The Snow Bear Read online

  For Tom, Robin and William,

  and for Phoebe, who loves polar bears.

  ~ HOLLY WEBB

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Dedication

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  Copyright

  “Look, Grandad, it’s starting to snow!” Sara peered out of the window, watching the first flakes spiral lazily down.

  Grandad looked up from the pile of old black-and-white photos he was sorting through, and nodded. “So it is. Well, they did say it might, on the news.”

  Sara frowned. “Do you think it’ll be snowing at home?”

  “Could be. It’s likely to be worse here, though. We’re further north. And the winds from the sea make it a lot colder too.” He got up and came to sit on the wide windowsill next to Sara. “Why are you looking worried? You love it when it snows!”

  Sara nodded. It was true that some of her best memories of winter trips to Grandad’s house were of playing in the snow. But then Mum and Dad had been there too. She couldn’t have a snowball fight on her own.

  “I hope it isn’t snowing back home,” she murmured, leaning against Grandad’s shoulder. “What if the baby comes and Mum and Dad can’t get to the hospital?”

  “The baby’s not due till after Christmas,” he said comfortingly. “And anyway, they’d call an ambulance. Ambulance crews manage, you know. They’re trained in that sort of thing.”

  “I suppose.” Sara gave herself a little shake. There was no point worrying. She’d just remind Dad to put a spade in the car boot when he called later, that was all.

  “It’s settling!” she told Grandad, as she watched the flakes falling faster and faster. They were staying on the windowsill outside now, not just melting away as soon as they touched it. She wriggled closer to the glass, and peered up as the snowflakes whirled past. The light was fading, and the sky was a strange greyish-yellow colour, as though there was a lot more snow up there.

  “Mmm. Looks like it,” Grandad agreed. “I reckon I’ve done enough work for this afternoon. Shall we go and find something to cook for tea?” He kissed the top of her head, laughing. “It’s all right. There are windows in the kitchen too. You’ll still be able to see the snow. If it really settles, you’ll be able to go out in it tomorrow. Too late now, though, it’s getting dark already.”

  Sara slid down from the windowsill with a tiny sigh. She loved Grandad and his strange old house. It was a stone cottage, built more than two hundred years ago, and it had a huge fireplace and deep windows that were perfect for sitting in. All the floors sloped and wobbled, and it was full of strange little hidey-holes. But if she was at home, she’d get to go out in the snow with all her friends who lived close by. They’d build snowmen in the park and have snowfights, and then go back to each other’s houses to warm up. But she didn’t really fancy building a snowman all on her own, and it wouldn’t be quite the same just with Grandad.

  Sara and her mum and dad always came to Grandad’s house at the beginning of the Christmas holidays. It was a tradition. They’d stay for a few days and then they’d all go back home for Christmas, Grandad too. But this year, Mum and Dad had decided it was better if Sara went to stay with Grandad on her own. Dad had driven her up, stayed for a quick lunch, and headed home again.

  Mum wasn’t in a state to be travelling far at all – she was due to have Sara’s baby brother a couple of weeks after Christmas, and she didn’t want to be squashed in a car for hours. Plus it wasn’t very sensible for her to be in an old stone cottage on a cliff-top by the sea, down a long bumpy track, miles and miles from a village, let alone a hospital. Sara loved the feeling she got at Grandad’s of being far away from anywhere. His house was like a safe little nest up on the cliff, like the seabirds’ nests he’d shown her when they stayed in the summer. But she had to admit it wasn’t the right place for Mum just now.

  “Does it snow like this in the far north of Canada?” Sara asked Grandad, as she followed him out of his study, and down the murky half-light of the passage to the kitchen. Grandad had put the lights on, but it was still gloomy. “In the Arctic, where you and Great-Grandad were? Does it look like the same sort of snow?”

  Grandad turned round from the fridge. “Snow’s snow, mostly, Sara. We saw some real blizzards there, though. There was one that lasted for three days once, and we were caught by it while we were visiting one of the Inuit families. My dad and I had supplies back at our own house that we’d brought with us – tins of stew, that sort of thing – but these people were living on their traditional foods.” Grandad paused, looking at Sara hopefully, waiting for her to ask. Sara didn’t mind. She loved his stories.

  “What did you have to eat?”

  “Dried seal meat,” Grandad told her triumphantly, pulling a bag of spaghetti out of the cupboard. He waved a jar of tomato pasta sauce at her. “Nothing like this. No pasta one day, stir-fry the next. With maybe a nice roast chicken on a Sunday. The Inuit mostly eat seal meat through the winter, and usually they have it raw. Perhaps some fish. Caribou meat in the summer. Whale meat and blubber too, of course.”

  Sara shuddered. Blubber was fat, and she hated the idea of having to eat it. She cut all the fat off her meat, and Grandad teased her about it. He said she’d be useless in a cold climate. “You really ate blubber?”

  “We had to,” Grandad nodded. “That blizzard lasted days. There wasn’t anything else, and we were hungry. Besides, it would have been rude to say no. They were sharing their food with us. How could we say we didn’t want it, when it was so precious?”

  It seemed colder in the kitchen suddenly, and Sara shivered. The snow was building up round the corners of the window over the sink. She didn’t want to think about being shut up with a blizzard screaming outside, even in this cosy house. “Were you in an igloo?” she asked.

  “Yes, a big one, made to last for the whole winter. It still wasn’t any taller than your great-grandad, though. Almost all of it was the sleeping platform. And there were six of us in there.”

  “For three days…” Sara muttered. It couldn’t have been bigger than her bedroom at home. “You must have been really grumpy with each other, being shut up all together.”

  Grandad smiled. “It helped me with learning the language, though. They told so many stories over those few days.”

  “Stories like the ones you’re writing down?” Sara asked. Grandad was writing a book on Inuit folk tales. He’d been fascinated by them ever since he’d lived in Canada, when he was only a few years older than Sara. His father, Sara’s great-grandfather, had gone there to study the Inuit people and taken his son with him. The house was full of the amazing things Great-Grandad had brought back, and Grandad too, when he’d returned to the Canadian Arctic years later.

  Grandad nodded. “It was those three days of stories that set me off. When the blizzard finally died down and we came out of the igloo, it was as if they were all swirling around in my head. Some of them I didn’t understand – there are lots of Inuit languages, and even your great-grandad didn’t know all the different ones. I don’t know them all now. I just got snatches of those stories here and there. Little snippets. Men who turned into polar bears. Strange gods and goddesses. Amazing things…”

  Sara smiled at him. “Tell me the polar bear story. The one about you and your friend, while you’re cooking the tea. Please?”

  “That one again?” Grandad laughed. “You’re just like your dad. It was always his favourite as well.”

  Sara nodded. She loved imagining Gr
andad telling the story to Dad, too. It was a family story – it belonged to her, and Dad, and Grandad. It had been Great-Grandad’s, too. It was special. “I wish I could go there, and see it all…” she murmured. “The igloos, and the seals, and the polar bears.”

  Grandad shook his head. “I shouldn’t think you’d see an igloo now, Sara. Most Inuit people live in houses these days. Even back when Great-Grandad and I were there, they were rare. That’s why we went. We wanted to record it all, before it changed forever.”

  “Forever?” Sara asked sadly.

  “I think so,” Grandad agreed, with a sigh. “Things do change. But sometimes for the better.”

  “So … the polar bear.” Grandad smiled at Sara. “Are you sure? You know the story’s a bit sad.”

  “Yes! I love it. I love that it’s about you.”

  Grandad nodded. “Actually, the family that we were with during the blizzard was my friend Alignak and his older brother, his father and his grandmother. The same Alignak who was with me when we found the polar bear cub.”

  “How old was he?” Sara asked, sitting down at the kitchen table. “The bear, I mean.”

  “Alignak thought he was just a couple of months old. We found him in the springtime – he said that the cub couldn’t have been out of his den for long. He’d seen cubs before. I hadn’t a clue. The bear was just sitting in the snow, looking miserable.”

  “What were you doing, when you found him?”

  Grandad laughed. “Well, Alignak was out to catch fish. I was along for the trip. He thought I was really funny. Useless at everything useful.”

  “And you found a polar bear.” Sara giggled. “What did Alignak’s mum say when he came home with a bear instead of fish?”

  Grandad shook his head. “His mum had died, years before. It was a hard place to live, Sara. Alignak’s grandmother looked after him, and his dad and his brother.”

  Sara nodded. “I remember now. Was she surprised, his grandmother?”

  “Alignak had brought creatures home before – an Arctic hare, once. But never a bear. She told us to take it back. And Alignak told her he couldn’t, because he’d used up all the dried fish she’d given him, coaxing the bear cub to follow us home. She was furious with him about that. But the bear stayed. Alignak and I had to fish to feed him, and his father and brother gave us seal meat and blubber sometimes as well. I think he was probably too young for most of the things he ate. His mother would still have been giving him her milk. But he was hungry, so he made do.”

  “What did you call him?” Sara asked. She knew already, but she liked Grandad to tell her – it was part of the story.

  “Peter. I named him, and Alignak liked the sound of it.”

  It was an old-fashioned sort of name, but Sara liked it too.

  “What happened?” she asked quietly. This was the sad bit.

  Grandad sighed. “We kept him all through the spring and the summer, and he got bigger. Alignak’s father wasn’t happy about the amount he was eating. He was taking food away from the family, you see. And they were worried that Peter might hurt us, I think, looking back. Never on purpose – he was friendlier than a dog. But even though he was only the size of a small dog when we found him, he was getting bigger and bigger, and he was strong. He’d jump up to hug us, and we’d go flying. He didn’t really understand that his teeth and his claws were too sharp for playing.” Grandad chuckled. “Actually, they weren’t too sharp – it was just that we weren’t bears. He should have been wrestling with his brother or sister. Polar bears usually have twins, and they grow up playing together.”

  Sara nodded. “So you had to make him go away.”

  “We tried to teach him how to catch seals, first. We didn’t want him to be all on his own without being able to hunt. We showed him good places to find birds’ eggs.” Grandad leaned closer, showing her a tiny red mark at the side of his cheek. “See this scar? That’s from an Arctic tern. They were dive-bombing us – you couldn’t blame them, really. We were stealing their eggs. Peter loved them.”

  He sighed again. “It still makes me sad. We waited till the winter was coming – once the sea was frozen over, it would be easier for Peter to catch seals from the ice. He was nearly a year old then, we guessed, when we left him there. Just about old enough to manage by himself. Probably.”

  “But he’d have died if you hadn’t taken him home with you when you found him,” Sara said firmly. “You did the right thing.”

  Grandad nodded. “I know. And it wasn’t fair to ask Alignak’s family to look after a bear.”

  “Did you ever see him again?”

  Grandad stirred the pasta thoughtfully. “We thought we did. There were quite a few young bears around that winter. But we could never be sure. I worried that he’d have gone too close to another polar bear, without realizing. They’re loners, polar bears, once they’re grown-up. Not friendly to each other. And after that winter, our year was up. We came home here again, your great-grandad and me.” He glanced at Sara. “Come and watch this pasta for a moment. I’ve got something I think you’d like to see. I found it earlier on, mixed in with some other old things.” He went out to the study again, and came back a few minutes later with an old black-and-white photo. “Look.”

  Sara took it carefully. “Grandad! Is that you?”

  “Mm-hm. And Alignak, and Peter. Sixty years ago, that must be now.”

  The boys and the bear stared out of the picture at Sara, smiling. Even the bear was smiling, she was sure.

  Sara sat by Grandad’s fireplace after tea, toasting in the warmth of the flames and gazing at the photograph, where Grandad had propped it up on the mantelpiece. The two boys looked so happy.

  But seeing them just made her feel lonely. Grandad was doing his best, but she really missed Mum and Dad. It felt so strange being at Grandad’s house without them.

  Grandad was out in the shed, finding the special big pot they were going to put the Christmas tree in. It was Sara’s job to decorate it. But she needed Dad to help her get the tinsel right up to the top. And Mum always pointed out the branches that still needed baubles on. It just wasn’t the same. Sara sniffed.

  Iknik, Grandad’s beautiful ginger cat, stalked into the room. He came over and sat down in front of the fire, close to Sara, but she was pretty sure it was the heat he wanted, not her. He wasn’t really a friendly cat, although for some reason he would always sit on Sara’s mum. Grandad said it was because Iknik was contrary, and he could tell that Sara’s mum didn’t like cats very much. Sara thought he was probably right. Still, she loved cats, and she kept trying with Iknik.

  “Hey, Iknik…” she murmured. “Puss, puss, puss.”

  Iknik turned his head and glared at her with eyes that glinted reddish-gold in the firelight. They made him look fierce and Sara dropped her hand. She’d been about to stroke him, but maybe it wasn’t a good idea.

  “Found it!” Grandad called. He looked triumphant as he heaved in the huge pot. “You’re in early, Iknik. He’s usually out hunting this time of the evening, but maybe he doesn’t like the snow? He’s probably forgotten it since last year. Unless it’s because I’ve lit the fire.” He came over to rub Iknik behind the ears. “I originally called him Iknik because it means fire, you see, and he had such fiery marmalade fur, and those strange yellowish eyes. But it’s an even better name than I meant it to be. Sometimes I worry he’s going to singe his whiskers, but he seems to know just how close he can get.”

  Iknik purred and rubbed the side of his head against Grandad’s trousers. Sara sighed. He wouldn’t ever do that for her.

  She stared gloomily into the fire. She wanted to be cheerful – she really didn’t want to upset Grandad and make him think she wasn’t having a good time. Especially as Grandad might worry and think he ought to call Dad. Which would make him and Mum worry about her, too.

  But it was so hard to be happy, when she just wasn’t.

  Grandad put his arm round her shoulders. “Do you think it’s time fo
r bed? You might even wake up to find everything covered in snow…”

  Sara woke up the next morning feeling cold. Grandad’s house was lovely, but the radiators were ancient, and sometimes didn’t work as well as they should. The room felt cold, and somehow looked cold, too, she realized, as she hauled her duvet up around her shoulders. The bedroom she slept in at Grandad’s was her dad’s old one, but Grandad had repainted it. When her dad had it, it was covered in posters, Grandad said, and you could hardly see the blue paint. He’d decorated it a pale pink when Sara was little. But today the pink walls didn’t seem as warm and rosy as usual. There was an icy, crystal feeling in the air.

  “The snow!” Sara squeaked, jumping out of bed, and then squeaking again at the coldness of the wooden floorboards. “Ow, ow…” She hopped across the floor on her toes, dragging the duvet with her, and climbed up on to the windowsill. It was a large one, almost like a window seat, and she liked to curl up in it and read. She flung the curtains open, and took a deep, delighted breath. “Oh, look at it…”

  Grandad’s garden was very big, but usually Sara knew where everything was – the clumps of rosebushes, the wooden bench, the greenhouse. Now it was all just lumps and bumps. Even the greenhouse seemed to have been flattened out by the deep, sparkling snow.

  She glanced round as the hall floorboards creaked. Grandad beamed at her from the bedroom door. “I might have known you’d be awake already. Amazing, isn’t it?”

  “It’s so thick,” Sara agreed. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen snow like this.”

  “It must have snowed heavily all through the night,” Grandad said, coming to stand at the window with her. “And the wind’s been blowing the snow around too. It’s all banked up against the garden wall, look, and the greenhouse.”