Fire in the Sky

by Erin Hunter

  “Hey, I never said I understood,” Toklo argued. “All I’m saying is, maybe your changing could be useful once in a while, instead of just a nuisance, like it usually is.”

  “It won’t take you a moment to pop down and look,” Kallik added.

  “Besides, you did it before with the geese, remember?” Toklo prompted.

  “Oh, right, and that turned out really well! I nearly died!” Ujurak huffed. “That’s exactly what I mean! What if something happens, or I forget to change back?”

  “That would be stupid,” Toklo said. “Just remember you’re not really a seal. How hard can that be?”

  “I’m a brown bear!” Ujurak shouted. “Okay? That’s all I am, and all I want to be! A brown bear!” He turned and stomped off, planting himself in the snow next to Lusa with his back to Toklo.

  Toklo blinked and gave Kallik a quizzical look. “What’s gotten under his fur?”

  Kallik shrugged. “Maybe being a whale for so long frightened him. Anyway, we can’t force him, and I don’t think we should wait here much longer.” She nodded at the sky. “A storm is coming. We should find shelter…and hopefully the hunting will be better farther from the shore.”

  Toklo’s stomach spasmed painfully with hunger. He had no idea where the shore was from here. Could Kallik smell that, too? Was it close—and what did “close” mean to a white bear who could run several skylengths in a day?

  They trudged back over to the others. Ujurak got up when he heard them approaching and stomped a few paces off into the snow, glaring over his shoulder at Toklo.

  Lusa lifted her head sleepily. “What happened?” she asked with a yawn.

  “Nothing,” Toklo said. “Come on, up you get.” He nudged her to her paws. “We’re going to find shelter.”

  “Shelter where we can sleep?” Lusa said hopefully.

  “That is the general idea,” Toklo said, shaking his head at her.

  As Kallik took the lead again, it began to snow harder. Fat snowflakes drifted down into their fur, catching on their noses and ears. They padded past low hillocks of snow and jagged claws of ice that looked as if they were trying to snag the clouds. Gradually the wind picked up, howling across the ice, so the bears had to huddle close together to make sure they weren’t swept apart.

  Kallik lifted her head and stopped abruptly. “I smell another white bear,” she said. “She’s very close—I didn’t smell her before, because of the storm.”

  “Does she have prey?” Toklo asked. “Maybe we could chase her off, like we did the last one.”

  “I don’t want to do that,” Kallik said, looking uncomfortable. “We shouldn’t need to steal food from other bears. We should be able to catch our own.” She sighed and shook off some of the snow that was drifting across her back. “Shelter is more important right now, anyway. We need to find a place to build a den.” She gave the sky a worried glance and started forward again.

  “What about one of these?” Toklo suggested, batting at a large mound beside them. It looked to him like there were plenty of snowdrifts to shelter in, stretching to the edge of the gray, stormy sky. But to his surprise, when he prodded them he realized the snow was only a thin layer covering a solid block of ice. He scraped at the ice with his claws, but it was hard as rock. Frustrated, he tried digging harder, but then his paw slipped and the ice scratched his pad. He jumped back with an outraged yelp.

  “OW!” He licked his paw. A few drops of blood dripped onto the snow.

  “You seal-brain,” Kallik said, whirling on him angrily. “Don’t you know a white bear will be able to smell that from skylengths away?” She jabbed at the drops of blood with her claw. “They’ll come sniffing around looking for us—and if prey is hard to come by, they might settle for one of us instead of a seal.”

  Toklo was about to snap back at her, when his eyes fell on Lusa. He remembered how larger brown bears had thought of him as prey when he was a small cub. White bears were even bigger than full-grown brown bears. And Lusa looked tiny and vulnerable out here on the ice. If anything happened to her, and it was his fault…

  He swallowed his angry response and quickly covered over the blood spatters with fresh snow. The storm was getting worse, and the blood drops were soon hidden. He dug his paws into the snow until they went numb and the bleeding stopped. He would never risk bringing danger down upon his friends.

  “These mounds aren’t big enough anyway,” Kallik said, shouting to be heard over the roaring wind. “We need a taller snowdrift, one we can really dig into, and it can’t be frozen all the way through.”

  They started walking again, fighting through the blizzard. Kallik poked the hills of snow they passed to see if any would suit as a den. Toklo bowed his head to keep the snow out of his eyes, wishing he could keep it from swirling in his ears. He thought it must be even tougher for Lusa, with her big, round ears. His large paws were having enough trouble in the deep snow; her little ones must be sinking up to her belly. He turned to check on the small black bear…and discovered that she had vanished.

  “Kallik!” he roared. Up ahead, Kallik and Ujurak both stopped and turned around. They were only shadows in the snowstorm, although they couldn’t be more than a bearlength or two ahead of him. How would they ever find Lusa in this?

  “Lusa’s missing!” Toklo barked. “She’s not behind me anymore!” He turned and floundered back through the gathering snow. What if a white bear had snuck up behind them, grabbed Lusa, and run off with her? Or what if she had slipped into a crack in the ice and the storm had carried away her cries for help?

  Horrible pictures crowded through his mind as he pressed forward, anxiously searching the snow along the path they’d come. He could follow their pawprints for a way, but the snow was already covering them with terrible speed. If they lost the path they’d taken, they might never find Lusa.

  “Toklo, wait!” Kallik called, bounding up beside him. “I can smell her! Follow me!” She sped up, galloping into the driving snow, and he charged after her with Ujurak close on his heels.

  Kallik skidded to a stop near a small pile of snow. Gently she poked the snow with her nose, then brushed some of it aside with her paw. Underneath the snow, curled up against a drift, was Lusa.

  She was fast asleep.

  A jolt of fear shot through Toklo’s fur. He looked up at Kallik and Ujurak with wide eyes.

  “What is it?” Kallik asked, trembling already at the look on his face.

  Toklo swallowed. “I think I know what’s wrong with Lusa.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Lusa

  Lusa felt the slow beat of her heart matching its rhythm to the heartbeat of the earth. She was warm and comfortable for the first time in a long while. The sun was hidden away, but its warmth seeped through her paws and her fur, promising that it would return. She was surrounded by the scents of bears she knew and loved—the familiar smells of Ashia, King, Yogi, and Stella from the Bear Bowl floated around her, comforting her. She saw the faces of Toklo, Kallik, and Ujurak, all at peace with the world for once.

  That was how she felt: at peace. Everyone was safe. She breathed in the whole world, feeling connected to it through every whisker. Leaftime would come again, and for now she could sleep, waiting peacefully for it to return.

  Then something sharp jabbed at her belly, breaking into the dream like an unwelcome burst of sunlight inside a shadowed cave. Lusa tried to wriggle away, but someone was poking her from the other side as well. There was nowhere she could escape back into her sleep. Gradually her breathing sped up, and she sensed cold, hard ice below her.

  “Lusa! Lusa! Lusa!” Her friends’ voices were too loud, too insistent. Lusa covered her head with her paws, trying to block them out. She wanted to go back to the peaceful place. She wanted to sleep.

  “No, Lusa, wake up! You have to wake up!” Toklo barked, nudging her again. She could smell the seal carcass on his breath, meaty and rich. A fierce wind struck her nose, filling it with the scents of ice and snow. She sh
ivered as a blast of cold shot through her bones. Why would her friends do this to her? Why couldn’t they just let her sleep?

  “Go away, Toklo!” she growled. She shoved his paws away from her. “You’re ruining it! I don’t want to be awake! It’s nice and warm when I’m sleeping, so go away and let me sleep!”

  “Lusa, you can’t,” he said, and the fear in his voice woke her up more than any of his jabbing and prodding. Snow flew into her face as she rubbed her eyes and blinked up at him. The world was a blinding whirl of white and the howling wind struck her with its full force. She didn’t want to wake up into this storm, but Toklo hung over her anxiously. “You mustn’t let yourself sleep out here in the open, Lusa,” he insisted. “This isn’t the right time or place. You have to stay awake.”

  Memories of Ashia saying the same thing in her dream came back to Lusa. She tried pulling herself into a sitting position, although it tired her out just to do that. “Why?” she yelped. “What—what’s the matter with me?” She looked at Kallik, pressed up against her other side, and saw Toklo’s look of terror reflected there. Ujurak was pacing in a circle around them, pawing at the snow on his face and watching her worriedly. Around them the storm still raged, and it was hard to see much beyond the shadows of her friends gathered close to her.

  “It’s the longsleep,” Toklo said quietly. “Brown bears do it when the cold weather comes and the season of earthsleep sends all creatures into their dens to wait for fishleap to return. They burrow into the earth and sleep through the cold months, until they can come out with the warm weather and find enough food to live on again.” He shook his head, burying his black nose in her fur. “I didn’t know that black bears did it, too. But that must be what’s happening to you—you’re feeling the pull of the longsleep.”

  “I can’t believe I forgot about it,” Ujurak said guiltily. “I should have known this would happen to you.”

  Lusa shook her head, trying to give Ujurak and Kallik reassuring looks. “That can’t be it,” she said. “I never heard about any longsleep in the Bear Bowl. Wouldn’t my mother have told me about it, if black bears did it?”

  “Maybe they do it only in the wild,” Toklo said, and Ujurak nodded. “But you can’t fall asleep out here, Lusa. You might not wake up again until the ice melts, and then what would you do?”

  I guess I’d wake up once I hit the water, Lusa thought, but she knew he was right. If she woke up in the sea, skylengths from shore with no idea which direction to swim in, she would surely die. Assuming she even survived the moons of cold-earth out here, where any white bear might find her and eat her or the storms might freeze her to death without her even noticing.

  “All right,” she said, shaking herself so the snow flew off in swirling white clouds. “I won’t let myself sleep. At least now I know what’s wrong with me, right?”

  She sighed. It was a relief to know that this was normal for a wild black bear. But it was scary, too. How could she fight the longsleep that was curled up inside her, waiting to wash over her like soft water? If this was natural for bears, what could she do to stop it?

  As if he’d read her mind, Toklo nosed her gently and said, “I can feel the pull of the longsleep, too. I find it helps if I eat well and keep moving.”

  Lusa’s stomach ached at the thought of any more seal fat. “I’ll try,” she said. “But it’s hard to keep moving when it’s so cold.”

  “We have to keep moving,” Ujurak insisted. “We’re wasting time here. We have to go.”

  “We’re not wasting time,” Toklo said, giving him an icy look. “We’re making sure Lusa is all right.”

  “I know, I know,” Ujurak said. He started pacing back and forth again. “But it’s just a storm. We can handle a storm, if we just keep going.”

  “I will,” Lusa promised, rubbing her face with one paw. “I can do it, Ujurak.”

  Kallik lay down and crawled up beside her. “Climb onto my back,” she suggested. “I’ll carry you, at least until we find shelter. We can’t risk losing you again in the storm.”

  “And we’ll figure out the rest tomorrow, after we’ve slept,” Ujurak said.

  Lusa felt her heart leap happily at the idea of more sleeping. Even knowing how dangerous it was, she still wanted to sleep more than anything else in the world. That seemed like an ominous sign to her.

  She scrambled up onto Kallik’s wide back and flopped over like a cub. It was easy to tell from here how much Kallik had grown. The white bear’s broad shoulders and hips comfortably supported Lusa’s weight as they trudged on into the whirling snowstorm.

  “Don’t worry, Toklo,” Lusa said. Her friend was padding right beside Kallik’s paws, watching Lusa anxiously. “I’ve been sleepy before and managed to stay awake. I can do this!”

  “I hope so,” said Toklo.

  But despite her words, Lusa felt Kallik’s rolling gait slowly lulling her back into sleep. Her fur was so warm…Even the snow battering at Lusa’s back didn’t feel cold enough to keep her awake. And it was so easy to just close her eyes and sleep….

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Kallik

  Kallik had her head down to keep the driving snow out of her eyes, so it took her a few moments before she heard Toklo calling her name.

  “Kallik, stop,” he said again, nudging her side.

  Lusa’s weight across her back was warm and heavy, and it took all her concentration just to keep putting one paw in front of the other. Reluctantly she stopped and swung her head around to Toklo.

  “She’s fallen asleep again,” Toklo said, nodding up at Lusa. On his other side, Ujurak pressed closer and gave the little black bear a worried look. Through the whirling snow Kallik could see large shapes, like bears watching them, but she knew they were just frozen hillocks of snow and ice like the ones they’d been passing all day.

  “There must be somewhere we can shelter around here,” Ujurak said.

  Toklo stared around at the bleak, dark landscape. “Even if we do find shelter,” he said, “what happens if Lusa goes to sleep and we can’t wake her up again?”

  They were all silent for a moment. Kallik knew none of them had any idea what to do if that happened.

  She slowly lowered herself to her belly while Toklo tried digging in the nearest snowdrift. But before too long his paws hit ice. “It’s like rock,” he hissed, scraping it with his claws.

  Kallik blinked, feeling despair wash over her. She couldn’t search for shelter and carry Lusa at the same time. But they couldn’t just keep walking forever, could they?

  “We’ll make her walk between us,” Ujurak suggested, nudging Lusa until she slid off Kallik’s back. Lusa’s eyes popped open as her paws hit the snow and she stumbled upright.

  “I’m awake!” she squeaked.

  “You are now,” Kallik said. “And you’ll stay that way if you keep walking. Just one paw in front of the next, all right?”

  Lusa nodded, rubbing her muzzle wearily. They set off again with the snow flying directly into their faces. The howling, freezing wind carried their voices away as soon as they opened their mouths, so it was impossible to talk. Kallik wasn’t even sure how to look for shelter anymore. It seemed like every snow pile concealed a block of ice underneath. But if they stopped too long to search for one without ice in the middle, they’d be buried in the snow, and then they might never wake up.

  Kallik’s pelt brushed against Lusa’s, although it was agony to walk as slowly as the little black bear needed to. She lifted her head to watch Ujurak as he paced ahead of them. His brown fur was almost entirely white under the snow. He pressed forward steadily, his hindquarters nearly disappearing in the flurries of snow between them. What was he looking for on the ice? What was Kallik supposed to find out here?

  “Nisa, please help us,” she whispered, but the wind yanked the words out of her mouth and scattered them into the storm. Surrounded by flurries of white on all sides, Kallik couldn’t see the ice spots in the sky or the bubbles and shadows under her pa
ws. She was utterly alone, cut off from the spirits above and below her.

  She’d thought she knew the ice, but really she knew so little about it. All that time she’d longed to live on the Endless Ice—all that traveling to get here—and now it seemed as if she wasn’t suited for it at all. Maybe she could survive better on land. Certainly she could keep her friends safer there. In this white, white world she couldn’t even tell which way was up anymore. How had her mother survived with two cubs? How did any bear survive out here?

  Kallik didn’t know how long they walked, but her paws ached and her nose was numb and they were surrounded by total darkness and whirling snow, when suddenly Lusa and Toklo stumbled at the same time and collapsed to their bellies. Lusa buried her face between Toklo’s front paws and curled into him.

  “I can’t go any farther,” she said. “I’m sorry, I’ve tried.”

  “I can’t, either,” Toklo agreed, his breathing heavy and labored. “We have to rest.”

  “No, we can’t!” Ujurak cried, bounding back to them. His movements were slow and exhausted, but he shook his head insistently. “We can’t give up. Our quest—”

  “I don’t care about your stupid quest!” Toklo snapped. “We’re trapped out here in a blizzard because you thought it was a good idea to follow her.” He jerked his chin at Kallik.

  A pang of guilt shot through Kallik. “I’m doing my best!” she protested.

  “This is what the signs said to do!” Ujurak reminded him.

  “You haven’t caught a seal,” Toklo pointed out to Kallik, ignoring Ujurak. “You can’t find us shelter. You can’t survive out here any better than we can! We might as well be following a salmon!”

  “Stop fighting,” Lusa murmured, burrowing farther into Toklo’s fur.

  “You just can’t stand letting someone else lead,” Kallik growled, getting angry now. “I’d be doing fine out here if I weren’t dragging your worthless carcass around behind me. And you’d be dead if it weren’t for Ujurak.”