The Quest Begins

by Erin Hunter

  “It’s not far enough,” Oka said. “We need to reach the river.”

  “But I don’t think I can go any farther,” Toklo said.

  “If your brother can do it, so can you,” Oka said firmly.

  “If—” Toklo stammered in disbelief. “You’ve been carrying Tobi since sunhigh! He’s not doing anything except lying there!” Toklo reared up on his back legs and held his front paws out to his mother. One of the pads behind his claws was bleeding, and there were scrapes and cuts all over them.

  Oka sniffed his paws, then looked up at the sky. For the first time she seemed to notice that night was falling, and stars were twinkling up above them. She reached around and nudged Tobi with her nose.

  “Cold,” he whimpered, burying his face in her fur.

  “All right,” Oka relented. “Let’s make a den for the night.”

  Relief washed over Toklo. He looked around and spotted a hollow under an overhanging rock.

  “How about over there?” he said.

  Oka grunted agreement and led the way to the sheltered spot. Tobi slid slowly off her back onto a pile of moss near the base of the rock. He curled up and immediately closed his eyes. Oka crouched beside him, licking his ears.

  Toklo sat down, exhausted. His paws felt like cold rocks at the end of his legs. He glanced up at the sky, where one star shone brighter than all the others.

  “I wouldn’t mind being that star right now,” he said to his mother. “I bet it never gets tired.”

  Oka looked up at it, too. “You don’t want to be that star,” she said. “That is the spirit of a bad bear. The other animals imprisoned it there for doing something terrible, and now they move in a circle around it, taunting it. It’s trapped, not free like us.”

  I don’t feel that free, Toklo thought, watching Tobi gasp for breath.

  “What did the bear do that was so terrible?” Toklo asked.

  “He disobeyed his mother,” Oka said, cuffing him over the head with her paw. “Now go find us some branches.”

  She dug the dirt and snow around Tobi into a makeshift den while Toklo nosed around for any branches that would help protect them. He didn’t find much, but he did find a few mouthfuls of dry berries. He brought them back to his mother and brother, even though his stomach was growling like an enormous adult bear. Oka took the berries without thanking him and rolled them all over to Tobi. But when they curled up together and Toklo rested his chin in the soft fur on her shoulder, she sighed and did not roll away.

  Grim, pale light was glimmering through the branches and snow when Toklo awoke. He blinked his eyes several times, wondering why he felt so strange and cold. It wasn’t just the uncomfortable ground below him. Something was wrong.

  Toklo shifted around and discovered that his brother was curled against his back, his paws tucked into his chest. When Toklo moved, Tobi pressed his paws to his face, scraped them down his muzzle once, and then lay still. His breathing came shallow and quick and smelled funny.

  Toklo nosed closer to him, smelling the same sharp scent he’d noticed on Tobi yesterday. His brother’s fur was cold, colder even than Toklo had been the night before. He realized with a start that Tobi’s eyes were wide open. Toklo put his face right in front of Tobi’s and waited for a reaction, but there was nothing. Tobi’s eyes were foggy, as if he were seeing clouds instead of his brother.

  “Tobi,” Toklo whispered. His brother’s ears didn’t even twitch. Toklo cautiously put out a paw and touched his brother’s side. He could feel Tobi’s breaths getting faster, and then suddenly they went very slow.

  “Tobi,” he tried again. “Tobi, are you going to the river? Are you going to be a water spirit?” There was no answer. Toklo was afraid but fascinated, too. How did a bear become a water spirit?

  Tobi took a long, shuddering breath, then went still. Toklo quickly drew back his paw. He sat up and sniffed along the length of Tobi’s body. There was still the sharp, rotten smell, but now something was missing. Tobi’s eyes were closed.

  He was dead.

  Toklo wondered what to do. He hadn’t seen his brother’s spirit go anywhere. Had it gone to the river? Was it still stuck inside his fur? He tried prodding Tobi again, but nothing flew out.

  There was a movement behind him, and Toklo jumped. Oka was waking up, shaking her head and getting to her paws. She looked around in bewilderment, and her eyes fell on Tobi. With a cry, she shoved Toklo aside and bent her muzzle to the dead cub. A low moan escaped her, and she rose up onto her hind legs and roared with pain and fury. The sound bounced off the rocks and rang in Toklo’s ears; he crouched at his mother’s paws, surprised that it didn’t bring the mountain down on top of them.

  Oka fell back onto all four paws and turned on Toklo, snarling. “Why didn’t you wake me?” she demanded. “Why? How could you just let him die?”

  “I—I didn’t!” Toklo cried. “I mean, I didn’t—there wasn’t anything I could do.”

  “You could have woken me!” she howled. “How could you do this?” She was raging at the sky, the trees, the rocks now. “How could you take him? Why must you take all my cubs? Why must they die like this? What have they ever done to make you angry?”

  She crouched in the snow beside Tobi and pushed her nose into his fur, pawing at him as if trying to get him to stand up. “I didn’t even get to say good-bye to him!” she cried. “My poor cub, my poor little cub, all alone…”

  Her voice trailed off into hushed tones that Toklo couldn’t hear. He backed away and sat in the opening of the den, waiting for her to get up and keep going. They still had to get to the river, didn’t they?

  His fur prickled with misery. He didn’t understand why she was so angry with him. He wasn’t the one who was too weak to live. He was the one who would take care of her, if she would let him. The water spirits hadn’t taken all her cubs…he was still here! Why didn’t that matter to her? Tobi must be with the salmon in the river now. Surely that was better than when he was here, where he was cold and sad and hungry and tired all the time. It was better for Tobi, and it was better for them, too.

  The light spread across the mountainside, illuminating fragments of color in the snow and turning the tip of the mountain golden-white. Oka lay next to Tobi, as still as a fallen tree. Toklo shifted his paws. Were they going to stay here all day? Weren’t they going to the other side of the mountain?

  A long time passed, and still Oka did not move. When the sun had risen halfway up the sky, Toklo padded a few steps toward his mother. “Mother?” he said. She didn’t respond or give any sign that she’d heard him. “Mother?” he tried again. “When are we going to the river?”

  Oka slowly lifted her head, turned it to look at him, and rested her chin on her paws. “Tobi will never find the river,” she murmured. “He should not have died here.”

  Toklo waited a moment. When she didn’t say anything else, he said, “But what about us?”

  His mother’s voice was low and raspy. “We were too slow,” she growled. “It’s our fault he’s dead, and it’s our fault the water spirits won’t find him.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Kallik

  As night fell, the storm died down, and Kallik was left in a silent, empty world. The darkness above her was filled with glittering ice spots, and the ice underneath her felt thin and hollow, as if the water was trying to push through.

  Her mother was gone. She still couldn’t believe it. How could Nisa be dead?

  Feeling was starting to creep back into Kallik’s paws and she could move her legs again, but still she lay on the ice. There was no reason to move. She had nowhere to go. She was all alone.

  Up in the night sky, she could see the outline of Silaluk beside the Pathway Star. Maybe Moose Bird, Chickadee, and Robin were really orcas instead of birds, circling and trapping Silaluk and then devouring her until nothing was left but bones. A stab of fresh grief pierced Kallik’s heart, and she pressed her muzzle against the ice. Was her mother’s spirit down there somewhere,
floating among the ice shadows?

  She didn’t know how long she stayed lying there. She could feel her heartbeat slowing down and her body getting colder and colder. She was dimly aware of the wind sweeping snow across the ice to pile up against her back. She thought that if she lay there long enough, eventually the snow would cover her over, leaving just a drift of white, and she would disappear forever…just like her mother.

  Below the sound of the wind, she could hear water lapping nearby and the ice creaking beneath her. Rrrrrraaaahhh, it whispered softly. Errrreeeeeeee. Ooooooorrrroo. Perhaps the ice spirits were grieving for her mother as well.

  Uurrrrrrrssss, whispered the ice. Taqqiiiiqqqqq…

  Kallik pricked her ears.

  Taaaaaaa…qqiiiiiiiiiq… the ice whispered again.

  Kallik lifted her head and stared into the ice. It sounded like her mother’s voice. The shadows whirled and bubbled, and slowly Kallik began to see a shape below the ice. For a moment she was sure her mother’s face looked back at her, and then it vanished again as the bubbles reformed, glowing in the light from the moon.

  Taqqiq. Kallik remembered hearing him run away into the mist. He was still alive out there…and alone, just like her. Except Taqqiq was even more alone than she was, because he thought Kallik was dead. With their mother gone, he was the only thing Kallik had left in the world. She had to stay alive to find him. He needed her—and she needed him, too.

  She pushed herself to her paws and shook off the layer of snow that had piled up on her fur. Her bones still ached and one of her hind legs throbbed from hitting the ice when the orca tail struck her. But her mind was clear again. She padded to the edge of the ice and looked down at the cold, dark water. Were the killer whales still lurking beneath the surface, hoping for another, even easier meal?

  She lay down on her belly and waited for dawn, drifting in and out of a sleep that was haunted by nightmares full of sharp teeth and swift fins and water that turned her fur pink.

  Finally the first rays of the sun peeked over the ice, bringing the snowscape to glittering life. Kallik was surprised by how much water she could see around her; the ice was melting as quickly as Nisa had said. But the shelf where they’d left her brother was still there, across the treacherous expanse of sea. If she wanted to find Taqqiq, she would have to swim back to the other side.

  Kallik scanned the water carefully, searching for any orca fins. She took several deep breaths, waiting to be absolutely sure there were no whales in sight.

  “Spirits of the ice,” she whispered, “please help me.”

  The waves sloshed lightly over the edge and around her paws, and in the soft lapping of the water she thought she could hear the murmur of her mother’s voice again. For Taqqiq, she thought, and screwed up her eyes, crouched on her haunches, and leaped into the water.

  Cold water swamped over her muzzle, making her cough and splutter. She started paddling her paws furiously, trying to swim as fast as she could across the channel. At last her front paws hit ice, and she scrabbled for a clawhold. Panic shot through her when she remembered that she’d never gotten herself out of the water before. She’d always needed help from Taqqiq or Nisa. What if she didn’t have the strength to climb out on her own?

  She flailed her back legs in the water. Her white fur must be shining like the moon beneath the dark waves—surely killer whales could see her from far away. Perhaps they were swooping in on her right now. As she lay helpless, half in the water and half on the ice, perhaps sharp teeth were closing in to clamp down and drag her under.

  “Mother!” she screamed. “Help me!”

  She lunged forward and was able to get a better grip on the ice with her front paws. Straining with everything she had, she hauled herself up until she could roll her back half up and onto the ice.

  She rested for a moment, panting heavily. Would it be that hard every time? How would she ever make it to land? If only she had another bear to help her…a bear like Taqqiq. Worry for her brother brought her to her paws, and she set out along the edge of the broken ice, heading in the direction that he’d fled.

  As she walked, she wondered where Taqqiq would go and how he would take care of himself. He was always so playful and easily distracted. She wondered if he remembered any of the lessons Nisa had taught them. There was still so much they didn’t know; it was too soon for them to be on their own. She made herself walk faster, desperate to find him. At least they might have more of a chance together.

  The sun was only a short way up the sky when Kallik came to the edge of the drift and faced another stretch of water. Her brother must have had to swim to go any farther.

  Leaping into the sea was even harder this time, since she knew the battle she would face getting out on the other side. Once in the water, the current seemed even stronger than before, but fear and determination drove her on. Kallik was exhausted by the time she crawled out onto the other side, but she shook out her fur and pressed onward on aching paws.

  It was a long, terrifying day. The ice kept moving under her feet and sometimes it cracked right where she was standing, plunging her into freezing water where huge chunks of ice slammed into her sides. Often the only piece of ice she could find to climb onto was a drifting floe, barely bigger than her mother’s back, and she could only stay on it a moment before she had to jump back in and swim to the next one.

  If she was lucky, the floes were close enough together for her to jump from one to the next, but more often she had to paddle between them. She knew she was losing time whenever she stopped to search for orca fins before leaping into the water, but the memory of her mother’s final cries still echoed in her ears. She was all Taqqiq had left. She had to stay alive to find him.

  As the sun rose higher in the sky, the air grew warmer and warmer, beating down on Kallik’s fur. She panted with exertion, and sometimes jumping in the water was actually a relief; at least it cooled her down.

  It wasn’t only concern for her brother driving her on. She knew she had to get to land before the ice melted completely. She could not be stranded out in the bay, too far from land, when the last of the ice melted. She couldn’t see any trace of land from where she was, and she knew she’d never be able to swim for long enough to reach it from here.

  Fortunately she could tell which way the land was from the scents that were carried on the wind. They were strange and tangled up, but unfamiliar enough that she knew it was somewhere different from her world of ice and snow and black sea. She hoped that Taqqiq had figured out the same thing and that he was traveling in the same direction. Maybe he had even found land already…but what would he do when he got there? Neither of them knew anything about survival off the ice. Nisa would have taught them and kept them safe while they learned.

  Kallik blinked, trying not to think about her mother. She had to focus on finding her brother, and then together they would learn how to survive.

  Dusk fell, and still Kallik kept walking, as far into the night as she could before her paws were too tired to take another step. At last she stopped on the most solid piece of ice she could find and slept until another day dawned, clear and frighteningly sunny. She didn’t just hate the sun now because it made her too hot; she hated it because it made the ice vanish beneath her paws.

  Her belly growled with hunger, and she kept losing her footing on the ice, slipping off the edge into the water several times. Her paws were wide and usually they felt perfectly suited to the slippery smooth surface underpaw, but now they were so tired and numb that she almost felt like she was walking on stumps of ice. She could tell that she was getting closer to the land because there were fewer chunks of big ice and more stretches of fast-moving water. Her fur was constantly wet, and she spotted several large birds swimming in the water and flying over the ice. They were gray and white, the color of a snowy sky, and they made loud squalling noises that hurt her ears.

  Kallik was stumbling with hunger by the end of the day. The sun was setting in a blaze of orange and red
when suddenly she spotted another white bear almost a skylength away, across the ice ahead of her.

  “Taqqiq?” she yelped. She began to run, galloping across the snow. “Taqqiq!”

  The bear spun around, snarling, and she saw that its muzzle was red with blood and a seal carcass lay at its paws. It was much too large to be Taqqiq; this bear had seen the last burn-sky, and he was big and angry and ready to protect his food.

  Skidding to a halt, Kallik spun around and ran. She didn’t look back until she reached the next stretch of water. With relief, she saw that the bear hadn’t chased her. But the sight of the seal had reawakened all her hunger, and she couldn’t think of anything but food. She swam to the next patch of ice and padded farther onto it, sniffing the air with one scent firmly in her mind. At last she found a hole in the ice that smelled of seal. She sniffed all the way around it as she’d seen her mother do. She could remember how Nisa lay down by the hole and waited patiently for so long. At least keeping still for that long would give her a chance to rest.

  Kallik stretched out on her belly, resting her head on her front paws. She kept her eyes trained on the hole, waiting for any ripple of movement, ready to pounce. Her body was exhausted, but she was too hungry to fall asleep. The suspense of waiting for a seal to emerge helped keep her awake, too, even though it seemed like the entire night was passing slowly by.

  Suddenly the sleek wet head of a seal popped out of the water, its whiskers trembling as it breathed in. Kallik leaped forward, her claws outstretched and ready to sink into seal flesh, her mouth wide and ready to clamp down.

  But her paws closed on empty air, and her jaws snapped shut on nothing. She was too slow. The seal had escaped.

  Kallik lay down and pressed her face into the ice. Maybe she should give up. She should let the ice spirits take her, and then she could be with her mother again. But Taqqiq was on his own, too. She had to stay alive so she could find him, and then they could take care of each other.