Seekers #6: Spirits in the Stars (5 page)

“I’ve almost forgotten what running water sounds like,” Lusa remarked, listening to the gurgle of the icy current, so different from the silent depths of the sea.

Splashing through the stream, the bears headed across an open space where snow and earth had been churned together.

“The musk oxen have been here,” Ujurak said as he peered at the hoofprints.

“There are so many of them!” Kallik exclaimed.

Toklo swiped his tongue around his jaws. “Good!”

They were still too full to think of tracking down the musk oxen, so they kept going to the far side of the valley. Here the ground sloped steeply upward to a ridge, but when they tried to climb, the loose snow gave way beneath their paws, and they slid helplessly back again.

“Now who’s stuck?” Lusa teased as Toklo pawed his way out of a drift, scattering snow as he shook his pelt.

Toklo just growled in annoyance.

They tried again and again, and before long Lusa was too wet and exhausted to think about teasing anymore. “There has to be an easier way than this,” she muttered as she struggled to climb through thick snow.

Glancing around to make sure she hadn’t lost sight of her friends, she realized that Kallik wasn’t with them. Anxiety stabbed through her, until she spotted the white bear farther up the valley, nosing around at the bottom of the slope.

“Look over here!” Kallik called.

Lusa trudged over and found Kallik standing at the mouth of a gully leading upward, where broken rocks poked out of the covering of snow.

“This looks easier,” Kallik went on.

The two she-bears waited while Toklo and Ujurak came plodding over. Toklo gazed up the gully, then nodded. “It seems to cut through the ridge,” he said. “We might as well try it.”

Kallik took the lead, bounding easily up the broken rocks. Lusa found it harder—sometimes she had to bunch her muscles for a long leap—but she kept going, her breath puffing out in clouds in the cold air.

A breeze was blowing from the top of the gully; Lusa picked up a salt tang carried along with it and realized that they were heading toward the sea.

As they reached the top of the gully, Kallik halted suddenly.

“What can you see?” Lusa asked.

She scrambled up to peer out from behind her friend; Ujurak and Toklo caught up a moment later.

In front of Kallik the ground leveled out, stretching in front of them for many bearlengths until it stopped abruptly. The salt tang of the sea was even stronger.

“Cliffs,” Ujurak murmured. “We can’t go that way. They’ll just lead us down to the sea again, if we don’t fall off and break our necks.”

“Hey, look!” Toklo pointed with his snout toward the edge of the cliffs.

Lusa spotted a white bear struggling through the snow, dragging the body of a seal behind her. The seal left a furrow in the snow, smeared with blood.

“I’m surprised there are so many white bears on this island,” Kallik murmured, looking puzzled. “Mostly we live alone on the ice. We don’t stay together once we’re full-grown.”

Lusa shrugged. “Well, these ones do.”

“Let’s chase her off,” Toklo suggested, bouncing a little on his paws. “Then we can steal her catch.”

Kallik gave him a shove. “What’s the point? If there are seals around here, we can hunt them fresh.”

“And not risk a fight,” Lusa added.

Toklo shrugged. “Okay.”

“We could go and talk to her, though,” Ujurak pointed out. “She might be able to tell us something useful.”

When the bears emerged from the gully, they had hardly covered a bearlength before the white she-bear turned and saw them. She stared at them for a moment, her eyes wide with alarm; then she lumbered back the way she had come, abandoning her catch in the snow.

“It’s okay! We won’t hurt you!” Kallik called after her, but the white bear didn’t seem to hear her.

“She didn’t even try to defend her catch,” Toklo said, sounding faintly disappointed.

“Maybe she’s not really hungry,” Lusa responded. “She’s pretty thin, though. She looks as if she’s in need of a good meal!”

Toklo padded up to the seal and gave it a quick sniff; Kallik and Ujurak gathered around, too, while Lusa headed past them to peer over the edge of the cliff. Her claws dug through the snow to the ground beneath as she gazed over the dizzying drop to the shore below, where sharp rocks were half covered by the frozen sea. Cautiously she edged backward again.

“I wonder how that white bear got down there,” she murmured to herself.

“It’s prey!” Toklo was arguing when Lusa rejoined her friends. “We can’t just leave it here.”

“But our bellies are full now,” Kallik retorted. “And I don’t want to drag a seal carcass all over the island. Ujurak, what do you think?”

“It won’t be too hard to carry if we all take turns,” the smaller brown bear pointed out.

“Well, maybe . . .” Kallik still sounded doubtful.

Lusa bent her head to sniff at the seal, wondering if she felt hungry enough to eat some now. A strange, rank scent was rising from the carcass, like a mixture of rotten fruit and firebeasts.

“Yuck!” she exclaimed, flinching. “I’m not eating that. It’s disgusting!”

All her instincts were telling her that they shouldn’t eat the seal, but the others had hardly noticed her reaction and were still continuing to discuss whether they should take it with them or not.

“Have you smelled it?” Lusa interrupted. “We really shouldn’t eat it. There’s something wrong with it.”

Her friends broke off their discussion and stared at her.

“Lusa, it’s
prey
,” Toklo pointed out, as if he were trying to explain something to a very small and stupid cub.

Kallik let out a huff of laughter. “You’ll be glad enough of it when your belly is empty again.”

“No, I
won’t
,” Lusa retorted, furious that they were laughing at her; even Ujurak’s eyes gleamed with amusement. “It smells wrong. No bear should eat it.”

“Well,
I’m
going to eat it,” Toklo announced. “So it smells a bit weird. So what?”

Lusa gazed at him in horror as he began to drag the seal toward him. “No!” she screeched, leaping across the carcass and butting Toklo in the chest.

Toklo was so astonished by her attack that he backed off, letting the seal drop. “Are you bee-brained, or what?” he demanded.

Lusa didn’t bother to answer. Giving the seal a strong shove, she tipped it over the edge of the cliff and drew a breath of relief as she watched it splatter on the rocks below.

“Lusa, what are you doing?” Kallik asked, anger in her voice. “That’s a waste of good food.”

“It’s
not
good; that’s the point.” Lusa knew she had to stand up for herself and what she had done. “Eating that seal would have made us ill.”

“You don’t know that,” Toklo growled.

Lusa tried hard to think of a reason her friends would accept.
How could they smell that seal and think it was good to eat?
“I just do—okay?” she said defensively. “And we can easily catch something else later.”

“Easily?” Toklo huffed scornfully. “There are lots of white bears living around here, or haven’t you noticed? That means there’s going to be plenty of competition for prey.”

Guilt stabbed Lusa like a thorn in her heart, but she still didn’t back down.
There was something wrong with that seal, and I’m not going to say I’m sorry for saving the stupid fluff-brains!

She noticed that Ujurak’s anger had faded and he was giving her a very odd look. Lusa almost asked him what the matter was. Then she realized he probably thought she had bees in her brain for throwing prey over a cliff.

I don’t care,
she told herself.
Somehow they’ll find out that I was right.

Chapter Five

Kallik

Kallik felt sorry for Lusa as
she watched the small black bear trying to defend herself. Whether she was right about the seal or not, she was only trying to help.

“Well, the rest of us are going to look for the seal hunting ground, and when we find it, we’ll catch some prey,” Toklo growled, thrusting his snout aggressively at Lusa. “If you don’t want to eat it, you can keep your mouth shut and stay away. I’m not going to gnaw frozen twigs, even if that’s good enough for you.”

He marched off, following the seal track in the snow, then halted and looked back over his shoulder. “Are you coming or not? I think that if we follow this track back, it will lead us to the place where that white bear caught the seal.”

“Okay.” Ujurak set off, trotting in Toklo’s wake.

Kallik exchanged a sympathetic glance with Lusa before following, aware that the smaller bear was trailing unhappily behind.

She herself was feeling optimistic. Toklo thought that with so many white bears on the island there would be competition for prey, but Kallik didn’t think he was right. So far they had seen plenty of prey, enough to support a good number of bears.

She wondered whether this place was still part of the Endless Ice. It certainly felt as cold as it did on the frozen sea. She reveled in the frosty air as she followed Toklo along the track of bear pawprints and seal blood.

“Look, I can see the pawprints the white bear made when she ran away,” Lusa said after a while. She was sounding more cheerful again, as if she was putting the quarrel behind her.

Kallik padded over to see. The pawprints were clearer here, undisturbed by blood or the marks of where the seal was dragged through the snow. A feeling of uneasiness crept up on Kallik as she looked at them.

“There’s something wrong here,” she said to Lusa. “The prints are uneven, as if she was stumbling through the snow. What was the matter with her?”

Lusa shrugged, unable to reply, though Kallik saw that her friend was looking uneasy, too. They followed the prints, heading in the same direction as the seal track a bearlength or so away. The tracks led to a jumble of boulders at the edge of the cliff. From here it looked as if the ground fell away to the shore.

“This is where the seals come from,” Toklo grunted in satisfaction.

He quickened his pace and rounded the boulders, until he halted with a huff of astonishment. Kallik hurried forward to find out what he had seen. Peering around Toklo’s massive shoulder, she saw the white she-bear, slumped on her side in the snow.

For a moment Kallik tensed, half expecting the strange bear to leap up and attack. Then she realized that the bear was hardly conscious; she let out a long moan, and her paws scrabbled feebly in the snow.

Brushing past Toklo, Kallik went up to her. “What’s wrong?” she asked. “Is there anything we can do to help you?”

The white bear groaned again, struggling to breathe. “My belly . . . it’s on fire.”

Kallik leaned her head against the white bear’s shoulder, trying to offer comfort, but the other bear jerked away from her, snapping her sharp teeth.

“Leave me alone,” she growled. “I won’t let you hurt my baby.”

Kallik backed away, staring in surprise. As the white bear moved, she revealed a tiny cub trying to suckle from her belly. Its eyes were still closed, and its hair was so fine that it looked almost bald.

So tiny!
Kallik marveled.
It must be newborn
.

“We won’t touch your cub,” Lusa said gently, padding up to stand beside Kallik.

The she-bear’s only reply was a hostile snarl that turned to a groan as she clawed at her belly. The cub whimpered and tried to burrow deeper into its mother’s fur.

“Do you live with those other bears?” Toklo asked. “Where are your dens?”

The sick she-bear glared at him. “Why would I tell you?”

“We’re not here to do any harm,” Kallik tried to reassure her. “We need to know about this island, that’s all. And if you tell us where to find your friends, we’ll fetch them and maybe they can help you.”

“No bear can help me.” The she-bear’s words turned into a groan, and she closed her eyes.

“I wonder why she’s ill.” Ujurak pressed forward and gave the she-bear a sniff. “She’s thin, but she’s not starving. . . . You can see she’s full of milk.”

“But she smells weird,” Kallik added, taking a good sniff in her turn.

“A bit like that seal,” Lusa agreed.

As her friend spoke, apprehension began to gather inside Kallik, like a stone in her belly.
What if Lusa was right?
Can
seals make us sick?

Ujurak approached the mother bear cautiously, sniffing at her fur as if he was trying to work out what was wrong.

Maybe he knows of an herb that will make her well,
Kallik thought hopefully.

But the she-bear didn’t understand. She snapped feebly at Ujurak and lashed out at him with one paw. Ujurak jumped back swiftly to avoid the blow.

“Come on,” Toklo said roughly. “We can’t do anything to help her. And our being here is only making her worse.”

Kallik realized that Toklo was impatient to be hunting seals, but even so she had to admit that he was right.
I think this bear is dying. And what will happen to her cub then?

Toklo led the way along the seal track, heading down toward the beach. Lusa and Ujurak followed, with Kallik bringing up the rear. She kept casting glances back toward the other white bear and her cub, even when they were out of sight. She couldn’t get the tiny cub out of her mind. Its pink, hairless skin looked so vulnerable in the biting cold.

That night Kallik lay curled up in the snow-den she and her companions had dug out against the cliff face. She listened to the peaceful breathing of her friends, but she couldn’t sleep.

If the mother bear dies, her cub will die, too.
The words echoed through her mind, over and over again.

No!
Kallik sat up, careful not to wake the others. She knew that she couldn’t abandon the cub, not if there was something she could do to save it.

Nisa didn’t let the orca take me. She gave up her life so that I would be safe. Now it’s my turn; I have to help this cub, whatever it takes.

The first light of dawn was glimmering on the snow as Kallik carefully slid out of the den and retraced her steps along the seal track to the top of the cliff. Beside the heap of boulders the mother bear lay dead, cold as a stone. Kallik fought with sadness and regret. She had known from the first there was nothing any bear could have done to help the mother.

But what about the cub?

Kallik pawed through the dead bear’s belly fur until she came upon the limp body of the cub. He lay so still that at first she thought he was dead, too. Her heart swelled with grief.

Oh, spirits, no! Please . . .

Then she saw, as if in answer to her silent pleading, that the cub’s chest was rising and falling as he breathed: a slight movement that Kallik had almost missed. Thankfulness washed over her as she realized the tiny creature was still alive.

Cupping her paws around him, she breathed warm breath over his body until he gave a wriggle and started to whimper.

“There, small one,” Kallik whispered, pushing him up against one of his dead mother’s teats. “See if your mother has any milk to give you.”

The cub latched onto the teat and began to suckle, feebly at first, then more strongly. Kallik waited for him to finish. Then she crouched down beside the cub and nudged him onto her shoulders. When she was sure that he was clinging securely, she turned and padded down the path, carrying the cub to her friends.

When she reached the beach, the other three bears were emerging from the den.

“There you are, Kallik!” Toklo called to her. “We didn’t know where you’d gone off to. You shouldn’t—” He broke off, staring. “
What
have you got there?”

“I went back,” Kallik explained, trying to keep a defensive note out of her voice as she padded over to Toklo and the others. “The mother bear is dead. I couldn’t leave the cub to die, too.”

“And how will you keep him alive?” Toklo asked scathingly. “We have no milk.”

Kallik faced the brown bear steadfastly. “I don’t know, but I’m going to try.”

“Your brain’s full of cloudfluff!” Though Toklo’s voice was angry, his eyes were haunted, as if he was revisiting some terrible memory. After his first horrified glance, he didn’t look at the cub.

Kallik took a step forward, baring her teeth. She would fight for the cub if she had to. Toklo was her friend, but the rage of protectiveness that surged up inside her made her forget everything except the threat to the cub.

For a moment Toklo held the white bear’s gaze. Then Kallik saw the haunted look in his eyes fade, replaced by respect.

“Do what you want,” he muttered, turning aside to talk to Ujurak.

Lusa padded up to Kallik, her bright eyes alive with interest. “Can I see?” When Kallik nodded, she stretched out her neck and gave the cub a gentle sniff. “Oh, Kallik, he’s adorable! Have you thought of a name for him yet?”

“Yes,” Kallik replied. “I’m going to call him Kissimi. It means ‘alone.’”

“But he’s not alone anymore,” Lusa pointed out. “He has you.”

Yes,
Kallik thought, deep satisfaction welling up inside her.
Yes, he has me.