Fire in the Sky (8 page)

Kallik dug in her claws and crouched down until the ice stopped rocking and she was able to balance for the next jump. As she sprang, the chunk shot backward, toward the edge, where the others waited with anxious eyes. This time she was ready for the lurch under her feet as she landed, and she stayed low, hardly breathing, until the chunk of ice steadied in the
water. It was bigger than the previous piece, large enough to take all of them. Kallik decided to wait for the others.

“Okay!” she called. “Join me here!”

Lusa jumped next, slipping on the ice as she landed, but clearing the small stretch of water easily. She looked fierce and determined, gathering her haunches underneath her for the second leap. Kallik slid carefully back to make room for her, and to balance the chunk of ice so that it didn’t tip her into the freezing water. Lusa arrived with a small grunt, and a flash of triumph in her eyes.

Toklo and Ujurak followed, their blond-brown fur flicking along their flanks as they plunged through the air. It was a squeeze to fit them all onto the second chunk of ice, but at least it was a lot more steady—though the water had started to lap over the side where Kallik stood. They’d made it safely across half of the channel.

Well,
Kallik thought,
“safely” if you don’t count the dark fins circling us.
She tried to shove that thought out of her head. Their ice floe had floated closer to the other side when Toklo landed, and another large chunk was near enough to jump to.

One at a time, they leaped again. This time Kallik went last so she could keep an eye on the orcas slicing through the water. By the time it was her turn, the pieces of ice had floated farther apart. She took as much of a running jump as she could, but as she pushed off, she felt the ice move below her paws, and she knew she wouldn’t be able to cover the whole distance.

The water seemed to rise up to meet her, sucking her in,
and she landed with a cold splash that took her breath away. Frantically she swiped her claws at the shapes around her. One of them darted in and rammed her in the side, knocking the wind out of her. Another swept up from below and crashed into her shoulder, leaving it numb from the impact. Kallik could hear her friends screaming her name, but the water swamped into her eyes and she was thrashing about too much to swim straight.

Terror coursed through her as she realized she was going to die. She was going to be killed by orcas, just like her mother. She was leaving her friends behind the same way as she’d been left—with no one to take care of them, no one to guide them through this strange world. It would be her fault if they died, too.

Suddenly she spotted a pale shadow in the water—white where the orcas were dark. The water was churning fiercely, so she couldn’t see it very clearly, but the orcas all moved away from it, whatever it was. Kallik squinted through the waves.

“Kallik, swim!” Lusa’s voice carried across the water. “Hurry!”

“Over here!” Toklo yelled.

Kallik turned away from the pale shadow and swam through the space the orcas had left. She reached up and felt the claws of her friends digging into her fur, dragging her up onto the ice. With a final heave and a scramble from her back paws, Kallik shoved herself up and out into the air. She was alive!

Even better, this chunk of ice had floated close enough to
the other side that they could leap across safely to the unbroken ice. Kallik tumbled onto the snow and lay there, her head spinning. She was too exhausted and dazed to stand up and shake out her soaking wet fur.

“That was really weird!” Lusa puffed, licking Kallik’s ear. “The orcas just seemed to back away all of a sudden.”

“If they hadn’t, I would have jumped into the water and fought them off,” Toklo promised. “I was just about to.”

“You can’t ever do that!” Kallik barked. “You can’t fight them, Toklo. Not even my mother could fight them. Promise me you won’t ever try.”

“But it seemed like
you
scared them off,” Lusa said, her eyes shining.

Kallik glanced over at Ujurak, who had a knowing look in his eyes as he gazed at the water. He lifted his head into the breeze. “I knew you would make it,” he said. “It’s another sign. We’re meant to be together, and we’re meant to be going this way.”

Toklo snorted. “Could you ask the signs to be a little less traumatizing next time?”

Kallik didn’t know or care if it was a sign for their quest right at that moment. She knew what
she
thought the pale shadow had been.

Thank you, Mother,
she thought, closing her eyes and resting her cheek against the cool ice.
Thank you for saving my life.

As soon as Kallik was up
to it, they started walking again. Ujurak tried to shake off the fear he’d felt when he’d seen the orcas attack Kallik. He knew that if she’d died, it would have been his fault for insisting they cross the broken ice.

And was he right about where they were going? He wasn’t even sure. The signs out here were so strange. He was used to reading broken tree limbs and piles of rocks and the sound of streams burbling in the distance. He didn’t know what to make of the shifting whorls of snow or the endless, blank emptiness of the ice, and that troubled him deeply.

He glanced around at Kallik’s huge bulk, looming over Lusa’s small, dark shape as they trudged side by side. It had been a relief to hand off the responsibility of leadership to her for a while. He’d hoped her knowledge of the ice would be enough to guide them wherever they were going, especially when he was so confused out here. But of course she knew even less than he did…well, she knew more about surviving on the ice, but she didn’t know how to read the signs of their
journey, and of course she didn’t know what they were looking for.

He
barely knew what they were looking for. The strange tugging under his fur pulled him forward relentlessly, so he knew there was a reason to be here. He just hoped he’d recognize it when they found it—and that it would help them save the wild, as his and Lusa’s dreams had promised.

Ujurak turned his eyes back to the sky. The dancing lights had been such a promising sign, but all they’d told him was to go out onto the ice. They gave him no clues about what to do once he got there. Even the Pathway Star confused him; at night it was nearly directly overhead, so he couldn’t tell if they were still supposed to be following it, or if it had just been leading them here, to the ice.

And during the day it was even harder. He squinted at the thin gray clouds scattered across the dull blue sky. Earlier he’d seen four distinct streaks of clouds, all angling in this direction, which he’d taken for a sign they should go this way. But now the lines had blurred away, and his certainty had melted along with them. There was nothing in all this emptiness at the moment to convince him they were on the right path.

He clung to the thought of Kallik’s mysterious escape from the orcas. Surely that meant what he hoped—that they had made the right choice and the spirits were with them. He just had to have faith.

And most important, he had to act confident for the others. They couldn’t know that he was even a little unsure; he had to hide how much the ice confused him. If they knew
how lost he felt, they’d lose faith in him. Ujurak looked back at Toklo stomping along, muttering grumpily to himself as he sometimes did. Toklo’s temper was already on edge; Ujurak was afraid the brown bear would seize any excuse to go back to the land.

If Toklo lost faith in Ujurak’s guidance, there would be nothing to keep him here…nothing to keep all four of them together. And Ujurak was certain that was the most important thing. All four bears were essential for whatever was ahead.

He took a deep breath, trying to calm himself. The memory of how he’d nearly lost himself as a whale still terrified him. And now that he’d taken back the role of guide from Kallik, the weight of his friends’ expectations lay heavily on his fur.

He had to be strong. He had to act sure, even when he wasn’t. He had to watch even more carefully for signs and hold the group together, no matter what. He couldn’t hope that Kallik would lead the way in his place anymore.

Everything depended on him.

Toklo stopped on a sloping bank
of snow and looked back at the broken ice river in the distance. He could still see black fins slipping through the green water. He shuddered as he imagined vicious teeth closing over his paws.

Nearly losing Kallik had given him more of a fright than he wanted to admit. He couldn’t rely on the white bear to take care of them. He needed to learn to catch seals properly and how to find shelter on the ice, in case he needed to take over for any reason.

He hurried to catch up to Kallik, scrambling past a sleepy-looking Lusa and a plodding Ujurak. Kallik’s wet fur was drying quickly under the sun and with the brisk breeze; she didn’t even seem very cold. Toklo had always thought his fur was the perfect thickness to keep him warm, but now he secretly craved whatever was keeping Kallik so comfortable out here.

“Hey, Kallik,” he said, nudging her flank. “Maybe you could teach me your way of catching a seal, the way your mother taught you.”

“Really?” she said. She swung her head around to look at him. “You really want to learn? It seems pretty boring at first. You have to be
very patient
.”

“Well, I’m quite a patient bear,” Toklo said. “I mean, that’s what I’m known for.”

Kallik snorted with laughter and Toklo checked behind him to see if Lusa had heard his joke. But she was a couple of bearlengths back, struggling through the snow with her head down.

“I want to learn,” he said earnestly. “I promise to listen, I really will.”

“And behave?” Kallik prompted. He nodded. “And not grumble?”

“I don’t grumble!” Toklo barked. “I never grumble!”

“Oh, really?” said Kallik.

“All right, if we get through this lesson, and I do exactly as I’m told, then you say you’re sorry for calling me a grumbler.”

“Deal,” Kallik huffed. She lifted her head and sniffed deeply. “We’re in luck. I think there’s a seal breathing hole only a skylength and a half that way.” She nodded at the edge of the sky in a direction that looked exactly like every other to Toklo. He tried inhaling, but couldn’t smell anything like seal.

“How do you
do
that?” he whined.

“Same way you can find your way back to places you’ve been before,” Kallik said. “It’s just something white bears are good at, smelling things that are far away.”

Ujurak only nodded when Kallik suggested they veer
slightly out of their way to reach the breathing hole. The sun had crossed the highest point of the sky and was heading back down into night when they reached the place Kallik had smelled. Dark clouds were gathering in the blue above them, warning of more snow to come.

This breathing hole looked small to Toklo, and he wished he could make it bigger, but he remembered what a bad idea that had been last time. So he followed Kallik, walking exactly as she did, sliding his paws carefully over the ice and then lying down right next to the hole with his ears pricked, watching for seals.

He could sense Lusa and Ujurak behind them, curled up together in the snow, but he tried to focus all his concentration on the hole, just as Kallik was doing. They waited and waited and waited for even a flicker of movement…but nothing happened. Not even a whisker of a seal broke the surface of the dark water.

Finally Kallik sat up with a sigh. The sun had nearly reached the edge of the sky, and the heavy gray clouds were thick above them, casting shadows ahead of the night. “I’m sorry, Toklo,” she grunted. “You’ve been very patient, but this is longer than I’ve ever waited before.”

Toklo scraped his claws along the ice in frustration. That wasn’t fair! How could he learn to hunt if they couldn’t even be sure there’d be seals where he was hunting? He turned to look at the other two waiting bears.

“Hey, Ujurak!” he called. “I have an idea! Come here!”

Warily Ujurak stood up and padded over to the hole. Lusa
shifted slightly where he’d left her, but didn’t wake up.

“Kallik says there might not be any seals here at all,” Toklo explained. “So I was thinking, maybe you could turn into a seal and just check for us.”

“I’m not a piece of prey, Toklo,” Ujurak snapped. “I’m a bear!”

“All you have to do is dive down there, swim around a bit, see if you spot any, and then come back and tell us. It’ll be so easy. All right?”

“No!” Ujurak cried. “How can you ask me to do something like that?”

“It’s no big deal,” Toklo insisted, surprised by Ujurak’s reaction. “We just want to know if it’s worth waiting here any longer. It’s not like we’re asking you to lure them back here or anything.”

Ujurak’s eyes stretched wide amid the snow-flecked brown fur. “You don’t understand!” he spat. “When I’m a different animal, I feel everything that animal feels—their hunger, their worries, their fears. I wish I couldn’t do it at all.”

“Hey, I never said I understood,” Toklo argued. “All I’m saying is, maybe your changing could be useful once in a while, instead of just a nuisance, like it usually is.”

“It won’t take you a moment to pop down and look,” Kallik added.

“Besides, you did it before with the geese, remember?” Toklo prompted.

“Oh, right, and that turned out really well! I nearly died!” Ujurak huffed. “That’s exactly what I mean! What if
something happens, or I forget to change back?”

“That would be stupid,” Toklo said. “Just remember you’re not really a seal. How hard can that be?”

“I’m a brown bear!” Ujurak shouted. “Okay? That’s all I am, and all I want to be! A brown bear!” He turned and stomped off, planting himself in the snow next to Lusa with his back to Toklo.

Toklo blinked and gave Kallik a quizzical look. “What’s gotten under his fur?”

Kallik shrugged. “Maybe being a whale for so long frightened him. Anyway, we can’t force him, and I don’t think we should wait here much longer.” She nodded at the sky. “A storm is coming. We should find shelter…and hopefully the hunting will be better farther from the shore.”

Toklo’s stomach spasmed painfully with hunger. He had no idea where the shore was from here. Could Kallik smell that, too? Was it close—and what did “close” mean to a white bear who could run several skylengths in a day?

They trudged back over to the others. Ujurak got up when he heard them approaching and stomped a few paces off into the snow, glaring over his shoulder at Toklo.

Lusa lifted her head sleepily. “What happened?” she asked with a yawn.

“Nothing,” Toklo said. “Come on, up you get.” He nudged her to her paws. “We’re going to find shelter.”

“Shelter where we can sleep?” Lusa said hopefully.

“That is the general idea,” Toklo said, shaking his head at her.

As Kallik took the lead again, it began to snow harder. Fat snowflakes drifted down into their fur, catching on their noses and ears. They padded past low hillocks of snow and jagged claws of ice that looked as if they were trying to snag the clouds. Gradually the wind picked up, howling across the ice, so the bears had to huddle close together to make sure they weren’t swept apart.

Kallik lifted her head and stopped abruptly. “I smell another white bear,” she said. “She’s very close—I didn’t smell her before, because of the storm.”

“Does she have prey?” Toklo asked. “Maybe we could chase her off, like we did the last one.”

“I don’t want to do that,” Kallik said, looking uncomfortable. “We shouldn’t need to steal food from other bears. We should be able to catch our own.” She sighed and shook off some of the snow that was drifting across her back. “Shelter is more important right now, anyway. We need to find a place to build a den.” She gave the sky a worried glance and started forward again.

“What about one of these?” Toklo suggested, batting at a large mound beside them. It looked to him like there were plenty of snowdrifts to shelter in, stretching to the edge of the gray, stormy sky. But to his surprise, when he prodded them he realized the snow was only a thin layer covering a solid block of ice. He scraped at the ice with his claws, but it was hard as rock. Frustrated, he tried digging harder, but then his paw slipped and the ice scratched his pad. He jumped back with an outraged yelp.

“OW!” He licked his paw. A few drops of blood dripped onto the snow.

“You seal-brain,” Kallik said, whirling on him angrily. “Don’t you know a white bear will be able to smell that from skylengths away?” She jabbed at the drops of blood with her claw. “They’ll come sniffing around looking for us—and if prey is hard to come by, they might settle for one of us instead of a seal.”

Toklo was about to snap back at her, when his eyes fell on Lusa. He remembered how larger brown bears had thought of him as prey when he was a small cub. White bears were even bigger than full-grown brown bears. And Lusa looked tiny and vulnerable out here on the ice. If anything happened to her, and it was his fault…

He swallowed his angry response and quickly covered over the blood spatters with fresh snow. The storm was getting worse, and the blood drops were soon hidden. He dug his paws into the snow until they went numb and the bleeding stopped. He would never risk bringing danger down upon his friends.

“These mounds aren’t big enough anyway,” Kallik said, shouting to be heard over the roaring wind. “We need a taller snowdrift, one we can really dig into, and it can’t be frozen all the way through.”

They started walking again, fighting through the blizzard. Kallik poked the hills of snow they passed to see if any would suit as a den. Toklo bowed his head to keep the snow out of his eyes, wishing he could keep it from swirling in his ears.
He thought it must be even tougher for Lusa, with her big, round ears. His large paws were having enough trouble in the deep snow; her little ones must be sinking up to her belly. He turned to check on the small black bear…and discovered that she had vanished.

“Kallik!” he roared. Up ahead, Kallik and Ujurak both stopped and turned around. They were only shadows in the snowstorm, although they couldn’t be more than a bearlength or two ahead of him. How would they ever find Lusa in this?

“Lusa’s missing!” Toklo barked. “She’s not behind me anymore!” He turned and floundered back through the gathering snow. What if a white bear had snuck up behind them, grabbed Lusa, and run off with her? Or what if she had slipped into a crack in the ice and the storm had carried away her cries for help?

Horrible pictures crowded through his mind as he pressed forward, anxiously searching the snow along the path they’d come. He could follow their pawprints for a way, but the snow was already covering them with terrible speed. If they lost the path they’d taken, they might never find Lusa.

“Toklo, wait!” Kallik called, bounding up beside him. “I can smell her! Follow me!” She sped up, galloping into the driving snow, and he charged after her with Ujurak close on his heels.

Kallik skidded to a stop near a small pile of snow. Gently she poked the snow with her nose, then brushed some of it aside with her paw. Underneath the snow, curled up against a drift, was Lusa.

She was fast asleep.

A jolt of fear shot through Toklo’s fur. He looked up at Kallik and Ujurak with wide eyes.

“What is it?” Kallik asked, trembling already at the look on his face.

Toklo swallowed. “I think I know what’s wrong with Lusa.”