“Please call the winds.”
“Very well,” he said.
And then the dragon roared to the sky. Wind whipped faster and faster around the mountain. Dust and rocks tumbled down the slope. Cassie shielded her face.
“Now!” the dragon cried.
Holding her stomach, Cassie jumped. Sound tore from her throat. “Grandfather! North Wind!” She plummeted down, spiraling through the sky. The green and gold swath of forest rushed toward her. “Wind munaqsri!” Air rushed past her as loud as a scream.
Suddenly, wind slammed into her from two directions. Squeezed, Cassie spurted up in the air. She arched over the dragon’s mountain and spun like a stray leaf, tossed by wind. Snowcapped mountains spiraled below her. Oh, she was going to vomit. “North Wind!” she cried.
“Poor child. She doesn’t know her north from her south.” A voice swirled around her, sweeping under her and beside her. It seemed to be coming from everywhere.
Streaks of cloud whipped past her. One of Gail’s uncles? “South Wind?” Cassie called.
“Let her fall.” A second voice rushed past Cassie’s ears. “She is nothing to us.”
Suddenly, she sank. She tried to scramble, to grab anything solid. Clouds slipped through her fingers as cool mist on her skin. “I’m your niece! I’m Gail’s daughter!” Below her, the Yukon River wound like a blue ribbon through the mountains—so tiny, so far down. “Please don’t drop me!” A gust rolled her, and she screamed as she tumbled through the air. Wind rushed past her ears as loud as her own scream.
“We must keep her, East,” the first voice—the South Wind—said.
Wind swept under her, and she was tossed up, up, up. “You can’t keep me!” she shouted. “You have to help me!”
“We cannot keep her,” the East Wind said, echoing her. “It was not right before; it is not right now.” The air began to blacken. Rain splattered on Cassie’s arm.
“But I want her!” the South Wind wailed like wind on the sea.
Cassie heard a crackle and saw a spark of white light jump from cloud to cloud. If they didn’t stop, she could be electrocuted. “Please!” Cassie shouted. “Uncles!”
“See!” the South Wind said. “Listen to her. She’s already family!”
“Yes, yes, I’m family! Gail’s daughter!” Cassie cried into the rising storm. “Stop it! Don’t storm! Please, stop!”
Instantly, the gray dispersed, and the breeze calmed to a whistle. “Did we hurt you?” the South Wind asked. “We don’t wish to hurt you. Your mother was our favorite child. We adored her.”
“She was a mistake,” the East Wind said.
Cassie bristled. “Excuse me?”
The South Wind said soothingly, “It’s an old argument. My brother did not approve of North’s adopting your mother.”
The East Wind growled like a rumble of thunder. “It was kidnapping.”
“Adoption,” the South Wind said.
“Kidnapping.”
In a reasonable tone, the South Wind said, “If Abigail did not love us, she would not have sent her daughter to live with us.”
Twisting in the air, Cassie tried to see the source of the voices. “I’m not here to live with you! I’m here to ask you to take me east of the sun and west of the moon!”
The air shuddered around her. “Oh, no, kitten. You cannot go there,” the South Wind said. “It is not a nice place. Not a nice place at all.”
“Not for living things,” the East Wind agreed.
“Besides,” the South Wind added, “it is too far. Much too far for us.” He sounded pleased. Streaks of cloud zipped past Cassie like silver minnows in a river.
“But you’re wind,” Cassie said. “Wind goes everywhere.”
“It’s beyond the ends of the world,” the East Wind said, and the sky darkened as he spoke. Deep gray stained the white clouds and spread.
Cassie felt a fat drop of rain hit her cheek. “The world is round. It doesn’t have ends,” she said. “Besides, Grandfather made it there. Can you take me to him?”
“Oh, kitten, you do not want to see him.”
“He has a temper,” the East Wind explained.
“Once, he was so angry he scattered us into hundreds of pieces all across the globe.” The air trembled. “It took us weeks to reassemble.”
He scattered his own brothers? She shivered. And these were the creatures that her mother had grown up with, that Gail had called family. “Just take me to him.”
“Absolutely not,” the South Wind said firmly. “He’ll tear you to bits.”
Cassie opened her mouth to argue, and her stomach squeezed. She clutched her stomach. Her baby! Not yet! She was so close to Bear! “For Gail’s sake, take me to him!”
“But…”
Her stomach loosened, and she sucked in air. “Please! If you cared about Gail at all, take me to the North Wind!”
In answer, wind rushed around her. Her skirt whipped and twisted around her legs. As she went spinning through clouds, she cradled her stomach.
“You may want to close your eyes,” the South Wind said to Cassie. “Some find this… distressing to their worldview.”
“Don’t worry about me,” Cassie said. “I married a talking bear.”
Enveloping her in empty air, the winds swept over the forest. She felt her stomach contract again as the two winds sandwiched her. She spun through the air like a pinwheel.
Clouds rocked underneath her, and she clenched her teeth, concentrating on not being sick. Faster and faster, she flew into the snow-toothed mountains. She slalomed between peaks. Veering close to one, the winds drove her toward the sheer face of the mountain glacier. “Watch it!” she yelled, and she sailed up the slope, bursting through clouds.
“We are here,” the South Wind whispered. As the winds slowed, Cassie saw a massive mountainside. A jagged cave cut open the side of the ice-coated mountain like a wound.
Snow spewed from the mouth of the North Wind’s cave as Cassie, carried by the two winds, flew toward it. Cold slammed into Cassie, and she catapulted backward through the air. She was caught in a sweep of wind as the North Wind roared: “BLAST YOU ALL. WHAT DO YOU WANT?”
Swirling around her, the South Wind whispered, “It is one of his bad days. Do you wish to leave now?” She felt the wind quivering. Tiny droplets of moisture beaded on Cassie’s skin.
She wanted to say yes, to run as far from this new monster as she could. “No,” she said. “This is what I came here to do. Bring me closer.” As the winds lowered her to the cave, she called, “North Wind, I need to talk to you! I’m Gail’s—”
“NEVER SPEAK HER NAME!” Howling, the North Wind tore out of his cave. He whipped around the peak at a hundred miles per hour. Mom called this monster “father”? Awed, Cassie watched boulders sail off the slope in showers of hail and ice. One of her uncles whimpered as the debris hit the mountainside in a mushroom cloud plume of dirt and ice. The crash sparked other rockfalls.
Far below, she heard a dragon roar as the avalanches cascaded. For an instant, hearing the dragon, the North Wind slowed. This was her chance. She thought of her mother rushing out of the station to protect her baby and her husband. If Mom could confront him for the sake of her family, then so could Cassie. She cupped her hands like a megaphone. “You have to take me east of the sun and west of the moon!”
“GO AWAY!”
“Now she’s done it,” she heard one of the winds whisper.
Hail hit her skin. Moaning, the winds huddled around her, suspended beside the mountain. She shielded her face. “Stop it!” Cassie cried.
“LEAVE ME ALONE!”
“Like hell I will!” she shouted back. “You have to help me!”
“LEAVE ME TO MY MISERY!” Rattling the mountain, the North Wind dove into his cave. A glacier cracked. Thundering, it slid down the mountain.