Great Bear Lake (24 page)

“See?” Taqqiq sneered. “None of them want you here, either. You're not a real white bear. White bears will do whatever they have to in order to survive.”

“I'm more of a white bear than you are! Real white bears respect the spirits.” Kallik tried to make a dash for the shore
but her brother stood in her way and pushed her roughly back with his shoulder.

Losing her balance, Kallik toppled over with a huge splash, and when she tried to get to her paws again there was nothing firm to stand on. She paddled frantically toward the beach, but Taqqiq blocked her way with a growl.

“Go, and don't come back!”

Kallik's legs ached and so did her neck as she tried to hold her muzzle above the water. There was something wrong with the lake here: The water didn't flow back and forth against the shore, but around in circles, making it impossible to swim in a straight line. The water didn't seem to hold her up the way it had done in the ocean; it felt too thin, not cold and comfortably thick as she scooped it with her paws. Her fur was heavy and soaked, dragging her down. Wind whipped the waves so that they crashed over her head, and she choked as she breathed in water.

“Nisa!” she wailed. “Nisa, save me!”

But the only answer was the blustering wind and the surging of the water around her ears.

Lusa thought she heard a voice
on the wind. She stopped swimming and began to tread water, listening. The sun flashed brightly on the lake, hurting her eyes; she couldn't see anything until a wave lifted her up. Then she spotted a white bear cub, only a few bearlengths away. She was trapped in a whirling current that was spinning her around like a twig. Her paws flailed and her head kept dipping under the surface.

“Nisa!” The cry was weaker now, half-choked by water.

“Hold on!” Lusa called. “I'm coming!”

She kicked out, clawing through the water toward the floundering cub. The white bear was sinking again when Lusa reached her; Lusa's legs pumped as she shoved her out of the swirling water. “Don't struggle,” she gasped. “I won't let you drown.”

She grabbed the white cub's scruff to keep her head above the surface. Out on the lake, so far away from the tree spirits who would have helped her, Lusa wondered if she could keep her promise. It was harder to swim with the white bear's
weight dragging her down; the exhausted cub seemed hardly conscious, unable to help herself.

Lusa struck out strongly toward a spit of land stretching out into the lake, its stones glittering in the sinking sun. The currents were fiercer here, threatening to pull her out into the endless lake, but she kept on paddling determinedly. Suddenly her paws thudded against mud and stones, and Lusa managed to stand with water lapping at her shoulders. The white cub couldn't hold herself up, even though she was bigger than Lusa, with longer legs. She slumped down as soon as Lusa let go of her scruff, so Lusa had to half-push, half-carry her until they splashed out of the water onto the stretch of hard, pebbly ground where they collapsed side by side.

Water was streaming from the white cub's pelt. She coughed up a couple of mouthfuls of water and lay still, her chest heaving.

Lusa stood up, shook droplets from her fur, and looked around. They had made it to the end of the spit where it joined the lakeshore. Behind her lay the water; ahead of her and on both sides stretched the bare, treeless land she had seen from her perch in the forest. Just ahead, the ground shelved gently upward to a low hill, where Lusa could see the top of some tall flat-face construction. It wasn't as wide as a flat-face den, but it was much, much taller, as tall as a pine tree, with openings all the way up.

She could hear the grunts and growls of bears many bearlengths farther along the shore. They were hidden behind a
rocky ridge, jutting up like teeth from the marshy ground.

She turned back to the white bear cub, who was huddled on the stones with her eyes shut tight. “Wake up,” Lusa urged, nudging her gently.

The white cub woke with a jerk. Blinking, she looked around as if she was trying to remember what had happened. When her gaze fell on Lusa her eyes stretched very wide.

“How did you escape?”

Lusa put her head on one side. “Escape? From what?”

“They were all around you. I thought you were going to be crushed! They should never have stolen you, I'm sorry.”

Suddenly Lusa understood. “You think I'm Miki, the cub the white bears took from the forest?”

The white bear sat up, and pulled a piece of water-weed off her head with her paw. “You're not?”

“No, Miki's my friend. I came to rescue him.”

The white cub stared at her. “But you're only one cub. The white bears will tear you to pieces. You must get away from here.”

Lusa ignored the cold trickle of fear down her spine. “I don't care. Miki is my friend, and I have to save him.”

The white cub searched her face for a long moment. “If I can't change your mind, will you let me help?”

“You?” Lusa stared at her in surprise. “Why would you want to help a black bear?”

“Because you helped me,” the white cub replied, sitting up. “And…and because the bear who stole your friend is my brother, Taqqiq. We were separated when our mother died. I
looked and looked for him, and now—” She broke off, swallowed, and began again. “He and his friends took the black bear cub because they want to force the other black bears to give up their food. But that's not the way to feed ourselves. What they did was wrong. Will you let me help?”

Lusa wondered if she could trust this bear she had only just met. And in spite of what she'd told Toklo, she didn't have a plan. Maybe two bears would have a chance when one didn't have a whisker of hope. “Yes, if you want to. Thank you.” Later she'd have time to think about how strange this was—how crazy she was, trying to rescue Miki from all the white bears. But it wasn't the right time now. There was a black bear in need of her help.

The white cub stood up, her broad thick-furred paws splayed on the stones. “My name's Kallik,” she said shyly. “What's yours?”

“I'm Lusa.”
That's enough chatter. We have to help Miki. It's not like this white bear is going to be my friend once Miki and I join the black bears again.
“What we have to do first,” Lusa decided, “is find out where Miki is.”

“Taqqiq brought him from the forest,” Kallik told her, pointing with her muzzle to the dark line of trees on the other side of the lake. “The last time I saw him was over there, where those rocks jut up.”

Lusa glanced at the ridge, from where the noises of bears came.

“The bears are arguing about going into the forest,” Kallik explained. “I'm afraid that Miki might get hurt. My brother
and his friends are stirring up the other white bears, making them angry with the black bears. I don't know what is going to happen.”

“Maybe nothing. Maybe they've already sent Miki back,” Lusa said hopefully. “But we have to be sure. We need to get closer and look for him. Come on!”

She led Kallik across the marsh to where the ground sloped up to the rocks. As they scrambled to the top, she could see muddy ground spreading out in all directions, the bleak surface broken only by boulders hunched like gray bears, and a few stunted bushes. Here they were closer to the flat-face building she had spotted from the lakeside. A stone path stretched away into the distance; where it started, beside the tower, a firebeast was crouching.

“Be careful,” Kallik said nervously. “We don't have to go near that, do we?”

“I think the firebeast is asleep,” Lusa said. She tipped her head back and looked up at the top of the building; she remembered how she used to climb the tallest tree in the Bear Bowl, looking down at all the other animals, and beyond.
If I could climb up there,
she thought,
I'd be able to see Miki
.

Looking more closely at the construction, Lusa realized it was too smooth to climb on the outside. But on the inside, visible through the openings all the way up, was a steeply sloping path with ridges. The opening at the bottom was quite small, but Lusa knew that she could squeeze through it.

Yes! That's it!

Turning to Kallik, she asked, “Can Miki still run?”

“I think so. When I last saw him, he was wriggling around quite a lot.”

“Good. Then this is what we'll do. If Miki's still down there, I'll find a hiding place not too far away from this building, and—”

“You'll have to hide really well,” Kallik warned. “Taqqiq will steal you, too, if he sees you.”

“Then I won't let him see me.” Lusa's belly clenched with a mixture of fear and determination. “Back in the Bear Bowl, my mother used to say that I could hide in a shadow!”

Kallik still looked worried—but at least she didn't ask what a Bear Bowl was. Lusa was getting tired of explaining.

“What should I do?” Kallik asked

“I need you to tell Miki where I'm hiding, then try to distract Taqqiq and his friends long enough for Miki to find me. Then I'll jump out in his place. The white bears will think I'm Miki and chase me. But I'll run away and climb the building.”

Kallik's eyes stretched wide. “But it's a flat-face thing!”

Lusa shrugged. “Flat-faces are okay, mostly.”

“What if Taqqiq catches you?”

He'll tear me apart
. Lusa could almost feel the sharp claws slashing through her fur. For a moment fear threatened to choke her, but she forced it down. “He won't. He's too big to fit through the opening, and even if he does, black bears can climb faster than any other bear.” At least, that's what King had said. But maybe he'd never seen a white bear climb. Her paws tingled. “While Taqqiq is chasing me, Miki can run
away, back to the forest.”

“I hope it works,” Kallik said.

“So do I.”

Kallik clambered up onto the ridge and stood on her back legs to see over a boulder.

“He's there.” She jerked her head downward.

Lusa's faint hope that Miki had already been returned to the forest vanished. She raced to the boulder and sprang up to Kallik's side.

Down below, she could see a large gathering of huge white bears. Roars and grunts suggested they were arguing about something. Lusa leaned forward and strained her ears to hear what they were saying.

“We're not really going to take over the forest, are we?” asked one white bear, who looked younger than the others.

An old male bear shook his head. “Of course not. Those cubs have blubber in their brains if they think we'd ever do something like that. White bears will starve before they steal food from black bears!”

A couple of bears shot alarmed glances at each other, as if they thought they might really starve, but a she-bear with a small cub by her flank nodded.

“Silaluk loses all his flesh during the hunt, but he still returns each suncircle. We will do the same; we just have to have faith that the ice will come back and there will be enough to eat.” Her cub butted her stomach, searching for milk that wasn't there, and she bent her head to hush him.

A broad-shouldered bear with scars on his muzzle stepped
forward. “Even if we are going to leave the black bears in peace, there is still the problem of the cub that they stole. What are we going to do about him?”

There was a murmur of unease among the bears, and a few turned away as though they didn't want Miki to be their problem.

“Siqiniq will know,” said the old male bear. “Ask her, Kunik.”

“I heard the question,” grunted a rasping voice; whoever was speaking was hidden from Lusa behind some larger bears. They shifted apart to reveal an ancient-looking she-bear, her flanks tucked up so that all her bones stuck out through her thin pelt.

“That's Siqiniq, the oldest bear,” Kallik whispered in Lusa's ear.

Siqiniq swung her head to look at the bears around her, who were gazing at her hopefully as if she could send Miki back to the forest with a twitch of her nose. “The bears who stole the black cub must take him back. That is their duty. If they appease Silaluk by putting right what they have done wrong, the peace on the Longest Day will be preserved, and the ice will come back.”

Kunik shrugged; his fur crumpled into deep folds where it didn't fit his thin body properly. “Your faith humbles us all, Siqiniq,” he said. “But I do not share your faith that these young bears will ever do what is right, not for themselves or for every white bear.”

Siqiniq moved to the edge of the bears and stared down at
the lake. “Maybe,” she commented, so quietly that Lusa hardly heard her over the wind. “But theirs will be the price to pay if they don't. Silaluk sees all, that much I do know.”

Lusa followed her gaze toward the shore, where four white bears were sprawled on the ground beside a clump of thorn trees. In the middle of them, trapped by their long legs and massive bodies, was Miki. He scrambled at one of the bears, trying to get past, but the white bear cuffed him and sent him rolling backward. Miki squealed and the four white bears huffed with satisfaction.

“Miki,” Lusa whimpered.

“Taqqiq and his new friends.” Kallik's sad voice spoke at her shoulder. “Kunik's right: They'll never take Miki back to the forest. Which means we might have to fight them if we want to help him. Lusa, are you sure about this?”

“Quite sure.” Lusa squared her shoulders. “There's no one else to help Miki. Let's go.”