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That was unlike any name Gytha had ever heard before. Gytha turned everything over in her mind, trying to keep from weeping as she did so. Tears would only freeze on her cheeks.

Her nighttime visitor had indeed been human, but his face had that distinctive scar. She had been right. Somehow, the human had been the bear, or the bear had been the human.

Now the queen held him prisoner and would either marry him or eat his heart. They were far from any shelter and far from wherever the queen was, as far as she could tell. What had happened to the underground prison with all the paintings and embroidery supplies and furs?

“What happened to the caves?”

“The queen unmade it,” Eshkeshken said over his shoulder. “It was only a prison, not the real palace. We must get to the palace to find her.”

“Where is it?”

He waved a hand in the air. “East of the sun, west of the moon, where only the winds can follow.”

Gytha frowned and looked around. “Then where are we going?”

“To ask the winds for help.” He turned around and walked backward for a moment, unconcerned with the cold or uncertain footing on the wind-swept ice. “You were kind to me,” he said seriously, “when you did not know who I am. A prince repays his debts.”

“A prince?” Gytha asked, her voice trembling.

“We go to rescue your bear prince, because you care for him, and we go to kill the queen, because I can no longer countenance her rule of my people.”

“Your people?”

He smiled at her, his lips pulled back from his sharp teeth, and said softly, “My people.” Then he turned around and began to walk again. “Are you warm enough to live?”

Gytha swallowed. “Yes. Thank you for making me wear all this.”

He waved a hand in acknowledgment of her thanks, but said nothing else.

Hour after hour they walked, until Gytha was staggering with fatigue. The darkness never changed. The stars remained overhead and the sun never rose. At last Dakjudr said something that Gytha did not understand—it sounded like glass shattering—and Eshkeshken stopped. “We can rest here,” he said.

In a few minutes, they had dug out a depression in the snow and ushered Gytha into it. “It will be warm enough for you to rest.”

“What about you?” She glanced from one to the other. Their shirts were similar and fit loosely, so they fluttered in the wind, highlighting their thin, hard frames. They wore longsleeves, but their hands and faces were not flushed with cold, and they did not shiver.

“We do not suffer from the cold as you do,” Eshkeshken said. “Rest now. There are miles yet to go.”

She crawled into the hole, which was just big enough for her to be out of the wind. She pulled her hood close around her face and listened to the wind rush past. Eshkeshken and Dakjudr spoke together quietly in their strange, rough voices, and she tried to imagine what they might be saying. She dozed.

Sooner than she expected, one of them reached down and shook her shoulder gently. “Come.”

She clambered out of her strange resting place.

Eshkeshken handed her a piece of yellow cheese. “Eat while you walk. You need strength.”

“Thank you.” Gytha turned everything over in her mind as they tramped through the snow. Alexander’s face had been visible only for an instant, but the ugly scar down his nose was the same one that had marred the bear’s face. Her midnight visitor, the man, was the bear who had taken her home expecting to pay for that generosity with his life. She had known this, but still it was difficult to understand. The bear who had promised the stranger would not touch her was the same man who had kept his distance, listening with sympathy when she wept from loneliness.

She wished she had bared her heart to him in the many hours they had spent in the dark. The darkness would have provided privacy for tears and an excuse for boldness. What ought she have said to him? She had not been brave enough.

“I know the bear is the man,” she said at last. “But why did you say he was a prince?”

Eshkeshken looked back at her in apparent surprise. “You didn’t know? The queen stole him from human lands twoand a half centuries ago. She wants him for her own, because his face is handsome and his skin is warm.”

“But he will not have her?” Gytha’s voice carried a question, but she was beginning to understand.

Dakjudr said, “His heart is warm but as hard as stone toward her. How can love arise when coerced? Love must be given, not taken by force.”

Her footsteps crunched on the snow, and Gytha turned to look at her in surprise.