As he tried to spot it with his relatively poor ursine vision, Luke became aware that bad weather was moving in, dark clouds eclipsing the horizon.
For the most part, he hadn’t worried too much about winter weather over the last few months. As a polar bear, he was uniquely suited to endure snow, rain, and severe cold, and Rogue’s heavy fur made him almost as durable. During the worst of the winter weather, they had huddled together in the most sheltered crevice in the ice that they could find, with Luke curling his huge bear’s body around Rogue’s smaller form.
But spring had brought wetter, more turbulent storms, and with them came the new danger of being washed or blown completely off the iceberg.
Luke had glimpsed land occasionally, but he wasn’t sure if he trusted himself well enough in the open water to swim for it without drowning. He had no idea where they might have drifted to. They were probably close to the North American mainland. But for all he knew, they’d floated clear across the Atlantic. Or they were lost in the middle of the sea, and they were going to drift around forever until the ice broke up.
Even if they were closer to land than he realized, a helicopter out here in the middle of the ocean had to be operating off some kind of ship as a base. Luke was no pilot, but he knew that helicopters couldn’t make unassisted trans-Atlantic flights.
Finally he saw it.
The helicopter was sleek, dark, and military-looking, skimming low over the sea. Maybe this was a perfectly innocent military exercise. But there weren’t very many reasons that anyone would risk moving around in this northern, iceberg-treacherous world.
There was no way it could fail to spot them on the ice. Luke by himself could easily have passed for a native polar bear. But a bear and a dog were all too obvious.
He still hoped the helicopter might somehow pass them by, but then it swung around to hover above them. The downdraft rippled his fur. Rogue pressed against him, trembling.
A voice barked through a loudspeaker, “We know it’s you. Don’t bother running; there’s nowhere to go. You can come back with us, or we can tranq you and do this the hard way.”
There was no chance he would go in without a fight. If they wanted the hard way, they’d get it. Luke turned and fled across the iceberg. Beside him, Rogue stretched out, running in great bounds.
A tranq dart thumped into the ice near him, but they reached the far edge of the iceberg without being hit.
The weather was worsening by the moment. Luke could already see a line of fog and rain rolling across the end of the iceberg they’d just vacated. Strong crosswinds were causing the helicopter to jerk around from side to side as it pursued them.
This end of the iceberg was considerably higher than the shallower side where Luke had been conducting his fishing expeditions. It was like a small ice cliff. But they had no choice. If they could stay free a little longer, the bad weather would force the helicopter back to its base.
And Luke knew he wasn’t going back. He hadn’t escaped just to be recaptured. And he certainly hadn’t survived this long to lay down and die now.
He leaped into the water. Beside him, Rogue jumped too.
As they hit the water and splashed to the surface again, the first cold, heavy drops of rain began to fall.
INGA
Inga wasable to forget her anxieties for a while, running the boat along the shore, glorying in the depth and colors of the water, the rocky beaches and bluffs. She passed whales rising and then sinking into the deep, seals floating like little buoys, small icebergs eroded by water and warmth into strange and twisted shapes with vivid blue ice at their hearts.
The storm front continued to pace her, growing darker and more prominent by the hour. It was a deep blue-gray wall above the water, and the sun was eventually blocked, the wind growing stronger and colder.
She still had hours left to get to the fishing shack, and she was starting to wonder if she would, after all, need to put into a cove or bay to wait out the storm. It might be a good idea to start looking for a good place. Also, she was about ready for lunch.
The waves were getting choppy enough that she decided to pull in somewhere before digging around in the cooler, so she angled closer to the shore and started looking for a sheltered location. A few minutes later she was motoring into a pool of deep water beneath a rock tower, shielded from the full force of the waves that were starting to sweep harder against the shore.
When the noise of the outboard motor died, the sounds of the sea swept in to fill the silence: waves crashing on the beach, the lonely cries of seagulls swirling around her.
And another noise she couldn’t quite place. Rustling?
It seemed to be coming from close to her.
Inga got up and climbed over the bench seat where she had tied down the cooler and her backpack. She hadn’t paid much attention to the emergency gear stowed behind the seat. Besides the life vests, there was a coat and rain slicker, some camping gear, and emergency flares, all lashed down with a waterproof tarp to keep it from getting wet.
Now that she was looking at it more critically, she noticed some feathers scattered around the tarp, and a hole chewed in it.
Curious, Inga poked at it. Something wiggled under the tarp. She heard hissing and soft chirping.
“Seriously?” Inga muttered.
There was a penlight on her key chain. She turned it on and shone it into the hole. The coat had been chewed to bits, and she saw gray and white feathers, and a pair of beady eyes looking back at her. The creature opened its jaws and hissed loudly.
