The Quest of the Cubs

by Kathryn Lasky

  She pressed her paws to her eyes. How could this be happening? She had lost everything: her brother, the red band timepiece, her wits. How would she ever find her way out of this place? Would it be possible to retrace her steps back to Stellan and Third? But there were no steps. The blyndspryee had erased every paw print. At least it hadn’t erased the stars. The stars still hung in the night sky. She could still find Nevermoves with or without the red band timepiece. And Stellan would still head north. He might not trust Uluk Uluk, but he would know that his sister would be heading north, for that star was all that bound them together now.

  The wind began to blow a light, fresh breeze from a different direction. The red band in the sky became clearer. She could see a moon rising. She tried to picture the timepiece and where the hands had pointed the last time. If I can see through snowdrifts and understand how crystals interlock, I should also be able to remember the parts of that timepiece, the hands and their positions the last time I saw them. I should be able to. I do have a brain. Let’s see if it still works!

  Through the rest of the night, Stellan and Third looked for Jytte. When they came across vast expanses of klarken ice uninterrupted by ridges of jumble ice, Stellan would hoist Third to his shoulders. The cub became adept at standing straight up while perched on his shoulders and peering into the distance—the emptiness, as Stellan thought of it, for there was no measure of distance that mattered in a world without his sister. But there was not a speck, not a bump on the horizon that could be Jytte. However, he refused to give up, and headed east. There must be a way to find her. The best plan was for him to head toward Oddsvall. That was the direction that Uluk Uluk had pointed them in. Surely Jytte would want to go there. She trusted Uluk Uluk. And so Stellan and Third continued on.

  Stellan lost count of the days that had passed since the devouring wind, the blyndspryee, had swept away his sister. The sun never set, and the two cubs stopped as little as possible. Light flowed continuously across the land, and at twiliqglow, which lasted for long hours, the white pelts of the cubs turned golden in the setting sun. Stellan and Third swam down a gilded chukysh and climbed out onto a snowy bank. Checking the red band timepiece, Stellan lined up the hands with the glow on the horizon, then set the other hand exactly opposite to that one to set their course for tomorrow. But now there was no darkness to separate the tonights from the tomorrows. It was always today in the cubs’ minds—an endless today with a sun that shone at midnight.

  On the eve of the next day, Stellan and Third climbed out of the channel waters onto the gravelly banks of the eastern island as mist swirled around them. The mist quickly became so dense that they could hardly see to walk.

  “Oddsvall?” Stellan murmured. “This is Oddsvall, I’m sure. The place that Uluk Uluk told us about.”

  Third gave a little shiver, a shiver of unease. He felt a disquiet seep through him but did not want to say anything yet.

  “Look, the Schrynn Gar clouds!” Stellan exclaimed. “There’s one that looks sort of like Jytte. You know how Jytte cocks her head sometimes.” Stellan felt a lump swell in his throat. “Oh, Third, I can’t stand it. I miss her so much. Maybe she’s figured out how to come this way even without the red band.”

  “No!” Third barked.

  “What are you talking about?”

  Third had not meant to betray his doubts so quickly. He looked down at the ground and scuffed his foot in the snow, unable to meet Stellan’s eyes. “I hope she is not coming this way.” He tucked his chin into his shoulder as if he wanted the fur to muffle his words. “We … we need to turn around soon, as soon as we can. I think something is stalking us. I felt it as soon as we climbed up on this bank.”

  “A bear?”

  Third’s voice trembled with fear. “No. Like no other creature we have ever met. Not a toothwalker. Not a wolf. Something cunning. I can almost smell his cunning.”

  Stellan scowled at Third. “We can’t turn around. I have a feeling Jytte is near. She might already be here.” He continued walking, faster than before. He needed to find his sister.

  “It’s too dangerous,” Third pleaded, running alongside Stellan.

  Stellan skidded to a stop and planted himself directly in front of Third. “I won’t turn around. I know you’ve never had a sister or brother who was kind to you. I know that Jytte and I fought sometimes. But the fights were nothing compared to our love. I simply can’t turn around. I can’t give up on my sister. And I know that she would never give up on finding me.” He took a deep breath. “Third, if you want to turn back, you can. But I need to keep going.”

  “No, no, you don’t understand at all.” Third’s eyes were wide with fear. “If we continue, I’m afraid neither of us will survive.” His head drooped. “But I won’t leave you. I am your brother. We go together.”

  The sight of the dejected cub made Stellan soften. “Oh, Third, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to insult you.”

  “Let’s go on. We’ll find her. Heart grit, remember? You’re the one who told me of heart grit.” But Third felt a curious commotion in his own heart that was more like a flutter than any grit. They had not walked far when Third stopped and, rising as tall as he could on his hind claws, pointed ahead.

  “What is it?” Stellan called.

  “I … I think it’s a whale.”

  “But I don’t smell any blubber,” Stellan said, poking his nose into the air.

  “There’s no blubber to smell … just … just … bone,” Third stammered. This is a place of death! But he knew there would be no discouraging Stellan.

  Third scampered ahead and seemed to melt into the oblivion of the fog.

  Through the veils of thickening mist, Stellan made his way and found the cub standing on tippy claws against a whale skull and peering into the void of the eye socket. The fog suddenly cleared, and the two cubs found themselves standing in a half circle of immense whale skulls.

  “Something happened here … ,” Third said, looking about.

  “I’ll say.” Stellan was standing by a pile of immense sun-bleached bones on the outside of the half circle. He picked up a long stick with a sharp point. “What do you call this?”

  “Dangerous!” Third replied. He slid his dark eyes around as if expecting something to snatch him by the throat.

  Stellan looked at the point. Although rusted, it was still sharp. “They killed whales here.”

  “They?” Third asked.

  “The Others.” Stellan swung his head toward a post with writing, and began to sound out the letters. “Odds—Oddsvall!” Stellan exclaimed. “We’ve arrived!” He looked from side to side, desperate for a sign of Jytte. She has to be here. The words rang in Stellan’s head like a mournful tolling. She has to be.

  Jytte tried not to think about Stellan and Third, because when she thought about them, she imagined them lost forever or in some sort of terrible danger, and the pain was too much to bear.

  For six nights she traveled alone. At least she knew that she had traveled the right course. She no longer needed the red band timepiece. It seemed that it had embedded itself in her head. She had also become more adept at navigating by the stars. She looked for her father’s star in the knee of the Great Bear and then the one in the forward paw that pointed to Nevermoves. She found the twin stars as well. Perhaps that was a sign that she and Stellan were not that far apart even if they were not together. But on these pale nights the stars were often hard to see and did not last long.

  She wished she hadn’t always taken her big brother for granted. They were so different, but that was what she missed most of all. She was foolish for railing at him for his worrying, his caution. There was, it seemed to Jytte, a space in this world that could not be filled.

  She was now climbing up a steep and very icy path. It had begun to snow lightly. The two volcanoes were shrouded with mist and there was an icy great peak of some sort in between, but it was difficult to see it in the ever-increasing fog. As she climbed, she began to pick up an odd
odor, an odor that reminded her of Moon Eyes. She bent down and scraped up some snow. She gasped. Issen blauen. The same ice that filled his empty eye sockets. Issen blauen was a singular ice. It only occured … Jytte’s mind seemed to stumble, but she forced herself to think. It only occurred at the Ice Cap. A bad place. Bad bears who tore the eyes out of good bears … bears like Moon Eyes! A terrible thought sent her reeling. Stellan was right! Uluk Uluk had betrayed them. She felt a hot anger boil up in her.

  Great Ursus! I’m in the Ublunkyn! Uluk Uluk has sabotaged us. He sent us in the wrong direction. Aghast, Jytte looked about. There were only volcanoes and mountains. She was as far away as one could be from the sea and the sealing grounds. She looked ahead, where occasionally the fog would thin, and there would be blinding flashes of reflected light off the peak.

  It was hard to imagine what could burn so brightly. She could never quite see it before another stampede of clouds would hurl in and obscure the peak. But she was too frightened and angry to think much of it. She had to get away from this terrible place. She had to find Stellan and Third before it was too late.

  High in the Ice Clock were four towers where Issengards stood watch.

  “Hvrak, come over here. The fog’s cleared. Take a look.” A bear with a slight limp went to the issen blauen scope, where a she-bear had her eye pressed.

  Despite his stiff hip, Hvark’s eyes were as sharp as youngsters’. “Interesting.”

  “Can you make it out?” the she-bear asked.

  “Three cubs, two on the east trail, one on the west trail.”

  “How did they find us?”

  “I don’t think they found us,” Hvrak replied. “But we’ll find them. Send out two teams of Roguers.”

  The fog grew thinner as Stellan and Third wound their way up the path. They were approaching the summit where an immense structure glared in the dawn light. They had noticed icy spines—narrow bridges—reaching across the deep abyss that separated the trail from the two volcanoes. The spines shimmered and appeared as delicate as the bones of a small fragile bird. The Schrynn Gar clouds still blew overhead.

  “What is that?” Stellan whispered. It looked as if all the intricate pieces of clockwork in Uluk Uluk’s laboratory had reassembled themselves here on this mountaintop. But these pieces were huge. There was a clock face as wide as a broad river, with four enormous dials on it. Like a wisp torn loose from a windblown cloud, a dim cry threaded through Stellan’s mind. Don’t go! Don’t go! It was the echo of his own voice crying for his mother not to leave. A scent that he had known forever swirled through his head. There was only one word for these fleeting impressions—Mum! Could she be near? Why else would he think of her right now? Mum, he thought desperately. Help us, please!

  At the very same moment, Jytte was staring ahead, stunned. She shook her head fiercely as if to clear it. I must be dreaming, she thought. But then out of the corner of her eye she caught a fragment of something, just the shadow of a movement, something dimly familiar. Jytte opened her eyes wide. It was her brother! And Third!

  “Stellan!” she cried. She raced down to where the two trails met at a turnoff.

  “Jytte!” Stellan roared as an indescribable joy flooded through him. He and Third ran toward Jytte and embraced.

  And at just that moment, the shadows of four Roguers slipped over the freshly fallen snow.

  As the three cubs ran, Jytte glanced back over her shoulder at the advancing Roguer bears, then ahead at the ice spines that arced high into the air, stretching across a seemingly bottomless abyss. It became immediately clear that the only way to escape the Roguers was to run along one of the ice spines that spanned the deep ravine. These slender bows of ice would never sustain the weight of a full-grown bear, but the lighter cubs might have a chance. A chance they must take. Because rushing toward them were the infamous Roguers that Moon Eyes had told them about.

  Ahead were the silver spines of ice. Below, the earth fell away into a vast depth and certain death. Stellan gasped. “How? How will we ever get across?” In order to get onto one of the spines, they’d have to jump.

  “Follow me!” Third shouted, and then made a spectacular leap through the air. He landed on the ice spine that connected the mountain they were on with the volcano.

  Jytte held her breath. To her relief, she saw that the spindle of ice was holding Third’s weight.

  “Follow him?” Stellan peered into the ravine and felt a dizzying swirl. It was as if the world fell away completely. His legs felt weak, like every single bone in his body was melting. He clamped his eyes shut. He simply could not look down. “Won’t it break?”

  “No, it won’t. It can hold us and hopefully not them,” Jytte said, glancing back at the four Roguer bears. But despite her words, her voice trembled. Then she shrieked as she saw two bears begin to swirl a net in the air.

  “Jump! Jump!” Third cried out as the filigree of the net printed against the morning sky.

  The two cubs locked eyes for a brief moment, then ran toward the sliver of ice.

  Stellan felt the muscles in his hind legs gather, the ones in his shoulders stretch. He did not think—he just leaped. There was a dizzying moment of weightlessness as he launched himself into thin air.

  Then he heard a creak. A creak and not a crack. Then a second creak. Did that mean they both had landed? It must, Stellan thought, and looked back and saw his sister straddling the ice spine.

  Third looked over his shoulder at the cubs. “Slide!” he commanded. “Slide across on your bellies. Don’t look down.”

  Stellan willed himself not to look, as the drop into the abyss was enormous. He could hear the Roguers talking, and their voices propelled him onward. Don’t look down. Don’t look back!

  “The next spine over could hold you, Jart. You’re the lightest,” one of the Roguers said.

  “That spine is not that thin, Jart. You’ll do fine. Take the net to use when you get close to them.”

  “Keep going!” Third said. “Keep going. Don’t listen to them, just concentrate.”

  “Spread your weight if you can, Stellan,” Jytte said. “Straddle the spine.” She had closed her eyes tightly, and in her mind’s eye, she could see precisely how this ice was structured, exactly how the crystals locked together.

  Stellan grew alarmed as the ice spine seemed to grow narrower as he inched his way across the the great abyss. He was not at the halfway point yet, but the spine started to arc upward at a steep angle.

  “We must go slower. The ice is more fragile. The crystals … ” Jytte’s voice trailed off. She felt her heart beat faster as her breath grew shallow. She knew that this slender sliver of ice could snap any second. But instead of thinking about that, she had to focus on what she knew about ice. She must let the ice tell her its story. “We can’t all reach the top at once. I can hear cracklings in the spine. I can smell it melting as the sun rises and the ice wears thin. Third, you go over the summit first. Then Stellan, but wait until Third is almost across. Then I’ll come. Understand?”

  “Yes,” the other two cubs replied. Behind them, they could hear slaps of the nets being flung out vainly by the Roguers. Thankfully, their aim was not good. But occasionally the edge of the net would hit their ice spine and the cubs would feel a shudder.

  Behind them, the Roguers were arguing. They were still trying to convince the bear Jart to climb out onto one of the other spines.

  “Jart, that spine, the next one over, is stronger, I can tell,” one was saying. “If you go out on that with a net, you’ll bag one of them.”

  “So I get to die trying to get these cursed cubs? Just to get a few more Tick Tocks?”

  Third shuddered at the sound of the words Tick Tock. He saw the blood that had seeped into his mother’s dreams. He was almost at the top of the spine, but he was quivering so hard he could barely grip with his knees. The ice had grown slick as the sun rose. He felt his grip weakening. He was sliding back. If he slid into Stellan, it would be too much weight at a cri
tical point.

  “Don’t slide back, Third! Hold on tighter!” Jytte barked.

  Third gripped the slender spine with all his might and climbed upward. Only when he reached the top could he loosen his aching grip and let himself slide down the other side. He was doing it. He was not sure how. But his clasp was holding. He began to slide, and within seconds bumped onto land. I’m across! A few moments later, Stellan arrived. As he scrambled to his feet, both cubs turned to look for Jytte.

  To their dismay, they saw she was not yet at the top of the arc. The Roguer bears were cheering on Jart, who was on the next spine over.

  “That’s it, Jart! Good fellow. I knew you could do it.” The bear Jart was as tall as he was slender. Balancing on the ice spine next to Jytte’s, he stood up to his full height and began to swing the net above his head. Jytte froze as she saw the tracery of dark mesh drift languidly against the azure sky. It was plummeting toward her like a circle of death. She had only a split second to escape it. Without thinking, she slung herself under the ice spine and hung on by her claws, upside down. The net hit the spine. She felt the mesh drag across the tops of her claws, but it did not snag them.

  “Try it again. Try it again!” the other Roguers roared.

  “You can make it, Jytte, you can!” Third called to her.

  “Not far, Jytte. Stay upside down,” Stellan urged.

  Jart let out a frustrated growl. “I’ll get her. I’ll get her next time.”

  Fury rose in Stellan, boiling anger like he had never known. There was a good-size rock where he stood on the slope of the volcano. He reached down and picked it up. He narrowed his eyes and calculated the distance. He didn’t have much time. Jart was gathering in the net to cast it again. Just as Jart lifted his arm into the air, Stellan threw the rock. There was a soft thud as the rock hit the top of Jart’s head. The net fell from his paw into the abyss. Jart began to wobble. A strange quavery roar came from deep in his lungs: “Ah … a … aaah … ” Stellan watched with a mix of satisfaction and horror as the Roguer fell off the spine and began plummeting through the air. So deep was the abyss that the sound when the bear hit the ground was hardly more than a muffled thunk. In this distance, he heard the other Roguers let out muffled screams and curses.