Ice (28 page)

“No, Cassie! Save yourself!”

She shouted at the queen, “Tell me: What do you want?”

Surrounded by shadowy shapes, the queen writhed on the dais. “Life,” she hissed. Instinctively, Cassie clutched her stomach.

“Do not do it!” Bear said.

“You have life?” Wingless, the queen rose into the air. “You have life in you?” What did that have to do with anything? Cassie looked down at her stomach and thought of her long journey here—it had to do with everything.

“No, Cassie!” Bear snapped his teeth and swiped with his claws, but the trolls still blocked him.

She’d do what she had to do to save her Bear. That’s what she’d done all along, all for him. Wasn’t it? With her arms wrapped around her stomach, she looked at her love and wondered—had she done it for him, or for herself?

The troll queen, body spreading like ink, flew above her. “We will keep you, then, and we will have your child!” she exulted.

Cassie felt the damp touch of trolls on her stomach. She swung her hand out to ward them off and struck only empty air. “Your princess promised my freedom!” The troll princess shrank into a ball. “I didn’t know!” she wailed.

Growing like some mythical god, the queen filled the cavernous room. The trolls thickened around Cassie and Bear. Through wisps of gray, the queen throbbed orange and green. “Your baby for your king. It is our bargain.”

Cassie looked down at her bulging stomach. Here was her chance for the two things she’d wanted when she’d begun this journey: her Bear and no baby. Except that it was not that simple. It hadn’t been that simple for a while now. “There must be something else you want,” she said.

“We make no other offer,” the queen said.

Cassie stroked her stomach and almost felt déjà vu, though it wasn’t her memory she was feeling.

She knew this moment. This had been her mother’s choice when she’d faced down the North Wind.

This had been her father’s choice when he’d honored Gail’s sacrifice and stayed with the newborn Cassie. Cassie hadn’t understood it before. She hadn’t understood them. But she did now—the horrible frustration her father must have felt, having to make that choice, this choice. All at once, she forgave him; she forgave them both. How could she give up her baby? But how could she lose Bear? She needed him. She loved him.

“Do not do it, Cassie,” he said. “Leave me. Please, I beg you.” She heard the words: If you love me, let me go.

She loved him enough to leave all she had ever known, to turn her world upside down, to come to this place beyond all known places, to risk her life, to almost die.

Did she love him enough to let him go?

Yes, she did.

The queen pulsed brighter. “What is your answer?”

Bowing her head, Cassie said a single word: “No.”

THIRTY-ONE

Latitude indeterminate

Longitude indeterminate

Altitude indeterminate

HISSING, THE TROLLS ROLLED OVER THEM. One troll was a drop of water, but hundreds of thousands were a tidal wave. More trolls flooded between Cassie and Bear. No, wait! She wasn’t ready yet! She hadn’t said good-bye.

Bear blurred behind trolls as if underwater. Muscles straining, he pushed at the tide. Cassie skidded backward. “At least let me say good-bye! Please!” She heard him call her name, and the trolls hissed louder. “Bear, I love you!” she yelled. Could he hear her? Please, let him have heard her. He’d never heard her say it. “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!” For everything! she wanted to say—for not trusting him, for endangering their baby, and most of all for failing to rescue him. She had proved to be her father’s daughter to the end. She had found her limit, the line she would not cross, the cliff she would not leap off. Bear was now a white smudge behind the gray shadows. “Bear!” Her stomach seized.

For an instant, she lost her breath, and the trolls swept her up. She sailed backward and rammed into a wall. Her face smushed sideways against stone. “You’re crushing me!” Crushing the baby!

The walls melted, and Cassie spilled into the white room. Catching her balance, she ran toward the throne room, but the troll princess sealed the wall shut again with a word, separating Cassie from the other trolls and from Bear. Shouting, Cassie pounded on the wall until another contraction crushed the breath out of her. She felt wet run down her inner thighs. “Oh, no. God, no,” she said.

“Not now. Not here.” Not without Bear. Not stranded on a troll island.

A pulsing orb, the troll princess said, “You truly have life in you?”

“Let me out of here,” Cassie said. “Make the door appear.” She had to get to her grandfather. He had to take her home.

The troll princess floated across the room and said, “Open,” the magic word. The stone melted into the wooden door. Battered, it hung open, and Cassie heard the crash of waves. She bolted outside.

Sea air hit her face. “Grandfather!”

Black clouds swarmed.

“Grandfather, help me.” She doubled over as another contraction racked through her. Walking made the contractions worse. “Grandfather!” she screamed.

Fascinated, the troll princess oozed over the rocks. “Is this pain?” Cassie slipped on seaweed as another contraction snatched her breath. She caught herself on a tree.

Her arms and legs shook. “Please, Grandfather!”

He did not answer, or he did not hear. Wordless, the wind stirred the sea, and swells smashed into the shore.

The troll princess asked, “What is it like to feel pain?” She had to keep calm. Calm. Calm. Cassie took deep breaths.

The princess sighed. “I wish I could feel pain.”

Another contraction followed fast on the heels of the last. This was not a false alarm; she knew it.

“Bear!” Breaking waves drowned her cry.

Contractions crashed on top of each other like a relentless sea storm. Cassie gasped for air. She flailed with pain. Her hands hit the rocks. She did not feel them. She yelled like an animal.

She didn’t know how long it lasted—hours, minutes, days. Contractions came and went. She was caught inside them. The world outside her body ceased to exist. She couldn’t think of a time before this and couldn’t imagine a time after. It was just the pain, the rocks, and the sea. And then, like in the eye of a storm, the pain eased, and Cassie needed to push. She spread her skirt and squatted.

Push. Veins jumped out on her neck, and sweat popped out on her forehead. Her lungs whooshed.

Push. She was exploding. She wanted to climb out of her skin. It hurt to push, and it hurt not to push.

She felt herself stretching. She would burst. More than anything, she wanted the baby out. She pushed.

A nervous-looking man perched on the rocks.

Cassie saw him. “Jamie! Help me!”

The troll princess darted behind him. He did not see her. “Are you all right?” With clenched teeth, she said, “Catch the baby.”

Jamie inched backward. “But . . .”

“Please!”

Gulping, Jamie knelt beside her on the rocks. “I can see the top of its head!” He looked up at Cassie.

“It has hair.”

She inhaled. “Soul ready?”

“No one has died today. I have no souls,” he said. “I’m sorry, but it will be stillborn.” She had to push now. She resisted. “Like hell it will!”

“I told you, I am short on souls.”

Pain hit. “Take mine!”

“Munaqsri don’t kill.”

She had to push! She howled. Her whole body wanted the baby out of her. But she would not let it.

Not without a soul. “I want my baby!”

At Cassie’s yell, the princess floated in closer.

“What is that?” Jamie scrambled back across the rocks.

Lifting her sweating head, Cassie looked at the troll princess. She was a troll from east of the sun and west of the moon, which was, Cassie had been told again and again, beyond the ends of the earth, where no living thing ever went.

The phrase tickled a memory: Is that what you want me to do? Let their souls drift beyond the ends of the earth? Beyond the ends of the earth? Here?

Yes, here. On an island of trolls . . . Trolls have no shape, no physical bodies, Gail had said. It’s an island of wild spirits. An island of wild spirits. . . an island of trolls . . . beyond the ends of the earth.

Not for living things. Nothing living ever goes there. In a flash, Cassie understood: Trolls were souls.

He won’t make me a baby, the troll princess had said. It is not possible, Bear had said. They have no bodies. The troll princess didn’t want to have a baby; she wanted to be a baby. “Here’s your chance,” she said to the troll princess. “You want to live?” The princess flashed gold and silver. “You mean . . .”

What do you want? she’d asked the troll queen. Life, the queen had answered. “Yes or no,” Cassie said. “Do you want to live?”

The troll princess brightened like an exploding star.

“Yes!”

“Take her!” Cassie shouted, and pushed.

Jamie stared at her.

“She’s a soul!” Cassie pointed at the troll princess.

The troll princess flew into Jamie’s hands.

Cassie felt underneath her. She felt a head, as soft as a seal’s, and she cradled it in the palms of her hands. Yelling, she pushed one final time. She felt the baby slip into her hands, and she caught it, hands under its back.

“It’s not breathing,” the human munaqsri said. He hesitated for only a fraction of a second, and then he slid his fingers between the umbilical cord and the baby’s tiny chest. He eased the cord over the baby’s shoulder and then he produced a knife and cut the cord. The baby took its first breath. Pink spread from its chest outward.

Jamie helped her lift the baby, and she held her child close. Its skin was as slippery as egg yolk. She felt it squirm.

“It’s a girl,” Jamie said.

Cassie looked down, and beautiful blue eyes blinked up at her. “Oh, my,” was all she could say.

Transfixed, she stared at the miniature hands and the perfect round cheeks. The baby squinched up her little face and wailed as loud as the wind.

“She takes after her mother,” Jamie noted.

Cassie laughed. Sweaty hair falling forward, she kissed her baby’s head. The baby smelled as sweet as rain. “You came out of me,” she whispered, cradling her baby girl.

She smiled down at her beautiful baby, cooing as the waves crashed onto the shore. She felt lighter than air. “You think you’re magic,” she said to Jamie. “Look at her. She’s real magic.”

“She’s beautiful,” Jamie said. Cassie glanced over at him and saw his cheeks were moist. “What are you going to name her?” he asked.

She didn’t have to think about it. “Abigail.” Her mother’s name. Above them, the sky swirled. Cassie wondered if the North Wind had heard her. “Abby for short.” She gazed down at baby Abby, red and sticky and perfect in her arms. “Think she will remember?” He shook his head. “Do you remember before you were born?”

“You got your wish,” she said to the baby. “You are alive.” Cassie’s smile became beatific. She looked up at the human munaqsri. “Got another minute? I have an idea.”

* * * * *

Cassie cradled her baby against her chest as the trolls swarmed over them. “Munaqsri,” she heard the trolls hiss as they encountered Jamie. He was, she guessed, the reason they were allowing her to return. He was new. “Munaqsri. Munaqsri.”

Jamie peeled trolls from his skin. “They’re everywhere!”

The walls melted around them. “Stay with me,” she said. She marched through the horde of trolls with Jamie in her wake.

The troll queen hulked over her dais. Cassie stopped, trolls hovering in a semicircle around her, and cradled the baby against her. A thousand eyes blinked at her. This time, she was not afraid.

Jamie fell out of the press of trolls. He saw the queen. “Who is she?” Colors spread in a rainbow flare across the queen’s broad back.

“She is a soul,” Cassie said, not taking her eyes off the queen. “Aren’t you? You are the unclaimed souls, the ones munaqsri missed.” The baby squirmed in her arms.

Tentacles sprouted on the troll queen. “New life!” She reached with a half-dozen writhing tentacles toward baby Abby.

Sounding nervous, Jamie murmured, “Uh, Cassie.”

The tip of a tentacle brushed within inches of the baby’s head. “We made no promise to the baby,” the queen said. “We will keep it. Munaqsri and newborn both.” Cassie held her baby tight but didn’t move. “I know why you kept my mother, why you bargained with my husband, why you want my baby. You want them to help you be alive, like you were supposed to be.”

Trolls whispered like leaves.

“I’m right, aren’t I,” she said. “You want to be alive.”

“Yes,” the queen hissed.

Cassie smiled down at her baby. Her red hair brushed the baby’s tiny hands. Baby Abby gurgled. “Her soul was the troll princess.”

All color drained from the queen.

The trolls erupted.

Jamie ducked as the trolls whipped in a frenzied tornado around them. Cassie planted her feet on the ground, baby in her arms, and waited.