Spirits in the Stars Read online

  Ujurak exchanged a glance with Toklo. When they had first arrived on the island, they had worked together to hunt and kill a musk ox. But clearly these bears had never thought of hunting together like that.

  “Without the seals we will starve,” Aga repeated.

  “No, you won’t!” Lusa’s voice was strong and excited once more. “You’ll be fine, because we’ll move the seals away from the hunting ground.”

  Every bear stared at Lusa as if she had grown another head. Ujurak heard Toklo mutter, “Oh, yeah, we’ll just tell them all to grow wings and fly!”

  “Don’t you see how it makes sense?” Lusa went on. “If the seals are healthy, then the bears who eat them are healthy. So we need to move the seals somewhere healthy.” She let her gaze travel around the group of gaping bears. “All you need to do is look after the animals that feed you. That means moving the seals away from the leaking pipe.”

  For a moment there was silence as Aga and the others thought that over. Then Ujurak spotted a disturbance in the crowd as a huge male barged his way to the front. “This is madness!” he growled. “And you’re crazy, Aga, if you agree with it. It’s just a trick! There’s nothing wrong with the seals. It’s been a hard season, so it’s no wonder if the seals taste a bit odd. These bears are just trying to poison us with their plants so they can take the seals for themselves.”

  Ujurak dug his claws into the ground with frustration as he heard a murmur of agreement from the crowd. Some bear called out, “Unalaq’s right! We shouldn’t trust them.”

  So that’s Unalaq. Ujurak remembered what Toklo had told him about how the huge bear had threatened him, and how he had chased Lusa and Kallik. We might have known he would make trouble.

  “Well, I think we should listen to them.” Yakone shouldered his way forward and stood beside Unalaq. “You’re too hotheaded, brother; you should think before you open your jaws.” Unalaq drew back his lips in a snarl, but Yakone ignored him and went on. “Has any bear seen these newcomers eating seals?” His gaze raked the crowd. “No? Then maybe that’s not their kind of food.”

  Ujurak was grateful that one bear at least could see sense. He could smell the taint of sickness on Yakone and see it in his drooping head and dull eyes. He pushed a little of the moss toward him.

  “Eat this,” he said. “It will help.”

  Yakone eyed the moss uncertainly. Before he could do anything, Aga thrust herself forward to his side.

  “I will eat it first,” she said. “Before any of my bears.”

  Ujurak admired her nobility, but he stretched out a paw to stop her as she lowered her head toward the moss. He gave her a careful sniff and realized that she hadn’t eaten any of the poisoned seal.

  “You aren’t sick,” he said. “The moss will only make you ill unnecessarily.”

  “But—” Aga began.

  “I’ll eat it,” Ujurak interrupted. “Then you’ll see what will happen to you. It’s not nice, but it will make you better, I promise you.”

  Ujurak bent his head, licked up some of the moss, chewed, and swallowed, feeling the gaze of every bear boring into him as he did so. Unalaq looked suspicious, and Lusa had alarm in her eyes, while Aga’s gaze was full of mysterious wisdom.

  The juices of the moss had a clean, astringent taste, and almost at once Ujurak could feel his belly start to revolt. Stumbling through the crowd, which parted to let him pass, he heaved and heaved up vomit into the snow until his belly was empty. Spitting out the last of the bitterness, he gulped in some fresh snow to clean his mouth and tottered back to the assembled bears.

  “See?” he rasped. “That’s all that will happen. The moss will get rid of the poisoned seal.”

  Aga looked at Lusa. “And you? You’re sure about this?”

  Lusa nodded vigorously. “Ujurak is never wrong about herbs,” she assured the ancient bear. “And . . . and I know that it will help your bears.”

  Aga gave a brisk nod, suddenly looking less old and frail. “Illa, go and fetch all the sick bears,” she ordered. “Bring them here to eat the moss.”

  “Toklo, could you go and fetch some more?” Ujurak asked. He still felt too shaken to go all the way back to the valley. “Lusa will show you where it came from.”

  “I’m on my way,” Toklo replied, heading back the way they had come with Lusa beside him.

  Kallik remained by Ujurak’s side. “I’m not leaving you alone with that Unalaq around,” she whispered.

  One by one the sick bears came up, took a mouthful of the moss, and went away to be sick. Unalaq stood watching, and he gave the moss a contemptuous kick with one hindpaw.

  “I’m not eating that!” he snarled. “You might trick all these others, but you won’t trick me.”

  “You’re not sick,” Ujurak pointed out, giving the big bear’s pelt a quick sniff. “So you don’t need to eat it.”

  “I wouldn’t touch it even if I was sick!”

  Two others—young males like Unalaq—were standing close behind him, and they nodded in agreement as he spoke.

  “You’re right, Unalaq,” one of them said. “Why would these strange bears want to help us?”

  Ujurak felt a flash of frustration burning through him like a bolt of lightning. How can they be so stupid? They just don’t want to be helped. “If you eat the poisoned seals, you will die!” he warned them.

  Before Unalaq or the others could respond, Kallik nudged Ujurak away. “Come on; calm down,” she murmured. “There’s no helping them if they’re that bee-brained.”

  As Ujurak turned away, he spotted Yakone, looking very shaky as he plodded up. Ujurak caught the smell of vomit on his fur.

  “You were right,” Yakone said hoarsely. “I got rid of all the seal I ate yesterday. It . . . it smelled really bad.”

  “You’ll be fine,” Kallik assured him. “Lie down and rest, and I’ll fetch you some fresh snow to lick.”

  “Thanks.” Yakone flopped down into the snow, his chest heaving with deep breaths.

  Leaving him to Kallik, Ujurak turned away to see Toklo and Lusa returning with more moss, weaving a path among the retching bears.

  Toklo dropped the moss at Ujurak’s paws. “I can’t believe they did what you told them!”

  Ujurak shook his head. “No, they did what Lusa told them. I think Aga has been waiting for a black bear to come and save her people.”

  Toklo blinked disbelievingly. “Lusa?”

  Lusa butted him in the side. “Show some respect!” she exclaimed with mock indignation.

  “Don’t forget,” Ujurak reminded her, “you still have to fulfill your promise of moving the seals away from the leak.”

  Lusa gulped, suddenly serious again. “Do you think we can?”

  Ujurak met her gaze, suddenly feeling what a huge task lay ahead of them. “We have to,” he replied.

  Chapter Nine

  Kallik

  When Yakone had gotten rid of the taste of vomit from his mouth, he settled down to sleep. As Kallik headed back to where Ujurak was dosing the last of the sick bears with the healing moss, she spotted Aga padding up to her. Her belly fluttered nervously. Does Aga know about Kissimi somehow? Can she smell him on my fur?

  But when the old bear reached Kallik’s side, her look was friendly. “You have traveled far, young one,” she said. “It’s strange to me, to see one of my kind together with brown bears and a black bear.”

  “It feels strange to me, too, sometimes,” Kallik confessed. “But they are my friends—and they would never dream of harming any bear here,” she added.

  Aga nodded. “I can believe that now.” Her bright eyes seemed to pierce Kallik to the depths; Kallik felt that somehow she must be able to see the truth about what had happened to Sura’s cub. She braced herself for an accusation.

  “The bears here are strange to me, too,” she began, desperate to distract Aga from asking questions. “Where I come from, white bears live alone, not in a group as you do.”

  To her relief Aga’s loo
k was still penetrating, but full of interest. “This is our way,” she replied. “Perhaps it is because we live on an island. Even if we tried to live alone, we would always be tripping over one another!”

  Kallik cast a glance to where Ujurak, Lusa, and Toklo were still dividing up the last of the moss. Come on! Get me out of this!

  “Why do you have special hunting grounds?” she asked Aga. “My mother, Nisa, told me that white bears range all over the Endless Ice and take their prey where they find it.”

  Aga blinked sadly. “Again, our island is small, young one,” she replied. “Our task is hard enough: to find food for all of us. The cove where the seals live is our best source of prey.”

  “I’m sorry,” Kallik said. Everything is connected, she thought. The sick seals, the way no-claws spoil the hunting grounds . . . Somehow we have to find out how to save the wild!

  She started at the touch of Aga’s snout on her shoulder.

  “Your friends are coming.” The old bear pointed to where Toklo, Lusa, and Ujurak had left the other white bears and were heading toward Kallik. Giving Kallik a look of great kindness, she added, “Perhaps we will talk again soon, young one.”

  Once she and her friends had left the sick bears to recover, Kallik couldn’t wait to get back to Kissimi. She bounded ahead, following their tracks back through the snow, straight to the snow hollow where she had left him.

  When he spotted Kallik, the tiny cub bounced up, letting out happy squeaks. Kallik bent over him, nuzzling his belly and reveling in the feeling of his soft paws batting her ears.

  I could stay like this forever, she thought.

  Behind her Toklo’s gruff voice broke into her absorption in her cub. “Come along. It’s getting dark, and we need to figure out where we can put the seals to make them healthy.”

  Kallik could hear the frustration in his tone.

  “I don’t know why we’re doing this,” he grumbled as Lusa and Ujurak caught up. “If these bears are too dumb to see that the seals were poisoned, how will they know when they’re safe to eat?” He kicked the snow irritably. “We should be concentrating on finding the end of our journey, not messing around like this for strangers.”

  Ujurak gave his friend a long, solemn look. “Toklo, what if this is the end of our journey? Helping these bears matters as much as helping any animals.” He hesitated, then added, “Besides, they’ve been waiting for Lusa.”

  Toklo huffed contemptuously. “That’s just a BirthDen story!”

  “It feels pretty real to me!” Lusa retorted, her fur bristling with indignation.

  Kallik tickled Kissimi’s belly lightly with her claws. “We should help the white bears,” she insisted, without taking her eyes off the cub.

  “You’re just saying that because you’re a white bear,” Toklo pointed out.

  Kallik rounded on him. “That’s not true! I’d help any bears who were starving to death because their food had been poisoned.”

  She flashed back to Yakone. His eyes were so tired and scared, even though he was acting brave around the other bears.

  An unfamiliar pain quickened in Kallik’s belly at the thought of what Yakone had suffered.

  Why do I feel like this? Why is Yakone different from all the other bears?

  “Please help the bears,” she begged, turning to Lusa.

  Lusa nodded, and brushed her muzzle against Kallik’s flank. “I’m going to try,” she promised. “But I’m not doing it on my own.”

  “Of course not,” Ujurak said instantly. “We’ll help you.”

  Kallik glanced at Toklo, who still looked unconvinced. “I suppose I’ve stuck with you this far . . .” he muttered.

  “That’s great!” Lusa blinked with relief. “First we have to find somewhere safe for the seals to live.”

  “Tomorrow,” Kallik said; Kissimi’s head was drooping, and he parted his tiny jaws in a huge yawn. “Now let’s get back to the den.”

  Gray dawn light gleamed on the snow as the bears set out the following morning to find a new home for the seals. A fresh breeze made Kallik’s eyes water, and she checked that Kissimi was bundled deep into the fur on her shoulders.

  “Did any of you notice that the sky was completely empty last night?” Ujurak asked as they left the den behind. “There were no spirits—not even the faintest trace of them. No Iqniq, as the white bears call them. Could they be right, that the spirits are abandoning us?”

  Kallik felt a stab of dismay at Ujurak’s words. Could my mother really be leaving me, now that we’re so close to the end of our journey?

  Desperately she tried to hear Nisa’s voice on the wind, or recall the touch of her fur, but there was only an empty silence.

  Mother, please don’t—

  Kallik’s frantic thoughts broke off as she realized that Kissimi was slipping off her shoulders. Halting, she boosted him back up. “Hold tight, little one,” she said gently, then hurried to catch up with her friends.

  Avoiding the no-claw denning area, they headed for the edge of the cliff not far away from where they had first seen Sura dragging her seal along.

  Lusa pointed with one paw. “The seal hunting ground is that way.”

  “Then we should go the other way,” Toklo suggested. “As far away from that stinking stuff as we can get to find clean water.”

  He took the lead along the edge of the island. Worried that Kissimi might fall, Kallik kept well away from the precipice, while the others searched for a way down to the shore.

  “We could try here,” Toklo reported, peering down over a dip in the cliffs. “I’ll go first, and for the spirits’ sake watch where you’re putting your paws.”

  He vanished over the cliff edge with Lusa after him and Ujurak a few moments behind. Kallik turned her head to look up at Kissimi. “Remember I told you to hold tight?” she asked. “It’s going to get bumpy now, but it won’t be for long.”

  Kissimi squeaked a reply as Kallik began edging down the broken rocks to the shore below. The others were waiting for her. She reflected that she would have climbed down quickly only a few days before, but that now she had her cub’s safety to think about.

  “Nice job,” Ujurak murmured as she reached the safety of the beach. He touched his nose to Kissimi’s tiny one. “Well done, little cub. You’re brave!”

  Kallik stared out across the frozen sea as she and her friends made their way along the beach. She felt they needed to get much farther away from the cove with the leaking pipe before they could be sure that the water was free of poison.

  Then, rounding a spur of rock jutting out from the cliff face, they found the way blocked by a pile of boulders stretching for many bearlengths above their heads.

  Toklo let out a growl of frustration. “We can’t climb that!”

  “Then we’ll have to climb the cliff again,” Ujurak said calmly. “I think I saw a place just back here.”

  Kallik’s shoulders drooped as she retraced her steps, padding behind Ujurak. Her legs ached with weariness, and her belly was grumbling for prey. Kissimi needs food, too.

  Ujurak led them to a place where there was a deep cleft in the cliff face, full of debris. “We should be able to claw our way up here,” he suggested.

  Without waiting for a response, he pushed his way into the cleft and scrambled upward, sending a shower of grit and pebbles and melting snow down on the bears behind him.

  “Ugh!” Lusa exclaimed, flicking dirt off her fur.

  She began to climb after Ujurak. Kallik waited for her to get well ahead before she started to follow, warning Kissimi again to hold on tight.

  “I’ll be right behind you,” Toklo said. “If he falls, I’ll catch him.”

  Kallik flashed the big grizzly a grateful look. Toklo might be grumpy, but I know I can trust him.

  She scrabbled her way to the cliff top, barely squeezing between the narrow walls of the cleft. Kissimi clung to her shoulders, squeaking excitedly as if this was a big adventure.

  Not long after they rega
ined the top of the cliff, the land fell away steeply into a gorge, where bare, gray boulders poked up out of the snow. The bears half slid, half scrambled down into the bottom and hauled themselves up the other side.

  “We’ve got to get back to the beach,” Lusa panted. “We’ll never find a home for the seals at this rate.”

  “And we need to hunt,” Toklo added. “If we don’t eat, we’ll be too weak to help the other bears.”

  He headed toward the sea again. Kallik realized that the ground was sloping downward more gently here, and soon they came in sight of a huge bay, a wide half circle like an enormous bite out of the land. At each side the cliffs gradually sank to meet the shore, and between them a frozen river ran into the sea.

  “This looks promising,” Ujurak said.

  Lusa’s eyes were bright and optimistic. “It looks great!”

  Their weariness vanishing, all the bears picked up speed until they were racing down the slope to the edge of the river. Kallik loved the feeling of cold air flowing through her pelt and the keen scent of the ice.

  They reached the riverbank a few bearlengths away from the shore. Snow-laden plants hung over the surface, and the air was filled with a soft gurgling sound from the river water flowing underneath the ice. Kallik took a long breath and let it out again in a sigh.

  It’s so peaceful here. I hope we’ve found the right place for the seals.

  Ujurak headed farther down the beach, while Kissimi crouched down at the very edge of the river and reached out with one paw to pat the frozen surface. “Ice!” he squeaked. “Ice!”

  Kallik gasped with surprise. “Hey, did you hear that?” she exclaimed. “Kissimi said ice!”

  “He’s so clever!” Lusa marveled.

  Toklo groaned. “I suppose now he’ll never stop talking. Just like a certain annoying black bear.”

  Lusa turned around and kicked out with her hindpaws, showering snow over Toklo. “I’ll show you how I can be really annoying!”

  She dashed off, following Ujurak, and Toklo lumbered after her.

  Meanwhile Kissimi was still crouching over the river, peering in fascination at the shapes made by the flowing water.