The Melting Sea Read online

  Kallik just let out a low growl and wouldn’t meet Toklo’s eyes. “It was so cloud-brained I don’t even have words for it,” she muttered. “Now are we going to eat or not?”

  But even though the quarrel was over, Toklo still felt the tension among them as they settled down to eat, and the calf’s meat was dry and tasteless in his mouth. We risked our lives for this, and now I can’t even enjoy it, he thought miserably.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Lusa

  Lusa’s legs ached as she slogged through the slushy snow, her head lowered against the squalls of rain that blew into her face. A few days had passed since the bison hunt, but her muscles still ached and her ears had only just stopped ringing from when she was trampled. But she was determined not to let the others know she was struggling.

  There was no need for Kallik to make such a fuss, she thought crossly. I may be small, but I’ve traveled just as far as the rest of them!

  The rain was driving down, and Lusa almost wished for snow again. It might be cold, but it didn’t soak through to her skin so uncomfortably, or sting her eyes.

  “Stop a moment.” Toklo, in the lead, was peering through the driving rain. “There’s something up ahead. Stay there while I check it out.”

  Lusa could just make out a dark shape, barely visible in the poor light. When Toklo returned and beckoned them forward, she realized that it was a small flat-face den. There was no scent of flat-faces around it; the sides were scarred and dented, and Lusa guessed that it hadn’t been used for a long time.

  “Great, let’s shelter,” Kallik suggested, glancing at Lusa.

  Lusa struggled with indignation, certain that Kallik had made the suggestion because she thought Lusa was too small to carry on. “Don’t shelter on my account,” she snapped.

  “Well, I’d be glad to be out of the rain for a bit,” Yakone said.

  The door of the den was hanging open. Toklo poked his head inside, then lumbered through the gap; Lusa and the two white bears followed.

  Lusa wrinkled her nose at the stale smell inside. It was dark and cramped, and the roof had fallen down at the far end, making it tight when all four bears were inside. Rain rattled on the roof with a weird, echoing sound.

  “So, Kallik,” Toklo began, “where exactly are we heading?”

  Kallik shook her head, looking uncertain. “I know the ice is breaking up, so I might not be able to get to the place where Taqqiq and I were born.” Brightening a little, she added, “But I want to find the place where I first came ashore. There might be other bears there—including Taqqiq.”

  “That doesn’t sound too hard,” Yakone commented.

  Kallik blinked. “The problem is, we’ll have to go past the no-claw denning place where I was captured—the place where the metal birds come from that carry bears up the coast.”

  “I don’t want to be caught!” Lusa exclaimed, shuddering at the thought of being bundled into a net and carried through the air.

  Kallik pressed herself against Lusa’s side. “Don’t worry. I won’t let the no-claws hurt you.”

  Indignant again, Lusa wriggled away from the white she-bear. “I won’t let them hurt me, either!” she retorted.

  She saw Yakone giving her a warning glance, as if he was telling her not to be offended by Kallik’s protectiveness. That’s all very well for him. No bear keeps reminding him how small he is!

  “Then we’ll try to go around the denning place,” Toklo said. “We’ll avoid the bear-capture place altogether and keep to the wilderness.”

  To Lusa’s surprise, Kallik didn’t look completely happy with this decision. Lusa guessed she was concerned about the bears who had been caught.

  “We can’t help the captured bears,” Toklo asserted, as if he was thinking the same thing. “And maybe it’s better for them that the metal birds take them up the coast, where there are no flat-faces.”

  Kallik shook her head, clearly not convinced, but didn’t argue.

  By the time the rain eased off, night was beginning to fall. Lusa emerged from the den, splashing through puddles of mud and snowmelt, shivering in the stiff breeze that still brought with it a spatter of rain.

  “My belly’s telling me it’s time to hunt,” Toklo stated as the other bears padded into the open after her.

  The bears’ route that day had taken them inland, so they could avoid BlackPaths that ran along the shore, and there had been no chance of hunting on the ice.

  “There are some likely-looking shrubs over there,” Toklo added. “I’m going to check them out.”

  “I’ll come with you,” Lusa said quickly.

  Kallik looked surprised. “Don’t you want to hunt with me and Yakone?”

  “We’ll have a better chance of prey if we’re in pairs,” Lusa responded, not wanting to offend her friend.

  Kallik nodded; she and Yakone set off in a different direction, while Lusa followed Toklo toward the clump of shrubs.

  “Are you okay?” Toklo asked her.

  Lusa sighed. “Kallik’s being a bit … weird,” she replied. “She keeps acting as if I can’t look after myself.”

  Toklo halted and faced Lusa; she was surprised at the deep seriousness in his eyes. “Remember, Kallik has lost so much,” he said. “It’s only natural that she wants to keep the bears who are important to her safe.”

  “But she keeps treating me like I’m a cub!” Lusa protested.

  “She doesn’t mean it personally.” Toklo hesitated, then added, “I know what it’s like to lose bears who mean a lot.”

  “Well, I’ve lost bears, too!” Lusa felt annoyance welling up inside her that Toklo didn’t seem able to see her point of view. “I had to say good-bye to Ashia and King and my friends.”

  “That’s not the same,” Toklo said gently. “You left them well and happy in the Bear Bowl, with plenty of food and shelter. You didn’t have to watch them die, or leave them to an uncertain fate....”

  Lusa bowed her head, feeling that maybe she deserved the scolding. She missed her family, but she knew they were happy where they were. Still, she couldn’t quite stifle her indignation. It’s so frustrating! The others still don’t think of me as wild like them, even though I’ve lived longer in the wild than in the Bear Bowl. Sometimes I can hardly remember what the Bear Bowl looked like, or how the food tasted.

  Toklo headed on toward the bushes, and Lusa followed him. As they crept closer, she picked up the scent of a snow hare, signaling to Toklo with a jerk of her head to the bush where she thought it was hiding.

  “Can you get under there?” Toklo whispered.

  Lusa nodded. Stalking forward, she located the hare’s exact position and crouched down onto her belly to wriggle underneath the prickly branches. The hare had flattened itself into a shallow hole; Lusa scooped it out with one paw. Blind with panic, the hare shot past her and dodged under the branches and out into the open, where Toklo killed it with a single blow of his paw.

  “Great job!” Toklo exclaimed as Lusa scrambled out of the bushes again. “We make a good team.”

  Lusa’s belly was rumbling. I’ve had so many shriveled roots and frostbitten leaves lately, I could enjoy some meat.

  She was feeling better by the time she returned to the den with Toklo, her annoyance driven out by the success of their hunt. “Maybe you’re right about Kallik,” she confessed to Toklo. “I’ll try not to mind when she fusses over me.”

  Back at the flat-face den, Kallik and Yakone had just returned with a plump goose. All four bears retreated into the den to eat and then, contented and full, to sleep.

  Lusa woke early and slipped out of the den while her friends were still sleeping. The rain had stopped, and a breeze was driving ragged clouds across the sky. A weak sun shone down, and under its warmth the snow was beginning to thaw.

  Energy pulsed through Lusa, and she began trotting up a slope opposite the den. I feel strong enough to run to the Endless Ice and back! In a fit of high spirits, she let herself slide down the other side
of the slope, only to have her paws skid out from under her in the slush. Landing with a bump, she saw that the marks her paws had left behind had exposed the bare ground.

  Wow, the snow is so thin!

  Even though the ground was made up of stones and mud, with only a few sparse tufts of grass, Lusa reveled in the feeling of it beneath her paws, along with the scent of the earth. She tried to dig down, hoping to find a juicy worm or two, but the ground was still frozen, too hard for her claws to do more than scratch the surface.

  “There you are, Lusa!” Kallik was standing at the top of the slope, looking down at her with an anxious expression. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

  Lusa felt her irritation rise, but remembering what Toklo had said, she forced it down. “Hi, Kallik,” she said, trotting back up the slope to join her friend on the crest. “Isn’t it exciting, that the snow is going at last?”

  Kallik didn’t look excited, and Lusa realized that it was different for her. “I want the ice to last longer,” she responded, her voice desperate. “I have to get out onto the Melting Sea once more, so I can find Taqqiq.”

  Sympathy swallowed up the last of Lusa’s annoyance. “I’m sure you’ll find him,” she reassured her friend. “If the ice melts, Taqqiq will have to come to shore, right?”

  Kallik sighed, looking gratefully at Lusa, and the two bears sat close together staring out at the horizon. As the sun emerged from behind a cloud, Lusa spotted a dark smudge stretching across the route they would need to take.

  “What’s that?” she asked Kallik, pointing with one paw.

  Kallik let out a gasp of excitement. “That’s it! The no-claw denning place I told you about—the place where they take the captured bears. I’m sure of it!” She sprang to her paws. “Let’s go!”

  Lusa stared at her, feeling puzzled. “But it sounds like a terrible place. Why do you want to go there?”

  “It is terrible,” Kallik admitted, her eyes still sparkling with excitement. “But don’t you see? It means I’m nearly home!”

  She ran down the slope, calling to Yakone and Toklo, who emerged sleepily from the den. “Hurry!” she told them. “We have to go. We’re almost there!”

  Kallik’s excitement was still bubbling over like a spring of fresh water as the bears set out. “If we can get out onto the ice, I’m sure I can find my BirthDen,” she told Yakone. “I’d love to show it to you—all of you!”

  Lusa was pleased for Kallik and tried to share her excitement, but she was aware that Toklo was more concerned about how they would get past the flat-face denning place.

  Reaching the top of the rise again, he paused to scan the landscape, then raised one paw to point. “That way,” he said. “We should be able to skirt the flat-face dens and get back to the shore on the other side.”

  Lusa could feel her optimism rising and knew that her friends shared it as they padded along with new energy. Kallik took the lead, striding out confidently.

  “Watch out for potholes,” she warned the others. “Sometimes the snow just gives way under your paws. We don’t want any bear to get hurt, especially now that we’re so close.” She paused, then added, “There are prickly plants, too, very close to the ground. Be careful not to get thorns in your pads.”

  The route Toklo had chosen led them around the denning place in a wide circle, but as the sun climbed in the sky, Lusa began to hear a distant rumbling sound, and feel an ominous vibration under her paws.

  “Is that a BlackPath?” she asked nervously.

  Skirting around a stand of stunted trees, Lusa saw that she had been right. The BlackPath stretched in front of them, blocking the route they wanted to take. It was wider than most of the BlackPaths Lusa had seen before; gigantic firebeasts pounded up and down in both directions, roaring and wailing as their crushing black paws carried them along.

  “We’ll never get across that,” Yakone stated.

  “We’ll have to try,” Toklo retorted. “It’s that or travel through the denning place.” He gestured to the others to line up with him along the edge of the BlackPath. “When I say ‘Now!’—run!”

  But there was no end to the thundering firebeasts. The bears stood beside the BlackPath, their fur buffeted by the wind of the huge creatures’ passing, waiting in vain for the chance to cross.

  Once, in a short lull, Toklo stepped forward, his jaws parted to give the word of command, but another firebeast appeared, racing down on him, and he leaped back with a growl.

  “It’s no good,” he admitted after another long and fruitless wait. “We’ll have to head for the denning place instead.” He gave a snort of annoyance.

  “We’ll be okay,” Kallik said, still with her air of confidence. “We’ll just have to hide from the no-claws.”

  Lusa wasn’t sure that she shared her friend’s certainty. They continued on, but walking so close to the BlackPath scared her, and her heart began to pound as another BlackPath joined it. It was a long time since they had been this close to so many firebeasts. On the Endless Ice she had become used to silence, and the continuous roaring and snarling froze her limbs with fear. She had to force herself to keep padding on.

  “We’ll have to cross this one,” Toklo said, glancing up and down the new BlackPath. “It’s that or go back.”

  At least this BlackPath wasn’t as busy as the first, but Lusa was panting with terror by the time Toklo gave the order to cross. On the opposite side they found themselves on a stretch of rough ground with flat-face dens looming up in front of them. Toklo was still looking for a way to skirt around them, but in every direction the bears turned, they were blocked by more BlackPaths. Lusa thought it was as if some huge, unseen predator was herding them toward the dens, the last place they wanted to go.

  As the bears crept between the dens, Lusa felt as though she was slinking along at the bottom of a deep crevasse. Strange, unexplained noises startled her, and she jumped with fright as a door opened in front of her. A flat-face popped out, looking back over his shoulder and growling something in a loud voice to someone inside. Toklo shoved her hastily around a corner, until the sound of the flat-face’s pawsteps died away.

  A narrow path lay in front of them, stretching into the distance. Kallik and Yakone took the lead, slipping along beside the walls and clinging to the shadows. Toklo and Lusa kept a lookout behind.

  The silver cans that held flat-face rubbish stood here and there against the walls, giving the bears a little cover. Lusa’s belly rumbled, but there was nowhere here to hunt, and the scents that came from the cans were harsh and unfamiliar. There was no food there.

  Besides, Lusa thought, Ujurak told me not to take flat-face food anymore. I can find my own food now.

  The ground underpaw was wet and gritty, with not much snow left except in the crevices behind the cans. Lusa winced as the slush stung her pads, and raised her paw to lick it.

  “Hey, that tastes good!” she exclaimed. “It’s not just melted snow.”

  Toklo grunted in surprise and slurped at the wet stuff on the ground. “You’re right,” he said. “I wonder what it is.”

  “And why have the no-claws put it here?” Yakone sounded suspicious. “It’s not just to give bears something tasty.”

  While they were still lapping at the ground, Lusa heard the loud sound of flat-face voices, coming from the end of the narrow path. “Hide! Quick!” she gasped.

  All four bears ducked into the shelter of a group of silver cans, crammed uncomfortably together in the little space. Lusa was sure that some bear’s paw, or some bear’s ear, must be poking out somewhere.

  The flat-faces are bound to see us!

  But the flat-faces walked past, still talking together in loud voices, passing the cans without glancing aside.

  Flat-faces never notice anything, Lusa thought, shaking with relief.

  Toklo waited for the noise of the flat-faces to die away before venturing out into the open again. “Okay,” he grunted, beckoning to the others. “Let’s go.”
>
  As they padded onward, Lusa realized she was feeling terribly thirsty. She bent her head to lap from a puddle on the ground, but it had the same sharp tang as the stuff on the ground earlier. Somehow it wasn’t as tasty as it had seemed before; she started to feel slightly sick.

  “I think this stuff is making me thirsty,” she said.

  “Me too,” Kallik agreed. “I wish we could find some water, or even snow.”

  Yakone grunted. “I knew there was something wrong. I just hope it’s not bear poison, like whatever the no-claws were putting into the sea on Star Island.”

  Lusa hoped not, too. Her thirst grew until she started to feel desperate for water, yet she could see nothing except for the narrow path leading onward, crossed here and there by other paths. Weird noises echoed around her from the dens.

  Are we going to be trapped here forever?

  At last the narrow path came to an end. Beyond it lay a wide-open space, tufted with twiggy grass and dotted with puddles. More dens loomed up on the far side. Lusa wanted to dash out into the open and drink, but she made herself stay still while Toklo carefully scanned the space in all directions.

  By now the daylight was dying, the setting sun casting dark shadows across the ground. Here and there glaring yellow lights appeared in gaps in the walls of the dens. Lusa’s ears strained to listen; she couldn’t hear any sound of flat-faces moving around.

  “Okay,” Toklo grunted at last. “Let’s drink.”

  Still wary, the bears ventured out into the open. Lusa plunged her snout into a puddle and winced at the foul taste of the water. It reeked of firebeasts and dirt, and a trace of the sharp tang that had made her so thirsty. But Lusa needed to drink so badly that she didn’t care.

  Glancing up with her muzzle dripping, she realized how filthy her friends were: Kallik and Yakone had turned almost black from the dirt. Lusa sighed, realizing how used she had become to seeing their fur almost as pure white as the snow.

  I can’t even see the red tinge on Yakone’s fur anymore.

  Her own fur was just as filthy, but when she dipped her paw into the puddle it came out with grit on it, and the many-colored sheen of oil. Her skin itched, and her nose was sore, and her eyes stung so badly that she could hardly see out of them. Her friends were suffering just as much, blundering about like cubs just out of the BirthDen.