The three cubs dragged the body past Syvert Hansen’s store, down the path that led into the gilly town of Oddsvall, past the huge whale skulls looming in the mist on the beach to the edge where the cubs had first scrambled out of the inlet. In the inlet, a large, glistening ice floe was floating by. So the three cubs swam toward the floe, towing Skagen’s body, and pulled him onto it. They floated with him for a while, and then the cubs began to sing the song of the Schrynn Gar winds that Skagen had taught them.
“Oh, the Scrhynn Gar winds are a restless wind
A restless wind they long to wander
Cross the plains and beyond the Grynn
To the land of ice to their wayward kin
To their wayward kin
That’s the way of the Schrynn Gar winds.”
A sudden breeze blew out of the east; a shadow spread across the floe and with one leap began to walk up into the sky, which was sprinkled with stars. It turned just once and, raising a paw, pointed to the Fighting Bear constellation that was rising in the east and striding toward the west.
The last of the lavender light of the twiliqglow had dissolved, but then there was a mute shudder in the sky as a banner of green unfurled. The three cubs slid off the ice floe and into the black water of the Oddsvall inlet and began to swim.
“Look,” Jytte said. “There they are!” She rolled onto her back and floated, looking at the sky.
“Who?” asked Third.
“Us,” Stellan said softly. “The two stars in the Great Bear constellation that wander. Our stars—Jytte and Stellan. We’ve come unstuck again and are skipping ahead of Mum.”
By now the sky was flickering with the dancing colors of the ahalikki. Third stopped swimming and was treading water.
“Jytte, Stellan, did you ever dance on an ice floe under the ahalikki with your mum?”
“Yes!” they both said.
“But, Third, how did you know about the dancing? Surely Taaka never danced with you,” Stellan asked.
“Never, but I dreamed it.”
“It was so long ago that we danced with our mum,” Jytte whispered into the night, “that it feels like a dream now to me.”
“Oh no!” Third said. “It was real. Besides, to dream is to live.” Third paused and then turned to the cubs. “I know what you dream of, what you seek. And together, we’ll find it.”
He needed no answer. Nor did Jytte and Stellan need to speak. The cubs looked into one another’s eyes and felt The Belong. So the three bears swam on toward the bear kingdoms of Ga’Hoole to find the Den of Forever Frost, find their father and hope for their mother, break a clock, and save their own kind.
Kathryn Lasky is the author of over fifty books for children and young adults, including the Guardians of Ga’Hoole series, which has more than seven million copies in print and was turned into a major motion picture, Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole. Her books have received numerous awards, including a Newbery Honor, a Boston Globe–Horn Book Award, and a Washington Post–Children’s Book Guild Nonfiction Award. She lives with her husband in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Copyright © 2018 by Kathryn Lasky
Interior illustrations by Angelo Rinaldi
Map illustration by Maxime Plasse
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available
ISBN 978-0-545-68304-3
First edition, March 2018
Jacket art by Angelo Rinaldi
Jacket design by Baily Crawford
e-ISBN 978-0-545-68307-4
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Kathryn Lasky, The Quest of the Cubs
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