Scream of The White Bear, page 1
Scream of the White Bear
David Clement-Davies
Phoenix Ark Press
Also by David Clement-Davies
Fire Bringer
The Sight
Fell
The Telling Pool
The Alchemists of Barbal
For Younger Children
Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron
Zo-Zo Leaves His Hole
The Terror Time Spies
Contents
Acknowledgments
I. The Great Sound
II. Journeys
III. The Dark
IV. Awakenings
Epilogue
On Global Warming
About the Author
Scream of the White Bear
By David Clement-Davies
Text copyright © 2019 David Clement-Davies
All rights reserved.
This 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.
Cover art by Ivan Zann
© 2019 Bookcoversart.com
Phoenix Ark Press
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The publisher and author are not responsible for any content that are not owned by the publisher directly.
No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.
For Dante and Beatrice
And for Allegra and my father, Stanley, a blazing spirit, wounded by the past and all its love and shadows
Acknowledgments
I would like to acknowledge Norbert Rosing’s wonderful photographic study The World of the Polar Bear, published by A&C Black – with gratitude for its inspiration in writing about these extraordinary and very real animals, that I used to watch in awe at London Zoo as a boy. For older readers and lovers of stories, I would also like to recommend a magnificent study on literature and its recurring patterns by Christopher Booker called The Seven Basic Plots, and any of the fables by Robert R. Johnson, in his great, wonderful little books.
According to a series of studies by the U.S. Geological Survey, future reduction of sea ice in the Arctic could result in a loss of two-thirds of the world's polar bear population within forty years.
“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.”
—Albert Einstein
“The modern hero…cannot, indeed must not, wait for his community to caste off that slough of pride, fear, rationalized avarice, and sanctified misunderstanding. ‘Live’ Nietzsche says, ‘as though the day were here.’ It is not society that is to guide and save the creative hero, but precisely the reverse. And so, every one of us shares the supreme ordeal - carries the cross of the redeemer - not in the bright moments of his tribe’s great victories, but in the silences of his personal despair.”
—Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces.
Part I
The Great Sound
Prologue
Listen cubs, gather round and listen. It was told at a time of great darkness and of fear, told in the Long Night, to warm the heart and calm the hot, beating blood, and so keep many a polar bear cub happy and safe in their frosty birthing dens. But what was it called, this strange, impossible story? It was called the legend of the Ice Lore. No, that’s not quite right. It was called the fable of the Ice Cry, or of the Twice Born. Or was it the legend of the Black Paw?
Well, whatever its name, the legend went something like this…
1
SLAYERS AND STORYTELLERS
“God created man in order to tell stories.”
— Hasidic saying
The scurrying arctic blizzard was done and in the enormous white silences settling like a sigh across the huge expanses of frozen sea ice, up here, high above the Arctic Circle, a savage cry cut the winter night – “Aooooooow!”. It was the lonely song of the wild wolf. The searching call seemed to quiver into form on the air, as if the cry itself had suddenly turned into the eerie coloured lights, flickering brilliantly across the great black canvas of moon-clad night.
The glowing astral pathway rose through the winter cold like billowing curls of blue-green smoke, sweeping up off the ice sheets and into the air in a drifting arc around the moon, the single Pole Star, and the great constellation hanging there in the heavens. The Aurora Borealis the modern language of science calls these strange astral lights. Men in more wondering days knew them as Arktus, the Greek word for a bear, although the Sioux Indians traditionally believed they are the spirits of unborn children, and some Inuit tribesmen, the ghosts of their dead ancestors: phantoms, swirling in the darkened skies. Closer to their freezing earth world, the Eskimo claim the famous Northern Lights as favourite beasts instead, like caribou, whale, or dancing salmon. But the Lera, the wild animals of the earth, truly know what they really are, and so they call them The Beqorn – those that bite with their teeth.
If the language of science is to classify them, in truth the magical display of Northern Lights is really caused by the sun’s superheated flares, bursting in outer space, sending out the solar winds through the void, that charge unseen particles in our upper atmosphere, making them swirl and flow towards Magnetic North. Yet, as the wolf howl came again, calling out in nature’s most primitive tongue, the ice itself seemed alive with a real magic this deep winter night – a Storyteller’s magic.
On the darkened flats of sea ice there was no sight of any wolf though. Instead, three huge shapes came lumbering from the blackness, as if shrugging off the bitter winter dark. The great, white creatures had heard the lonely howl, their little ears up on their heads, listening intently, although these beasts were not frightened of mere wolves. For these were Bellarg – Ice Lords – the great white polar bears of the arctic wilds, and, as such, the largest and most dangerous land-living carnivores left on earth.
It was the season of the deepest snows now, in Bellarg lore the season of the King, and in their mythology, this was the region of the King too, the high North. The three wandering bears had long winter fur sleeves at their forearms, and the first was whispering in a voice that rumbled from his white belly like muffled thunder.
“And what story do we tell now, disciples, as we go?” he growled deeply, his keen eyes catching the reflection of the astral lights.
“The Great Story, Illooq Longsleeves,” answered the second polar bear immediately, giving a growl, as if even speaking of it made him nervous.
“Of the Coming,” added the third eagerly, ice flecks glittering electric blue across his yellow teeth, “at the end of the world itself, Illooq Longsleeves, and everything there is.”
“Indeed,” growled Illooq gravely, the Bellarg’s strong face filling suddenly with light. “At the end, yes, yet the story tells of resurrections too, brother, even the end of Death itself. In such dangerous times though, our great Master forbids us any fighting, brothers. So we must speak the Great Story instead, as we journey, and only words of true power now. For our Master Sorgan teaches us that the jaw is always mightier than the claw.”
Illooq Longsleeves frowned though as he spoke, for these were dark and dangerous times indeed, filled with many unseen threats, as all were whispering of how the very ice world itself seemed to be melting and vanishing completely. How there was a strange hotness in the air too, and how the arctic Lera were dwindling away mysteriously. Illooq shook his head. He was a fighter to his jaws and paws, yet his growling journey forced a different calling on the brave young disciple. One that frustrated courageous Illooq, at times, and made him nervous for all his kind.
Far behind them, the wolf that had indeed howled stood stiff-backed in the darkness, still listening intently, his scrawny tail raised, his keen senses on full alert. A curling white snout sniffed at the bears’ paw prints in the snow in front of him, and his yellow-gold eyes glittered with a vicious cunning. The snow wolf had given the cry to make the three polar bears think he was alone, for he well knew they were aware of his presence already. A polar bear’s sense of smell is so acute it can scent a seal from more than a mile away, even under the thickest ice, not to mention animals as pungent as wild wolves, and moving above ground too. The wolf turned and saw a red glow of heat and warm blood, for wolves’ eyes are perfectly adapted for night vision, and like few they can see in the dark.
The wolf scampered back towards the strange glow, which changed from red to a hazy white as he drew closer, revealing forty more polar bears, all large Bergo as adult males are called, waiting in neat lines on the Ever Frozen Sea, listening closely to the air with their great heads raised to the coloured skies.
These wild bears were watching the numinous Northern lights warily though, for some among them said the Beqorn were really dead Bellarg spirits that, when they leave a polar bear’s dying mouth, fly north, calling and whispering to the world eternally, and so lighting the future and giving it warning too. It was said that in the farthest North, the air itself snapped its teeth and told strange tales.
It was an unnatural sight to see so many polar bears together, standing in these r
At the head stood their leader, Glawnaq, a Bellarg of such massive strength and gigantic bulk he seemed to cast a shadow over all the rest. There was power in his body and courage in his muzzle, although the boar’s head was turned away from the approaching wolf and lost in deep shadow. The wolf spy reached the bears and padded up to its master very nervously, lowering his tail in complete submission, for even a young bear could knock him across the ice sheets with a careless paw, and kill him instantly. This waiting Bellarg was famous for his sudden flashes of temper too, a celebrated warrior among the Ice Slayers, who, in the face of the growing threat to all the Bellarg, with snow dens that had begun collapsing on Bergeera and their cubs, and with dwindling food stocks everywhere, planned to make himself Lord of all the Bellarg now. Perhaps over the five thousand polar bears that were said to still survive right across the Arctic Circle. Glawnaq planned to bring them together as one.
The other arctic Lera were asking why, muttering in their dens, nests and snow holes, or coddled for warmth in the most secret places of the earth. For polar bears are famously solitary, independent creatures, wild to their very claw marks, rarely forming anything larger than small family groups. With food growing so scarce too, and the ice so precarious in places, it seemed a strange plan to unite them at all.
“Your report, Varg?” the leader grunted, as the wolf reached him, using the Lera word for a wolf. “Are they Fellagorn or not?”
“Oh yes, great Glawnaq, Fellagorn they are, all right, three fat Warrior Storytellers.”
“Warriors!” snorted Glawnaq though. “Priests and holy fools, you mean, Varg, mumbling of souls or mystic spirits and refusing to fight. Searching the empty wastes of the North for signs of their sainted Great Story instead and branding us all nothing but common Pheline.”
The Serberan looked up sharply. The mysterious Order of the Fellagorn had been led for years by their Great Master Sorgan who, with his holy disciples, were keepers of the polar bears’ most sacred lores and myths. They were told and retold in their secret gatherings out on the ice – their Telling Moots, they were dubbed – or at their regular Story Jousts, where the ancient sect always met to talk, argue, and hurl stories and legends at one another. For the Order of the Fellagorn were the true guardians of the Ice Lore, the ancient code by which all Bellarg live their savage lives out in the Northern wilds. This fact alone demanded that the Storytellers be honoured, and paid an annual tribute of seal and walrus meat, although many bears resented them for it. Fellagorn did not often come amongst ordinary polar bears, you see, preferring tributes to be left out on the edge of the Ever Frozen Sea. Yet representatives, Tellers they were called, were sent out among the Bellarg, intermittently though, to see if bears were upholding the Ice Lore, or to tell them stories and so renew the stock of their guiding legends.
The sacred order was cloaked in mystery and rumour then, and feared by many, especially the more superstitious among the female Bergeera. Some whispered that great Sorgan himself engaged in terrible rituals, and drank hot walrus blood, up there in the far North. A bear who had reached nearly double the normal life span of any polar bear in the wild, usually around twenty to thirty years. Other nervous Bellarg spoke in baited breaths of some ancient curse that haunted the Fellagorn Order.
There was much speculation too about how a Great Master was chosen. Some said at a Master’s death, his soul would leave his body, climbing the skies and then returning to earth, entering a new snow den to fill the spirit of a newly born cub, and so be reborn, when other Fellagorn would set out through the snows to find their new Great Master. Yet the Great Master and his Fellagorn Warriors, just like Illooq Longsleeves and his two companions, were also revered as fighters, and for their growling voices too, which Bellarg believed had the power to enchant and to affect the course of life itself. For the Fellagorn had a favourite saying: In the Beginning was the Word.
Now it was said that Sorgan had summoned all the Order to use their word power to seek out signs and so tell the Great Story again, a tale as old as memory. The story contained all their myths but also told of the coming of a mighty Saviour, at the end of time, a Marked One, only born when the ice itself screamed, groaned and cried out for help.
“But we’ve their trail now, at least, spy,” reflected Glawnaq, with deep satisfaction, swinging his angry head to look at the wolf, who quavered and slunk back immediately. “There can be only one Saviour – Varg. I, Glawnaq One-eye.”
The cowed wolf had flinched for a reason, as the Serberan Leader turned his head towards him. Half of Glawnaq’s face was gouged and terribly scarred, and his right eye was missing completely. Behind Glawnaq his devoted Ice Slayers began to pound their paws on the sea ice, as a rising wind skittered sharp water crystals against their winter coats, presaging another blizzard.
“My mighty bears shall train their will and their fighting power to meet the new fears, wolf,” growled Glawnaq proudly, “like true warriors, not holy frauds. So we’ll overturn Fellagorn lies and their feeble, dying Gods forever, and all shall come, when Glawnaq One-eye summons. The Barg shall serve us too,” added Glawnaq, with sudden contempt in his face, “and so we Slayers shall not only survive but triumph, as common polar bears at last accept the Truth.”
Glawnaq paused as the thumping faded, and looked closely at the wolf spy, for he had no intention of telling a mere servant all his deeply laid plans. His searching left eye had narrowed to almost a pinprick, and there was something terrifying in the look, while the bear’s cruel mouth seemed to harden like ice on stone.
“That old charlatan Sorgan believes the Fellagorn can fight what comes with their voices and stories alone, praying to their blessed Atar for salvation, in their snivelling terror.”
The Serberan’s collective breath came like a scornful wind as they growled again, as one, this time at Glawnaq’s mention of the great moon goddess, Atar. The Fellagorn said that blessed Atar, the Moon, had infused her cold into everything at the dawn of time, to make the good, flat Ice World. She was the moon goddess then who had bestowed on the Bellarg a very rare power too: The Great Gift. It was the ability among all the Putnar, the predators of the world, to understand the myriad tongues of other Lera quite naturally. Only wild Bellarg have it, although being such proud and independent animals, often lofty in their ways, the mighty Ice Lords rarely showed much interest in the common Lera, unless their hunger or anger was aroused.
“So they meet in the far North then,” continued Glawnaq thoughtfully, peering at those three fading white shadows moving steadily away into the distance. “And we follow. They make my job almost too easy, wolf. But if there really are any signs, as the Fellagorn claim, then we’ll soon remove them all. No lies must hinder bears now. Reason alone must guide, in strength and purity.”
“Purity and strength,” growled another Bellarg, the largest of a group of eight males set apart in the crowd. His name was Garq, and with claws sharpened daily on huge rocks, and a great fur collar at his throat, this boar led Glawnaq’s inner bodyguard, revered even by the other Ice Slayers, and known as The Glawneye. Around Glawnaq and Garq other deep bear eyes glittered savagely, as it started to snow. The blizzard was here once more.
