Fire in the Sky (18 page)

He remembered the other part of his mission—to release the rest of the birds and seals and animals in here. Except now he knew that they would be free eventually. Sally had said they’d all be going back to the wild, and in the meanwhile the humans were taking care of them. So they didn’t need his help. All he had to do was save Lusa.

“Besides, Tara fed her recently,” Sally went on. “She’s
practically gone through our entire stock of canned fruit already! But we’ll be getting more supplies tomorrow when our ship arrives.”

Suddenly there was a commotion at the entrance of the tent. A dark-haired woman pushed her way in and called, “Quick, clear the tables! We have another batch coming in!”

All the people in the tent sprang into action, putting animals back into cages and wiping down the tables. More people in green coats came in the front carrying nets and cages. Ujurak’s heart lurched as he saw the sad state of the birds and animals inside. Oil dripped from their feathers, and most of them were entirely motionless. He couldn’t believe any of them were alive with that much poison saturating their skin.

“Come on!” Sally said. “This is where you can really help!” She dragged him over to the nearest table and handed him a pair of gloves. Ujurak pulled them on as Sally introduced him to Erica, the dark-haired woman who’d led the way in. She gently extracted a long-necked bird from one of the nets and laid it out on the table. Ujurak saw her pull a tiny dart out of its side.

“It’s tranquilized,” Sally pointed out, seeing the direction of his gaze. “That way it won’t wake up and panic in the middle of this.”

Ujurak was relieved to hear that it wasn’t dead. He followed Erica’s instructions as she showed him how to remove the oil from its feathers and gently wipe off the beak, eyes, and webbed feet with a soft, bubbly mixture.

Erica moved on to the next table, and Ujurak and Sally
worked for a while in silence. Every time he looked up, Sally grinned at him.

“Isn’t this great?” she whispered. “We’re totally helping! I’m so lucky my parents let me come up here and do this.”

Ujurak had to admit, it made him feel better, too. He could see the difference immediately in the bird’s feathers. His nimble flat-face hands worked quickly and efficiently, and he felt connected to the other people around him, all of whom were working hard on the same thing. He couldn’t believe there were this many flat-faces willing to spend their time just helping and saving animals.

True, the damage was from something the flat-faces themselves had done to them. But maybe Lusa was right after all. Maybe the flat-faces weren’t all bad, and maybe some of them could make a difference. If he hadn’t had his friends and his life as a bear to go back to, he could imagine staying in this form and doing work like this for the rest of his life.

He glanced over at Lusa’s cage. She had her eyes fixed on him and her head was tilted curiously. He smiled at her, and she blinked.

Don’t worry, Lusa,
he promised silently.
I won’t forget this time. I know who I am and why I’m here. And I’ll get you out of here. I promise
.

It was Ujurak. Lusa was sure
now. The way the flat-face boy looked at her and smiled—it gave her the same warm, secure feeling that being with Ujurak did.

When he first walked in, she’d wondered why he looked familiar. For a while she’d watched him, thinking that perhaps she’d seen him around the Bear Bowl. He didn’t look the way Ujurak had looked the last time he became a flat-face. This time he was bigger and his hair was a bit lighter, and he moved with an odd new confidence, as if he felt more comfortable being a flat-face than he had before. Even his flat-face chatter sounded deeper and wiser, as if he knew more words and flat-face ideas than he had before.

But there was something about his scent that still smelled a bit like Ujurak. It had to be him. He’d come to rescue her! She hoped that meant that Kallik was here, too, waiting just outside the pelt walls somewhere. Lusa loved the idea of the four of them being together again.
I hope they found Toklo. I hope he’s all right.

She peered up through the bars at the table where Ujurak was working next to the dark-haired girl. They were talking and laughing as if they’d known each other for ages. Lusa had seen them start with a bird, but now they were cleaning off a droopy-looking seal. She wondered if Ujurak’s stomach growled when he saw it. She wasn’t at all interested in eating it, but she was sure Toklo and Kallik would be!

Ujurak’s delicate new paws worked gently on the seal’s fur, rubbing something bubbly onto it and then carefully cleaning out the oil. He looked as kind and capable as the flat-faces who had worked on her when she came in. He also looked as if he was having a good time. Lusa couldn’t remember him looking so happy, certainly not since they’d been out on the ice. He’d been worrying so much about the oil and the flat-faces, he’d barely said a word the last couple of days they’d been together.

Now he was chattering away in a funny flat-face voice. Lusa wished she could understand what he was saying. What was his plan for rescuing her? How would he get her out past all the other flat-faces? She settled back on her hindquarters. She wasn’t worried. Ujurak would figure it out; he always did.

The same dark-haired female as before came back with another bowl of fruit. Lusa licked it up gratefully. She loved the tingle of sweetness on her tongue and the taste of the juice sliding down her throat.

“That’s not bear food,” grunted a voice nearby.

Lusa jumped and looked around. The old white bear was
awake, squinting at her through the bars of his cage. He looked disoriented and unhappy. Even though he’d been washed by the flat-faces, his fur was still a sickly gray color.

“It is for black bears,” she told him.

“Huh,” he said, sniffing at a bowl of meat sitting in his cage. “And you trust them enough to eat it? If it comes from the no-claws, it’s probably poisonous.”

“No, no,” Lusa said. “It’s good, I promise. You should eat if you’re hungry.”

“Huh,” he said again. He gave the bowl a doubtful glance, but Lusa could see that he was tempted. “What is going on in here? Why do they have us trapped like this?” He stood up and turned in an awkward circle inside his cage. One of his large paws swatted at the bars. “When I get my claws on them, I’ll show them how a white bear should be treated!”

“Wait, don’t get excited,” Lusa said, trying to sound soothing. “The flat-faces are just trying to help, I promise.”

He squinted at her again. “What’s a flat-face?”

“Um,” Lusa said. “Oh. I mean the no-claws. We call them flat-faces.”

“Huh,” he grunted.

“But these are the good kind of, uh, no-claws,” Lusa said. “They’re taking care of us and feeding us and trying to clean us up.”

“Clean us up!” the old bear snorted. He glared at one of his gray, sticky paws. “They’re the ones who created this mess in the first place!”

“I know,” Lusa said. “But I think that was a different group
of flat-faces. Some of them are bad and some of them are good. Kind of like bears.”

“No bear is as bad as a no-claw,” he growled.

Lusa thought about Shoteka, the giant grizzly who had gone after Toklo even though Toklo was just a cub. But at least Shoteka never had a firestick. “That’s probably true,” she allowed. “Yet some flat-faces are actually very kind. I grew up in a place where flat-faces fed us and healed us if we got sick.”

The old bear looked shocked. “There’s no such place!”

“There is!” Lusa insisted. “It’s called the Bear Bowl. My mother and father and friends are still there. Flat-faces come to visit every day, and some of them bring food and even play with us.”

“Sounds unnatural,” the white bear grumbled. He sighed heavily and looked down at his paws. “But I guess I wouldn’t have gotten clean without them. I never thought I’d see the day when I’d need help from a no-claw.”

“There’s nothing wrong with accepting help when you need it,” Lusa said.

“White bears can take care of themselves!” he snapped. “That’s how it was when I was a cub, anyway. We had skylengths of endless ice to walk without ever seeing a no-claw or firebeast. Seals practically threw themselves out of the sea for us to eat. I remember my mother telling us stories of Silaluk and teaching us to fight.” He shook his head. “She was killed by a firebeast. That was the first time I ever saw one. And they’ve just kept coming, more and more of them all the time. Now the ice is full of no-claws and their burning, choking
smells and their horrible smoke.”

Lusa felt terribly sad for the old bear. His head drooped and his paws trembled with exhaustion and fear.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen to me,” he sighed finally.

“Maybe you can come with us,” Lusa offered. “My friends are going to rescue me soon. I can tell them to free you at the same time, and we’ll go out on the ice together. It’s easier with friends. Less lonely, and less scary.”

The white bear shook his head. “I don’t have the energy for it anymore,” he told her. “Everything has changed so much. It’s all so hard.” He sighed again. “Perhaps the no-claws can look after me better than I can look after myself right now.”

Lusa wished she could lean into his fur and make him feel better. She wanted to tell him that she was going to save the wild with Ujurak and the others, but she was afraid it would sound ridiculous. The way he described the changes…how could four little bears do anything about that?

“No,” the white bear said, staring at the flat-faces bustling around the pelt-den. “It’s no use.” He lay down, rested his chin on his paws, and closed his eyes. “The world I knew is gone,” he said sadly. “And it’s never coming back.”

The sun was slowly sinking below
the edge of the sky. Ujurak had been inside the pelt-den the entire day, and it was driving Toklo wild with anxiety. There’d been no sign of him or Lusa. Toklo hated not knowing what was going on. He stood up and shook out his fur, scattering small wet drops of snow around him.

“Toklo, just keep still,” Kallik complained. “I’ve told you, creeping up to the pelt-den over and over again is only going to get you caught. All your pacing hasn’t told you anything yet, has it?”

“I might smell something new this time,” Toklo growled. “I’ll be right back.” He crept out from behind the chunk of ice where they’d been hiding for most of the day. They’d seen flat-faces charging in and out of the pelt-den. At one point a whole crowd of them had arrived on several firebeasts and carried a line of oil-soaked animals into the den. It had been very noisy, and the commotion inside the pelt-den afterward went on for a long time. And it still didn’t give Toklo any clues
about what was happening.

Toklo was baffled. What did the flat-faces want with the sick animals? Did they love their oil so much that they had to save it any way they could—even if it meant squeezing it out of feathers and fur? He wanted to know what would happen to the animals afterward. From the scent of the pelt-den, most of them were still alive in there. Including Lusa…he kept catching her scent mingled with all the others.

He realized that Kallik was crawling along close behind him. They were only a few bearlengths from the back wall of the pelt-den at this point. The dark green wall rippled in front of them, and the high-pitched chatter of flat-face voices leaked out. Was one of them Ujurak’s?

“We should have told Ujurak to send us a sign,” he growled to Kallik. “Now we don’t even know if he remembers that he’s a bear—or why he’s in there.”

“He told us to give him some time,” Kallik said. “I’m sure he remembers. He’ll do what he promised.” She glanced at the slumbering firebeasts. “Toklo, we’re way too close. Can we please go back to our hiding spot?”

“Shhhh,” he said fiercely. “I’m listening.” He padded a few steps closer and strained his ears toward the pelt-den.

“Oh,” Kallik said in a sarcastic voice. “Wonderful. Because
that
will help.”

He growled at her and took another step toward the den. Of course, she was right. He didn’t want to admit it, but nothing he heard from the den told him anything. He took a deep breath in, but the smells were equally mysterious. There was
no way to know what was happening inside unless he clawed open the walls himself.

He was sorely tempted to do just that. Frustrated, he pawed at the snow.

“You know what would be really unhelpful?” Kallik said. “If we got captured by flat-faces, too. That would be spectacularly useless.”

“We’re not going to—” Toklo snapped, whirling on her. But his words were interrupted by a huge roar. Toklo nearly leaped out of his skin as a firebeast only slightly bigger than him came tearing around the side of the pelt-den. Its eyes blazed and its roaring was louder than most full-grown bears. It raced at him and Kallik as if it was preparing to attack.

“Run!” Kallik shouted. She bundled into Toklo, shoving him aside as the firebeast whooshed past. They both scrambled around and bolted for the safety of the ice field. The roaring slowed behind them and then stopped. By the time Toklo and Kallik were crouched, panting, behind their chunk of ice again, the firebeast was resting outside the entrance of the pelt-den.

“It wasn’t chasing us at all,” Toklo grumbled.

“Yes, but that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t have hit us!” Kallik said. “Especially since we were right in its way!
Now
will you settle down, please?”

Toklo bristled angrily. His frustration came boiling up from deep inside, and he bared his teeth at her. “Stop telling me what to do!” he snarled.

“Stop acting like a stupid squirrel, then!” Kallik snarled
back. He realized how much bigger she’d grown than him. But he was still sure he could fight her, and this time Ujurak and Lusa weren’t there to stop them.

They were standing nose to nose, and he had his paw lifted to strike at her throat, when he saw the look on her face shift from hostile to concerned. She turned to look at the pelt-den, sniffing the air.

“What?” he asked, lowering his paw. “Do you smell something?”

“I thought I did,” she said. “I think I can tell which no-claw scent is Ujurak’s. But it’s all muddled up with the other smells in there. I wish my nose were more helpful!” She clawed at her muzzle, and he realized that she was just as worried and terrified as he was. They didn’t need to take their fear out on each other’s pelts.

Toklo took a step back and grunted with exasperation. “This is horrible,” he said.

“I know,” Kallik agreed with a sigh. She lay down and buried her nose in the snow for a moment. “I wish there was something we could do.”

“I’m the one who was supposed to look after them,” Toklo said, scraping at the block of ice. “Both of them, Ujurak and Lusa. I always take care of them. But now they’re both in danger, and here I am just hanging around like a useless lump of fur.” He remembered the star-bear’s words about one of them dying. What if Ujurak or Lusa was on the edge of death right that moment, and he was just sitting outside watching the pelt-den instead of trying to save them?

“I know how you feel,” Kallik said. “Really I do. But remember, they’re not exactly helpless, either of them. Lusa understands flat-faces…she knows all about them and she’s not even that scared of them. She’s probably doing better in there than you or I would. And Ujurak
is
a flat-face right now. With his powers, and guided by the spirits the way he is, he’ll know what to do. I’m sure they’ll be all right.”

Toklo grunted and lay down next to her. “We’ll see.”

“You know what we should do?” Kallik said, sitting up in a rush and spraying snow all over him. “We should hunt. We need to keep our strength up anyway, in case we have to make a speedy escape tonight. That’s probably the best way we can help.” She nudged his side. “Besides, it’ll keep us from worrying so much. Come on.”

Toklo wanted to stay and watch the pelt-den, but as soon as Kallik had said the word “hunt,” he felt the enormous, gnawing ache in his stomach. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten. Was it back on the floating firebeast with Lusa?

“All right,” he said grudgingly, climbing to his paws.

“This might take me a moment,” Kallik said, turning her nose into the wind. “There are so many seal smells coming from the pelt-den…I have to separate out the ones coming from farther away…. Let me think.” She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply, slowly twisting her head one way and then the other.

“There!” she said. Her eyes popped open. “Let’s go!” She sprang to her paws and started to run across the ice.

Toklo followed her, impressed. How could she smell
something so far away? He knew his nose was excellent, but it was so clogged with the oil scent that he doubted he’d be able to find a seal hole even if it was under his paws right now.

They ran and ran, sprinting up snowy hills and tumbling down the other side, skidding on slippery patches and jumping over small cracks in the ice. Sometimes Kallik would stop to sniff the air and peer at the bubbles underneath her. Toklo had to admit he loved the feeling of the wind in his fur. He already felt better, just from stretching his legs and getting a chance to run. It was much more satisfying than crouching in the snow and staring at flat-faces all day long.

Finally Kallik slid to a stop and pointed with her nose. Toklo saw the dark hole in the ice up ahead. It looked very still, and he couldn’t smell any recent scents of seal. But he watched Kallik slowly creep up and lay down next to the hole. Then he copied her movements, trying to be just as quiet and stealthy. He imagined he was stalking a rabbit through the forest, placing his paws carefully among the leaves and branches. Here it was ice and snow, but the cautious pawsteps were the same.

Kallik fixed her eyes on the hole. Her breathing slowed down until Toklo could barely see her fur rising and falling. She seemed to have forgotten that he was there. He stared at the dark water, too. It was still hard for him to wait patiently for prey to come to him. He wanted to rush at the water and attack moving shapes with his claws, the way he caught salmon. But he already knew that that wouldn’t work out here.

His ears pricked forward as something rippled below the surface. His eyes flicked to Kallik and he saw that she had
turned her eyes to him as well. With a tiny movement of her head, she motioned from him to the hole.

“You should get it,” he whispered back.

“Just try,” she said softly. “I know you can do it.”

He was about to argue with her, when a sleek brown head popped out of the water. Immediately his instincts took over and he lunged forward. For a moment his claws sliced through air, and he was afraid that he’d missed it. But then they sank into rubbery flesh, and he yanked the seal toward him, burying his teeth in its neck. Shaking it ferociously, he dragged it back up onto the ice and pinned it down until the thrashing stopped.

“You did it!” Kallik crowed. “That was perfect!”

Toklo wiped blood off his muzzle and licked his paws. “I did, didn’t I?” he said smugly. “That wasn’t so hard.”

Kallik looked offended. Quickly Toklo ducked his head and muttered, “Well, perhaps it was a little hard.”

The white bear bumped his side in a friendly way and crouched beside the seal. They tore long strips of flesh off and chewed, watching the sun disappear and the dark shadows creep across the ice. Toklo glanced up at the stars. It was easier to feel confident about saving Lusa when his belly was full. Maybe the others were even right about bear spirits watching over them.

They polished off the seal in no time, and then Toklo stood up, rubbing his paws into the snow. “We’d better get back,” he said. “We should be there when whatever Ujurak is going to do happens.” The anxiety was returning, prickling through his pelt.

“Absolutely,” Kallik said, getting to her paws as well. “Race you there!” She sprinted off across the snow.

“Hey!” he shouted. “No fair! Your paws are better on the ice, and you know where we’re going, and you got a head start—” He realized she wasn’t slowing down, so he stopped complaining and started to run. The cold night wind chilled his nose and made his eyes water. But his paws felt strong and powerful, and he flew across the snow as fast as any white bear. He kept Kallik in his sights as he ran.

Toklo cast a glance up at the stars. He
hoped
the others were right about the bear spirits, and that the star-bear who had told him one of them would die was wrong. If there was any night when they could use serious spirit help, this was it.