The Melting Sea Page 8

  The lid was so tight that Lusa couldn’t even smell what was inside. Her paws felt too big and clumsy, and they were still sore from walking so far.

  She froze for a moment as she heard louder voices from the den, and a light went on in a gap above her head. But she was so close to food now that she kept on levering at the can lid, thinking of how hungry the other bears were.

  The lid flew off unexpectedly, clattering to the ground. A shout came from the den. They’ve spotted me! Not caring about the noise anymore, Lusa tipped the can over and raked through the contents that spilled out over her paws. Her jaws watered as she scented all kinds of tasty things. Grabbing some in her mouth, she turned to flee.

  At the same moment, the door of the den swung open, and Lusa found herself facing two snarling dogs. From inside the den the flat-faces shouted encouragement, and a thin beam of yellow light shone out, making Lusa screw up her eyes. She started to back away, still gripping the food in her jaws.

  The dogs crept closer, and one of them leaped for Lusa. She had to drop her mouthful and snarl, rearing up and thrashing her forepaws in the air. But the dog kept coming, and Lusa knew she would have to fight. Panicked, she lashed out one paw, striking the dog across its head. It let out a howl of pain but turned faster than she thought possible and snapped at her leg with sharp teeth. Lusa sprang backward, pulling her leg free, but now the second dog was upon her, leaping up and trying to close its jaws on her throat.

  Lusa tried to remember how Toklo would fight. Duck away … now twist … strike that dog on its shoulder … snap at the other … whirl and strike again. But she didn’t have Toklo’s strength and skill, and she couldn’t fight both dogs at once. She felt teeth meet her ear and let out a squeal of pain as she swung her head around with the dog still holding on. It didn’t let go until she slammed it against the wall of the den. Blood began to run into her eyes so she couldn’t see clearly.

  Then Lusa heard another snarl and a deep-throated barking. Another dog! She closed her eyes and tried to picture her mother and father and her friends in the Bear Bowl. But all she could see was Toklo and Kallik and Yakone, searching endlessly for her, blaming themselves for letting her sneak off alone.

  “I’m so sorry,” she whispered.

  The deep-throated bark sounded beside her ear, and Lusa braced herself for pain. She could hear vicious snarling and snapping—but felt nothing.

  Am I dead already?

  Opening her eyes, Lusa gaped in astonishment. There was a battle going on! A third dog was fighting the others, snapping at first one and then the other, darting out of range before they could retaliate.

  New energy flowed into Lusa, and she sprang to fight alongside her new ally, not asking herself where he had come from. Together they beat the other two dogs back toward the door of the den. The flat-faces took them in and they vanished, whining, their tails drooping.

  The third dog turned to face Lusa. “Come on,” he said in a familiar voice.

  Lusa drew in a breath of pure astonishment. “Ujurak!”

  Without saying any more, the lean brown Ujurak-dog began to lead the way back through the flat-face dens. Lusa ran behind. Her wounds were still hurting badly, but she felt desperately glad to be alive.

  Once they were well away from the dens, the lights receding into the distance, Ujurak halted. “Are you okay?” he asked, giving Lusa’s wounded ear a lick with his long pink tongue. He nosed down her sides, checking her injuries. “There’s an herb you can use,” he told her. “It grows close to the ground, with narrow, grayish leaves. You’ll find it beside streams, under the soil. It has a bitter taste, but it should take the pain away and help the wounds heal.”

  His slightly frantic tone told Lusa how worried he was. She took a pace back to stop his desperate examination of her injuries. “I’m fine, really,” she assured him. “Thank you for rescuing me.”

  Ujurak’s expression grew somber. “You shouldn’t have been there,” he said. “Bears don’t need flat-face food! Didn’t you learn that from our journey? You can find your own food now, you and all the other bears.”

  Lusa backed away even farther, shocked by how stern Ujurak sounded. “Okay, I’m sorry,” she said. “I just wanted to help the others.”

  Ujurak’s voice softened. “You can help by finding leaves they can eat and signs of prey. You won’t help them if you go off and get attacked by dogs.”

  Lusa nodded. “I know.”

  She followed Ujurak as he led her back across the plain, halting when the pile of grass and sticks came into sight.

  “Come with me,” she begged Ujurak. “Kallik and Toklo will be so happy to see you!”

  Ujurak shook his head, making his long, thin ears flap. “No, not like this,” he said. “I am with you all, always. Remember that.”

  Lusa let out a long sigh. She wanted Ujurak to be with them in his old bear shape, just as he had been on their first journey, but she knew that was impossible now. “Good-bye, Ujurak,” she said. “And thank you so much.”

  “Good-bye.” Ujurak touched his wet nose to Lusa’s ear. “We will meet again.”

  Reluctantly Lusa turned away and limped toward the pile of sticks where her friends were sleeping. When she looked back, there was no sign of the dog, and no pawprints in the snow where it had walked.

  “Don’t leave us, Ujurak,” she whispered into the air.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Kallik

  Kallik sprang to her paws, shaking, as a roar sounded close to her ear. Sleep still clung to her, and it took her a moment to realize the fearsome sound had come from Toklo. “What’s happening?” she asked.

  “Wake up, Kallik. It’s Lusa.” Toklo was standing by the pile of sticks with Lusa beside him. “Look at her—she’s covered in blood!”

  Morning had come while Kallik slept, though the sun was hidden behind clouds. The ground was covered with wisps of white mist. Through them Kallik stared at Lusa; her fur was matted with blood, and one of her ears was torn. The tang of blood hit Kallik’s throat. “Lusa, what happened?” she gasped.

  “I tried to find some food by the flat-face dens,” Lusa explained, her head bowed miserably. “You know, like we used to. But the flat-faces sent dogs to attack me.”

  “I’ll mangle them!” Toklo exclaimed, tensing his muscles as if he was about to dash off across the plain. “I’ll spread their guts from here to the Melting Sea!”

  “No!” Lusa stood in front of Toklo, blocking him. “Ujurak came in the shape of a dog, and he helped me to fight them off.”

  “Ujurak!” Toklo’s eyes lit up. “He’s here?” Calling Ujurak’s name, he ran out onto the plain.

  Kallik chased after him, with Lusa by her side and Yakone, just struggling out of sleep, bringing up the rear.

  “Toklo, wait!” Lusa called. “He isn’t here anymore.”

  Toklo halted and turned back. Sympathy pierced Kallik like a thorn as she saw his downcast expression. “Why didn’t he stay?” Toklo asked angrily. “He didn’t even say good-bye!”

  Lusa padded up to him and reached up to touch his shoulder with her muzzle. “He wants you to know that he’s always with us,” she said.

  Toklo grunted. “It’s not the same.” Hesitating, he added more fiercely, “Do you promise you’re telling the truth?”

  Lusa drew in a shocked breath. “Of course! Ujurak is watching over us all,” she insisted. “But I was the one who got into trouble and needed his help.”

  Yakone nudged Kallik and drew her a little ways away. “Do you believe Lusa?” he asked.

  “Of course I do,” Kallik replied. “Ujurak would never abandon us.”

  Yakone looked doubtful. “He wasn’t there when the no-claws chased us on their pawsticks.”

  “We saved ourselves that time, didn’t we?” Kallik retorted, determined not to hear a word said against Ujurak.

  Yakone sighed, nodding. “I know how important Ujurak was to you. I liked him too. I just don’t want you to put yourself in danger
because you think he’ll save you every time.”

  “I won’t,” Kallik promised. And I hope the others won’t either, she added silently to herself.

  Toklo padded back to the white bears with Lusa limping by his side. “It’s time we headed for the Melting Sea,” he announced.

  “We can’t,” Kallik objected. “Lusa needs to rest.”

  Toklo glanced at Lusa, clearly realizing that Kallik was right, though he said nothing.

  “We need food, too,” Yakone pointed out, “or none of us will be strong enough to travel. Look, suppose Kallik and I—”

  “I told you before, we’re not splitting up,” Toklo interrupted, a trace of aggressiveness in his tone. “Come on, Lusa, I’ll carry you.”

  Lusa looked embarrassed, but she didn’t object as Kallik gave her a boost onto Toklo’s shoulders. “I’ll be fine soon,” she insisted, “and maybe you could find this herb that Ujurak told me about. He says it grows beside streams under the snow and will help me feel better.”

  “What does it look like?” Yakone asked.

  “It’s a low-growing plant, with narrow, grayish leaves,” Lusa told him, remembering how Ujurak had described it.

  “Sure, we’ll find that for you,” Yakone promised. “Come on, Kallik. Let’s look.”

  “Just don’t go wandering off and get lost,” Toklo warned them.

  “We won’t,” Kallik assured him as she followed Yakone, glad that there was something she could do for Lusa.

  Yakone halted when they had padded several bearlengths away from Toklo and Lusa. “We have to find a stream running through the snow. Do you know how to do that?”

  “You’re the expert,” Kallik replied.

  “But you’re learning.” Yakone’s eyes were filled with amused affection. “Try to show me what you know.”

  “Okay.” Kallik raised her head and tried to pick up the scent of running water, but the scent of snow, firebeasts, and the distant salt tang of the Melting Sea drowned out anything else she might have smelled.

  So I need to look at the surface of the snow. There have to be signs....

  Glancing at Yakone, she padded forward, keeping pace with the distant Toklo, who was trudging onward with Lusa on his shoulders. At first she thought the ground all looked the same under its covering of snow, except for humps that meant there were buried rocks or bushes.

  Yakone was watching her expectantly, and Kallik realized that he had already spotted what they were looking for. He knows I can find it, she thought with a twinge of excitement.

  Beginning to enjoy the puzzle, Kallik scanned the ground more carefully. At length she noticed that some of the humps in the snow formed a curving line. Bushes often grow on the banks of a stream … Beyond the humps was a swath of flat snow, about a bearlength wide, smoother than the surrounding ground and following the same curve.

  “Over there!” she exclaimed, pointing with her muzzle.

  Yakone nodded and let Kallik take the lead as the two white bears raced toward the frozen stream. Kallik pushed through the line of bushes, dislodging snow from their branches, and began scraping away at the water’s edge.

  At first she only found grass, and some small plants with round, dark leaves that obviously weren’t what Lusa needed. Yakone was searching on the opposite bank, but he hadn’t found anything either.

  Suddenly worried that they might lose Toklo and Lusa, Kallik glanced up. Her friends were still visible in the distance; the brown bear had halted and let Lusa slide to the ground, where she sat slumped in a heap. The sight of Lusa so obviously miserable made Kallik search even harder. Her paws thrust the snow aside, and eventually she found the plant she needed, straggling over stones at the very edge of the stream. It had the grayish leaves Lusa had described, and a sharp, pleasant scent.

  “I think I’ve found it!” she told Yakone.

  He came to join her and bent his head to sniff the plant. “That looks like it,” he commented. “Let’s take some to Lusa.”

  Very carefully, so as not to crush the juices from the leaves, Kallik picked several of the stems and bounded back across the snow with them gripped firmly in her jaws.

  “Here!” she exclaimed, coming to a halt by Lusa’s side. “Are these right?”

  Lusa raised her head, her eyes weary and pain-filled. “They look right,” she said, giving the leaves a cautious sniff. “And they smell good. Thanks, Kallik.”

  “You took your time,” Toklo remarked impatiently while Lusa chewed up the herbs.

  “Well, that’s how long it took!” Kallik retorted, fed up with Toklo’s grumpiness.

  Before Toklo could say any more, Yakone interposed, “Anyway, we can get going now. Lusa, do you want to ride on my back?”

  “I’ll carry Lusa,” Toklo insisted with a glare, crouching down to let the small black bear scramble onto his shoulders.

  As they plodded on across the plain, Kallik could see that the herbs were working for Lusa; she visibly relaxed as the pain ebbed, and finally sank into a doze as she lay splayed out on Toklo’s back. She didn’t even wake when they had to cross a couple of small BlackPaths, and only stirred uneasily as they skirted a no-claw den where a couple of dogs were barking.

  “I wonder if those are the dogs Lusa had to fight,” Kallik murmured to Yakone.

  “I’ve no idea. We’d best stay well away from them to be on the safe side.”

  The sun was sliding toward the horizon by the time that Lusa woke up. She looked much brighter and more alert, sitting bolt upright on Toklo’s back. “Look over there!” she whispered after a few moments. “Aren’t those tracks in the snow?”

  Kallik looked where Lusa was pointing. At once she spotted the pawprints, leading in a straight line toward a clump of bushes several bearlengths away.

  Toklo bent his head to sniff. “A snow hare,” he said. “And the tracks are fresh. Come on, Yakone.”

  Lusa slid down from Toklo’s back, and the two males set out, creeping cautiously toward the bushes. Meanwhile Lusa started to dig down into the snow. Kallik could see that her legs were still stiff and her paws painful after the fight; she was too clumsy to dig effectively.

  Kallik crouched down beside her and began to help, thrusting the snow aside until she uncovered some plants.

  “Thanks.” Lusa tore off a mouthful of leaves and chewed. “I’m sorry, Kallik,” she went on. “It was stupid of me to go off on my own like that.”

  “It’s okay,” Kallik told her, giving her a friendly touch on the ear with the tip of her muzzle. “You were very brave....”

  Her voice trailed off, but Lusa seemed to understand what Kallik hadn’t wanted to say and finished Kallik’s thought. “One day, I’ll be on my own all the time.”

  Kallik felt a stab of sadness. “I’ll miss you, Lusa,” she whispered.

  “I’ll miss you, too,” Lusa responded.

  A sudden shriek broke the silence between them. Kallik looked up to see a scuffle in the snow where Toklo and Yakone had gone to stalk the hare. A moment later Yakone straightened up with the white body of a hare dangling from his jaws.

  “They got it!” Kallik exclaimed.

  With Toklo hard on his paws, Yakone returned and dropped the hare beside Kallik. “It’s a big one,” he said. “And we wouldn’t have caught it if you hadn’t spotted the tracks, Lusa.”

  Lusa’s eyes shone at his praise.

  By the time Toklo, Kallik, and Yakone had shared out the prey, the sun had gone down. With no obvious denning place in sight, Kallik and Yakone piled up the snow to make a windbreak, and all four bears settled down in its shelter.

  Kallik dreamed of wind scouring across the ice, and woke in the cold light of dawn to see Yakone standing at the top of the hollow, staring at the horizon. Careful not to disturb the sleeping Toklo and Lusa, Kallik scrambled up to join him.

  Yakone turned his head to look at her, his eyes gleaming with excitement. “I can smell waves,” he told her.

  Kallik stood beside him, the wind
blowing into her face and flattening her fur against her sides, and took a deep sniff. Yakone was right! The air was carrying the salt tang of the Melting Sea, far stronger than she had scented it before.

  Quickly Kallik slid down into the hollow again and prodded Lusa and Toklo awake. “Hurry!” she urged them. “We have to go. We’ll reach the shore today!”

  Toklo grunted sleepily and heaved himself out of the hollow. Lusa was more difficult to rouse. When her eyes blinked open at last, she stared at Kallik, then shook her head as if she was trying to clear it.

  “Sorry,” she murmured. “I can’t hear you very well. And my ear feels funny, like there’s something stuck in it.” She started to claw at it.

  “Stop that.” Kallik gently pushed her paw away. “You’ll make it bleed again.”

  Lusa nodded, but she still looked uneasy and kept shaking her head as she climbed out of the hollow.

  “Get on my back.” Toklo bent down and spoke loudly into her other ear.

  “I can walk,” Lusa retorted. “And you don’t have to shout.” Her eyes glimmering with sudden amusement, she added, “It’s not all bad. If my ear’s blocked, I can’t hear you bossing me around!”

  “Cloud-brain!” Toklo exclaimed, giving the smaller bear an affectionate shove. “Now, are we going or aren’t we?”

  Kallik’s paws itched to bound across the plain toward the sea. The pace set by Lusa, who was still limping, seemed agonizingly slow. Kallik struggled with her impatience, but she didn’t suggest splitting up. She knew how Toklo would take that suggestion.

  Besides, it’s not just Yakone who will see my home for the first time. It’s the others as well. I want us all to be together when we get there.

  Excitement and memories bubbled up inside her. “I remember my BirthDen,” she told Yakone. “Nisa used to tell me and Taqqiq such wonderful stories—stories about Silaluk and Robin, Chickadee, and Moose Bird, who hunted her. She taught us so much, too … how to find a seal hole, and sit there very quietly.... I remember the first time I caught a seal. It tasted so delicious! And the games I used to play with Taqqiq—” Kallik broke off suddenly. “I’m sorry, Yakone. I’ve told you all this before, haven’t I?”