The Quest of the Cubs Page 3

  “What’s this?” he asked uneasily, feeling one of the strange sensations that made his mum call him a Riddler.

  “Never you mind,” Taaka snapped before turning back to her eldest cub. “Oh, you darling little roly-poly thing!” Taaka cooed in delight. “More? You want more?”

  “Yes, Mama!”

  The cub devoured another chunk.

  “Please, Taaka?” First said tentatively. “Could we have a bit more of the halibut?”

  “No. I’m saving that for my little Second’s first meal.” Taaka sighed. “I thought your mother said you knew how to hunt? You’ve been having a nice comfy time here. Time to get to work. I won’t stand for you taking food out of my cubs’ mouths just because you’re feeling lazy.”

  “But you wouldn’t let us outside,” First said.

  “Are you back talking me, Fourth?”

  “We … we can try hunting tomorrow,” Second said wearily. “But if we don’t eat before then … ” She trailed off.

  Taaka jerked her head to the side. “There are berries over in that corner. I saved them from summer.”

  The cubs scurried over, but the berries were as hard as pebbles and did little to help the gnawing hunger.

  First had begun to grow dizzy and could swear he could feel himself shrinking under his own pelt.

  Outside, the storm was still raging. The wind was wild and screeching across the frozen sea. Second glanced at her brother, who was slumped against the wall. There was a dull sheen in his eyes. “First,” Second whispered softly. “First!” He didn’t seem to hear her. But she could not say his name too loudly or she would be scolded for not calling him Fourth. “Are you all right?”

  “I … I’m fine. I’m getting used to the hunger.”

  “No, First, don’t get used to it.” She nudged him. There was no response. “First, listen to me! We have to get out of here.” But the words bounced off him. He did not stir.

  Second was growing more and more desperate. Her brother’s breath had become uneven. There were longer and longer pauses between each breath. Is my brother going to die? Wild gusts of despair were flailing inside of her. She looked over at Taaka, who was cuddling her two biggest cubs. The third one was weakly trying to make its way to her milk. A dark coldness began to invade Second. They had to leave. If she had to haul her brother out of this den herself, she would. She started to prod him.

  “Leave me alone, Second,” he growled softly. “I just want to sleep.” If he slept, he might not wake up. Deep inside, Second knew this would be true.

  She nipped him lightly on his haunch. He flinched and gave a little yelp.

  “Eating your brother, are you?” Taaka chuckled drowsily.

  First stirred. Taaka’s words startled him from his thick lethargy. He opened his eyes and stared at Taaka. A terrifying realization took shape within him. That bone! The strange one that wasn’t salty, the bone of a smallish creature. A creature not quite grown. It had come from a cub.

  She’s waiting for us to die. Then she’ll eat us! First thought, as disgust and horror filled him. There was a peculiar, hungry look in Taaka’s eyes. Her tongue slipped from her mouth and licked her lips as if she were already tasting their blood.

  In that electrifying moment, Second sensed her brother’s alarm and understood what was happening. She felt the cold spike of death in the air.

  Wait. Second mouthed the word. First nodded. They would wait until Taaka fell asleep and then they would make their escape. They couldn’t risk spending one more night in this terrible place.

  They didn’t have to wait long. As soon as Taaka’s rumbling snores filled the den, the two cubs climbed noiselessly up the chute, which seemed to have grown in length. They heard Taaka roll over. There was a squeak from her big cub.

  “Drat!” she muttered.

  First and Second froze. If Taaka woke up and found them halfway up this chute, it’d be over for them. First’s heart was thudding so fast in his chest, he was sure Taaka would hear it. They waited. They heard her sigh. Then belch. And then finally snore. First exhaled silently, then signaled Second, and they continued, clawing their way up the last bit and into the maw of the ferocious storm.

  In the biting air, each cub let out a long sigh of relief. Better to be devoured by slashing winds and bitter cold than gobbled by Taaka. Then, without another word, they took off, sprinting as quickly as they could. Every force in the universe seemed to fight against them. It was what their mother called a gnaw blizzard, where the very crystals of snow were sharp as teeth and bit through their fur. But they were beyond feeling pain. It was only fear that coursed through them like a mad river. Shoulder to shoulder, leaning against the savage wind, the two cubs attempted to make their way through the storm.

  The black dome of the sky jittering with stars hung over the vast white world of ice, a world that now seemed too big. Second looked up. Without their mum, the stars were nameless. She could not find the great starry bear, let alone the knee star for which their father had been named. Or the heel star of their mother, or the two little wandering stars, Jytte and Stellan, that their mum said trailed the big bear through the night. Those stars, family stars, were lost.

  Second wasn’t sure how far they had gone when the two cubs tumbled into a slight depression. She didn’t even let out a yelp as she hit the ground. At least they were now protected from the wind.

  Second sighed deeply as she settled back against a soft cushion of snow, then wrinkled her nose. “It smells funny back there,” she said, and nodded toward the rear of the wallow they had fallen into.

  First sniffed. “What does it smell like?”

  “Not Mum,” Second sighed. “Do you suppose that we could maybe go find Mum?”

  “She’s gone to the Den of Forever Frost, the Ice Star Chamber.”

  Second bristled. “That doesn’t mean she’s vanished. She’s out there somewhere.”

  First was growing agitated. His sister was so impulsive. How could she think that they could simply set out across the Frozen Sea and find their mum! She never thinks things through. “Even if we wanted to catch up with her, we don’t know which way she went. All the stories she told us about the Den of Forever Frost, she never told us where it was. But none of that matters right now. We have to find some food.” His stomach gave a great rumble, as if to emphasize that fact.

  Second thought for a moment. “Fine. If you don’t think we can find Mum, I have an even better idea.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Let’s find our father!” Second clapped her paws together.

  “Are you completely kaplunga? He’s already left us once.”

  Second looked up at the sky, searching for the knee star named for her father, Svern. No, she thought. I am not crazy. But First was right. Before they did anything, they had to eat. She turned to her brother. “Fine. Let’s go find food. Then we’ll decide what to do.”

  First sighed with great relief. “Now that is truly a sensible idea!” He gave his sister an affectionate cuff.

  So the cubs rose up and began once more to stagger along, keeping near the wallow in case they needed to find shelter again. The snow-covered land was sculpted by the wind into snow dunes, occasional hillocks, and mounds, with small winding troughs between them. But this snowscape could change depending on the direction of the wind. It was a constantly shifting maze in which knolls could be flattened or new sharp ridges might emerge.

  First paused as he heard a scurrying beneath the snow. “Lemmings?” he said. He had a dim recollection of their mum talking about lemmings. The roundish little rodents were plumper than mice, with beady eyes.

  Second nodded eagerly. “How do we get at them?”

  “Well, we can’t catch them by their tails, as they almost have no tails. Mum told us that. But she said they had some fat.”

  “You mean blubber.”

  “No, not that kind of fat. But we can’t be picky.” Once again First’s stomach growled. Hunger was a sharp thing
. It cut into you, burrowed into you, making you feel not just weak but light-headed. Right now, all he needed to do was hunt, and to hunt he must think. But he was feeling dizzy from hunger. He lowered his head to the ground and tried to listen.

  Second saw a spark appear in her brother’s dark eyes. First seemed to regain strength as he grew alert. He must have heard something, thought Second, a skittering beneath the snow’s crust.

  She watched as her brother bounded headlong into a drift. There was a soft explosion of snow. First emerged, batting his eyelashes, then sneezed. Two small snow geysers erupted from his nostrils.

  “Get any?” Second asked.

  “No,” he replied glumly. “I could have sworn there were a bunch of them down there.”

  “Well, I’m not sure if rodent would taste very good.”

  “I’m so hungry, I’d eat anything right now.”

  The cubs wandered back across the shifting snowscape of windswept ridges and mounds, growing colder and hungrier with each step. “Maybe we should rest,” First said hoarsely as they returned to the wallow. It was a small den compared to those of bears, but it looked as if there were remnants of nesting materials, including clumps of moss and lichen. It looked soft and inviting, good for curling up and taking a quick nap. So, shivering with cold, they curled up together on one of the larger piles.

  Sleep came only in short bursts. Each time, the cubs awakened, they felt a terrible sense of loss, though for a brief moment they could not remember why. When they did remember, the pain was even worse.

  A figure appeared seemingly from nowhere, and almost indistinguishable from the snow in its whiteness. The cubs blinked. The figure had not entered from the opening the cubs had stumbled through. Two golden eyes gleamed at them. The rest of the creature was the whitest white either of them could imagine.

  The creature remained perfectly still except for her delicate ears, which pivoted this way and that, as if trying to pick up something beyond words. This must be the source of the strange smell, First thought. He watched carefully. She was smaller than they were, but older. And like the tern he had spotted flying overhead days ago, this creature had lost something dear to her.

  Finally, the animal spoke. “What are you doing here?” It dawned on First that this strange little creature, with her sharp tiny face and pointy ears, was a Nunquivik fox.

  First and Second exchanged glances. It was the height of rudeness to enter another creature’s den without offering a gift.

  “I’m sorry. We have no seal scraps,” First said, dipping his head slightly.

  “Of course you don’t. You’re not out on the ice yet. You take me for a fool?”

  No, First thought. Looking at her, First realized that he would never take this creature for a fool. According to their mum, these foxes were steeped in knowledge of bears, of seal hunting.

  “Oh no, never!” First said quickly. “But how did you get in here?”

  The fox gave a quick flick of her head. “Another tunnel. Yonder. I knew you were here.”

  “How?” Second asked, eyes narrowing shrewdly.

  “I have ears, don’t I?” She twitched her ears this way and that. Can she sniff with her ears? First wondered.

  “You heard us?” First asked.

  “We foxes have the best hearing of any creature in the Nunquivik.”

  Second was growing nervous. “Do we have to leave? We can’t go back to Taaka.”

  The fox did not reply for a moment. “No, I suppose you can’t go back. Taaka’s mean as a weasel. And there’s nothing meaner than a weasel.”

  First felt a flood of relief, but not enough to sweep away his uncertainty. This fox could be a friend, but then again, they had nothing to offer her.

  “Your mum must have been in a desperate situation if she left you with Taaka. Where did she go?” the fox asked.

  “Our mum had to go to the Den of Forever Frost,” Second said, a note of pride in her voice.

  “The Den of Forever Frost? Is that what she told you?” the fox asked. A dark shadow clouded her golden eyes, sending a shiver through First.

  “Yes,” First replied. “Like in all the old stories. Do you know about it?”

  “Never heard of the place,” the fox said quickly. But there was something behind the golden gleam in her eyes. First had seen the same anxious look in his mum’s eyes when he had asked her what was bothering her.

  The fox sighed deeply. “Look, this part of the den that you tumbled into happens to be my grieving chamber.”

  “What’s grieving?” First asked, although he sensed it had something to do with loss. The fox clamped her eyes shut briefly, as if she were thinking very complicated thoughts.

  “Grief,” she said slowly, “is what you are feeling right now about your mum. It’s when someone you love is taken from you.”

  “But she wasn’t taken,” Second said. “She left us. I don’t understand why she would leave us with Taaka. If she really loved us … ”

  “What do you mean if?” First cut her off, eyes flashing. “She had no choice, Second. She loves us! How could you think anything else?”

  Second knew First was right. Their mum loved them. But how could she have done what she did? How could she have left them with Taaka? It was almost as if another mother, a false mother, had invaded their real mum. Was such a thing possible?

  “Are you missing your mum too?” Second asked the fox.

  “No, I am missing my kits.”

  “What happened to them?” Second asked. First tried to give her a kick. His sister could be very nosy.

  “Two big snowy owls carried them off.”

  “That’s horrid! Why would an owl do that?” Second asked.

  “Why?” the fox repeated. “To eat, of course.”

  The pain in the fox’s eyes was almost unbearable for First. He felt as if he’d been pulled directly into the fox’s head. There was a storm of horrifying images as the fox recalled the sight of her kits bleeding and struggling in the talons of the snowy owls, and then watching, helpless, seeing them slowly dissolving into the clouds as the birds flew off.

  “I’m sorry,” the fox said. Her eyes grew soft. “You don’t know about such things. I should have realized that bear cubs are not accustomed to the idea of being eaten. Your kind, after all, are the largest predators on earth. Nothing eats you. You’re the top eater, or you will be soon when you’re grown-up.”

  The cubs fell silent for a moment. “I’m … I’m so sorry about your kits,” First said gently. “What’s your name?”

  “Lago. And yours?” Her ears made those tiny pivoting motions, as if she could pluck their names right out of thin air.

  “I’m First,” First said. “And she’s Second.”

  “Our mum used to tell us stories about you,” Second said.

  “About me?”

  “Well, not about you exactly. Make-believe stories about foxes.”

  “Oh, those silly stories, the Ki-hi-ru stories, about she-foxes turning into musk ox or seals or even bears.”

  “Yes! There was one about a fox and a bear. But the bear didn’t know he had taken a fox as a mate because she had changed her shape into that of a bear, and—”

  “Pure nonsense!” Lago chuckled. Her laugh was high and squeaky. But when First looked into her gleaming golden eyes, he saw something lurking behind the mirth.

  Fear.

  Lago let the cubs spend the night in her den. She had no food for them, but at least she could provide shelter.

  When dawn broke, Lago nosed the cubs awake. “Come with me,” she whispered. She had spent enough time in her grieving chamber. She had to get out on the ice if she wanted to grow fat and find a new mate. But first she’d take one last plunge into the snow for a mouse to sustain her on the journey, and find a few for the poor cubs. Maybe she could teach them a thing or two about rodent hunting.

  The two cubs crept out onto the snow crust after her. Crouching very low, Lago slithered across the crust, her hea
d wagging ever so slightly this way and that. They watched her ears flick just the tiniest bit. Suddenly the fox leaped straight up into the air, her body suspended in an arc over the snow. Then, headfirst, she dived straight down, plunging deep into the powdery white. When she emerged, she had two mice in her teeth. The cubs were astonished. Was she bird or fox? For indeed in that moment she had seemed to fly.

  Lago trotted over to them and dropped the mice at the cubs’ feet. “Try them. You probably won’t like them. But you have to eat something. And there’s more down there.”

  The mice were plump. Although they found the taste somewhat revolting, the cubs gobbled them up.

  “But don’t you need them?” Second asked as Lago dropped two more in the snow for them.

  “I can make do for now.”

  “How did you even find them?” First asked. He hadn’t heard or seen any sign of the creatures at all.

  “I’ve got—well, all foxes have—the Northing.”

  “The Northing?” First repeated.

  “It’s something that we are born with. The Northing helps us find our way no matter where we are. And it helps us hunt. It’s like a sparkling line in our head that matches up with a deep line in the earth. We measure all things from it. It becomes a guide for us.”

  First nodded. “Mum told us about a star called Nevermoves that helps bears when they are out on the sea ice. Is it like that?”

  “A bit, perhaps. But not exactly.” Lago gave the cubs a look they couldn’t quite identify. “Now I must be going. There’s a bear I want to follow onto the ice.” She tipped her head, as if she wanted to say good-bye but couldn’t quite utter the words. Then she turned and trotted off.

  The cubs watched her go with a pang. Her shadow sprawled across the moonlit snow and finally disappeared as she headed toward the edge of the Frozen Sea.

  Second wheeled around to First and whispered in a strangled voice, “Why couldn’t Mum have left us with Lago?”

  “She’s not our kind,” First replied.

  Second tipped her head in the direction of Taaka’s den. “But did Mum think she was our kind?” Her eyes grew fierce as the idea she’d pushed out of her head returned, filling her with warmth. “We don’t have a choice, First. We need to find our father.” Second knew that once their father laid eyes on his cubs, he’d never abandon them. He’d protect them. He’d love them at first sight.