The Melting Sea

by Erin Hunter

  The sun was starting to go down, casting red light over the shore as the bears gathered around their prey. Akna chewed up some of the seal meat and gave it to Kassuq and Iluq before taking any for herself.

  Toklo spotted Lusa taking a few mouthfuls of the muskrat.

  “This isn’t bad,” she mumbled with her mouth full. “Much better than seal!”

  But soon she abandoned the catch and climbed the slope; Toklo spotted her stripping leaves from a bush near the edge of the trees.

  With food in their bellies the cubs looked sleepy and contented, and huddled into the curve of their mother’s belly to suck milk from her.

  “At least I should have some milk now,” Akna sighed, looking almost as drowsy as her cubs.

  As darkness fell, Kallik coaxed the white bear family to get up and head for the shelter of the pines, in the lee of the slope to be out of the wind. Toklo and the others settled down beside them.

  “It feels good to be helping other bears, for a change,” Kallik murmured quietly to Toklo.

  “It’s what Ujurak would have done,” Toklo responded.

  As his friends fell asleep around him, Toklo stayed awake for a little while, sitting alone on the shore and looking up at the sky. Ujurak’s stars shone brightly, even brighter than the others, it seemed to Toklo.

  Are you watching us? he asked silently. Is this what you wanted us to do? Looking at the sleeping shapes of Kallik and Yakone, he added to himself, At least it keeps us together for a little longer.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Lusa

  “Dig your claws into the bark and peel it away like this,” Lusa instructed.

  Akna watched her carefully, while the two cubs attacked the base of the pine tree, scratching at the bark with soft claws.

  “But what’s it for?” Akna asked.

  “You can eat this soft green layer just under the bark,” Lusa explained. “Try it. It’s really tasty.”

  Akna doubtfully sniffed the green layer and swiped her tongue over it. “Hmm … not bad, I suppose,” she commented. “But I’d need an awful lot of it to fill my belly. And only squirrels feed off trees!”

  “Well, let’s catch a squirrel, then!” Toklo suggested, striding up through the pine needles.

  “Yes!” Iluq bounced up and down with excitement, while Kassuq blinked eagerly at Toklo.

  “You’re too young,” Lusa told them. “Don’t worry, we’ll find something fun to do while your mother hunts.”

  As Lusa turned toward the shore, Kallik and Yakone appeared through the trees and padded up to the other bears.

  “We’re going onto the ice again to hunt for seals,” Kallik announced.

  Lusa spotted Toklo giving the two white bears a worried look. He must be afraid that they won’t come back. She wanted to reassure him, but she knew the gruff brown bear would never admit to his feelings. A wave of affection for him washed over her.

  Kallik and Yakone headed down to the beach again, with Iluq and Kassuq scampering after them.

  “We want to come, too!” Iluq squealed. “It’s great out on the ice.”

  “Yeah,” Kassuq added. “We’ll catch the biggest seal!”

  “Hey—stop right there!” Lusa told them, dashing after them and blocking them. “You’re too small to swim so far.”

  “We aren’t,” Iluq insisted, dodging around Lusa while her brother tried to wriggle past on her other side.

  “No.” Lusa reached out with one paw to grab Iluq before she could go any farther. “You’re coming with me, and …” She thought rapidly. “And I’ll show you some stuff you can do to help you grow big and strong.”

  “Yes!” The two cubs bounced up and down with excitement.

  Through the trees Lusa could hear Toklo teaching Akna how to follow the trail of a snow hare. “They’re not like seals. It’s no good sitting still and waiting for them. You have to find tracks and then follow them.”

  Not wanting the cubs to disturb their mother and Toklo, Lusa steered them out of the trees and farther along the shore until she found a place where a large amount of driftwood had been washed up.

  “Look here,” she said, clawing a piece out from the rest and pushing it in front of the cubs. “Are you strong enough to pick this up?”

  “Easy!” Iluq boasted, grabbing the wood in her jaws.

  “Very good,” Lusa praised her. “Now let Kassuq try.”

  The male cub, who was smaller than his sister, still managed to pick up the wood, while Iluq nosed about in the pile until she found a bigger piece.

  “Watch! I can carry this one!” The little she-bear hefted the piece of wood into the air, but it was so big and awkward that she lost her balance, staggered, and flopped down on her side.

  “Cloud-brain!” Kassuq teased her.

  “You try it then, if you’re so clever!”

  Kassuq grabbed the big piece of wood, straining to lift it off the ground. It was too big for him to manage, but at last he raised it about a whisker’s width into the air, and dropped it again with a huge gasp. “There! And I didn’t fall over, either.”

  Iluq leaped onto her brother and the two cubs rolled over, lashing their paws in a play fight.

  “That’s enough,” Lusa said, suppressing laughter as she separated them. “This is something you can do anytime. Keep practicing and lifting heavier and heavier pieces, and it will make your muscles strong. And there’s another thing I want to show you.”

  “What’s that?” Iluq asked.

  “When you’re on the ice, you can make dens out of snow, right? But what will you do when there’s no snow?”

  “There’s always snow,” Kassuq objected.

  Lusa shook her head. “You’ve already seen the ice starting to melt. When burn-sky comes, the snow will melt, too. Then what will you use for shelter?”

  The two cubs were staring at Lusa, big-eyed. Lusa hoped that she hadn’t scared them.

  “We could dig into the ground,” Kassuq suggested at last.

  “Yes, good idea,” Lusa said.

  “Or hide among trees,” Iluq added, pointing with one paw toward the pines at the top of the slope.

  “That’s a good idea, too,” Lusa told her. “Or you can build something. If we pile up this wood, then it’ll make a good shelter from the wind.”

  Iluq’s eyes sparkled. “Let’s do it! Then there’ll be a comfortable place for Mother when she comes back.”

  Lusa checked for the direction of the wind and began helping the cubs to pile up the driftwood into a windbreak. Contentment welled up inside her as she felt the different pieces of wood beneath her paws.

  I’ve been away from forests for so long....

  “Hey, look!” Kassuq’s voice distracted Lusa from her reflections. “This piece of wood looks just like a squirrel!”

  Iluq scampered over to gaze at the driftwood her brother had found. “You’re right … look, there are its eyes and its nose. It’s staring at me!”

  “Let’s hunt it,” Kassuq suggested.

  Lusa watched, amused, as the two cubs crept up on the piece of driftwood. Their eyes sparkled, and they let out little snorts of excitement. A real squirrel would have been way up a tree by now.

  At last Iluq pounced, her forepaws landing hard on the piece of wood. She bent her head, growling. “Got you! Now I’m going to eat you.”

  “Me too!” Kassuq grabbed one end of the wood in his teeth.

  As the cubs tussled over the driftwood, Lusa got a better look at it. She realized that the knotholes and the grain of the wood really did look a bit like a squirrel’s face.

  “You know, black bears like me believe that there really are faces in trees. We think that when we die, our spirits go to live there,” she told the cubs. “Sometimes you can see the spirits’ faces in the bark. Like your squirrel. Or this one.” She snagged an old, bleached branch with her claws. It had two scraps of bark still clinging to it that could have been eyes, and a knothole like a gaping mouth.

  Iluq a
nd Kassuq dropped their “squirrel” and came to stare at the new branch. Iluq stifled a snort of laughter and prodded it with one paw. “Hey, old bear, can you hear me in there?”

  Kassuq started scrabbling among the scraps of wood and grabbed a piece in his jaws, waving it at his sister. “Here’s a bear coming to get you!” he mumbled around the stick.

  Iluq squealed and darted away, nearly knocking over the carefully piled-up shelter. “That’s not scary! I’ll find a bigger one to get you!”

  “Hey, have a bit more respect!” Lusa said, stifling laughter. “That old bear might leap out of the tree and eat you up!”

  Both cubs froze, staring at her with huge, terrified eyes.

  “Really?” Kassuq gasped.

  “No, not really,” Lusa reassured them. “But I think we’ve had enough of that game for now.” She knew that if they went on play-fighting, the shelter would be completely destroyed. “Let’s walk along the shore for a bit.”

  “Will you tell us more black bear stories?” Kassuq asked as they set out.

  “Sure I will,” Lusa told him. “I was born in a Bear Bowl,” she began when the two cubs were padding along, one on each side of her. “That’s a place built by flat-faces—sorry, no-claws—for bears to live. The flat-faces would come and look at us, and if we waved our paws and looked cute, they would throw fruit at us.”

  “Like this?” Iluq tottered up onto her hindpaws and waved her paws in the air.

  “What’s fruit?” Kassuq asked. “Did it hurt?”

  Amusement bubbled up inside Lusa. “No, it’s nice,” she replied. “It’s sweet, squashy stuff that grows on trees, and you eat it.”

  “These trees?” Iluq asked, giving the belt of pines an interested look.

  “These aren’t the right kind,” Lusa told her. “But later on in burn-sky you’ll find trees and bushes with fruit on them.”

  Kassuq’s tongue swiped around his jaws. “Is it as good as seal?”

  “Black bears like me think it’s better,” Lusa said tactfully. “But seal is the best food for white bears. So,” she went on, “I escaped from the Bear Bowl, because I had to find Toklo and give him a message,” she said, skipping over the part about Oka.

  “And did you find him?” Kassuq asked.

  “Of course she did, cloud-brain!” Iluq darted at her brother and gave him a prod. “Toklo’s that big brown bear who’s teaching Mother!”

  “Yes, I found him,” Lusa said, gently pushing Iluq away from Kassuq before the cubs started fighting again. “And we went on a long, long journey, right up to the Endless Ice, where the spirits dance in the sky.” She sighed, remembering. “It’s so beautiful!”

  “I want to go there!” Iluq asserted.

  “Maybe you will, when you’re bigger,” Lusa responded.

  “No, I want to go there now!”

  “There are all kinds of other interesting places you might travel to,” Lusa went on, hoping to distract the little she-bear. “There’s Great Bear Lake, where lots of bears gather to celebrate the Longest Day. I met Kallik there, and—”

  Lusa broke off. The clack-clack of a metal bird sounded overhead, growing louder with every heartbeat. Looking up, she saw the bird hovering close by, with another net of white bears dangling underneath it.

  “Is that how we got here?” Iluq asked, staring up with fascination in her eyes.

  “Yes.” Lusa’s heart was starting to pound. Glancing around, she spotted an outcrop of rock a couple of bearlengths away. “Let’s get behind there,” she continued, herding the two cubs in front of her. “We don’t want to be underneath it when they drop those bears, do we?”

  “We’d be squashed flat!” Kassuq squealed.

  Lusa and the cubs dived behind the rocks as the metal bird swooped lower. Lusa crouched down and tried to shield the cubs with her body. A fierce wind swept over them, ruffling their fur, and deafening noise blasted their ears.

  “I don’t like it!” Kassuq wailed. “Make it go away!”

  “It will soon,” Lusa tried to reassure him, but the cub was in too much of a panic to listen. Wriggling out from underneath Lusa, he darted away from the rock, fleeing toward the trees.

  “No! Kassuq! Come back!” Lusa sprang after him, grabbing him by the scruff, and dragged him back, still wailing, into shelter. To her relief, Iluq hadn’t moved; she was pressing herself, shaking, into the rock, her eyes huge with fear.

  The metal bird sank down and placed the net of bears onto the shore a few bearlengths closer to the water’s edge. As the metal bird climbed back into the sky, two white males rolled out of the net and onto the stones.

  “Look!” Iluq whispered, peering out from behind the outcrop. “They’re so big!”

  Lusa realized that white bear cubs were brought up by their mother, so these two might not have been so close to a white male before.

  “Do you think one of them is our father?” Kassuq asked. “Shall we go and ask them?”

  “No,” Lusa said sharply, shuddering as she imagined the two cubs trotting up to these huge bears and giving them a friendly prod. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to go too close.”

  “Why not?” Iluq asked. “Look, that one’s waking up.”

  The white bear nearest to the rock had just stirred and opened a beady eye. Lusa dragged both cubs back into shelter.

  “Because white males sometimes eat little cubs like you,” she told them sternly, remembering how scared Akna had been when they first met, and how she had been ready to fight to protect her cubs. “Especially when they’re starving.”

  Kassuq gulped. “Really?”

  “Really.” Lusa was sorry she had to frighten the cubs, but she needed to make them understand what a dangerous position they were in. “You’ll be fine,” she added. “We’re going to get away from here, as quickly and quietly as we can. Don’t make a sound, and do exactly as I tell you.”

  Both cubs gave her a scared nod.

  The white bears were slowly waking up and fighting their way out of the meshes of the net. Lusa glanced up the slope toward the pine trees. We’d be safe there, but how to get there …?

  The shore was empty of anything that might have offered cover, except for another outcrop of rocks about halfway to the trees. It was smaller than the one where they were hiding now, and Lusa didn’t think that they could all hide behind it.

  But that’s all there is.

  “Okay, this is what we’ll do,” Lusa told the cubs. “When I say ‘now,’ we’ll run as fast as we can to that rock over there. Then we’ll hide until we see what the white bears are doing. Okay?”

  “Okay,” Iluq responded tensely, and Kassuq nodded.

  Lusa peered out again from behind the rock. The white males had clambered to their feet and were swinging their huge heads around, checking out their surroundings. One of them let out an experimental bellow, and Kassuq jumped with fright.

  “Now!” Lusa said. “Hurry!”

  The two cubs sprang out from behind the rock, heading for the smaller outcrop. Lusa followed, casting glances over her shoulder at the white males. They still didn’t seem to have noticed her and the cubs.

  They had almost reached the rock when Iluq suddenly let out a yelp and toppled onto her side. Lusa ran toward her. “Get behind the rock!” she told Kassuq. “Iluq, what’s the matter?”

  “I’m stuck!” Iluq wailed.

  Reaching her side, Lusa saw that the little she-cub had gotten her paw stuck under a piece of driftwood. The wood itself was jammed between two boulders, and however hard Iluq tugged, she couldn’t free herself.

  “Don’t worry,” Lusa gasped, remembering how scared she had been when she got her paw stuck in the ice on the Island of Shadows. “I’ll get you out.”

  A rumbling roar came from farther down the shore. Glancing up, Lusa saw with horror that the two white males were gazing in their direction. They still looked dazed, and their movements were uncoordinated, but after a moment they began to lumber toward Lusa and t
he two cubs.

  Lusa felt her whole body grow tense as she braced herself for trouble. They’re bound to challenge me when they see that I’m a black bear.

  She heaved at one of the boulders that were jamming the driftwood, but she couldn’t shift it. Iluq noticed the white bears and let out a shriek of terror. She struggled even harder to free her paw, but it was no use.

  Then Lusa heard a high-pitched squeal from close by. “Hey, you bears! Over here!”

  It was Kassuq, jumping up and down and waving his paws at the two male bears.

  “No, Kassuq!” Lusa cried, even while she admired the little cub’s bravery. “Go and hide, like I told you.”

  But it was too late. One of the white males veered over to Kassuq, and Lusa had a horrible vision of him tearing at the cub’s flesh with his sharp fangs. Instead, the huge bear thrust his muzzle out at Kassuq, sniffing him curiously, then pushed him back with short jabs of his snout until he was pressed up against the outcrop of rocks where Lusa had hoped to hide.

  The second white male padded up to Lusa and Iluq, who was still helplessly stuck. “What have we here?” he rumbled, sniffing at Iluq. “Three cubs?” His cold, beady stare rested on Lusa. “What’s wrong with you? You’re not a white bear!”

  Lusa shoved her way between the white male and Iluq, desperately trying to remember the fighting moves Toklo used when he confronted enemies. Scratch their noses … go for their eyes and throat … stay out of reach of their paws … Oh, Arcturus, they’re so big! Pushing down her panic, she reared up on her hindpaws, her forepaws splayed out and her claws ready.

  “I’m not afraid of you!” she growled.

  Before any bear could move, a roar of fury erupted from the pine trees. Lusa glanced over her shoulder to see Toklo and Akna exploding into the open and racing down the shore.

  “Get away from my cubs!” Akna snarled, heading for Kassuq.

  Toklo thrust Lusa aside to take her place in front of the white male that was menacing Iluq. A fierce flame of battle burned in his eyes. “If you want them, you’ll have to come through me first,” he barked.

  The male bears swayed backward. Lusa could see that they were still too unsteady for a fight, and not really in the mood to match Toklo’s and Akna’s aggression.