The Quest Begins

by Erin Hunter

  But the problem with berries, as she discovered, was that not even all the berries in the wood could add up to a seal. They were just too small. She ate every berry she could find, and by the time she moved on she was feeling a bit more hopeful, even if she was still hungry. Her muzzle was stained with red berry juice and her claws were all sticky, but her head felt a little clearer, and she could imagine surviving long enough to find Taqqiq. She hoped he’d discovered berries and learned to eat them, too.

  That night she found another makeshift den in a pile of rocks. It was colder than the den in the tree roots, and closer to the bay so she could hear the waves crashing all night long. It was hard to sleep with all the noise, and it worried her that she hadn’t found Taqqiq yet. When the first rays of sunrise slipped in through the cracks in the rocks, she climbed out and started walking again. It was strange to see so many new things pushing their way out of the ground or along the arms of the trees. Sometimes it seemed like there was a light dust that smelled of plants floating through the air, which made her sneeze and her eyes water. The snow was melting away quickly and the ground was wet under her paws, squishing between her claws as she put her weight down.

  Whenever she could, she stopped to find berries, and once she was lucky enough to find a carcass with some meat still on it. The animal was unfamiliar to her, and it didn’t have the salty, fishy taste of seal, but she ate it anyway. As she traveled, she tried to attach more of her mother’s words to what she saw.

  At one point, she found herself walking through a muddy, watery, weedy territory that she thought might be a “marsh.” She was watching her paws, concentrating on finding the driest spots to step on, so she didn’t see the herd of animals in front of her until one of them snorted.

  She looked up and jumped back in surprise. They were enormous. They didn’t look as heavy or solid as white bears, but they were much taller than she was, perched on four long, skinny legs. Their short, shaggy fur was brown and they had long, wobbly-looking muzzles. But strangest of all, several of them had two sets of giant claws growing out of the top of their heads.

  Caribou! Kallik thought. She stared at them. Most of them were grazing, nibbling at the plants and ignoring her. A couple had lifted their heads and were watching her, but they didn’t look very concerned. Kallik backed up until the bushes hid her from view, and then she turned and found a different way through the marsh.

  Toward sunset, as the light around her was turning orange and hazy, she came to a small pond. Trying not to slip on the mud, Kallik crouched at the edge to lap up the water. All at once the dirt beside her paw moved. Startled, she froze and stared at it. Whatever it was moved again, just twitching a little, then suddenly it jumped straight up into the air.

  Kallik didn’t even think about what she was doing. With a quick, instinctive pounce, she clapped her paws around the jumping thing and pinned it to the mud. Her claws sank into it and it flailed one more time, then lay there, limp and unmoving.

  Had she killed it? Kallik lowered her head and sniffed it without lifting her paw. It certainly seemed dead. The creature, which was smaller than her paw, had two small legs and two long legs with webbed paws. It was slimy and lumpy, its skin like a cross between a fish and a seal. It was greenish brown, and its belly was pale white. Two bulging eyes sat on top of its head, and when she leaned on it she could see that it had a long tongue inside its mouth.

  Curious, she nibbled on it and discovered that it tasted quite interesting. Its texture was a lot like a seal’s, except it didn’t have any fat and it wasn’t quite as meaty. She devoured it in a few bites and felt a little odd afterward, but it was more of a meal than berries. She sniffed around the pond for a long time but didn’t see any more animals like that. She tried digging in the mud around the water, but all that did was make her fur dirtier. She’d have to try again at the next pond.

  The days grew warmer and warmer, and Kallik panted under her thick fur coat. A couple of days were so hot, she couldn’t even come out of her shelter. Instead she lay in the shade below a thicket of branches, trying to conserve her energy and keep cool. It was hard to sleep, though, since the ground below her was damp and flying insects kept buzzing around her muzzle. Kallik wasn’t sure which were mosquitoes and which ones were flies, but she remembered that her mother hated both of them.

  Every day she thought about Taqqiq and wondered if he was all right. Had he remembered all the things their mother had told them?

  One morning she found a strange den that smelled of an animal she hadn’t yet met. It was large, with flat walls made of dead trees, and it was raised up on long legs above the waterlogged ground. The faded scents of unfamiliar food wafted from it, but it looked deserted, as if the inhabitants had been gone for a while.

  She sniffed around the outside but couldn’t find a way in. Still hopeful, she moved in a circle around it, sniffing the area in search of scraps.

  Aha! There was a dent in the wet ground, and half buried in it were two lightly speckled brown eggs. She had seen eggs already on this journey, but never anywhere she could reach them. But she was pretty sure she could eat them. Like the seal pups her mother had pulled from their den, these were the beginning of birds, and she knew she could eat birds.

  Kallik crouched low to the ground, like her mother had taught her, dragging herself forward on her belly as slowly and quietly as she could. She imagined crunching through the shells, and her mouth watered with anticipation. She crept closer and closer, dreaming of the delicious taste of the eggs…

  An angry screech sounded from the sky. Kallik didn’t have time to roll away before a bird launched itself at her head, scratching and pecking. Kallik’s heart leaped with terror and all her fur stood on end as she tried to dodge her attacker. The bird shrieked again, swooping away and then diving back down, jabbing at her with its claws. Its sharp beak hammered at her head and the claws swooped close to her eyes, scratching at her muzzle.

  Terrified, Kallik fled. The bird pursued her out of the marsh, only giving up when she scrambled into a patch of trees and hid under a pile of branches. She could still hear its angry cries as it wheeled away and flew back to its nest.

  Kallik curled herself into a ball, feeling wretched. She couldn’t even hunt a pair of eggs that were just lying there. How was she ever going to catch real prey on her own? The land was too strange and too frightening. She belonged on the ice, with the bear spirits guiding her paws and snow whistling through her fur.

  Maybe she should try to find the place of the Pathway Star, where the ocean was frozen forever and the spirits danced in the sky in many colors. No matter how far away it was, it had to be better than this nightmare of mud and heat and starvation. Maybe Taqqiq would have gone that way, too. Maybe that was the only place a white bear could ever truly be safe.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Lusa

  Lusa stared sadly at the closed doors. The walls of the Bowl didn’t feel cozy and sheltering now. They felt hard and unfriendly, trapping her somewhere she didn’t want to be. She wanted to know what was going on outside. She wanted to be with Ashia while she was sick, but she couldn’t. There was no way for Lusa to find out what was happening to her.

  What if they had taken her mother away forever?

  Four sleeps passed, and on the morning of the fifth day, Lusa started pacing around the walls of the Bowl, desperation rising inside her. She wondered how things would be different in the wild if a bear got sick. At least then she could be with her mother and see what was happening to her. She wouldn’t be stuck inside these stone walls with no way to escape and no choice about it.

  There was a rumble at the back, near the big doors. Lusa galloped over, sniffing the air. She could smell the metal firebeast—and Ashia!

  The doors opened a little way, and a cage was backed into the Bowl. One of the feeders unlatched the door, and Lusa’s mother climbed out, blinking and shaking her head in the sunlight.

  “Mother!” Lusa barked. She capered around he
r mother’s legs, jumping up to touch Ashia’s muzzle with her own. “You’re all right! You’re alive!”

  “Of course I am,” Ashia said. She sounded sleepy.

  “Are you hungry?” Lusa asked. “I saved you some really good berries. And it was hard, because I really wanted them! But I saved them for you because Stella said you would be back, and I told the Bear Watcher I would be good and not eat the berries as long as he brought you back so you could have them, wasn’t I good?”

  “Very good, dear,” Ashia said. She lowered herself to the ground between two of the boulders and raised her head, as if she wanted to feel the sun on her shoulders. Yogi and Stella bounded over and crowded around her.

  “Where did you go?” Yogi demanded. “What was it like?”

  “Did you see the forest?” Stella asked.

  King strolled up, nudging the others aside. “Give her some space,” he ordered. He bent his head and sniffed Ashia, pressing his nose into her fur. “You look well,” he said gruffly.

  “I am,” Ashia said, lifting her muzzle to his.

  “Mother!” Lusa butted in, bouncing on her paws. “We want to know everything! Tell us where you went and what you saw, please please please!”

  “It was quite strange,” Ashia said sleepily. “I woke up inside a cage, like the one that left me here just now. The cage was in a flat-face den, with straight walls on all sides, like the ones in our stone den, but even straighter and with no openings that I could see. I felt strange, as if I’d just woken up from a long sleep, and heavy. I couldn’t move my paws or my head or anything.”

  “Were you scared?” Yogi asked with wide eyes.

  “No,” Ashia said. “I felt like I was dreaming. I remember staring at the ceiling a lot. And when I dozed off I had a lot of strange dreams, about the forest and the river and berries growing on bushes, thousands and thousands of berries.”

  “What are thousands?” Lusa asked.

  “It means lots,” Stella explained. “Only more than lots…so many lots and lots that you need a bigger word for them.”

  “Oh,” Lusa said. “So, like the thousands of fleas on Yogi.”

  “Hey!” Yogi protested. “That’s not true!” Lusa chuffed with laughter and ducked away as he swatted at her head.

  “Then what happened?” Stella prompted Ashia, ignoring the cubs.

  “The furry flat-face in green was there,” Ashia said.

  “I didn’t like him,” Lusa interjected.

  “He was very nice,” Ashia admonished her. “He spoke gently to me and fed me and took care of me until I was well again.”

  “Then why did he shoot you?” Lusa challenged.

  “I don’t know what that was,” Ashia said. “But it only stung for a minute, and then I fell asleep, so it can’t have been anything too bad.”

  “Hmmm,” Lusa said skeptically.

  “And then when I stopped hurting inside, and wanted to eat again, they brought me back here.”

  “Did you see the tigers?” Lusa asked. “And the fla-min-gos?”

  “I did!” Ashia said, looking a bit more awake. “There are so many different animals out there, very close to us. Most of them are behind Fences like ours. I saw one with long, long, skinny legs and a neck so long and tall, it could reach up to the top of the tallest tree in our forest.”

  “No!” Lusa cried. “How did it get like that?”

  “Maybe it just kept reaching and reaching for berries until its neck stretched,” Yogi suggested. “Maybe that’ll happen to you if you keep dancing for the fruit the flat-faces throw you.”

  “I also saw an animal that was big and gray with a long dangly nose,” Ashia interrupted, warding off another argument. “Its ears were the size of our biggest water dishes, and it had two long fangs, like curved claws, sticking out of its mouth on either side of its nose.”

  Lusa tried to picture this, but her imagination failed her. How could a nose be long and dangly? She touched her forepaw to her own shiny black nose and blinked in confusion.

  “And there was a tall Fence running all the way around the whole place,” Ashia went on. “Inside, with the animals, there are mostly trees and grass and gray paths in between. But on the other side the paths are wider and full of firebeasts roaring and running around. Next to the paths are flat-face dens—like our stone den but much bigger.”

  “Why do flat-faces need bigger dens than us?” Lusa asked. “They’re much smaller than we are.”

  “I don’t know,” Ashia answered. “Perhaps they keep their trees and boulders inside their dens instead of using the ones outside.”

  Yogi scratched his ear with his back paw. “Or perhaps the firebeasts live in their dens, too. They’re pretty big!”

  King harrumphed and waggled his head. “I’ve stuck my nose in a few flat-face dens,” he growled. “They hoard things, like squirrels and magpies do. Their dens are full of food, if you can figure out how to get to it, and they collect shiny treasures that aren’t any good for eating.”

  “Why?” Lusa wanted to know.

  “Don’t ask me,” King grunted. “Flat-faces make no sense.”

  Ashia lay down and looked up at the puffy white clouds floating in the sky above them. Her eyes kept closing, and her voice dropped to a murmur. “And in the distance,” she whispered, “beyond the paths, beyond the dens, beyond the firebeasts…I could see a mountain. A huge mountain, one that makes our boulders look like specks of sand. This mountain has snow on the top and dark forests all along the sides…forests that could swallow our small trees whole.” She sighed. “It was beautiful.”

  King reared up on his hind legs and made an angry huffing sound. “Don’t talk about that sort of nonsense,” he ordered. “The mountains and the trees that we have here in the Bear Bowl are big enough, and there’s no use dreaming about what we cannot have.”

  “Is that the mountain you came from, Father?” Lusa asked. “Have you been up to where the snow is?”

  “Look what you’ve done,” King snarled at Ashia. “That’s enough talk of the outside. Do not speak of it again—that goes for all of you.” He dropped to all fours and lumbered off, his rage radiating through his fur.

  Lusa watched him curiously. Why did stories of the world outside the Bear Bowl make her father so angry? She waited until he’d settled himself in the far corner, out of earshot, and then she whispered to her mother, “I want to know more about the mountain. Please tell me more!”

  But Ashia was already snoozing, a light sleepy hum coming from her nostrils. Lusa nudged one of her mother’s paws, and Ashia twitched but didn’t wake up.

  Lusa sat down to wait. This wasn’t the end of it, whatever her father said. She wanted to know more about the wild, and she would find out…one way or another.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Toklo

  Sadness and confusion swept over Toklo, like the river washing over his paws. He looked around at the other bears gathered by the river. Most of them were still fishing, but a few had glanced up to watch his mother walk away from him. Oka climbed onto a large rock and sat with her back to Toklo, hunching her shoulders and acting like he wasn’t even there.

  He didn’t understand what was happening. Why had she rescued him if she was just going to ignore him? He couldn’t figure out why she was so angry. It wasn’t his fault the giant bear had tried to kill him.

  The river gurgled and splashed around his paws, scattering chilly droplets in his fur. Clouds had blown in on the wind, dimming the sunlight so the day felt grayer and colder. Toklo gazed up at the snowy mountains towering over the forest and felt suddenly small and very lonely. He didn’t want to lose his brother and his mother both at the same time.

  “Mother!” he called. “I said I was sorry!”

  Oka didn’t turn around. She shook her head and then lowered it to the rock, letting the fur settle on her shoulders.

  Fine then, Toklo thought crossly. I don’t need you, either. He turned away and stepped purposefully through the w
ater to the other side of the river. He found a rock opposite his mother and sat down on it, watching her.

  After a long time, Oka got up and stepped off the rock. Toklo sat up, wondering if she would come over and say she was sorry. But she didn’t even look at him. She began pacing along the riverbank, back and forth, back and forth. She seemed to be talking to herself. Another bear wandered near her, dabbing its paws in the water as it searched for fish. Oka spun around and snarled at it. Startled, the other bear reared back and galloped farther downstream.

  Toklo felt his fur prickle along his back. Why was his mother acting so strange? Oka turned in a circle, following her stumpy tail around and around, and then sat down in the water. Even though there were no other bears near her—all the bears along the river were giving her a wide berth now—she snarled at the air as if she were being attacked.

  Finally she lay down, half in and half out of the water, and sank her head onto her paws. Toklo could see the fur rising and falling on her back as she breathed. He curled up on his rock with his back to her. He wasn’t going to watch her anymore. If she didn’t care about him, he didn’t have to care about her, either. He would just stay right here until she came over to apologize and take care of him again.

  The sun sank slowly behind the mountains as Toklo lay there, waiting. A deep purple dusk settled over the valley, and he was starting to fall asleep when he heard the shuffle of large paws on the pebbles nearby. He scrambled up, his head spinning from the sudden movement. Hope leaped into his chest as he saw a large female bear approaching him…and then died again when he realized it was not his mother. He glanced sideways and saw that Oka was still lying in the same position.

  The large female came closer and sniffed him curiously. “Why are you by yourself, little cub?” she asked. “Where is your mother?”

  Toklo didn’t want to admit that his mother was right there but pretending he didn’t exist. He shrugged his shoulders. “I’m waiting for the salmon,” he said. “Like every other bear here.”