Spirits in the Stars

by Erin Hunter

  Several firebeasts were crouching here and there among the dens. Toklo glared at them as they padded past, and a low growl came from his throat.

  A shiver went through Ujurak as he waited for the firebeasts to open their glaring eyes and break into a menacing roar. But they stayed dark and silent.

  “It’s okay. They’re asleep,” he whispered.

  “They’d better stay that way!” Toklo muttered back.

  Keeping their distance, the bears headed down to the shore and scrambled over the boulders into the cove.

  “Thank Arcturus there aren’t any of the white bears here!” Lusa exclaimed as she leaped down onto the pebbly beach. “They listened!”

  Toklo gave a huff of agreement. “We have enough to worry about without them coming around.”

  Gazing out to sea, Ujurak spotted several seal breathing holes, and even some seals basking on the ice, well away from the shoreline. He took a pace toward them, then stopped, realizing that he had no idea what to do next.

  “How are we going to get them to move?” Lusa asked, echoing his doubts. “I thought we could show them the poison trickling out, but how would we get them close enough to see it? Or we could get the stuff on our paws and then—”

  “You can forget that right now,” Toklo interrupted. “I’m not getting that stink on my paws, not for all the bears on the ice!”

  Lusa sighed. “You’re right; it is horrible. And we would still have to show them where it came from. Kallik, you know more about seals than the rest of us,” she went on. “How can we make them understand?”

  “We can’t,” Kallik replied. “Bears don’t talk to seals.”

  “Then maybe we can chase them into the other bay,” Toklo suggested, hunching his shoulders as he gazed out at the distant seals.

  “We can try,” Kallik agreed dubiously. “But what if they dive back into the water? We can’t chase them there.”

  Toklo hesitated, then shrugged. “We’ll have to stop them from going back through their breathing holes.”

  Kallik gave Toklo a look that told Ujurak she didn’t think that would work, but she said nothing.

  “We can’t just stand here,” Lusa said. “Let’s give it a try.”

  Toklo lumbered out onto the ice, picking up the pace as he drew closer to the seals. Lusa dashed after him. Ujurak exchanged a doubtful glance with Kallik, then followed.

  But well before the bears reached the first breathing holes, the seals were aware of them. They started hauling themselves across the ice, slipping down through the holes into the safety of the ocean. There were too many holes for the bears to intercept the seals. Ujurak could sense their panic.

  “Cloud-brains!” Toklo halted and let out a roar of frustration. “We want to help you!”

  “They don’t understand,” Lusa panted.

  Kissimi squealed with excitement as Kallik hurled herself across the ice, trying to intercept a seal as it dove down through a hole. It slid past her, barely a muzzlelength ahead of her claws, and vanished with a farewell flick of its tail.

  Lusa charged into a group of seals, biting and snapping in her efforts to herd them toward the new bay, but the seals just scattered in terror. Lusa lost her footing on the ice and thumped down hard on her haunches.

  “Why won’t they do as they’re told?” she gasped.

  Ujurak heard a panic-stricken screech behind him and spun around to see that Toklo had flung himself on top of one of the seals, which lay limp under his claws, its eyes glazed with fear. Toklo was poised to sink his teeth into its throat.

  “No, Toklo!” Ujurak yelled. “We’re not hunting! The seals are poisonous!”

  Toklo let out a snarl of rage and scrambled off the seal. The terrified creature lay frozen for a moment, then dug the claws on its front flippers into the ice and flung itself down a breathing hole.

  “This feels all wrong,” Toklo grumbled. “Seals are prey.”

  “Not these seals,” Lusa reminded him.

  Glancing around, Ujurak saw that almost all the seals had vanished, and those that were left were moving rapidly toward the nearest holes. Chasing them hadn’t worked.

  “Now what do we do?” Kallik panted.

  Lusa shook her head helplessly. “I have no idea.”

  “It was a dumb idea anyway.” Toklo glared at the breathing hole where the seal had vanished. “We couldn’t have chased them all the way to the new bay.”

  “We could have if they’d stayed on the ice,” Kallik argued.

  Ujurak listened to his friends bickering and realized that there was only one answer. He let out a long sigh. “I know what to do,” he said reluctantly.

  He concentrated as he headed toward one of the breathing holes, feeling his fur shrink back until a smooth gray pelt covered all his body. His legs changed into flippers. By the time he reached the hole, he had taken on the complete shape of a seal.

  As Ujurak slid easily through the conical tunnel into the dark water beneath, a nearby seal swerved away from him in alarm, with a soft grunting noise. Ignoring it for the moment, Ujurak drew a little of the water into his mouth, aware right away of its sickening taste, and he saw how cloudy it was because of the poison leaking from the pipe.

  This is disgusting, he thought. I wonder why the seals haven’t moved already. They must know about that beautiful clean bay; it’s not so far away. Hope surged through him. It’s so clear they must move. Maybe this task will be easy, after all.

  Ujurak swam among the seals, who were hovering in the water, reminding him of the shapes that had swirled around him in his dream. They were all staring at him with solemn eyes in whiskered faces.

  I’m surprised they know I’m a stranger, he commented to himself, finding it hard to tell one seal from another.

  Then as his gaze traveled around the group and he looked more closely with his seal eyes, he realized that he was wrong to think they looked alike. One seal had more of the silver-gray dappling on its back than any of the others. Another had especially long whiskers. Yet another was very fat. Ujurak realized that each of them was subtly different.

  As different as one bear is from another.

  Ujurak swam on, looking for a breathing hole so he could take in air, but also wondering which of the seals was their leader. Spotting a circle of light above his head, he headed for it, only to find a big, whiskered seal floating just beneath the hole.

  His senses spinning from lack of air, Ujurak wondered if the big seal would try to block his way. He braced himself for a fight, but at the last moment the big seal swam aside.

  Ujurak popped out through the hole, gulping in huge mouthfuls of air. He hauled himself out onto the ice and dragged himself awkwardly a bearlength forward.

  Cautiously Ujurak scanned his surroundings. To his relief none of the white bears were waiting for their prey to appear. Toklo, Lusa, and Kallik had disappeared, too; Ujurak guessed they were hiding so as not to spook the seals.

  Hearing a grunt behind him, and the sound of a large body flopping onto the ice, Ujurak turned to see that the big seal had followed him out of the hole.

  “Who are you?” the seal asked. “Where have you come from?”

  “I come from far away,” Ujurak replied, hope surging up inside him at the chance of explaining. “I have something important to tell you.”

  The big seal blew out a noisy breath, riffling his whiskers. “What?”

  Ujurak glanced around. More of the seals were appearing through the breathing hole, staring curiously at Ujurak as they formed a ragged circle around him and the big seal. This time Ujurak had no difficulty reminding himself that he wasn’t one of them. The urgency of his mission kept his mind focused.

  Taking a deep breath, Ujurak raised his voice to carry to all of them. “This place is making you sick!”

  The big seal narrowed his eyes, giving Ujurak a suspicious look. Ujurak expected him to deny that there was anything wrong, but he said nothing, as if he was taking his time to weigh what Ujurak told h
im.

  The other seals, Ujurak could tell, were more shocked by his announcement. One or two of them shot him hostile glares. Others bent their heads close to one another and muttered anxiously.

  One young male with silver markings clustered thickly on his back leaned forward and slapped one flipper threateningly on the ice. “Go away and mind your own business!” he barked.

  “Leave him alone, Silver!” an older female snapped, shouldering the young male back. “Maybe he’s got a point.”

  “But how does he know?” another seal asked warily.

  “I have found the place where the poison leaks into the water,” Ujurak explained.

  “Poison?” The word was echoed by more than one seal in the crowd.

  “What is he talking about—poison?”

  “I’ll show you,” Ujurak answered. “Follow me.”

  Sliding down through the breathing hole, he swam farther inshore, until he spotted another hole near the rocks. When he hauled himself out, still clumsy in this new shape, he found himself close to the place where Kallik and Lusa had found the leaking pipe.

  “Look,” he said to the big seal as his whiskery face popped up out of the hole. Ujurak pointed with one flipper toward the place where the brown stinking liquid was oozing out onto the rocks.

  The big seal pulled himself out onto the ice, followed by his companions. Shocked exclamations came from some of them; Ujurak realized how strong the stench was to his sensitive nose—stronger even than when he was a bear—and he could understand how the seals must be revolted by it. One or two of them even plunged straight back into the hole.

  Anger jolted through Ujurak at the thought that the seals had stayed in the cove when something was so obviously wrong. “You must have known this was here,” he accused the big seal. “Why haven’t you moved away? I know it’s been making you sick. The water is poisoned. The fish you eat have been poisoned.”

  Ujurak’s heated tones didn’t seem to affect the big seal. “This is our home,” he growled. “And the no-swims helped us make our home here. So why would they do something that would drive us away?”

  No-swims? Ujurak wondered. Does he mean flat-faces? And what does he mean by saying that they helped the seals?

  The big seal loomed over him. “I don’t trust you,” he went on. “You don’t live here, you’re not one of us, and yet you’re so anxious for us to leave? This feels like a trap. Did the bears send you?”

  Chapter Eleven

  Ujurak

  Fear surged through Ujurak, and he had to force himself not to recoil in front of the big seal. He didn’t know how the seal could have come so close to the truth.

  “Of course the bears didn’t send me!” he snapped. “I’m a seal!”

  The big seal still loomed over him, stretching out his whiskery snout to sniff at Ujurak’s skin. Frantically Ujurak wondered if some of his bear scent was still clinging to him. No other creature has mentioned it before, but then, this is the first time I’ve drawn attention to myself like this.

  “There’s something strange about you,” the big seal growled, still sniffing.

  “Yes.” Ujurak forced himself to speak steadily, not showing his fear. “I’m the only seal here who seems to realize that this water is making you sick.”

  Before the big seal could reply, a smaller female edged forward timidly. “I thought the water was bad, too,” she said. “But no one listened to me.”

  Instantly Silver, the aggressive male with the silver back, rounded on her. “Splash, how dare you say that about our home? Remember how hard we fought to win this place!”

  Ujurak glanced up at the big seal. “What does he mean?”

  “Tell him, Dark,” Silver said, with another hostile glare at Ujurak. “Then we’ll drive him off.”

  Dark, the big seal, gazed out across the frozen sea for a moment; Ujurak could see memory flickering through him like shoals of fish.

  “Our mothers and our mothers’ mothers have calved in this place for longer than any seal can remember,” he began. “Yet there came a time when we were almost driven out. Orca came—”

  “I know that story!” a young seal calf interrupted, slapping his flippers against the ice. “You told it to me in our snow-den,” he added, nudging up against a female with a dappled pelt.

  “That’s quite enough from you.” His mother cuffed him lightly over the head. “We don’t interrupt when Dark is speaking.”

  “Thank you, Dapple.” Dark gave her a brief nod. “Orca came to the cove, many sunrises ago, and attacked us,” he went on. “A lot of seals died. We tried to fight, but there were too many orca. And they came back, time after time, until few of us were left.”

  “I remember that,” an older male said, his head bowed in sadness. “My mate was one of those who tried to drive the orca away, and she never came back.”

  “My father was another,” Silver added, the aggression in his voice giving way to pain.

  Murmurs of agreement came from the other seals, as they remembered their own losses. Ujurak could sense the horror that enveloped all of them like a cloud.

  How could they have lived through that, day after day? They must really love this place.

  “In the end,” Dark continued, “we decided that we couldn’t fight them. We would have to leave. We—”

  “I wish I’d been there! I wouldn’t have been scared,” blurted the young seal calf. In the midst of his tension Ujurak had to stifle a huff of amusement at the youngster. “I’d have killed all the orca!”

  “No, you wouldn’t have! I would have!” Another calf butted his friend from behind. “You be an orca, and I’ll show you!”

  Dapple let out a growl as the two calves started to shove each other. “Stop showing off, both of you!”

  “What happened then?” Ujurak asked.

  “Swift, who was the head seal, was ready to lead us in search of a new home,” Dark replied. “But at the last moment the no-swims came.” He nodded in the direction of the flat-face denning area.

  “And you’d never guess what happened.” Splash, the small female who had backed up Ujurak about the poison, broke in, her timidity forgotten as her eyes glowed with the memory. “The no-swims started killing the orca!”

  Ujurak was astonished. “They what?”

  “They killed the orca,” Silver repeated. “Open your ears, mud-brain!”

  “Finally the last of the orca fled.” Dark took up the story again. “And so we stayed here. And ever since then we have looked on the no-swims as our saviors.”

  Dapple nodded. “We like living close to them. The no-swims don’t hunt us, so we must be special to them.”

  “And that’s why we have to stay,” Dark finished.

  Ujurak’s head was spinning. He couldn’t understand why the flat-faces would have hunted the orca to save the seals. Then he remembered Sally and the other flat-faces who had helped the animals and birds trapped in the oil.

  Sally and her friends really cared. Maybe these flat-faces are like them? But that still doesn’t mean the seals can stay here. . . .

  Ujurak let his gaze travel over the listening seals. “How many of you have been sick?” he asked.

  Dark let out a growl of annoyance and glared at the other seals as if he was daring them to answer. But to Ujurak’s relief he didn’t manage to silence them all.

  “I have,” Dapple said.

  Splash gave a vigorous nod. “I have, too. I told them it was the water!”

  A voice spoke from farther back. “My calf died.”

  “Can’t you see that Splash is right?” Ujurak asked. Once again he pointed with his flipper to the stinking liquid oozing out of the pipe. “It’s the water that’s making you sick—the water and the fish that swim in it. You can smell that the stuff coming out of there is all wrong. It’s bad no-swim stuff.”

  The words were hardly out before Ujurak realized he had made a mistake. Dark loomed threateningly over him again. “The no-swims aren’t bad!” he ins
isted.

  Ujurak saw that the head seal was ready to fight, and that there were others, like Silver, who would back him up. Arcturus, tell me what to say!

  “No, the no-swims aren’t bad,” he agreed, realizing he would have to handle this carefully. “They haven’t poisoned the water deliberately. It’s an accident.”

  “What? How?” Silver demanded, while Dark still glared at Ujurak and the rest of the seals muttered urgently among themselves.

  “I don’t know,” Ujurak replied. “But I know it isn’t the no-swims’ fault. If they want you to be safe, they’d be happy for you to move.”

  To his relief Dark backed off slightly. He seemed to be thinking about what Ujurak had said. The other seals looked at one another anxiously.

  At last Dapple spoke up. “I’d be willing to move. I don’t want my calf getting sick.”

  “I’d go, too.” A younger male pressed forward, his whiskers twitching eagerly. “I’m sick of living near that stench.”

  “But what about the orca?” The older male, the one who had lost his mate, looked Dark in the eye. “They’ll attack us again if we don’t have the no-swims to protect us.”

  “You’re right, Shade,” Silver said. “Besides, why should we move away just because this mud-brain tells us to? Maybe he planned this with the orca!”

  There was a chorus of agreement. Ujurak could feel the mood of the gathering swinging against him, as if the seals were prepared to admit that the leaking pipe might be causing their sickness, but they were too terrified to move away from it.

  Give me the right words now, Arcturus! he begged.

  “Where is your pride?” he asked challengingly. “Can’t you fight for yourselves? There are many, many seals in the ocean—as many as there are stars in the sky. They don’t all have no-swims looking after them.”

  Dark struck the ice with a flipper. “Are you saying we’re scared? I’m not, and I’ll prove it to you! Maybe we should move after all. . . .”

  “Then I know where you can go,” Ujurak said eagerly. “There’s a bay farther around the island—” He gestured with a flipper. “A river runs down into it. The water is clean, and there are plenty of fish.”