam released. Run! A mammoth waterfall crashed down from the parapets. It drowned the topiary garden.

Snow cycloned, and ice pelted her face and arms. Cassie stumbled as the ground shook. Again, she was knocked down. Ice chunks rained down on her like a meteor shower. On her knees, she crawled. She inhaled snow, and tears poured from her eyes as the ice pelted her.

And then suddenly, it was still.

Curled on the ground, Cassie panted. Her muscles were as tense as fists. She heard running water. Ice tinkled. She tried to open her eyes and could not. The tears had frozen her eyelids shut.

Dammit, she had to see! What had happened? The castle, her home… Was she still too close? She couldn’t run if she couldn’t see which direction to run.

She yanked off her gloves and spat on her fingers. She rubbed the warm saliva on her eyelids. Eyelashes broke. Her hands stiffened in the cold. She scraped until she could crack her eyes open. She blinked furiously and shoved her chilled hands back into the gloves and mitts.

She was surrounded by white. Snow hung in the air, and it was impossible to distinguish between ground and sky. The world was devoid of color. It was as if she had fallen into a bowl of milk. Securing her goggles, she stood and squinted into the whiteout. Where was the castle? Had it fallen? What about the gardens? Slowly, the snow-choked air thinned.

And the polar bears came.

One by one, the white bears walked ghostlike out of the snow. Through the blurred air, they appeared to drift. Close by—too close—one brushed past her. She stiffened, wanting to scream, not daring to scream. Bears were all around her, emerging from the white. She was surrounded, engulfed.

As the snow settled, she saw hundreds coming from all directions. Soon she could see the gardens, now a wasteland of icy spikes. Sniffing the snow, the polar bears wandered through the wreckage, trampling the remnants. Cassie swallowed, a lump in her throat. All of Bear’s beautiful sculptures… And then she saw what was left of her home.

The castle was gone. The buttresses were ice boulders; the walls were icebergs. She began to shake. She could have been crushed. If she had woken a few minutes later… if she had run a little slower… She could have been killed. As long as these walls are standing, nothing here will harm you, Bear had said once. The walls were no longer standing. Her home was destroyed.

And Bear was gone.

She’d lost him. She’d truly lost Bear.

Cassie felt icy knives twisting in her gut. Her husband was gone, her home destroyed, she was thirteen hundred miles north of the station, and she was surrounded by polar bears.

More bears came. All around her, the ice was thick with them. Cassie was squeezed between dozens—up to her neck in bears. Fur pressed against her, and the stench of their dead-seal breath made her head pound. In every direction, all she could see was the curve of their backs like waves in a cream white ocean. She was drowning in a sea of polar bears.

Surrounded by predators, she felt short of air. Bears did not gather like this. It wasn’t natural. Run, her instincts screamed. “Keep calm,” she whispered to herself.

Inches from her, a polar bear swung his head toward her face. He poked her parka with his muzzle. She smelled his breath as he snuffled her face mask. “Don’t eat me,” she said. Her voice cracked.

At the sound of her voice, other bears turned to stare at her.

Shivers walked up her spine.

Cassie heard a bear huff. More bears turned their heads, and then more. Hundreds of blank, black eyes bored into her. Don’t move. Just don’t move, she thought. Her skin crawled, and her feet started moving despite her. All the bears were watching her now. She heard the crunch of her mukluks and the breathing of thousands of bears. Don’t run, she thought, but her feet retreated faster and faster. The bears parted like the Red Sea. She backed through them, out of the press of bears and onto open ice, and then she turned and ran. Her pack slapped her back. Wind pounded her face. Leaning into the wind, she ran across the frozen waves.

In an unnatural herd, the polar bears followed.

CHAPTER 16

Latitude 88° 51’ 42” N

Longitude 151° 25’ 50” W

Altitude 10 ft.

Overhead, the sky was palest blue, almost white from the reflected ice. There was not a single bird or plane. Cassie checked the GPS: 88° 51’ 42” N and 151° 25’ 50” W. For five days, she had trekked across the frozen waves. She should have been rescued by now.

“C’mon, Max,” she whispered as she looked again at the sky. “Save me.” Low on the horizon, the permanent sun pricked the corners of her eyes.

Why hadn’t he come?

The low sun rolled along the horizon as she continued on. The afternoon’s white glare increased as the sun passed due south. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of polar bears still plodded behind her. She felt prickles on her spine as she thought about them, her silent white shadows. Dad and his team should have noticed the absence of so many polar bears by now. They should have sent Max in his plane to investigate. He should have followed the signals from the bears’ tracking collars—any signal from any bear—and they should have led him directly to her.

By evening, the sun was to her right. Ice crystals sparkled in a halo around the sun and in gold sheets around Cassie. The powdery mist cut visibility even more. She forced herself to concentrate on the ice in front of her. But even with all her concentration, she stumbled over invisible frozen waves. She had no depth perception in the glare of infinite whiteness. Her remaining eyelashes were icicles, framing her view of the world. Her nostril hairs had also frozen. She exhaled through her nose to keep it warmer. Her Gore-Tex pants rustled as she stumbled along. It was the only sound in the emptiness besides the huffing of the bears.