Island of Shadows (4 page)

“If you're sure….” Kallik murmured. “Thanks, Toklo.”

Meanwhile, Lusa was poking about in the tipped-over can. “Hey!” she said. “There are potato sticks! They're the best. And fruit!”

“You'd better have those, Lusa,” Toklo said. “Is there any more meat?”

“Hang on a moment.” Lusa disappeared inside the can, and Toklo heard her rooting around. Then she backed out again. “There you go. Meat.”

She dropped a crumpled paper sack at Toklo's paws. Inside, the meat looked as if something had chewed it into little pieces, and there were scraps of tough white stuff holding it together. Toklo buried his snout in the sack and wolfed down meat and white stuff all at once.

“Great, Lusa,” he mumbled between gulps. “Thanks.”

Yakone raised his head from the bone. “Lusa, this is a really neat trick,” he commented. “And you're not scared of no-claws at all.”

Lusa ducked her head, looking embarrassed. “Flat-faces are mostly okay. They don't understand about bears, though.”

“Lusa's right.” Toklo swallowed the last mouthful of meat. “They don't like us near their dens. So we need to get out of here.”

With a quick glance around to check for firebeasts, he headed back the way they had come. The others followed. Toklo felt better to be in the lead again, though he couldn't forget the shame of getting stuck inside the can.

And it'll take forever to get the stink out of my fur!

Kallik suppressed a sigh as she
followed Toklo out of the no-claw denning area.
Why does he have to be so pushy, and want to lead all the time? What does it matter?

Toklo had been difficult ever since they left Star Island. Kallik knew that he was grieving for Ujurak, and she had tried to be understanding.

But we all lost Ujurak. We're all grieving. It's not just about Toklo.

Padding in Toklo's pawsteps across the plateau and toward the distant hills, Kallik tried to focus on the good things. They had been faced with so many problems on Star Island: the poisoned seals that were making the white bears sick, and the oil rig that was endangering the wild and cutting the connection with the ancestral spirits.

We fixed it, all of it! That's an amazing achievement. And now we can go home.

Kallik's thoughts flew back to the Frozen Sea, where she and her brother, Taqqiq, had played as carefree cubs, so long ago. Their mother, Nisa, was gone forever, but Taqqiq was still alive; at least Kallik wouldn't let herself think otherwise. Hope welled up in her.
Maybe Taqqiq has gone back there. Maybe I'll see him again.

She glanced at Yakone, who was striding tirelessly alongside her. “Did I ever tell you about my brother?” she asked.

Yakone shook his head; Kallik was warmed by the interest in his dark eyes.

“I lost him when my mother died….” she began, launching into the tale of how she and Taqqiq had been separated on the ice, how she had finally found him at Great Bear Lake, where all bears gathered to celebrate the longest day of burn-sky, only to lose him again when he decided not to join Ujurak's journey.

“He hung out with some pretty unpleasant bears by the lake,” Kallik confided to Yakone. “They used to steal food. Once they even stole a black-bear cub and wanted to keep him so the other black bears would give them their food!”

“That must have been hard for you,” Yakone said. “After all, he was your brother, right?”

“It was very hard,” Kallik admitted. “He had changed so much from the Taqqiq I knew when we were cubs. He seemed to know what his friends were doing was wrong, but he made a lot of enemies, thanks to them. I just hope he found his way back to the Frozen Sea,” she went on, anticipation bubbling up inside her. “I'm going home, Yakone, and I want Taqqiq to be there!”

The trek across the island seemed to take forever. The cold was no problem for Kallik, but she hated the biting wind that flung ice crystals into her face, and the rock that was hard beneath her paws. There was little prey; Toklo managed to catch a hare, but it was thin and scrawny, hardly enough to feed one bear, let alone four. And when they tried to creep up on the gulls or the snow geese, the whole flock would take off before the bears got near enough to spring, flapping around their heads with harsh cries that sounded like mockery to Kallik.

When they reached the range of hills, they spent a whole day trying to find a path that would lead them through. That night they slept huddled in the shelter of an overhanging rock, and they finally scrambled up to the ridge in the gray light of the next day's dawn.

Kallik shivered, and her heart sank as she gazed out across the view in front of her. Beneath her paws the ground sloped gently away to another expanse of icebound sea, which stretched into the distance, with no more land in sight. That wasn't the problem; it was the state of the sea that troubled her. Close to shore, the frozen surface was sliced through with dark jagged cracks, splitting the ice into separate floes. Kallik could imagine them tilting beneath her feet, pitching her into the hungry waves.

“Are you okay, Kallik?” Lusa asked, looking up at her.

Kallik swallowed. However hard she tried, she couldn't forget how her mother had died: the swirling water between two chunks of ice, and the vicious jaws of the orca gaping to drag Nisa down. “I'm fine … it's just … it looks as if there might be orca down there.”

Lusa pressed comfortingly against her side. “Look how narrow the cracks in the ice are. Even I could jump across those. We probably won't need to swim.”

“And if we do, we'll deal with the orca,” Yakone promised.

“You have seen orca before, haven't you?” Toklo broke in irritably. “They're not that easy to deal with.”

Without giving Yakone the chance to reply, he headed down the slope; Kallik and the others had to trail after him. Kallik remembered that the last time they had encountered orca, Ujurak had been there to help them, turning into an orca himself to drive the great whales away. He wasn't here now, and she had probably made Toklo angry by reminding him.

But we can't examine every word before it comes out of our mouths just in case it upsets Toklo
, she argued silently.
He'll have to accept that Ujurak isn't coming back, just like the rest of us.

When the bears reached the edge of the sea, Kallik was relieved to see that the ice floes were bigger, and the cracks narrower, than she had thought when she'd seen them from the ridge. Lusa was right: It would be easy to leap from one to the next. Her fears began to recede a little, though she still kept a sharp lookout for the telltale fin of an orca cutting through the waves.

Yakone was scanning the water carefully, too. “I was hoping there might be seals, or fish,” he explained to Kallik. “But the sea seems empty.”

Kallik shuddered. “Maybe the orca have taken all the prey.”

“This is getting to be a hungry journey,” Yakone commented.

“They all are,” Lusa grumbled.

For once, Toklo let Kallik take the lead as they reached the shore. She listened for a moment before she set paw on the ice, studying the sounds the broken floes were making, the noise of the waves slapping around them. She chose the chunk of ice that sounded heaviest in the water, the least likely to break up again under the weight of the bears. She gathered her haunches underneath her and jumped as far from the edge of the ice as she could. It tipped and rocked beneath her, but she stayed crouched down, and she was close enough to the center to avoid sliding into the dark green water around the edges.

“Follow me closely,” she called to the others. “Keep away from the edges, and stay low. The ice will move, but you should be okay.”

She noticed that Yakone hung back and waited for Lusa and Toklo to jump first. Kallik guessed Toklo wouldn't like feeling that the white bear was watching out for him, but he had to accept that Yakone was better suited to this part of the journey. Lusa couldn't jump as far as Kallik, but her weight was less, so the ice rocked less disturbingly. The little black bear stayed on her belly and wriggled over to join Kallik in the middle.

Toklo took a short run up and leaped so far that he almost flattened Lusa. The floe jerked in the water and waves slapped against the sides, but the bears huddled together and the ice quickly steadied. Finally Yakone jumped on, spreading his weight evenly among his four giant paws and only blinking when the ice lurched to one side.

“This is not going to be easy,” Lusa commented between gritted teeth.

“The ice will be more solid as we get away from the shore,” Yakone assured her. “And you've done great so far. Follow me to the next one.” He slid cautiously toward the edge of the floe; Kallik and Toklo shuffled back to balance his weight. There was a jerk as Yakone sprang onto the next chunk of ice, but Lusa headed determinedly after him, grunting with concentration as she jumped over the gap.

“You go next,” Kallik told Toklo, spreading her paws farther apart to steady the bucking ice.

Toklo looked at her. “I'll watch out for orca, I promise. I can still keep you safe, Kallik.”

Kallik's heart ached.
You have nothing to prove, my friend.
Out loud she said, “I know you can, Toklo. I hope the water here is too shallow for whales, but we need to keep watch, especially when Lusa is crossing the gaps.”

Toklo nodded, and for a moment everything felt the same as it had always been: the two larger bears looking out for Lusa and Ujurak, knowing that their strength and size had to keep all four of them safe. Then Yakone called out, “Is everything okay?” and Toklo's gaze clouded again. He slithered to the edge of the floe and jumped heavily across the gap. One of his hindpaws landed close to the jagged cliff that plunged down to the open waves; he grunted and snatched it back before stumbling toward Yakone and Lusa, who were watching him with wide, startled eyes. Kallik silently begged them not to comment.

“Wait for me!” she barked, trying to sound lighthearted. She let her paws slip over the ice until she felt the floe start to dip under her weight; then she pressed down with her hindpaws and pushed herself over the dark gap that snaked through the smooth white ice. She landed with her paws spread wide to keep her steady, but the other bears were already balancing the floe, and it barely moved under her weight. Kallik nodded breathlessly to her companions, then looked past them. Chunks of ice stretched toward the horizon, bobbing gently as the waves moved beneath them. Lusa was right, crossing them wouldn't be easy, but they didn't have a choice. And the sea would close up as they left the shore behind and reached the deeper, colder water.

Kallik shook her fur. “Let's keep going,” she said. “We won't want to get caught on the broken ice when night comes.”

As the day went on, Kallik began to notice that Lusa was lagging behind. Even though the gaps grew smaller as they came to the deeper water, she seemed to be having problems jumping from one ice floe to the next. Kallik waited on a large, steady floe for the black bear to catch up. She thought she could guess what was wrong. Since the raid on the no-claw dens, Lusa had only had meat to eat, and not much of that.

Out here on the sea, there's no chance of finding any leaves or berries for her.

When Lusa had caught up, Kallik stayed beside her, crossing with her from one floe to the next, until they reached Toklo and Yakone, who had stopped to wait for them a few bearlengths ahead.

“Everything okay?” Yakone asked.

Lusa nodded. “I'm sorry,” she panted. “I just feel so tired. My paws don't seem to go where I tell them to.”

“She needs to get to land,” Kallik told the male bears. “Can we go any faster?”

“Oh, sure.” Toklo's voice was heavily sarcastic. “Go faster, when Lusa can't keep up as it is. That's a
great
idea!”

“I just thought—” Kallik began.

“No, you didn't think,” Toklo interrupted. “Why can't you just let me make the decisions, and we would all do a lot better?”

It was hard for Kallik not to lash out at Toklo and rake her claws over his ears. “You have no right to order us around!” she growled.