Fire in the Sky

  “We’re supposed to be working together!” Ujurak yelped. “Why can’t you all see that? We have to keep going!”

  “For what?” Toklo snarled, turning on him. Lusa whimpered in protest as he shifted away from her. “To where? You don’t even know where you’re taking us!”

  “Maybe I don’t,” Ujurak admitted.

  A chill shivered through Kallik’s bones. If even Ujurak didn’t know where they were going, what hope did they have?

  “But I know we have to get there, and I know we have to do it together!” Ujurak added.

  “Do your precious signs say anything about how to stay alive?” Toklo growled. “Because we’re not going to be much use if we’re all dead!” He stopped, panting, and looked down at Lusa, asleep between his paws. “I just don’t care anymore,” he said. “You keep going if you want to. Lusa and I are staying here.” He flopped down beside her and closed his eyes. Almost immediately the storm began to cover them both with snow.

  Kallik wanted to keep arguing, to try to defend herself, but the truth was she didn’t think she had it in her to walk much farther, either. More important, she was afraid that Toklo was right. She had no idea what she was doing out here. She couldn’t take care of her friends, even though she’d promised to.

  She looked up and met Ujurak’s hurt, confused eyes. “I’m sorry, Ujurak,” she said. “I don’t know what else to do. I can’t find us shelter, and we’re all too tired to keep walking. Maybe coming out here was a mistake.”

  Trembling with exhaustion, she curled up against Lusa’s side and huddled as close to her friends as she could. After a long moment, she felt Ujurak lie down beside her, resting his head on his paws with a defeated sigh. The wind howled against Kallik’s back, battering her fur. Perhaps she could protect her friends…if they kept Lusa in the center, maybe their warmth would keep her safe…maybe the storm would end soon….

  Kallik was asleep before she could have another worried thought.

  In her dream, Nisa and Taqqiq were curled around her in a warm den, listening to the storm howling outside. Kallik rested in her mother’s fur, letting her fears drift away. Someone else could take care of her now.

  “I’m going to get some food,” Nisa said, standing up and rolling Kallik aside. She shouldered her way to the entrance of the den and began digging at the snow.

  “Wait, don’t go,” Kallik begged. “We’re all right in here.”

  Nisa didn’t answer. Her white haunches disappeared down the tunnel into the whirling snow outside. Kallik crawled over to Taqqiq and huddled next to him. At least she wasn’t alone.

  Then Taqqiq stood up and walked to the entrance as well.

  “Taqqiq, don’t leave me!” Kallik yelped.

  He shook his head slowly, then crawled outside.

  Kallik was terrified. Why had they left her alone? She turned in a circle in the center of the den. It felt as if furry bodies were pressing up against her, but she couldn’t see anyone else in there with her. She was on her own, and the den was filling up with snow.

  More flakes flew in through the entrance, fast and furious as if bears were outside shoveling it in at her with their paws. But it wasn’t ordinary snow. Kallik tried to dig into it as it covered her paws, but it was black instead of white, sparkling with the light from countless chips of ice, like the night sky turned into snow and piling up all around her….

  The ice spots swirled under her paws, eddying and rippling across the roof of the den. Kallik looked up and then all around, and realized she was surrounded by blackness on all sides. The den had vanished, and she was floating in warm darkness, lit only by the sparkling ice spots.

  “Kallik,” said a gentle voice.

  Kallik turned and saw a great bear padding toward her across the sky. The bear’s pale fur glittered with stars and rippled as she moved, carrying with it the scent of the wind. Her eyes were kind as she leaned down to touch Kallik’s nose.

  “Silaluk,” Kallik breathed in awe.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Ujurak

  The first thing Ujurak noticed was that he couldn’t hear the storm anymore. An eerie stillness had replaced the howling, whistling wind that had filled his ears for so long. The freezing-cold feel of the snow piled up against his back was gone as well; instead he felt a soft breeze ripple through his brown fur.

  Next to him, Kallik murmured something he couldn’t hear. Then he heard Lusa’s voice more clearly. “Arcturus!” she whispered.

  Ujurak opened his eyes. The endless white of the storm had vanished. Even the snow under their paws was gone; the four bears floated in darkness, curled together just as they had lain down. The other three were asleep, although their ears twitched and they made soft noises as if they were dreaming.

  An enormous shadow shifted in the darkness as if it was stepping out of the sky. Stars sparkled along the edges of its fur as it moved toward him. Ujurak raised his head, blinking at the massive bear looming over him.

  “Mother,” he said.

  Relief flooded through him. He felt safe for the first time in moons. The starlit bear lowered her head and nuzzled him. He wrapped his front paws around her neck and held on, feeling like a cub again, cherished and loved.

  “My son,” she murmured. Her breath was warm and carried the scent of green growing things. “You have come such a long way.”

  She drew him into her fur and he nestled closer, remembering how they used to sit like this when she was teaching him about life as a bear.

  “I am very proud of you,” she rumbled, licking his ear. “You have chosen your companions well.” They both looked at the other bears, who slept on with peaceful expressions. Ujurak wondered how they could sleep through something like this.

  “They’re having their own spirit meetings,” his mother said, answering his unspoken question. “To each of them, you look asleep, too.”

  “I forgot about you,” Ujurak confessed, burying his nose in her fur. “I don’t know how. But my memories—I couldn’t remember anything for so long. I wasn’t even sure if I was really a bear.”

  “Do you remember now?” she asked gently.

  He nodded. He remembered sunlit days on a mountain, learning to hunt at her paws. He remembered her digging for herbs in a shaded grove, teaching him which plants could heal. He remembered her stories at night, when the stars spun dizzyingly above them.

  He also remembered the first time he realized he could shape-shift. They were in their den, dozing after a hunting lesson. A small brown mouse had crept out from the back of the cave, sneaking up to grab a berry that Ujurak had dropped.

  Through his half-closed eyes, Ujurak watched it closely: its twitching whiskers, its black eyes flicking this way and that, its tiny claws scuttling over the stone floor, and its rapid, sudden movements as it darted from shadow to shadow.

  As he watched, he felt a strange sensation, like itching all through his pelt. He opened his eyes wide in astonishment as his paws began to shrink. His tail grew longer and his ears opened up and out and his fur became less shaggy. The cave shot up around him as he grew smaller and smaller. He saw the mouse scurry away into its hole, squeaking in fright.

  Finally the changes had stopped and Ujurak examined himself. His whiskers twitched and his eyes flicked nervously around the cave. The mouse poked its nose out of the hole again and peered at him suspiciously. After a moment, it trotted out and crouched beside the berry to continue eating it.

  “Hello,” Ujurak tried. It sounded like a high-pitched squeak to his big ears, but the mouse tilted its head at him as if it understood.

  “I thought you were a bear,” the mouse squeaked. “Peculiar. Guess my eyes are worse than I thought.”

  “Uh…yeah,” Ujurak agreed.

  “Berry?” the mouse offered, nudging the round, dark blue fruit toward him.

  Ujurak scampered over and took a bite out of the berry. It was so much bigger when he was this size! Normally he’d swallow a whole pawful of blueberries in one
gulp. But being this small meant he could savor the juice flowing over his tongue and really taste the berry. He licked his paws, wondering what else was different about life as a mouse instead of as a bear.

  Then he had a troubling thought. What if he was stuck like this? Could he go back to being a bear? Would his mother know it was him?

  “EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK!” the mouse shrieked, fleeing back into its hole. “Run! A bear!”

  Ujurak heard the mouse’s sharp claws skittering away through the cracks in the stone. He turned around and looked up and up and up into his mother’s wise brown face.

  She blinked at him affectionately. “I thought this might happen. Remember you’re a bear, Ujurak. A bear—come back to me.”

  The warmth in her voice was reassuring, and before Ujurak could worry any more, he felt himself growing and changing. His bear snout returned and his claws thickened and lengthened, and in a moment, he was a bear cub again. He scampered over and pounced on one of his mother’s paws.

  “Did you see me?” he barked. “I was a mouse! I went squeak and the mouse talked to me and he gave me a berry and I could hear all sorts of things and my whiskers were twitchy and I was a mouse!”

  “I did see that,” she said. “You’re a very special bear cub, you know. Not all bear cubs can do that.”

  “Really?” He pawed at his ear. “I bet they wish they could. Can I be anything? Can I be a bird, too?”

  “You can be anything you like,” said his mother. “But understand that you will sometimes feel very different from the bears around you. Try to remember that you’re special and don’t let it bother you.”

  Her words echoed in Ujurak’s mind as he leaned against her paws in the starlit emptiness. He had felt so different…if only he could have remembered her words earlier.

  “I wish we could have stayed together,” he said sadly.

  “Me too, little bear,” she said. “But we cannot always choose the path we walk.”

  She wrapped her paws around Ujurak as he shuddered, remembering the flat-face hunters who had chased him and his mother with firesticks. He remembered the sharp cracking sound that made his mother fall to the ground; he remembered her telling him to run. He hadn’t wanted to leave her, although he could hear barking dogs coming after them. But then, against his will, he’d felt his legs becoming wings, feathers sprouting through his fur, and a rush of air lifting him up to safety and freedom. He had tried to fly back to her, but although he circled for hours, he never found her.

  “I missed you so much,” he said. “I ate berries and insects and anything I could catch. Sometimes I changed into other animals, so I could eat what they ate, if it was easier to find. Was that wrong?”

  “You stayed alive,” his mother murmured. “That’s the important thing.”

  “And then I heard a voice in my head,” said Ujurak, lifting his chin to look up into her starry black eyes. “I thought—I thought maybe it was you talking to me. It told me to leave the mountain and follow the star. I didn’t want to—I didn’t want to leave the place where I’d lived with you. I thought maybe I’d only be able to hear your voice in our place, and I didn’t want to lose it and be alone again. But it told me I’d find other bears to join me, and they’d travel with me where I needed to go.”

  He ducked his head. “I still wouldn’t go, though. It wasn’t until the flat-face hunters came…and then a little brown bear saved my life, and I realized he would be the first to join me on my journey. That’s how it began.”

  He turned to look at his friends. Toklo, who had saved his life more than once. Lusa, whose spirit shone like the brightest star in the sky. And Kallik, whose courage and loyalty never wavered as she led them on this final part of the quest. They had all done so much for him….

  “What is all this for?” Ujurak asked his mother. “Where are we going?”

  She rested her chin on his head. “Be brave, little bear. Just remember what you have to do.”

  “But I can’t remember that part,” he said, clinging to her. “It feels like my head is full of snow when I try to think about it. I don’t know where we’re going, or why, or what to do when we get there.”

  “Keep heading toward the rising sun,” she whispered. “I am waiting for you.” She nuzzled his ear. “All will be well. I promise.”

  She nudged him back toward his friends, then lay down beside them, curving her massive body around all four of them to keep the blizzard at a distance. Warm, still air settled over the bear cubs.

  “Sleep,” she murmured in his ear, and Ujurak closed his eyes and slept.

  Much later—it could have been moons later, for all he knew—he heard her whispering to him again. “I must leave you now, but we will meet again soon.” He mumbled in protest, and she pressed her nose into his side. “Have courage, my precious son.”

  Ujurak opened his eyes and watched her walk away across a landscape that was now snowy and calm. Her paws strode across the snow, leaving no prints behind. Her starry outline blurred into the brightening sky, then vanished into thin air.

  He pushed himself upright, blinking. The storm was over, but it had transformed the world. Instead of flat, featureless drifts of snow in all directions, the bears were surrounded by strange whorls of sparkling blue ice, looming over them in odd twisted shapes. Some of them looked like giant frozen waves, trapped in the moment before they crashed to shore.

  “Wow,” Ujurak said softly.

  The other three bears stirred. Kallik woke up first, stretching her paws out in front of her and yawning. Toklo came awake abruptly, blinking and shaking his head. Lusa was the last to awaken, but she opened her eyes and sat up without needing extra prodding.

  They gazed around at the weird ice formations for a moment, breathing in the cold, still air.

  Lusa let out a tiny, happy sigh. “It was Arcturus,” she said. “The Bear Watcher. He was here, and he saved us! I saw him in my dream!”

  Kallik shook her head. “No, that was Silaluk. I saw her. She’s the great bear in the stars, the one who gets chased by the hunters all through burn-sky.”

  “I saw the bear, too,” Toklo grunted. “The lonely one. The star we’ve been following.”

  “Actually,” Ujurak said, “that was my mother.”

  The other bears whirled around to stare at him. Ujurak had never seen Toklo look more astonished in his life.

  “Your mother has stars in her fur?” Lusa asked in a hushed voice. “But I thought that was Arcturus….”

  “I’m sure it was Silaluk,” Kallik said. “She was a white bear, not a brown bear.”

  “She is all of these things, and more,” said Ujurak. “But to me, she’s just my mother.”

  “So what do you call her?” Toklo asked.

  “I call her Mother,” Ujurak said. Lusa woofed with amusement. “But I think she is sometimes called the Great Bear, and I’m the Little Bear.”

  “The Great Bear,” Toklo echoed. “So your mother comes from the stars, and you can change into different animals. What are you, Ujurak?”

  Ujurak inhaled deeply, letting the crisp scent of snow fill his lungs. “I don’t know, exactly,” he said. “But I know that Mother sent me on this journey, and we’re nearly at the end of it.” He turned his head to gaze at the distant edge of the sky. “She told me all will be well, and I believe her.”

  Toklo shuffled his paws and looked at Lusa sideways. Ujurak nudged Kallik’s side. “We’re supposed to walk toward the rising sun,” he said. “I’m sure now. Everything is exactly as it should be.”

  He was anxious to move on…especially now that he knew that his mother was waiting for him at the end of their journey.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Kallik

  Kallik’s fur tingled as she turned her face toward the sunrise. The sun was barely above the edge of the sky, but its light already sparkled brightly off the snow, dazzling her eyes. The strange forest of ice spread all around the bears, some of the pillars as clear as still lakes so th
at Kallik could see the shadowy images of her friends reflected in them as they walked by.

  She passed an ice whorl with two stumps jutting out on either side, like paws reaching toward her. It looked like a blue-white bear, jaws open in a roar of triumph. Kallik imagined Silaluk watching her from inside the ice, guiding their path.

  A rich scent of fish and fur drifted past her nose and Kallik stopped suddenly, sniffing. “I smell seal!” she cried. She whirled around to face Ujurak. “I know I can catch it this time. Silaluk told me I belong here. She said that I have the spirit and courage of the greatest white bears. I want to try hunting again.”

  Ujurak gazed at the long rays of sunlight spilling through the ice trees. “But it’ll take so long…. I really think we should keep going.”

  “What?” Toklo growled. “Don’t be a salmon-brain, Ujurak. We need food! Especially snooze-face over here.” He poked Lusa’s side with his claw and she jumped, blinking in surprise.

  “What? I’m awake! What?”

  “It won’t take long,” Kallik promised, feeling the power of the ice surging through her paws. “I can do this.”

  Reluctantly Ujurak nodded, and the bears turned to follow Kallik through the pillars of ice. The scent suddenly seemed very strong, and Kallik kept running ahead and running back to her friends because she couldn’t control her excitement and energy. The rays of light from the rising sun lit up the ice like stars underpaw, and the wind tugged at her fur with the scent of more seals and more snow.

  She spotted the dark hole in the ice in the shadow of a giant archway made of ice trees leaning against one another. The sun shone through the ice, sending shimmers of light across the rippling water.

  “Wait here,” she whispered to the others. “And no fidgeting this time. No helpful comments either,” she added before Toklo could say something snide. He snapped his jaw shut and glowered.

  Small puffs of snow rose up from Kallik’s paws as she padded toward the hole. She crouched and slid on her belly the last few bearlengths, feeling the snow slide smoothly underneath her. This felt so much better than rolling in dirt all the time. At the edge of the hole, she braced herself and gazed intently at the water. The wind brushed softly through her fur, whispering with the voices of the spirits and the star-bear. Kallik couldn’t believe that she’d really met Silaluk—and that Ujurak was her son! She remembered the star-bear’s kind eyes and soft, wise voice. There was something about her calmness and strength that did remind Kallik of Ujurak. She was everything Kallik had imagined when Nisa told her the old stories.