Free Ice Drift (9780547540610) by Theodore Taylor Page A

that," Alika said.
    "I have. Everybody is in the meeting hall, eating and laughing and singing."
    Alika said quietly, "Those are good things to think about. It won't be too long until we're there with everyone again."
    Alika didn't want to talk about the future, when the floe would come apart, though it certainly would happen. But not a day or night went by that he didn't think about it.
    By mid-January, the moon was full again, and Alika and Jamka were out hunting. Sulu huddled a few feet away, staying near his big brother. The moon was shining so brightly that they could see miles ahead. Mock moons were on either side of it.
    Without warning, Jamka tensed. His tail rose straight up, front legs rigid.
    Alika held his breath and slowly raised the harpoon. The indicator rod trembled, and the nose of a seal plugged the breathing hole as Alika drove the harpoon head into it, Jamka howling and Sulu yelling, "We can eat! We can eat!"
    Alika yelled triumphantly, "Yes, we can!"
    The animal was fat, and Alika dressed it in the main
iglu,
having learned his lesson about storage in the small house and guarding their meals from
nanuk.
    Â 
    The crosscurrents began playing tricks in the afternoon, steering the floe westward, then eastward. It was a ship without a rudder.
    "What's happening?" Sulu asked, face showing alarm.
    "I don't know. Every day we go farther south and there's nothing we can do about it," Alika answered. No one really understood the waters in the strait and how they changed night and day. "Let's just hope the currents push us toward shore."
    Early the next afternoon, when they were down at the floe edge with Jamka intently watching a hole, Sulu yelled, "
Nanuk!
" and Alika turned around, grabbing the Maynard.
    Thirty feet away, coming in their direction, was one of the largest bears Alika had ever seen. Jamka leaped away from the seal hole, and the bear headed in a run for the Little One, about ten feet away.
    Alika heard the bear puff and fired, hitting it in the head, blood spurting as it hurtled down the short slope, plunging into the water.
    Sulu had dropped into the snow face-first, and Alika sank down, shaking all over.
    Jamka appeared puzzled as he watched the
nanuk
beginning to float away, leaving a red streak behind. It had all happened so quickly that none of them could move. The bear would have provided at least three months of food. Old Miak had lived on bear meat his last four months.
    Finally, Alika said, "It was bound to happen." He went over and sat beside his brother, an arm around Sulu's small shoulders. "Papa warned that the bear would make a puff before it attacked. I pulled the trigger when I heard the puff."
    "It is probably the same bear that came here before, the one that broke into the storage
iglu.
It knew we were here," Alika said.
    "And he could have eaten all of us," Sulu said, still breathing hard.
    That was true, Alika thought. Bears ate seals; wolves ate caribou and musk oxen; foxes ate lemmings and hares, and dined on the leavings of bears, quarreling with ravens over which got the last bites. Bears also ate unlucky humans. And humans ate all of the animals.
    Looking at the bear floating away, the blood running down over its black nose and spreading, Alika felt sorry for it. He'd never really liked to look at the five
nanuk
skulls in his front yard, although he knew it was tradition to save them, and he knew all hunters had great respect for the beautiful bears and their spirits. He also believed there was indeed a place where bears lived somewhere in the sky. Inu said he'd been there, and Alika believed him.
    Alika had never thought he would have to kill one. But his family had slept on bearskins for years, and they all wore bearskin pants. Bears had been good to them.
    He had watched, and even helped, as his papa and mama had cut up the carcasses of bears, rejoicing that they'd have the meat and hides. Yet they expressed sorrow each time that such a beautiful animal had to