There were at least ten other bears already assembled on the spit. The ice had almost melted entirely from this piece of land, and small flowers with purple blossoms sprang from the earth.

Jytte went up to a female bear, Jakey’s mum. “Pardon me, can I ask what you and all these bears are doing here?”

“Oh, it’s a historic region, my dear. We live to the west, but we’ve always wanted to come here. They’ve just recently opened up one of the caves to visitors. It played an important role during the War of the Ice Talons.”

Jytte and Stellan exchanged glances. There might be important information about the Den of Forever Frost here, Jytte thought.

Stellan was uncertain, but he knew from the expression on Jytte’s face there would be no stopping her now. They fell into the group and followed.

“Ooooh! Look at those,” Jytte said, gesturing toward the purple blossoms. She had a dim recollection of their mum telling them about flowers, but she’d never seen a real one. “What are they?”

“Ice violets,” Jakey’s mother said. “First sign of spring here.”

Stellan was about to say that there were no flowers in the Nunquivik but decided not to. Best if no one knew where they came from.

The ground felt good under their feet. The snow melts almost completely here! Third marveled. He noticed Jytte and Stellan scratching at the ground with their claws.

“No wonder odd things grow here.” Jytte’s voice was filled with wonder as she examined the soil. “It’s as if the earth feeds them.”

Stellan’s attention was caught by a bright, tiny orange flower quivering in the breeze like a small flame. He realized how very few colors there had been in the Nunquivik, except of course when the night sky was radiant and pulsing with the hues of the ahalikki. With every step this new land became more magical.

Up ahead, Jakey and his mother had stopped alongside several other bears. As the cubs approached, one of the bears—a female—stepped forward. She was tall and rather gaunt. Her eyes had a pinched look, as if she were squinting to bring something into sharper focus. There was unnerving glint in her eyes, and when her gaze settled on Jytte, Stellan took a step closer to his sister and tried to casually rest a paw on her shoulder, but Jytte shook it off. Don’t baby me! Stellan picked up the thought as clearly as if she had barked at him.

“Welcome to the Firth of Grundensphyrr, bears.” She nodded at them all now. “My name is Grynda. Today, I’ll be guiding you through one of the most historically significant sites in the entire Northern Kingdoms.

“I am a certified member of the Decency Order of Bear History and Genealogy. I come from one of the oldest and most revered of the bear families, the clan of Svelynk. As you all know, there are eighteen bear clans, or there were at one time. Each clan’s name derived from one of the eighteen major stars that comprise the constellation of the Great Bear. My clan’s star was way up the spine of the bear, the backbone,” she said with a small note of triumph.

Stellan bristled slightly. Their mum said only vulgar bears bragged about ancestors. He hoped that Jytte wouldn’t start trying to brag about their own ancestors, Svree and the Great Marven and Svenka.

Jytte sidled up to her brother. “Why do we need a guide? Can’t we just explore on our own?”

“I don’t think they want us to be on our own,” Third said warily.

“They? Who’s ‘they’?” Jytte narrowed her eyes.

“Well,” Stellan said, “that’s the problem. I feel there is something bigger going on here than just a history lesson.”

“So here we are on the banks of the legendary Firth of Grundensphyrr,” Grynda explained. “One of the most popular tourist destinations in these kingdoms, a storied place. The place where the bears and the owls of Ga’Hoole came together as allies in the ancient owl wars against forces of evil. But many of the tales you’ve heard are just that—stories and not actual history. Stories are not facts. They are alternate non-information, perhaps misinformation, with no value except for mild entertainment. We in the Decency Order find it profoundly offensive when myth is confused with actual history. Indeed, false stories can offend and corrupt our faith—our vrahkyn, the old Krakish word for faith. So it is our mission to untangle those knots of misleading, fanciful tales and give you the true history and restore the faith, the vrahkyn.”

Jytte and Stellan exchanged a startled look. Their mother had said that stories restore belief and their truths can change the world. Some of the other bears nodded as if they understood, but many looked rather mystified.

“So on our tour,” Grynda continued, “you will learn a new kind of truth.”

Does truth change over time? Stellan wondered.

Jytte raised her paw and Grynda frowned. “I prefer that you save the questions until the end of the tour.”

“You just said they never happened, these legends.” Jytte struggled to make her voice forceful but still polite. The polite part was hard. Her heart was thumping in her chest.

“Correct. These stories never happened.”

“And that they damaged our faith … our vrahkyn?” Jytte asked.

“Indeed!” A brittle light flashed in Grynda’s eyes.

“How … how do you discover if our faith is damaged?” Jytte stammered a bit.

“I was about to get to that,” Grynda replied. Now the light was gone. Jytte cocked her head and looked straight into Grynda’s black eyes. They were like tiny holes. They reflected nothing. It was the nothingness that disturbed Jytte. This was a hollow bear. “If you will follow me into the cave just ahead, I shall show you a marvelous device.”

At that moment a female warbler swooped from the sky and skimmed the crown of Grynda’s head. “Ah, the migration of warblers this time of year. It’s called the Warbler Moon here in the Northern Kingdoms of Ga’Hoole.” She tipped her head up toward the sky.

A young bear, perhaps just a season younger than Jytte and Stellan, had raised her paw to ask a question. She seemed to be alone.

“Another question,” sniffed Grynda. “So many questions and we’ve hardly started.”

“Just to say, madam bear—”

“I am a prefect. That is what bears of instruction of the Decency Order are called.”

“Actually, it’s not a question, prefect,” the young cub said.

“Ah, now who’s the prefect? You came to correct me, I suppose.”

“No, no, prefect, but I just know that in these parts the owls call this moon the Moon of the Golden Rain, not the Warbler Moon.”

“Thank you for that information. Would you prefer to be the prefect and continue the lecture? You seem to be an authority.”

“Never, madam!” Stellan felt anger boiling in the young cub’s head.

“So as I was saying, there was never any truth to such legends.”

Jytte slid closer to the young bear. “Do you believe her?” she whispered.

“She is half right. The legends that began here were mostly those from the old times of the owls. But it was here that the owls and the bears first came together in the time of the ancient wars, sometimes called the Hag Wars, in the time before Lyze of Kiel.”

“How do you know all this?” Stellan whispered. “You look so young.”

“I was born just two Halibut Moons past.”

“Like us,” Jytte said, gesturing toward Stellan.

“Yes, but not exactly.”

“How do you mean not exactly?” Third asked. Beneath the fluffy white facial fur, Third noticed a deep crease in the bear’s forehead, similar to that of an elderly male bear. Yet this bear was female and too young to have such a crease even if she were male. Was there also a tracery of fighting scars?

“I’m an old soul,” the bear replied. Perhaps this bear walks back through time as I walk through dreams, Third thought.

“Now.” The strident voice of the bear Grynda rasped the air. “If you follow me to those cliffs straight ahead, we shall enter the foyer of the ceremonial hall where the bears from yesteryear gathered to hear the false stories around the time of the Great Melting.” She paused dramatically. “And I shall show you the amazing device that we call the Vrahkynyx, which tests one’s faith.”

Something in Grynda’s tone made Stellan shudder, but it was too late to turn around. He felt as if there were other eyes watching them. The “they” he had imagined before. Were there in fact guards here? Why would there be guards?

He suddenly felt vulnerable. He was reluctant to be left with this guide despite the fact that there were other bears around them waiting to enter the ceremonial hall.

“It’s all right, Stellan,” Jytte whispered, trying to sound unruffled. “Let’s keep moving.”

Third put out a paw to stop her. “I’m not so sure, Jytte. I’m having odd feelings.”

“Me too,” Stellan said. Something was not quite right about Grynda. There was something so unbearish about her. He couldn’t imagine her hunting, or rearing cubs and teaching them to hunt, or swimming, or digging out a den on the pack ice.

“I can’t explain what it is. Almost a smell.” Third’s shiny black nose began to quiver. He looked about as if some hidden shadow, a shadow from one of his terrible dreams, was stalking him.

“I don’t care,” Jytte said. “She might still have important information about the Den of Forever Frost. We have to keep going.”

The cubs followed Grynda along with the others into a large cave. As they walked, they noticed enormous outcroppings of rock and ice projecting from the walls.

“It was here,” Grynda continued, “when the seas rose during the time of the Great Melting, that the Great Marven stories were told. Though, of course, the Great Marven never existed. He was merely a myth, a figment of some bear’s silly imagination.” A gasp swept through the space, and Stellan felt something crumble inside himself. The Marven stories his mum had told them always gave him hope. Swimming had not come as easily to him as it had to Jytte. But Marven too was said to have a slight twist to his rear paw. It was a twist perhaps just like his own, and yet Marven had become a great swimmer.

“Is Marven just a myth?” a somewhat elderly bear with a stooped appearance asked, his voice full of doubt. “I’ve heard these stories of the Great Marven all my life.”

“I’ll tell you exactly how it came to be,” Grynda replied confidently. “The bear who told those stories was indeed a wonderful storyteller but a terrible swimmer himself. The truth was that Marven could not swim at all. Not one bit. He was deformed and a beggar.”

Stellan looked down at the twist in his own hind foot, and something began to shrivel inside him. He felt Jytte reach for his paw as if to assure him that the stories of Marven were real. Yet this bear Grynda had called him a beggar, a thief, and a liar. Was this the truth that she said the tour would reveal?

“Now onto the Vrahkynyx. Right this way, please.” Grynda led them down a winding passage to a niche in the wall where she stopped.

“Stand back, please, while I uncover this amazing device.”

With a flourish she snatched a seal skin that was covering the niche to reveal an odd instrument. “Is it not a thing of beauty—of beauty, truth, and faith?”

The three cubs froze as their eyes traveled over the strange apparatus. A sickening feeling began to well up in each of them. The structure was made of metal and odd pieces—pieces they had seen before. This was, in fact, a timepiece that had been taken apart and reassembled into something just as frightening as the great Ice Clock.

“How does this work?” Stellan asked nervously.

“It fits on your head. I then ask you some questions, and the dials on the Vrahkynyx can read your faith. But even if you register as having a low level of faith, we can help you.”

Faith in what? thought Stellan. And then he plucked the thought right out of Grynda’s twisted mind. Faith in the clock. The Great Ice Clock of the Ice Cap.

“We’ve got to get out of here!” Stellan whispered. He wheeled about and glared at Jytte. “Follow me now.”

“Where are you going?” called the bear Grynda. “That is not authorized. You cannot just leave.”

Frantically, the cubs began to scramble out of the cave just as guards suddenly appeared behind Grynda. “Go!” Stellan shouted to Jytte and Third as they took off. These weren’t guards, he realized.

They were Roguers from the Ice Cap.