The sheep scattered.
As the slope steepened, Cassie used her hands. She felt as agile as a giant tortoise. She placed each foot carefully and then steadied herself with handholds. Her abdomen grazed the rocks.
She felt the baby squirm. “I promise I will never make you climb a mountain again, if you behave yourself this time,” she said to her stomach. “Just stay in there awhile longer. Okay, kiddo?”
Grunting and panting, she clambered onto an outcropping. She rested on the ledge and cooled her face with crusted snow. Above the tree line, she could see across the valleys. Larches, leaves brilliant gold, shone like candles against the dark spruces. She wondered how high she’d have to climb for the North Wind to hear her. She held a hand out to feel the wind. “Wind munaqsri? Grandfather! Hello?”
No answer. She had to climb higher.
Cassie continued to inch up the mountainside. She repeated to herself with each step: You may not be able to climb this mountain, but you can make it one more foot. The sun passed behind the mountain, and she climbed, shivering, in shadows. She paused to call again with still no luck.
An hour later, the slope steepened. Continuing to climb, she jammed her fingers into a crack. Searching with her foot, she found a foothold. She pulled herself up. Feet braced, she reached for the outcropping. She stained the rocks with specks of blood from her scraped fingers. Swinging her leg up, she beached herself onto the ledge. Cassie leaned against the mountainside and panted. Below her, the trees were pick-up sticks and the wild sheep were dots on distant rocks.
High enough, she decided.
Back pressed against the mountain, Cassie got to her feet on the ledge. Wind whipped her hair into her face. She pushed it behind her ears, and she looked across the landscape. The height made her head spin. She could see hundreds of miles of forest. It stretched into the horizon. A flock of Canada geese flew beneath her. Pressing one hand on her stomach, she breathed deeply. She bet her baby would be born loving heights. Or with a deep-seated fear of them.
She closed her eyes to stop the dizziness. Time to see if it had been worth all the effort. Filling her lungs with wind, Cassie shouted, “North Wind! Grandfather!”
She felt wind on her face. It did not speak.
She shouted again: “I am Gail’s daughter! I need to talk to you!”
He was out there somewhere, she was certain. But where? Was he all the wind, or only a piece of it? She wished she’d asked Gail about her family. She knew nothing about the wind munaqsri, except the fact that they were her family and they oversaw the munaqsri of the air. She hoped that was enough. It had to be. “I’m your granddaughter! Please, answer me! Grandfather! Uncles! Wind!”
Cassie shouted until her throat was raw. “Answer me! Please!” She could feel the wind—her hair and skirt flapped, and snow and gravel tumbled down the mountain—so why didn’t he answer her? “Grandfather! Uncles! Munaqsri! I know you exist! Talk to me!”
Rock cracked. It split from the mountainside. She swallowed her scream as a chunk of rock collapsed inches from her outcropping. It tumbled, stirring other rocks. A mini-avalanche crashed down the side of the mountain. Shaken, she looked at where the rock had split.
A single eye stared at her.
It was an enormous eye. It looked like a curved, yellow mirror embedded in the rock. She saw her reflection, covered in dirt and blood, stomach bulging like a fun house distortion. She stared, transfixed. The eye blinked with an eyelid of granite that slid down like an avalanche and then up again. It was part of the mountain. Rocks were scales. Boulders were nostrils. She looked at the ledge behind her. She was clinging to its claws.
Open, the dragon’s mouth was a cavern. If he yawned, peaks would crumble. Dirt plumed as he spoke. “You called for a munaqsri.”
“I, uh, meant to call the wind munaqsri,” Cassie said. Judging from his six-foot eye, this munaqsri could have crushed the bowhead whale.
“You are wasting your breath shouting for my wind cousins,” he said. “They will not hear you. You are too earthbound to catch their interest.”
Now she learned this? After that climb? “What do I do?”
“Whatever you want.” The dragon shrugged. Snow and rocks sloughed off the slope. With a thunderous sound, the mass slid down the mountain. Cassie watched it cascade beneath her in a billowing cloud. Below, trees snapped like toothpicks.
Cassie swallowed. “Can you help me?”
His rock eyelid slid over his eye. She waited, but it did not reopen. It looked indistinguishable from the other rock faces again. “Um, excuse me?” Cassie said politely.
He did not answer.
“Mr. Mountain?”
No answer. She pressed her lips together. She had not come this far to be intimidated by a bunch of rocks with eyes… even very large dragon eyes. She—correction, they: Cassie and her baby—were not going to be dissuaded. She wasn’t alone in this. She drew courage from that. Steeling herself, Cassie thumped on his claw. “Answer me. Please. How do I get the winds’ attention?”
He opened one eye and regarded her with his giant pupil. “There is one way.”
“Tell me,” she said.
The dragon laughed. Rocks danced off the mountain. She flattened herself against the slope and covered her ears as the rocks crashed. “You won’t like it,” he said.
“Tell me how! I am not afraid!” She pounded his claw with her fist. “Tell me, dammit!” He fixed his great eye on her and said one word:
“Fall.”
CHAPTER 28
Latitude 63° 26’ 00” N
Longitude 130° 19’ 53” W
Altitude 4325 ft.
Cassie peeked over the edge. Fall?
On the mountainside, the rocks looked like rows of serrated knives. Automatically, her hands cradled her stomach. She’d already tumbled down a cliff once. “It’s not a vertical drop,” Cassie protested. “I’d roll down the mountain, not fall through the air. It won’t work.”
“I can fix that,” the dragon said. He shifted his weight. Beneath her ledge, the mountain crumbled. Avalanche! She clung to the dragon’s claw and screamed. The grinding stopped. Irritably, he said, “Please don’t scream.”
She inched to the edge and peered over. Wind whipped her hair against her cheek. Below her, the slope was gone. The mountain went straight down for a quarter mile. Cassie scrambled back against his claw. Her heart pounded fast. She was aware of how thin her skin felt and how breakable her bones were.
What’s wrong with me? she asked herself. Only a few months ago, she had dived into the Arctic Ocean. How was this any different? Looking over the edge again, she swallowed hard. The dragon’s tail, a string of granite, curled in the air. It was different. She wrapped her arms tighter around her stomach. Everything was different.
How far would she go for Bear? Where was the limit? Was there a limit? She wasn’t risking just herself anymore.
The baby kicked against her hands, and she felt her skin roll like an ocean wave. “Are you up for this?” she asked her stomach. Another kick. It felt as if the baby were urging her onward. Cassie smiled. How far would she go to give her baby its daddy? East of the sun and west of the moon, of course. “C’mon, kiddo,” she said. “Let’s go find your daddy.”
Cassie placed her toes on the lip of the ledge and looked out across the boreal forest. Wind whipped her hair so that it slapped her cheeks and forehead. She brushed it back. Her baby wouldn’t grow up like she had, missing a parent she’d never known. “Can you call the wind munaqsri?” she asked the dragon.
“You truly intend to do this?” For once, he did not sound condescending. He sounded curious. “What possible reason could you have for hurling your soft, tiny body from me?”
She had a hundred reasons: because Bear had carved a statue of her in the center of the topiary garden, because she could always make him laugh, because he’d let her return to the station, because he won at chess and lost at hockey, because he ran as fast as he could to polar bear births, because he had seal breath even as a human, because his hands were soft, because he was her Bear. “Because I want my husband back,” Cassie said. And, she added silently, because my baby deserves to know him.