Fire in the Sky
“Oooooooooh,” Lusa breathed. Toklo crowded up behind her and saw that the small space was full of dried meat and fish, hanging from metal hooks on the ceiling. It was all frozen solid, covered in the same thin white frost as everything else.
Toklo stood up and clawed a large piece of fish down to the floor. It landed with a solid thunk, like a piece of ice crashing to the ground. “Can you eat this?” he asked Lusa.
“If we thaw it a bit first,” Lusa said, breathing on the fish. They both rubbed it with their paws and breathed on it until it was soft enough for them to tear off pieces and eat it. Still hungry, Toklo brought down a few more chunks of meat and chewed through those as well.
“What do you think is in here?” Lusa asked, pawing at a little round container. It was small and Toklo could pick it up in one paw.
“Why do you think there’s anything inside it?” he asked, sniffing it. It seemed like a solid block of flat-face metal to him.
“I’ve seen things like this before, in the flat-face rubbish,” Lusa said. “But they were open, and there were usually delicious juices left inside.”
Toklo was skeptical, but he picked up the object in his mouth and carried it to the wall. Hefting it in one giant paw, he smashed it against the wall as hard as he could.
To his surprise, it cracked open, and juice splattered across his nose.
“Fruit!” Lusa shouted joyfully. She dove on the tin, licking up the slivers of pale orange flesh that spilled out. “It’s peaches!” she said, giving Toklo a delighted look. “I had these in the Bear Bowl sometimes. They’re yummy!”
Toklo licked the juice off his nose and nibbled a bit of peach off the floor. It was sweet and juicy, but he still preferred meat. “I think I saw more of these somewhere—I’ll go look,” he offered. He walked around the edge of the room until he spotted a ledge high up on the wall. Several more small silver objects were stacked along it. Grunting with the effort, he scrambled up until he could reach the ledge and knock them all down.
One after another, he smashed them into the wall, and Lusa gratefully gobbled up all the fruit.
“It’s like a black bear feast,” she said, licking her paws clean. “I feel so much better, Toklo.”
He stood up to peer out one of the holes in the wall. The shadow of the floating den had stretched even farther across the ice. It still shocked him to realize that the days were so short. “We might as well stay here for the night,” he said. “It’s sheltered, so we’ll be out of the wind.” Plus it would save tearing his pads trying to hollow out a chunk of snow. “And we can eat again before we keep going in the morning,” he added.
“All right,” Lusa said, padding out into the tunnel again. “I think I saw some soft stuff down this way.”
“Soft stuff?” Toklo hurried after her. “We don’t need—”
He skidded to a stop as Lusa charged into one of the small rooms off to the side of the tunnel. She leaped onto something long, fluffy, and white, and started digging with her claws until whatever it was was bunched up around her like a nest. Then she flopped down with a contented sigh.
“You’re a crazy little bear,” Toklo said, hopping up beside her. The fluffy stuff was weirdly soft under his paws, like sleeping on goose feathers or piles and piles of moss. He sniffed it cautiously, but any flat-face smell had faded long ago. That’s reassuring, he thought. The last thing he wanted was for the flat-faces who’d lived here to come back and find him and Lusa sleeping in their nest and eating their food.
“Yup,” Lusa said sleepily. She snuggled closer to him as he lay down. He rested his chin on her back and gazed out at the darkening sky.
“I hope Ujurak and Kallik are all right,” Lusa murmured.
“Me too,” Toklo agreed. He missed the weight of their friends pressed against him while they slept.
“It’s colder without them,” said Lusa sadly.
“I know,” he said.
After a moment, Lusa’s breathing slowed, and Toklo realized she was asleep. He saw a few stars appearing in the sky. This strange floating den, offering fruit and shelter in a place that had seemed so unwelcoming from the moment they set paw on the ice, had been a lucky find. But how much farther did they have to go before they reached land? Would he be able to take care of Lusa all that way? Would she be able to stay out of the longsleep until they were safe?
He shoved the words of the star-bear out of his mind.
No one was going to die. Not if he had anything to say about it.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Lusa
A strange creaking sound woke Lusa from dreams of fruit and berries. She blinked at the pale morning sunlight. Toklo was standing at the window with his paws up against the glass, peering out at the ice.
CRRRRRREEEEEEEEAAAAKKKKKK.
“What was that noise?” Lusa yelped, sitting up and rubbing her eyes.
“I don’t know,” Toklo said, looking worried, “but I think we should get out of here as soon as we can.”
“Can we eat something first?” Lusa pleaded. She jumped down to the floor and stretched. Her paws felt lighter and the pain in her stomach was gone. She felt well rested for the first time in days. She wished they could stay here longer.
“All right,” Toklo said as she trotted to the door. “But carefully—and fast!”
Lusa scampered down the tunnel to the big room with all the food. She pawed open a few doors and dragged out some dried meat and fish for them to eat, while Toklo broke open more of the delicious fruit containers for her.
Lusa had her nose buried in a dripping pile of sweet pears, when there was another loud creak, and she distinctly felt the floor shift under her paws. She looked up in alarm and saw that Toklo had his paws braced wide apart. As they stared at each other, the floor shifted a bit more, and one of the unopened tins rolled slowly past them and clunked into the opposite wall.
“The den is moving,” Toklo growled. “Let’s go!”
Lusa lapped up the last bits of juice and scrambled after him to the door. They hurried down the tunnel, but just before they reached the way out, an enormous CRACK! split the air and the whole den tilted backward, knocking the bears off their paws.
“The ice is breaking,” Toklo cried in a panic.
Visions of drowning in freezing black water filled Lusa’s head as she galloped after Toklo, slipping and skidding on the sloping floor. They hooked their claws into the wooden branches that grew beside the steps and started to haul themselves upward. Lusa heard another crack and looked down to see a sharp opening like a claw scratch running across the floor below them. To her horror, water was beginning to swell up through the crack. She shoved Toklo as hard as she could with her nose and he climbed faster.
They burst out into the open, tumbling and sliding across the slippery top of the floating den. The sky was dim, with low clouds blocking most of the sunlight, and a strange, reddish haze hung in the air. The ice stretched around the den in a dull, forbidding way.
Toklo ran to the edge of the den and peered over the side. Lusa bundled up behind him and saw the dark water rapidly climbing toward them, as if it was sucking them in. The nearest ice was a bearlength away, and two bearlengths down. They would have to jump.
“I can make it!” she panted as Toklo gave her an anxious look.
“Then you go first,” he said. Lusa didn’t argue. She clambered over the side and inched her way down as far as she could. The water churned and bubbled only a few pawlengths from her fur. She took a deep breath and launched herself toward the ice.
“Ooof!” she grunted as she landed hard on the cold, slippery surface. For a moment she felt as if she was sliding back into the water, but she dug her claws in and hauled herself away from the edge. Quickly she scrambled out of the way and Toklo leaped down beside her.
They both turned to look back at the sinking firebeast. It was so huge, yet it was being swallowed up by the water as if it were nothing more than a berry. Loud popping sounds echoed from it, so loud
that Lusa didn’t hear the cracking of the ice as well.
“Uh-oh,” Toklo said, shoving her back. She looked down and saw a large crack appearing in the ice at their paws. Toklo shoved her again, and they began to run as fast as they could onto the open ice, with the splintering, widening gaps chasing after them.
They ran and ran. Lusa hoped they were still heading toward the shore; she was all turned around, but maybe Toklo had been paying attention. Her heart thudded as she thought about the ice splitting right underneath her and dumping her into the freezing water, where she might drown, or get trapped under the ice, or be eaten by orcas. The memory of their gleaming teeth as they snapped at Kallik made her run faster.
Finally Toklo skidded to a stop, panting, and Lusa crashed into him and landed on her backside. He turned to look back as she caught her breath.
“I think we’re safe,” he said. “The ice is more solid here. And I don’t see the cracks anymore.”
“Oh, good,” Lusa puffed. She didn’t know if she could have run any farther. She peered at the edge of the sky where they’d left the floating den. The large black shape had vanished, swallowed up by the water as if it had never been there.
“Did we do that?” she asked Toklo.
“I don’t know,” Toklo answered.
Lusa looked down at the bubble-filled surface under her paws. She shuddered. “Why did it happen, then?”
“Who knows,” said Toklo. “Perhaps it was our extra weight pushing the den down. Kallik says the ice is thinner than it used to be.”
“That’s so sad,” Lusa said, shivering. “Imagine if your home could just melt away. Poor Kallik. What if it melts and never comes back?”
She thought of her dream, of the vision telling her to save the wild. And what was she doing? Running off to the safety of the land and deserting her friends. She hung her head. It was too late to catch up to Ujurak and Kallik now.
She just had to hope that she was right, and that they didn’t really need her after all.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Kallik
Kallik’s fur felt heavy across her shoulders when she woke up. She opened her eyes. Something was different—and not in a good way. She blinked, trying to chase away the blurriness of sleep. Nothing changed, and she realized that they were surrounded by a thin, reddish-brown haze drifting in the air around them.
Beside her, Ujurak shifted and woke up. He scrambled to his paws and wrinkled his nose. “What’s that smell?”
“I’m not sure,” Kallik said, sniffing and then coughing. “I’ve never smelled it out on the ice before.” She pawed at her nose, thinking. “It smells like no-claw smoke, the kind that comes out of the firebeasts and some of the flat-faces’ really big dens.”
Ujurak clawed at the haze, looking puzzled. “But how could there be flat-face smoke all the way out here?”
Kallik shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“Maybe the sun will burn it off,” Ujurak said. Kallik rose to her paws and followed him, paws crunching on the snow. It felt strange to be alone with Ujurak, without Lusa’s happy chatter or Toklo’s grumpy comments. Ujurak barely spoke. He kept staring off in the direction where the sun rose, as if he was straining his eyes to look for some sign of his mother out there.
There was nothing to see but ice in every direction. Toklo and Lusa had vanished over the edge of the sky the day before. Kallik missed them terribly, but if she really thought about it, she had to admit she thought Toklo was doing the right thing. Keeping Lusa alive was more important than forcing her to carry on with a journey that was making her sick. Kallik thought of Toklo’s brother, who had died when he was still a tiny cub. Was that why he was so protective toward Lusa? At least Kallik hadn’t had to watch her littermate die. She wanted to believe that Taqqiq had found his friends again, and had made it safely back to the Frozen Sea.
Instead of burning away in the sunlight, the reddish fog grew thicker as they stumbled forward. The bitter scent clogged up Kallik’s nostrils until she couldn’t smell anything else. It made her dizzy and frustrated, like having all her senses taken away. She couldn’t tell where anything was anymore—the nearest seal hole, the closest open water—anything. She stopped and reached out with her paw to make sure Ujurak was still beside her.
“Do we really have to go this way?” she growled. “It smells like it only gets worse from here.”
“We have to,” Ujurak replied. “This is the way Mother said to go. What is this haze?”
“I have no idea,” she admitted. “It’s not a normal ice thing. Um…maybe—” She hesitated, worried about how Ujurak might react to her suggestion. “Maybe you could turn into a bird and fly over the fog? Then you could see what’s going on or how far it reaches….” She trailed off.
Ujurak was shaking his head. “No,” he said. “I know for sure now. My mother is a brown bear, and so am I. So that’s how I’m going to stay. Mother will look after us.”
Kallik sighed. “Don’t you think maybe there’s a reason you can turn into different animals? It would be really helpful. Just this once?”
“No,” Ujurak said stubbornly.
Kallik rubbed her eyes and looked down at the snow underpaw. Here it wasn’t as white and clean as it should be—instead it was stained with the reddish brown of the fog. “This can’t be natural,” she said. “What if the spirits are angry at us for leaving Lusa and Toklo?”
“We didn’t leave them,” Ujurak pointed out. “They left us. We’re going the right way.”
He pushed ahead, stamping his paws through the oddly colored snow. Kallik glanced up at the thick clouds of fog that seemed to be pressing down on them. If she could turn into a bird and get out of this, she would in a heartbeat. Why did Ujurak have to be so stubborn about not using his powers? She wondered what had happened under the ice, when he had turned into a beluga whale. Whatever it was, it had set him against changing shape ever again. Was it too much to expect him to share the suffering of every living thing? She felt a stab of sympathy for him. Maybe she wouldn’t want to change into a bird after all. Being a white bear was good enough for her.
They trudged on for what felt like moons. Kallik couldn’t tell if night was falling; she hadn’t glimpsed the sun all day. Not only that, but she wasn’t even sure they were still heading in the right direction. She had a terrible feeling that they were going around in circles. It reminded her of the stinging smoke she and Toklo had been lost in on Smoke Mountain.
“Ujurak!” she called. The small brown bear stopped and turned to her. “I think we should wait for the fog to go away,” she suggested. “I’m pretty sure we’ve passed that big chunk of ice over there at least three times.”
Ujurak squinted at the icy column she was pointing at. “That’s because all ice chunks look the same,” he said.
“Actually,” Kallik said, annoyed, “they don’t at all. That one has three stubby branches sticking out of it like a tree, plus a knobby bit at the bottom that looks like a root, and a hole at the top where the wind goes ‘whheeet wheeeet’ as it whistles through. I bet you couldn’t find another piece of ice that looked exactly like that anywhere on the Endless Ice.”
Now Ujurak looked impressed. “All right, you win,” he said agreeably. “We can wait. I’m sure the fog will go away soon.”
Kallik wished she could be so sure. She led him to a snowdrift near the tree-shaped ice. The snow was piled up higher than her head, so it gave them some shelter to curl into, although Kallik didn’t like letting the reddish snow touch her fur. She turned in a circle, digging some of the snow aside to see if there was cleaner snow underneath.
Suddenly the snowdrift reared up and exploded toward her. Kallik and Ujurak jumped back with a startled yell.
It was another white bear! The dense fog had hidden her scent, and she’d been lying half-buried in the snow, so they hadn’t seen her, either. Her fur was streaked with the reddish-brown color, like bloodstains. Kallik looked down at her own paws and realized she
, too, had red smears across her white fur.
“This is my den!” the strange bear growled. “You can’t have it! My cubs need it!”
Kallik backed away a step. “We’re not here to take your den,” she whimpered. “I promise. We were just taking shelter from the fog for a while.”
The she-bear collapsed against the snowbank, her whole body limp with exhaustion. Kallik realized that the she-bear could barely stand, even though she looked well fed, with a plump belly.
“Well, it’s not quite a den yet,” the strange bear admitted. “I’m resting right now, but I’ll make it a den soon. Then I’ll have my cubs in there and watch them grow until they’re big enough to come out on the ice.”
Kallik felt a twinge of sorrow as she remembered her own BirthDen. Her mother had built it before having her and Taqqiq, just as this bear was going to do. It had been warm in there, and cozy, and very, very safe. If Nisa had been too tired to dig her own den, she hoped a passing bear would have helped her.
“What’s your name?” Kallik asked. “I’m Kallik, and this is Ujurak.”
“I’m Iniq,” said the bear. She squinted at Ujurak as if she was puzzled by his brown fur, but she didn’t seem to have enough energy to ask about it. Kallik realized that Iniq’s belly wasn’t plump, but swollen with unborn cubs. She wondered if they were heavy to carry around.
Iniq pawed at the snow. “I want to start building the den, but I’m so tired. I just need to rest a bit longer.”
“Let us help you,” Kallik offered. “We’re stuck here until the fog lifts anyway.”
“It shouldn’t be long,” Iniq said. “I’ve seen this fog before—we call it dirty mist. It blows in with the wind from the east and usually disappears after a while.” She looked down at the snow again.
“I’m a very good digger,” Kallik told her. “I’ll make a good den for you and your cubs.”
“Really?” Iniq said, her eyes shining with gratitude. “You wouldn’t mind?”