The Melting Sea (3 page)

Glad to turn her back on the troubled island, Lusa fixed her gaze on the hills she could see ahead of her, at the other side of the ice. They seemed so close. But almost at once she realized that reaching them wouldn't be as easy as she had hoped. The surface was rougher than she was used to, as if sheets of ice had rubbed against each other and thrust up ridges that were hard to clamber over and dug painfully into Lusa's paws.

“Look at this!” Kallik called from up ahead.

Struggling across the uneven ice to join her, Lusa saw a much smoother stretch reaching into the distance on either side, parallel with the hills on the distant shore; on its edges the ice was even more broken, like tiny mountain ranges with jagged peaks.

“What did that?” she asked.

“I think it must have been one of those flat-face firebeasts,” Toklo replied after a moment. “It pushed its way through here, smashing up the ice, and then the water froze again after it left.”

Lusa shuddered, remembering the firebeast they had encountered after they left Star Island, when they had been forced to swim in the freezing water while flat-faces shot at them with firesticks. “I hope it doesn't come back.”

Toklo nodded. “Those things are dangerous. We'd better get moving.”

Still nervous, Lusa kept looking around as she clambered over the spiky ice at the edge of the firebeast track. There was no sign of the huge creature, with its glittering, unnatural colors and its deep-throated roar, but she couldn't relax until they had left the weird trail far behind.

Her paws hurt even more as she tried vainly to pick a path through the rutted ice. Toklo was limping badly, she noticed, and even Kallik and Yakone were having trouble.

I wish my legs were longer
, Lusa grumbled to herself as she struggled up the side of a steep ridge and let herself flop down the other side.
At this rate, it will take days to cross
.

She realized that she was dropping back, sometimes losing sight of the others in the dips between the ridges. But the broken ice dug into her paws, and however hard she tried, she couldn't go any faster.

Then Kallik stopped to wait for her. “Come on,” the white bear said. “Climb on my back. I'll carry you for a bit.”

“I'm not a baby!” Lusa protested indignantly. “I don't need you to take care of me.”

Kallik sighed. “I know. But this is a lot tougher for you than the rest of us. Let me help you.”

Lusa wanted to refuse, but she felt so exhausted, and her paws hurt so much, that instead she found herself climbing onto her friend's back. “Thanks, Kallik,” she murmured as she crouched down into her thick white fur.

Even with Lusa's weight on her back, Kallik loped much faster across the ice than Lusa could, climbing the ridges with hardly any hesitation until she caught up with Toklo and Yakone. For a while they made good progress, and the hills ahead seemed to be drawing nearer, but gradually Lusa became aware that their outlines were becoming blurred. At the same time the air was growing colder.

“Fog,” Toklo muttered. “That's all we need.”

As the mist swirled around her, growing thicker with every pawstep they took, Lusa realized that she had never seen fog like this before. The air was full of tiny ice crystals that stung her eyes and settled on her pelt, striking deep into her fur like frozen thorns.

“What's happening?” she whimpered.

“I've seen this kind of fog a few times on Star Island,” Yakone remarked. “It happens when it's really cold. There's nothing any bear can do about it, except shelter until it's over.”

“Like we can do that out here,” Toklo grumbled.

The fog rapidly grew thicker, blotting out their view of the mountains ahead. Lusa wasn't even sure that they were moving in the right direction anymore, though Kallik and Yakone strode on confidently, less worried by the stinging ice than Lusa and Toklo.

Still perched on Kallik's shoulders, Lusa thought she had never been so cold in all her life. “I'll be an ice bear if this goes on,” she whispered under her breath.

Hoping for some shelter near the ground, she slid down from Kallik's back and plodded along beside her friend. For a short while the going seemed easier, but ice crystals began clogging in Lusa's pelt, weighing her down like stones, and it became harder and harder to put one paw in front of another.

She paused for a moment to catch her breath and try to scrape some of the ice crystals off her fur. But as fast as she scraped, they settled again.
I really look like a white bear now
.

Looking up, she realized that she couldn't see Kallik or the others; their shapes had melted into the thick fog. Listening closely, she thought she could hear pawsteps; then they, too, faded. Lusa wasn't even sure which direction they had been traveling.

She opened her jaws to call out to her friends, then stopped herself.
If I do that, they'll know I'm lost. They'll know I need help. They already think I'm just a cub, and I'm
not
!

Remembering all the times she had needed help from the other bears, Lusa was determined that this time she would cope by herself.
When we reach Kallik's home by the Melting Sea, we'll be splitting up. Before that happens, I have to prove that I'm their equal
.

But when Lusa set out again, the fog was so thick that she could hardly see her paws. Every breath felt like thorns in her throat. She wasn't sure whether her friends even knew that she had fallen behind.
If they think I'm still with them
, she thought, pushing down panic,
they could be way ahead by now
.

Before she had gone many pawsteps, Lusa came up to an ice ridge with a deep crack running from top to bottom.
I'm sure I've seen that before! Am I going in the completely wrong direction?
She was so scared that she hardly dared move.

While Lusa still stood there, her paws frozen to the ground with fear, she heard a clicking sound. A caribou appeared out of the fog and loomed over her. Lusa was so close to panic that she barely realized how weird it was to meet a caribou out on the ice.

Oh, no! Has it come to take revenge on me, because I was part of the hunt?

Lusa braced herself for a fight, hoping desperately that she stood a fair chance against a caribou.
It doesn't have any sharp teeth or claws. How dangerous can it be?

Then a voice spoke inside her head. “Follow me.”

Lusa could hardly believe what she was hearing. Blinking ice crystals out of her eyes, she stared up at the caribou.“Ujurak?” she whispered.

The voice spoke again. “Yes, I'm here. Follow me, and we'll find the others again. Keep close to me.”

“But I can hardly see you through this fog,” Lusa protested.

“Then follow the sound of my feet,” Ujurak responded.

He lowered his mighty antlered head and began to shoulder his way through the fog. Lusa followed, sometimes losing sight of Ujurak's huge shape, but always able to hear the sharp, distinctive clicking of his feet as he paced over the ice.

“I don't want to slow the others down,” Lusa confessed out loud, trying not to sound self-pitying. “But I'm worried they might go on without me if they think I'm lost.”

“They would never leave you.” Ujurak's voice sounded reassuringly in her head. “You're a family. You belong together, and they all know that.”

Gradually the fog was thinning out, and Ujurak led Lusa to a place where there was no more than an icy mist. Ahead she could hear voices, and see shapes circling anxiously.

“Lusa! Lusa, where are you?”

“Here!” Lusa ran forward to her friends. “I got lost, but Ujurak found me. He's a caribou—look!” She whirled around, to see nothing but the wall of ice fog. The caribou had vanished.

“At least you're safe,” Toklo grunted.

“And it's good to know that Ujurak is still with us,” Kallik added, her eyes shining.

“He shouldn't have to watch over us,” Toklo snapped back at her. “We should be able to look after ourselves!”

Feeling guilty because she was the one who had needed Ujurak's help, Lusa wondered what Toklo was so angry about. She thought he would be glad to know that Ujurak still cared about them, even though he had gone back to his starry home.

“It's too tough out here,” Toklo went on, glaring at Kallik. “Maybe we should have crossed somewhere else.”

“But maybe somewhere else the ice is starting to break up,” Kallik retorted, beginning to sound exasperated.

“Yeah, this is the way Nanulak's family told us to go,” Yakone added, backing up the white she-bear.

“Then we need to move faster,” Toklo responded gruffly, “and make sure we don't lose Lusa again.”

Even in the midst of the freezing fog, Lusa felt hot with embarrassment that Toklo was singling her out as the one who would hold them back.

“I can keep up,” she insisted.

“You'd better ride on my back again,” Kallik said, padding over to her side.

For a moment Lusa felt like protesting, but all the bears were looking at her, and she thought it would be even more embarrassing to refuse. Reluctantly she scrambled onto Kallik's back, and had barely gotten settled when the white bear lurched forward beneath her. Within a few pawsteps the fog grew denser once more. As Lusa gazed ahead at what little she could see of the ice ridges, she had to admit she was relieved not to be struggling along on her own paws anymore.

Yakone took the lead, picking up the pace until Lusa could see that Toklo wasn't comfortable.

“What's the rush?” the brown bear panted.

“We need to get out of this fast,” Yakone responded. “You said so yourself.”

Toklo gave an irritable grunt. “The ice isn't going to break up right now, you know.”

“It's not that.” Yakone hesitated, looking uneasy, then added, “Back on Star Island, some of the older bears said you could get sick by breathing in the crystals of ice fog.”

“What? Really?” Kallik queried.

“Actually, I never saw a bear who got sick like that. I'm just telling you what they said.”

Lusa found it easy to believe. All of them were gasping for breath, and her belly was rolling uncomfortably.

“Even if it's true, there's nothing we can do about it,” Toklo pointed out. “We've got to breathe!”

Kallik and Toklo kept on, following Yakone, but Lusa realized that all three of them were growing more tired with every pawstep, finding it harder and harder to clamber across the ice ridges. Kallik's shoulders slumped beneath her, and guilt weighed Lusa down like a rock in her belly as she thought of how much more difficult she was making it for Kallik.

“This is no good,” Toklo announced, halting in front of a particularly steep ice ridge. “It's already getting dark; we're never going to make it off the ice tonight.”

Yakone looked as if he was about to argue, but before he could speak Kallik flopped down onto the ice and let Lusa slide off her back. “You're right, Toklo. Let's sleep here.”

The fog was so dense that Lusa hadn't realized that the light of the short snow-sky day was fading. Now, looking around, she realized that true darkness was gathering. Together with her friends she huddled in the shelter of the ice ridge, wrapping her paws over her nose to block out the ice crystals.
Just in case …
she thought muzzily. When she glanced from side to side, she saw that the others were doing the same. She slipped into sleep.

Sometime during the night Lusa woke to find that the fog had cleared. The moon shone down on the ice, bathing it in an eerie silver light, and the stars blazed out with a frosty glitter against the black sky.

Lusa craned her neck above the hump of Kallik's sleeping body until she spotted Ujurak's constellation.
He was the youngest of all of us
, she thought,
but he turned out to be so strong and wise
. He was so strong that he had seen her from far away and rescued her from the ice fog.

“I'm strong, too, Ujurak,” she whispered aloud.

The comfort of knowing that the star-bear was watching over her was like thick fur wrapped around her, and his starlight was in her eyes until she drifted back into sleep.