Before he could look around any further, a tall man with dark skin and curly black hair strode up to him, frowning.
“Who are you?” the man asked, stepping between Ujurak and the cages. “I haven’t seen you around before.”
“I—uh—I’m, I’m Ujurak,” Ujurak stammered. He thought quickly. “My dad works on the oil rig.”
The strange man frowned even more. “Was he one of the ones out here yelling at us the other day? Telling us their job is more important than saving these animals here? Because if he sent you to convince us to let that other icebreaker ship through here, you can tell him it’s not going to happen.”
“Um,” Ujurak said, confused. “No, he didn’t—I mean, we feel bad about the spill. I just wanted to see if there was anything I could do to help.” He glanced around at the oil-splattered wildlife. “It’s all so horrible.”
His voice broke, and the man’s face softened. “Look, kid, we don’t need any trouble.”
“I won’t be trouble!” Ujurak promised. “My dad won’t mind that I’m here. Truly. There must be something I can do. I’m good with animals.”
The tall man rubbed his chin for a moment, studying Ujurak. “All right,” he said at last. “My name’s Craig. I’m second in command of the international response team, here to help clean up after the oil spills.” He snorted in a way that reminded Ujurak of someone. “It’d be a lot more useful if we could stop the spills before they happened, of course, but no one listens when you tell them that drilling up here isn’t worth it.” He flung out a hand toward a seabird lying miserably in a nearby cage.
“Nobody cares about the gulls and the seals and the polar bears. No matter how many pictures we take or how many reporters we call. By this point, they’re like, ‘Oh, another oil spill, boring. Call us when a celebrity gets drenched in oil, then maybe we’ll be interested.’” Craig saw the baffled look on Ujurak’s face and shook his head. “Sorry. This kind of thing gets me really worked up.”
Ujurak couldn’t believe it. Someone who felt the way he did about the oil! “It’s not just birds and seals, either,” he said. He had a vague memory of swimming through dark water that tasted like poison and an enormous beast nearly running him down as it churned through the water. “The beluga whales are really suffering, too. There’s nothing for them to eat and the pollution in the water is making them sick.”
Craig ran one hand through his hair. “Been doing your research, have you?” he said. “What else do you know about the whales?”
“Some of them have been killed by the—” Ujurak hunted for the right word. “Poisonbeast” popped into his head, but he had a feeling that wasn’t the right thing to say here. “The large vehicles that swim,” he finished lamely. “Underwater?”
“Submarines?” Craig asked. Ujurak nodded. That sounded right to him. Craig cracked a smile. “Fancy meeting a sixteen-year-old who doesn’t know what a submarine is,” he said. “Where’ve you been hiding, under a rock?”
Maybe, Ujurak thought. “This is not my first language,” he explained. Technically that was true. He wasn’t sure what he was supposed to be, but he knew he’d been something else before he was a human.
“Ah,” Craig said, nodding. “Well, it doesn’t surprise me that the submarines have killed some whales, although they always say they’ll be real careful about their routes and everything.” He shoved his hands in his coat pockets and rocked back and forth on his feet, looking troubled.
“It all seems so obvious to us,” he said. “Of course when you disrupt the environment like this, the animals are going to suffer. When you fill the water with poison, everything dies. And we’re all connected, so we shouldn’t think we’re safe just because we don’t live in the Arctic. It starts with the gulls and the whales, but then—”
“Oh my gosh, Craig, did you really find someone who hasn’t heard all your speeches yet?” A cheerful-looking girl bounced up behind Craig and grinned at Ujurak. “Escape while you can,” she said with a wink. “He’ll go on like this for days. Even here, where we obviously all agree with him.”
Escape. Something about that word caught Ujurak’s attention. That’s what he was here for. Something about escaping.
Craig returned the girl’s grin fondly. “I don’t know what you have to be so cheerful about,” he said. “It’s your future we’re mucking up.”
“No, we’re fixing it,” she said, whapping him on the arm. “Look at all these animals we’re helping! We’re making a difference!”
Craig rolled his eyes. “Ujurak, this is Sally. Our perpetual optimist.”
Sally held out her hand and Ujurak shook it tentatively. She had shoulder-length dark hair and laughing dark eyes, and she looked about the same age that Ujurak was in this form. Her smile was wide and friendly, and she laughed easily. She reminded him very strongly of someone—someone close to him—but he couldn’t think who. He couldn’t remember anyone he knew at all.
“Why don’t I show you around?” Sally suggested. “Save you from Craig’s sermons, give you something to do?”
“Okay,” Ujurak said.
Craig laughed. “Guess I can’t compete with that. Just be careful, you two. These are still wild animals, however helpless they might seem right now.” He clapped Ujurak on the shoulder. “And thanks for coming. We appreciate all the help we can get.” Craig lifted the flap and ducked out of the tent. Ujurak heard him calling to someone outside.
“So you probably saw the smaller tents outside.” Sally started talking as soon as Craig was gone. “That’s where we sleep, or at least, take turns sleeping—we’ve been so busy in here, we can’t take much of a break. All these animals need to be cleaned and fed and tranquilized again, plus of course we’re still figuring out where to take all of them once they’re healthy enough to be released back into the wild.”
“You’re going to release them into the wild?” Ujurak asked, surprised. He wasn’t sure why, but he’d thought the humans were going to keep the animals locked up forever.
Sally gave him a funny look. “Of course. What else would we do with a bunch of seagulls and walruses?”
“Um,” Ujurak said. “I don’t know.”
She took his arm and tugged him forward, pointing to a seal in one of the cages. It looked up at them with large, limpid black eyes. Oil clung to its gray flippers and long whiskers. “Look at that poor thing,” she said. “She was just swimming along, minding her own business, when a bunch of oil got dumped on top of her. You should have seen her when they brought her in! She was slick with oil from head to tail. It’s amazing she could breathe at all. She wouldn’t have survived if we hadn’t put her straight into some warm water and cleaned her off. We still have some work to do, but she’s looking much better now.”
Sally crouched and pulled a silver bowl out of the bottom of the seal’s cage. “Want to feed her?” she offered. “It’s easy.”
“Sure,” Ujurak said, feeling a little more confident. Sally acted as if it was absolutely natural for him to be here, and it made him feel as though he could actually help. She showed him where they kept a cooler of dead fish on ice for the seals. He took one between his fingers and dropped it through the bars of the cage into the seal’s mouth. She swallowed it and made a low barking noise.
“Aw, she said, ‘Thank you!’” Sally said, beaming.
“Actually, I’m pretty sure she said, ‘Another! At once!’” Ujurak explained.
Sally started laughing. “That’s hilarious!”
Ujurak took another fish and fed it to the seal, trying to hide his expression. He wasn’t used to being called funny—especially when he hadn’t meant to be. He’d actually understood the seal’s language, and that’s what she had said.
“Oh, let me show you the weirdest one we found!” Sally said, pulling his elbow to steer him around. She guided him past the large polar bear and pointed to a smaller cage a few feet away, closer to the center of the tent. “Check it out. That’s a black bear!”
Ujurak looked at the small black cub curled up inside the cage, and his heart nearly stopped. He knew her.
It was Lusa!
That was who Sally reminded him of, he realized. She had the same bright, happy spirit as Lusa. His memories came flooding back. He was a bear—a brown bear. He was here to free Lusa. Toklo and Kallik were waiting outside. That’s what he was here for. And his mother was somewhere above, watching over him. Hang on to that, he reminded himself.
He remembered the last time he was a flat-face, and how much smaller he had been. He felt more confident now, more comfortable inside his human skin. He wondered if that was because he was in the shape of an older flat-face this time, or if it was because he could remember some of the things he’d learned before.
Lusa stared at him through the bars, her eyes bright and startled. He wondered if she recognized him. He stepped toward her, thinking he should say something to her in bear language and let her know who he was and that she was safe now.
“Hey!” Sally said. She caught his sleeve and yanked him back. “Don’t get too close! You heard what Craig said. She’s a wild bear. I mean, I know she’s wicked cute, but she could still be dangerous.”
So could I, Ujurak thought. I’m a wild bear, too.
“Sorry,” he said.
“That’s okay,” Sally said, smiling again. “I’m a little bit in love with her myself. Isn’t she the cutest? We totally thought she was a polar bear when she came in all covered in oil. That’s until we started scrubbing, and her fur stayed black! We have no idea what a black bear is doing out here on the ice. I mean, it doesn’t make any sense at all. The poor baby must be so hungry and confused.”
“Can I feed her, too?” Ujurak asked.
To his disappointment, Sally shook her head. “No, only Tara and Erica are allowed to handle or feed her. They know what they’re doing. We can work with the animals that are less likely to claw our faces off.”
Indignant, Ujurak nearly said, “Lusa wouldn’t do that!” But he caught himself just in time, and nodded instead. “Okay.” He’d have to find another way to get close to her.
He remembered the other part of his mission—to release the rest of the birds and seals and animals in here. Except now he knew that they would be free eventually. Sally had said they’d all be going back to the wild, and in the meanwhile the humans were taking care of them. So they didn’t need his help. All he had to do was save Lusa.
“Besides, Tara fed her recently,” Sally went on. “She’s practically gone through our entire stock of canned fruit already! But we’ll be getting more supplies tomorrow when our ship arrives.”
Suddenly there was a commotion at the entrance of the tent. A dark-haired woman pushed her way in and called, “Quick, clear the tables! We have another batch coming in!”
All the people in the tent sprang into action, putting animals back into cages and wiping down the tables. More people in green coats came in the front carrying nets and cages. Ujurak’s heart lurched as he saw the sad state of the birds and animals inside. Oil dripped from their feathers, and most of them were entirely motionless. He couldn’t believe any of them were alive with that much poison saturating their skin.
“Come on!” Sally said. “This is where you can really help!” She dragged him over to the nearest table and handed him a pair of gloves. Ujurak pulled them on as Sally introduced him to Erica, the dark-haired woman who’d led the way in. She gently extracted a long-necked bird from one of the nets and laid it out on the table. Ujurak saw her pull a tiny dart out of its side.
“It’s tranquilized,” Sally pointed out, seeing the direction of his gaze. “That way it won’t wake up and panic in the middle of this.”
Ujurak was relieved to hear that it wasn’t dead. He followed Erica’s instructions as she showed him how to remove the oil from its feathers and gently wipe off the beak, eyes, and webbed feet with a soft, bubbly mixture.
Erica moved on to the next table, and Ujurak and Sally worked for a while in silence. Every time he looked up, Sally grinned at him.
“Isn’t this great?” she whispered. “We’re totally helping! I’m so lucky my parents let me come up here and do this.”
Ujurak had to admit, it made him feel better, too. He could see the difference immediately in the bird’s feathers. His nimble flat-face hands worked quickly and efficiently, and he felt connected to the other people around him, all of whom were working hard on the same thing. He couldn’t believe there were this many flat-faces willing to spend their time just helping and saving animals.
True, the damage was from something the flat-faces themselves had done to them. But maybe Lusa was right after all. Maybe the flat-faces weren’t all bad, and maybe some of them could make a difference. If he hadn’t had his friends and his life as a bear to go back to, he could imagine staying in this form and doing work like this for the rest of his life.
He glanced over at Lusa’s cage. She had her eyes fixed on him and her head was tilted curiously. He smiled at her, and she blinked.
Don’t worry, Lusa, he promised silently. I won’t forget this time. I know who I am and why I’m here. And I’ll get you out of here. I promise.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Lusa
It was Ujurak. Lusa was sure now. The way the flat-face boy looked at her and smiled—it gave her the same warm, secure feeling that being with Ujurak did.
When he first walked in, she’d wondered why he looked familiar. For a while she’d watched him, thinking that perhaps she’d seen him around the Bear Bowl. He didn’t look the way Ujurak had looked the last time he became a flat-face. This time he was bigger and his hair was a bit lighter, and he moved with an odd new confidence, as if he felt more comfortable being a flat-face than he had before. Even his flat-face chatter sounded deeper and wiser, as if he knew more words and flat-face ideas than he had before.
But there was something about his scent that still smelled a bit like Ujurak. It had to be him. He’d come to rescue her! She hoped that meant that Kallik was here, too, waiting just outside the pelt walls somewhere. Lusa loved the idea of the four of them being together again. I hope they found Toklo. I hope he’s all right.
She peered up through the bars at the table where Ujurak was working next to the dark-haired girl. They were talking and laughing as if they’d known each other for ages. Lusa had seen them start with a bird, but now they were cleaning off a droopy-looking seal. She wondered if Ujurak’s stomach growled when he saw it. She wasn’t at all interested in eating it, but she was sure Toklo and Kallik would be!
Ujurak’s delicate new paws worked gently on the seal’s fur, rubbing something bubbly onto it and then carefully cleaning out the oil. He looked as kind and capable as the flat-faces who had worked on her when she came in. He also looked as if he was having a good time. Lusa couldn’t remember him looking so happy, certainly not since they’d been out on the ice. He’d been worrying so much about the oil and the flat-faces, he’d barely said a word the last couple of days they’d been together.
Now he was chattering away in a funny flat-face voice. Lusa wished she could understand what he was saying. What was his plan for rescuing her? How would he get her out past all the other flat-faces? She settled back on her hindquarters. She wasn’t worried. Ujurak would figure it out; he always did.
The same dark-haired female as before came back with another bowl of fruit. Lusa licked it up gratefully. She loved the tingle of sweetness on her tongue and the taste of the juice sliding down her throat.
“That’s not bear food,” grunted a voice nearby.
Lusa jumped and looked around. The old white bear was awake, squinting at her through the bars of his cage. He looked disoriented and unhappy. Even though he’d been washed by the flat-faces, his fur was still a sickly gray color.
“It is for black bears,” she told him.
“Huh,” he said, sniffing at a bowl of meat sitting in his cage. “And you trust them enough to eat it? If it comes from th
e no-claws, it’s probably poisonous.”
“No, no,” Lusa said. “It’s good, I promise. You should eat if you’re hungry.”
“Huh,” he said again. He gave the bowl a doubtful glance, but Lusa could see that he was tempted. “What is going on in here? Why do they have us trapped like this?” He stood up and turned in an awkward circle inside his cage. One of his large paws swatted at the bars. “When I get my claws on them, I’ll show them how a white bear should be treated!”
“Wait, don’t get excited,” Lusa said, trying to sound soothing. “The flat-faces are just trying to help, I promise.”
He squinted at her again. “What’s a flat-face?”
“Um,” Lusa said. “Oh. I mean the no-claws. We call them flat-faces.”
“Huh,” he grunted.
“But these are the good kind of, uh, no-claws,” Lusa said. “They’re taking care of us and feeding us and trying to clean us up.”
“Clean us up!” the old bear snorted. He glared at one of his gray, sticky paws. “They’re the ones who created this mess in the first place!”
“I know,” Lusa said. “But I think that was a different group of flat-faces. Some of them are bad and some of them are good. Kind of like bears.”
“No bear is as bad as a no-claw,” he growled.
Lusa thought about Shoteka, the giant grizzly who had gone after Toklo even though Toklo was just a cub. But at least Shoteka never had a firestick. “That’s probably true,” she allowed. “Yet some flat-faces are actually very kind. I grew up in a place where flat-faces fed us and healed us if we got sick.”
The old bear looked shocked. “There’s no such place!”
“There is!” Lusa insisted. “It’s called the Bear Bowl. My mother and father and friends are still there. Flat-faces come to visit every day, and some of them bring food and even play with us.”