The Melting Sea

by Erin Hunter

  Not yet. Wait …

  “Just back off,” Taqqiq hissed. “Or Salik will hurt you much worse than he did last time. I’m loyal to my friends. I can’t believe you thought I would turn my back on them.”

  He sounds as if he means it, Lusa thought with an inward shiver. Oh, Arcturus, which side will he fight on?

  “Enough talking!” Manik growled.

  Pale dawn light spilled in on Lusa and Sakari as a massive paw swiped through the snow that blocked the entrance to the den. Lusa leaped up, her teeth bared and her claws extended, throwing herself upon Manik. He jumped back, howling with surprise.

  Behind Lusa, Sakari hurtled out of the den. She barreled into Manik and sent him sprawling, then whirled to confront one of the other bears, roaring a challenge.

  More roars answered her as the rest of the bears rose up out of the ice, galloping toward the knot of invading bears. Toklo and Tartok sprang out of hiding behind the snow mound and flung themselves on their enemies.

  For a couple of heartbeats Salik and his bears stood frozen, as if they couldn’t believe what they were seeing. Lusa briefly hoped they might flee without a fight. But then Salik let out a snarl of fury.

  “Get them!”

  Lusa found herself in the middle of a heaving mass of bears. After a moment of heart-stopping terror, she realized that she was so small the bigger bears ignored her. She was able to wriggle among their legs, clawing at her enemies and nipping at their paws. Now and then one of them would take a swipe at her, but she always managed to dodge.

  The only danger is being trampled on!

  Above her head Lusa could hear snarls and the heavy breathing of battling bears. Paws swished through the air. She caught a glimpse of Kallik facing an enemy bear, and the two older cubs darting in at Iqaluk, striking at him from both sides.

  We’re winning! she thought exultantly.

  Then a heavy paw landed on her shoulder, throwing her to the ground. Claws sank into her flesh. “How dare you attack me?” Manik growled close to her ear.

  Oh, spirits! Lusa thought. She struggled hard, her face pushed into the snow, but she couldn’t dislodge Manik. The claws of his other forepaw raked down her side. She lashed out with her hindpaws and felt fierce satisfaction when Manik let out a sharp yelp of pain, but he still didn’t let her go.

  Then Lusa felt a jolt as another bear threw himself on Manik. She couldn’t see, but she recognized Toklo’s scent.

  Thank you, Arcturus!

  Manik’s grip on her loosened, and Lusa could drag herself free. She saw Toklo and Manik raised up on their hindpaws, gripping each other’s shoulders as they swayed to and fro. Without hesitating, Lusa sprang up at Manik, fastening her claws into his back. He roared with rage and tried to throw her off, while Toklo got in a few hard blows to his head and shoulders. Manik dropped to all four paws and retreated, snarling.

  “Great job, Lusa,” Toklo panted.

  “Thanks for helping,” Lusa responded. “We make a good team.”

  Now Lusa found herself on the edge of the fighting. She spotted Nukka fighting together with Olikpok, driving one of Salik’s bears back, pawstep by pawstep. Hearing a terrified yelping, she turned to see Iqaluk fleeing, pursued by Yakone. Tartok and the mother bear whose name she still didn’t know had one of the others on the ground.

  Where’s Salik? she wondered. And Taqqiq?

  As if in answer to her thought, Lusa heard a furious roaring. In the ruins of the BirthDen, Salik and Shila were grappling together. Though Shila fought bravely, Salik easily outmatched her in size and strength. His claws were fastened in her shoulders, and he was snapping his jaws perilously close to her throat. Shila battered at him with her forepaws, but the blows only seemed to enrage Salik more.

  “I’ll teach you to trap us!” he snarled.

  “You’re finished, Salik!” Shila gasped, but her struggles were growing weaker.

  Toklo let out a growl and headed toward her, but before he could reach the wrestling bears, a loud bellow sounded behind Lusa and Taqqiq hurtled past her, to throw himself on Salik. His claws scored down Salik’s back; Lusa saw blood soaking into the enemy bear’s white fur.

  Salik let Shila go and tried to turn and strike out at Taqqiq. But his paws met empty air as Taqqiq clung close and kept on clawing him from behind. “Traitor!” Salik howled.

  Shila took a pace back to recover herself, then sprang at Salik again and slammed her head into his belly.

  Salik’s attempts to fight back turned into struggles to escape, but Taqqiq and Shila bore him down to the ground and pinned him there until his efforts grew feebler and he was still at last, cringing in submission.

  Taqqiq stepped back. “Now get out of here,” he snarled.

  Unsteadily Salik heaved himself to his paws. Looking around, Lusa saw the battle was almost over. Only two of Salik’s bears were still fighting, being slowly driven back by Kallik and Tartok.

  “Let them go!” Toklo roared over the sounds of growling and trampling paws. “They’ve had enough!”

  Kallik and Tartok broke away from the combat and stood panting while Manik, Iqaluk, and the rest huddled together in a group and started backing away across the ice. Salik paused for a moment, his furious gaze resting on Taqqiq.

  “Don’t come crawling back to us,” he threatened. “You know what you’ll get if you do.”

  “I’m not coming back,” Taqqiq retorted. “I’ve found better friends.”

  Salik still hesitated, until Sakari stepped forward. “I’m warning you, Salik,” she said solemnly, “if you try to make any more trouble, we’ll fight you again—and we’ll win again. Now go away and don’t come back.”

  Salik limped across the ice to join his friends, and all five bears turned and lumbered painfully away. Nukka, Tartok, and Olikpok pursued them for a few bearlengths, then stopped to watch them go.

  Letting out a grunt of satisfaction, Toklo came to stand beside Lusa, with Kallik and Yakone close behind him. Shila padded over to Taqqiq, while the mother bear and her cubs joined Sakari. Every bear’s gaze was fixed on Salik and his gang as they retreated.

  Finally, they faded into the mist, and Lusa couldn’t see them anymore.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Kallik

  Kallik stood gazing into the distance until she was sure that Salik and his bears had really gone. Then she turned back to her friends.

  “Toklo, you’re a hero!” she yelped, padding up to the brown bear and touching her nose to his shoulder. “The plan worked so well, with all of us fighting together and looking out for one another.”

  Toklo scrabbled his paws in the loose snow, looking embarrassed. “It’s not my victory,” he muttered. “It’s every bear’s.”

  “Who would have thought Iqaluk could run so fast!” Kallik went on, turning to Yakone. “And Lusa, you were great! I’ll never forget the look on Manik’s face when you came jumping out of the den.”

  “I’ll never forget it, either,” Lusa responded with a snort of amusement. “Or the feel of his claws in my shoulders,” she added ruefully.

  “Are you badly wounded?” Kallik asked.

  Lusa shook her head. “I’ll be fine.”

  Looking around, Kallik could see streaks of blood on the fur of most of the white bears, but none of them seemed seriously injured. They looked tired and battered, but joy in their success was fueling them with new energy.

  Tartok was loudly describing to Olikpok how he’d wrestled with one of Salik’s bears.

  “I hit him like this!” he boasted with a swish of his paw. “And the stupid fish-breath turned and ran!”

  Nukka and the mother bear were excitedly discussing the battle, while the two older cubs chased each other around them, rolling in the snow and throwing it around in glittering showers under the morning sun.

  Taqqiq padded over to Shila, who was sitting in the ruins of the BirthDen, breathing hard. “Did Salik hurt you?” he asked. Kallik thought he sounded nervous.

  “
Not too much,” Shila replied. “It’s worth it, just to be rid of them for good.” She looked up at Taqqiq and added, “I’m sorry I didn’t trust you before.”

  Taqqiq stared at his paws. “I deserved it,” he mumbled.

  A warm feeling swept through Kallik, as if the sun had emerged from behind a cloud. In the end, her brother had made the right choice.

  Tonraq and Pakak came scampering over from the seal hole, bouncing around their mother’s paws.

  “Did we win?” Tonraq demanded. “Have they really gone?”

  “They’ve really gone,” Sakari confirmed.

  “Yes!” Pakak gave a huge leap off the ground. “And we nearly caught a seal,” he added.

  “That’s great,” their mother told them. “Now we’d all better think about hunting.”

  “Sakari’s right.” Yakone padded up to Kallik and spoke quietly into her ear. “We have to think about hunting.” Kallik nodded, realizing that Yakone didn’t mean quite the same thing as Sakari. “The battle’s only half won,” he added. “Now we have to teach these bears how to hunt on land.”

  Toklo and Lusa, who were standing close enough to overhear, murmured agreement.

  Kallik felt energy flowing through her, as if all the power of the ice and the spirits was in her paws. “We’ll help them,” she vowed, looking around at her friends.

  “You said you would teach us how to hunt on land,” Shila reminded Toklo. “I think it’s time we got moving.”

  “Moving?” Sakari looked up from watching her two cubs chasing each other around a heap of snow. “You mean, leave the ice? Now?”

  Tartok snorted. “I’m not leaving yet. Why did we chase off Salik and his gang if we’re just going to head for land?”

  “It’s okay,” Kallik broke in hastily before an argument could start. “We can teach you the hunting skills right here, so when you have to go to land you’ll know what to do.”

  Two days had passed since the victory over Salik. Sakari and Tartok had both caught seals, so the bears were all full-fed. They had decided to rest and recover before starting on the hunting instruction, but were eager to begin now. As they gathered around, Kallik could see how keen they were to learn how they could feed themselves when the ice melted and they had to go ashore.

  “So what do we have to do?” Olikpok asked.

  Kallik glanced at Toklo, but for a moment the brown bear didn’t seem to know how to start. Suddenly Lusa jumped up and padded toward the edge of the ice floe.

  “Look, there’s a piece of driftwood in the water,” she pointed out. “Now imagine that’s a fish in a fresh-water river.”

  “Then the river would be flowing, and the fish would be swimming,” Toklo objected. “You have to stand in the stream and jump where the fish is going to be. We can’t practice that here.”

  Kallik could see the white bears were looking confused. Tartok leaned over and muttered something into Nukka’s ear.

  “I know,” Lusa replied to Toklo. “But sometimes the fish rest in pools close to the riverbank, where the water is shallow. And then you can slip a paw in carefully and hook the fish out.”

  “That’s right,” Kallik added, hearing a murmur of renewed interest from the white bears. “Show them, Lusa.”

  “Okay.” Lusa crouched down beside the bobbing piece of driftwood. “You need to make sure that your shadow doesn’t fall on the fish,” she explained. “If it knows you’re there, it’ll swim away.”

  Slowly, as if she was trying to catch a real fish, Lusa leaned out over the water, her paw poised. But she leaned out too far, letting out a yelp of alarm as she started to topple into the sea, paws flailing.

  Kallik let out a horrified cry, imagining an orca lurking below, its jaws gaping. She was too far away to help her friend, but Yakone leaped forward and grabbed Lusa by the scruff, dragging her back onto the ice again.

  “Thanks, Yakone,” Lusa gasped. “Sorry,” she added to the group of white bears. “I’ll do it right this time.”

  Even more carefully, she slid her paw into the water. “You have to concentrate on not making ripples,” she said. “The fish mustn’t even know you’re there. Then, once you have your paw underneath it—”

  Swiftly she brought her paw up, hooking the driftwood so that it clattered onto the ice. Lusa slammed her paw down on it. “The fish will flap about,” she explained. “Kill it right away, or you might lose it again.”

  “That looks hard …” Nukka murmured.

  “If a black bear can do it, we can,” Tartok declared. “Can I give it a try?”

  Lusa nodded, dropping the wood back into the sea. Tartok took up a position on the edge of the ice and let his paw sink into the water. A moment later he brought the wood up again and let it fall onto the ice with a satisfied grunt.

  “You forgot to kill it,” Shila pointed out.

  Tartok gave the wood a hard swipe with his paw. “Happy now?” he asked the she-bear.

  “They’ll soon pick it up,” Kallik said, padding over to join Lusa and Toklo, while the other white bears gathered around to try catching the “fish” for themselves.

  “I know,” Lusa responded. “But it feels weird, teaching our skills to white bears.”

  “It’s the right thing to do,” Toklo told her. Kallik saw his eyes grow unfocused, filling with memories. “Remember how Ujurak taught us, in all his different shapes? So it must be okay to share our wildness with other bears. It’s better than taking flat-face food, surely?”

  Lusa nodded. “Ujurak told me not to do that again.”

  “Sharing our skills is the way to survive,” Kallik said, grateful that she and her friends were able to help the white bears. “If it means that white bears have to behave like black or brown bears, then that’s what we have to do.”

  “Hey, Toklo.” Tartok’s voice was muffled as he strode across the ice toward them, because he was carrying the driftwood fish in his jaws. “We’ve all done this fish thing. Can you show us how to hunt on land now?”

  “Sure,” Toklo said. “This time we’ll make the driftwood a snow-hare.”

  Kallik watched as Toklo demonstrated how to stalk the driftwood, creeping up on it pawstep by pawstep, then landing on it with a huge leap.

  “Anyone want to try?” he asked.

  “Me!” Nukka exclaimed immediately. “I can do that.”

  She crouched a couple of bearlengths away from the driftwood, slowly edged her way toward it, and pounced. Her forepaws slammed down onto the wood; she scooped it up and tossed it into the air. As it landed, she brought one paw down on it with such a hard blow that it splintered into pieces.

  “Yes! It’s dead!” she cried.

  Cheering rose from the group of bears standing around her. “Great leap,” Tartok commented.

  Toklo stepped forward, and Nukka looked at him anxiously. “Was that okay, Toklo?” she asked.

  “Better than okay,” Toklo told her. “That was great for a first try. But you’ll need to remember that if that piece of wood really was a snow-hare, it could scent you. Keep downwind of it, and you’ll be able to creep up and grab it before it knows you’re there.”

  Nukka nodded. “I’ll remember.”

  Kallik spotted Lusa picking up one of the scraps of splintered wood and carrying it over to Pakak and Tonraq. “This is something you can practice,” she told the eager cubs, scoring her claws down the wood. “Now you try,” she said.

  Both the little cubs imitated her scratching. “Like this?” Pakak asked.

  “Yes, that’s very good,” Lusa replied.

  “But what’s it for?” Tonraq asked.

  “Well, when you get to land, there’ll be a lot of trees—”

  “What’s a tree?” Pakak interrupted.

  Lusa exchanged an amused glance with Kallik. “It’s like this piece of wood,” she explained, “only much, much bigger. Trees go right up into the sky, and they have lots of branches—other bits of wood—sticking out of them. They’re covered over with this roug
h coating called bark.”

  “Bark? That’s what seals do.” Tonraq jumped to his paws and demonstrated. “Wah! Wah! Like that.”

  “This is a different kind of bark.” Lusa sounded as if she was hanging on hard to her patience. “If you claw it off like I just showed you, the inside of it is good to eat. And sometimes you can find grubs inside. They’re good, too.”

  “What are grubs?” Pakak asked.

  Kallik left Lusa to it and padded across the ice, passing the white bears who were still practicing crouching and stalking. Close by, Toklo had taken Shila and Taqqiq to one side and was drawing something out on the ice with one claw.

  “So if the bison herd is here,” he pointed out to Shila, “you would need to skirt around them there, and Taqqiq could drive a young bison over to you.”

  “That should work,” Shila agreed. “Then we can kill it together.” Her tongue emerged and swiped around her jaws. “I had bison once last burn-sky. It was great.”

  “They’re getting the idea,” Yakone remarked, strolling up to Kallik. “I guess once they get to shore they’ll figure out the details for themselves.”

  “I think they will,” Kallik said, her gaze traveling over the group of happily occupied bears.

  “Is it true that Toklo and Lusa are moving on tomorrow?” Yakone said quietly.

  Kallik’s jaws dropped open, and she stared at him. She’d been so caught up in the problems on the Melting Sea that she had forgotten their original plan.

  Yakone and I can make our homes here, but Toklo and Lusa can’t stay on the ice. They have to travel on to find homes of their own....

  That night, Kallik curled up with Yakone in a small den they had dug for themselves in the snow. But she couldn’t sleep. All night she tossed and turned, unable to think of anything but the parting with Toklo and Lusa that was so close now.

  Finally she felt Yakone heave himself to his paws. “Come outside with me,” he said.