Great Bear Lake (13 page)

“Oh, Ujurak!” Lusa's voice was husky with relief. “Can you stand up?”

The young cub blinked in bewilderment. “What happened? Where—” He tried to scramble up and collapsed again, his words ending in a gasp of pain.

“A firebeast hit you,” Toklo said.

He wasn't sure that Ujurak understood. The small cub's eyes had closed again, and he kept whimpering as Lusa sniffed all over his body.

“I don't think you've broken any bones,” she murmured reassuringly, smoothing Ujurak's fur with one paw. “Try to get up. We'll find a place to shelter.”

“I can't,” Ujurak moaned.

“Of course you can.” Lusa bent down and gave the little cub's snout a comforting lick. “Remember when you were a goose, flying away on big, strong wings? You can do anything.”

“…not a goose now,” Ujurak murmured, but he made a big effort and hauled himself to his paws.

“Lean on me,” Lusa encouraged him, shoving her shoulder under Ujurak's for support. “There's a hollow not far away.”

Staggering, paws weaving uncertainly, Ujurak let Lusa guide him down to a hollow just above the river, sheltered by a straggling berry bush.

Toklo plodded after them. “Ujurak, tell me about the healing plants,” he urged. “I'll find some for you.”

“Can't remember…” Ujurak breathed out the words, his eyes closing again.

Lusa curled protectively beside him, her eyes soft with sympathy. “Let him be. We'll ask him again in the morning.”

Toklo nodded, and settled himself on the rim of the hollow. Ujurak had survived this time, but what about the next? This wasn't a place where bears should be. It was too dangerous.

It's all my fault, because I wouldn't swim the river
. He made himself remember what Lusa had told him about his mother.
Was she right? Did Oka really love me?

Toklo sighed. However he tried to excuse himself, he had been a coward. And his cowardice had nearly cost Ujurak his life. The young cub might forgive him, but Toklo knew he would never be able to forgive himself.

Kallik had lost track of time.
She felt as if she'd been trekking across the empty landscape forever. The nights were so short; no sooner had the sun set than its glittering edge rose again from the flat horizon.

When the sun was at its fiercest and the flies were most troublesome, Kallik tried to find shade to sleep. Then she began trudging again.

Every so often she came across bear prints and droppings, and some of them were almost fresh. Once she saw a large male far ahead of her. She followed at a distance until he drew ahead and she lost sight of him.

As she trekked, she often thought about the family of bears she had seen set down by the metal bird. Kallik imagined playing with the she-cub and her brother, chasing them and scampering through the snow.

But most often, she thought about her mother and brother. All kinds of things could spark her memories. She could be curled behind a rock, sheltering from the sun, and suddenly
she'd remember being safe and warm, curled up with Nisa and Taqqiq in the birth den, listening to Nisa's stories of Silaluk and how she was chased by Robin, Chickadee, and Moose Bird. Or she'd be clawing the hole of a mouse in the hard ground and she'd remember crouching next to Taqqiq beside an ice hole, while Nisa taught them how to catch a seal. Even in this sunburnt wilderness, Kallik's paws tingled with excitement as she remembered how Nisa had dragged her prey up onto the ice; she could almost taste the rich fat as she sank her teeth into the meal her mother had provided.

Then, one morning, the sun grew hazy and soon it vanished altogether in a misty white cloud. The cloud sank lower and lower, unrolling across the plain until Kallik could barely see her own paws, and the sound they made was muted, as if she were padding across a covering of feathers. It was cold, too: not the hard, bright cold of the ice, but a raw chill that sank into her pelt and invaded her body with every breath. It was spooky to set her paws down when she had no idea of what lay ahead. She was walking blind, more alone than she had ever been before.

Kallik's eyes began to ache from the bright sheen of the mist around her, dazzling in the light of a sun she couldn't see. Gradually, the glare softened as the sun dropped in the sky, and then she felt like she was walking on the bottom of the sea. She must have slept, and she woke to see the same white mist, brightening then softening as the sun climbed and dropped in the sky for several days.

Once, to break the deathly silence, she let out a bark, but
her voice sounded feeble in the surrounding nothingness. Then she shivered as she wondered if something might have heard her, and be stalking her, creeping up on her unseen. From then on she padded as softly as she could, even trying to suppress the sound of her own breathing.

All she could feel was the hard ground under her paws and the chill of the mist that crept into the depths of her pelt. The marshes around her, with the pools and reeds and buzzing insects, might have vanished altogether.

Kallik wondered if she would spend the rest of her life padding through this unbroken whiteness.

And then came the bad memories. They seemed so real that it was like they were happening all over again. She saw her mother, Nisa, being pulled under the water by the orca. She called to her brother, Taqqiq, through the white mist.

“Taqqiq!” she cried.

Kallik started running through the wall of mist, bounding over sharp stones and spiky bushes.

“I'm coming, Taqqiq! I'll save you!”

Suddenly, she skidded to a halt. Ahead she could pick out two hazy shapes. White shapes, scarcely visible against the background, one much bigger than the other. A full-grown white bear was walking ahead of her, with a small cub at its side.

The cub spoke. “I'm tired! Let me ride on your back, please.”

Taqqiq!

Kallik watched the mother bear crouch down to let the cub scramble up into her fur. Then they set off again, with the
cub riding on his mother's shoulders. Their scent trail drifted behind them, tickling Kallik's nose. Scents she had thought she would never smell again.

“Mother! Taqqiq! It's me, Kallik! Wait for me!”

She hurled herself forward, but however fast she ran, the mother and cub stayed the same distance ahead of her, even though they didn't seem to be hurrying.

How could Nisa be here, when Kallik had seen her slip beneath the waves, dragged down by the orca? How could Taqqiq be with her, unless he were dead, too?

Kallik only knew that she had heard her brother speak, and she could pick up the familiar scents of Nisa and Taqqiq on the damp air. Her heart pounded as she raced along. But even when she put on an extra burst of speed, she knew she was dropping behind. Thicker mist surged between them, blotting her mother and brother from Kallik's sight. She let out a wail of desperation.

“Wait!” she begged. “I'm coming!”

The mist swirled; the indistinct figures of the two bears appeared again, Taqqiq still crouched on Nisa's back. They were even farther ahead now; they didn't turn their heads to look at Kallik as she panted along behind them, as if they didn't know that Kallik was there, or didn't care. Her muscles ached and her heart thudded hard enough to burst out of her chest. But it was no use; the faint shapes of Nisa and Taqqiq melted back into the fog.

“Don't leave me!” Kallik shrieked.

She ran on and on, calling for her mother, though now
the fog was as blank and empty as before. Suddenly a mound of white rose up in front of her; unable to stop in time, she crashed into it and felt the softness of fur.

“Mother?” she gasped.

The next thing she felt was a stinging cuff around her ear. Yelping with pain and shock, Kallik looked up. A female bear stood glaring down at her, but it wasn't Nisa.

Disappointment surged over Kallik. “You're not Nisa.”

“No, I'm not, whoever she might be,” the she-bear growled. “Now go away and leave me alone.”

“But there was a cub with you,” Kallik persisted. She might have been mistaken that she had seen her mother, but she had definitely heard Taqqiq's voice. “Where is he?”

“There's no cub. Go away.”

Kallik gazed around desperately, but Taqqiq's shape had vanished into the mist. “He was here,” she insisted. “Did you see where he went?”

“How many more times?” the she-bear snarled. “No.”

Kallik stared down at her paws. She felt exhausted and confused.

“Are you still here?” the bear asked bad-temperedly.

Kallik crouched low to the ground. “I'm sorry I ran into you,” she said. As the bear turned and began to pad off, she added, “Are you going the same way as the other bears?”

The she-bear paused and gave her a curt nod.

“Do you know where the tracks lead?” Kallik burst out.

The other bear let out a grunt of surprise. “You don't know? Well, you're only a cub, I suppose. This is the Claw Path. It
leads to a lake where bears meet in peace on the Longest Day. No bear will raise claw against another while they stay beside that lake.”

“Why not?” Kallik asked, trying to imagine somewhere she would be allowed to eat her kill without worrying that a bigger bear would steal it from her.

“It's the place where the white bears meet to call back the ice. We order the sun down from the sky so the cold can return and we can go out to feed once more.”

Kallik stared at her in astonishment. “Can we really do that? Make the ice come back?”

The she-bear nodded solemnly. “Once the lake was connected to the everlasting ice,” she continued. “But the ice shrank and melted, cutting the lake off and trapping the bear spirits that live under the surface. Many bears gather there now, and pay respects to the deep, still water. We never forget that once, long ago, it was ice.”

“The spirits are there?” Kallik's belly lurched. Did that mean she would be able to see her mother again, as well as find her brother? Perhaps that was why she had seen Nisa and Taqqiq in the fog; they must be traveling toward that sacred place, too.

The she-bear didn't seem to have heard Kallik's question. She was gazing into the mist, as if she could see something there that Kallik could not. “They say the lake is on the route that leads to the Place of Everlasting Ice.”

“Oh!” Kallik exclaimed. “The Place of Everlasting Ice is real!”

“Some bears say the place is nothing more than a legend. I
know
it is real, but it's very far away—farther than your paws could take you.”

“I have to get there,” Kallik insisted. “I'm looking for my brother.” Hopefully, she added, “May I travel with you? I'd help you find food.”

The female grunted. “Eat all mine, more like. No, it's best to travel alone. One mouth to feed, one pelt to protect.”

Kallik's heart sank. “But what about all the other bears?” she protested. “The ones who left tracks here?”

“Just because many bears have passed this way doesn't mean they were traveling together,” the other bear replied, beginning to pad away. Glancing over her shoulder, she added, “Didn't your mother tell you that white bears live alone?”

Only when they're old enough,
Kallik thought, digging her claws into the ground. She knew it would be no good to follow the she-bear; she wasn't like Nanuk or the she-bear who had been dropped safely from the metal bird, willing to help a strange cub. So she sat and waited until the huge white shape melted into the mist.

Loneliness flooded through Kallik, as cold and heavy as the fog. She was going the right way, but it seemed so unfair that she still had to be on her own. If she had really seen Nisa and Taqqiq traveling toward the lake, why hadn't they waited for her? And if Taqqiq was with their mother now, that must mean he was dead. So what was the point of going to the Place of Everlasting Ice to look for him?

Then Kallik's pelt prickled as she asked herself why Nisa's
spirit had appeared to her.
She must have been showing me the way to go! She said she would take care of me.
Kallik knew that she had to keep going; besides, she wanted to see the lake the she-bear had told her about. Even if she didn't find Taqqiq, she might hear news of what had happened to him. She heaved herself to her paws and kept on walking.

A faint breeze sprang up, pulling the fog into thin shreds. Soon Kallik could see where she was going again, following the bear trail through the same bleak, unfriendly expanse of mud and reeds and stunted bushes. Far ahead, she could make out a white dot that she thought was the she-bear; peering past her, Kallik picked out two or three more white dots, moving in the same direction. She headed after them, but didn't try to catch up. None of them was Nisa or Taqqiq, and she guessed she wouldn't be welcome to travel with them.

The breeze stiffened, blowing toward Kallik, until she was fighting for every step against a raw wind that flattened her fur to her sides and blew stinging debris into her eyes. Gray clouds rolled across the sky. Rain began to fall, harder and harder; the wind drove it into Kallik's face in cold flurries. Soon her pelt was soaked; she waded through a sea of mud that splashed up and streaked her white fur. Head down, she struggled on, almost as blind as she had been in the mist. Every pawstep was more of an effort than the last.

“I've got to find shelter,” she muttered.

Glancing around, she couldn't see anything except the sweeping rain; she was almost ready to lie down in the mud and let it wash over her. But she was afraid that if she did that
she would never get up again.

Then she saw something dark looming up, a couple of bearlengths away from her path. She veered toward it.
Maybe it's a cave, like the one where I hid from the insects
. But when she reached it she saw it was only an outcrop of rock poking up out of the mud. Sick with disappointment, she turned away, then looked back.

You won't find anything better, seal-brain!

The outcrop wasn't a real shelter, but at least it blocked out the worst of the wind. Kallik crouched at its base, huddling against the rock wall beneath a shallow overhang. Exhaustion swept over her; she didn't think she could have gone any farther if she had tried. Letting out a faint moan, she closed her eyes and listened to the buffeting of the wind and the lashing of the rain. She longed to feel the comforting touch of her mother's fur, to burrow into Nisa's side, where she would be warm and safe.

“Nisa, can you hear me?” she whispered. “Please help me. I don't think I can go on anymore.”

Kallik was drifting into sleep when she felt movement beside her; something was wriggling between her body and the rock. She started back and opened her eyes; blinking in astonishment, she saw the Arctic fox with the torn ear. Its pelt was drenched, showing every one of its ribs, and it was shivering wretchedly. Its terrified gaze locked with Kallik's; it was tense with fear and ready to flee if she showed the least sign of a threat.

A spark of warmth woke inside Kallik at the sight of the
pathetic bundle of fur and bones. She wasn't the only one to be alone and miserable.

“It's okay, fox,” she murmured. “You can stay.”