by Laurence Yep
As they entered the twisting passages, Kles flew above them to keep an eye out for any more of Roland’s creatures.
Leech would have followed on his flying disks, but Bayang said to him, “It’d be better to walk. If Roland does have men around, they might mistake Kles for some bird, but you’ll stick out.”
Scirye felt sorry for her friend, because he looked a little disappointed. She knew how much he loved flying, but he still wasn’t as polished and skillful a flier as the griffin or the dragon.
In the maze, Lord Resak moved with an easy, fearless stride—as if he knew that he was the fiercest and deadliest creature in this dangerous land. It was sometimes difficult, though, to pick out the bear’s white fur.
It seemed to blend into the snowy walls, and the bear jinked through the turns so quickly that Kles lost sight of him and they were reduced to following his tracks, jogging along until they caught up with him.
Lord Resak had stopped and was shoving at a large ice boulder, the powerful muscles of his body rippling on his back and shoulders.
Trusting that he had a purpose, Bayang stretched her long body and joined him. With the dragon’s help, the boulder slid across the snow, revealing an opening about a yard wide and three yards deep.
“The ring seals are used to digging breathing holes through the ice and carving out lairs for their pups,” Lord Resak explained. “I just expanded it a bit.”
Scirye peered down into the hole, realizing that it was the mouth of a tunnel connecting the top of the frozen surface to the Arctic Ocean. At the bottom of the shaft, chips of ice floated on the dark water like pieces of broken glass as the ice pack tried to solidify and heal itself.
The bear looked up at the sky where the clouds were beginning to thicken again, reducing the sun to a dull glow as it began to sink toward the horizon.
“There’s going to be another storm soon. The snow should cover up our tracks and the drag marks when we pull the boulder back over the hole. Dragon, I think you should come last so you can do that,” he instructed. Then he studied the rest of them. “I don’t think you can swim very far or fast with those scrawny arms and legs even if the water wasn’t freezing. We’d better get you some help.”
He gave a couple of coughs to clear his throat and then began to growl in a deep rhythmic monotone that made the friends instinctively draw closer to one another. Raising his forepaws, he stamped his right hind paw rhythmically while he dragged his left as if he were lame in that paw, dancing sometimes faster and sometimes slower while he created patterns upon the snow.
As he turned his head from side to side and up and down in time to the beat, his jowls drew back in his teddy bear smile. Despite the hostile land and his enemies closing in, he was happy to be alive, to see the sky and snow and ice, to feel the frozen ocean beneath his paws, to have the cold wind riffle his fur, to draw the crisp, chilly air into his lungs and nostrils, for all the wonderful scents in the world…for, well, everything.
All of the sea’s frozen surface seemed like his drum. The staccato rhythm of his paws traveled joyfully through the snow and ice and up through the soles of Scirye’s boots and into her body, and she found herself tapping her feet in time with him.
As Lord Resak celebrated, he seemed to grow larger—not in size but in power. And she realized he was not just that “sort” of a bear. He wasn’t a bear at all but some spirit of the North. And perhaps not just any spirit either but the spirit of every Arctic creature, from the smallest to the largest, who lived in this harsh but beautiful place.
Suddenly the sea began to roil, the ripples sending the ice chips floating away from the center. Scirye started when a horn thrust up from the sea. Water trickled from the sharp tip and along the grooves of the spiraling pattern on its sides. Scirye waited to see the creature that owned the horn…and waited and waited, for the horn kept on shoving into the air until it was some nine feet long.
Ringed by foam, a glistening, speckled head finally emerged with small eyes and mouth but with a large bulbous dome on the forehead. The horn itself seemed to extend outward through the left upper lip of the milky white creature.
The horn tilted as the creature bent its head momentarily so it could shoot a fine spray of mist from what must have been its blowhole on its back. And then it began to wave its horn in time to Lord Resak’s drumming paw.
“A narwhal,” Roxanna gasped. “I’ve only seen pictures of them.”
“I thought it might be some kind of unicorn at first,” Scirye said.
“Long ago their horns used to be sold as that,” Roxanna explained. “But narwhals usually winter farther south.”
The narwhal gave a brief series of clicks, whistles, and squeals that made Lord Resak chuckle as he got down on three legs and extended a foreleg. And that paw that had knocked down freebooters and Ajumaq stroked the slick domed forehead of the creature as gently as if it were a kitten. Then he spoke to the narwhal in its strange language in a loving, soothing voice.
Which will we see next, Scirye wondered, the fighting machine or more of the teddy bear?
Suddenly there came the patter of many paws and then Scirye saw the largest otters she had ever seen. They were about a yard long, with sleek brown fur dusted with snow. When the surface was level, they pulled in their short forelegs and slid along, letting their hind paws trail behind them. There were over a dozen of them—she was never sure how many because they kept moving about restlessly.
A sea otter with a brindled muzzle rose on his hind legs in front of Lord Resak. “We are the last group, Uncle. The others have already used the seal doorways to retreat into the ocean. We’ve trapped many of the humans, including the group that was after them.” The otter indicated Scirye and her friends.
“If you sent them to help us, we thank you, Lord,” Scirye said with a bow.
Lord Resak waved a paw. “I didn’t know who you were until you introduced yourselves just now.”
The otter twisted around. “We figured if the freebooters were after you, you had to be all right.”
“We understand the principle.” Bayang laughed. “That’s why we interfered with your personal battle, Lord Resak.”
“What are sea otters doing in the middle Wastes?” Roxanna asked.
“I believe you humans call them the phantoms.” Lord Resak chuckled and motioned to the otters. “Now go home for a well-deserved rest.”
The otters slid down the snow and ice, splashing into the water and then disappearing.
Lord Resak turned to the friends. “Hold still. I need to cast a spell so the cold water won’t affect you and yet you’ll be able to breathe.”
Once again, Scirye felt the tingling sensation as his claws sketched a quick design and he muttered the secret words. Then he gestured. “Come. One of you climb onto this one. You’ll find paw-holds along the walls of the hole.” He indicated the side where they started.
Scirye was going to step forward, but Roxanna beat her to it. The Sogdian girl lowered herself into the shaft, feeling around with her boot until she found the first niche. She descended rapidly after that until the sea was lapping at her boots.
The narwhal watched her descent with eyes shiny as pebbles and then lowered its head, exposing the long, white and gray dappled expanse of its back. As it slid forward across the water, its fins looked small compared to its body.
Shoving herself from the wall, Roxanna dropped onto the narwhal. The impact submerged them both for a moment. When they re-surfaced, she was clinging awkwardly to the slick, glistening skin.
“Sit forward and hold on to the horn,” Lord Resak instructed.
Roxanna had trouble climbing toward the head until the narwhal bent its body even more so that she slid over the moist skin, grabbing desperately onto the horn. Instantly, the narwhal began to buck.
“Not so hard,” Lord Resak snapped, and then spoke a series of clicks and whistles so that the narwhal calmed down.
When Roxanna loosened her grip on the horn, she sp
luttered as she spat out a mouthful of seawater. “Well, I wanted to do something my brothers haven’t. But now I can’t tell anyone about it.”
Before she could even cry out, the narwhal submerged into the water so that all that was left was the ice fragments tossing up and down on the surface.
Roxanna’s head had barely disappeared before another narwhal rose to the surface, sending up a spray of mist from its blowhole. This time Lord Resak said something and the creature adjusted its position, perhaps so it would be easier to climb on.
Peeking out of Scirye’s fur, Kles said, “I’m not so sure about this. Griffins were born with wings, not fins.”
Scirye stuffed his head back inside the coat. “You’re my entourage, remember? You’re supposed to go where I go.”
Kles’s voice came muffled from inside the coat. “In the sky and on the land, but not underwater.”
“And I belong on good old terra firma,” Koko insisted. “My mother never raised her baby boy to be a submarine.”
“Then you can wait here and say hello to Roland,” Bayang said.
Koko gulped. “I didn’t volunteer to be a monster’s chew toy either.”
“Actually,” Leech said, “you did when you got on that carpet in the museum.”
Koko flung up his paws. “Okay, okay, but”—he eyed Leech defiantly—“I don’t have to like it.”
Ignoring Kles’s complaints, Scirye clambered down the shaft until she was just above the restless ocean. As she tried to gather up the nerve to push away from the side and jump onto the narwhal, Lord Resak gave another order in the narwhal tongue. The creature slid through the water, curling its body to fit against the curving wall of the opening. Apparently, Lord Resak had learned from Roxanna’s difficulties.
Lord Resak said something else to the narwhal and it twisted its body so that she slid down the slippery hide toward the horn. The temptation, of course, was to seize it and hold on for dear life, but she made herself hold it loosely. She was surprised at how smooth the spiral-grooved horn was.
Before she could even blink her eyes, her narwhal, eager to escape the hostile air, sank into the ocean. The winter sea was dark as ink, but the bottom of the tunnel, lit by the intermittent moonlight, shone like a huge silver disk. There was just enough dim light to make out the underbelly of the Wastes. If the top half was rugged, the bottom half was even more jagged where there were no winds to wear the edges away. Even though there were water currents, the temperature was so cold that they replaced as much as they took away.
Scirye almost panicked. Within her coat, she could feel Kles squirming in alarm. This was no visit to the seashore on a vacation. She could not tell up from down anymore in the gloomy void and her lungs were on fire.
She held her breath as long as she could before it exploded outward from her aching lungs in a stream of bubbles. She stiffened as she took in a mouthful of salty water, but to her surprise she wasn’t suffocating. It was as if her lungs were taking air from the water like a fish. Her breath rose like a chain of silvery beads to where they splattered into a flat oval like a misshapen pancake of air.
She took a few more experimental breaths, grateful to learn that Lord Resak’s spell was indeed working. Nor did her clothes feel heavy and soggy with water—as if the traveling spell kept them dry as well.
It was almost as if she weren’t swimming underwater but instead was drifting through a twilit world.
Another narwhal churned past her, its body almost a silhouette against the opening above. As her eyes adjusted to the faint light, she vaguely became aware of other shapes about her, sensing them as much by the slight currents that their bodies made as they circled slowly as by sight. But she could certainly hear them, for there was a constant chatter of buzzes and clicks. She assumed they were other narwhals and that Roxanna was somewhere on one of them.
A third narwhal returned, followed by a fourth and fifth, and then someone heavy plunged into the water, creating a column of bubbles. Lord Resak emerged, his paws propelling him along.
A moment later, they were plunged into momentary darkness as Bayang filled the tunnel. It stayed black even after she entered the ocean, having covered up the hole in the ice as Lord Resak had ordered. Now the only illumination came through the opaque ice itself.
Though the dragon had tried to go gently into the water, the sheer bulk of her body created a wake that tossed Scirye’s mount about. For a brief moment, she almost lost her grip on the horn, but then her narwhal adjusted to the turbulent water that Bayang created and surged forward with a powerful twist of its tail.
Scirye felt like screaming in protest, but no sound came from her—as if the dusky ocean had taken her voice away. The gloom seemed to close around her so that there was only her and the wild narwhal, who would probably be relieved if she floated away. The isolation crushed her like an invisible hand. Just as she began to pant in fear, she felt a large leathery paw touch her arm.
“Don’t worry,” Bayang’s voice reassured her. “I’m keeping an eye on all of you.”
Yes, of course, not only would the dragon be used to the sea, but her large eyes would be able to see in what was darkness to a human also. Scirye wasn’t alone at all. She had friends who had already fought to protect her. Suddenly her terrors began to evaporate like mist before the sun.
She tried to ask about their other companions, but her words came out as gurglings. Bayang, though, could guess what she wanted to know: “Yes, everyone’s all right.”
For a while, the powerful dragon swam beside Scirye, keeping her comforting touch upon the girl’s arm until Scirye managed a grateful smile at Bayang.
When Bayang finally left Scirye, she didn’t feel afraid because she sensed now that the dragon was nearby, her sleek body easily keeping up with the speeding narwhals.
When they left the Wastes, the frozen ceiling flattened out like translucent glass. Scirye could see bubbles of air trapped within the ice now and how the surface itself was pitted.
Around her the narwhals moved with a fluid grace, swimming with swift beats of their tails while they used their small fins like steering rudders. The ones who were carrying passengers were careful to keep level as they dipped and then rose through the ocean, but the ones without were playfully corkscrewing through the water.
They all seemed to move in time to a pattern of clicks and squeals in a rhythm that reminded her of Lord Resak’s drumming. Could the narwhals be singing?
Still they swam on with the sea and ice darkening as the sun set until the water was inky black. Scirye fought her panic by trying to think of other things. Beneath her, the narwhal sped on, its powerful body moving with efficient twists.
Her narwhal whipped through the sea like a spiked torpedo. It’s like being on a roller-coaster ride, she decided. It’s scary and exciting all at the same time. First the volcano and now this. And so she even began to enjoy herself.
She actually regretted it when her narwhal finally slowed down. Slim, shadowy creatures about a yard long darted around her, moving in a spiral path. High-pitched voices squeaked and squealed, and their tone made it plain they were challenging the intruders.
Then, from somewhere nearby, she heard Lord Resak answering, and she almost giggled, because his deep voice was not really designed for such sounds and the words came out more like the noise a rusty hinge would make.
Then they were moving forward again. The water grew stiller—as if there were only the currents made by swimmers and not by the ocean about her. She guessed they were entering some underwater gate in a wall.
Suddenly there was a shimmering brightness—though it took her a moment to orient herself and realize it came from above her. The surface glittered in restless, ever-changing patterns, but she could make out blurry fires that must be lights.
She could make out figures around her now. There must be a dozen narwhals surrounding her, and after counting she was glad that her friends had all made it.
Something zipped in front
of her, creating a cloud of bubbles, and as they dissipated she found herself staring into the muzzle of another sea otter. The creature was about a yard long and her black eyes regarded Scirye with friendly curiosity—which was reassuring, because the otter’s forepaws held a spear and there was a flint dagger tucked into a belt around her waist. Then the sea otter flipped onto her back and kicked backward—in motion looking as sleek as her charm.
The otter waited respectfully as Lord Resak came into view. The large bear had to be drawn by two narwhals, keeping a paw on the horn of each.
Releasing his twin mounts, the bear motioned for Scirye to get off and then pointed to their right. She made out the outline of steps carved into ice that led into the water.
Scirye patted the narwhal gratefully upon the head and swam toward the steps, moving through more sea otters and narwhals. From the corner of her eye, she saw her friends heading in the same direction.
Lord Resak moved beside her until he was sure she was going to the steps, and then with a sudden powerful kick he burst upward, shattering the brilliant surface in a storm of bubbles.
For a moment, Scirye lost her orientation in the cloud of bubbles that enveloped her when Lord Resak rose out of the water, but Bayang took her arm, guiding her along until she could feel the steps beneath her feet.
She saw Roxanna’s blurry shape next to her and together they climbed out of the water. Little beads of salt water clung to the tips of their furs, but otherwise they were as dry as when they entered the ocean.
The dock upon which they were standing had been carved from ice just like the huge cavern that surrounded them—though the cave walls were rough-hewn while the dock was worn smooth as concrete. Here and there the ice had a beautiful blue tint, and the whole cavern glowed with a golden light as if the very sunlight had been trapped within it.
A squad of guards was standing at attention, two bears, a seal with a mottled pattern of irregular rings, a walrus, a white wolf almost as big as the walrus, and, to Scirye’s surprise, two humans.
Lord Resak’s fur was now matted to his skull and made him look sleek and yet powerful at the same time. He shook his head joyfully, as if he were taking a hot bath, and the drops splattered everywhere.