The Quest of the Cubs Page 7

  They swam on, often tipping their heads up to see the star that never moved, and the two smaller stars that once again had skipped ahead. Could these three stars guide them and protect them? They were approaching land, they could tell. In the night they spied a fringe of small trees like pale shadows. They were called white barks, and they grew in scattered patches, often at the edge of the Frozen Sea, where slender limbs swayed in the slightest breeze and their leaves in summer often made a soft, whispering music. Now, as the moon began to set low in the sky, the trees turned silvery. The water in the tickle was perfectly calm and the reflection from the ahalikki cast pools of color. It was like swimming though a liquid rainbow.

  As they approached the end of the tickle, they could see the carcass of the beluga shimmering like a great white stone on the beach. The water was at half tide now and rising, but alas, too late for the whale.

  Suddenly, they heard a sound skidding toward them from a ridge of jumble ice that rimmed the tickle. A huge and hideous face hung down from the ridge. It must have climbed out farther down where the water was still deep, as this end of the tickle was almost completely dry. The face had two long, glaring tusks and a nose encrusted with prickly hairs.

  “No passing! The whale is for me,” it roared.

  It was a beast so huge that he blotted out the sky. Stellan felt a coldness creep over him. It was different from any kind of cold he had ever felt. It was paralyzing. There was something terrible and freakish about the beast’s eyes. They were not forward facing, but appeared to have slid off to each side of its head, and they were a dark red, like old blood. The bristly hairs on its face twitched with a life of their own.

  The cubs were so frightened they couldn’t think. They couldn’t move. It felt as if their very guts were climbing up into their throats as they watched the drool drip from the creature’s mouth. We’re about to be devoured, Stellan thought. Their mum had told them how dangerous and vicious these monsters were.

  “Toothwalkers,” their mum had said, “prefer cub flesh to any other. As hunters, their habits are horrible. All of their prey suffer and die slowly, for they like to watch the fear in their eyes.”

  Stellan felt his fear radiating from him, arousing the toothwalker’s hunger. Long ropes of saliva were dripping from its mouth.

  “I smell halibut!” the creature said. A disgusting, mottled tongue slipped from its mouth. “Halibut, freshly digested. And if I eat you, I get the halibut as well! But I shall eat you slowly. I shall rip open your stomach and take the halibut and then eat your heart. A heart eaten while still beating is juicy.”

  Heart grit! thought Stellan. I’ve dodged a shark, jumped on the back of a skunk bear. We can do this. We can do this. The words unleashed a surge of strength, propelling Stellan as he leaped up and bit the mottled tongue of the toothwalker. The creature yowled. Blood sprayed into the night as the beast rolled onto its back, flailing helplessly with its flippers at the sky.

  “Run!” Stellan yelled to Jytte. “Run toward the whale before the tide comes in.” They had to. They could outrun a toothwalker, but not outswim one. The water they were standing in was shallow, but quickly becoming deeper. With each second they were losing their advantage over the toothwalker, who was now howling in anger more than pain. The cubs pushed mightily on the gritty bottom of the tickle and sprang forward, sailing through the air toward the beach where the beluga carcass lay. But just then, the toothwalker swung its head wildly, trying to right himself onto its belly. The long tusks flashed through the air, and Stellan felt something strike his haunch. He kept running for a few seconds, but then he couldn’t. A sharp pain coursed through him. His sister screamed.

  “You’re bleeding, Stellan!” Jytte had seen the tusk slice into her brother. His blood splattered her face. A hot fury flashed through her, unleashing a surge of power. She thought of nothing, not fear, not danger, not blood. She would die, but she would die killing if she had to. She wheeled around and, grabbing her brother, dragged him by his front paw out of the range of the toothwalker’s long tusks. She was startled by her own strength. She wondered if suddenly the power of her father, Svern, had swept through her, overtaken her, if only for that single moment.

  “You’re all right. You’re all right, Stellan. Look, there’s not much blood. It was just the shock of it all that was probably the worst.”

  Stellan blinked at his sister, looking at her in wonder. “Jytte, do you realize what you just did? You’re smaller than me and you dragged me all this way. The toothwalker can’t reach us. Look at it over there. It’s still on the ice, on its back.”

  Jytte’s eyes opened wide. “I guess I did, but … but it didn’t feel like me.”

  “It was you, Jytte. You saved my life.”

  The toothwalker was now bellowing, a raw, searing sound of pure rage. It tried to clamber across the ice, but its flippers were useless. “Mine, mine!” it kept railing into the night as the moon dragged in the tide.

  The beluga was just where Jameson had promised. The meat was not as tender as the halibut. They had to work hard to get it, tearing through the thick skin, but it was worth it. Stellan kept glancing at the moon, which was rising.

  “We need to eat fast,” he said. “If the water reaches the beluga, the toothwalker will come with it.”

  “Is the water coming closer?” Jytte dared not look around but kept eating the whale flesh.

  “No, it can’t. We’re safe until the tickle fills in. The toothwalker can’t make it to us across this ice. We’re far enough.”

  Jytte stopped gorging and lifted her muzzle toward the sky. Her mother’s voice echoed in her mind: A young moon is a strong moon, a tide dragger. A sliver of a new moon scraped the dark, and the lap of the water on the incoming tide could be heard.

  “Eat faster!” Jytte said.

  When the Mystress of the Hands learned that Svenna could read and write, she’d assigned Svenna to the Numera. That first day, Svenna had been led to a large room where she’d seen row upon row of bears hunched over ice-slab desks, scribbling on ice tablets. Vryk, a bear known as a preceptor, a kind of teacher, had greeted her in a clipped, expressionless tone.

  “This is the Numera. We calculate here.”

  “Calculate what?” Svenna had asked.

  Vryk had looked at her blankly. “Information from the clock can help prepare us for the next Great Melting.” Svenna felt a shiver course through her. How could that be possible?

  The Great Melting had been the most cataclysmic event in the history of bears. Not only had thousands of bears perished in the floods, but it had unleashed the monstrous dragons that swam in the depths of the sea.

  “How can mere calculations prepare us for the next Great Melting?”

  Vryk appeared stunned by the question. “Keep your musings to yourself!” he said sharply.

  “It was a question, not a musing.”

  “Questions are not welcome here. Doubt is not welcome here. Doubt is punishable. Severely punishable.”

  Svenna’s only real question was how long would she have to be here until she could return to her cubs. She asked herself this question a hundred times a day. Her purpose on earth was to raise those dear cubs. To teach them how to hunt, how to swim, how to be honorable bears who knew their own history, and not to sit in front of this abacus recalculating endless columns of figures.

  Soon a gong sounded, and then the first of the quarter chimes. This was the signal for the evening meal.

  “Time for lineup,” her denmate Hanne said cheerfully. She was a female about Svenna’s age, perhaps a bit older.

  Like everything at the Ice Cap, meals in the ice dining hall, a vast space with many tunnels leading off it, were carefully choreographed. Bears entered the hall from a designated tunnel according to their service, and always in a prescribed order. From one of the ice balconies a young bear took her place at the ice harp. The frame of the harp was made from the special-quality ice known as frysenglass. The strings were made from the ho
llow guard hairs shed from bears, which gave a haunting resonance when they were plucked. The first chords signaled the entrance of the bears in the highest echelons of the High Council of the Timekeepers.

  Next came the High Chamber of the Prefects, followed by the Low Chamber of the Prefects. Svenna took her place now in the O’Clock Tunnel, as it was called, where the numerators lined up. A new sequence of chimes had begun sounding the hour, and on the second stroke of the chimes, her line began to move into the dining hall. At the same time from the Works Tunnel came the guards, the Roguers, the hunters, and the greasers, who, with whale oil, would lubricate the various moving parts of the clock. Svenna noticed that in contrast to the hunters and the Roguers, the greasers were quite thin and generally smaller than full-grown bears. Also from the Works Tunnel came dozens of very small seals with a bluish cast.

  Lastly came the Order of Tick Tocks. They were all cubs, and they entered from behind a swaying curtain of icicles at the back of the hall at the very lowest tables.

  “What do they use those cubs for?” Svenna asked Hanne.

  “They have devoted their lives to the clock. It is a great honor.”

  Svenna stared at the small, trembling creatures. “But did they make that choice themselves?”

  Hanne gave her a puzzled look. “What does it matter?”

  What does it matter? Svenna thought, horrified. If these cubs had indeed been taken against their will, then nothing could matter more. They were supposed to be with their mums, learning to swim, to hunt. Not stuck here, being paraded about as part of some ridiculous charade. Part of her wanted to run to them, grab as many as she could, and flee this strange, terrible place. But the guards would surely kill her, and then there would be no one to care for her own cubs.

  With a sigh, Svenna tried to turn her attention to her dinner. She found the food at the Ice Cap odd. She had never heard of food being “prepared.” What preparation was needed beyond hunting? Once you found your prey, you killed it, tore off chunks of succulent meat, and ate it. Here, however, instead of hunting, food was “prepared” some distance away at the twin volcanoes Pupya and Prya. So everything they ate had the peculiar odor.

  At the high tables, the elite bears known as the Authority were seated. They were given a choice for their meat of smutz y bludder—smoked or bloody. At the lowest table it was all bludder.

  Hanne was craning her neck for a glimpse of the Mystress of the Chimes. “They are taking their places now. You have a much better view since you’ve been promoted and get to sit with me at this table.”

  “I see the Master of the Complications,” said Svenna. He was a very large bear with a slight limp.

  “Yes, and above him is the Chronos,” Hanne said.

  Finally, as the music of the ice harp reached a crescendo, the Grand Patek entered. He was carried on the Frost Throne by the four largest bears of the Timekeepers’ high guard, the Issengard. These bears’ massive chests were always emblazoned with the fresh blood of a beluga whale whose blubber would be smoked for the next meal. The blood itself streaked down their chests on a diagonal like a banner. It was similar to the bloody badges of the Roguers who had come for Svenna, but more ostentatious. These were proud, arrogant bears.

  All the highest-ranking bears were festooned with the jewelry of timepieces. Some, like the Mystress of the Chimes, wore tiny springs hanging from their ears. Others jingled with all manner of dials and wheels.

  “Can you see the Mystress of the Chimes? Do you see the jewelry she’s wearing tonight?” someone whispered.

  “Look, see around her neck those blazing stones. The blue ones are sapphires, and then there are the red rubies.”

  “What do they have to do with clocks?” Svenna asked.

  “Not sure, really, but they’re very important. They put them in the jewel holes of the clock,” Hanne explained.

  Another bear, Ragvar, a preceptor in the Numera, leaned toward Svenna. “Bearings,” he said. “They bear the friction and make the gear trains run smoothly. The ones the Mystress wears are just the leftovers from which the clock jewels were cut.”

  Svenna was left dizzy by what she was seeing and hearing. This was a world she never could have dreamed of. A hideous world where mechanical things were worshipped. Where bloody badges and black scars had become adornments along with jewels, while young cubs were enslaved and abused. Nothing she saw had anything to do with the noble traditions of the bears, traditions that had been passed from generation to generation from the days of the first bear council in the Den of Forever Frost. These creatures don’t have the right to call themselves bears, she thought, looking around in disgust. She was trapped in a living nightmare.

  No sooner had Stellan and Jytte stepped onto land near the fringe of silvery trees than a thick fog began to roll in. It grew thicker and thicker.

  “I’ve never seen anything like this,” Jytte said as they started walking. Were they getting closer to the hunting grounds? She sensed they were getting farther from the sea. It was a dry fog and did not have the sting of salt. But it grew steadily thicker. And when did night end and morning begin? In the dense murk of the void between sky and earth, it seemed to be truly no place. Without the stars, they felt adrift. It was almost dizzying, and even with their four paws on the ground, it was hard to tell up from down, as sky and land seemed to merge. They trudged on through the frightening infinity of the void.

  At last they were so tired they curled up and fell fast asleep. The fog was still thick when Stellan woke. Starting to rise up, he struck his head something on hard.

  “Ouch!” he cried.

  Jytte was instantly awake. “What in the world … ?” Stellan was muttering and squinting at something. Jytte blinked. “What are you looking for? You can’t see a thing. This fog is thicker than Mum’s belly fur.”

  “I’m just trying to see what’s in front of my face right here.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s … letters! Letter on a piece of wood.” He yanked the wood up from the deep snow.

  “Letters!” Jytte echoed. “Remember Mum was teaching us letters. She said many of the stories from the Long Ago had been written down in the Den of Forever Frost. Let’s try and sound it out.”

  “W-I-N-S-T-O-N.” Stellan spelled out the first word. Then the second: “S-N-O-W-T-E-L.”

  “Win … ston Snow-tel? Is that a name? A place?”

  “I don’t know. But let’s keep moving,” Stellan said, glancing over his shoulder.

  “But what direction?” Jytte swiveled her head. “I can’t see anything. I can’t even see where we came from. We’re supposed to be going north by following the star Nevermoves. But we move all the time, and unless we can see that star we don’t really know what direction we’re moving in, do we, Stellan?”

  “We just have to put one paw in front of the other and go.”

  So they went. There passed more pieces of wood with letters. WINSTON GAS ALL NIGHT, WINSTON 5&10, and CALL 675-2327 (BEAR).

  “Hey,” Stellan said. “That word is bear!”

  “That’s nice. It’s like we’re being welcomed.”

  “Welcomed to what? Where are we?” He felt a prick of suspicion. Other creatures did not put up signs to welcome bears.

  The fog had not let up. As they headed in what they hoped was a northerly direction, the cubs passed several strange dens. They were all aboveground and made from wood. “How does a bear live here?” Stellan asked, looking about. “Most of these dens don’t have roofs. And they have holes, but they aren’t round.”

  The cubs came to call the holes “not rounds” and couldn’t figure out why they were in the middle of the wall of a den. But the dens made good shelters, especially as a blizzard had begun to blow in.

  “These not rounds, maybe they’re here in case the bears want to look out at something,” Stellan said.

  Jytte was quiet for several moments, then turned to her brother. “You know what, Stellan? I don’t think bears really liv
ed here.”

  “You don’t?” A shiver coursed through him, a shiver not of cold but of fear. He didn’t want to encounter any more strange creatures—skunk bears, toothwalkers, krag sharks. He’d had enough. “Jytte, if bears didn’t live here, who did?”

  “It could be the Others.”

  “Others?” Stellan’s voice quaked.

  “Maybe. Let’s go see,” Jytte replied, and walked into the den. She looked around a bit and then tried sitting near a not round.

  “These aren’t as cozy as a real den,” she pronounced. She got up and settled into a corner. “Not cozy at all.” She sighed as she looked up into the roofless den, which was now hung with the impenetrable fog. “I want the stars.”

  I want Mum, Stellan thought, but said nothing.

  Jytte looked in vain for the Svern star. Her mum’s words flowed through her: That’s the star in the hind knee of the same leg as my heel star. You see, we walk together across the sky. Heel follows knee. Jytte wondered if perhaps they might be so lucky as to find their father and mother together someday, somewhere.

  Later they roused themselves and started out again. And again they walked through the thick pelt of fog and blizzard, heading in the direction they believed was north. They felt their energy dwindling. The cold seemed to pierce right through their fur. Jytte was thinner than Stellan was, and he thought he heard her teeth chattering. A terrible, sad little sound.

  “Oh no!” Stellan gasped. “The letters again. The same ones, WINSTON SNOWTEL. We’re going in circles!”

  “We can’t be!” Jytte said. Fury rose within her. It was as if the whole universe was playing a nasty trick on them. She scooped up a pawful of snow. Dry snow. Not good for skeeter slides. They must be a fair distance from the sea and the northern hunting grounds. Bears did not hunt on land in this season. She crinkled her brow and began to think. It was maddening that without the stars they had become lost and merely gone in circles. Her mum had said she was an ice gazer. She had to use what their mum had called her gift to find their way again and not go in circles.