The Quest Begins (9 page)

Toklo dragged himself to his paws, panting and shivering. Oka slowly came back, her sodden fur clinging to her thin frame. She stopped on the edge of the riverbank and stared at him.

“I'm sorry, Mother,” Toklo whimpered. “I'm so sorry I tried to fish on my own. I won't do it again, I promise.”

Oka didn't move any closer. She seemed to be looking right through him. Toklo felt rooted to the spot, as if his legs were growing out of the riverbed. Why didn't his mother come to comfort him?

When she finally spoke, her voice was hoarse.

“I can't do this,” she said. “I can't watch my cubs die. I won't let it happen again.”

“Mother—” Toklo began. He'd heard about her first litter of cubs, who had all died in their first few moons.

“Leave me,” Oka growled. “Leave this territory. We're all going to starve here. If you must die, do it somewhere else, far away from me. Go away, and don't come back.”

Hunching her shoulders, she turned and walked away, leaving Toklo standing alone in the river.

Kallik felt even more alone on
land than she had on the ice. It was strange not to have smooth, cold snow beneath her paws. Here she felt heavy and awkward; her paws kept sinking into the ground, and everything smelled wrong.

The piles of rocks beside the sea gave way to a long stretch of speckled dirt that ran along the water as far as she could see in each direction. Farther back, away from the water, the land rose up for several bearlengths and then flattened out again. Kallik could catch a glimpse of unfamiliar colors and shapes on top of the ridge, but it was hard to see much detail from where she was.

Maybe if she climbed up there, she'd have a better view all along the shoreline. Maybe she'd see Taqqiq!

Kallik's paws were sore and her fur was waterlogged, weighing her down, but she focused on putting one paw in front of another as she walked across the dirt, leaving the ocean behind her. Her feet left pawprints like they did in the
snow, but here the dirt tangled in her fur and her claws and it was nasty to lick off, scratching her tongue instead of cooling it.

Kallik walked along the base of the cliff, looking for a way up. Soon it began to slope and part of it had fallen away around large boulders, so she could scramble from one out-cropping to the next.

Huffing and gasping, she rolled onto the top of the ridge, her fur caked with dirt. From up here, she could still hear the waves battering against the rocks. The sound was even louder than the wind that howled across the ice. Kallik wished her mother were there, so she could bury her nose in Nisa's fur and block out the noise. The farther she traveled from the sea, the lonelier she felt. The comforting whispers of the spirits below the ice were a long way behind her, and Kallik felt as if her mother were getting farther and farther away as well. It was getting dark. She needed to find a place to rest where she could be safe for the night.

There were strange tall shapes ahead of her, taller even than a large white bear standing on his hind legs. Kallik crept up cautiously, wondering if they might attack, but they kept still even when she came right up to them. They didn't seem like they could move at all; their paws were buried in the dirt. Kallik sniffed the air. She recognized the sharp, fresh smell she'd noticed from the ice.

She stood up on her hind legs and rested her front paws on the solid, unmoving body. It was the same shape as one of her mother's front legs, but wider around, and reaching up into
the sky. And it was brown, like the dirt under her paws. Up above, it split into several arms with something that looked like feathers attached. The feathers were a color Kallik hadn't seen on its own before, although they looked like they might be part of the ocean's colors. She wondered if this was the “green” her mother had described.

She dropped down to all fours again and sniffed around the base of the strange thing. Green whiskers were pushing out of the dirt around its paws, and with a jolt Kallik realized that this must be grass. It wasn't how she'd pictured it from her mother's description. She lifted her head and studied the tall shape again. It smelled like the grass—alive but not meat, with scents of dirt and sky and rain in it. Her mother had told her that was how “plants” would smell. So perhaps this was a “tree.”

Kallik felt a little better once the world around her had a few more names attached to it. Her mother had talked about the land for a long time, so all Kallik had to do was put together her mother's stories with what she found in front of her eyes.

Around the other side of the tree there was a hole where the dirt had caved in below its roots. Kallik squeezed between two of the roots and found herself in a small shelter, surrounded by dirt walls that reminded her of the snowy dens her mother would sometimes build. Even if an adult white bear found her here, it wouldn't be able to fit through the roots to get to her. She dug her claws into the dirt and spread it around, making herself a comfortable spot to sleep in. She
didn't like the feeling of the crumbly brown earth coating her paws and getting stuck in her fur, but she guessed she'd have to put up with it until burn-sky was over.

Kallik curled up and rested her muzzle on her paws. Outside the ice spots were twinkling in the sky, and right over her head, brightest of all, she could see the Pathway Star. Despite her loneliness, she felt comforted by the sight of it. Even if she couldn't reach the ice spirits during burn-sky, at least the Pathway Star would always be there for her. She remembered the story of the place where the ice was always frozen and the bears danced. If the Pathway Star could lead bears there, could it also take her to Taqqiq?

Her eyes closed drowsily, and sleep washed over her before she could worry any more.

 

In the bright light of the next morning, Kallik's spirits rose as she scrambled out of her hidden den. The trees around her rustled and whispered almost like the bear spirits in the ice, and the sun sparkled brightly off all the new colors and shapes around her. Surely her mother would be proud of her for getting this far by herself. Wherever she was, she must know that Kallik was looking for her brother.

“I'll find him, Mother,” Kallik murmured. “We'll be all right.”

Her belly growled loudly as if it was answering her, demanding food.

“I know, bossy,” she said playfully to her stomach. “Let's see what I can find.” She knew there were no seals on the land,
but her mother had said they could eat berries and grass and other kinds of plants, too. Kallik sniffed the grass around the tree and tried tugging up a mouthful of it.

It tasted sharp and dirty, nothing like the rich, chewy warmth of meat or seal fat. “Blech,” she said, spitting it back out again. She'd only eat that if she had to.

Shaking herself, she trotted back toward the water, following the sound of the waves. She stopped every few paces and sniffed the air or nosed the ground, searching for scents of food. But before she found anything to eat, another familiar scent hit her nostrils. White bear! Could it be Taqqiq? She dashed to the edge of the ridge, where she could see out across the shore and the water.

In the distance, about half a skylength away, she spotted a large white bear lumbering along the edge of the bay. Disappointment prickled her fur when she realized it was too big to be Taqqiq. But perhaps if she followed it from far away, she might be able to eat any leftover prey it couldn't finish. She thought for a moment, shuffling her paws. It wasn't safe to get too close. Her mother had told her and Taqqiq about cubs being killed by extremely hungry white bears.

Suddenly a movement caught her eye farther along the shore. It was another white bear—heading in the same direction! The two bears were far apart and clearly not traveling together. But they were going the same way….

They must be heading to the gathering place! Her mother had spoken of a place where the white bears gathered to meet the ice. All Kallik had to do was go the same way—and stay as
far away from the other bears as possible.

“Please, Silaluk,” she whispered, “show Taqqiq the way to go, so I can find him at the gathering place.” She prayed that he remembered what Nisa had said about the place where the ice came back. She prayed that he'd made it onto the land at all. From here she could see right out into the bay. The wind whipped ripples across the open stretches of water, and birds circled overhead, shrieking.

Kallik decided to stay on top of the ridge, keeping the shore in sight as she set off around the bay. Then she could hopefully see any other bears coming from a long way off. Round gray things rolled and clacked beneath her paws, and she guessed these were “stones.” Or maybe “rocks.” She had never figured out what the difference was from the way her mother described them.

She traveled the whole day, staying low when she got too close to another bear ahead of her. She found no abandoned prey, no carcasses to chew on, and finally she had to stop and eat some grass, despite its bitter taste. She followed the scent of plants into a group of trees…a “wood,” if she remembered her mother's words right. Here there were short, fat trees, and some of them had little round balls growing on them in sharp colors that made Kallik blink. Were these “berries”? Some of them were black like her nose but some were bright red like blood. She wondered if they tasted like meat. They smelled all right to eat, but she worried…how would she know? What if they made her sick?

The roaring in her belly made up her mind. It was this or
starve to death. She closed her teeth over the berries and tugged them free. They tasted sweet, nothing like meat but much better than grass. If she could survive on these, maybe burn-sky wouldn't be so bad.

But the problem with berries, as she discovered, was that not even all the berries in the wood could add up to a seal. They were just too small. She ate every berry she could find, and by the time she moved on she was feeling a bit more hopeful, even if she was still hungry. Her muzzle was stained with red berry juice and her claws were all sticky, but her head felt a little clearer, and she could imagine surviving long enough to find Taqqiq. She hoped he'd discovered berries and learned to eat them, too.

That night she found another makeshift den in a pile of rocks. It was colder than the den in the tree roots, and closer to the bay so she could hear the waves crashing all night long. It was hard to sleep with all the noise, and it worried her that she hadn't found Taqqiq yet. When the first rays of sunrise slipped in through the cracks in the rocks, she climbed out and started walking again. It was strange to see so many new things pushing their way out of the ground or along the arms of the trees. Sometimes it seemed like there was a light dust that smelled of plants floating through the air, which made her sneeze and her eyes water. The snow was melting away quickly and the ground was wet under her paws, squishing between her claws as she put her weight down.

Whenever she could, she stopped to find berries, and once she was lucky enough to find a carcass with some meat still on
it. The animal was unfamiliar to her, and it didn't have the salty, fishy taste of seal, but she ate it anyway. As she traveled, she tried to attach more of her mother's words to what she saw.

At one point, she found herself walking through a muddy, watery, weedy territory that she thought might be a “marsh.” She was watching her paws, concentrating on finding the driest spots to step on, so she didn't see the herd of animals in front of her until one of them snorted.

She looked up and jumped back in surprise. They were
enormous
. They didn't look as heavy or solid as white bears, but they were much taller than she was, perched on four long, skinny legs. Their short, shaggy fur was brown and they had long, wobbly-looking muzzles. But strangest of all, several of them had two sets of giant claws growing out of the top of their heads.

Caribou!
Kallik thought. She stared at them. Most of them were grazing, nibbling at the plants and ignoring her. A couple had lifted their heads and were watching her, but they didn't look very concerned. Kallik backed up until the bushes hid her from view, and then she turned and found a different way through the marsh.

Toward sunset, as the light around her was turning orange and hazy, she came to a small pond. Trying not to slip on the mud, Kallik crouched at the edge to lap up the water. All at once the dirt beside her paw moved. Startled, she froze and stared at it. Whatever it was moved again, just twitching a little, then suddenly it jumped straight up into the air.

Kallik didn't even think about what she was doing. With a quick, instinctive pounce, she clapped her paws around the jumping thing and pinned it to the mud. Her claws sank into it and it flailed one more time, then lay there, limp and unmoving.

Had she killed it? Kallik lowered her head and sniffed it without lifting her paw. It certainly seemed dead. The creature, which was smaller than her paw, had two small legs and two long legs with webbed paws. It was slimy and lumpy, its skin like a cross between a fish and a seal. It was greenish brown, and its belly was pale white. Two bulging eyes sat on top of its head, and when she leaned on it she could see that it had a long tongue inside its mouth.

Curious, she nibbled on it and discovered that it tasted quite interesting. Its texture was a lot like a seal's, except it didn't have any fat and it wasn't quite as meaty. She devoured it in a few bites and felt a little odd afterward, but it was more of a meal than berries. She sniffed around the pond for a long time but didn't see any more animals like that. She tried digging in the mud around the water, but all that did was make her fur dirtier. She'd have to try again at the next pond.

 

The days grew warmer and warmer, and Kallik panted under her thick fur coat. A couple of days were so hot, she couldn't even come out of her shelter. Instead she lay in the shade below a thicket of branches, trying to conserve her energy and keep cool. It was hard to sleep, though, since the ground below her was damp and flying insects kept buzzing around
her muzzle. Kallik wasn't sure which were mosquitoes and which ones were flies, but she remembered that her mother hated both of them.

Every day she thought about Taqqiq and wondered if he was all right. Had he remembered all the things their mother had told them?

One morning she found a strange den that smelled of an animal she hadn't yet met. It was large, with flat walls made of dead trees, and it was raised up on long legs above the waterlogged ground. The faded scents of unfamiliar food wafted from it, but it looked deserted, as if the inhabitants had been gone for a while.

She sniffed around the outside but couldn't find a way in. Still hopeful, she moved in a circle around it, sniffing the area in search of scraps.

Aha!
There was a dent in the wet ground, and half buried in it were two lightly speckled brown eggs. She had seen eggs already on this journey, but never anywhere she could reach them. But she was pretty sure she could eat them. Like the seal pups her mother had pulled from their den, these were the beginning of birds, and she knew she could eat birds.