Nestled deep into a bouldered slope, the Haaland's house teetered one rock slide away from ruin. Quaint and well-loved though its wooden walls and numerous adornments appeared, the pumpkin-colored home stood in shambles. A pair of tattered flags sagged on the incoming breeze: Norwegian and American. Partially exposed snowmobiles rested under weathered tarps beside an old hatchback.

The moment we creaked open their rigged electric fence-designed for four-legged 'friendly' neighbors- a dozen howling huskies sprinted across the dirt yard. The flurry of noses and tails calmed when Danala stiffened, tail skyward, and allowed the rowdy pack to circle her. Anders guided me up crooked doorsteps to the front door. The home's interior bordered on lovingly threadbare, maintained in the style of someone who treasured mismatched, hand sewn drapes and the multitude of dented walls forced to absorb the energy of eight children.

Tucking the cub against his hip like a squirmy football, Anders gestured for my parka.

I leaned the walking stick against the wall, glancing from bear to hearth. "Amy?"

"She's welcome. Come now, before the heat's out."

For the first time in days I peeled off the heavy lining, ripped it from my arm with a pained gasp. Sweat, blood, and rotten meat polluted the air, so rancid you could taste it. With a wrinkled nose I folded the sticky fabric over my arm and fixed my cardigan sleeves. I didn't have to look at the wound to know I was head-to-toe festering.

"Do you have somewhere I can hang this?" I asked, pressing at the ripped puncture on my forearm.

"No," Anders said, taking and promptly drop-kicking the parka off the stairs. As the door shut, the huskies pounced, converging on the smelly lump in a flurry of wagging tails and curious tongues.

Feeling mighty self-conscious, I turned my attention inside. The stale odor clung to my skin, completely overpowered logs burning in the fireplace, whose thrown heat made me shiver after being so cold so long.

Amy's tiny nose caught a scent buried beneath my stench. She scampered under a coffee table. I lunged, but Anders gripped my elbow tight. "She can't do this place harm! No more than has already been done, I gather!"

"You sure?"

Nodding, he let go. "Shoes, please."

As I struggled to yank off the boots, a blanketed woman dropped her book on a faded loveseat and folded her reading glasses. Anders' wife had a petite body lost somewhere in her comfy attire. She rose to greet us dressed in a moth-eaten sweater and frayed, baggy jeans belted up to her waist. Snow streaked the ash brown hair she'd pulled into a bun. A stern pout made her seem a lot fiercer than an old woman should. Wrangling eight sons probably had something to do with that.

"I wasn't aware we were having company," she said flatly, as if her husband had brought home a boss or mother-in-law. Her nose wrinkled. "I am now."

Anders laid a smacking kiss on her cheek. "Honey, this is Rebecca. Found her near the valley pass. She ran into a spot of trouble. Becky, this is Emma, my beautiful bride."

"I wanted to head straight to Longyearbyen, but Anders insisted I come here," I said in hand-extended apology. An enormous diamond glittered on the hand that shook mine.

"Of course he did." She sighed. "My husband is nothing if not persistent."

"Kept saying I'd marry you. Look at us now!" 

She bumped hips with Anders on his way to a granite kitchen island. The hardness in her dark brown eyes softened as she smiled at him.

"That's not all. Strong chin and stronger muscles reeled my bride in." Anders poured a porcelain cupful of tea. He returned with a second, which I accepted eagerly, reveling in warm chamomile.

"Honest work brings honest muscle. And if that honest, muscular meathead keeps showing up at your door, eventually you decide to take him out for a spin."

I liked Emma. I was admittedly afraid of her, but I liked her.

 "Emma, I said you'd fix her and her kid some lunch and patch that nasty cut. Maybe offer a quick bath. She's been in the wilderness for days."

He whispered that last part in Emma's ear, but not low enough to keep me from fidgeting near a dingy window to air myself out.

Something shattered in the kitchen.

The two hustled in. I eased after them, careful not to slosh hot tea on my shirt. Except for my bra, I was officially out of layers.

Emma swatted the back of Anders' head. "That's not a child, Andy!"

Mashed potatoes splattered the floor. Underneath a barstool, Amy nosed the remains of a ceramic plate. Gobs of sour cream glued her fur together. Setting the tea on the island and muttering ten thousand apologies, I reached for the sticky cub. Amy fastened her paws to one cedar leg, tongue straining for every mushy glob.

Emma tapped my shoulder. 

With a firm tug I detached the bear-turned-octopus and handed her off. Unlike her husband, Emma felt the skinny ribs and swore. I bit my tongue. She wasn't my mother, Amy wasn't my responsibility, and I didn't have to defend anything, but I still felt like her condition was my fault.

"Nature's supposed to run its course and all, I know that, I do, but—"

"I don't care." Emma pulled Amy's lips apart and ran a finger along the exposed gums.

"Anders said she's a Eurasian brown."

Numbers and letters inked the lower left lip. "He's right. Eurasian brown, but this one's been tattooed . . . " The cunning that came from raising  a horde resurfaced. Suspicion shaded her voice. "Where were you hiking?"

"Along the shore." I leaned in for a closer look at the numbers. "What's that mean?"

"We've got to call in to Ny-Ålesund." Her fingers massaged the cub's neck, probing for a radio collar or some hidden microchip, I guessed. Amy moaned and twisted for potatoes. "I can't believe this."

"I didn't steal her," I asserted, awaiting Amy's return with crossed arms. "I'm an assistant on Professor Kasper Guastad's expedition." Spitting out that demon's name was difficult, but his reputation gave me an alibi. I didn't have any other viable reason for being on Spitsbergen.

Emma shuffled as though preparing to relinquish her charge, but the motions ended at a hand on her slim waist. "Kasper doesn't allow his assistants time to sleep, let alone hike, especially when his ship has just docked."

My stomach cramped. "You know him?"

"Do you?" she snapped. "Are you familiar with his research?"

"Carbon," I said. A stack of his papers had arrived at the dorm after I'd accepted the Queen's mission, but I'd glanced through them while watching a documentary on the stolen Rembrandt. Amy grumbled; even she knew my answer sucked. "He hasn't told me all the details; I was brought to learn. I'm an undergrad biology major from the United States."

Her eyes rolled. "He wouldn't take a wet-behind-the-ears student and pitch her at his life's work when every year there are dozens of enthusiastic, qualified students begging to attend his expeditions."

With an uncertain smile Anders draped an arm over each of us. "Two weeks ago, the paper posted a notice concerning the Ny-Ålesund experiments. Three pregnant female browns had been transferred from the mainland to test the hypothesis that . . . To test what now, dear?"

"If a polar might rear cubs of a genetically similar species."

"Yes, exactly that. Wasn't there a power outage, during which a mother and cub escaped? I can't imagine Becky here can walk away from the facilities with a full grown, hungry bear, no." He pried Amy from Emma and placed her back on the ground. Nose-down, she returned to the scene of her crime. "Poor girl must've lost her mother. Got hungry and confused. Wouldn't have followed Becky otherwise."

The hair on my neck tingled. Hazy terrors and foggy shapes from my escape drifted through my mind. Maybe my imagination hadn't been playing tricks after all. Although I hadn't been invited to sit, I collapsed onto a bar stool and pulled my tea close. Emma coughed but for the moment allowed me to stare into the cup and speak. "Fog rolled in off the lake when I ... fell. At one point I thought I saw a bear."

"The mother in her final moments," Anders concluded. "You were very lucky she was weak. A mother with a cub to feed would have stopped at nothing."

I remembered Kasper's finger, the glitter of the frosted seal skull, the thick coating of blood on the brown grass. The big male polar bear turning away; in the moment I didn't remember a bang but there in my memory rang a clap of gunshot. Had Amy's mother killed Kasper? Had Kasper killed her?

Rubbing her forehead, Emma moved to the sink. Through its oval window she surveyed a sloped backyard of weathered sandstone and scratched plastic igloos. "The program director will want to know." She sighed. "Would you be able to mark the location on a map?"

"Everything was covered in fog and I was disoriented from—" The words stalled. I tapped the cup rim and stared at the black blood of my forearm. Emma knew Kasper. If he wasn't dead, she'd surely tell him I wasn't. In my silence Amy clawed at an oak-paneled cupboard. Anders moved her backward with his foot.

"From hitting your head?" he prompted.

Emma opened an upper cabinet and produced a glass ramekin which she filled with boiled water from the kettle.

I nodded. Great, coiling puffs of steam didn't stop me from taking a sip. The taste alone was worth the mild burn. "You can't return Amy to the program," I said. "Her mother died. She's almost dead. This isn't her appropriate habitat."

Emma stooped and barehanded gathered the broken plate's remains. "Amy?"

"The cub." After a sip of tea, Anders added, "I am not responsible."

Emma dropped the fragments into the trash. "Rebecca, it is our duty and yours, if you are Kasper's assistant, to bring Amy to Ny-Ålesund. You understand the importance of research?"

"Yes."

"Kasper and I taught together at the University of Oslo. He's staying in this very house tomorrow night. You aren't included his list of team members who'd be coming in and out the next few weeks. I would've recalled an American. I always hope another Alaskan will wander through."

Sneaking anything past Emma wasn't happening. My elbows touched the granite so that the cup's lip hovered above mine. "Queen Joronn paid me to work with him this summer," I said slowly.

Emma exchanged a look with Anders. "Why's our Queen sticking her nose in his research again?"

"Again?"

"Kasper's already won the Queen's Medal of Merit. I wonder what he's working on now."

I knew. 

"Queen Joronn promised to help me find work," I said. "I'm not looking for trouble. I planned on handing Amy off to a vet. Once I reach Longyearbyen I'll even reimburse you for your troubles."

Anders waved my proposition off with a checkered dish towel. He set both it and the ramekin across from me. "It's a broken dish. We're more than happy to have saved a life for such a small sacrifice."

Judging from her scowl, the only altruistic bone in Emma's body suffered from osteoporosis. She plopped two sugar cubes into my cup with enough force that the resounding splash stung my cheeks. With an unapologetic smile she handed me a spoon to break them apart. "Tell me about Professor Guastad."

"I shouldn't have to."

"You must."

As the tea settled, the long shadow of a rifle stretched across the surface. The spoon rattled against the cup's rim. Immediately I dropped the utensil as if scalded. Anders watched curiously. With a forced smile I elevated the cup, blew on the tea a couple times and let the cubes dissolve on their own. Emma strode to far wall, where below a clock and framed family pictures sat an ancient landline. She plucked the phone off the receiver and cradled it against her shoulder.

"Shall I call Kasper and ask why he sent an inexperienced student into the wild?" The dial tone sped my heart. If he was alive, Kasper couldn't know I was. He couldn't. "Shall I, Becky?"

"Hang up!" I cringed, covering my ears at the pitchy shriek. "He was with me."

The phone clicked back into place. 

My chest caved. I told her of our hike but trailed off at mention of our supposed break to gather soil samples.  The contents of my cup curdled into thick, red syrup. No matter how much I told myself it was a hallucination from exhaustion and fear, my stomach flipped. I almost threw up.

Emma pulled her ass onto the nearest stool. Her open mouth was the most off guard I'd seen her. "What happened next? If you're here and he isn't . . . The poor man!"

I wanted to lie but the words wouldn't come. Bottled emotion demanded release. Until now I'd been too busy surviving to feel; there'd been one threat after another after another and I was terrified and angry.

"Take your time, Becky," Anders urged. "You're safe here."

If I took any more time the words might never emerge.

With a pitiful gasp my walls collapsed. My tongue stumbled on easy words. In search of comfort I pushed off the island and groped for Amy.

Bless them if they understood, because sniffling, choked sobs drowned my hearing. I stuttered through the  betrayal, the bear, the meat, and the trail of flesh and blood. My eyes stung. I couldn't see, couldn't do anything more than shiver and hug Amy close. She brayed and resisted. After a moment's struggle, I released her into the silence of Emma's kitchen.

Anders stirred sugar into his tea. The spoon clinked eleven times and I was content to simply breathe and count until Emma reached for my hand.

"Kasper Gustad- are you certain you were with the real Kasper Gustad?" she asked.

Rolling back my sleeve, I brandished the ugly injury. Regaining my voice was a battle I wasn't close to winning, but I managed a small nod and brief description of him.

"I don't understand." Emma's tone lacked the confidence of earlier. "An award-winning scientist attempts to murder a summer intern? Over what?"

"Awards don't make you a good person, honey," Anders said.

"Should I take the word of an unproven stranger over a distinguished scientist?"

My nails bit into the flesh of my palm. I stared into the drab backyard of rock, surprised to find my cracking voice. "I don't know who he is as a person. All I know is he tried to kill me."

The floorboards creaked. Emma had stepped off her stool. The hand rubbing my back was gentle and her voice softer still. At first I resisted, but her fingers wore away the knots in my shoulders. 

"Help me understand," she said. "You're so young and of little societal importance."

Fair enough assessment. I relaxed against her touch. "Remember Prince Niklas' discovery?"

Her eyebrows rose. "What of him?"

I told them. Everything from Boston to Spitsbergen.

Emma's touch disappeared finger by finger. My back ached in protest. "Tragic though your tears are, I'm afraid you're crying over wolves, which my good friend is not," she decided. A red plastic brief case had been set on the counter during my explanation.

"Wolves act on instinct. They do what they must. Kasper isn't a wolf. He's a monster." I wished I had the diary and my phone as proof. Pictures from the scene could have helped, but instead I had only horrible memories. I pressed my temple, stuck my fingers hard against the split skin. A mass of gritty, dirty blood dislodged. If the clot or the sight of me wiping it on my pants repulsed her, Emma made no show of it.

"How do I know you didn't kill him in cold blood, that you aren't a bear thief he had the misfortune of stumbling across?"

Anders slammed his palm on the counter. Emma and I both jumped. Amy growled. "He had hungry eyes, Emma, I've always told you."

Emma frowned. "He's been good to us."

"Good to you. Jealous of me, or have you forgotten that ring he offered after I had proposed to you?" Agitation raised his voice. I shrank back, feeling as if I'd stumbled into a deeper problem. "How many times since has he considered you for this fate, or me?"

Emma's hand found his. "He's never harmed us, Andy. There's no proof he harmed Allison."

Anders snatched my arm. I yelped, he let go, but there was no stopping him. "Becky!" Anders began near a shout. "She's right to use a false name. Becky is proof! That man is a nightmare wrapped in human skin."

Emma rolled her tongue along her lips, thoughtful, then poured me a fresh cup of tea. "In any case, Rebecca is lucky to be alive what with her animal magnetism. Surviving encounters with possibly three adult bears is a remarkable feat in and of itself."

Anders rubbed a hoary five o'clock shadow. "This stinks worse than she does, Em. The Queen comes to town unannounced, the settlement enters a lockdown and we have a girl claiming to have been attacked by a merit recipient."

If I had Amy's round little bear ears, they would've perked. "Queen Joronn's here?"

"Supposedly," he said. "Haven't seen her, but she tends to hole up behind the guards when she's here anyway. Her guards have been skulking about the past two days. Thought it was odd at the time, but what do I care? I'm retired."

Amy pawed a cabinet. It swung open. In she marched, fearlessly navigating jugs of rendered fat and dish soap until she'd uncovered a sponge to shred. Anders reached into a bowl and dropped a raw salmon head on the floor as a distraction.

"The last time Queen Joronn and I spoke she was busy making arrangements for Nik's wedding. She and Princess Annelise left for some resort I can't pronounce in central Norway. She wasn't ever traveling off mainland."

Emma soaked the rag in the ramekin. "Turn your cheek, Rebecca."

"Why would she lie?" I asked, turning. And who was she lying to?

Emma pushed my hair aside. "A stitch or two ought to do. Be still now, this'll tingle." Sharp fire radiated through cracks in my skin, outlining the attack. Delicately put, it hurt like a mofo, but no pain compared to that first night, and the arm was going to be a hundred times worse,  so I grit my teeth and dealt.

Anders dropped another hunk of fish onto the floor for Amy to vacuum. "Longyearbyen, eh?"

"I can't stay here if Kasper's coming.  Can you possibly get me to Jon Tveit?"

"Another upstanding community man." Emma's eyebrows rose.

"Kasper might be targeting him.  I need to retrieve the painting ASAP. I don't know what Queen Joronn is doing or if she's really here, or even if she's someone to trust. So I need to see Jon first." 

Anders called but had to leave a message. I waved him off before he could mention my name.

Emma looked across to her husband. "This is getting a bit too murky, Andy. We need to call the police."

He shook his head. "The Queen is lying, either to the settlement or Becky. Stationing men here? Kasper's crew dropping him and Becky off in the wild? I'd bet the house those guards ensure she won't make it back to mainland in anything other than a body bag."

Emma snorted. At that point Anders pulled her aside to the living room, where the two had a loud conversation in Norwegian. When they returned, her smile was thin.

"I don't trust you," she said, "but if there is a chance that Kasper is the man you claim he is, or that the Queen's guards are here for you, I could not in good conscious deliver you to die."

Her husband pursed his lips. "I hope you covered your tracks."

My boots were drenched in blood. The water bottle and spade lay forgotten on the rocky slope. Fear spiked my heart. Any amateur tracker could gauge my whereabouts. I sprang to my feet, knocking my teacup on the way. Hot chamomile coursed over the counter in a steaming waterfall. Amy was too busy tearing apart the salmon to care about the puddle spreading across the linoleum.

"You're in danger," I said, reaching for the cub.

Emma grabbed my good arm and pressed the towel against my head. "Sit your butt down and let me finish. Where do you think you'll go? Flights are grounded. You've sustained several injuries."

"Life threatening?" I asked.

"Without proper care, certainly."

"Then please patch me up and find a way to get me to Jon," I insisted. "I have to warn him. After that, I don't know. I'll figure something out."

"You're on a relatively remote island," Anders pointed out.

The needle sunk in. Emma pulled the stitch through. I gripped the stool rim and swore a thousand times in my head. Aloud, I hissed, "Well, I can't fly."

"No." Anders wrung the tea-stained sponge over the sink. Wafting chamomile didn't calm me now. "That leaves you at Ægir's mercy."

Emma's iron grip prevented me from shaking my head. "The sea and I aren't friends."

Anders turned and lifted the lid off a burbling pot on the stove. Steam billowed past his widening smile. "My sons, those still on the island, are fishermen. Boat's in working order. We'll take you back."

Emma tied a third stitch. The needle clinked into the ramekin to be later cleaned with a sanitary wipe before returning to the first-aid kit. "There'll be eyes on the water," she said in a careful tone, moving to assess the deeply swollen wounds on my arm. Her reluctant agreement suggested she didn't particularly enjoy her husband's offer to involve the family in my escape.

"We'll send her off in Lady Neveya with the dawn trawlers. With the arctic char biting, no one's fool enough to travel to the mainland over a strong profit. Doubt there will be much if any suspicion. If the guards don't catch her here tonight, they won't realize she's in the village until we're miles off shore."

"Where will you bring me?" I asked, trying not to crack my teeth grinding them so hard against the electric fire inside my arm.

"Half a country's length away from the American embassy in Oslo I'm afraid, but we have friends, the Engens. They might take you the rest of the way or get you to someone who can."

"We can't involve them," Emma said, informing me how lucky I was to still have working fingers and that we're going to have to drain the injury. If it weren't for the dense parka and if the bear had decided to take more than an exploratory bite, things would've been worse.

"Have you forgotten what happened to Marcus?" he asked. "They'll help this girl, I'm sure." Anders set a plate of roasted potatoes and cooked salmon before me. I was so desperate for food I popped a piece potato into my mouth sans-fork. He watched with a bemused expression. "Good?" he asked.

"Best I've ever eaten and my dad's a chef." I rambled praise in Emma's silence, breathing steam. "Who are the Engens?"

"Friends you haven't met," said Anders. "They've got the resources to get you home."

"And Mr. Tveit, too, if he needs help?" I said, feeling stronger already with food tantalizing my taste buds.

"You would still go to him?" Anders asked. I nodded. "Aren't you afraid?"

"I have to. He may or may not have stolen a world treasure, but I can't Kasper kill any one else."

"Very well." Anders laughed. "Seeing you here, hearing those big words, I do sense a warrior's spirit in you."

"That's bullheaded college student talk," I replied. Emma laughed.

"Not a bull, but a bear." Anders gestured at the living room ceiling. Grizzled with dust, wolf, bear, and the pelts of smaller ilk warmed the cross beams. Even though they were long-deceased, I struggled to meet those stitched-shut eyes. "We are fierce warriors, we who wear them. But you, you have tamed the spirit." He scratched Amy's ear. "Queen of the berserks, the Vikings would have called you! Bear queen!"

"What they would have called me was Dead, because that's what I'd have been by now in those times. Norway's kicking my ass."

"Under this roof you, Becky, have been named a proper bear queen," Anders insisted, patting me on the back. He was trying hard to make me feel better, I thought. "I will draw you a bath. Emma will arrange for little Amy-back to the mainland with you she goes. We'll be on the road before dawn. You will have one hour with Mr. Tveit. We must depart with the other fishing boats or risk attention."

"Can't I go tonight?"

"You need medical attention, little bear queen. Mr. Tveit we will call, but you must be seen to. My son Oskar, his wife is a veterinarian. We will have her come this night to clean and sew this arm of yours, give you antibiotics."

"I still think-"

"At dawn, Becky. You do not realize how close to being a skeleton you are. Mr. Tveit will see you come dawn."

"In the land of midnight sun," I argued, shoveling food into my mouth, "dawn doesn't exist."

"There is always a dawn," Emma reminded me as her husband walked past to prep the bath.