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While the children slept soundly, Iorek Byrnison stirred. The constant sway of the metal floor never gave him peace, even after night fell and the winds calmed. Iorek despised the sense of nausea that came with being in the air—he expected his time on the water and ice would have rectified that. But this was Lee Scoresby’s balloon, and there was little space for a panserbjørn to rest. It was only made worse by the tarp, which shut out his view of the world for warmth’s sake. Iorek couldn’t tell where Lee was taking him, and he could never predict when the craft would change direction.
For a while, Iorek tried to find a sense of monotony in the movement. He tried shutting his eyes and reaching out toward his armor, which was piled neatly beside him. One of his claws traced around the grooves in his helmet—it was a feeling he’d missed in Trollesund, a sensation he had always tried to mimic but never copied perfectly. Now, his armor kept him company as he waited for morning to come. This journey would be over soon—he’d just have to soldier through the next few hours.
“Hey, Iorek,” Lee’s voice called. On account of the balloon’s flame sputtering, Iorek couldn’t pinpoint where the greeting came from. The aeronaut’s voice was drawn out by grogginess; it was clear that he had caught the bear sniffing around. Iorek didn’t say much—he sighed heavily and let his chin rest on the floor.
“Lee.”
As Iorek’s voice rumbled in his throat, he felt Lyra shift against him. The bear froze, then turned toward the two children curled against his stomach. Neither of them showed any sign of wakefulness—Roger was even snoring softly, bundled up tight in Lyra’s arms. Though her eyes were shut, the girl’s face was turned toward Iorek, and her neck craned in the direction of where those Svalbard mountains would be if the tarp hadn't covered it up.
Iorek pulled his paw away from his armor, letting it come to rest beside his snout. He noticed how a pale light fell onto his fur—a soft pink, flooding over muddled white. The sunrise had a unique way of hiding the bloodstains under his claws, he thought.
“Oh, Iorek,” a familiar voice called. “You should at least try to get some sleep.”
Iorek glanced up at the small shadow perched atop a set of crates nearby. Hester’s voice was unmistakable, highlighted by that certain Texan drawl that matched her person. The daemon seemed to materialize from the shadows, only revealing her close proximity when she knew that she had the high ground. Not that it mattered much—both bear and daemon knew who held the most power here. But that didn’t stop Hester from looking down upon him with black, unblinking eyes.
The bear paused at first. He’d talked enough long nights with Lee Scoresby to usually keep him from hesitating, but he’d spoken very little to his daemon directly. Hester’s words demanded a similar kind of attention from the bear that Lee often had.
“I will sleep when we land,” Iorek said. He raised his head to look at the little hare—she was the size of one of his great paws, perhaps even smaller. “It was never in my nature to leave the ground.”
Iorek noticed movement from the other side of the balloon. Lee Scoresby revealed himself by pushing back one of the flaps of the tarp and sticking his head out into the dark. Faint pink light streamed into their crowded space in return, making the shadows on his face more prominent. Though his daemon scrutinized Iorek, Lee paid the bear no mind. He was more obligated to greet the dawn. He was stained in grime and still smelled of faint gunsmoke, but the sun took him anyway. In the silence, Lee Scoresby offered up that wide smile of his and scratched at the unshaven stubble on his chin. Then, with a quiet loss of breath, he leaned his weight against the railing. Iorek felt his stomach drop the balloon dipped, but he didn’t speak of it.
When the little rabbit offered a simple tsk, tsk, tsk, and a shake of her head—it was enough to catch the bear’s attention. Her beady eyes shifted against the torchlight of the balloon.
“Y’know, when I settled, Lee was surprised that I didn’t sprout wings,” she said. Behind her, the aeronaut chuckled to himself, even though Iorek doubted that he could hear their conversation over the wind.
Iorek curled his paws inward. Though he spoke softly, his voice still rolled deep in his throat.
“I couldn’t imagine you as anything else,” he said.
Iorek noticed the way Lee’s eyes flicked toward him. It was subtle, and only lasted for a moment. The man’s attention quickly fell back on the sky—he would have been fast enough to be unnoticed by most, but Iorek was an armored bear. He hardly ever questioned anything that he saw.
“Lee didn’t like how I turned out, at first,” Hester admitted. “We were reckless and stupid when he was a kid.” Iorek’s attention turned to the little daemon as she spoke. “He thought he’d messed me up somehow. Or someone else did.”
Hester’s whiskers twitched, and her face softened. She curled into herself as the wind passed by until she resembled a round little ball. She always seemed so fragile—Iorek noticed how every sense of movement left her poised and alert, if not shaken in the way that most rabbits on the tundra were. But the human in her was just as obvious—she never showed any indication of leaving her post, and her gaze stayed steady.
“Well, Lee and I still left Texas,” Hester continued. “We got ourselves a balloon, and learned the ropes, and we found a way up here.” As she spoke, she glanced back at the aeronaut, who was still preoccupied by the mountains that jutted out beneath them. “Turns out, my sensitivity to the air currents help us navigate. And this settled form left me farsighted—I can spot danger in the sky long before most do. And Lee, he’s got a way with mapping things out in his mind. He can take one look at the landscape and memorize every inch of country he finds.”
Hester stopped suddenly, just as Lee shifted his weight on the other side of the craft. His smile had softened throughout the conversation, but he was still looking beyond him with that glint in his eye—into the valleys of ice stretched toward the mountains, which started to bathe in pink and gold. The man couldn’t pry his gaze from it.
“You could have become a skilled cartographer,” Iorek said, keeping his gaze on Lee.
“Maybe. Maybe not. Doesn’t matter much,” Hester replied. “All I know is that Lee’ll follow the wind forever. Even after I turn to Dust, he’ll find a way to fly without me. He can’t help himself.”
After Hester spoke, the children stirred against Iorek’s chest. It was the only sound that brought Lee Scoresby’s attention back inside the craft. He glanced over at Lyra with a newfound alertness, but the girl only turned over in her sleep. When she mumbled to herself, everyone else fell still.
Lee’s tired eyes rested on the girl for a moment longer. Flecks of snow had settled in his hair after having leaned out of the safety of the craft for so long. As another gust of wind passed through, directing itself toward Iorek and the children nestled against him, the aeronaut made up his mind. He shut the tarp in several swift movements, then checked the tautness to ensure that he had sealed it properly. Then, as he walked toward the other side of the craft, he clicked his tongue softly at his daemon.
“C’mon, Hester. Need your help with something.”
The daemon turned to jump down from the crates, but just before doing so, she looked back at Iorek. There was hardly any light, save the fire in the center, but the bear could make out just enough of the daemon’s form to sense that he was being watched.
“Fine,” Iorek said, with a hint of a growl in his voice. “I’ll try to sleep.” He noticed the hare perk up in the corner of his eye—but he pretended to pay her no mind as he rested his head on the cold metal and shut his eyes.
Centuries later, Iorek Byrnison’s atoms settled as snow. He mostly stayed in the ice, compacted by billions of his kind. Occasionally, the thaw would bring him up to view an open sky, where he would encounter other atoms flown in on the wind. One of them might have been Lee’s or Hester’s, still navigating the thermals to get where they needed to go. Friction would pull on the bonds between molecules, urging Iorek to get off the ground.
Sometimes, when the wind was convincing enough, it would brush against the arctic’s surface and send up a flurry of white.