“We’ve been here before!” Stellan cried out in frustration. “Three times already.” The cubs had taken to notching the ice at certain points to track their progress, but it now appeared they were going in circles. Though not an exact circle. The maze had some parts that were spirals or that coiled about and ran back into each other. There were other regions where the pathways formed interlocking triangles.

“And you know what?” Stellan was shaking his muzzle furiously, as if in utter disbelief. “We are not that far from where we first entered the maze. We’ve made no progress whatsoever.”

Third was shocked by Stellan’s outburst. Normally it was Jytte who was the impatient cub, easily frustrated and quick to anger.

“I am sick and tired of looking at my own face every time I turn a corner. And all of yours as well.” There were multiple images of the cubs reflecting back at them. “I reach out to make sure that Jytte has her paw on my tail, and what do I feel? Ice, not Jytte!” Stellan’s voice rose. “Are we going to be here forever? Are we going to die here?”

Jytte looked in alarm at her brother. She had never seen him like this. “Calm down, Stellan,” Jytte pleaded.

But the word calm seemed to anger him more. “I swear I’ll kick the place down.”

“Don’t!” Third cried. But the big cub kicked the ice with his immense hind paw. Fragments broke from the wall.

“Well,” Jytte said. “You certainly put a notch in that one.”

Suddenly the cubs felt a quake in the ice beneath their feet. A crack opened and something began to emerge. A skull, Jytte realized, staring in terror. A moment later, bones of a flipper sprang from the crack and scattered. But within seconds the flipper bones started to knit together. Long tusks, twice as long as those of a toothwalker, were reaching toward them from the crack. The cubs backed up against the ice wall as the tusks crept toward them. The skull rolled and suddenly flames shot out from its nostrils. Jytte winced at the heat, then flattened herself against the ice wall, watching transfixed as more bones emerged.

A sulfurous scent filled the tunnel as the cubs could do nothing more than watch in fascinated horror as the scramble of bones continued to fuse, becoming whole skeletons. Patches of skin began to cover the bones. The stench was overpowering. It was a smell of death and long decay. I caused this, Stellan thought. I caused it! And I shall end it.

Stellan drew his short dagger and his war hammer. “Aaarrrgh!” he bellowed. In one leap he jumped over the dragon walrus’s head.

His reflection had multiplied in the infinity of the mirror maze, but the dragon walrus had no reflection and could only see the multiple ones of Stellan. It was impossible for the monster to tell where he was in relation to the numerous reflections of the cub. This was to Stellan’s advantage, and he managed to creep up behind the beast.

The other three cubs watched, spellbound. They heard the slam of the war hammer. The skull smashed into hundreds of pieces. The flames coming from the snout hissed and flickered out. The rest of the bones began to rattle and splinter, then slid away into the crack from where they had emerged.

The cubs looked at one another in amazement.

“It’s gone,” said Jytte, peering down at the shards of shattered skull. How had her brother done this?

Third wondered if the fragments of skull might somehow reassemble. He was breathing heavily. He reached for his short dagger, ready to smash the piece to dust.

“I’m sorry,” Stellan said hoarsely. “I’m so sorry.”

The cubs fell into a stunned, exhausted silence. They were all breathing heavily and coughing from the horrid stench. Finally, Third spoke.

“I might be a dreamwalker, but no dream I have ever walked through has been as confusing as this. In dreams there are no walls, walls of any kind, ice or rock. But here there are.”

“And everything is always white, glaring white,” Froya fretted. “Even our skin no longer looks black in this maze.” Froya ran a claw through the fur on her arm. Their normally black skin appeared to be a pasty color closer to gray. “That’s simply not right,” Froya huffed.

“I have an idea,” Third said. “If we can retrace our steps back to the entry, then we can begin again and follow the wall.” Third placed his paw on the wall next to him. “We must put this paw, our port paw, on the wall always! If we don’t see any notches, we’ll know at least that we aren’t retracing our old steps.”

“I suppose that makes sense,” Jytte said.

Froya shrugged. “We might as well try it.”

Stellan remained silent. He didn’t feel he was in a position to judge anything after having reawakened a monster that nearly killed them all.

“Let’s do it,” Jytte said.

None of the cubs were thrilled to start over, but they followed Third’s instructions and soon arrived at the entrance to the maze.

“Great Ursus!” Stellan exclaimed. “I think it took us forever to get to the notched wall, and we got back here in no time at all.”

“This is good, very good,” Third said, nodding his head. “It’s always helpful to have a method.”

“I think we’re really on our way now,” Jytte said.

Their spirits improved, they set off again, walking briskly and keeping their port paws steadily on the port wall.

It was Jytte who noticed it first, but she hesitated to say anything until she was certain. She sensed a change. The light, the very air seemed different. It was as if the brittle radiance were dissolving. Finally, with her paw still on a wall, she said quietly, “I think we might be here.” She slipped down her goggles just enough to expose one eye. She squinted. “We are here!”

“Really?” Froya said. One by one the cubs took off their goggles. A pale lavender twilight suffused the Den of Forever Frost. The spiky brightness was gone. In the ceiling overhead there was a large opening with the stars perfectly framed. The space was bigger than a den, and circular. Ice benches ringed the perimeter. They looked as if bears had sat in them at one time, for they were scooped out slightly, worn away.

Slowly, Stellan began to walk around, stopping to take in every detail. When he had completed the circle, he came back with a look on his face that Jytte had never seen before. An expression of complete awe. He opened his mouth to speak but no words came out.

“Stellan, what is it?”

“This … this is where the council of bears met. This is where they sat. This is the Ice Star Chamber in the very center of the Den of Forever Frost. There are eighteen places for eighteen bears, just as Mum told us—”

Jytte interrupted, “One for each of the eighteen stars of the Great Bear constellation and the eighteen bear clans from the long ago, the time of yore.”

“It’s beautiful!” Third said, his voice full of wonder.

Stellan remembered his father’s words. You must first find the quiet in your soul. It will be dim after so much brightness of the ice. You have to move around within this quiet, in this new dimness, and let it talk to you … Let it speak and you shall find the key.

Stellan touched his own ears and tipped his head back toward the night sky. “Look, the Svree star.” Stellan pointed up. He spoke in barely a whisper, as if any word, anything he said too loudly, might shatter the peace, the calm of this place, and that the brightness and the monsters might return.

“It’s magnificent!” Third said.

Third, however, was looking not up but across at an opening opposite the one they had just come through. A wraithlike figure was moving toward them in a cocoon mist.

Could it be? Third thought. The figure nodded as if to say, Yes, it is.

“Eervs!” he called.

The other three cubs wheeled about. They saw the bear now—a very ancient bear shrunken with age in a pelt that seemed too large for him. To their confusion, the bear was laughing gently.

“Not Eervs.” He paused. “Here, I am Svree. It’s rather like the mirror maze you just emerged from. Except not an image. It’s the reverse of my name. Eervs becomes Svree, here in the den. Welcome to the Ice Star Chamber of the Den of Forever Frost.”