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K'eyush and the nanuq

By Strega, for Meanybeany

It was late one fall when K'eyush met her, the nanuq.

He was walking the shoreline between the fingers of new-fallen snow and the chunks of ice that cluttered the harbor, looking for little holes in the sand the clams made. He dug them out quickly with a tool made of reindeer horn, before they could burrow out of reach. By the time the sun was two hands above the horizon he had a rabbit-skin bag full of them already, enough for a good meal. Yet the morning was young, the tide was not yet in, and he looked for more.

The path he could walk was narrow, for above a certain point the beach was frozen too hard for clams, and below a certain point he would wet his feet in the surf, which was very bad even with sealskin boots. There was a limit to how far he could forge, too, for with very good reasons his village was the southernmost coastal village for many days travel. Eventually, if you headed inland and traveled far, you could circle back and once again find the Inuit or their brothers the Inupiat, but past the jut of land south of his village you would meet no men for many leagues.

His breath fogged as he walked and ice crystals formed on his parka where the fog landed. It was as he brushed the accumulated ice from the wolf-fur lining of the hood that he spied the white dot atop a nearby hill.

His name meant "bear cub", and he always felt a certain kinship to the three tribes of bears; the black ones, from the forests south of his village, the browns, which lived everywhere, and the great white bears, the nanuq, who mostly lived to the north. Of the three tribes his village had the most dealings with the nanuqs, for they were the most trustworthy. For longer than he had lived a treaty, authored by a legendary nanuq queen, had allowed trade between the two peoples. Two-legs sold ornaments and sex to the four-legs, and the four-legs brought seal and other meat that they caught in trade, or even brought rare herbs or edible plants they sniffed out but did not themselves value.

It was unusual to see a nanuq this late in fall. As the sea ice formed the white bears moved out onto it, hunting their favored prey of seal and walrus. They did not linger on the shore like this one. K'eyush stopped in his tracks and looked up as the bear.

Even today it was not unheard-of for a rogue nanuq to hunt the Inuit. There had been a time when a nanuq pelt was a favored gift to a newly wedded couple, and just as the hunters sought out the bears for their hides the nanuq sought to give the hunters a white-furred pelt for only as long as it took the bear to digest them. The conflict had escalated in some areas to the point that there were either no nanuq at all or no Inuit, the combatants reduced to either fur blankets or bear droppings. "White death" they had called the bears in the worst of it, with packs of angered bears moving invisibly through the winter snow into a village and not leaving until either every bear was dead or every Inuit was devoured.

It was better these days, with the treaty. Were it a brown or black bear atop the hill he would give it a wide berth, for there was no such treaty between those tribes and the Inuit. And if this were truly a rogue, the nanuq was doing a very poor job of hunting him. It lay in a wind-shadowed nook as yet uncovered by snow and it was very obviously a bear.

Or was it? When he was a head shorter than now he'd played at making false nanuq out of snow to amuse and alarm his neighbors. Though he was two leagues from the camp, perhaps youngsters were playing the same trick here.

He was curious now, and it was only a few minutes' walk up the hill. For a young and strong man like himself it was little effort to make his way through the shallow fall snow and up the slope.

It was not a snow-bear, for its head turned to watch him as he climbed. Or rather it was, he thought with a smile, for what is a nanuq but a snow bear? He kept climbing, seeing as he approached that it was quite small by bear standards. A big male nanuq could weight as much as ten men, sometimes more, but this one was only three times his bulk. Less than five hundred pounds, the strange Southern people in their odd smooth clothing would say. Still, its paws did not bulk large for its size, so it was full-grown. A female, then.

He stopped at ten paces' distance and showed his hands so she could see he was not carrying a spear, for just as rogue nanuq were not unheard-of, so sometimes the Inuit broke the treaty and hunted the white bears. The bear ducked her head in acknowledgment and made a hooking motion with a paw. He could approach.

She lay half on her side, curled up with both her rump and muzzle toward the edge of the little niche in the cliffs. With boulders at her back to block blowing snow and a long slope in front of her she could watch the shore for miles, spying out seals or other potential meals. She had most likely seen him long before he did her. After one more storm to drop some snow into this sheltered place she would not be visible at all. It was a very useful vantage point which K'eyush resolved to remember.

He was almost certain that she was female. Though her fur concealed her sex, a male nanuq has bulges in certain places that she lacked. It wasn't until he was a mere few paces away that he could see the furry groove beneath her anus. Definitely a female.

Her eyes were dark and glittering as obsidian, her claws sharp and just as black. Everywhere else she was yellow-white, her pelt dense and long. Only on her muzzle, where the fur was shorter, and in the depths of that slit beneath her tail did a hint of black skin show through. She was very small for a nanuq, and, K'eyush thought, very beautiful.

The protocol for a meeting like this escaped him. Though tiny for a nanuq, if she decided to overpower him even a bear this size could swallow him whole. There would be nothing to mark his passing but a set of tracks in the snow, soon to be obliterated by the wind, leading up to the predator that consumed him. Perhaps this entire encounter, from his "accidental" sighting of her up until this face to face meeting, was merely a clever ploy to get herself a meal. Or perhaps she really was just resting here, but wouldn't turn down this sudden opportunity for a full belly. Even if she were treaty-bound, he might offend her somehow. It was rare, but it did happen sometimes that an initially friendly meeting ended with a nanuq letting out a well-fed belch.

But K'eyush was not an easily frightened man, and all his life the white bears had fascinated him. They were, these days anyway, usually to be trusted. So he reached into the pouch at his belt and offered her the largest of the clams he had squirreled away there.

She tilted her head inquisitively as she eyed the shellfish. It was what the Inuit called an iviluk and the southern people called a razor clam, long as his hand and fat with meat. She took it from his hand gently; for a moment the end of the clam protruded from her black lips, then with a toss of her muzzle it was gone.

He expected a crunch to follow, but there was instead a small, wet sound. She had swallowed the clam intact. That made him blink, for though the bears often swallowed prey whole, and had no trouble digesting such things as bone or shell, they did not need to, and the hard outside of a clam has little flavor compared to the meat.

"You could chew. It wouldn't bother me." He was startled to hear the words come out of his mouth. The bear just smiled and extended her muzzle for another morsel.

It took only a few minutes to deplete his sackful of clams. What would be a fine meal for a human or two, once shelled and cooked, made just a snack for the bear. She licked him after swallowing each clam, tasting the sea on his fingers. At some point, he wasn't sure quite when, he had sat next to her, back against her shoulder, with one of her great paws wrapped beneath his thighs to hold him close. If she chose to eat him now there could be no escape.

But she didn't. When she nosed for another clam and he showed her the empty pouch she just smiled again and lay her huge head in his lap.

And felt the bulge there. K'eyush hadn't even realized it was happening, but he suddenly found the white bear impossibly arousing. The strength, the strong frame, the unapologetic hunger that took one clam after another from his fingers, yet merciful enough to pass up the greater meal she held between her paws.

"Sorry, sorry," he mumbled, and stroked her coarse-furred neck with trembling fingers. Without intending it he had done something that must be deeply insulting. When she lifted her chin off that incriminating bulge he half expected her paw to hold him tight as her maw gaped wide.

And she did snug him tight to her with that paw, but only so he didn't move as she undid the whalebone buttons of his fly with her fangs.

"Oh," he said in surprise, and then he groaned, for his manhood had sprung from his fly the instant the buttons were loosed. But the groan was not in embarrassment; it was because a great lick of strong nanuq tongue, mottled purple and black, had drawn his cock into her mouth.

In the end she did not eat him whole, but rather just a little bit of him. His shaft, ample though it might be for a human, fit easily into her great jaws. With her powerful tongue stroking him within her mouth and her rubbery black lips sucking it was not take at all long before he found something else to feed her beyond the clams. He wrapped his feeble human arms around her neck and thrust against her muzzle, and soon enough she once again made that small, wet swallowing noise.

"Thank you," he whispered as he tucked himself back in through the fly so that his wet skin would not freeze. It had been warm in her mouth, so warm. He wondered what other parts of her might be that warm, but he would wait a while to learn that.

"You are welcome," she growled in pidgin Inuit-Nanuq. Up until that moment he wondered if she knew that tongue, but she did, and he understood it. You had to have both to communicate with the bears, both a bear versed in growl-speaking the tongue and familiarity with it to understand it. They had already proven, though, that even without speaking it was possible to get along. She pointed her nose down the slope, and he took that as a dismissal.

"Come again in a week, if you can," she rumbled, "And we will talk again."

He found himself back in the village later that same day, stars in his eyes and barely remembering the walk back. When he realized where he was he rolled his eyes and turned right around, for his visit with the nanuq, however enchanting, had used up the very thing he'd left the village to get. It was back to the beach, and now the incoming tide was covering up the best clamming spots. It took the rest of the day to barely fill his pouch once more, and he made it back to the tents only when the sun was disappearing behind the mountains and a thin snow had begun to fall.

Other Inuit mocked him as he trudged in, but when he returned to his hide tent his mother took one look at him and just smiled. She'd seen that look before, and she cooked up the clams without a word. Her son had finally fallen in love. She was correct, of course. She was merely wrong when it came to the species of his son's lover.

It was hard to wait a week, but K'eyush didn't waste it. The Inuit aren't by nature an idle people; the young and strong hunt and fish and trap, while the elders craft clothing and weapons when they aren't maintaining the tents. It is a matter of survival. Yet even in a village that didn't tolerate the lazy his sudden industry warranted comment.

From morning 'till past dark he hunted, and trapped, and gathered. What he couldn't catch himself he traded for with the spoils of much work. His particular expertise was fishing and shellfish gathering, though he was a shore fisherman rather than one of the ones who ventured out in kayaks. Those were the ones who caught the really big fish, and early on he decided that was what he wanted. So he traded, but on credit; he told his trading partners that he wanted the fish on a particular day.

Each night he lay awake and thought of the bear. He was not the first or the last of his people to fall in love with one; the story of the Bear Wife (and, gender-swapped, The Bear's Wife) were old when his village's elders were children. Perhaps he was reading too much into one encounter; the she-nanuq might simply have paid him for the clams with sex, itself a flip-flop of what usually happened. Much more commonly, a male nanuq would pay a female villager for a few hours of her time, but what he did with the female bear did happen from time to time.

The night before the week was up, he hardly slept at all. Soon he would meet her again...if she was still there.

In the morning he went to the fisherman's huts and found they had, as agreed, brought back fine fat fish for him. Each fish was packed in snow and perfectly intact, with even the smallest longer than his arm and the largest almost too heavy to lift. He smiled and thanked them, packing the fish onto a light sledge and himself in heavier clothes than the last time. Winter was nearly here, and it was in a powdery falling snow - more crystallized humidity than true snowfall -- that he trudged once again along the beach.

With white now thick on the ground he would not have known there was a nanuq on the hill, but a week had not dimmed his memory. He reached the well-remembered spot on the beach where he first saw her and turned up the slope. There, the shape of the boulders that sheltered her. If she was there, she blended in perfectly with the snow, and the worry that had nagged at him at the night came flooding back. But when he was halfway up the hill he saw a triangle of black points move, nose and eyes, and he smiled his relief. She was there, just as she had said.

She lay in the same spot, and the few pawprints around her showed that she had barely moved since the last snowfall from a direction that would enter her sheltered nook. That was two evenings ago, and he worried, suddenly, for her health.

This time he did not pause at a distance, but came right to her and put his hand on her broad muzzle. "Are you all right, white lady? You have moved little since the snows."

A purple tongue gave his hand an affectionate lick. "I do not need to move much, unless it suits me. I am well, but I see that you have brought something with you...?"

"I have." He returned to the sledge and pulled aside the fur he had used to cover the fish. Before leaving the village he had thawed them in his tent, and insulated by the furs for his hike they were still flexible. It was a fine salmon that he offered her first.

"For me?" She lifted her head, interested, and when he held out the fish she took in its head with a gentle nip of her fangs. He expected her to put it down between her paws and tear at it, for bears are often picky as to what parts of a fish they will eat, but once again she surprised him. She simply flipped the fish upward without releasing it, then relaxed her bite and let it slide in. The ten-pound fish slipped past her lips and was gone as quickly and easily as a dolphin swallows a herring.

K'eyush blinked at the fish's tail as it disappeared beneath her chops. The weight of the slick fish carried it down into her throat, and with that now-familiar wet gulp she dispatched it to her stomach. The purple tongue emerged to take the taste of fish from her black lips and his fingers, and she bobbed her head gratefully.

"Thank you, O man."

"I'm K'eyush. You don't need to swallow them if you don't want. I won't be bothered if you rend them."

" K'eyush", she said. "'Bear cub'." She looked him up and down with a fang-hidden bear's smile. "Little bear cub, I simply eat as I am accustomed to eating. I, Littlepaw, a daughter of my great mother, am different than others of my kind. You may see how, if you linger long enough."

She glanced casually toward the sledge, and he turned that way himself. He had, after all, brought a great many fish.

Or so he had thought. In just a few minutes, one after another, half of them were gone. The fish were stacked so that the largest were at the bottom, so each one he took from the pile was larger than the last, and each slipped easily into her maw. That in itself was no surprise; no fish yet was as large as a man, and he knew he would fit into those jaws.

The surprise was the sheer number of them she ate, one after another. He'd dragged the sledge miles to her and well knew the weight of its cargo. By the time he was down to the last few -- which were half of the total weight, the bottom ones being the largest -- she had swallowed down more bulk in fish than he had flesh and bone in his body. She was not a large nanuq; she had just eaten a third her weight in fish without pause, and without even a belch to mark their passage down her throat. She should be swollen around such a meal, pendulous of belly even given her bulky ursine body, but the fish might as well have evaporated like frost in the spring.

"I don't understand," he said as the last of the medium-sized fish disappeared down her gullet.

"You'll see," she said with a bearish smile, and when he turned toward the sledge she hooked her paw around him and held him close. By the time she had undone his fly once again with her fangs he was achingly ready.

But this time she turned away, lifted her little stub of a tail, and let him have her from behind. Her furred slit was welcome warmth after the chill air on his cock, and somehow he lasted minutes at it, thrusting his hips against her substantial rump. When he finally gasped and spent himself she just turned her head toward him and smiled; despite his best efforts, he had not managed to give her similar pleasure. A man was just not well equipped enough, compared to a nanuq. Perhaps if he used his whole arm...?

And then he saw it. The last time they had met she had not stood, but he still had a good sense of how large she was after the hour he'd spent in her company. He knew how large her paws were, how massive her streamlined head was. And they were bigger, now. She was bigger in every line, every curve. The hundred and fifty pounds of fish he had fed her -- and, presumably, the few pounds of clams the last time -- had not gone to swell her belly. Somehow it had gone straight into her body. Four hundred and fifty pounds of snowy-furred bear was now six hundred, all in the course of an hour of feeding.

"How," he stammered, spent but still in her. "You got bigger, but you just ate. It's impossible."

"What is impossible in this world?" rumbled the bear, and turned back toward him. An irresistible paw pulled him down in the snow, but he was not to be cold. Instead she curled around him, her paws beneath him to keep his heat from melting the snow, her great body wrapped close to keep out the wind. He had not realized how tired he was until she lay down her head in his lap. It was easy to fall asleep, wrapped in the warm strong paws he so loved.

When he woke it was night, and he remembered how badly he had slept the night before. No wonder it had been so easy to fall asleep with his white lady. As he stirred she woke as well, and soon enough gave the sledge a pointed glance.

The fish were frozen once more, but that did not deter her. Hard and crusted with ice crystals as they were, still she wrapped her jaws around one after the other and sent them down her throat. The last, and largest, was a young halibut, a flat bottom-living fish with both eyes on one side. It was as wide as his shoulders and weighed half as much as he did. If he had doubted that her jaws could manage him, watching her gulp down the hard-frozen fish would have relieved any doubt.

The second batch of fish was, again, almost his whole weight in meat and bone. This time he watched it happen; bit by bit, as fast as she swallowed, she grew. Even as the halibut slid down her throat he watched her paws, her muzzle, the great curve of her flank, all stretch and swell.

She turned her rump to him again, a reward for the fish and -- he hoped -- a sign that she cared for him and did not see him merely as an appendage that brought her tasty fish. He could have had her again, but aching though he was for that warmth he wanted her to know pleasure, too. So it was that some time later her sex clamped down on his arm, thrust in her past the elbow, and squeezed him almost painfully as she came.

"But how?" He said soon after. "How is it possible?"

She shrugged, a massive movement that shifted him where he sat. "My mother is bigger than any other nanuq we know of. Far bigger, far stronger. Just a few months ago she swallowed an entire orca who came to her, battered and old. He had long admired her from afar and for the cost of one mating he offered himself as a meal. She is bigger, now, than even an orca, because part of him and part of all the walruses and seals and other bears and humans remains with her. But I am different even than my mother."

"You eat and you grow," he said, and scratched her ears. "You were taller when I mated with you just now than you were the last time."

"Just so,"she growled, and pushed her cheek into his scratching fingers. "I do not need to eat often, though I grow hungry. Before I met you I had stayed here for many sunrises, just watching the shore. I had eaten only a few times since leaving my mother. A few seals, a wolf that grew too bold when I played dead, some fish, one of the Southern men in their odd smooth clothing. What I eat stays with me. I do not pass it as others do, when they are done with it. I get bigger, instead."

"And so you stay here, not needing to eat? Did the other nanuq cast you out?"

Her muzzle rested on his shoulder for a moment from behind. In the warmth of her curled-up bear he could easily sleep again. Her rumbling voice, transmitted through his flesh, shook his whole chest. "Have you noticed where we are, bear cub?"

Of course he knew where she was, where they were. Atop a snowy knoll that overlooked the bay south of his village. But also overlooking the shore still further south, in the area they dared not go. He looked at the stretch of mud beach, ice, snow and rocks; it was little different from the beaches he walked hunting for clams. There was no sign of the reason his people avoided it, though he knew it was there.

"The thing from the sea."

"That's right. We call it by different names among ourselves. I call it the kraken, but that's just a name the Southern man said to me. Even they, the ones in the big ships, avoid this stretch of sea now. No one, man nor bear or walrus or even orca, dares approach this stretch of beach, now. If you do its tentacles will come out to grab you, and you will not be seen again. What it is like under the water I do not know; we swim better than men, we nanuq, but if we swim in this thing's waters we do not swim for long."

"And you're here to watch for it, to learn about it?"

"For now," she growled, and yawned. "Your people may not know, for your villages move, but the Great Mother has known of the thing for much longer than you or I have been alive and bit by bit the thing grows and expands its territory. She sent me here to learn, and maybe, if I should grow large enough, to do something about it."

"Like what?", he said, but she yawned again and pointed her muzzle down the slope.

"In a week then?" He said, though he left her side with the greatest reluctance.

"In a week," she growled.

Once again he slogged back through the snow to the beach. Though he was less lost in a haze than the last time he returned from his lover, he was still wrapped in memories and daydreams. What might be bring her next time?

And then he looked up and he was walking into the village, and all of the elders, his mother, and half of the other adults were waiting in a half-circle for him.

He stopped. "What's going on?"

"We know," said Kulitak, oldest in all the village. "Chena was fishing, and followed your sledge track out of curiosity. She saw you and the bear, though you and the nanuq were too busy to notice her in return."

"Yes," K'eyush said. "I was with the nanuq. I did not want to upset my mother, or I would already have told." He shrugged. "One cannot choose with whom one falls in love."

His mother's expression, already sour, did not change. It was Kulitak who spoke again.

"It is your business who you love. But if you are to live in this village, your work must go toward its people. The food you brought to your bear would have fed us all for two days."

"And I worked for that food," K'eyush said reasonably. "I gathered food for myself and my mother, and for the common pot. And then I hunted and fished and trapped twice as hard, so I would have something to bring to her. What I do with my extra time is my business."

The looks the elders shared told him that they doubted him. What Kulitak said next confirmed it. "If you could so easily gather three times your usual amount, we cannot but wonder what you were doing with your time before."

K'eyush, always slow to anger, nevertheless began to flush. "It was not easy. I could not do it every week. I only did it to bring something to my love."

"And will you do it again this week, for your next visit?" said the elder, who must have guessed when he met Littlepaw the first time. They knew where she was, too, and despite the treaty his worry and anger increased.

"When the male bears come and bring food to our women, in payment for a few hours or a night with them, you do not question how they spent their time. I have always provided my share to the village, and what I do with the rest is my business. Not yours!"

Again the elders shared looks, and there was whispered conversation. In his heart K'eyush felt that he was being treated unfairly. Though his mother stood across from him, he knew what he would say if they forbade him to see Littlepaw again.

And so, an hour later, he was climbing the hill once more. Now that he was paying attention he saw more footprints on the trail than should be there. On his way there the sledge had partly concealed his tracks. There was not just one set of prints on top of the original sledge marks, but three: His, and Chena's, there and back.

Littlepaw was sleeping when he reached the hollow. He heard her snuffle as she smelled his approach, but she did not wake. Had it been a stranger, or someone she didn't trust, he was sure she would have. Smiling, and careful not to wake her, he snuggled into the arc of her curled-up form and settled down to sleep.

"Well," she said when she woke in the morning, and after waiting for him to wake as well. "I would guess that something went wrong at your village."

K'eyush sighed and stroked her head, which once again rested in his lap. Like the rest of her it was noticeably larger than when first they met. "They do not approve of me visiting with you. If I am to stay with my tribe I must agree never to meet you again, and I do not want to."

"What will you do, then? I am happy to have you stay," and she licked his cheek past the hood of his parka, "But you are only one man. You cannot live indefinitely without shelter as I can. Eventually your clothing will wear out, if nothing else."

"If needs must I can go to another tribe...but I do not want to do that yet. I have an idea, a way I can help you."

At first the seal did not react when the snowball hit it. A second, and then a third exploded into fluff against its blubbery hide before its eyes finally snapped open. "Ha!" K'eyush shouter, and flung another snowy missile that burst behind its ear.

Seals are not by nature courageous animals, and the first thing it did upon spying K'eyush was to turn toward the ocean. It could have escaped toward him instead, and reached the water sooner since it rested on the near side of a narrow spit of land, but its natural inclination was to turn away from danger.

That was what he wanted it to do, of course. His snowball assault continued as it humped its way down off the ice and to the beach. The missiles could not hurt it...but they did not need to. As the seal slid over the last few yard of shore a heavy paw reached out of a snowbank and dragged it in.

By the time K'eyush caught up with the seal Littlepaw had it half swallowed. He watched the seal thrash its flukes as the nanuq lifted her muzzle to gulp it down. It was already much too late for the seal to save itself, and with two bobs of Littlepaw's snout only the tips of the seal's finger-like tail flukes protruded from the corners of her mouth. They twitched one last time, even as the bulge in her neck pulsated. The seal was bigger than K'eyush, but with a last toss of her muzzle the flukes were gone. He watched the bulge slip down her long neck until the only sign it had existed was a subtle broadening of her furry flanks.

But that didn't last. He knew it was going to happen; he'd fed her the sledge full of fish and watched her grow bit by bit. This time it was a live seal being absorbed, and even though he was expecting it he was mildly horrified to see the bulge disappear as she grew. It took less than a minute from that last gulp to the seal being incorporated fully into her now-larger body.

"I know it doesn't really matter whether it was digested slowly or instantly," he said, "But it is...odd to see it happen."

She licked her chops with a wash of purple tongue and smiled as nanuq do. "It is strange to me, too. I cannot tell you how it works, and I would not recommend sticking your head down my throat to watch. I might be tempted."

That made him laugh and led to some rough horseplay. That led, inevitably, to another mating, right where the seal had breathed its last. He was learning her ways now, and despite the size difference they could both have their pleasure. He just needed to be creative, though if she got much bigger he'd have to use more than an arm.

There was a precariously thin belt of land between his tribe's hunting lands and the domain of the kraken, and he it was here they had found the now-digested seal. In the irregularities of the terrain, perhaps they might even find another.

In fact they found three, but they only caught one. Littlepaw might absorb her meals with uncanny speed, but getting used to her new bulk took some time. She had nearly doubled her mass since they first met and was the size of a smallish male nanuq now. A single clumsy footfall alerted the next seal too early, and a brush of her broader flank against an icy cliff scared off the second before she got close enough. K'eyush's attempts to distract the seals could only go so far; the instant they sensed her they bolted in the opposite direction even if he was between them and the water.

The third attempt would have been a failure as well, except that this time he anticipated the seal's lunge. It was a big male fur seal this time, twice as heavy as the harbor seal that was now part of her, and it could brush him aside with ease...but he only needed to delay it for a moment. As it rushed in panic away from Littlepaw he snatched up the biggest rock he could easily heft in both hands and bounced it off the seal's bullet head.

Fat and thick bone blunted the impact so that it was only stunned for a moment, but it was one fatal moment too long. Littlepaw was bulkier and clumsier than she once was, but in a straight line she was still faster than a man. She lunged after the seal and swallowed up its flukes with one snap of her ravenous maw.

It could only squirm and fumble at the rocks with its flippers as it was devoured. A great rippling contraction moved through the fur of Littlepaw's neck, sucking the bulge of the seal's tail down her gullet. There was no awkward thickening of the seal's body, like a man's shoulders, and her jaws slipped forward to allow more of it into her throat. She trapped the seal's head to the ground with a forepaw and pushed her jaws downward; there was nowhere for the seal's fat body to go but into her maw.

It was a more challenging meal than the last, but Littlepaw was determined and hungry. The seal, heavy as three big men, was devoured in a series of gulps until its face stared hopelessly out of the nanuq's jaws.

"I'm sorry, otok," K'eyush said respectfully, and the seal stared back at him for a moment before Littlepaw's jaws closed over its face. Her muzzle lifted, the bulge in her throat pulsed and moved downward, and a last muffled bark made it past her lips as the seal was swallowed alive.

The big seal was more than half as heavy as her newly enlarged body, and it made a ponderous bulge in her middle...briefly. it was absorbed with the same uncanny speed as the last. Before she finished licking her lips the bulge was vanishing and she grew before his eyes as seal flesh and bone and fur became part of her.

When he first met her she was small for a female nanuq, and even the largest of those was dwarfed by a big male. Now, after a sledge-load of fish and two fat seals she was as tall at the shoulder as all but the most massive males. Her paws were perhaps a bit small for her bulk, as was her head, but her bulky body and growing rolls of fat made up for it. In only three weeks she had gone from perhaps three times to ten times his weight.

More of her to love, K'eyush thought, and hugged her around the neck. She nuzzled his neck affectionately.

"What now?" Even her voice had changed. It was deeper now, more a rumble than a growl.

"I have another idea or two. You know more about the kraken than I do, though. In the time you spent on that hill, did you ever see it?"

"Just its tentacles a few times, when it reached out of the water to grab a seal. I never saw its body, but the southern man I talked to did. It pulled his ship over, and of all the crew he was the only survivor. He got a look at it, though, and he said it was like any lesser squid. Many tentacles, and a body with a mouth in the middle of the arms."

"And was that the same southern man you ate?"

She smiled as bears do. "The southern men are not friends to the nanuq. He wouldn't talk until I squashed him beneath a paw, and all the while he blustered and threatened. Any nanuq would have eaten him. At least with me, he was digested quickly rather than slowly."

"I do have an idea, but it may be very dangerous for you. And I need to know one more thing. The two seals were still struggling even as you swallowed them. It looked as though the absorption process didn't start until they were fully in your stomach. What would happen if you ate something so large it couldn't all fit in your belly at once?"

She thought about that. "I'm not sure. I've eaten several things that filled me very full. Even the first thing that I ate after leaving the Mother's camp, the wolf, must have weighed half as much as I. I was very small then, half the size I was when you met me. They all fit in my stomach, though...except perhaps the second seal. I am fairly sure it started to digest into me before I finished swallowing. I suppose I should be thankful the process appears to be painless. I'd feel bad about eating big things alive, otherwise."

She had settled down on her side, half curled around him, and offered her paws to keep his underside off the ice. He snuggled back into her soft fur, ready for a rest after a day of helping her hunt.

"Soon, I think. I think you will be ready soon," he said. "But not quite yet. You still need to be bigger. And there's only one thing around that's big enough for that."

That was when she really began to grow. Until this point she had been constrained by the size of prey she could outrun or overpower, and those were few and spread out across the land. A few fish wouldn't bulk her up significantly, and it wasn't until he provided the motivation (and distraction) that she went after seals. Perhaps her lack of ambition before was due to her not needing to eat; her hunger would increase to a certain tolerable point and then just stop. It was not that she was lazy, he thought. Eventually she planned to do her duty, but without hunger or fear to impel them any man (or bear) would take every opportunity to indulge in sloth.

Now she was three times as large as when he met her, and there wasn't much on land she could not overpower. Barring an orca or the kraken itself, there wasn't much in the sea, either. And he had already thought of an abundant prey source that should just be within her limits.

Offshore but within eyesight was a low, rocky island. His tribe visited it a few times a year to hunt, and not all of them came back. Walrus, after all, are not nearly as timid as seals.

That night when the moon was down and he could see little she carried him on her back as she swam. Her ink-black eyes could enough even under starlight to guide them to the island.

When she padded up to the shore of that little island she weighed just shy of a ton, as the southern people measured it. When she left, two days later, she weighed a hundred.

The first aivik - walrus - was a challenge, and might have hurt her badly had it expected her attack. Knowing the prey as he did, he had her bury herself in a snowdrift and hurled slush balls at a solitary young bull until it woke, blinked bewhiskeredly at him in confusion, and finally wormed its way toward him to teach him a lesson.

Instead the walrus learned its last lesson, namely that a fool might be bait to lure in an even more foolish creature. As it passed the snowbank Littlepaw burst forth, caught its neck between her forepaws, and rammed her maw down over its blunt wrinkly head before it could raise its tusks.

Each creature he had seen her eat had been larger not only in raw size but in proportion to herself. The harbor seal had been half her weight, the fur seal two-thirds of it. This walrus was at least as massive as she was, but as with the smaller prey she had caught it by surprise and begun swallowing before it could defend itself. It could do little more than thrust its flippers at her in protest as she worked her distended jaws over its head and neck. The tusks that could do so much damage disappeared down her gullet with the rest, their tips slipping past her black lips and out of sight.

There was little he could do to help, though the walrus put up a mighty struggle; a single flip of its tail could crush him against the rocks. He could only cheer her on as bit by bit she swallowed it up. Despite its humorously rotund appearance the walrus was heavy with muscle. It was a predator, after all, albeit a fish-eater, and weak predators do not last long. It thrashed back and forth, trying its best to pull itself free from her jaws, for it knew exactly what was happening and where it would end up if it surrendered.

It faced the same problem the previous seals had, though: it was streamlined, shaped perfectly to be swallowed, and it had no claws to dig into the ice to stop the advance of her paws. Littlepaw -- how ironic that name would seem, soon -- pushed it forward until its tailflukes were trapped against a boulder, and then it was just a question of whether her maw could gape wide enough to take it all in. As it thrashed and wriggled her jaws would pause, and she would be pushed back, but never did she disgorge even an inch of its leathery hide. Eventually it would tire, and in the trembling moments it took to rest the great muscles in her throat would contract and force it that much closer to her stomach. For the first time he saw her dense fur so stretched the black skin beneath appeared.

And for the first time he saw proof that she need not entirely swallow prey for her curious digestive process to begin. So massive was her meal that a man's height of walrus tail hung from her jaws even as the great bulge of its head and neck descended into her gut. The wrinkled, fingery tail flukes suddenly stood out straight, shivering, then fell down limp. Even as she tossed her muzzle upward, bolting down the rest a foot at time, she was already growing.

"That answers that question," K'eyush said as the walrus's fingery flukes slipped into her jaws and down her throat. As fast as the great blubbery tusker arrived in her stomach it was absorbed, converted into more of her own furry body. For the first time she even belched, though it was a modest sound. Even the air exhaled from the luckless walrus' lungs must be absorbed.

She stretched, yawning to re-seat her jaws on their hinges. It had astonished the southern man, she'd mentioned in passing, when she told him she would swallow him whole. Such a thing was impossible, he'd said. He had learned the hard way that he was wrong, and like the seals and the walrus and the wolf that preceded him he was part of her now.

"Indeed," she rumbled, and he marveled at how quickly the walrus was absorbed. She was taller now at the shoulder than he was to the top of his head. When next the made love - soon, he hoped - he would have to use both arms or even his legs to satisfy her.

"That was not the only walrus on this island," he said with a smile, and she gave him a sharp-toothed grin in return. "And you are big enough to not need to surprise them any more."

So began a feeding frenzy that stunned him, though it was he who arranged it. Littlepaw rushed from the rocks and leapt on a second walrus, overpowering and gulping it down far more easily than the last. She did get one long scratch on her neck, but that healed to a red patch on her fur as her latest meal was incorporated into her body. Then a third walrus, and finally she was large and strong enough to simply rush into the mass of them by the seashore, where the great scarred bull watched over his harem.

It was the presence of the harem that brought in the young, opportunistic males she had eaten earlier. They lurked at the edges of the dominant bull's territory, hoping to rush in and complete a mating when he was otherwise occupied. Now the bull shared his lesser rival's fate; five tons of hungry white death snapped him up and swallowed him down, and then seven tons of nanuq was after the females of his harem.

She did not get them all, but she was now so massive that a mere paw could trap one to the rocks, and some were crushed by the others as they sought to escape. With four more down her throat she trapped the last against the cliff. The sea churned behind her as a dozen escapees swam to safety. For a the others, there was no such escape.

All too soon thereafter he watched the last set of tailflukes slide into her jaws. The creature before him now dwarfed the one he had met and loved only a few weeks. Great rolls of fur-covered fat swayed pendulously as she stepped forward to nuzzle him. There had been a time when she had to lift her head to do that; now she had to lower it.

Even she needed to rest after a banquet like this one, and no mere snow cave would hold her now. Twenty tons of bear slept curled up on the beach, insulated by thick fat and fur dense as summer grass. Stretched out on top, half sunk into her pelt lay K'eyush, for so massive had his love grown that she might crush him in her sleep if even one limb happened to rest atop him for too long.

Over the next few days she hunted down and devoured the last few walrus who had not learned of the horror now in their midst. So enormous was she now that to her they were no greater or more threatening than the fish he had fed into her muzzle on their second meeting. In the end there was nothing left on the island worthy of her attention. They discussed swimming to another of the walrus basking spots, but at close to fifty tons he was sure she was large enough now for what he had in mind. She was more than three times as tall at the shoulder as he was to the top of his head, and though her paws and head were comically undersized compared to her massive body, still she could gulp even the largest walrus with ease.

As they swam back to the mainland of Alyeska to enact the climax of his plan, there was one last tremendous bit of luck. Halfway between the island and the shore a gray whale broached not more than a paw's length from her nose.

What that whale must have thought she was they never knew. Surely it would not have approached so close to a killer whale. Perhaps it perceived her shape and simply assumed she was a normal nanuq. It must have realized at once what she really was when its little eye broke the surface and saw the white fur looming like a hill, but it was already too close.

K'eyush yelled as Littlepaw -- how ironic that name was now! -- sank her claws into the whale's thick hide and dragged it toward the shore. Astonished at the assault, the confused whale put up little resistance before her paws could once again reach the bottom, and by the time it began to thrash its flukes her jaws were already around its snout.

This time he was atop her as she fed. For all his planning he'd never thought to feed her a whale, but he felt her flesh expand beneath him as her forepaws stuffed the enormous sea mammal into her gullet. It must be at least as heavy as she was, even after her many meals of walrus, but she did not hesitate. A whale was even less well equipped to resist her hunger than a walrus, and it was merely a question of whether he jaws could gape wide enough. As with everything else she had tested them against, the whale did not prove too large for her gullet.

By the time she had swallowed all but the tail-flukes she had climbed from the water like an iceberg wind-driven onto the shore. He stood a little way away, clutching a fish her wave had driven onto the beach, and watched the flukes bend into her jaws and disappear. Twice as massive now as even when she left the walrus's island, she lowered her head and politely took what he would once have called a large fish from his arms. Down inside her the whale heaved one last time as it was absorbed, bulging out her mighty flank.

"And now," she rumbled, far greater now in bulk than even her Great Mother, "To business."

It had all led to this moment, and it merely remained to see if it would work. He rode on her back, across land rather than sea this time. In the distance he saw one of his fellow villagers stand bolt upright at the sight of a colossal bear striding the land. Whoever it was turned and ran from his fishing spot toward the sleeping tents. If he survived, he would explain how it all happened; if he and his love lost their lives in what they were about to attempt it would just be another tale told around the cookfires.

Soon enough they were back at the spit of land that marked the divide between the village's hunting grounds and that where they did not dare go.

Once again, perhaps (he hoped) for the last time, he must serve as bait. He had never seen the kraken, and did not know how it hunted. But he knew it was immense, and that its body was seldom seen. It could not hunt by sight, then, not when hunting land-dwelling prey. It must hear them. But not through the air, where the sound of crashing waves would drown out all but the loudest cries. It must feel their footsteps through the ground and through the water.

So, sure in his heart that he was right and equally sure that his lover would come to his aid should he be attacked, he went down to the shore and jumped up and down on the sand. An hour later, with still no sign of the thing, he picked up a rock much like the one he'd used to stun a now-absorbed fur seal and began slamming it against a boulder.

Littlepaw's roar warned him, but already he had seen the white foam as something huge rushed toward the shore. He had not been so foolish as to take his eyes off the water, but even so he would never have escaped if he were alone. A column of suckered flesh as thick as a child was tall came whipping up out of the surf to feel around on the beach, and it knew close enough where he was that when it lashed sideways it would have crushed him against the rocks...if Littlepaw had not there to stop it.

She caught it in her jaws and anchored her mighty paws among the boulders, sure that it would try to drag her into the waves. K'eyush ran, but not far; if she lost this fight, he would die with her. The tentacle tensed and quivered as the beast in the water tried to pull her in. Just as they had planned it failed, and more of the suckered limbs came writhing out of the water to seize this new, massive prey.

Such was the plan of the sea-beast, but it was their plan, too. By the time the additional arms reached Littlepaw she had gotten her jaws around the first and swallowed it down. It was thick as a fat walrus, but she well knew that even a walrus was just a snack to her now. Every foot of it that reached her stomach was near-instantly absorbed. Tons of rubbery muscle and suckers alike were consumed, adding to her already vast bulk, and when she caught and swallowed the second and third tentacle as well the sea turned to foam. The thing in the water, suddenly alarmed as it felt something odd and alarming happen to its extremities, tried to withdraw its limbs and escape, or at least pull her into the sea where it would have the advantage.

It was still stronger than Littlepaw, but she knew she must not lose her grip if she wanted to live. She engulfed three increasingly thick tentacles until they stretched bowstring-taut and then held her ground. Her bulk had doubled yet again from the flesh consumed in this one meal, and the struggle was now an even one.

The one eventuality they could not account for was whether the kraken could sever its own limbs. The entire plan would be for naught if the thick tentacles snapped; they would be reduced to guarding the beach or wandering the seashore in hopes she might get her teeth into it again.

But it could not, or it would not, and for hours the two fought. From morning until sunset Littlepaw struggled and sweated as he cheered her on. Twice it nearly managed to drag her into the waves, for even her colossal strength must yield to exhaustion. The kraken tired too, though, and however its body worked the loss of the limbs she had already digested did it no favors. As the sun touched the horizon a dozen more tentacles came writhing up out of the sea.

Even Littlepaw's mammoth form was cocooned in rubbery flesh, and K'eyush, despite his determination to live and die with her, had to run. He could not contribute to the fight in any way and the ink-dark nanuq eyes peering from the mass of tentacles pled with him to save himself. He could only scramble to safety and pray to his ancestors that she would prove the stronger.

But the kraken had made a mistake. Unaccustomed to challenge it had underestimated Littlepaw, and when she proved a genuine thread it had struggled to escape rather than launch an attack. If it had tried this attack earlier it most likely would have won, but by the time the tentacles came crawling out of the ocean even the great sea beast was exhausted. They wrapped her up, right enough, but the few limbs left in the water were not enough anchor to drag her to her doom and Littlepaw herself had a ready supply of food with which to replenish her energies.

That source was the kraken itself, and despite its best efforts to confine her limbs her mighty forepaws stuffed one tentacle after another down her gullet. The last few lashed her tough pelt raw, but it did not stop her from swallowing them as well.

The end was near and the kraken must have sensed it, for finally its vast body appeared on the surface. It was a great octopus, with both long and short tentacles. Most of its long ones were down Littlepaw's throat now, or were absorbed into her ever-expanding body. It only had a few of its lesser tentacles, to anchor itself to the sea bed. A great beak appeared among the arms, snapping in anticipation of the fight. K'eyush could have stood upright in the open beak, as he could have in Littlepaw's now-enormous maw; to either great beast he would be just a morsel.

Littlepaw could see the beak too, and though she continued to swallow down the tentacles, and thus draw the body closer, she did not want to confront that sharp-edged threat. As the kraken's body was drawn close enough for the small tentacles to at last join the fight she freed one massive forepaw and brought it down on the squid-body. K'eyush's ears rang with the impact and water sprayed from beneath the kraken. Again and again the paw fell, as lesser tentacles wrapped around Littlepaw and the kraken tried to drag her into a last fatal embrace. Struggling and exhausted, the colossal bear struck one more time. This time the paw landed square in the center of the thing's body, and for a moment the tentacles went limp. The continuing corrosion it experienced as its tentacles were absorbed by Littlepaw's body was too much. If she was exhausted and in in pain, the sea beast was weary to the point of collapse.

Panting through a mouth stuffed with rubbery meat, the great bear reached out her paws. She had watched K'eyush lift and throw rocks, and it was not beyond her dexterity to stuff a boulder into the wide-open beak. The kraken's tentacles began to lash and grip her once again as it recovered from the blow, but with the threat of the beak removed the great bear was ready to end things. As the small tentacles plucked at her pelt her mighty jaws creaked wide once again, this time for the kraken's central body.

It was her largest meal ever, and it was only possible because as fast as she swallowed her prey she grew. She was thrice the size now she'd been before the first tentacle came reaching for her, and her jaws proved able to encompass a meal she could never have managed even this morning. Slowly she swallowed it down, working her maw over the tough rubbery flesh. When its eyes vanished beneath her stretched black lips K'eyush cheered, but it was not over yet. Though nearly swallowed, its tentacles could still grip her throat and tongue. It took a full hour of additional struggle before the thing was reduced to an enormous bulge in her neck and a few last tentacles writhing from her jaws.

The sun was long set and the stars were out when the mammoth conflict finally ended. The exhausted bear stretched out her neck, and one last contraction pulsed through the distended muscles of her neck. Reluctantly, struggling to the last, the bulky body of the kraken slid down her throat. He watched the now familiar bulge swell out of her flanks. Only twice before had he seen the black skin show through the fur there, but as with the first walrus and the whale, it did not last long. Mighty as the kraken was, it could not resist her unique ability to digest and absorb prey as fast as it reached her stomach. The last few tentacles twitched from her maw and went limp, just as the walrus's tail-fingers had a few days before. A last toss of her muzzle and the little tentacles joined their owner in death.

Littlepaw slumped down atop the rocks, panting. Though absorbing prey replenished her energies, she had never been in such a protracted battle before. For a terrible moment K'eyush thought her great heart had given out under the strain, and he rushed forward to hug her muzzle. She was massive now; he could scarcely get his arms around her nose, much less her snout. If she were any larger the titanic breaths she sucked in might draw him into her nostrils like a fly. He realized that she was not dead, merely recovering.

It had not occurred to him until now that their time as lovers must be over. Even if he crawled entirely into her sex he could not hope to satisfy her. No creature that walked or swam could love her now, save perhaps if she captured a good-sized whale, and even then she must use its entire body to please herself. That would not be any joy for the whale, but perhaps it would appreciate what other opening it might be entering.

Her eyes opened at last, and she smiled a teeth-hidden smile down at the little man between her forepaws. "And so I accomplish my goal," she rumbled in a voice so deep and powerful it made his chest shudder. Very carefully she licked the top of his head. "I could never have done it without you, my little love."

He need not be gentle, and he hugged her nose with all his might. "What will you do now, Littlepaw? Where will you go?"

"Where I go, you will go with me, bear-cub," she rumbled, and lowered her head so he could climb up her muzzle until he sat between her ears. "I will not return to my people; we have little in common now. Why don't we see what the rest of the world has to offer us?"

A group of Inuit from his village were gathered on the hill, filling the snow cave where he had met his love. He saw them draw back as Littlepaw climbed back to her feet; after her meal of kraken she was unthinkably massive. From nose to rump she was three hundred feet long, and half that at the shoulder; each pawfall communicated a quarter of her thousand tons to the ground, and the beach and half-frozen muskeg quivered like jelly. Each paw was thirty feet wide, and despite her colossal bulk she did not sink into the sand. Her enormous paws spread her weight too thinly for that.

K'eyush saw his mother and brother in the crowd on the hill and waved. A few of the Inuit, including his brother, waved back. He heard a cheer as his love's long strides carried him out of earshot. He doubted he would see any of them again, but that was fine. He was exactly where he wanted to be.

His clan watched him go, knowing what they were seeing. Each would remember it to the end of their years, and pass it on to their children. They knew what they had witnessed: the birth of a legend.