The Melting Sea (8 page)

“This way,” Kallik said, and took the lead as they headed down the mountainside.

I need to guide them now
, she thought.
We're so close to my home!

Pausing briefly, she raised her muzzle and gave the air a good sniff, straining to pick up a trace of the Melting Sea on the wind. Delight thrilled through her as she caught a tantalizing whiff of salt water.

But it smells just like the sea around Star Island and the Island of Shadows
, she admitted to herself after a moment. However hard she concentrated, she couldn't distinguish anything special that made her think of her mother or her home. A claw of anxiety stabbed at her.
What if I don't recognize the place where I was born? I promised to show Yakone my home, but what if I can't?

Fear gave strength to her paws, and she forged ahead, striding out determinedly to the bottom of the slope and across the valley to where the next mountain peak reared up ahead of them.

“Hey, Kallik! Kallik!”

At the sound of Lusa's breathless voice, Kallik halted and turned. The small black bear stumbled up to her, puffing so hard that for a moment she couldn't speak. Toklo and Yakone were still farther back, weaving a course through the boulders that littered the valley floor.

“What's the matter?” Kallik asked.

“Slow down!” Lusa gasped. “Even Toklo and Yakone can't keep up with you.”

“Sorry,” Kallik replied, realizing she had been so deep in thought she hadn't checked where her friends were. “I'm so worried,” she confessed to Lusa, panic welling up inside her again. “I'm afraid that I won't remember my home clearly enough.”

Lusa padded to her side and gave her a reassuring nudge. “Of course you'll remember when we get there. There's still a long way to go.”

Kallik's voice rose to a wail. “But what if I can't even find the way? What if I'm leading you wrong?”

“Cloud-brain!” Lusa said affectionately. “We know we're going the right way because of the sun and the stars. We just have to keep walking until we get to somewhere you recognize. Besides,” she added, “Ujurak would tell us if we were going in the wrong direction, wouldn't he?”

Far from reassuring Kallik, Lusa's words only increased the white bear's worries. “But how does Ujurak know where I was born?”

“I'm not sure. But I know that he does.” Lusa's voice was full of confidence. “He's not like us. He can see everything now that he's in the sky.”

Gratitude for Lusa's faith in her and in Ujurak flooded over Kallik and revived her spirits a little. While she waited for Yakone and Toklo to catch up, she studied the mountain that lay ahead of them. Almost at once she spotted a path that wound upward among the rocks, zigzagging across the slope.

“That looks promising,” she said as the male bears padded up. “Let's go.”

“Just remember you're not in a race this time,” Toklo grumbled as he followed her.

At first the path Kallik had chosen seemed easy, but it was steeper than it looked, and loose grit beneath the snow made their paws slip. After they had plodded upward for many bearlengths, Kallik came to a halt in front of a pile of boulders that completely blocked their way.

“Now what do we do?” she asked.

“Can we get around?” Yakone wondered out loud. He began to climb the steepest part of the slope, which would have taken him above the blockage, but almost at once he started to lose ground, scrabbling with his paws and slipping back down in a shower of snow. Lusa let out a startled squeal and jumped out of his way.

“Sorry,” Yakone said. “There are loose rocks under there. We'll never get up that way.”

“Don't say we have to go all the way down again!” Lusa exclaimed.

Toklo didn't speak, but leaped up onto a rocky outcrop and began to survey the land around them. Kallik leaped up beside him; Yakone gave Lusa a boost and then joined the others on the top of the rocks.

“Look over there,” Toklo said as Kallik reached his side. He jerked his head toward a narrow gully that led up the mountain at an angle. “We might get up that way.”

“It looks very steep,” Kallik responded doubtfully.

“It reminds me of the gully that we followed when we first reached the Island of Shadows,” Lusa contributed. “That was a struggle, but we made it okay.”

Yakone nodded. “It looks like there might be a stream at the bottom of it. We might get a drink there, and there could even be prey.”

“But how are we going to get up to it?” Kallik asked. The gully opened up several bearlengths above their heads, across the slope where Yakone had discovered the loose rocks under the snow.

“Look there,” Yakone replied, pointing with one paw. “Where the snow is lumpy? There must be boulders or maybe bushes under there, and that would give our paws something to grip.”

“Then let's go!” Lusa said, giving a little bounce.

Kallik admired her cheerfulness, even though she must be almost exhausted by the difficult journey with little sleep. Her own resolve strengthened. “Okay. Follow me.”

She set out into the snow, following the line Yakone had indicated. The snow-covered lumps turned out to be tough little thornbushes growing close to the ground. The thorns dug into their paws and the branches rasped against their sides, but at least it was possible to haul themselves upward from one bush to the next until they reached the mouth of the gully.

Yakone had been right about the stream. Its course was marked by a line where the snow was smoother. Toklo scraped away some of the snow to reveal an icy covering, which he broke with one blow of his paw. He plunged his snout into the hole he had made and took a long drink.

“That was good,” he said as he raised his head again, shaking water drops from his muzzle. “All we need now is a fat hare or two, and we can walk for days!”

But as Kallik led the way up the gully, there was no sign of prey. Her belly grumbled, but she ignored it and concentrated on the climb. Though the gully was steep, the ground underpaw was fairly smooth, and they made good progress.

Looking back over her shoulder, Kallik saw her friends following her in single file.
I hope Ujurak is watching us
, she thought. The fears she had felt about traveling without Ujurak were slowly fading, as pride in how they were managing the journey took over. “I trust you,” she whispered to Ujurak, hoping he could hear her. “If we get into trouble, I know you'll be with us.”

The sun had climbed high in the sky by the time the gully came to an end in a low wall of rock. Sharp, jutting stones made a path for the bears to climb to the top. Ahead of her, Kallik saw a stretch of level ground, many bearlengths wide, with yet another mountain slope at the far side.

“This would be a good place to stop,” Toklo panted, clambering up beside her. “We need to hunt and rest for a bit.”

Kallik and the others agreed. While Lusa began digging through the snow in search of roots and grass, the three bigger bears separated to look for prey.

Following the line of the stream, which meandered across the level ground from a frozen waterfall on the mountainside ahead, Kallik spotted bird prints in the snow. Raising her muzzle, she sniffed the air, and the scent she picked up flooded her jaws with water.

Goose!

Glancing around, she saw nothing at first, so she padded forward on silent paws, trying to pinpoint where the scent was coming from. A heap of boulders blocked her view ahead, and as she crept around them, she spotted several geese poking about in the snow at the edge of the stream.

Kallik paused. The thrill of the hunt was rushing through her, but she knew she mustn't let herself get careless. She shifted slightly to make sure she was downwind of her prey and picked out a goose at the edge of the group: It was the closest to her, and had its back turned.

Pawstep by stealthy pawstep, Kallik crept up on the goose. When she was within a bearlength of her quarry, one of the other geese spotted her; it let out a raucous cry of alarm and took to the air in a flurry of wings. The rest of the geese followed. But Kallik was already leaping, batting her goose out of the air with a slap of one forepaw. The goose fell to the ground, wings flapping helplessly. Kallik severed its neck with another swift blow.

Triumph filled her as she picked the goose up in her jaws and turned to carry it back to her friends. Then she halted in surprise as she saw Yakone pacing toward her.

“I was watching you,” the male bear said as he reached her side. “That was a terrific catch. You looked just like Toklo!”

Kallik gaped, dropping her prey. “What? Didn't I look like a white bear?”

Yakone looked taken aback. “Well, of course. I just think it's great that you can hunt like other bears.”

Kallik took a deep breath. “Sorry,” she murmured. “I only want everything to be perfect going home. I don't want the bears there to think I'm not like them.”

Briefly Yakone buried his muzzle in her shoulder fur. “Everything will be perfect, because we're both here,” he told her. “So quit worrying!”

I wish I could believe him
, Kallik thought.
There's still so much that could go wrong
.

Toklo nosed his way into the
open and stood blinking in the pale dawn light. Behind him, in the den they had scraped out beneath an overhanging rock, he could hear his friends still snuffling in their sleep. From somewhere nearby came the sound of slow dripping, a sign that the snow and ice were starting to melt at last. A faint scent of pine wafted toward Toklo on the breeze, and from high above his head came the cry of a bird.

Excitement prickled at Toklo like ants creeping through his pelt.
The warmer weather is coming
. But his excitement couldn't banish his anxiety as he thought of the time when his little family of bears would split up.

Kallik and Yakone will stay at the Melting Sea. Lusa and I will have to go on alone
.

Determinedly pushing away the thought, Toklo gazed at the landscape ahead of him and began planning the day's route. He and his friends had traveled through the mountains for several days, and already they were nearing the end of the range. They had descended a long way from the high peaks; from the ledge where he stood, Toklo could see a flat expanse of land stretching into the distance. The horizon was so misty and blurred that Toklo couldn't make out any details, but he wondered if he was already gazing out over the Melting Sea.

On their journey they had stayed at the center of the ridge to avoid flat-faces. To Toklo's relief they hadn't seen any more metal birds, or the weird flat-faces with sticks on their paws.

That's because we've been extra careful. For all we know, the flat-faces are still looking for us
.

But even though it was so important to stay away from flat-faces, the bears hadn't been able to travel by night. The terrain was too difficult. Toklo winced in sympathy as he remembered how Yakone had stepped off the edge of a rock in the dark and wrenched his shoulder. That had meant a day of no traveling at all, so he could rest.

After that, they traveled in daylight, always alert for the appearance of more flat-faces. Toklo stifled a sigh of regret for the vast open spaces of the Endless Ice, where flat-faces never bothered them.

But we couldn't stay there forever
, he reminded himself.
We're all going home, back where we belong—wherever that is
.

“Hey, the air smells different!” Lusa popped out of the den beside Toklo, her eyes gleaming as she surveyed the land in front of them. “I can smell green things growing—buds under the snow! I—” She broke off with a squeak as a drop of water fell from the overhanging rock above and splashed onto her head. “The mountain's melting!” she exclaimed.

“No, just the snow,” Yakone told her, emerging from the den behind her and stretching his limbs with a mighty yawn.

Kallik pushed her way into the open behind him and paced forward to the end of the ledge, where she stood staring into the distance. After a moment she spun around. “I can smell home!” she gasped. “Look, the Melting Sea is there!”