The shortest way home is rarely a straight line. Especially when everyone is holding someone.
The morning began with four cubs, twelve fish, and one mother who had made the serious mistake of saying, “Stay together.”
They took this literally.
Two cubs held her left paw. Two held her right. This produced a family arrangement known locally as Five Across and made narrow paths temporarily theoretical.
Mother carried a bamboo basket of salmon on her back.
The youngest cub kept checking it.
“Still there?”
“Yes.”
“All twelve?”
Mother looked over her shoulder.
“Eleven.”
Everyone stopped.
The youngest gasped.
Then a salmon tail slowly rose from behind Mother’s ear.
“Eleven in the basket,” she corrected.
They continued.
Mother watched the cub beside her. He watched his little brother. The two cubs on the left leaned forward, trying to see what the right side was finding so interesting.
This caused the entire family to curve.
They curved around a snowbank.
They curved around a sleeping seal.
They curved so completely around one blue iceberg that they returned to their own footprints.
The eldest studied them.
“Someone has been here.”
Mother nodded solemnly.
“They look friendly.”
So they followed the strangers’ footprints.
For twenty minutes.
The sleeping seal opened one eye when they passed him for the second time.
By the third, he had begun counting.
“Five,” he announced.
“Correct,” said Mother.
Nobody asked what he was counting.
Near noon, the youngest slipped. Four paws tightened immediately, and instead of falling, he swung briefly between his brother and Mother like a very surprised shopping bag.
He laughed first.
Then everyone did.
Even the seal, from somewhere behind them.
By the time they reached the ice ridge, nobody remembered who had been leading.
Mother still had eleven salmon in the basket and one behind her ear.
The next morning, five sets of footprints appeared again.
The seal was already waiting.
He had drawn a line in the snow wide enough for everyone.
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