That night, Mrs. Sharp sat once again beside Thomas’s bed while his aunt and his father met with Detective Freeman at the police station about “next steps.” Mrs. Sharp’s knitting needles clicked on in such a regular pattern that it reminded Thomas of a toy train.

The ball of yarn rolled off her lap and she made an “oof” noise as she bent to retrieve it. She placed the ball in Thomas’s hands. “Would you hold this, Thomas?”

He sat up. The ball was light, like there was air at the center.

“I was wondering—” Thomas broke off, considering whether he wanted to know the answer to the question he was about to ask.

“Don’t hold so tight, dear.” Mrs. Sharp traced the strand from Thomas’s hands to her knitting, tugging gently as she did so. “Let go a little. That’s right. Now you’re the perfect spindle.”

Thomas had to work to stay relaxed. He had never held a ball and let it go at the same time. He took a deep breath and willed Dave to fold up his wings so they weren’t covering his airway. “Do you think my mother is dead?” he asked finally.

Mrs. Sharp put her hand on Thomas’s knee. “I hope not,” she said, “but it is a possibility. I am so sorry, Thomas.”

Mrs. Sharp resumed her knitting and they were silent for a while, Thomas concentrating on the pull of the yarn between his fingers.

“Aunt Sadie says that my mother isn’t anywhere. But she must be somewhere.”

“I have an idea,” Mrs. Sharp said. “Why don’t we imagine a place for Helen?”

“My father says—”

“Your father likes facts. But since we don’t have all the facts, we could make some up. That is, if you’d like.”

Thomas thought about informing Mrs. Sharp that you couldn’t make up facts. But he realized in the same moment that he very much wanted to. So he nodded.

“Would it be warm?” he asked Mrs. Sharp.

“Warm…like the desert?”

No.

Thomas did not think his mother was in the desert. “Would she be warm?”

“Oh yes. Absolutely.”

“Would there be…magic?”

“I don’t see why not. It’s your story.”

Thomas nodded. Helen liked stories with magic.

“And talking animals?”

Mrs. Sharp nodded again. “Talking animals are very common in invented places.”

“Yes. And it has to be cozy. Like…inside a blanket…or a big coat.”

“All right, then,” she said. “Close your eyes and see if this feels right.”

Thomas closed his eyes and concentrated on the soft yarn at the tips of his fingers.

“Helen drove to the airport and parked her car,” Mrs. Sharp said. “She sat there for a long time, looking out the window.”

“What was she thinking?” Thomas asked, his eyes still pressed closed, hoping for a glimpse of his mother.

“About you, of course. And your father. And your aunt. Then, all of a sudden, it began to snow.”

“But it didn’t snow on the first day.”

“Hmm, yes that’s so. But maybe this was magical snow…meant only for Helen. You did want magic, didn’t you?”

“Right,” Thomas replied. “Yes to magic.”

“The snow fell thick and soft, until…until there was a quilt of snow. Helen sat inside the car looking at it with wonder.”

“Was she sad? Were the clouds in her eyes?” Thomas felt a tug on the yarn and he reminded himself to loosen his grip.

“Yes…and no. She was sad to be leaving, but she was also about to take a journey, one she knew only she could take. She was…determined. Something was calling to her, Thomas. Listen.” Mrs. Sharp made a shushing sound. “Do you hear that?”

“No.” Thomas heard nothing; but he felt the soft snow falling and drifting up against the car, silent and warm, like…a thousand balls of yarn.

“I’m quite sure I hear something. I’ll wait until you can hear it, too. Relax, Thomas. It will come to you.”

It took some time, but Thomas thought maybe he did hear something. “Someone’s knocking,” he said, listening harder to make sure. “On the car door.”

“Yes, that’s it. And now that someone is wiping away the snow from Helen’s window.”

“It’s a mitten,” Thomas said. “Or…a great big paw.”

“A paw. Yes. I thought so, too.”

At the thought of his mother in the car like that—all alone—Thomas felt Dave’s wings brush the top of his stomach. He took a deep breath and let it out. Slowly. One more breath. Then another.

“I think I see a snout. Do you?” Mrs. Sharp asked him.

He did see it…emerging from the blankness. “A polar bear,” he said. “White like the snow.”

“Yes,” Mrs. Sharp agreed. “His paw beckons to Helen and she gets out of the car.”

Once again, Thomas squeezed the ball of yarn and felt the tug of Mrs. Sharp’s knitting needles. “The bear won’t hurt her,” he said with certainty.

“No. He wants to help.”

Thomas peeked at Mrs. Sharp before squeezing his eyes shut again. “I don’t hear anything, do you?”

“No.”

“Why aren’t they talking?” Thomas tried to get a clear view of the bear, but the snow kept covering him up. “The bear is sad,” Thomas said after a moment. “The clouds are in his eyes.”

“Something must be troubling him. But he’s not ready—or maybe he can’t…share it yet. Helen stands quite still, looking into the bear’s eyes.”

Thomas nodded his head. “She’s good at being patient.”

“The snow continues falling,” Mrs. Sharp resumed. “Soon it covers her shoulders, her hair, even her eyelashes. She shivers a little. The bear gestures again, this time for her to follow him to a clearing where the tree cover is so heavy the snow has piled up on the branches. It’s…more like a cave. Helen watches as the bear turns over a rock and produces a fur coat from underneath it.”

“Oh no. It can’t be fur.” Thomas was quite sure on this point. “She wouldn’t like that. She wouldn’t even wear the coat Aunt Sadie found for her at New-4-U, the one with the fur trim on the hood.”

“Of course she wouldn’t. This is a magic coat, Thomas. It’s the coat of the very first polar bear queen. She died long ago, but her coat stayed behind to…protect travelers. Travelers like Helen. It has been passed down for hundreds of years.”

“Well then…that’s different.” Thomas paused, thinking. “And she needs a coat. She took hers off.”

“Yes, I know. Your father told me. Shall we continue?”

Thomas nodded.

“Helen takes off her coat and hangs it in the branches. The polar bear helps her on with the fur coat and as she puts her arms in the sleeves, this terrible heaviness she’s felt these last couple of years…it’s beginning to feel…”

“Lighter,” Thomas said. He handed the ball of yarn back to Mrs. Sharp and turned over on his stomach, letting one arm dangle over the side of the bed. His bed was so high that his fingers didn’t reach the floor. He wiggled them, thinking. “Her shoes aren’t warm enough, either,” he said.

The knitting needles paused in their rhythmic clicking and Thomas saw that Mrs. Sharp was staring out the window that overlooked the backyard.

“Something is happening inside Helen,” she said finally. “She’s feeling a great warm surge of energy. The bear sweeps his paw to indicate her feet.”

“I still don’t understand why he doesn’t talk to her.”

“Only you know that, Thomas.”

“But I don’t.” It bothered Thomas. In a magical story, the bear should talk. “Maybe the bear is under a spell,” he told Mrs. Sharp. “Keep going.”

“From underneath the same rock,” Mrs. Sharp continued, “the bear produces a pair of boots, thick and sturdy and warm. Does this sound right to you, Thomas?”

Thomas nodded. “They were left behind, too, to protect travelers like my mother,” he murmured.

“Helen sits down on the rock, takes off her shoes, and—”

“Pulls them on,” Thomas interrupted Mrs. Sharp. He couldn’t help it. He wanted her to know that he was seeing it, too.

There was a moment of silence as Thomas and Mrs. Sharp looked at each other. It was as if they’d come to a place in the road where they could turn left or right and each wanted the other to say which way.

“We’re coming up to it,” he said.

“Coming up to what?”

“The part where the polar bear talks. He is under a spell; he can only talk this one time.” Thomas asked himself, what would a sad bear say to his mother? He wanted the bear to tell her to turn around, get back in the car, and go home. But he knew that wasn’t what the bear was going to say.

“You’re about to set off on a journey, Helen…” Mrs. Sharp said, speaking in a low voice that didn’t sound much like a polar bear. Turning so he faced the wall, Thomas pulled his pillow over his head and closed his eyes. He lay quiet, breathing in and out, imagining his story.

“Are you frightened?” said the polar bear.

Helen shook her head

“Only you can do this,” he said, reaching deep down under the rock and pulling out a bag with a long, thin cord. “Here. You will need this on your journey.”

The scene disappeared from view and Thomas sat up. He looked at Mrs. Sharp and blinked. “He gave her a bag,” he said. “It has a long cord and she put it around her neck and tucked it inside her coat.”

“What is in the bag?” Mrs. Sharp asked.

Thomas shook his head. He didn’t know. He lay back down and looked at the ceiling. There was a curved crack above his head. As Thomas stared at it, he imagined that the ceiling was a field of snow and he was looking down on it, searching until he found his mother and the bear.

The bear turned away from Helen and closed his mouth around his claw, like Dave sucking on a finger. But he wasn’t sucking on it. He pulled it from his paw. There was a drop of blood on the end of it, where he’d torn it away.

“Why would he do that?” he asked aloud. “Is he giving it to her?”

“Giving her what, Thomas? My sight isn’t as good as yours.”

“His claw. He pulled it right out of his paw. And now he’s…” Thomas paused, his gaze fixed on the ceiling.

“Here’s a whistle,” he said as he folded it into her palm. “I would give my life to save you, Helen. You know this. Use it to call me—but remember, the whistle can only be used once.”

The great white bear blew into the claw until it doubled in size. It was a whistle with an opening where it should have been attached to his paw and two small holes along its sharp, curved length. Before he turned back to Helen, he licked the blood away.

Thomas relayed to Mrs. Sharp what had happened and she said, “I’m guessing Helen took the whistle and placed it in the bag she’d hidden beneath her coat.”

Thomas nodded. “It’s not the only thing in the bag…” He could see something else, something round and soft, but he didn’t know what yet.

Thomas waited. But nothing more came to him.

“It’s time for her to leave, isn’t it?” Thomas asked Mrs. Sharp.

“Yes, I believe it is time for Helen to say good-bye to the bear.”

“Maybe she’s going to the astral plane.”

“How do you know about the astral plane?” Mrs. Sharp paused in her knitting to look at Thomas.

It was easy for him to tell her about the phone call. And Marina Rush. And the astral plane. She wouldn’t mind that Thomas had answered the phone while his father was in the shower.

“She said if I wanted her to, she would search for my mother there.”

For some reason, Mrs. Sharp began to knit faster. Tap. Tap. Tap. “Easy for her to say, since the astral plane cannot be seen.”

“Then how do we know it’s real?”

“We don’t, but I believe the astral plane was considered by classical scholars to be a place between the world of the living and the world of the dead. Is that where you’d like your mother to go in your story?”

Thomas was still, trying to decide if the astral plane was a good place for Helen to go. “Can the astral plane be more north than north and more south than south?” Thomas asked, remembering a fairy tale he and his mother had liked to read.

“I don’t see why not.”

“Then yes. She’s going to the astral plane now.”

“Helen is stroking the polar bear’s soft white neck,” Mrs. Sharp said after some time. “ ‘Thank you,’ she is saying. ‘Thank you more than I can say.’ He bends down toward her as if he is about to whisper something in her ear. But all Helen feels is his fur brushing against her face.”

“Like butterfly kisses,” Thomas murmured, thinking of the times his mother brushed her eyelashes against his face.

“Yes. Almost like a kiss. As she turns to get her bearings and find the horizon, a great gust of wind knocks drifts of snow from the branches above and they swirl around Helen. When she turns back toward the bear, he is gone.”

Thomas pressed his lips together and swallowed. “How—” He rubbed his eyes with his fists to keep the tears inside. “How can a story start with good-bye?”

“I don’t know,” Mrs. Sharp told him. “But you do. Somewhere inside you know the answer.”

“So it’s…not over?”

“No…no! It’s only just begun. At least you can rest easy now knowing that wherever Helen is, she is perfectly warm, Thomas. We are agreed on that point, are we not?”

Thomas nodded.

“And somewhere in this house you are going to re-create the safe warm feeling Helen has inside her coat. Maybe right here, under your covers. When you go there, you will imagine what is happening in the story. And then you will discover what comes next. Do you understand, Thomas?”

Thomas nodded. He rolled over to face the wall again and pulled his knees up close, snuggling under the covers with every intention of spinning out more of the story, but all he could do was picture his mother in her coat of fur and her sturdy boots, as if she were inside a snow globe, slowly disappearing behind a curtain of snow.

He slept deeply for the first time in days, knowing she was warm.