Note: I have no idea what this dream means, if it means anything, but it was very vivid and cohesive, which is why I include it here.

The house on the hill was empty. No one had lived there for a very long time, so long in fact, that neither of the children could remember even a whisper of who, in the old days, might have lived there. What they did know, though they could not have told how they knew it, was that somewhere in this old house, was a doorway to the enchanted kingdom of The Polar Bear King.

The children walked up the hill hand in hand, as if on a mission, which, in fact, they were. There were two of them, a boy and girl. The boy was ten, the girl a little younger.

"What do you think it will be like?" asked the girl.

"Cold," said the boy. "What else?"

The girl bit at her lip. "Do you think he'll be a nice bear?"

"Everything will be all right," said the boy.

"Should we take a weapon?"

"That would be rude," said the boy. "We just have to hope for the best."

The porch boards creaked as they walked across, but they left no prints. Wind and rain had cleared the porch of dust.

"Here goes," said the boy, and turned the knob. The door swung open on silent hinges.

Inside, the rooms were clean and brightly lit. The furniture was carved wood and red velvet, the kind you might see in an antique store. It looked very old, yet at the same time, new, as if it had been well preserved but never used.

The children looked in every room. Finally, the boy said, "There's nothing here."

"Let's look a little longer," said the girl. "Look, there's a closet we haven't been in."

"He won't be in a  closet," said the boy. "He's not a mop bucket." But he swung the door open anyway.

There, in the floor, was a trap door.

The children exchanged glances. The girl took in a deep breath and nodded. The boy grasped the handle and pulled the trap door open.

A gust of cold air splashed their faces, and they looked down into the white crystal world of The Polar Bear King. A crude wooden ladder led from the closet floor into the vast whiteness.

"I suppose we have to do it," said the girl.

"I'll go first," said the boy, "to make sure it's safe."

He began to climb. After a few moments, he called up out of the whiteness. "It's okay," he said, and the girl climbed down after him.

Snow swirled around them, wind danced through their hair. It should have been bitter cold. Instead, it felt rather pleasant, cool but not too cool, impossibly mild for a world of sparkling ice and crystalline formations and light refracting into rainbows all around them.

"Look," said the girl, and pointed.

Out of the swirling snow came a massive figure covered in white fur and wearing a gold crown. It stood on two feet like a man, but it was not a man. It was a bear. The children could have stood on each other's shoulder's and not come to the polar bear's chest.

"Do you know who I am?" the bear asked in a rumbling voice.

The boy knelt in the snow. The girl stood gawking, and the boy grabbed her hand and tugged her down beside him. "Yes," said the boy. "You're the Polar Bear King."

"I am," said the bear. "And this is my kingdom. What seek you here?"

"Help," said the boy. "Our world is out of balance, and you're the only one who can make things right."

"Out of balance," said the bear.

"It never snows in Africa," said the girl, helpfully. "There are lots of places where it never snows."

"What do I care for your world?" asked the bear. "It's job enough to keep mine running properly."

"Please," said the boy, and the girl echoed,

"Please."

"Well," said the bear. "Since you've said please..."

The bear held out a paw to each child, and as his claws closed around their hands, they rose into the air, up through the trap door and into the sky.

"Look," said the girl. "There's our house. And there are Mom and Dad." She waved her free hand at the figures below.

"They can't see you," said the bear. "Not while you are with me."

Time passed, or perhaps it didn't. It was impossible to tell. The children and the bear flew over mountains, across deserts, through muggy jungles buzzing with insects. Where the bear went, a blanket of snow fell, dusting the earth with the healing magic of The Polar Bear King. Finally, the bear said, "I have done what I can. I must return to my home."

They flew to the old house on the hill, and The Polar Bear King set them down on the front porch. The front door creaked open and they went inside to find the furniture swathed in white sheets and a thick layer of dust. When the boy threw open the door to the trap door closet, a cloud of dust puffed up. The trap door was draped in cobwebs.

The Polar Bear King furrowed his brow. "I have been away too long."

The boy tugged at the trap door, but the hinges had rusted. The Polar Bear King nudged the boy aside, closed his massive paw around the handle. and pulled. The trap door shrieked open, and quickly they scrambled down the ladder into the world of the Polar Bear King.

But what was this? Spring had come to the Polar Bear King's land. But what a spring. Drab and colorless, a sickly spring in a land of melting snows and mud, of stunted trees and scrub.

The dancing snowflakes had been replaced with clouds of gnats, the cool clean air with a dank and swampy stench.

"Walk with me," said The Polar Bear King.

After a time, they came to a village, and in the center of the village was a crowd of people gathered around an eely-looking man who seemed to be making a speech. The man wore a dingy polar bear skin around his shoulders and a tarnished crown on his head.

"That is my uncle," said The Polar Bear King. "It appears he has usurped my throne."

"Can we help?" asked the boy.

"You can bear witness," said The Polar Bear King. "As the law requires."

The man in the polar bear skin waved his fist in the air and shouted, "I am The Polar Bear King! You must do as I say."

"No, I am The Polar Bear King," said the real Polar Bear King, and he rose up on his hind legs and roared until the villagers and The Polar Bear King's uncle covered their faces and cowered.

Then The Polar Bear King's uncle straightened and said, in a quavering voice, "And why should they believe you? Where have you been, then, this past century?"

"Far," said The Polar Bear King. "Too far. But now I have returned."

"You think I care for that?" The man sneered. "I am The Polar Bear King now."

The Polar Bear King lowered his head and growled. The man cringed, but stood his ground.

"Because you are family, I will let you live," said The Polar Bear King, "but you are trying my patience." With a sweep his mighty paw, he sent the man in the bearskin tumbling.

Then he stood up on two legs and raised both paws, and a cool wind blew across the village, and the first flakes of snow began to fall.

"I am The Polar Bear King," said the bear to the villagers. "The wind and the snow are my proofs, and these children are my witnesses."

"Is this true?" asked the villagers.

And the children said, "It is true."

So it was that winter returned to the Polar Bear King's land, and the usurper slunk away to lick his wounds, grateful to escape with his life.

As for the children, they climbed the ladder up into the empty house and returned to their world in time for supper.