As the cubs rounded a bend, they gradually became aware that there was a different quality to the darkness. Each one seemed to sense it but dared not say a word until finally Jytte stopped. She realized that the ice did feel different and it had to be light that had changed the ice, and yet it still seemed dark in the tunnel.

“Let me go ahead of you, Stellan.” She had not gone more than a few steps when she cried out, “Sky! I see sky.”

“Yes,” Knute said calmly as he swung on an orange thread above them. “We are entering the crevasse.”

The crevasse was narrow, but when the cubs looked up, they saw a sliver of blue over their heads. Soon the crack opened wider and the sliver of blue became a ribbon unfurling above them.

“A cloud!” Jytte cried. A gossamer white cloud stretched out against the blue. “Look! It’s racing across the sky. There must be a breeze. A breeeeeze!” She stretched out the word as if she were tasting it, and it was the most delicious thing in the world after this endless journey beneath the ground where a wind never blew.

“A bird! Not an owl. Maybe an eagle?” Stellan said as a bird slipped from the cloud and angled its wings. It was as if the cubs were reclaiming, piece by piece, a world they knew.

They kept walking. Their progress was slow, as the cubs rejoiced with every treasure the sky revealed after their days of endless bareness in the depths of the glacier tunnel.

They whispered with delight as the day above faded into the dusky colors of twilight and then caught their breath when they spied the first star.

“We’re here,” Knute said quietly.

“Pleek’s Plonk?” Froya asked.

“Yes, and it’s time for me to get to work spinning a silk ladder for you.”

The cubs looked up. It was hard for them to imagine Knute spinning a rope that would reach to the top.

“Can you really do that, Knute?” Stellan asked doubtfully. What if this silk began to shred and they fell? It would be a long fall. They might not get hurt, but how would they ever get out? The thought of staying beneath the ground forever was not a pleasant one.

“Yes, but let me explain. As you can see, there are some pawholds in this ice wall left from other creatures making their ascent. You must use both the ladder and the pawholds. But at this time, the time of the weeping ice, the pawholds are not reliable. Your paws and feet can slip. So the rule here is one paw for the holds and one paw for the ladder. Do you understand?”

The four bears nodded.

“I should have the ladder completed by the time the Aranea rises in the sky.”

“Who?” Froya asked.

“Aranea, the Great Spider constellation.”

The ladder, spun in shades of green and blue and soft pink, was a glorious creation. As Knute wove the last rung, he called down.

“Aranea rises!”

The cubs crowded together at the base of the silk ladder and gazed up into the night.

“Beautiful,” Froya whispered. There was one bright blue star, Aranea, in the center, but a mass of hundreds of stars spread out from it, forming a web across the night sky. The cubs couldn’t even see the far edges of the Aranea constellation.

“Now, I suggest you start up one at a time. The ladder is strong, but all of you at once might be too much.”

“You’re the smallest, Third,” Stellan said. “Why don’t you go up first?”

“Are you sure, Stellan? Maybe since you’re the biggest we should test it with you.”

“I might strain the ladder too much. Better to get the lightweights up first—you and Froya. Then Jytte and I will follow.”

“I suppose,” Third said reluctantly.

The cub stretched up and reach for the pawhold just above his head and then placed one foot in the foothold. With his free paw and free foot he reached for a rung of the ladder and tugged it a bit as a test. Then he put his foot on a lower rung.

“Seems to be holding,” Third said, though there was a tentative note in his voice. “Of course, I’m the smallest. So maybe it’s not a real test.”

“Come along, come along,” Knute said. “We don’t have all night.”

Stellan detected a new urgency in the spider’s tone. Was Knute doubting his creation?

Third made it to the top. He shut his eyes for a brief moment and emitted a sigh of relief.

“Good, good job. Quick now, Froya,” Knute snapped.

Stellan felt a trickle of anxiety. This spider is fearful of something.

Stellan’s riddling powers began to stir, picking up the scents of Knute’s alarm. The spider was worried about the ladder, but something else too. Terror was flooding through the spider’s mind.

Stellan looked over his shoulder as he stood at the bottom of the ladder. A dark river seemed to be oozing toward them, and then he blinked in horror as he saw the molten red eyes of what could only be frost vipers. “A slither!” he shrieked. “Go! Go, Jytte.”

“But Froya hasn’t reached the top,” Jytte shouted.

“Never mind. Go! Go!” Knute and Third were both yelling. Then Knute swung down on a thread, landing on the wall between Froya and Jytte, who had just started climbing. “Quickly, quickly. Don’t panic. We’re all right unless one breaks away. Steady there, Jytte. Froya, you keep going. Never look back.”

The moment he uttered those words, there came another sound. A hissing. One viper had broken free of the slither and was racing across the weeping ice toward them. Jytte saw it too. She began to back down the ladder. A flood of terror swept through her, and she felt as if she were being engulfed by the red glow of their eyes.

“No!” Stellan and Knute both cried. But Stellan couldn’t step on the ladder yet, as it would certainly be too much weight, and Jytte now seemed frozen, unable to move.

“You have to go, Jytte.” Knute voice was strained. “I can’t cast until you’ve cleared the way for Stellan.”

Cast? Stellan thought. Why is he casting? The ladder is made.

Jytte finally moved again and Stellan began to climb up the ice wall. The viper started to coil. Its head was just beneath Stellan, its forked tongue lashing out. At that moment, Knute unleashed a massive amount of silk, which landed on the viper’s head, then wrapped around its body. Stellan’s breath locked in his throat as he watched a knot in the silk begin to tighten. The viper was retching, its red eyes bulging and growing dimmer as if a fog had rolled across them.

But there was another sound too—weak gasping. Stellan sensed it before he saw what was happening. It was the sound of a spider dying. Knute was dangling feebly from one of the silken threads.

“Knute?” There was no answer. “Knute, are you … are you …”

The spider stirred just a bit. “I gave it my all, Stellan. All of my silk.”

“Knute, you can’t die.” Stellan felt desperation invade him. No, you can’t! A creature so far from our own kind shouldn’t die for us! But the spider already had, and dropped from the thread to the bottom of the crevasse, where the frost viper lay dead, wrapped in the snare of silk that Knute had spun.

Guilt and sorrow weighed heavy in his heart as Stellan began to climb. His paw nearly slipped, as the ice wall was weeping steadily, and Stellan was weeping too. He finally climbed out of the crevasse into the night, into the wind and the starlight that showered down on the just-greening land of the Firth of Uthermere on Stormfast Island.