Fire in the Sky

  Satisfied, Kallik turned back to her portion. Lusa felt guilty for lying to her, but she didn’t want Kallik to worry that she would go hungry out here. She forced herself to take a few more bites, chewing slowly to make it go down more easily.

  “Hey!” A strange voice interrupted them, and Lusa whirled around to see a large female bear stalking toward them. “That’s mine! I caught it!”

  “Too bad,” Toklo growled. “It’s ours now.”

  “You can’t leave newkill and just expect it to be there when you get back,” Kallik said, planting herself between the seal and the unfamiliar bear.

  “But—” the other bear started.

  “Where is it, Mother?” a younger voice cried plaintively behind her. A small cub came scrambling over the top of the snowy hill and stumbled, tumbling down to land at her mother’s paws. “I’m starving! I’m so hungry I could eat a—” She stopped, staring wide-eyed at the four bears around the seal.

  “Hey!” she whispered loudly. “Why are those bears such funny colors? What’s wrong with them?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” said the she-bear. She stood up on her hind legs and clawed at the air. “They’re going to back off and let us have our seal.”

  “No!” Toklo snarled, raising himself onto his hind legs as well.

  Lusa exchanged glances with Ujurak and guessed that he felt as bad as she did. They were so hungry—but how could they steal from a tiny cub?

  Suddenly a roar split the air and Lusa nearly jumped out of her skin. A full-grown male white bear charged across the snow toward them, baring his teeth.

  Lusa’s heart pounded with terror. How had he snuck up on them? He must have been moving very fast. He was enormous, and from the look on his face, he wasn’t very pleased.

  “I SMELL SEAL AND IT WILL BE MINE—” The white bear stopped midroar and skidded to a halt. He stared at the brown and black bears.

  “What—how—” he stammered. He shook his head vigorously and pawed at his eyes. He swung his head toward Kallik and the other white bear. “Are those brown bears? And a black bear? Out here on the ice?”

  “Yes,” Kallik said, her voice trembling a little. She lifted her head and looked him straight in the eye. “Yes. They’re my friends.”

  “Your friends?” he barked. “What are they doing out here? They’ll never survive!”

  Toklo gave Lusa an I told you so expression.

  “They will!” Kallik said fiercely. “I’ll make sure they do!”

  “So will I!” Ujurak jumped in, looking angry.

  The grown bear’s gaze fell on the half-eaten seal. “By helping them to steal other bears’ newkill?” he growled. “There’s barely enough for the white bears to eat out here. And now you’re bringing strange bears who don’t belong to steal our prey?”

  “We’re not stealing! We have as much right to this newkill as anyone,” Kallik snapped. “Certainly as much as you. You didn’t catch it, either!”

  Ujurak suddenly reared up on his hind legs. “And if you disagree, you can fight us for it, bear to bear!”

  “Ujurak, no!” Lusa squeaked. She saw the mother bear nudging her cub backward out of the way. The cub’s tiny paws were trembling with fear.

  The male bear reared up on his hind legs as well, lashing out at Ujurak with one of his front paws. Ujurak dodged the blow and then threw himself at the bigger bear, bashing into his stomach with his shaggy head. His claws raked down the white bear’s side, leaving thin trails of red blood. The bear roared angrily, flung out a huge paw, and thwacked Ujurak on the side of the head. He flew through the air and landed with a painful thud on the ice. He crumpled into a furry heap and lay still and unmoving. Lusa couldn’t even see him breathing.

  The male bear charged over and reared up, preparing to crush him with his massive paws.

  “Ujurak!” Lusa screamed.

  A blur of brown and white fur shot past her, and she shrank back as Kallik and Toklo both leaped at the giant white bear. Toklo’s jaws fastened in the bear’s neck and he sank his claws in to hold on, growling ferociously. Kallik reared up on her hind legs and battered his head with her paws.

  Terrified, Lusa scrambled behind a lump of ice and covered her head with her paws. She couldn’t watch. The bear was so big! And as they fought, she could feel the ice shaking beneath them. What if it cracked, and they all fell in? Who would save her if they all died?

  Lusa heard a deep growl and the trembling stopped. She peeked out and saw that the giant white bear had finally shaken Toklo off. He backed away as Toklo and Kallik stepped toward him, brown and white fur side by side. As scared as she was, Lusa felt a burst of pride. They weren’t afraid of anything!

  “It’s not worth it,” the white bear spat, glaring at the cubs. “I’m not going to fight you over a scrap of seal skin. If you want to share your food with bears who don’t belong here, that’s your problem,” he said to Kallik. He cast a scornful look at Lusa, Toklo, and Ujurak. “Black and brown bears don’t belong on the ice. Everyone knows that. You only have to look at their fur to know that. Muddy, sticky bears.” He shuddered. “You’ll find that out soon enough!”

  He turned and bounded across the snow, disappearing quickly into the blinding whiteness.

  Lusa galloped down to Ujurak’s still body, reaching it a moment before Toklo and Kallik did. “Ujurak!” she yelped, pressing her nose into his fur. “Are you all right? Ujurak!”

  To her relief, he drew a long, shuddering breath and struggled to sit up.

  “What were you thinking?” Toklo exploded. “Picking a fight with a full-grown white bear all by yourself? You could at least have transformed into a white bear before you did it, you squirrel-brained—”

  “No!” Ujurak snapped. “I’m a brown bear! I’ll fight like one! And we need food, so why shouldn’t I help defend it? That’s what brown bears do, isn’t it?” He licked his shoulder and winced a little.

  Lusa couldn’t believe Ujurak was behaving so oddly. He never chose violence if he could avoid it.

  “Why don’t you let us do the fighting from now on?” Kallik suggested.

  Ujurak bridled, and Lusa jumped in quickly. “It’s not that we don’t think you’re strong, Ujurak! It’s just that if anything happened to you, we’d all be lost—we wouldn’t know where to go or what to do. The quest would be over. Can’t you see that?”

  A tense moment passed, and then Ujurak swiped at the snow with his front claws. “Fine,” he muttered.

  Suddenly Toklo gasped. “The seal!” he roared. “It’s gone!”

  “Gone!” Kallik shoved past him and stood next to the breathing hole. The ice was bloodstained where the carcass had been, but there was no sign of the seal itself. “How—where did it go?” She gave the dark water a puzzled look, as if perhaps the seal had come back to life and swum away.

  “The mother bear,” Lusa realized. “She must have snuck off with it while you were fighting.”

  “How dare she!” Toklo roared.

  “Well, it was hers to begin with,” Lusa pointed out.

  “Only until we claimed it,” Toklo retorted. “You should have been keeping an eye on it!”

  “Oh, right!” Lusa flared. “Because I’m so sure I could have stopped her! With what, my useless tiny paws?” She scuffed a pawful of snow at him and turned her back, huffing angrily.

  There was a long moment of silence, and then Kallik sidled up to Lusa. “It’s not your fault,” she said in a quiet voice. “You don’t need to be scared of other white bears. We’ll protect you.”

  “I know that,” Lusa mumbled. “You were brilliant, Kallik. I’m fine.”

  But she was lying again. Seeing that white bear, and hearing what he said about her fur, made her feel even more uncomfortable than before. She hadn’t even thought about how she stood out against the snow. White bears could probably see her coming for skylengths and skylengths. Or if their noses were like Kallik’s, they could almost certainly smell her.

  “Let’s keep
going,” Ujurak said, stalking up the hill in the direction the mother bear had gone. Lusa could smell the trail of the seal carcass, but she was glad Toklo didn’t suggest going after it. She couldn’t bear the thought of eating now anyway.

  Kallik bounded ahead to take the lead with Toklo close behind her. Lusa followed with a sigh. She tried to look on the bright side: They’d chased off a big white bear on their own. And maybe they wouldn’t have to be out here too much longer. Maybe they’d figure out what they had to do, save the wild, and return to the land again.

  Best of all, maybe soon night would fall, and then Lusa would be able to go back to sleep.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Kallik

  A cold night wind blew across the ice, but inside another cave of snow, Kallik was warm and cozy. She watched Lusa’s back slowly rise and fall as the little black bear slept. In their huddled sleeping pile, it was hard to tell which fur was Toklo’s and which was Ujurak’s. Kallik had a sharp burst of memory of Nisa and Taqqiq sleeping curled together in the same way. It was so powerful she could almost smell her mother’s warm breath and feel her brother’s solid bulk pressed against her side.

  Her mother’s spirit felt so close to her, out here on the ice. Nisa seemed to be watching her from every ice bubble, from the light drifts of snow dust in the wind, from the bright, sparkling ice spots in the sky.

  Kallik shifted her weight. The sun wouldn’t be up for a little while yet, but she couldn’t fall asleep again. She was too happy to be on the ice and surrounded by snow. And she felt responsible for the others—in her dreams, she walked in Nisa’s pawsteps, worrying about Toklo, Ujurak, and most of all Lusa as if they were her own cubs.

  She just hoped that Ujurak was right to have faith in her, and that her instincts were taking them the right way.

  Perhaps she could try catching a seal while the others slept. Carefully she eased her paws free and dug at the tunnel she’d filled in. A gust of cold air swept in and Toklo rolled over in his sleep, grumbling. Kallik nosed her way outside and shoved snow back into the hole to keep the others warm.

  The night was very quiet, with moonlight casting a peaceful glow over the empty ice. Kallik’s white fur ruffled in a breeze that carried gusts of snow into swirling whirlwinds around her head. She lifted her muzzle and inhaled deeply. Through the sharp, pure smells of ice and snow came the warm, furry scent of seal. She began to pace toward it, wondering if she looked as powerful and graceful as she remembered Nisa looking when she hunted. Snow crunched under her paws, and she let out a satisfied huff. It was good to have clean fur again, after moons of dirt clogging up her pads.

  The scent led her across small hills of snow to a wide, flat part of the ice. Kallik spotted the breathing hole from a few bearlengths away, dark against the paler gray of the ice. Cautiously she crept up to it and settled down to wait, resting her nose on her front paws. Vivid memories flooded through her—of her mother waiting patiently, teaching Kallik and Taqqiq the importance of absolute stillness and silence. Become one with the sea-ice, she thought, hearing her mother’s voice echo in her mind. Absorb its stillness and the seals will not sense you.

  Without the other three watching her, Kallik felt focused and sharp, all her senses alert. She felt as though she could wait like this forever, watching the hole and dreaming of her cubhood. Her breathing slowed as she sensed the comforting presence of spirits in the ice and stars all around her. She was so caught up in her memories that she nearly missed the hint of a splash right before a seal popped its sleek brown head out of the hole. It gave her such a startled look that she would have laughed, if she hadn’t been lunging forward to sink her claws into its neck. She could already taste the rich fat sliding down her throat.

  But to her surprise, her paws closed on empty air. With another splash, the seal disappeared below the water. She’d missed it! She’d failed again!

  Kallik sat back on her haunches and stared at the dark water. She’d been so sure she was going to catch it. And this time she couldn’t blame Toklo for distracting her.

  Was it hopeless? Perhaps Nisa dying so soon meant that she would never be a real white bear. Maybe there was too much her mother hadn’t had time to teach her. Miserable, Kallik trudged back to her friends. She wished her mother’s voice would return and tell her what she was doing wrong.

  The sun was a pale pink glow on the edge of the sky when she reached the snow cave and started digging into it with her paws. Toklo shot awake as she poked her head inside. He nearly clawed her nose off before he realized it was her and not an invading bear.

  “Where have you been?” he snapped.

  “Nowhere,” she said. “Just walking around.” She didn’t want to admit that she’d failed yet again to catch a seal. She could just imagine how Toklo would react to that.

  As if he’d read her mind, Toklo said, “I am dying of hunger. Let’s get these lazybones up and go catch a seal.”

  Kallik winced guiltily. Toklo poked Ujurak in the side and he rolled onto his paws, blinking as if he’d been dreaming about being another animal and was startled to find himself as a bear.

  Lusa was much harder to wake up, but she finally dragged herself out of the den, and they gathered in the sun, shaking snow off their fur.

  “A good day for traveling,” Ujurak observed, sniffing the cold morning air.

  “A good day for eating,” Toklo grumbled. “If we could just find something to eat.”

  Kallik took a deep breath. “Ujurak, listen,” she said. “I know you want me to lead us, but I don’t know where we’re supposed to go.” Her confidence was badly shaken by her failed hunt. She had to ask him for help now; she couldn’t keep pretending she knew what she was doing. “I mean, what are you looking for?” she went on. “A white bear would normally just wander the ice, eating seals and sleeping until burn-sky returned. I have no idea what you think we’ll find out here, or how I’m supposed to lead you to it.”

  She lowered her head, feeling better for having confessed, but mostly feeling terrible for failing her friends so badly.

  Ujurak gazed around at the ice, looking thoughtful. “It’s all right,” he said in his faraway voice. “Let me try to read the signs.” He paced a few steps away from them, studying the sky and the snow.

  Toklo snorted. “More signs. I don’t need any stupid signs. I can tell you exactly where to go—to the nearest seal!”

  Kallik nearly snapped at him, her anxiety and frustration boiling over, when she suddenly realized that Lusa was asleep in the snow beside them. Worried, Kallik nudged her in the side until the little black bear slowly opened her eyes.

  “Lusa, what’s wrong?” she barked. “Something is wrong, isn’t it?”

  Toklo came to stand next to Kallik, peering down at Lusa.

  “I’m just, um…resting,” Lusa said groggily, trying to sit up. “I’m all right. Nothing to, um…worry about.” She gave up and lay her head back down on the snow with a sigh.

  “Lusa, you don’t have to pretend,” Kallik said gently. “Please tell me what’s wrong.”

  “I’m sorry,” Lusa said in a small voice. “I’m just—I’m so tired.” She put one paw over her nose. “And my tummy hurts,” she said in an even smaller voice. “I’m sorry, Kallik; I think it’s the bit of seal we ate last night. It feels all wrong in my belly. All I want is berries.”

  Kallik put her paw lightly on Lusa’s belly. The black bear’s words were slurred as if she was speaking through a mouthful of water, and her eyelids drooped while she talked. But she was getting as much sleep as the rest of them—more, sometimes—and they weren’t traveling as far on the ice as they used to on the land. It didn’t make sense for her to be so tired.

  “It’s all right,” Kallik soothed. “Just rest for a moment, and we’ll wake you up when we’re ready to go.”

  “Thank you,” Lusa said with a sigh, closing her eyes. Within a moment she was in a deep sleep again.

  Kallik looked up and met Toklo’s worried gaze. “Do y
ou think she’s sick?” she asked as Ujurak came padding back to join them. Ujurak looked from them to the sleeping bundle of black fur at their paws.

  “Maybe,” Toklo said, digging his claws into the snow, “but I don’t see what we can do about it. Unless—Ujurak, is there anything you can do?”

  Ujurak shook his head. “There aren’t any herbs out here,” he said. “Even if I knew what was wrong with her, I don’t have anything that might make her better.”

  Kallik felt a stab of powerful guilt. Medicine was something Nisa had never taught her about, because she and Taqqiq had never been sick—at least, not that Kallik could remember. “If Lusa needs herbs, maybe we should go back to the land,” she said, forcing out the words. She desperately wanted to stay on the ice, but her friend’s life was much more important. “Maybe it was a mistake to come out here after all.”

  “No!” Ujurak said firmly. “This is where we are supposed to be, I know it. I don’t know what will happen next, but if we have any chance of saving the wild, we have to be out here.” He stood up, shaking the snow off his fur. “We just have to keep going. The signs tell me we should go that way.” He pointed with his nose and then set off without waiting for them to argue with him.

  Kallik exchanged glances with Toklo again. “That was strange,” she said. “Wasn’t it?”

  Toklo shifted his shoulders. “I don’t know.” He prodded Lusa’s side, but she didn’t move.

  “I mean,” Kallik hurried on in a low voice, “it’s not like Ujurak to not care about his friends. Right? Isn’t it weird that he’s not more worried about Lusa? Maybe there’s something wrong with him, too. It’s like he doesn’t even feel anything right now.”

  “I’m sure he is worried,” Toklo said, wriggling uncomfortably. “But maybe he knows something we don’t. As usual.” He poked Lusa again. “Come on, time to go.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” Kallik said, although she wasn’t entirely convinced. “Maybe when we save the wild, it’ll save Lusa, too. And that’s why it’s so important…. That could be it, couldn’t it?”