DELETED SCENES FROM THE POLAR BEAR KING — JESSICA HUDSON
/after Ola Solum's 1991 film
Alternate Beginning
The Princess of Winterland narrates. Begins with her mother who died when she was six. Her father’s favoritism. Her sisters’ jealousy. Her take on all three: unnecessary yet inescapable. Considers the political dealings of her father’s kingdom. The ecological highlights of the region. Lists her loves. Books. Snow. Skiing. Flowers, although she’s never seen a real one. Her name.
Long Journey South
The Princess rides bareback on the King of the South. Keeps quiet when the sun is up. Pictures the flowers in his eyes. He’ll be a polar bear for seven years. Realizes she forgot to bring a change of clothes. She’d planned to sleep beside him throughout the frigid nights, curled against his warm belly. His thick white fur her only comforter. She forgot he turns into a man at midnight. Forgot he’s just a man. He doesn’t travel with clothes.
Honeymoon
When he enters her bedchamber, the Princess turns her face away. The curse: you must not see his face. When he enters her bed, the Princess looks at her hands flickering in the firelight. Closes her eyes. When he enters her, the Princess turns herself into a plum blossom. Touches his chin. Fingers his chest. Listens to him breathe.
Alternate Ending: Southern Kingdom
Her father arrives at dusk. Rides through an orchard for the first time, the castle coated in sun-gold. Suddenly thinks he understands his daughter more. Meets his three sun-brightened granddaughters the next morning at breakfast. Eats a pear for the first time. Unwraps a satchel of furs. Hands each girl a glowing snowball. They touch the cold spheres. Glisten in the heat.
Alternate Ending: Winterland
She teaches her husband to ski. Harness wild reindeer. Talk to arctic foxes. They have sex on piles of bearskins in her childhood room. Candles flicker madly. Afterward, they lay on the damp fur. Recall the early years when they had to make love blindly, arms draped over soft chests, thighs cool. Later that night, their youngest tiptoes in to sleep between them. A bad dream about a white bear. Endless winter. A princess with no name.
Jessica Hudson is a graduate teaching assistant working on her Creative Writing MFA at Northern Michigan University. She is an associate editor for Passages North. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in The Pinch, Fractured Lit, and perhappened mag, among others.
