Bear had risked all of them to marry her. He’d trusted that she’d respect his one and only request. And she hadn’t. Cassie hugged her stomach. Even through all the layers, she could feel the slight bulge. This… what he’d done… didn’t excuse the damage she’d done, however unintentionally, to all these beautiful bears. She had to reach Bear.

The fox shuddered, and his ribs sank down, down, as if folding into his fur. They didn’t rise again. “Munaqsri!” she called.

She saw nothing.

“Fox munaqsri!” Cassie said. “I need to talk to you on behalf of the bear munaqsri!” He had to be here. She had no backup plan.

“You know the polar bear?” a voice said. Suddenly, a second arctic fox perched beside the dead fox. Spiking his fur, the fox arched his back like a cat. “You tell him I blame him for the fate of my foxes. While his bears herd, my foxes are starving.” His muzzle curled back, and sunlight glinted on sharp incisors. “I will bring my complaints to the Arctic overseer—” With his thick white fur and delicate snout, he looked like a cross between a Pekinese and a Persian cat, hardly anything threatening. But he was an angry fluff ball with the power of a munaqsri.

Cassie scrambled to her feet. “Wait, listen! Bear… the bear munaqsri… is in trouble. I need you to speed me to the troll castle, east of the sun and west of the moon.”

The effect of her words was instantaneous. He switched from furious to distressed in an eyeblink. “He has forsaken his bears? Oh, my foxes!” The fox tilted his head back and yowled. “My foxes will starve! No one has ever returned from there. He will never return!”

The fox’s cries sliced into her. She clapped her hands to her ears. “Yes, he will!” Cassie shouted. Her mother had returned. If Bear could rescue Gail, then Cassie could rescue Bear. She would bring him back. She would fix everything. “I can bring him back!”

His howl died in yet another split-second mood change. Now silent, the fox stared at her. “Who are you?” he asked finally.

“Cassie Dasent,” she said. She couldn’t read the expression on his fox face. He’d already gone from furious to distressed to contemplative in less than thirty seconds. Please, let him help her.

“You are not a munaqsri,” he said.

“I’m the wife of the polar bear,” she said.

“Interesting taste,” he said.

Cassie gritted her teeth. Now he was mocking her? Her husband was missing, suffering with trolls; the polar bears and arctic foxes were in danger of extinction; and she was stuck on the ice, at least four months pregnant, with summer rapidly approaching. “I didn’t trek here from beyond the North Pole to be insulted by something cuddly,” she snapped. “It’s your choice, Fluffy: Help me and help your foxes, or don’t help me and watch them die.”

Fluffy licked his nose. Cassie held her breath. She’d either reached the erratic munaqsri or utterly antagonized him.

“I cannot take you there,” he said finally. “The castle is east of the sun and west of the moon. It is beyond my region. I cannot leave the ice. Another munaqsri is responsible for foxes on land.”

“Then help me find another munaqsri,” Cassie said. There had to be a munaqsri who could cross from the ice to the land. Quickly, she scanned the ice, the sky, and the sea.

Out in the ocean, a whale lifted its spiral tusk. Slow and stately, a second horn rose out of the water. As if in an ancient ritual, the two narwhals crossed their unicorn horns. “Call a whale,” she said.

“A whale will not help you,” he said. “You are not a munaqsri, and they will have no interest in the fate of the polar bears or of my foxes.”

One problem at a time, she thought as she lifted her pack onto her shoulders. “Just do it. Please, Fluffy?”

The ocean buckled at her feet. Screeching, seabirds recoiled from the water. For an instant, their bodies blackened the sky. “He comes,” the fox said.

Cassie stumbled as waves rocked the ice. Inches from the ice edge, a dark smooth curve as large as a submarine rose out of the water. And then it kept rising, larger and larger. As Cassie stared, the bowhead whale lifted its mouth above the swirling waves. Its maw gaped open, and Cassie saw fringed plates of baleen, enormous sheaths that filled the whale’s mouth. Algae, barnacles, and seaweed clung to the dripping sheaths. No ordinary whale could have been this huge.

The colossus shut its mouth, and waves swelled onto the ice. Cassie scrambled backward as freezing water splashed her mukluks. Behind her, the ice cracked. She looked over her shoulder to see a split in the ice widen from the stress of the waves. On either side of the split, her polar bears waited, shoulder to shoulder—her beautiful bears. Seeing them gave her strength.

“I need your help,” she said to the whale.

“You are not a munaqsri.” His voice pounded like a drum. She shuddered as each syllable hit her ears.

“My husband is,” she said. “He’s the polar bear munaqsri.”

Rising higher in the water, as massive as a monster from a myth, the bowhead drummed, “He may be, but you are not. You have no ties to us.”

The ice rocked as if in an earthquake. Spray and wind hit her face. She spread her legs to keep her balance and held the shoulder straps of her backpack. He didn’t care if he drowned her, she realized. Looking up at the leviathan, she said, “I’m tied to him. We made vows.”

“We are all bound by our promises,” he intoned.

Cassie pushed her hair out of her eyes and squinted up at the bowhead. He eclipsed the sun. “Please. You have to help me reach the troll castle.”

“Nothing living ever goes there,” the bowhead said.

“Then take me across the ocean,” she pleaded. “Just to the shore. I’ll find the way myself from there. But please, help me off the ice!”

“I do not help humans.”

“The bears will die if I don’t save their munaqsri,” Cassie said. She couldn’t fail. Her beloved bears would vanish from the face of the earth. “Help me for their sake.”

The bowhead drifted against the crumbling ice. Cassie flailed as the ice rocked. “The bears are not my concern,” he said.

He had to care about something! She cast around for another idea, and she hit on inspiration. “I’m carrying the Bear’s child,” she said. “One of you. A future munaqsri.”

The bowhead sprayed water from his spout. Screaming, Cassie threw her gloved hands over her head and ducked as it rained ice-cold seawater. “You risk a munaqsri,” the bowhead boomed. “It cannot be allowed.”

Beside her, the arctic fox hissed and growled. “You hold a species’ future inside you, and you undertake this quest? You seek death.”

Oh, no, she’d made it worse. “But I have to save—”

“I cannot allow you to endanger a future munaqsri,” the bowhead said.

“Nor I!” Fluffy said.

“You must stay on the ice where you belong.” With that pronouncement, the bowhead submerged. A vast wave of water surged in his wake.

Cassie scrambled away from the wave. “I’ll die if I stay!” She would die, the bears would die, the foxes would die. Bear would be trapped in the place that had made Gail scream.

“The bears will care for you until the child is born,” Fluffy said. “And when he is grown, the bears will have their new king. My foxes shall live, and all will be as it should.”

She shook her head. Her throat felt choked. She had to make him help her. She couldn’t lose her one chance at Bear. “Bowhead!” she shouted at the waves. Could he still hear her? Please, let him hear her. The glittering black waves still churned in his wake. Cassie called to the deep, “You want your precious child to live? Then keep its mother alive!”

She ran and dove into the Arctic Ocean.