Great Bear Lake (8 page)

Still confused, Toklo headed back toward the tree where the others were sleeping, but before he reached it, a grouse shot across his path, giving out a raucous alarm call. Almost without thinking, Toklo reared up on his hindpaws and swatted it out of the air. As it fluttered on the ground he grabbed it by the neck and carried the limp body back to his companions.

A sort of faint pink twilight had fallen by the time Toklo arrived back at the tree. Ujurak was curled up in a hollow lined with dead leaves, his paws hooked over his nose. Looking down at him, Toklo felt an unexpected pang of sympathy; the young cub looked so thin and exhausted. He dropped his prey and gave Ujurak a gentle prod in his flank.

“Hey, Ujurak, wake up.”

“Wha…?” Ujurak raised his head, blinking sleep out of his eyes. “Is it time to go?”

“No.” Toklo edged the grouse toward his friend. “Here…eat.”

Ujurak scrambled out of the hollow and stared at the bird, his eyes shining. “Toklo, you caught this for us? You're great!” He pelted over to the tree where Lusa had disappeared, and stretched his paws up the trunk. “Lusa! Lusa, come down! Toklo brought us some food.”

The branches rustled and Lusa's bottom half appeared as she climbed swiftly to the ground. She padded over to where Toklo was waiting beside his prey. “Thank you, Toklo,” she murmured, crouching down and tearing off a mouthful.

Ujurak crouched beside her, but before he took a bite he glanced up at Toklo. “Aren't you coming to share?”

Toklo shook his head. “I've had something.”

His belly was nowhere near full, but Lusa and Ujurak were so grateful that he couldn't take any of their meal. He rested his muzzle on his paws and watched them eating. His stomach rumbled but he didn't mind. He closed his eyes and drifted to sleep.

That night, he dreamed his brother Tobi was alive and strong. They hunted together, bringing down a full-grown deer, and afterward they shared the prey that they'd caught as brothers.

Kallik woke in the milky light
of dawn and pulled herself to her paws. Her limbs felt stiff and heavy as she set off along the narrow spur of the bay, like she was walking through sticky mud.

“Bears don't belong on the land,” she muttered. “What if I was wrong about the silver path? Will my mother be mad at me for going the wrong way?”

At the end of the spur of water, she hesitated, gazing in the direction the moon had shown her. The land in front of her was flat, covered in wiry grass with a thornbush or an outcrop of rock dotted here and there. Shallow silvery pools reflected the growing light in the sky, glittering in the first rays of the sun as it rose above the horizon.

“It's now or never,” she told herself. She took a deep breath and padded forward, taking her first steps away from the bay, away from her birthing grounds, away from the place where she knew other bears would gather to go back onto the ice.

As the day grew hotter it was hard to keep her paws moving.
Her fur itched and she longed to find a patch of shade and lie down there, but she made herself keep going.

I wish I was back on the ice,
she thought.
I wish I could go home
.

As she trudged, Kallik felt a growing sensation that something was watching her, that silent paws were following her. She glanced around uneasily, but nothing moved or made a sound, except for the reeds beside a nearby pool, brushing together in the breeze.

“Who's there?” she growled, but her voice sounded thin and weak.
It's this weird place,
she thought.
It makes me worry about things that aren't there
.

She padded on but the feeling didn't go away. She did her best to ignore it, but it was hard not to keep glancing over her shoulder.

The sun had begun to slide down toward the horizon when Kallik thought she could hear a strange rumbling in the sky, very faint, but somehow familiar.
Thunder?

She looked up but the sky was clear, a deep blue streaked with pink. Silhouetted against the setting sun, she could see a dark shape. It was no bigger than a bird but it grew rapidly as it drew closer. Suddenly, her belly lurched and a memory flashed behind her eyes like a seal popping its head out of an ice hole.

The metal bird!

The sound grew louder until it thumped inside her head, hurting her ears. As the metal bird approached her, Kallik could see a web dangling underneath it; inside the web was a huge bundle of white fur, all squashed up. This bird was
carrying a white bear—at least one—just as the other bird had tried to carry Kallik and Nanuk back to the ice. Kallik remembered the wind in her fur, and how terrified she had been to find herself flying skylengths above the ground. She had clawed at the web in a panic until Nanuk had soothed her and explained to her what was happening.

But that metal bird had never reached the ice. Kallik shuddered as she relived the moments when its wings had begun to whine and clatter as if it were in pain, until it burst into flames and fell out of the sky. Her heart pounded as she remembered Nanuk's broken body lying amid the wreckage, her eyes closed and her fur already cold against Kallik's muzzle.

The rumbling, chopping sound swelled until it seemed to fill the whole world; Kallik crouched down and put her paws over her ears. Suddenly, the noise changed, becoming more high-pitched and whining. Kallik lifted her head and risked looking up. The bird was sinking closer to the ground, its long metal wings no longer keeping it up in the air.

“No! No!” she yelped, scrambling to her paws and bounding toward it. “Go up! Go up!”

But the metal bird didn't hear her. It went on sinking, lower and lower. Wind from its clattering wings flattened the grass and bent the sparse thornbushes. Kallik hid behind a rock, peering out as she waited for flames to start spouting from its body. She flinched as she heard a high-pitched cry of terror coming from the web.
There must be a cub in there!
She squeezed her eyes shut tight and waited for the earth-shaking crunch of metal and fur amid roaring flames.

Several heartbeats passed; the only thing she could hear was the chopping sound of the wings, throbbing steadily through the air. Daring to open her eyes again, she saw that the metal bird was flying so low, hovering in one place, that the web containing the bears bumped gently on the ground. Kallik pricked her ears hopefully.
No bear could die from a little bump like that!

She watched from the shelter of her rock as the web fell down around the bears and three furry shapes tumbled out: a she-bear and her two cubs. All three looked bone thin, as if they'd had as much trouble as Kallik finding food on land since the ice melted. Kallik could guess how confused they must feel, dropped here by the bird without anything to tell them where they were. But at least they didn't look as if they were hurt.

The web flopped loosely beside them, amid dust that was spitting into the air from the wind stirred up by the metal bird. The bears rolled sideways, away from the net, and lay still. The noise from the bird's wings grew louder, and it lifted into the sky, clawing its way into the blue air. The wind blew harder beneath it, raising the dust higher and ruffling the bears' fur. Kallik could just make out a flat-face in the bird's belly, looking out at the bears the bird had released. She wondered if there had been a flat-face in the metal bird that had carried her and Nanuk, and what had happened to it when the bird had crashed in flames.

The metal bird's nose dipped down and it flew away. The noise of its wings faded quickly, and the dust settled around
the bears. Kallik peered nervously at them. They were very still. Were they still alive? She padded out from the shelter of her rock until she could see the outline of their flanks clearly against the pale brown dirt. They were breathing.
Thank the ice spirits
. Kallik didn't know what she'd have done if she'd seen more dead bears dropped by the metal birds. She remembered how a sharp sting from the flat-face's shiny stick had made her go to sleep before she and Nanuk were carried in the net; perhaps these bears were sleeping, too. She went back to her rock to wait for them to wake up.

The sun had crawled farther across the sky and Kallik was starting to get very thirsty when the first bear moved. A tiny she-cub lifted her head and looked around through half-closed eyes, then rolled onto her stomach and opened her eyes wide in surprise. She was clearly thinking,
Where am I?
She scrambled to her feet and took a few unsteady steps, shaking her head as if it were full of water, before flopping to the ground again. Just then, the other cub, a slightly bigger male, hauled himself up and walked in a circle, gazing at his paws as if he couldn't understand why the ground was so different. He went over to his sister and butted her with his head until she stood up again, still wobbly, and together they stumbled over to the she-bear who was still lying in a heap of fur. They pushed their muzzles into her flank and barked in high-pitched voices until her shoulders twitched and her eyes flickered open. Kallik heard her grunt, long and low as if she were aching after her sleep; then the she-bear propped herself up on her front paws and heaved herself onto her feet with a
jerk. She stood still for a moment with her head hanging so low that her snout was almost on the ground, as if she was gathering her strength.

A pang clawed at Kallik's heart, and for a moment she looked away, her eyes stinging.
They look just like Nisa and Taqqiq and me!

When Kallik looked back, the mother bear had lifted her head and her gaze was sweeping warily across the landscape. Kallik huddled behind the rock, trying to make herself as small as she could. She knew how unfriendly strange bears could be. This mother bear might think she was a threat to her cubs.

But to Kallik's relief the mother bear didn't see or smell her. Kallik guessed that her nose was still full of the smell of the metal bird and the sharp cold wind that sliced through the net when it was flying through the air. Rolling her shoulders from side to side, the she-bear padded over to her cubs. The breeze was blowing toward Kallik—another reason she was able to hide from the mother bear—so that she could hear what they were saying.

“Are you both okay?” the she-bear asked, sniffing each of her cubs from ears to paws.

“My head's spinning,” the male cub complained, stumbling forward until he could lean against his mother's shoulder. He had broad shoulders and powerful legs, as if he would be a strong bear when he was full-grown, but Kallik could see that his legs were trembling from the strange journey. “I think I'm going to be sick.”

“We'll find some water soon,” his mother promised, bending down to touch his shoulder with her nose. “Then you'll feel better.”

She raised her head again to scan their surroundings.

A pang of sadness pierced Kallik's heart like a splinter of ice. This mother bear was
so
like Nisa! She was strict with her cubs, but it was obvious how much she loved them. She would do everything she could to protect them and get them back to the ice, where there would be food. Something occurred to Kallik, and she sat up straighter.
The mother bear will know which way the sea is, and where to find the closest ice. I could follow them, and then I'd be back where I belong, with seals to eat.

“Where are we?” the male cub yelped. “Why did the flat-faces put us to sleep and bring us here?”

“I don't know why flat-faces do anything,” the mother bear replied. She paused for a moment, her snout tilted upward as she sniffed the air. “But I think I know where we are. I've been here before.”

“Did a metal bird bring you?” the she-cub asked excitedly, her eyes sparkling.

“No, I've never flown with one of those before,” the she-bear told her. “I came here on my own paws. I was on my way to the ice….”

“The ice!” The she-cub tried to scramble to her paws, then flopped back down again. “Will there be seals and fish? I'm
starving
!”

The male cub leaned against his mother's shoulder again. “I can only see all this mud and yucky grass.”

“But what can you smell?” his mother prompted, looking down at him.

The cub stretched his snout forward and took a couple of deep sniffs. Kallik saw his eyes grow wider. “Salt and fish!”

“That's the sea,” his mother told him. “Isn't it wonderful? We'll soon be back there, and it won't be long now before the new ice comes.”

Kallik raised her snout to sniff, too, and felt the pull of the sea air drawing her back the way she had come. Uncertainty gripped her again, like the jaws of the orca.
Am I going the wrong way?

“Come on.” The mother bear's eyes gleamed with anticipation as she left the male cub to stand on his own, and nudged the she-cub to her paws. “The sea isn't far away. And then there'll be plenty of fish for all of us. I think I can even make out a trace of ice already.”

Ice!
Kallik stiffened, sniffing frantically, but she couldn't pick up any ice at all on the air.
I'm not as good at scenting as a grown bear,
she thought sadly.
Maybe I never will be, because I don't have any bear to teach me
.

The mother bear beckoned to her cubs, urging them close to her. “Let's go.”

“Can't we ride on you?” the she-cub pleaded, struggling forward shakily.

“Yes, we're tired,” her brother added. “And my legs feel as floppy as a fish.”

“Walk a bit first,” their mother urged, nuzzling each of them encouragingly on the shoulder. “Some exercise will make you feel better.”

She gave the male cub a gentle push to get him going. The she-cub tottered after him, and their mother brought up the rear. All three of them headed back the way Kallik had come. Back toward the Pathway Star. Away from the land, toward the sea.

Kallik's muscles tensed. For one desperate moment, she was tempted to plunge out of her hiding place to join them. Maybe they wouldn't attack her. The two cubs could be her friends: She liked the she-cub's bright, inquisitive eyes with their mischievous twinkle, and her brother's strong legs and shoulders would be good for games on the ice.

Most of all, the mother bear was gentle and loving to her cubs; she was taking care of them just as Nisa had taken care of Kallik and Taqqiq. Surely she wouldn't drive away a cub who needed help?

I could go back with them and find the ice!

Claws tore at Kallik's heart as she glanced over her shoulder. The moonlit path had led in the opposite direction. And maybe at the end of the path she would find Taqqiq.
But I'm not sure I'm strong enough to follow the path to the end!

Looking back, she saw that the mother bear had paused, sniffing the air again.

“What's the matter?” the male cub demanded, swiping his tongue around his jaws. “Can you smell prey? Is it a seal?”

“No,” his mother told him, still concentrating on the scent she was picking up. “I think there's another bear nearby.”

The little she-cub let out a squeak and flattened herself to the ground. “A big bear? Will it eat us?”

Her brother gave her a scornful glance; he stayed on his paws, but Kallik could see his eyes widen as he glanced around nervously.