Svenna hadn’t been able to stop thinking about what she’d seen in the Stellata Chamber. The Grand Patek had actually been shouting out her mate’s name. Svern! Bragging about torturing him. She pressed her paw to her heart and closed her eyes. Would they ever see each other again?

But there was nothing she could do to help Svern now. Her focus had to remain on escaping this wretched place and reuniting with her cubs. Though until she found a way out, she wanted to do whatever she could for the Tick Tocks. When she was sure no one was watching, she slipped back into the secret tunnel and wandered through the darkness until she saw the chillingly familiar bloodstained mist.

Them! It’s them! A flood of gillygaskins roiled in the loom of the blood haze and the gillys seemed to be singing. Drawn by their song, she began to make her way toward their voices.

At the edge of Ursulana,

Where the stars never shine,

Cling the gillygaskin cubs,

Far from that place sublime.

Oh, Ursus, let us in,

We’re knocking at your door.

We must flee this cursed place,

Gather on that starry shore,

Though we’re splintered,

And not whole.

We know that somewhere in this night,

Swirl the shards of our lost souls.

What gives wholeness to a life unlived?

A cub who’s never played?

A creature snatched from mother’s milk,

Her heartbeats muffled, then replaced

By ticks and tocks of that great wheel

That chews and rips and makes us bleed,

Yet never quite to die or live.

And so we’re left behind,

To quivik we are doomed.

Suspended in our grief,

Ne’er to be alive or dead,

Between the fangs of time,

Nor glimpse Ursulana so divine.

Yet we long to see the stars bloom across the night,

To escape this bloody mist of quivik,

To take our final flight,

Through this never-ending night.

“Juuls? Juuls?” Svenna called out.

“Here,” a tiny voice whispered. “Here with the rest.”

There were so many of these gillygaskins, it was almost impossible to count them all. Perhaps one hundred or maybe five hundred. They loomed over this strange landscape. They did not appear to walk or crawl but float. Some lacked feet or paws. Sometimes they were headless, or a head might be drifting near the shoulders that it once set upon.

“But why, Juuls? Why can’t you go to Ursulana?” Svenna asked. Juuls simply shrugged.

“I think … I think …” Another little gilly who was missing arms bobbed up and down through the hazy swirls. “We can’t get to Ursulana because we aren’t whole. We are so broken we don’t even have shadows! If I could have my arms back and my legs, I could paddle, and then swim to Ursulana.”

“No.” Svenna shook her head. “You are not broken.”

“But look at us!” a voice cried out. “I have no body. Just a head.”

“You are whole inside. You were born whole, but you were all taken as Tick Tocks when you were too young to remember anything. Your mums, the milk, the winter den that first year. Did your mum ever tell you the story of the fidgety cub who could not be quiet during still hunting? Or the Ki-hi-ru stories? Did she tell you those stories about the shape-shifter foxes who can change themselves into other animals? Or dancing under the lights of the ahalikki? Did you ever do that?”

The armless gilly’s head shook. Then the various other gillys shook their heads too, and murmured, “No … nooo.”

“What’s the ahalikki?”

How can I describe it? Svenna wondered. “It’s sort of like a rainbow in the night.”

“But what’s a rainbow?” another asked, and before Svenna could begin to even try to explain, Juuls asked, “What are stories exactly?”

This shocked Svenna most of all. “What are stories? You don’t know what a story is?”

“We know nothing except the escapement wheel.”

Svenna looked out at the little ghost cubs. It seemed as if this place quivik was about as far from Ursulana as any bear could be. And why? They had hardly had a chance to be cubs.

“Can you show me the escapement wheel? If I am to understand you and understand this fiendish place, I must see the wheel on which you were imprisoned. I must understand your world if I am to help you get to Ursulana.”

All she had to do was think of her own cubs, First and Second, that they would be here now if she had not come here herself to serve. These gillygaskins were her cubs now. These little ghosts who had been mutilated for this stupid clock were her mission now.

But Svenna herself was not a ghost. Not yet. She was alive, and her own cubs were alive somewhere, someplace. She knew that they had narrowly escaped from Roguers. As long as they lived, she was alive. She had the will to live and to do anything to escape. If she did, she knew where she would go. To the Northern Kingdoms to where the great bear Svree was said to have formed the first council of noble bears in the Den of Forever Frost before the Great Melting, before the time of the dragon walruses, before the monstrous tyranny of the Ice Clock of the Ublunkyn.

“Follow us,” Juuls said. He and another cub began to lead Svenna through the vales of the murky blood fog. They came to a place of clear ice. Juuls pointed with his pawless arm. She realized that they were now on the back side of the clock, behind the clock face and peering into its innards. Her eyes focused on an immense wheel with sharp teeth spiking its circumference. There were notches between the teeth, each just wide enough to accommodate a very small cub, not even a yearling, just three or four months old. As the wheel turned, each cub hopped from one notch to the next.

“But what is the purpose?” Svenna asked, shaking her head in disgust.

“They experiment,” Juuls replied. “Sometimes the wheel is fully loaded, each notch with a cub, sometimes not. It’s all part of honoring the clock. It is an honor to sacrifice. That is what they tell us. It’s proof of our faith, our vrahkyn.”

Many of the cubs on the wheel were bleeding. Most of them were beyond being terrified. Their eyes seemed frozen and strangely clear—like ice. They were transfixed. They might as well have been dead.

“But why do they need to do this?”

“Balance. If the clock is balanced, they believe it gives warning of a great melting.”

“Divine balance. That is what they call it,” one gilly whispered.

“Divine! It’s grotesque! It must be stopped,” Svenna growled. “And it has nothing to do with faith.”

Then the head of the headless cub floated close to Svenna and settled on her shoulder. The head spoke very quietly. “But we have been stopped. Stopped by death and stopped on our journey to Ursulana. We have not lived and we have not died exactly. We are caught on another wheel. The wheel of quivik, and we long to move on.”

What the little gilly cub said struck Svenna deeply. The gilly was right. It was as if these poor creatures had been caught between the gears, the teeth of earth and the embrace of Ursulana. This was the meaning of quivik. But perhaps in some way she could help these cubs move on … move on to Ursulana.

“I must leave you now, but I shall be back. I promise.”

Then Juuls gave a little chuff. “But what about stories? What are stories? You never told us.”

“Stories are … Well, I’ll have to tell you one when I come back. And I shall.” Svenna paused. “But stories, yes, stories are important. You know, without stories a creature only lives one life, but with stories, a cub like you can live a thousand lives.” She paused and took a deep breath. “ ‘Once upon a time’ are the most important words in any language.”

“Not ‘bless our clock divine’?” Juuls asked.

“Never!” Svenna replied fiercely.

And sometimes, Svenna thought, there was more truth in stories than in real life. These cubs had not had real lives. That was why their souls were restless. She had once said to Svern that stories could find dens in bears’ souls. That was the first time Svern had hugged her. A warm feeling flooded through her.

I must tell them stories! Svenna vowed. And when I send them on their way, then and only then shall I escape this place alive. I’ll find my cubs and we shall go far, far away from the tyranny of this clock. This monster god!

As Svenna was wending her way back to the Mystress of the Chimes’s den, she heard another sound—peculiar and strange for this part of the world. She paused for a moment. It was like meltwater. Impossible! Nothing melted at the Ublunkyn. There was only hyivqik ice, the hardest kind that ran to great depths in this region, the most frozen part of the Nunquivik Sea. To the south, one could often hear the growl of the sea beneath that ice. This sound, however, that Svenna was hearing was unnerving. It was as if something was tearing, ripping from the very core of the earth. Perhaps, Svenna thought, Great Ursus herself was becoming angry at this infernal, savage Ice Clock!