Fire in the Sky Read Free Page B

not all white bears, remember. I hope you know what you’re doing, taking us all out there.” He turned and let out an impatient growl as Ujurak and Lusa wandered slowly up behind him. Ujurak was carrying two smaller fish. Lusa was shaking her head as if her ears were full of water, and was pawing sleepily at her muzzle.
    “Come on, hurry up, snailpaws,” Toklo growled at Lusa. He poked her in the side with his nose. “Where’s all that annoying early-morning cheerfulness you’re usually so full of?”
    “Well, maybe if you hadn’t woken me up by dropping a fish on my head,” Lusa protested, yawning.
    “It’s a good big fish,” Toklo said proudly. He jabbed his newkill with a paw. “We’d better eat while we still can.”
    Kallik felt her shoulder fur rising. “There’s prey out on the ice, too!” she barked. “Really good prey! Just you wait until I catch you a seal!”
    “Sure,” Toklo muttered as he ripped off a chunk of fish. “I’ll wait for that.”
    “We’ll be fine out there,” Lusa interjected quickly. “Ujurak’s excited, too—right, Ujurak?”
    The small brown bear was standing with his front paws in the water, gazing quietly out at the horizon. “Is this the way we have to go?” he asked Kallik.
    Kallik swallowed. That was the kind of question Ujurak usually had the answer to—not her! But she was supposed to lead them to the ice, and she didn’t want Toklo or Lusa to worry that she couldn’t do it. So she tried to sound confident as she replied, “Yes, there’s ice right out there. I can smell it.” She lifted her nose to inhale the beautiful clean scent. “I’m sure we can swim to it. It isn’t far at all.”
    “Swim to it?” Lusa echoed, licking the last bits of fish off her fur. She padded over to stand beside Ujurak and dabbed her paw in the water. “ Brrr! It’s very cold!”
    “Well, of course,” Kallik said. “Otherwise it couldn’t have ice on it, could it?”
    “And it tastes funny,” Toklo said suspiciously, dipping his snout in the water. He stuck out his tongue and pawed at it with a disgusted look. “ Blech! That’s not normal water at all!”
    “No, it’s salty,” Kallik said, hanging on to her patience. “You don’t drink it, you swim in it. Look, it’s no different from swimming in the Big River. Remember? We did that just fine,and this is a shorter distance.”
    Toklo squinted into the mist. “How can you tell?”
    “I trust Kallik’s nose,” Ujurak said quietly, before Kallik lost her temper and shoved Toklo into the ocean. “This is the way for us.”
    The bears finished off the large fish, although Kallik could barely eat; her head was full of seals and of snow crunching underpaw and of cold, sharp winds that lifted her pelt, hair by hair. She hoped that Taqqiq had found ice somewhere, too. She wanted to think of him hunting seals and rolling in snow…just like she would be soon! Toklo noisily swiped his tongue around his muzzle. Ujurak was using his teeth to scrape fish scales from under his claws. Lusa was standing still, her head bobbing as if she was falling asleep again.
    “Are we ready?” Kallik prompted. This was it; the moment she had journeyed all this way for. It seemed so long since she had been on solid ice that for a heartbeat she couldn’t remember what it felt like. Nisa had been alive, and she and Taqqiq had been helpless cubs, pretending to be brave when really they knew nothing about how to survive….
    “Are we going, or are you waiting for the ice to come to us?” Toklo snapped.
    Kallik jumped. “Sorry, just…just thinking. Come on, keep together. There will be stronger currents in this water than in the river or the lake. Don’t get swept away. If you feel yourself drifting, paddle into the current and it should bring you back to where you started.”
    Lusa padded close to Kallik’s side as they waded into thewater. She jumped back in surprise when a wave rolled in toward her, but Kallik nudged her