The Quest of the Cubs Read online

  First sighed. “When will you understand that fathers have nothing to do with their cubs? It’s not that they love us or don’t love us. They don’t know us, and that is the custom. Don’t you understand?”

  “No! No, I don’t,” Second exploded. “The word ‘custom’ has no meaning for me. It’s a stupid word. It’s just an excuse not to think about anything.”

  First felt his heart sink. He could see the sob quaking within Second like a wave about to break. “I … I … didn’t mean to make you so upset.” He put his front leg around her shoulders. “Second, we can’t fight. All we have in this whole wide world right now is each other.”

  His sister’s face crumpled. Tears slid from each eye and were frozen solid by the time they reached the guard hairs of her muzzle.

  “You’re right,” he continued. “We don’t know when Mum’s coming back, and we’ll never make it on our own. We have to try to find our father.”

  Second stared at him, startled. “Really, First? You want to go find Da?” A current of excitement passed through her, and she began to jump from side to side. “But where do we go? How do we know how to find him?”

  First considered this. “Mum said he’s hunting in the north.”

  “But how do we get to the hunting grounds?”

  First looked about. The world had turned white, as land and sky merged into a singularity of nothingness. But for the first time, he felt undaunted. “We just have to wait until the storm blows itself out. Until we can see the stars, the one called Nevermoves. Mum said if you follow it, it’ll guide you to the north.”

  And so the cubs, clinging to each other, rolled into a ball, a small bundle against the ferocious wind, and waited for the stars to return.

  When their hunger grew too much to bear, they hunted mice. But there was something wrong with the rodent food. It did not satisfy. Within a short time, their stomachs were making angry sounds. Hunger was their constant companion. Just when First was beginning to regret their plan, the storm started to clear and the stars appeared.

  “Look!” First shouted. “There it is.”

  Second wiped her eyes. “It’s there. The Nevermoves—right where Mum said it would be, just off the forward paw of the Great Bear. It’s waving to us. It’s saying, follow me. Follow me! And look, those two little stars, Jytte and Stellan, are skipping ahead, straight for it!”

  By the time the storm had blown itself out, the tips of their guard hairs were spangled in icicles and radiant in the light of the stars.

  The cubs were shivering—shivering but happy. They staggered to their feet and began to follow the scent of the ocean. They would go out onto that great frozen sea and become real hunters—hunters of seal and not mice! They would grow to be the largest predators on earth. By the time they found their father, they’d be expert hunters, and he’d have no choice but to be proud of them.

  They walked through the rest of the night until the first glimmer of the dawn began to glow on the horizon, swallowing the stars one by one. But they were heading north—to the hunting grounds of their father. Of this they were sure.

  And so they continued through the dawn and into the dim light of a new morning. Two little cubs, just tiny specks in the vast white world of Nunquivik, headed toward a boundless frozen sea.

  They had not been long under way when First felt an odd sensation. He stopped in his tracks. The wind had died, and an eerie stillness crept over the landscape. The weak sun appeared rimed with frost. And everything from the sun in the near colorless sky to the ice seemed brittle and on the verge of shattering.

  “We shouldn’t go this way.”

  Second spun around. “Why not?”

  “It’s dangerous. There’s something hidden here. I … I can’t explain it exactly, but I feel it’s another creature’s secret.”

  Second sighed. If they had to stop every time First had one of this weird “feelings,” they’d never make it to the northern hunting grounds. “What are you talking about, First? Another creature’s secret?”

  “I smell halibut … and seal … It’s another animal’s hoard of food.”

  Despite the fear in First’s voice, Second’s mouth began to water. But before she could ask how they might find this food, a creature with spiky black fur exploded from behind a pile of ice.

  “Mine!” a voice shrieked.

  Something hurled itself against First, who went skidding. For a moment, he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t even move. Help! First tried to shout, but the full weight of the creature was on his windpipe. Just when his vision started to blur, the beast pivoted sharply and ran toward Second, its teeth bared, an evil light flashing in its eyes.

  No! The word tore through First as he watched in horror. Wheezing, he scrambled toward his sister, but before he could reach her, the creature grabbed Second and flung her to the ground.

  Skunk bear! His mum had told them about these dark, bristly furred animals. They were smaller than bears but incredibly vicious and strong. Their fangs were dreadful, very long in comparison to the short, sharp teeth squeezed in between them. They seemed to have more teeth than their mouths could hold.

  Second writhed and gnashed her teeth, but she couldn’t shake her attacker loose. Its strength was shocking. It’s crushing me! Its short, stocky legs were gripping her midsection, and she felt as if every breath of air was being squeezed out of her.

  First watched in horror as the creature lifted Second off the ground. It threw back its head, squashing the cub harder and harder. Second was gasping for breath.

  He’ll break her, break her in two! Desperate, First launched himself into the air from behind the beast, landing on its back. He dug his claws into the skunk bear’s skin, holding tight as he could as it thrashed from side to side. With one leg, First reached around and swiped at the creature’s face with his claws, tearing the nostrils. There was a terrible snorting sound. Blood spurted into the air.

  The skunk bear dropped Second and began howling, blind with fury. In the bloodstained snow were the black fragments of what had been his nose. The sounds that came from him were distorted. His breathing seemed mangled.

  First grabbed his sister, and then, half dragging and half carrying Second, bolted. They were some distance away when Second seemed to recover herself.

  “I’m all right! I’m all right.”

  “Did he break anything?”

  “No, no.” Second looked up at her brother in awe. “You did it, First. You saved my life!”

  “I did?” First replied, stunned. It was now all a blur to him. He looked back and, in the distance, could still see the skunk bear convulsing on the ground. “I don’t think he’ll follow us.”

  “I don’t think he could find us. You wrecked his sense of smell, First. He’ll never be able to track us or any other creature again.” She looked at him with an expression he’d never seen before. Admiration. “You’re powerful, First.”

  But hungrier than ever, First thought. They had to find food soon.

  They continued north, scrambling over ridges of jumble ice, but so far they had not seen the one that ridged the Frozen Sea. Second stopped and lowered her muzzle until it was half buried in the snow. Was she smelling true sea ice? First wondered. Had they come that far? Second started off haltingly in one direction but had gone only a few paces before she turned sharply. She slowed but continued in the new direction, plowing through the snow with her entire muzzle. First recalled his mum’s words: Your sister is an ice gazer.

  “An ice gazer? What does that mean?” First had asked.

  “The ice is a mystery. It contains secrets within secrets, and your sister can parse them. Just like your father. He too was a gazer. Both of them can smell the snow, the ice—the rotten ice, the dryness of freshly fallen snow of the First Seal Moon, and how it differs from the Seal Moon that follows.”

  Second reared up and waved one paw in the air. “We did it. That last ridge from this morning was the rim of the Frozen Sea. This way! This way! I sm
ell the salt and I hear the water far beneath the ice sea.”

  Both cubs felt a flutter of excitement as they walked on. This would be their test. Could they do it? Could they find seal on their own? Gradually they began to push out their doubts with a staunchness of spirit and grit. Heart grit their mum had called it. Yes, they had heart grit. That was what she told them a bear needed to survive. And so their walk became a march, a march across the ice with Nevermoves as their guide, and in their heads a plainsong thrummed. No more mice, no more rodents! They were hunters, hunters of the sea, of the big-blooded animals that would make them fat.

  All the while they reviewed the lessons for still-hunting their mum had taught them. Still-hunting, she had told them countless times, was just what it sounded like—being very still. First wondered if Second, with her impulsive nature, could be very still, and if so, for how long?

  They walked and walked. They could see the soft glow in the distance where the sun would never really rise but was only a stain on the horizon, a faint shade of red from another world where it was truly morning.

  The land under their paws felt different. There was none of the eerie stillness that had enveloped them before they encountered the skunk bear. Even the air smelled different here.

  A new sound began to thread the air, a sound neither one of the cubs had ever heard.

  “What is that?” Second asked, a tremor of excitement in her voice.

  “I’m not sure.” First angled his head to hear better. It was a distant sound, like a muffled thunder. He could even feel a light vibration beneath his feet. “Second, it’s a roaring. It’s the sealing season beginning. Remember what Mum said about males roaring and—”

  Second’s eyes grew bright. “And females stand quietly by! Not me!” Second began to roar, though it was not quite the deep, thunderous sound of the big-chested bears. “If that idiot skunk bear hadn’t squished me, I would be able to do this better.” She pouted and tried again.

  First chuckled to himself. Second was not exactly what one would call humble.

  The roaring was thunderous but at the same time jubilant. The clamor grew louder as they drew closer.

  “There must be so many bears out there, First! Maybe one of them can help us find our father!”

  They sped up, walking steadily in the direction of the roaring. Suddenly, a deep voice split the air.

  “Toothwalker out of water on ice approaching roaring. Beware!” The cry raked the night, and the cubs skidded to a halt. “Not you, cubs. Don’t worry.” The bellow came from a mass of ice slabs that had piled up one atop the other at odd angles a short distance ahead. Sitting on the summit was a bear so still that they had taken him as part of the ice formation.

  Second, rarely at a loss for words, now struggled to speak. “Wh-what … what are we seeing here?”

  “I take your question to indicate that you have seen, but do not comprehend, my peculiar condition,” the bear said. There was more silence. “I can hear your breathing but no words come out. I could tell that you’re cubs from the strike of your paws against the ice as you ran.”

  “Can’t you see us?” First asked, for the bear was swinging his head about but never settled his gaze upon them.

  “Your eyes are blank,” Second said. Bears’ eyes were dark—a rich, deep brown, almost black—but these eyes were completely white. White as snow, white as ice.

  “Not quite true,” the bear said. “Once I had eyes. But now the sockets are packed white with issen blauen. And so I am called Moon Eyes.”

  “What is issen blauen?” Second asked.

  “It is the highest-quality ice in the world.”

  “Does it help you see?” For once, First didn’t chafe at his sister’s nosiness, for he was dying to ask the same questions.

  “No, I am still blind, for my eyes are no more.”

  But blind seemed the wrong word in Second’s mind. The bear did not seem to need eyes. Second felt as if this bear could see her in a different way, a manner that did not require eyes.

  “Why are you sitting here and not at the roaring?” Second asked.

  “I am a guard.”

  First tipped his head to one side. “How can you be a guard, if you cannot see?”

  “I can hear. I heard your footfalls, didn’t I? I could tell you were cubs. Cubs entering your second year, I believe.” The cubs looked at each other in wonder.

  “So what do you guard against?” First asked.

  “Weak ice, breakthroughs from which toothwalkers might climb. I listen for these perils, and then I roar to signal the other bears to scatter. But I guard not simply against, but also for.”

  “What does that mean?” First asked.

  “I guard for our old way of life—a way of life that is disappearing in the Nunquivik. The noble traditions have been forgotten.” He shook his head sadly. “Nothing has been the same since the Roguers arrived in these parts.”

  “What … what do they do?” First asked nervously, not liking the sound of that word.

  “They are savage. They seize cubs, for the most part.”

  “Seize cubs? Why?” Second was stunned.

  “To take them away to a dangerous place. To enslave them, it is said.”

  “So how do you know who’s a Roguer and who’s not?” First asked, glancing over his shoulder at the empty expanse of whiteness they’d just crossed.

  The bear Moon Eyes tapped his nose. “I can smell the Roguer because he has the scent of the Ublunkyn. You know what the Ublunkyn is?”

  “No, sorry,” First said.

  “The Ublunkyn is the region of the Ice Cap, far from here, but not far enough. Never far enough. That is where they take the cubs. That is where bears forget the old ways—they forget the ways of hunting, and the traditions of the clan bears. They forget their stories, their history. They forget the ways of Svree.”

  Despite the sound of the roaring, a pocket of silence seemed to envelop the cubs and the blind bear.

  Second leaned in closer to Moon Eyes. “You say you can smell the Roguers because of the smell of the Ublunkyn. So the ice there is different from this ice?”

  Moon Eyes’s nose quivered. “Yes, the ice is very different there. I’ll never forget its scent.”

  “Why?” First asked.

  “That is a long story and a sad story.” He sighed. “You see, it was the Roguers who blinded me many years ago when I was just a cub. They tore out my eyes when I dared to run away.”

  The cubs sat on a slab of ice just beneath Moon Eyes’s perch. He looked down at them with his unseeing orbs of white issen blauen.

  “When I was a cub, perhaps even younger than you, certainly smaller, I was captured by brutal bears and taken on a long journey. When we finally arrived in the Ublunkyn region I saw a chance to make a break for it. It was the second time I had tried to run away from them, and they decided I was too troublesome and that I would make a better Tick Tock if I were blind. So they tore out my eyes.”

  Second shuddered with disgust at the terrible image. “A Tick Tock? What is that?”

  “I don’t know exactly, because I escaped before I got to the Ice Cap.”

  “And you escaped even though you were blind,” First said.

  “Yes, finally I did. You see, when they blinded me, I began to bleed heavily. So they packed my empty eye sockets with ice. It was issen blauen, the ice of the Ublunkyn, and it has a very peculiar odor. The scent filled my head and blocked every other scent almost entirely.

  “When those Roguers blinded me, they never thought I would dare escape, and they became careless while guarding me. So I did dare. I knew I could smell my way out, for I knew that when the scent of Ublunkyn ice began to fade I would be heading in the right direction—away from the Ice Cap.”

  Second wondered if she could have gotten away if her eyes had been torn out. Would she have been able to sniff the deathly scent of the Ublunkyn ice, the issen blauen, and escape it?

  “I eventually found my way back.
The other bears were astounded when they saw me staggering toward them. They were frightened, of course, when they saw my eyes. But I told them that I might prove useful. At first they didn’t believe me. But over the years they have come to trust me. It has worked out well. They hunt for me, and I guard for them during the roarings.”

  “We’re going to the roaring ourselves,” Second explained. “We’re ready to become hunters!”

  Moon Eyes shook his head. “I sense you’re hungry, but this is not a place for young cubs. Not during these dark days.” The bitterness in his voice reminded First of how disgusted their mother had been by the strange bear who had stolen their seal. “A few seal breathing holes opened up two leagues from here. I can hear their breathing. I can hear the sound of the water welling up in the holes.” He lifted one paw and pointed.

  “But what about the roaring?” Second asked. She pointed in the opposite direction. “Why can’t we hunt with the other bears?”

  “Cub!” Moon Eyes said sternly. “What is your name?”

  “We haven’t been named yet,” First said quietly. For the first time, he felt a sense of shame for his nameless condition. If one had a mum, there was really no need for a name. They were Svenna’s cubs. That was enough. But now there was no Svenna. No mum. They were nameless and lost. “I’m First, and my sister is Second.”

  “Ah, of course. I should have known. I shall not ask what happened to your mother, but I assume it was not good. Yes, you need to hunt, but not at the roaring. The bears there won’t take kindly to the appearance of two cubs.” He paused; then, turning toward the roaring, he sniffed the air. “I sense the issen blauen coming from that direction. There are Roguers out there. Roguers from the Ice Cap.” Then, rising to his full height, he let out a freakish bellowing that seemed to make the moon itself tremble in its transit and shake every star in the sky until the constellations wobbled and the Great Bear appeared to gallop across the night.