Polar Distress

by Sheila Grau

  The monster didn’t look down. He roared and stepped on top of the sled of fish. Another snowmobile put on the brakes, left its offering of fish, and turned around.

  “He’s too angry to eat,” Frankie said. “He’s ignoring the food. Or he hasn’t seen it.”

  “Oh, no!” I said. “He’ll destroy the village.”

  This was our fault. Not directly—Alasie had thrown the boulder. But she never would have if it hadn’t been for us.

  I imagined I was back in a game of Giants vs. Villagers and took off, straight at the monster. His motions were jerky and unfocused, just like Pierre’s when he woke up after a long sleep. I was pretty sure I could dodge his feet, and I was too small to be a threat he would focus on. Someone had to make him see the food.

  I reached the sled and grabbed a fish. It was frozen and slippery and as big as my thigh. I held it by the tail and spun around to heave it at the monster, but it only went about twenty feet, falling well short.

  Frankie caught up with me. He grabbed a fish and did the same maneuver, and this time the fish flew like it had been shot from a canon, hitting the monster in the face. The monster shook his head, looked down at us, and roared angrily.

  “Throw another one!” I yelled, and Frankie did. His practice with Kumi paid off, because he hit the monster square in the face again. This time, the monster caught the fish in his mouth.

  “Again!” I yelled, handing him another fish.

  We teamed up, me handing Frankie a fish, him throwing it. Grab and throw, grab and throw. The pile of fish got smaller and smaller. I turned and yelled for more fish. Two snowmobiles raced over, ridden by local men, who helped me hand fish to Frankie. Their mouths hung open as they watched Frankie work.

  Frankie kept throwing, his aim worsening as he got dizzier and dizzier from all that spinning, but the monster had stopped his approach. The fish were coming too fast for him to do anything more than catch them.

  Three sleds of fish later, Frankie collapsed, but so did the monster. He held his belly and curled up on the ground. It looked like he’d fallen back to sleep.

  Gradually, the rest of the villagers came over to where we stood. Soon we were in the midst of a huge, relieved group. They all wanted to pat Frankie and me on the back. We’d done it—we’d saved the village.

  Big Jim stood on the ridge above us. The air was crowded with excited chatter, but when Big Jim’s voice boomed out, everyone went silent.

  “Who woke up Amaruq?” he said, glaring at us.

  I looked at Alasie. She was trying to disappear backward into the crowd.

  “I did,” I said, raising my hand. “It was me.”

  The crowd that had been congratulating us a moment earlier immediately edged away.

  Frankie grabbed my arm. “What are you doing?”

  “Hoping I can get them to break the fifth rule of hiding treasure,” I said with a shrug.

  “Pack up, visitors!” Big Jim yelled. “You’re leaving on the next dragon!”

  “The fifth rule of hiding treasure: Don’t tell anyone where you hid it.”

  —FROM PROFESSOR FLAGHOTH’S SEMINAR ON TREASURE HIDING

  I was hoping that Alasie’s frozen demeanor toward me might thaw a little bit. Taking the blame was a long shot, I knew, but it was the only shot I had left.

  I couldn’t help but feel jittery as I returned to the inn to pack up. The rest of the group went back to camp. I’d just gotten us all kicked out, and we had nothing but a few flakes of sudithium. It would be my fault if we didn’t get any more.

  Villagers stumbled into the inn, looking spent from the battle we’d just waged—the panic, the desperate loading of fish, the fleeing for safety. Now, tired and relieved, they sat down to rest. They’d lost their community building, but fortunately it had been empty at the time of its destruction.

  The villagers seemed happy, and I soon realized why when I heard Big Jim’s voice from the kitchen.

  “They all have to leave now,” he said. “That was the agreement: one more incident and they’d leave.”

  He came out with hot drinks for everyone. I was heading for the stairs, but he grabbed my arm with his free hand and nodded to the counter, where a mug sat steaming at my usual spot.

  “Aren’t you mad at me?” I asked, because I couldn’t tell.

  “You woke Amaruq,” he said. “That was the thing we were most worried about happening. But your bravery helped save the town. You didn’t run. I admire that. And now all you visitors have to leave, and that makes me happy.” He shrugged.

  I nodded. “I’m sorry for everything we’ve done,” I said.

  A moment later, the front door burst open, and an enraged Professor Murphy stepped inside, with Rufus right behind him.

  “Are you a complete idiot?!” he screamed at me. “I told you one thing—one thing! Do not go in the crater, and what do you do?”

  “You set me up to fail. You gave me an area that’d been picked clean,” I said.

  “You could have killed us all. Do you realize that?” Professor Murphy said. Rufus clenched his fist and lunged toward me, only to be held back by Professor Murphy. “And we’re so close. So close! I want you to pack your bags and get out of here on the first dragon. The rest of us will wait for tomorrow. It’s bad enough that we have the Pravus team taunting us at every turn, but to be sabotaged by one of our own . . . We look like fools! Because of you.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that. I knew it wasn’t fair, but I couldn’t come up with a defense.

  “Go home. The shuttle dragon leaves this afternoon. Be on it.” They turned and left, slamming the door.

  The room was quiet after that. Nobody even picked up a fork. They were all looking at me, even Alasie. My face was hot with embarrassment and shame.

  Alasie was leaning against the wall, furry arms crossed as she stared at me. After everyone had been served and Big Jim had returned to the kitchen, she crooked her finger at me, beckoning me to join her in the corner. When I did, she said, “Why’d you do that?”

  My eyebrows went up. She was speaking? To me?

  “Why’d you take the blame for what I did?” she repeated.

  “I don’t know,” I answered, and I really didn’t. “Look, I know you don’t want us here, and we’ve attracted all those hares and everything. I feel bad about that. And then you missed your race, because of us.”

  She kept glaring at me.

  “I heard what Big Jim said to you, about how the village wanted to send you away from here after you’d made a mistake. I know how you feel.”

  “You’re not being sent away from your home,” she said. “You just have to leave my home.”

  “It’s not that,” I said. “I made a deal with Professor Murphy. I have to find some sudithium or I’ll be kicked out of school. And then he set me up to fail—making me dig in the stupidest spot, knowing I wouldn’t find any.

  “You know, I’m just as angry as you,” I went on. “I would have thrown that boulder too, if I could’ve lifted it.”

  She nodded.

  “Why didn’t you just tell us about that hibernating snow beast?” I asked.

  She surprised me by laughing. “Amaruq. That’s his name,” she said. “He’s supposed to be a secret. We don’t want the white woman to know that he’s here. It’s a long story. I’m sorry you got in trouble.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “It was bound to happen sooner or later.”

  “Wait here,” she said. She disappeared into the kitchen. I heard her talking with Big Jim. When she came back, she grabbed my arm. “Come with me.”

  “Where?” I asked.

  “Just come,” she said. “I want to show you something.”

  As she dragged me through the kitchen, Big Jim said, “Take a weapon.”

  Outside, she attached a sled to one of the snowmobiles parked behind the house and began loading it with equipment.

  “Where are we going?”

  “I’m going to give you some,”
she said, motioning for me to get on the snowmobile behind her. “Now that Amaruq is awake, the white woman will know we have it. We’ve been hiding it from her. But when word gets out about Amaruq, she’ll know. And she’ll come for it. She wants to make sure she has it all. She’ll come and find it, no matter where it’s hidden. It has to go. We knew this would happen sometime, but we were hoping we’d have a plan by then.”

  “You’re going to give me some sudithium?”

  “It’s not going to be easy,” she said over her shoulder to me. “There might be . . . obstacles.”

  Of course there would be. That was the fourth rule of hiding treasure.

  “Can I get my friends?” I asked.

  “No time.”

  And then we sped off.

  ‡‡‡

  It was still early, though it was hard to tell because the clouds hung low in the sky, making it seem like dusk. Alasie took off a different way, along a track that snuck out the back of town and headed through the smaller hills there. We came down to a narrow bay that was also frozen over and started across. Riding on the sea ice made me nervous, because there were pockets of water on top, but Alasie rode through them without worry. The ice below must have been very strong.

  The scenery was the same: white, white, and whitish gray with the occasional dark chasms where the ice was split and the sea below was revealed. We had to take detours around those cracks in the ice.

  We rode across the bay toward a towering red cliff. It had a crumbly look to it, and chunks of rock had sheared off and fallen to the frozen ice below. A narrow opening divided the cliff in two, allowing passage through to the other side. Alasie headed for the opening but stopped just as we reached it.

  “Almost there,” she said, looking through to the other side.

  “Where?”

  “You’ll see.”

  She drove up a smooth incline of snow and through the alleyway in the cliff. The rock walls on either side rose straight up and loomed over us, like skyscrapers.

  Another frozen bay met us once we made it through. This bay was enclosed by a horseshoe of cliffs. We rode across the ice to the tip of the other side. Alasie stopped the snowmobile next to the cliff wall and got off.

  “There’s a mark here somewhere,” she said, scanning the wall of rock.

  This reminded me of the last rule of hiding treasure—don’t forget where you hid it. It’s surprising how many people do.

  “There!” She pointed to a spot on the wall. Then she turned to the sled and removed a shovel and a pickax. She handed me the shovel.

  She walked out onto the ice, measuring off ten paces. “We have to dig a hole right here,” she said.

  She stabbed the ax into the ice, but only a few flakes shot off. She kept at it, and so did I, right next to her.

  “Amaruq is not so bad,” she said, between jabs. “He wasn’t supposed to wake up for another couple of weeks. We would have moved the food to the crater before then, because he wakes up really, really hungry. And confused—thinks he’s back in the war. But after he eats and takes another nap, he’ll be happy.”

  “Why is he a secret?”

  “He is a deserter from the white woman’s army,” she said.

  “Irma Trackno?”

  “Yes. Irma wants him back. He came here last summer to hide from her. It was great at first, because he kept the other big animals out of town and we felt safe. Even after he hibernated in the crater, the animals stayed away. Until you guys showed up.”

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “We knew that as soon as he woke up, Irma would find out he’s here. Her search teams didn’t show up until after he hibernated, but we see them often now. Once she knows he’s here, she’ll come for him. And she’ll punish us for hiding him.”

  “She does seem like the vengeful type,” I said, remembering all the stories Darthin had told me about her.

  “Yes. Some on the council think we should give Amaruq the mineral, so he stays big. Then he can protect us from Irma’s revenge. But next winter he’ll hibernate again, and we’ll be defenseless, and Irma will come. Others on the council want to give her the mineral. Maybe she’ll be so happy to have it, she won’t be mad that we hid Amaruq.”

  “How did you get the sudithium?” I asked. “Didn’t the miners get it all?”

  “In the big crater, yes. That was many years ago. The white woman’s army set up camp near where your cabins are, and they mined that crater for years.”

  Alasie gave a mighty swing, and the ax went through the ice. She swung it a few more times, until she had a little hole. She went back to the sled, grabbed a large sword, her bow and arrow, some rope, and a fish. She placed these next to her hole in the ice, and then motioned for me to help her widen it. As we dug, she continued with her story.

  “The people here hated the miners, who were from the south and very rude and condescending, acting so superior with their fancy tools and weapons. They couldn’t last one winter here alone, and they had no respect for the people who can, and have, for generations.”

  I nodded. “My foster mother, Cook, says that’s the problem with people. Everyone thinks they’re better than everyone else and they don’t treat others with respect.”

  We gave the edges of the hole a few whacks, then rested. Dig and rest. Dig and rest. My arms started to ache.

  “If the miners got all the sudithium, how did you end up with it?” I asked during one rest.

  “Two years ago, long after the miners were gone, there was a big explosion in the sky. A meteorite broke up before landing, and the rocks with green flakes fell across the ice here, in this spot. Fishermen used to come to this bay for mussels, and two of them found the rocks. They remembered the mining people, so they collected all the rocks and hid them in a secret cave.

  “We don’t want Irma to have it, because she uses it for war. So when she asks, we tell her there’s nothing left here. But all the animals are still so big. We tell her trace amounts must still be in the soil, or maybe they adapted to be that big. Who knows? She doesn’t believe this. She thinks we’re hiding it. So she lets intruders like you come to look for it. She wants to make life so miserable for us that we just give it to her.”

  I kept jabbing at the ice while Alasie talked.

  “It’s very sad, but her plan has worked,” she went on. “We’re ready to give up. Every group that comes causes more problems than if we just let Amaruq shrink back to size and leave. We’re sad for him, but we can’t protect him anymore.”

  “You guys are protecting him?”

  “Yes. He was in many battles, and he doesn’t want to fight anymore. You saw him. When he wakes up, he thinks he’s back in a war. The fighting has affected him very badly.

  “Big Jim says the council has decided to give Irma the sudithium, but before we do, I want to give you some. I told him what you did, and he said okay. Then you could show that Murphy and not be in trouble.”

  Aww, that was so nice of her.

  “And the sudithium is under this ice?”

  “Yes.”

  I looked into the hole and saw a gap below the ice. “Where’s the water?” I asked.

  “The tide is going out,” she said. “When the tide comes in, the water hits the top of the ice. When it goes out, the ice stays frozen in place. Sea ice is very strong.”

  “How’d the sudithium get down there?” I shined my flashlight into the hole and saw dark, swirling water down below.

  “We hid it here. Like I said, we didn’t want Irma to find it. We know from Amaruq that most of the creatures she gives it to go straight to battle and are forced to fight huge armies by themselves. Most of them die, but she doesn’t care. She says she can make more monsters.

  “Some boys found a secret cave in the wall here when they were hunting for mussels. When the tide goes out, they can walk to the cave. When the tide comes in, the entry to the cave floods, but the inside is higher and stays dry. It’s the perfect place to hide the rocks from Irma’s sold
iers. They come to the village with their fancy equipment to find the sudithium, but they don’t find anything.”

  “That’s amazing!” I said. We never would have found it—that was obvious.

  “It’s a good hiding spot to keep it from people,” she said. “Unfortunately, something else found it.”

  As she said this, a giant tentacle slithered through the opening in the ice and grabbed my leg.

  “Polar bears eat seal meat, so they haven’t been exposed to sudithium in their food chain. They avoid this area because of the other large animals.”

  —DARTHIN, EXPLAINING THE ABSENCE OF POLAR BEARS

  I screamed. Alasie moved quickly. She grabbed her sword and swung it down hard on the tentacle, puncturing the thick hide. The tentacle released me in a flash and slithered back into the darkness below. I heard splashes echo from beneath the ice.

  I scurried away from the hole as fast as I could. Alasie dropped the sword and picked up her bow and arrow, firing three quick shots into the darkness.

  “What was that?” I asked.

  “Ice squid,” she said. “Very dangerous to the fishermen around here.”

  “How are we going to get past it?”

  She kept her focus on the hole, but no more tentacles emerged.

  “We wait for the tide to go out all the way.”

  I heard a crack behind me. Turning, I saw tentacles waving in the air, having burst through one of the crevasses we’d crisscrossed on our way to this spot. “It’s huge!” I screamed.

  The slithering tentacles rose up high and then crashed down on the ice, trying to break it. Alasie kept shooting until she ran out of arrows, hitting them five times before they slithered back down.

  “I’m not sure our tranquilizer works on this one,” she said.

  As if to prove her point, a tentacle rose back up in the air.

  “Should we get off the ice?” I asked. It seemed like a good idea to me. I nodded at our snowmobile.

  Alasie shook her head. “The tide is almost out,” she said. “He has to go to deeper water now.”

  We watched as the tentacle withdrew, and soon the thumping below the ice stopped. After a nervous few minutes spent watching and listening, Alasie edged back over to the hole. She gave the ice a few whacks, then backed away. She did this a few times, until she felt safe.