Free Seekers #6: Spirits in the Stars by Erin Hunter Page B

male, stepped forward; his eyes glittered with hostility. Lusa swallowed her fear and made herself stare back at him, though when he loomed over her he was almost big enough to block out the whole sky.
    “You’re lying!” Unalaq growled. “You just want all the food for yourselves. All the seals, and what’s in these silver cans!”
    “Right!” Tunerq agreed, coming to stand beside Unalaq. “But you won’t get it.”
    Most of the other bears gathered around, muttering threateningly, though Lusa noticed that Illa and the bear with the red-tinged pelt hung back, looking uncertain.
    “That’s not what I want at all!” Lusa protested. “I’m trying to help, if you’d only listen. The seals—”
    Kallik jabbed Lusa hard with one paw. “Er . . . I think we ought to go.”
    As she was speaking, Unalaq stepped forward with a fierce roar. Lusa and Kallik spun around and fled. Lusa could hear the white bears pounding after them, and imagined she could feel their hot breath on her pelt.
    They raced past the denning area and down to the shore, fleeing along a stony beach that ended in an outcrop of sharp rock.
    “We can’t climb that!” Lusa gasped.
    “We’ve got to!” Kallik’s voice was grim.
    Putting on an extra burst of speed, they reached the bottom of the outcrop. Kallik gave Lusa a boost; as she scrambled over the pointed rocks, Lusa looked back to see the white bears charging after them along the beach, with Unalaq in the lead.
    She pulled herself up and over the summit of the rocks and practically fell onto the snow-covered beach of a cove beyond. Kallik sprang down after her a moment later; together they crouched, panting, behind a heap of boulders and waited.
    They could hear growls and snarls from the white bears on the other side of the outcrop. After a few moments Unalaq’s voice rose above the others. “Stay away from our hunting ground! These are our seals. We’ll be watching to make sure you don’t steal any.”
    Lusa and Kallik remained silent, huddled in hiding behind the boulders. For a few moments they could hear pawsteps and snuffling on the other side of the outcrop; then the sounds faded to silence.
    “They’ve gone!” Kallik gasped with relief.
    Now that the danger was over, Lusa was able to look around her. The cove felt safe, small and sheltered between looming cliffs. Out on the sea-ice she spotted the dark patches of seal breathing holes, showing that there would be good hunting here for the white bears.
    “Why did Unalaq say this was their hunting ground?” Kallik wondered. “White bears don’t really have hunting grounds like brown bears do. And they don’t live in groups together, either. These white bears are really weird.”
    “I suppose they come here because this is where the seals are,” Lusa replied.
    She noticed there was a harsh tang in the air, as if firebeasts had been breathing smoke everywhere. And beneath that stench was something sharper, like some sort of liquid; Lusa gagged as she breathed it in.
    “I don’t like it here,” she said. “It smells terrible.”
    “Then let’s go back,” Kallik suggested, rising to her paws.
    “No,” Lusa said stubbornly. “We have to find out what that stink is first.”
    Peering around more carefully, she noticed that the ice and snow had melted from some of the rocks farthest away from the shoreline, and that steam was rising from them.
    “Look at that,” she said to Kallik, pointing with one paw. “That’s not right. I’m going to see what’s causing it.”
    She bounded up the beach, with Kallik following more slowly. Scrambling over the rocks, Lusa spotted a flat-face pipe, like the ones they had seen where the flat-faces were taking oil from the ground, only smaller. This pipe was cracked, and foul-smelling black stuff was oozing out of it.
    “It looks a bit like oil—but it doesn’t smell like it.” Lusa turned away, clapping a paw over her nose as if she could block out the stench. The stuff