Fire in the Sky (2 page)

They headed up the slope away from the sea, looking for dry grass and shelter from the wind. The pebbly sand underpaw gave way to tufts of thick grass. Beyond the river, Lusa could see a line of trees up on a ridge. She could almost hear their leaves rustling from here. She wished she could curl up in their safe, strong branches, or tuck herself between their thick roots. She wanted to fall asleep surrounded by the whispers of
bear spirits watching over her from behind the bark.

One thing she knew for sure: There were no trees on the ice. No trees meant no friendly black bear spirits. What if she died out in the cold, white emptiness? Would her spirit ever find its way back where it belonged?

“It’s all right,” said a gruff voice in her ear. Lusa turned and saw Toklo padding along beside her. Kallik and Ujurak were a few pawsteps ahead. Toklo nodded at the wooded ridge. “I know you wish you were up there.”

“You’re right. Which means that I’m not brave at all,” Lusa said. “Toklo, I’m terrified.”

“Well, all of us are,” Toklo grunted. Lusa tilted her head in surprise. “I mean, I’m not
very
scared,” he amended. “Just a little bit. Only because it’s squirrel-brained to leave the land, where all the prey and shelter are. Brown and black bears don’t belong on the ice. But I figure we have to trust Ujurak. He’s led us all the way here, and we’re still in one piece.”

“Yes,” Lusa murmured, turning her gaze to the shambling bulk of the shape-shifting bear ahead of them. “He hasn’t let us down so far.”

“There’s not enough room to be a bear on land anymore,” Toklo went on in a low growl. His eyes were focused on the dark, blurred line of mountains on the horizon. “Perhaps there will be room for us out there, on the empty ice.” He snorted. “There
should
be room. There isn’t anything
else
out there.”

Lusa was about to tell him she’d been thinking the same thing, when something pale and warm loomed ahead of her, and she collided with Kallik’s haunches. The white bear had
stopped with Ujurak beside a clump of thornbushes. Ujurak was nosing around them, checking for prickles in the grass, or sharp-edged stones, or anything else that would make this a bad place to rest for the night. Lusa was beyond caring; she was so tired, she imagined she could sleep quite comfortably on a BlackPath.

She felt a flash of anxiety that Kallik had overheard her and Toklo worrying about the ice.

“I can’t wait to see your home,” she whispered, pressing her nose into the white bear’s fur. That was true—she did want to understand where her friend came from, even if it frightened her.

Kallik nuzzled her gently. “You’re going to love it, Lusa,” she promised. “You’ll see. No firebeasts, no smoke, no oil. Nothing to tempt the no-claws out there. Just you and the wind and the feeling of cool under your paws. It’s the best place ever.”

Lusa didn’t argue, but right then she would have thought anywhere she could close her eyes was the best place ever. The grass here was tall and soft, and the bushes hid them from the strong gusts of wind off the sea, as long as they didn’t get close enough to the branches for the thorns to stab them. Small flecks of white drifted through the air, glimmering in the moonlight. It was starting to snow. In Lusa’s fuzzy head, it just seemed like a soft, cozy blanket settling on her fur.

She flopped down, and by the time the others were settled snugly around her, she was fast asleep.

A murmur of chattering voices surrounded her, too high and fast for her to understand. Lusa pawed at her eyes and sat up, then stopped with a gasp.

Flat-faces!

Lots and lots of flat-faces were peering down at her, their pale, furless faces blank.

Lusa spun around to wake up her friends and realized they were gone. Gone also were the thornbushes and the smell of the sea, replaced by sloping gray walls and a tall, familiar tree with wide-spaced branches, and a group of bears she’d never expected to see again.

She was in the Bear Bowl. Lusa relaxed, letting the tension out of her shoulders. This was just a dream. She’d visited the Bear Bowl in her sleep once before, when she’d been told to save the wild. Nothing to be scared of, just her mind wandering through her memories. There hadn’t been so many flat-faces in her last dream. Lusa stood up on her hindpaws to look at them. She remembered how they used to point at her and laugh in their high, chattering way when she danced—especially the flat-face cubs. She tried waving her paws and wiggling her snout in the air. Maybe they would throw her blueberries if she did that. Even dream blueberries would be better than none.

But the flat-faces just stared at her in silence. Their faces were as blank and cold as the stone gray walls. They didn’t care what she did.

Lusa dropped to her paws. “Hrrrmph,” she muttered. “Well, I don’t care about you, either.” She turned her back on them,
trying to hide the uneasy shiver that went through her fur.

“Don’t worry about them,” said her mother’s gentle voice. Ashia pressed up next to Lusa, sniffing her from ears to paws. “You’re still not eating enough, little one. Look how thin you are!”

“We’re eating better in the Last Great Wilderness, though,” Lusa pointed out. She bumped her mother under her chin. “I am a wild bear, after all. I had goose tonight!”

“Really? I’ve never had that,” her mother said. “I know you have traveled far, far away, but sometimes I wish you were still here, playing with Yogi, listening to Stella’s stories, sleeping in the curl of my belly.” Sadness filled Ashia’s brown eyes. “The wild needs you, I know that, but you will always be my precious cub, and I will never forget it.”

“I know,” Lusa whispered. “I miss you, too.” She looked over to the rocks where King was sunning himself while Yogi toyed with a dead leaf. Yogi looked much bigger than she remembered, and his coat was turning sleek and long instead of tufty and fuzzy around his ears.

“We’ll see each other in our dreams,” Ashia went on. “I’m very proud of you, little blackberry. I know you’re going to save the wild.”

Lusa stretched her paws out in front of her, feeling sleepy again. “We will try,” she promised. She started circling in the grass, digging up a comfortable nest. “I’d better get some more sleep,” she grunted. “I don’t know why I’m so tired.”

“Wait,” Ashia yelped, looking concerned. She nudged Lusa’s side as Lusa lay down. “Stay awake. Lusa, don’t fall
asleep. You can’t go to sleep yet.”

Lusa blinked at her. “But I’m so tired,” she protested, feeling like a tiny cub again, too weak to play outside the den for long. She snuggled up to her mother’s strong, furry legs. “Just let me sleep for a little while.”

The Bear Bowl started to fade around her. “Lusa!” her mother’s voice called again, sounding farther and farther away. “Lusa, you must stay awake. It’s very important. Lusa!”

The clear, crisp smell of ice
wove its way into Kallik’s dreams. Her legs churned as she raced across a skylength of snow, as fast and strong as her mother, Nisa, had once been. Her brother, Taqqiq, bounded along beside her, barking at her to keep up, to race him to the seal hole where food waited, warm and salty smelling, pulsing with juicy fat….

When Kallik woke up, the scent was still in her nose, calling her toward the ocean. It smelled closer than ever. She pushed herself to her paws, shaking off the cold morning dew. Toklo was already awake, splashing quietly through the river with his eyes fixed on the ripples, watching for fish. Ujurak was stirring as if he was about to wake up, while Lusa looked so fast asleep that Kallik bent down to make sure she was still breathing. In her sleep, Lusa muttered, “Hrrmmmrrrgerroff,” and rolled away from Kallik.

Shaking her head in amusement, Kallik padded toward the shore. Her paws sped up as she scrambled across the shingle, running to the water and the ice she could smell in the distance.
The scent of it was so strong that she almost expected to see a sheet of pure white ice reaching all the way to the shore, but the sea closest to them was still not yet frozen. Foam-dappled waves brushed against the sand with a murmuring sound like spirits whispering.

Kallik peered out to the horizon, squinting in the grayish morning light. The rising sun was partly hidden by a thin veil of mist, with streaks of golden light peeking through in pale glimmers on the water. The mist hung low over the ocean as well, but Kallik padded along the shore until she found the spot where the ice smelled strongest. It couldn’t be far to get to the ice from here. Just a short swim away…and then she’d have ice under her paws again!

“You are way too excited about this,” Toklo grunted as he stalked up behind her and dropped a large fish on the sand. “We’re not all white bears, remember. I hope you know what you’re doing, taking us all out there.” He turned and let out an impatient growl as Ujurak and Lusa wandered slowly up behind him. Ujurak was carrying two smaller fish. Lusa was shaking her head as if her ears were full of water, and was pawing sleepily at her muzzle.

“Come on, hurry up, snailpaws,” Toklo growled at Lusa. He poked her in the side with his nose. “Where’s all that annoying early-morning cheerfulness you’re usually so full of?”

“Well, maybe if you hadn’t woken me up by dropping a
fish
on my head,” Lusa protested, yawning.

“It’s a good big fish,” Toklo said proudly. He jabbed his newkill with a paw. “We’d better eat while we still can.”

Kallik felt her shoulder fur rising. “There’s prey out on the ice, too!” she barked. “Really good prey! Just you wait until I catch you a seal!”

“Sure,” Toklo muttered as he ripped off a chunk of fish. “I’ll wait for that.”

“We’ll be fine out there,” Lusa interjected quickly. “Ujurak’s excited, too—right, Ujurak?”

The small brown bear was standing with his front paws in the water, gazing quietly out at the horizon. “Is this the way we have to go?” he asked Kallik.

Kallik swallowed. That was the kind of question Ujurak usually had the answer to—not her! But she was supposed to lead them to the ice, and she didn’t want Toklo or Lusa to worry that she couldn’t do it. So she tried to sound confident as she replied, “Yes, there’s ice right out there. I can smell it.” She lifted her nose to inhale the beautiful clean scent. “I’m sure we can swim to it. It isn’t far at all.”

“Swim to it?” Lusa echoed, licking the last bits of fish off her fur. She padded over to stand beside Ujurak and dabbed her paw in the water. “
Brrr!
It’s very cold!”

“Well, of course,” Kallik said. “Otherwise it couldn’t have ice on it, could it?”

“And it tastes funny,” Toklo said suspiciously, dipping his snout in the water. He stuck out his tongue and pawed at it with a disgusted look. “
Blech!
That’s not normal water at all!”

“No, it’s salty,” Kallik said, hanging on to her patience. “You don’t drink it, you swim in it. Look, it’s no different from swimming in the Big River. Remember? We did that just fine,
and this is a shorter distance.”

Toklo squinted into the mist. “How can you tell?”

“I trust Kallik’s nose,” Ujurak said quietly, before Kallik lost her temper and shoved Toklo into the ocean. “This is the way for us.”

The bears finished off the large fish, although Kallik could barely eat; her head was full of seals and of snow crunching underpaw and of cold, sharp winds that lifted her pelt, hair by hair. She hoped that Taqqiq had found ice somewhere, too. She wanted to think of him hunting seals and rolling in snow…just like she would be soon! Toklo noisily swiped his tongue around his muzzle. Ujurak was using his teeth to scrape fish scales from under his claws. Lusa was standing still, her head bobbing as if she was falling asleep again.

“Are we ready?” Kallik prompted. This was it; the moment she had journeyed all this way for. It seemed so long since she had been on solid ice that for a heartbeat she couldn’t remember what it felt like. Nisa had been alive, and she and Taqqiq had been helpless cubs, pretending to be brave when really they knew nothing about how to survive….

“Are we going, or are you waiting for the ice to come to us?” Toklo snapped.

Kallik jumped. “Sorry, just…just thinking. Come on, keep together. There will be stronger currents in this water than in the river or the lake. Don’t get swept away. If you feel yourself drifting, paddle into the current and it should bring you back to where you started.”

Lusa padded close to Kallik’s side as they waded into the
water. She jumped back in surprise when a wave rolled in toward her, but Kallik nudged her forward. She could see Lusa’s paws trembling, but the little black bear didn’t turn back.

The cold, salty tang of the ocean air tingled in Kallik’s nose. “Stay close to me, and I’ll help you if you need it, all right?”

Lusa nodded, her eyes wide.

“Blech!”
Toklo complained behind them. Kallik could hear him splashing loudly and batting at his nose. “What if we swallow this stuff? It’s so gross!”

“It’s just water, Toklo,” she called back. “Sheesh,” she muttered, and beside her Lusa snorted with amusement.

“Oh, wow,” Ujurak said, leaning down to sniff the waves as they surged around his paws. “I can sense so many animals out there in the sea! Animals, and fish, and animals that look like fish but aren’t…”

“Well, don’t change
now
,” Toklo grumbled. “We might never find you again.”

Then even Toklo had to shut up, because they’d waded in far enough for the water to splash over their muzzles. Kallik pushed off from the gravelly, sandy bottom and started to swim. The water lifted and tugged on her fur and her paws churned as she shoved herself forward. She felt a burst of happiness as the sea buoyed her up and waves rolled under her body. It was as if the water was welcoming her back into the world of white bears; this was where she was meant to be. The heaviness she always felt on land drifted away, leaving her weightless and full of strength. The river had been dirty,
sucking her down into its black depths, but this empty gray water let her slice cleanly through, and even the waves didn’t seem to be trying to push her back to the shore.

Kallik kept an eye on the small black shape of Lusa’s head, only a few pawlengths away. Lusa’s snout stuck up in the air and she gasped for breath as she paddled, but if Kallik went slowly, she could keep up. The brown bears were close behind them, swimming vigorously. Toklo closed his eyes every time a wave came toward him, and when it swamped over his head he poked his muzzle out the other side, sputtering and snorting.

Soon Kallik’s muscles began to ache; she hadn’t used them for swimming like this in a while. She knew that if
she
was tired, Lusa must be even more so. The little black bear had seemed much quieter recently, and cheerful only when they made their nests for the night. Had the long journey tired Lusa out? Kallik wondered how much farther they would have to go. Even Ujurak seemed unsure. And the ice was still a long way distant—a shimmering blue shelf at the edge of the sky up ahead.

“Lusa!” she called. “You can rest your paws and float for a moment, if you want. Look.” She stopped paddling and let her paws hang. The salty water kept her afloat, with only a flick of her paws needed now and then to keep her head above water.

“I’ll try,” Lusa burbled as water went up her nose. She coughed and flailed, then kept her legs still and quiet below the surface of the water, the way Kallik had. Her look of surprised relief made Kallik feel warm inside.

She paddled back to Toklo and Ujurak to give them the same advice, and for a while all four bears drifted calmly, catching their breath and resting their sore muscles. Beneath the water, Kallik felt more alive than ever, even though she wasn’t moving. She could tell from the way the current brushed against her fur which way they needed to swim, and she knew exactly where her companions were from the tiny ripples they sent out when they moved their paws to keep afloat. It was like being able to
see
without putting her head underwater.

“SQUAWK!”
shrieked a bird overhead.
“SQUAWK! SQUAWK!”
A seagull plummeted toward them, diving straight for Kallik. Its sharp yellow beak just missed her nose, and Kallik let out a roar, swiping at it with her front paws. But the gray-and-white bird swooped away and hovered on a current of air just out of reach. Kallik thought it looked very smug.

“Just you try that again!” she challenged, bobbing up and down in the waves she’d created.

“SQUAWK!”
it hollered back. Kallik glared as the bird circled overhead. It was clearly waiting until she stopped paying attention to it, and then it would come back to annoy her some more.

“Stupid seagulls,” she muttered, just as the bird swooped down again. This time it aimed for Ujurak’s nose, and the small brown bear ducked under the water to escape.

“Go away!” Kallik barked. “Or we’ll eat you!”

“SQUAW-AW-AW-AW-AWK!”
the seagull cackled. It flew up in a wide arc, then dove back down toward Toklo.

“Uh-oh. Now it’s messing with the wrong bear,” Lusa
puffed, churning her paws to lift her head higher above the waves. Toklo surged out of the water right at the lowest point of the bird’s dive and swiped his claws at it. The hooked tips grazed the seagull’s feathers and nearly dragged the bird into the sea. It was almost upside down before it managed to right itself with a panicky thrust of its wings. It flapped out of reach of Toklo in an awkward, unbalanced way, scattering feathers.

“SQUAAAAAAAAWK!”
it screeched in outrage, then turned and flew away.

“That’s right!” Kallik called after it. “Pick on someone your own size!”

“I think I’m ready to keep swimming,” Lusa said, taking a deep breath. Kallik paddled closer to her, and they all began to swim again. It was much colder than the Big River. Kallik could feel the piercing chill even through her thick fur; she knew Lusa’s paws must be nearly numb by now. Craning her neck, she saw a jagged white ledge looming above the waves.
The Endless Ice!
She’d finally found it. Far, far from her BirthDen, she was safe once more.

“Almost there,” she barked encouragingly as the ice shelf drew closer. “We’re so close!” The pure white ledge ahead of them was like the promise of newkill after a hunt. Kallik could almost taste it. She put on a burst of speed across the last stretch of water and hauled herself up, hooking her claws in the ridges of the shelf. With a fierce, wriggling push, she scrambled out of the water and sprawled out onto the flat expanse of ice.

It was deliciously cold underneath her. Her paws felt cool and light instead of heavy and caked with mud, as they had for the last several moons. She wanted to roll and leap and rub her back into the snow, breathing in the clean, icy air.

But first she turned around to help Lusa up. Gently she put her jaws around the scruff at the back of Lusa’s neck and tugged her upward, as Nisa used to do with her and Taqqiq. Lusa yelped with shock as her paws skidded across the ice and she landed in a small, wet heap at Kallik’s paws.

“Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!”
Lusa cried, shaking herself and spraying drops of water all over Kallik. “How can it be even colder when I’m out of the water?
Brrr! Brrrr! BRRRR!
” She scrambled up and tried turning in circles to warm herself up, but her paws kept slipping on the slippery ice until she tumbled onto her side or her belly.

Toklo boosted Ujurak up and then let Kallik help him out of the water. Both brown bears immediately slipped and scrabbled across the ice, crashing into Lusa and ending up in a wet pile of fur. Lusa whoomphed with amusement from underneath Toklo.

“It’s a little slippery,” Kallik said, realizing she should have warned them.

“Oh,
is it
?” Toklo roared.

“You just have to move slowly at first!” Kallik said. She hurried over to untangle her friends.

“I can’t even stand up!” Toklo grumbled, thudding onto his side again. He collected his paws underneath him, braced himself, and tried to shove himself upright. Immediately all
four paws shot in different directions and he sprawled face-first onto the ice.

“I’m glad you think this is so funny!” he huffed at Lusa, who was rolling in the snow, chuffing with laughter. “How are we supposed to travel if we can’t even walk?”

“You’ll get used to it,” Kallik promised. She leaned against him to support him until he was standing upright, looking wobbly. “Here, spread out your paws and slide them one at a time, like this. Focus on keeping your balance lower than your belly, so that you’re almost bending your legs.” She leaned from one side to the other and skated across the ice. It felt so natural to her that for a moment she was a cub again, and she looked back to see if her mother was watching. But there were no white bears here, just three bedraggled heaps of dark fur with huge baleful eyes and dripping muzzles.

Toklo looked unimpressed.
“Hmmph,”
he grumbled. “Stupid ice.” He tried to slide forward a step like Kallik had and ended up sprawled on his face again.