Seekers #6: Spirits in the Stars (8 page)

She pulled herself up and over the summit of the rocks and practically fell onto the snow-covered beach of a cove beyond. Kallik sprang down after her a moment later; together they crouched, panting, behind a heap of boulders and waited.

They could hear growls and snarls from the white bears on the other side of the outcrop. After a few moments Unalaq’s voice rose above the others. “Stay away from our hunting ground! These are our seals. We’ll be watching to make sure you don’t steal any.”

Lusa and Kallik remained silent, huddled in hiding behind the boulders. For a few moments they could hear pawsteps and snuffling on the other side of the outcrop; then the sounds faded to silence.

“They’ve gone!” Kallik gasped with relief.

Now that the danger was over, Lusa was able to look around her. The cove felt safe, small and sheltered between looming cliffs. Out on the sea-ice she spotted the dark patches of seal breathing holes, showing that there would be good hunting here for the white bears.

“Why did Unalaq say this was their hunting ground?” Kallik wondered. “White bears don’t really have hunting grounds like brown bears do. And they don’t live in groups together, either. These white bears are really weird.”

“I suppose they come here because this is where the seals are,” Lusa replied.

She noticed there was a harsh tang in the air, as if firebeasts had been breathing smoke everywhere. And beneath that stench was something sharper, like some sort of liquid; Lusa gagged as she breathed it in.

“I don’t like it here,” she said. “It smells terrible.”

“Then let’s go back,” Kallik suggested, rising to her paws.

“No,” Lusa said stubbornly. “We have to find out what that stink is first.”

Peering around more carefully, she noticed that the ice and snow had melted from some of the rocks farthest away from the shoreline, and that steam was rising from them.

“Look at that,” she said to Kallik, pointing with one paw. “That’s not right. I’m going to see what’s causing it.”

She bounded up the beach, with Kallik following more slowly. Scrambling over the rocks, Lusa spotted a flat-face pipe, like the ones they had seen where the flat-faces were taking oil from the ground, only smaller. This pipe was cracked, and foul-smelling black stuff was oozing out of it.

“It looks a bit like oil—but it doesn’t smell like it.” Lusa turned away, clapping a paw over her nose as if she could block out the stench. The stuff smelled like the dead seal, and like Sura, but here the smell was so strong that it made Lusa’s eyes water and her belly flip over.

“This place is
really
bad,” she choked out.

Even Kallik was looking worried by now as she stared at the pipe and the oozing stuff. “You’re right, Lusa,” she murmured. “We have to tell Ujurak and Toklo about this.”

Chapter Eight

Ujurak

“Okay, little cub,” Ujurak said. He
crouched down just outside the thornbushes that screened the entrance to their den, so that he was eye-to-eye with Kissimi. “I’m a seal. What are you going to do to me?”

Kissimi let out a squeak of delight and pounced on Ujurak, batting at him with small, soft paws. Ujurak rolled over, paws in the air. “Oh! Oh! A big, fierce, white bear got me!”

“Oh, please . . .” Toklo muttered from where he sat a little way up the hill from the mouth of the den. “You’re getting as bad as Kallik.”

Ujurak sat up, shaking his pelt, and gently brushed the snow from Kissimi’s fine white fur. “We’re just playing,” he replied mildly. Affection washed over him as he glanced over at Toklo. He knew very well that whatever the big grizzly said, he wouldn’t let the little cub die. “I told Kallik I’d look after him, and—”

He broke off as he spotted movement farther down the valley and made out Kallik and Lusa racing toward him.

“Toklo! Ujurak!” Their agitated cries rang through the air.

Toklo sprang to his paws, and Ujurak scanned the valley behind his two friends, half expecting to see some of the white bears chasing them. But nothing else moved in all the snowy landscape.

“What’s the matter?” Ujurak asked as the two she-bears panted up to him and flopped down on the snow. Anxiety clawed at him as he saw the distraught expression in their eyes.

“The white bears chased us,” Lusa panted. “Into a cove . . .”

“There’s foul stuff leaking out,” Kallik added, stumbling over her words in her eagerness to tell the story. “Sickness!”

“Sick seals! Sick bears!” Lusa wailed.

“Calm down.” Toklo strode over to them, authority in his voice. He rested a paw on Lusa’s shoulder. “Start at the beginning.”

As the two she-bears caught their breath, Kissimi wobbled over to Kallik, letting out squeaks of joy at seeing her again. Kallik let him climb onto her back and snuggle into her fur, while Lusa began the story.

Ujurak listened with growing concern as he learned what Lusa and Kallik had discovered. He could see that Toklo, too, was finally taking Lusa’s ideas more seriously.

“So we climbed out of the cove on the other side,” Kallik finished, “and sneaked past the no-claw dens so that the white bears wouldn’t see us.”

“What are we going to do now?” Lusa asked.

“That leaking stuff sounds really terrible,” Toklo said. “I feel like I can smell it now.”

Ujurak raised his snout into the air and sniffed experimentally. “I
can
smell it!” he exclaimed, gagging as the rank smell drifted into his nostrils. “Lusa, do you have some on your fur?”

Lusa twisted around, trying to see all her pelt at once. “Oh, yuck, I do!” she complained, rolling in the snow in an attempt to clean off a patch of her shoulder fur. “I don’t think I’ll ever get rid of it.”

Ujurak reeled back from the stench, his mind spinning.
That stuff is really bad.
He remembered the last time he’d been a flat-face on the ice, helping to rescue the creatures who had been poisoned by oil from the rig.
This must be a different kind of poison.

“If the stuff smells as horrible as this,” he said, “it must be poisoning the seals and the fish and everything in the sea. And then the bears that eat them.” He paused, then added decisively, “We need to tell Aga.”

Kallik rose to her paws. “We’ll have to find out where the white bears are denning. Come on.”

“Hey, Kallik.” Toklo stopped the white bear before she had gone more than a couple of pawsteps. “You’ll have to leave that cub behind.”

Kallik spun around; Ujurak saw how she fired up as soon as Toklo mentioned separating her from Kissimi. “No. He’s coming with us,” she stated flatly. “He can’t stay here on his own.”

“But you can’t let the other white bears see him,” Toklo argued. “Not after you lied about him to Aga.”

“Then I’ll stay here with him,” Kallik said, turning back. “The rest of you can go.”

Toklo blocked her as she tried to return to the den. His tone was determined, but not hostile. “Kallik, we’ve come this far together. You can’t let the cub change that.”

“He hasn’t changed that!” Kallik snapped back. “I’m still loyal to my friends.”

“Come with us, then,” Ujurak said, becoming impatient with the delay. “We’ll think what to do about Kissimi later.”

Kallik flashed him an uncertain glance, as if she was still torn between their friendship and her care for Kissimi. “Okay,” she agreed reluctantly.

With Kallik in the lead, Kissimi on her back, the four bears headed down the valley.

“This is the way to the place where I first met Aga and Illa,” Toklo pointed out. “Maybe the bears’ denning area is near there.”

Kallik grunted agreement; Ujurak could tell she still wasn’t feeling too friendly toward Toklo.

As they padded farther down the valley, Ujurak fell into step beside Lusa. “You’ve been digging into the snow for plants,” he began. “Do you know where the snow is thinnest?”

Lusa considered for a moment, glancing around and sniffing the air carefully. “There might be a place over there,” she replied, angling her ears toward a rough slope a few bearlengths away.

Ujurak bounded over to the place she showed him; pushing his nose down into the snow, he sniffed deeply. He smelled the tang of moss, then shook his head.
That’s not the right kind. I’ll know the smell when I find it.

Toklo and Kallik padded up, gazing curiously at Ujurak as he raised his head and shook snow off his muzzle.

“What are you doing?” Toklo asked curiously. “You won’t find any prey under there.”

“I know,” Ujurak replied absently, still sniffing and not paying much attention to what Toklo was saying.

The big grizzly let out a grunt. “Well, don’t be too long about it, whatever it is,” he said. “We’re going to see the white bears, or have you forgotten?”

He turned and plodded on, and after a moment’s hesitation Kallik followed him.

Ujurak went on checking a few more spots, instinctively aware of which herb he was looking for, even though he couldn’t remember ever having used it before.
My mother must be sending me a message.

At last the scent he was looking for flooded over him, tangy and clean. Scraping through the snow, he unearthed some delicate silver-gray shoots of moss. With a huff of satisfaction, he dug up some of them.

“Lusa, can you carry this under your chin?” he asked. “Take as much as you can manage.”

“What’s it for?” Lusa asked curiously.

“You’ll see.”

Ujurak bounded forward to catch up with Kallik and Toklo, Lusa behind him, carrying the moss. When they reached them, Kallik was digging a hole in the snow.

“You stay there,” she told Kissimi, nudging him gently into the hollow she had made. “You’ll be nice and warm. And you’re not to move, whatever happens, until I come back for you. Do you understand?”

Kissimi let out a squeak; then he crouched down and wrapped his paws over his nose, looking up at Kallik with wide eyes.

“That’s a good little cub,” she murmured, touching her nose to his. “Okay,” she added to the others. “Let’s go.”

“The white bears should be just over this ridge,” Toklo said. “That’s where they were coming from when I first met Aga.”

As they crossed the ridge, Ujurak noticed that a white bear was on watch again; he had a red tinge to his pelt, and Ujurak thought he recognized the bear who had been watching when they first arrived on the island.

The reddish bear came to meet them as they padded down the slope, and he gave a nod of recognition to Kallik and Lusa. “Have you come to tell us not to eat hares as well?” he asked.

He sounds almost friendly,
Ujurak thought, surprised and pleased. “We need to speak to Aga,” he announced.

The bear hesitated for a moment, then gestured with one paw. “Sure. Follow me. My name’s Yakone, by the way,” he added, looking at Kallik as he spoke.

“I’m Kallik,” the she-bear replied. “This is Lusa, and the brown bears are Toklo and Ujurak.”

Yakone narrowed his eyes, looking at Kallik with interest. He led them down the slope, from the crest of the ridge to a wide, flat expanse of snow with the mounds of several dens visible just above the surface. A few white bears, looking thin and ragged, were wandering among the dens.

Ujurak spotted a couple of the bears lying stretched out on the snow. “What’s the matter with them?” he asked Yakone. “Are they sick?”

“It’s nothing,” Yakone replied. “Just bellyache.”

Sniffing the air, Ujurak could smell the sickness even at a distance, and he knew the trouble was worse than that.
Does Yakone really not know, or is he lying to us, to hide these bears’ weakness?

“We’re not going to attack you, you know,” he murmured.

Yakone turned his head to look at him, half surprised and half amused. “Four of you against all of us?” he responded. “No, I wouldn’t think so.”

Yakone led the way to a den with two bears outside; Ujurak recognized the younger of them as Illa. More of the bears gathered around as they approached, looking curiously at the newcomers.

As soon as Illa spotted Ujurak and the others, she rose and stretched out her neck to speak into the mouth of the den.

“Aga, you have visitors. Shesh and Tungulria are here.”

Aga’s rasping voice came from inside the den. “I’ll come out.”

When she emerged, Ujurak was shocked by her appearance. The ancient she-bear looked thinner and older than ever, though it was only the day before that they had seen her.

“I heard what happened beside the no-claw dens,” she said, dipping her head in greeting.

Lusa stepped forward and laid down the moss she had been carrying in front of Aga; Ujurak admired her courage. She was trembling with a mixture of fear and anxiety, but her voice was steady as she spoke.

“You have to listen to us, please. We don’t want your food. We want to help you.”

Aga fixed her eyes on Lusa in a long, considering look. “Well, Tungulria,” she said at last. “I’m listening.”

Ujurak took a pace forward to stand by his friend’s side. “We know why your bears have been getting sick,” he explained. “There is a leak in the rocks near your seal hunting ground that is poisoning the seals. When the bears eat the seals, they get poisoned, too.”

“How do you know this?” Aga asked. Her voice was guarded, as if she had not decided whether to believe the story.

“I found the poison!” Lusa told her, bouncing a little on her paws. “Kallik and I did.”

She launched into the story of being chased into the cove by Unalaq and the others, and how she and Kallik had found the stinking stuff leaking out of the pipe.

She’s exaggerating a bit!
Ujurak thought, remembering how Lusa had first told the story.
She’s making it sound as if there’s a whole river of the stuff pouring into the sea!

Finally Toklo halted Lusa with a grunt. She flashed a glance at him and stopped speaking.

Ujurak waited as the silence stretched out.
What will they decide?

At last Aga blinked. “What can we do?” she asked.

Illa moved closer to the old bear, her face showing shock and confusion. “Are you going to believe them?” she asked.

Aga nodded gravely. “I will believe Tungulria,” she said. “The Iqniq told me to. Long ago.”

Ujurak heard Lusa gasp with astonishment. Aga had been
expecting
Lusa—or at least a black bear.
She must have had great faith to keep believing among all this snow!

“They must have been told about you by the spirits of their ancestors,” Ujurak whispered to Lusa. “To these bears you’re special!”

Lusa looked shocked and unnerved, shaking her head as if she wanted to deny what she had just heard.

“Don’t worry,” Ujurak reassured her, pushing his snout briefly into her shoulder fur. “We can use this to help them. Tell them that they must eat this special moss to make themselves sick.”

Lusa swallowed nervously, then reached out one paw to touch the moss she had placed in front of Aga. “My friend says that if you eat this moss it will make you sick,” she explained.

To Ujurak’s dismay there was a murmur of protest from the other bears who stood around listening.

Aga clearly shared their anxiety. “My bears are already sick,” she said. “Why would I make them worse?”

“This sick will make you feel better in the end. The moss will clear out your insides and take all the poison away,” Ujurak told the ancient bear. “But you must not eat any more seals. Not one. There may be other seals near here that aren’t poisoned, but unless you learn to tell them apart from the ones in your hunting ground, you can’t risk eating them.”

Aga’s eyes widened in anguish. “Then we will starve,” she whispered.

“Why?” Toklo asked. “There’s other prey on this island. Hares and musk ox, and—”

“But not enough,” Aga interrupted. “Yes, we can catch hares and birds, but only the strongest of us can hunt the caribou. And no bear is strong enough to bring down a musk ox.”