Great Bear Lake (15 page)

Lusa scurried as fast as she
could away from the edge of the lake, splashing through marshy ground toward the trees. She dipped her head, trying to avoid making eye contact with the brown bears, but she could hear their growls around her and sense their dark eyes glaring at her.

As she reached the forest her belly tightened with excitement. She slowed, savoring the strong scent of black bears. She hadn't smelled that scent since the Bear Bowl! There were lots of them here, judging by all the scents; more black bears than she'd met in her whole life. She ventured underneath the outlying pines, treading cautiously over the uneven ground, thick with fallen needles. The soft murmuring of bear spirits was all around her in the whispering branches.

Soon, Lusa began to hear the voices of bears up ahead. Their scents grew stronger, pulling her on. Above her head, the branches of a tree waved wildly as if a bear were climbing there, though she saw nothing. The voices grew louder; Lusa scrambled up a steep bank and found herself on the edge of a
clearing. Warily she peered out from behind the nearest tree.

The clearing was full of black bears. Lusa could hardly see the ground between them as they jostled for space. One bear close to the tree where she was hiding gave the bear next to him a hearty shove.

“Watch where you're putting your claws! That was my hind leg.”

“Sorry.” The other bear sounded grumpy. “There's no space to breathe here.”

A little farther away, a couple of she-bears were touching noses. “It's good to see you again, Issa,” said one. “Is this your cub? She looks a fine, strong one.”

The little cub pressed herself into her mother's pelt, and peeped out shyly at the speaker.

“Yes, the spirits have blessed us this suncircle,” Issa replied. “And how about you, Taloa?”

“I've had a terrible journey to get here,” Taloa replied, shaking her head. “So many flat-faces! I thought a firebeast would get me for sure. But it's good to be here,” she added.

A couple of half-grown males bounded past. “You stole a fish from me last time!” the one in the rear shouted.

The other bear glanced back. “I'll steal another one this time, you dumb chunk of fur!”

His pursuer leaped at him and knocked him over; the two of them rolled over and slammed into an older bear, who huffed at them in annoyance. The two young males broke apart, scrambled to their paws, and dashed off together, seemingly friends again.

Lusa began to realize that the bears in the center of the clearing were older, with shrunken bodies and grizzled snouts, while the younger adults were gathered around them, with most of the cubs on the outside under the trees. She looked longingly at two cubs about her own age, who were chasing each other up and down a tree.

“I'm faster than you!” one of them called out.

“No, you're not! You're slower than a fat rabbit.”

Lusa's paws itched to join in their game, but she suddenly felt very shy. She couldn't walk into the middle of all these bears and introduce herself. Step by step, she crept back from the edge of the clearing, until she was brought up short by a tree. She looked up; the trunk stretched high above her head until it divided into a thick tangle of branches.

Lusa started as rustling sounded behind her. She bounded up the tree, never stopping until the branches concealed her. Peering down, she saw a young black bear padding past to join the other bears in the clearing.

“Hi, Pokkoli!” a bear called. “Over here!”

Lusa climbed the rest of the way up the tree. It was good to feel the rough bark under her claws and the trunk swaying with her weight as she neared the top. She hadn't climbed a tree for a long time. Wind ruffled her fur; the rustling of the branches blended with the lapping of waves on the shore of the lake.

Looking out, Lusa saw that her tree was one of the highest in the forest. From her vantage point she could see farther, and she realized that the lake she had thought so big was only
one branch; the main body of water, the tree trunk, stretched into the far distance until it was lost in a shimmering haze. Did it stretch all the way to the end of the world?

Lusa stared over the murmuring canopy of the forest. Beyond the trees, she could see the gathering of brown bears swarming across the open shore. She tried to pick out Toklo and Ujurak among the shifting mass of bodies, but she was too far away to see any of them clearly, and besides, her traveling companions were small enough to be completely hidden by the full-grown bears.

Hugging the trunk with her front paws, Lusa wriggled around until she was facing the other way. Not far off, the trees came to an abrupt end, leaving an endless stretch of bare earth. Marshy pools dotted the ground, reflecting pale light from the sky. Reeds grew around them; rocks jutted from the earth and there were a few scrawny bushes, twisted into weird shapes by the sweeping wind. After that, just empty, empty space; flat, windswept land with no trees, no friendly bear spirits, nothing at all as far as she could see.

Lusa was clinging to one of the last trees in the world.

Kallik woke up blinking in bright
sunlight. She lay huddled at the base of the rock; her pelt and the muddy ground all around her steamed gently as the hot rays dried them out. For a few moments she kept still, letting the warmth soak through her fur, then she tried to stand. Wincing as she stretched stiff muscles, Kallik looked for the Arctic fox, but it had gone. She tried to stifle a pang of loss.
It's only a fox
.

An enticing scent tickled Kallik's nostrils. Food! Her belly rumbled and saliva flooded her jaws as her gaze fell on the body of a hare, stretched out on the ground beside her. The scent told her it was freshly killed.

Puzzled and a little afraid, Kallik looked around. She longed to sink her teeth into the prey, but she knew what a risk it could be to eat another bear's kill. She pictured a huge white bear roaring as it bore down on her, its claws outstretched. Then she spotted the fox, its eyes gleaming from underneath the low branches of a thornbush.

Warmth flooded over Kallik. “
You
caught it, didn't you?” she said.

The fox twitched its ears.

She had sheltered the fox during the storm, and now it had brought her a gift. That was what friends did for each other. She had a friend!

“Thank you,” she said, dipping her head.

She tore at the delicious hare meat, savoring every mouthful as she felt it slide warm into her belly. It tasted even better because the Arctic fox had brought it for her.

Kallik was so hungry that she could have eaten the hare twice over. But she stopped when a haunch was left, and backed well away. She wondered if the fox trusted her enough to come close now that the desperate need for shelter from the storm was past. It crept up, more confidently now, and settled down to eat with a bright-eyed glance at Kallik.

With her belly full, Kallik set out again.
I am on the Claw Path!
she thought, excitement fluttering inside her. As she trekked, she began to notice large pawprints and droppings, and the occasional bunch of white hairs snagged on a bush. She knew that other bears had passed this way. Here and there, she found a few berries, but she guessed that most of the bushes along the Claw Path had been stripped by the bears who had gone before her. The fox had watched her leave the rock where they had spent the night, and she didn't know if it was still following her, out of sight. She hoped it was, but she knew that she had to concentrate on her journey, not the fox's, and at last she was sure she was going the right way.

“Thank you, spirits, for guiding me here,” she whispered.

The sun was sliding down the sky when Kallik spotted movement on the ground a few bearlengths ahead of her. Padding forward curiously, she spotted a snow goose fluttering in a muddy hollow. It kept trying to take off, then falling back again, as if one of its wings was damaged.

Kallik crept toward it, remembering to keep downwind, and killed it with a quick blow to the neck. She ate her share, recalling what Nisa had told her about not bolting her food. Then she raised her head and looked around.

“Are you there?” she called to the fox. “This is for you.”

A russet snout poked out from behind a rock; the fox's eyes gleamed as it crept forward. Kallik backed away. She left it gulping down its share of the prey, but now she knew she would see it again.

I wonder if we'll go all the way to the Endless Ice together
.

Thirsty, she veered from the track toward a pool fringed with reeds. She dipped her head to drink. Above her the sky was still light; there was no moon or friendly star-spirits reflected in the water. Even the water tasted thin and empty, compared with the sea. She looked up as the Arctic fox stepped to the opposite edge of the pool and started lapping.

“I'm glad you're here, with me,” she said softly.

The day stretched on. Kallik had to rely on the traces of other bears to be sure she was still going the right way. She began to fear that she would never reach the bears' meeting place, or it would take her so long that the Longest Day would be over before she arrived there. Maybe the Longest Day had
been and gone without her noticing; she didn't know exactly how long the nights were compared with the days because she was asleep. And how would she know the way from the lake to the Endless Ice? What if there were no other bears going there? She remembered the she-bear she had met in the mist telling her that it was too far for her paws.

“It's
not
too far,” she muttered determinedly. “I
will
get there.”

The fox was traveling in sight of her now, trotting a little way ahead with its bushy tail sweeping the ground. The tip of the tail left a tiny line in the dust, like a burntpath for ants.

Halfway up a grassy slope, the Arctic fox halted, sniffing the air. It crouched low with its tail flat on the ground.

“What is it?” Kallik barked.

A gentle breeze was blowing down the slope into her face, and she sniffed, drawing in a familiar scent. It was the scent of bears. Her heart flipped with excitement. “We made it!” she yelped. “We found the gathering.”

The fox turned and scurried a short way back down the slope. It stopped and looked back as if wondering whether Kallik was coming, too.

“It's this way,” Kallik said.

The fox crouched in the grass, its nose twitching.

“I understand,” Kallik said. “This is not the place you're going. What would you want with a gathering of bears?”

Kallik knew that the fox didn't belong by the lake. To other white bears, an Arctic fox would be prey, and her friendship would be over in a few greedy mouthfuls.

“I hope we meet again, little one,” Kallik murmured.

The fox flicked its ears, then began stalking through the grass, its nose to the ground. Suddenly it pounced into a clump of bushes and a hare sprang out, dashing away down the slope. The Arctic fox darted after it.

At the foot of the slope the fox stopped. It looked back at Kallik, then it dashed away on the trail of the hare.

Kallik watched it scamper out of sight. “Good-bye,” she murmured. The fox had been her only friend since Nanuk died, and she would miss it. But white bears would make better friends because she could talk to them—and she was about to meet lots of them, including the white bear she had been looking for all along. She turned around and started running up the slope.

“I'm coming, Taqqiq!” she called, bounding as fast as she could.

The smell of the bears grew stronger and she could hear their faint sounds. She skidded to a stop at the top of the ridge and stared, feeling her eyes stretch wide with astonishment. Whatever she had expected, it hadn't been this.

Ahead of her, the ground fell away in a long slope, all the way to the shores of a lake. Kallik hadn't seen so much water since she left the melting ice. And along the shore were more white bears than she had ever imagined could be in one place, even more than at the gathering place beside the sea where she had been born. More bears than she'd dreamed existed.

She had reached the bear lake. She'd reached the gathering for the Longest Day.