The Melting Sea (13 page)

Yakone turned his head to look at her, his eyes gleaming with excitement. “I can smell waves,” he told her.

Kallik stood beside him, the wind blowing into her face and flattening her fur against her sides, and took a deep sniff. Yakone was right! The air was carrying the salt tang of the Melting Sea, far stronger than she had scented it before.

Quickly Kallik slid down into the hollow again and prodded Lusa and Toklo awake. “Hurry!” she urged them. “We have to go. We'll reach the shore today!”

Toklo grunted sleepily and heaved himself out of the hollow. Lusa was more difficult to rouse. When her eyes blinked open at last, she stared at Kallik, then shook her head as if she was trying to clear it.

“Sorry,” she murmured. “I can't hear you very well. And my ear feels funny, like there's something stuck in it.” She started to claw at it.

“Stop that.” Kallik gently pushed her paw away. “You'll make it bleed again.”

Lusa nodded, but she still looked uneasy and kept shaking her head as she climbed out of the hollow.

“Get on my back.” Toklo bent down and spoke loudly into her other ear.

“I can walk,” Lusa retorted. “And you don't have to shout.” Her eyes glimmering with sudden amusement, she added, “It's not all bad. If my ear's blocked, I can't hear you bossing me around!”

“Cloud-brain!” Toklo exclaimed, giving the smaller bear an affectionate shove. “Now, are we going or aren't we?”

Kallik's paws itched to bound across the plain toward the sea. The pace set by Lusa, who was still limping, seemed agonizingly slow. Kallik struggled with her impatience, but she didn't suggest splitting up. She knew how Toklo would take that suggestion.

Besides, it's not just Yakone who will see my home for the first time. It's the others as well. I want us all to be together when we get there
.

Excitement and memories bubbled up inside her. “I remember my BirthDen,” she told Yakone. “Nisa used to tell me and Taqqiq such wonderful stories—stories about Silaluk and Robin, Chickadee, and Moose Bird, who hunted her. She taught us so much, too … how to find a seal hole, and sit there very quietly.... I remember the first time I caught a seal. It tasted so delicious! And the games I used to play with Taqqiq—” Kallik broke off suddenly. “I'm sorry, Yakone. I've told you all this before, haven't I?”

“Yes, but I don't mind hearing the stories again,” Yakone replied. His eyes sparkled. “The Melting Sea isn't just your home,” he added. “It will be mine now, too.”

The land began to slope gradually upward, and Kallik caught sight of long, dark shapes standing upright across their path. She stared at them, puzzled, for a heartbeat, until she realized that they were pine trees.

It's been so long since I've seen a tree...
.

Lusa quickened her pace, still limping, and stumbled up to the nearest tree, pressing her face against the trunk. Kallik caught up to her in time to hear her murmur, “I've come home.”

Yakone gave a start of surprise. Hardly able to wrench his gaze away from the pines, he asked Kallik, “Lusa doesn't come from here, does she?”

Kallik shook her head. “No, but she has a really strong connection with trees. Black bears believe that their spirits live inside trees after they die, and the patterns in their bark are the faces of their ancestors.”

Yakone nodded slowly. “Lusa told me about that.” Giving the pine trunks an intense stare, he added, “Now that I have seen trees, I can tell it would be easy to believe. I feel like I'm being watched.”

Kallik saw that Yakone remained uneasy as they headed into the belt of trees, constantly looking up at the sky. “I feel trapped,” he confessed to Kallik. “I know the trees aren't thick, but … how does any bear know where it's going?”

In contrast, Toklo was clearly at home, striding confidently through the pines. He paused to sharpen his claws on a trunk, then gave Lusa a boost to the lower branches so that she could nibble some pine needles.

Leaving them to follow, Kallik led Yakone onward.

“Are you sure this is the right way?” Yakone asked. “I can't smell the sea anymore. I can't smell
anything
except for these pines!”

“I'm sure,” Kallik replied. Though the heavy, resinous scent of the pines was all around her, she could still distinguish the sharp scent of the sea, drawing her inexorably toward it.

Then, before she had expected it, Kallik broke out of the trees and found herself at the top of a slope that led down gently to a sweep of shoreline.

The Melting Sea!

“I'm home!” Kallik gasped. Suddenly she felt a warm presence near her. She felt sure that she could hear her mother whispering,
Welcome home, little one
.

Feeling as if she had wings on her paws, Kallik ran down the slope to the edge of the sea and gazed out. Close to the shore, the ice had melted.

That's okay
, she told herself.
The weather is getting warmer; the bears won't be out on the ice for much longer, anyway
.

Still, a fierce longing swept over her to swim out to the ice she could see in the distance bobbing on the black waves. She could smell seals and fresh snow and the salty tang of sea ice.

“It's beautiful.”

Kallik started with surprise as she realized that Yakone was standing by her side. Lusa and Toklo were at the top of the slope, just emerging from the trees.

“Come on!” Kallik called to them. “Come and see my home!”

A harsh clattering noise drowned her last few words. The distinctive
clack-clack
of a metal bird sliced through the air. Kallik flinched and looked up, seeing the familiar shape in the distance, heading straight for her.

Yakone gave Kallik a shove, back toward the trees. “We need to get under cover,” he said urgently. “There might be no-claws with firesticks planning to shoot at us.”

Kallik bounded beside him, up to the line of trees where Toklo and Lusa were waiting. But before they plunged into shelter, something made her turn back. As the metal bird drew closer, she spotted something dangling underneath it.

“What
is
that?” Lusa asked curiously.

Kallik's belly lurched with horror as she realized that the metal bird was carrying a net with white bears inside, just like the one that had carried her and Nanuk. A wave of bile gushed into her throat and she stood still, frozen to the spot as she watched. She was sure that the metal bird was going to crash.

“Kallik, what's wrong?” Yakone asked anxiously.

Kallik barely heard him. Instead, she was filled with memories of her own terrifying flight, crushed against Nanuk, her paws snagged in the meshes of the net, hardly able to breathe through the freezing, rushing air. Then the clacking sound had changed, becoming sharper and more irregular, until the last dreadful plummet to the ground....

Kallik winced and shut her eyes, then opened them again, compelled to watch the destruction she was sure would happen. But the metal bird didn't crash. Instead, it swooped low and the net that carried the bears dropped to the ground. The metal bird hovered for a moment, then rose and flew away. The net unwrapped, leaving the white bears lying on the ground a few bearlengths away from the shore.

As the clattering noise of the metal bird died away, Kallik ran down the slope toward the white bears.

“Kallik, wait!” Toklo shouted.

“Be careful!” Yakone added.

Kallik ignored her friends. As she drew closer, she saw there were three white bears huddled on the shore: a mother and two cubs. She halted as she reached them, almost unendurable pain coursing through her. She felt like she was seeing herself with her mother and Taqqiq. She felt like she was seeing herself and Nanuk. Or it was like she was seeing Ujurak, lying dead in the snow. All the death and pain she had seen in her life washed over her in a wave of horror, choking her so that she could hardly breathe.

“Kallik?” She heard Yakone calling to her.

Kallik wrenched her head around to face him. “They're dead.”

Toklo halted at Kallik's side and
stared at the white she-bear and the two cubs. Almost at once, he realized Kallik was wrong. The bears weren't dead; already they were beginning to stir. Something was wrong, though: They seemed muzzy and confused, struggling to lift their heads and making strange patting motions at the ground with their paws, as if they wanted to get up but were too weak to manage it.

He nudged Kallik in the side. “It's okay,” he reassured her. “They're not dead. Look, they're moving.”

Kallik didn't seem to hear him. She went on staring at the bears with an expression of horror on her face. Then the she-bear grunted and rolled over; Kallik blinked and seemed to come out of her daze.

“The metal bird brought them here,” she whispered.

“Why?” Toklo asked. He had heard Kallik's story many times, of how she had traveled beneath the metal bird that had fallen out of the sky, but he had never truly understood what it meant.

Lusa and Yakone stood by, looking startled; Yakone in particular seemed frozen with shock.

He doesn't know how close flat-faces and bears can get sometimes
, Toklo thought.

While they were talking, the mother bear was waking up, blinking and licking her lips as she tried to sit up.

Lusa stepped forward, dipping her head, obviously meaning to say hello, but before she could speak, the mother bear lurched to her paws, growling as she placed herself between Lusa and her cubs. Lusa took a pace back, flattening her ears with nervousness.

“Who are you?” the she-bear demanded. “Where am I? How did I get here?”

Toklo braced himself for a fight. The mother bear was clearly terrified, but aggressive in protecting her two cubs. “It's okay,” he began. “You're—”

Another growl from the mother bear drowned his words. “Stay away from us. Touch my cubs and I'll rip your pelt off!”

“Toklo, back off.” Kallik pushed past him. “Your color is scaring her. She probably hasn't seen brown or black bears before.” Facing the mother bear, she spoke gently. “We won't hurt you. The metal bird brought you here. Do you remember?”

The she-bear stared at Kallik for a moment without replying. Toklo could see that the sight of a bear of her own kind was calming her. “I remember no-claw dens....” she murmured at last. “A firebeast came roaring up … I felt a sharp pain, and then everything went black.”

“Yes!” Kallik said. “And then you woke up in a huge white stone den, with other bears?”

“That's right … we were stuck behind gray columns. No-claws came and looked at us.”

“I was there once, too, trapped behind the columns,” Kallik told her. “They put sticky stuff all over my fur. It smelled terrible.”

The she-bear looked confused. “I never had that.” Curiously, she added, “How did you escape?”

“I didn't. The no-claws made me sleep again, and when I woke up I was flying underneath a metal bird, with another she-bear called Nanuk. It's the same way that you got here. But my metal bird crashed, and Nanuk died.”

The she-bear looked startled. “Thank the stars that didn't happen to us.”

She turned to nuzzle her cubs. The two tiny bears weren't entirely awake yet; Toklo thought they looked very young, much smaller than Kallik when he first met her.

The she-bear nudged her cubs to their paws and helped them disentangle themselves from the net. “My name is Akna,” she said. “This is Iluq, and this is Kassuq.”

“Hello,” Kallik responded, dipping her head. Her gaze lingered on the cubs, and Toklo heard her whisper, “Just like Kissimi …” Then she continued, “I'm Kallik, and this is Yakone. The brown bear is Toklo, and the black one is Lusa.”

Akna shot an uneasy glance at Toklo and Lusa; Toklo remembered how peculiar white bears had looked to him the first time he had seen them.

The two cubs were whimpering softly; Iluq, who was a she-cub, bigger than her brother, tottered up to her mother and pummeled her with her forepaws. “I'm hungry!” she wailed. “I want to feed!”