Stellan winced. “That was nasty, Jytte.”
“Sorry,” Jytte mumbled, realizing she’d gone too far.
In truth it was a creek tucked snugly under billows of snow. The ice wasn’t that thick, and underneath they found barely moving winter-sleep fish. The fish were easy to catch, and the cubs ate until finally Jytte announced, “One more fish and I’ll grow scales.”
Suddenly, they heard a noise, a raw voice carried by the wind.
“What is that?” Stellan whispered.
“Shhh! It’s coming this way.” They listened a few more seconds. It was the familiar snuffy little whines of distress. The words, garbled at first, became clearer.
“I don’t want to be a Tick Tock … I don’t want to be … ” The words Tick Tock scratched at the back of Jytte’s mind. She had heard those words before, but where?
“It’s a cub, Jytte,” Stellan said anxiously. “It’s in trouble.”
A figure staggered toward them in the milky light of a half-moon.
“Third!” Stellan exclaimed.
“It can’t be.” Jytte’s voice was thick with wonder.
“But it is!” Stellan bounded over to the little fellow and crouched down. “Climb up, Third. Climb up on my back. I’ll carry you over to some fish.”
The scrawny cub tried to climb up but slipped off with a low moan.
“Here, Third,” Jytte said. “I’ll help you up onto Stellan’s back.” She had forgotten how small young cubs were, and Third was even smaller.
Jytte began stripping off the flesh of the leftover fish and feeding him small bits.
“Open your mouth, Third, that’s it. Yeah, I know, different from Mum’s milk.”
“I have a feeling he hasn’t had much of Mum’s milk lately,” Stellan said.
Third looked at them, blinking, while he swallowed. In between bites he kept repeating, “No … no Tick Tock … I don’t want to be a Tick Tock.”
Gradually, the foggy glaze that filled his eyes began to clear.
Stellan leaned in closer. “Third, you know us, don’t you? We were Fourth and Fifth.”
“No,” he said quietly. “You were First and Second.” He paused. “No Tick Tock.”
A frightened looked came into his eyes, and the tiny cub fell back into a faint.
“Oh no, what have I done?” Jytte gasped.
“He’s not dead. Don’t worry.” Stellan began rubbing snow in the cub’s face. “I think we have to get out onto the sea ice again. This little fellow needs blubber. Seal blubber. He’s starving to death. I bet Taaka kicked him out of the den.”
Jytte had a more dreadful thought, which she did not say out loud, but once again Stellan read her mind.
“Jytte, you think that Taaka was going to eat this cub?” he asked quietly.
“Kill him and feed him to the other two,” Jytte muttered.
“Great Ursus, a mother could do this?” Stellan said, stunned.
“Taaka could.” They both looked at the tiny scrap of a cub and wondered how Third had ever made his way so far.
As gently as possible, Stellan lifted the little cub to his shoulder, and he and his sister headed north and two points east to the Frozen Sea.
They were glad to be back on the ice. Yet it was with great trepidation that they approached the first breathing hole that they found.
Third slipped from Stellan’s back. They had no fear that he would make any noise. He had been virtually mute since he had fainted—not a single word about Tick Tocks, whatever they were. Nor had there been any whimpering. Jytte and Stellan flattened themselves against the ice and were perfectly still. This time they had worked it out. Only one of them would grab for the surfacing seal. They would not risk getting their paws stuck again. It was decided Stellan would smack the seal after Jytte grabbed it.
“Do I smack first and then lift it from the hole? Or lift and then smack when it’s out of the hole?” Stellan asked. “I can’t remember how Mum did it.”
“Lift … smack.” But it was not Jytte who answered. It was Third. They turned to him in amazement. How would he know? He was nearly a year younger and had most likely not yet been out on the ice with his mum.
“How do you know that?” Jytte asked.
The little cub shrugged. He barely spoke more than a few words at a time.
Perhaps he didn’t know many. It was hard to imagine Third having conversations with his brutish bigger brother and sister. And Stellan seriously doubted Taaka would ever tell her cubs stories as their mum had.
“So, you got that, Jytte? You lift and I smack?” Stellan asked.
“Got it.” Within seconds, she heard a stirring under the ice. She could almost catch the seal’s scent. Great Ursus, she thought, don’t make this seal Jameson. But she couldn’t take time to really look. She had to act quickly. The top of the seal’s head broke through the water. Jytte clawed its neck and hauled it from the hole. There was a resounding slap, then the head lolled to one side.
“Well done, Stellan!” Jytte shouted.
But before they could take their first bite, they heard a whimper behind them. “What’s the matter, little fellow?” Stellan turned around to look at Third, and his blood turned to ice.
A large black wolf melted out of the night. A strange green fire glowed in his eyes, and his fangs glistened in the moonlight. His hackles were raised.
“Oh no!” Jytte whispered, feeling her own guard hairs stiffen as a sickish feeling invaded her. He was a huge wolf.
Fear engulfed Stellan. His heart was thundering in his chest. He felt the tiny cub trembling against his leg. He reached out and dragged Third back, shoving him behind them. But the wolf kept advancing, swinging his head menacingly from side to side. In the moonlight the wolf’s shadow spread out on the ice as if claiming the vast frozen sea. Stellan thought he could read the creature’s thoughts. Mine, mine … all this is mine. A scent rolled off it. Not the wolf’s scent but that of his latest kill—a cub!
The distance between them was shrinking. Stellan could see the wolf’s shoulder muscles begin to bunch beneath the fur, readying to charge. With each second Stellan felt a suffocating desperation. I must breathe, breathe and think, if we are to survive.
The wolf stopped short, a crazed look in his eyes. Stellan could feel the beast’s hunger, hunger for them. He let out a harsh growl, fierce and commanding. “Submit! Submit!” Stellan understood this strange language immediately. The wolf’s tail was stiff and straight out.
Stellan recalled their mum saying that wolves, though much smaller than bears, made up for it with their cunning. They might be small, but they know exactly how to slice the life-pumping artery. There’s always a lot of blood when a wolf kills.
When a wolf kills. The words echoed in both the cubs’ minds. They felt each other’s fear, fear for themselves and fear for little Third. Within seconds they could be destroyed. Jytte imagined the rip of his fangs in her own flesh. She wanted to flee, but that was unthinkable. She would rather die than flee. Jytte dug her claws into the ice. She would not see her brother hurt. She must be cunning, cunning as a wolf. She looked down at the dead seal and pushed it toward the stalking wolf, but slightly to the side.
“He wants both,” Stellan whispered to Jytte.
“Both?”
“The seal and Third. He’s expecting us to hand over Third.”
“No!” Jytte let out a low growl and, without thinking, rushed toward the wolf.
“Jytte!” Stellan shrieked. He saw blood fly through the air as Jytte skidded across the ice. The wolf charged after her, but she dodged and seemed to vanish into thin air. Stellan sensed she was behind a pile of old jumble ice, but the wolf seemed mystified. He stood there quivering, trying to catch Jytte’s scent. He swung his head back toward Stellan. He’s confused, Stellan thought. He doesn’t want to turn his back on me to look for Jytte.
Behind the jumble ice, Jytte was panting, trying to catch her breath, when something truly extraordinary occured in her min
d. For the first time in her life, she knew exactly what Stellan was thinking. Not just sensed. She could hear his thoughts. Decoy! she heard.
Stellan inhaled sharply as he felt his sister wandering through his thoughts. Decoy! he thought again. We need a decoy.
The wolf kept turning his head to look for Jytte, who was still crouched behind the mass of jumble-ice fragments. The ice was heavy, and the slabs appeared immovable. But she saw a telltale crack in one of the foundation pieces. If she clawed that, it just might make the entire mound crash. And that would be a distraction! She wedged a claw into the crack. There was a creak, then a loud crack!
The guard hairs on the wolf bristled. He turned his head.
Now! The neck, Stellan! The neck! Jytte willed. In that moment Stellan forgot his fear. A hot fury swelled within him like a thunderbolt, and he charged. For the wolf, Stellan was a blur on the periphery of his sight. But the wolf’s neck presented the perfect target. Stellan leaped and sank his teeth in his neck. Blood spurted into air that was spangled with frost crystals. The wolf landed on the ice with a bone-shaking thud, then lay still. He was dead, his eyes flung open as if he couldn’t quite believe what had just happened to him. Jytte limped out from behind the wreckage of ice.
“You’re hurt, sister.”
“Not really.” She let out a ragged breath. “He caught me with his claws, not his fangs. Between your haunch and my shoulder, we are going to be as crisscrossed with fighting scars as Uluk Uluk’s face.”
It was a necessary kill, but it was not one to celebrate. The wolf was stealing their prey. They did what had to be done. Jytte and Stellan looked into each other’s eyes. A realization threaded through them: We have no one. We take care of these things ourselves now.
The three cubs turned their backs on the wolf and began to tear at the seal. With each bite, Third gained strength. Indeed, he almost appeared to grow fatter before their eyes. Jytte and Stellan were both immensely curious about Third. What had Taaka done to him? How had he come all this way? They felt, however, that such questions had to wait until Third was stronger.
They had not been feasting long when they spotted crows, blacker than the night, circling above the carcass. One swooped down and began sniffing around the wolf’s body. Another landed and started clawing at the large gash in the wolf’s neck.
“It’s okay,” Jytte said. “I don’t think they’re interested in our seal.”
“We really did it.” Stellan stared at the seal in awe. “Remember our mouse days?”
“Don’t remind me,” Jytte replied. “I suppose we’ll know we’re real hunters when we’re tailed by a Nunquivik fox instead of crows.”
“You are a real hunter, Jytte.” Stellan looked up. A blob of blubber hung from the corner of his mouth. “You hooked that seal right in the neck and hauled it up.”
She tucked her chin and felt a warm thrill run through her. My brother thinks I’m a real hunter! “Thanks, Stellan.”
A strong wind suddenly swept down on them.
“We better find an ice snug for the night. The ukhar is starting to blow. I feel its fangs,” Stellan said. The ukhar winds, named for their sharp, slicing edges, were particularly heavy during the Second Seal Moon.
Stellan stood on his hind legs with Third upon his shoulders. My, he has grown, thought Jytte regarding her brother. She wondered if she had grown as tall. She stood up as well and joined him in scanning the horizon. The red band was just showing. She checked the timepiece. Yes, they were still on track with the course Uluk Uluk had set. The pointer for true north always lined up with Nevermoves, and they would keep two points to the east of it, as Uluk Uluk had told them.
The ice on the sea was changing. It was different from when they had first gone on it after finding Third. But it was not yet the klarken ice.
“Over there, a snug!” Third said, pointing with his small paw toward a pressure ridge. Pressure ridges always offered good wind protection.
Stellan tipped his head up. “Good work, Third.” He gave the cub’s leg an affectionate pat.
Third beamed with pride. That simple little pat on his leg was as good as the taste of blubber. “I’ll tell you my story when we find shelter. I promise.” Words seemed to be coming more easily to him now. “But can you tell me where are you going? What are you looking for? Your mum? I know some mums are good.”
Stellan sighed wistfully. “Our mum was very good. But we think it might be easier to find our father.”
“Our da,” Jytte said. “He’s in the northern hunting grounds. That’s why we look for Nevermoves.”
“Nevermoves?” Third asked.
“The star that points north. Our mother showed it to us.”
“Your mother showed you the stars?” Third’s voice was filled with wonder.
“Yes,” Jytte said. “And pointed out the ones she and our da were named for.”
“Goodness!” Third exclaimed softly.
As the three cubs walked off from their kill site, the crows lifted their heads from the carcass. Their beaks were bloody. The largest of the crows nodded to the other three. They set off in the opposite direction of the cubs and rose, flapping, like rags of darkness in the sky.
Snow had collected on the downwind side of a pressure ridge, sculpting the edge into waves. The Nevermoves star was in the place it should be, and the twin stars Jytte and Stellan were scampering off just ahead of the star called Svree. With the reappearance of these stars, and with the additional help of the red band timepiece, the cubs knew they were going in the right direction.
They had hauled the seal to a snug beneath the pressure ridge where they had dug out the snug even deeper. It was cozy and protected them well. As they settled down, their bellies full, they were ready to hear Third’s story.
Jytte looked at Third, tucked in the crook of Stellan’s arm. He was so tiny. How had he survived long enough to get to that place near the river where they had found him?
“So she kicked you out of the den?”
Third hesitated for several seconds before nodding. “But it wasn’t just about milk. Or fighting for my share.” He paused, tears brimming in his eyes. “She yelled a lot … A lot.”
“At you?” Stellan asked.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“She was scared of me.”
Stellan stared at Third with confusion. “What? Why?” How could Taaka be frightened of this little cub? The weakest of all her cubs? Was there something that he and Jytte were missing?
“Scared of you? But you’re so tiny and powerless,” Jytte added.
There was another long pause. It seemed that the words Third was trying to summon were falling away before they reached his mouth. “I’m not exactly powerless. I do have certain powers.”
“You do?” Stellan said.
“I think Mum knew it before I did. See, I have these dreams at night—strange, scary dreams.” The words now came out of Third in a rush. “I guess I would mostly mumble, but sometimes I’d cry out. Mum would just shove me out of the den, and my dreaming became even stronger. I realized that the dreams that were the scariest weren’t my dreams at all but my mum’s.”
“Wait,” Stellan said. A sudden queasiness seized him, as if he had eaten rotten blubber. “You could see your mum’s dreams?”
“It’s hard to understand, but it was as if I was inside my mum’s head. And I’ll tell you, it’s an evil country. I can’t call her mum anymore. Inside Taaka’s head … she’s not right.”
He can’t call her mum! Stellan thought. How terrible for a little cub to even have to say this, let alone have to wander through the evilness of his mother’s twisted mind.
“It took me a while to understand that the dreams weren’t mine but hers. It was where I learned the words ‘Tick Tocks.’ ”
“What did you see in her dreams?” Jytte asked.
“I saw blood and fur on something called a wheel—a wheel that had teeth.”
Stellan began to tremble,
but said nothing.
“I saw something that looks a bit like this.” Third reached out and touched the red band timepiece suspended on the chain hanging from Jytte’s neck. She jerked back. “But the one I saw was huge!”
“And what about the Tick Tocks?” Stellan asked.
“I’m still not sure. But I know it means something terrible, and that I was going to become one. That was Taaka’s plan. I heard her talking to my brother.”
“What did she say?” Stellan asked.
“She said that I was a freakish little thing and to stay away from me when we were allowed to play outside in the snow. She said my brother would never win a game with me because I have something she called ‘second sight.’ I think she was talking about the dreams.”
“But how did you know that you had to leave?” Stellan asked gently, trying to hide his growing horror.
“I had had a dream the night before. It was truly my dream this time. Two huge bears came and carried me off. All jolly, you know, telling me, ‘You’ll like being a Tick Tock. Tick Tocks will become your best friends.’ Then, suddenly, I was in a terrifying place … There was this enormous tower made of ice, and I don’t know how to describe it, except to say … ” Third’s eyes rested again on the red band timepiece. “I could see right through it, to its very beating heart, and I saw these little cubs walking on the wheel I just told you about, with the teeth. If the cubs missed a step, it devoured them. And I think they are what’s called a Tick Tock.”
“So you left?” Stellan said.
“As fast as I could.”
“But how did you ever find us?” Jytte asked.
“Good dreams, I think. I dreamed of you two and warm, cozy things. I never thought I could really find you.” Third paused. “I suppose it’s all because of good dreams and good luck.”
“Where did the luck come in?” Jytte asked.
“I stumbled onto some jumble ice. That’s where I fell asleep the first night. And then I felt this huge jolt that woke me up. The jumble ice had been torn apart and I was floating. The current was rapid. I didn’t have much choice. I couldn’t jump off. I don’t know how to swim. So I stuck with it. I’m not sure how long.”
The Quest of the Cubs Page 10
