Great Bear Lake (7 page)

“There's something up ahead!” Ujurak called. He pushed past Toklo and broke into a trot.

Lusa bounded after him and made out a long, dark shape stretching from the far bank. When she caught up to Ujurak she saw that it was an old fallen tree. The branches and leaves had been washed away, and even the bark was mostly stripped off. Only the bare silvery trunk remained, the root end resting on the bank and the narrower end, where branches had grown, on the pebbles.

“See?” Toklo said, joining them. “I knew we wouldn't have to swim.”

Lusa didn't reply. She studied the tree carefully; it made a very narrow bridge across the channel, and she thought they might have trouble keeping their balance. She would much rather swim, but she didn't want to make Toklo angry again. He obviously wasn't going to get back into the river. Although the tree trunk might not give him a choice if it tipped him off….

“I'll go first,” she offered, scrambling up to dig her claws into the trunk. She figured that since she was the smallest
and lightest, it made sense for her to test the bridge.

Dark green moss grew on the trunk, making the barkless surface slippery.
Are you there, bear spirit?
she asked silently, resting her front paw questioningly against the tree. She didn't know what happened to bear spirits whose trees fell or were cut down. Perhaps that was when they went to dance in the sky.
If you're still here, please help us,
she begged.

Carefully setting one paw in front of another she headed out across the channel. The trunk bounced under her weight, scaring her at first.
But what's going to happen, bee-brain? If you fall in, you can swim!

Heartened by that thought, she moved faster, and soon got close enough to leap down onto the grassy bank at the far side.

“Come on!” she called to the others. “You'll be fine!”

Ujurak was already climbing onto the trunk, squeezing through the few remaining root stubs. He crossed with quick, neat pawsteps, apparently unworried by the movement of the tree beneath his paws.

He let out a sigh of relief as he joined Lusa on the bank. “Now we can find the right path again!”

Lusa watched Toklo as he clambered onto the trunk and began to make his way unsteadily across. On the island, the end of the trunk sank more deeply into the stones, making a rough grinding sound. Under his heavier weight the trunk bounced harder; Toklo had to drive his claws into the wood at every pawstep to stop himself from toppling off. When he was halfway across, Lusa heard an
ominous creaking, as if the trunk was about to break.

Suddenly the tree lurched to one side. Toklo toppled sideways; his hind legs dangled over the surface of the water while he clung on with his forelegs wrapped around the trunk.

“Hang on, Toklo!” Lusa leaped back onto the trunk and began making her way along the wildly bouncing tree.

Toklo scrabbled with his hindpaws, but he couldn't get a grip on the slippery wood. Lusa reached him, sank her teeth into his scruff and hauled upward, digging her claws into the trunk. For a few terrified heartbeats she thought his weight would pull her into the river, but at last he managed to get one hindpaw, then the other, up onto the trunk.

“Okay!” he gasped. “Give me some room.”

Lusa let go his scruff. She could see real fear in Toklo's eyes, and wondered why he was so terrified of deep water. It was such a strange thing for grizzlies to be afraid of. Unable to turn around on the narrow trunk, she edged backward and Toklo followed her, breathing hard. Lusa kept her gaze locked with his, as if she could hold him steady and draw him to safety with her eyes. The creaking sound came again, louder now, and she braced herself for the trunk to crack and pitch them both into the river.

“Lusa, you've made it. You can jump down now.” Ujurak's voice came from behind her.

Lusa looked down to see the grassy bank beneath her. She leaped off beside Ujurak, stumbling because she had to jump backward. Toklo, still over the water, tottered again and let
out a grunt of fear. Ujurak sprang up beside him and steadied him with his shoulder.

The tree trunk rolled underneath them and started to crash down into the river. Water surged up; Ujurak jumped to safety but Toklo slipped, clinging to the crumbling edge of the bank while his hindquarters dangled into the stream.

“I can't hold on!” he yelped.

Lusa reached over and fastened her teeth in the thick fur on his shoulder. Ujurak grabbed him on the other side and they heaved together. Scrabbling with his hindpaws, Toklo pushed himself upward and collapsed ungracefully on the bank.

Lusa padded a few pawsteps up the bank and looked around. She was standing on a narrow strip of grass on the edge of a stone path; as she watched, a red firebeast roared by, filling the air with its noise and harsh smell. The bright glare of its eyes flashed across Lusa and was gone. Beyond the stone path, a grassy bank led up into more trees.

“Which way now?” she asked Ujurak. She felt exhausted; every muscle in her body ached and her belly was bawling with hunger. But she knew that they couldn't stay here, so close to the firebeasts.

Ujurak's eyes were dark and desolate, and he did not reply.

Anxiety clawed at Lusa's belly. “What's the matter?”

“Why were there no fish in the river?” Ujurak whimpered. “Where have they gone?”

Relief surged through Toklo as he
dragged himself away from the river and onto a narrow strip of grass alongside a BlackPath. Beyond the BlackPath, a tree-covered slope led steeply upward. A few bearlengths farther away from the river, Ujurak and Lusa were waiting for him, their fur buffeted by the wind of the flat-faces' firebeasts as they roared past.

Instead of joining them, Toklo shook earth from his pelt, then flopped down again, panting, on the grass. He had hated crossing the hungry river on the fallen tree trunk, but he hated swimming even more. Ujurak liked it, but Ujurak was strange in a lot of ways, and as for Lusa…what did she know about being a brown bear? Toklo was furious that Lusa was better at swimming than he was, and more furious still that she had helped him, as if he were a feeble cub who couldn't manage on his own. He wouldn't let her know how scared he had been.

Oka had told him that the spirits of dead bears drifted down the river to a faraway land where they could be forgotten by living bears. But he still remembered his mother and Tobi,
so that meant their spirits must still be in the river. Toklo just wanted to forget them, forget what had happened—but how could he, when Lusa kept shoving them in his face?

The thought of plunging into the river with the spirits of his dead mother and brother had filled him with horror. Perhaps they were angry with him because they had died while he was still alive. And when Lusa and Ujurak forced him to swim, he had felt Oka's and Tobi's dead claws hooking into his fur, trying to pull him down to the bottom of the river until the water gushed into his jaws and everything went black….

“Are you okay?” Lusa asked, jolting him back to the present. The concern in her dark eyes reminded Toklo all over again of how scared he had been as the river closed over his head.

“Of course I am,” he growled. “At least, I will be when we find some food. I've almost forgotten what meat tastes like.”

“So have I.” Lusa sighed. “I guess I could find some berries in the forest.”

“Berries aren't proper food for a bear,” Toklo retorted. “You can eat them if you like, but I want something a lot more satisfying.” His jaws watered as he remembered the taste of salmon; what was the good of a river if there weren't any fish in it?

Ujurak gazed longingly downstream. Toklo could see that he just wanted to move on.

“We can't travel if we don't eat,” he told the smaller cub. He padded away from the others, his muzzle raised to sniff out prey. Spotting some white smears along the side of the BlackPath, he added, “Look, that's salt. We should lick it up.
It won't fill us, but it's better than nothing.”

“Salt?” Lusa remembered the flat-faces hanging up a block of the white stuff for the bears in the Bear Bowl to lick. “Did the flat-faces put it here for us?”

“They put it here, but not for us bears, that's for sure. And don't ask
why
,” Toklo snapped as Lusa opened her jaws to speak again. “I don't
know
why flat-faces do what they do. They're crazy—even crazier than black bears.”

To his relief, Lusa kept quiet as all three bears stepped warily out onto the BlackPath to lick up the patches of salt. Toklo sniffed in disgust as his tongue swiped over it; the white stuff was cold and dirty—so dirty that in some places he could hardly distinguish it from the BlackPath.
But it's better than nothing
.

He remembered the day Oka had found salt like this, and told him and Tobi that it was good to eat. For once Tobi hadn't complained, and they had all stayed together, eating companionably, until—

“Run!” Ujurak squealed.

Toklo looked up to see a huge blue firebeast bearing down on him. Terror pounded through him; he leaped away and bounded across the BlackPath to the safety of the other side. The firebeast roared past with a high-pitched howling; Toklo didn't dare move until the sound had died away into the distance.

Looking around, he spotted Ujurak still on the other side of the BlackPath, next to the river. “Are you okay?” he called.

“Fine,” Ujurak replied, huffing out his breath.

Toklo's belly lurched with relief when he realized that the younger cub wasn't hurt. Lusa had climbed the wooded bank beside the BlackPath and was clinging to a low branch on the nearest tree. She scrambled down as the noise of the firebeast dwindled away, and trotted back to the bank to stand beside Toklo.

“That was close!” she panted. “Was the firebeast hunting us?”

“No,” Toklo growled. “But it would have flattened us if we got in its way. They don't care.”

Ujurak set a paw on the BlackPath, about to cross, when Toklo heard the rumble of another approaching firebeast. “Keep back!” he barked. Ujurak jumped backward, his eyes full of alarm as the creature roared past.

Toklo waited until the sound had died away. “Okay, come now,” he told Ujurak. “It's safe, but run fast.”

Ujurak bounded quickly across the BlackPath. “Thanks, Toklo,” he said. There was a look of disgust on his face, and he kept passing his tongue over his lips as if he could taste something bad. “Those things stink!”

“Which way should we go now?” Lusa asked. “Up here?” She took a couple of paces up the bank.

Ujurak stood still and closed his eyes.

“Here we go again,” Toklo sighed, glancing back at the blue-gray ridge of mountains in the distance, then at the river curling away through woods and hills.

Ujurak opened his eyes. “We must follow the direction of the river,” he told them, and padded away.

Toklo huffed and set off after him with Lusa at his side.

Gradually the steep bank beside the BlackPath sank into a gentle slope and then to flat ground covered in trees and bushes. As they padded along, Toklo began to hear something other than the wind in the trees and the roar of firebeasts; his ears pricked as he recognized the sound of flat-face voices.

“Flat-faces!” Lusa exclaimed at the same moment.

“Stay back,” Toklo warned her, not sure if she would expect these flat-faces to feed her like the ones in the Bear Bowl. “They won't be friendly to bears.”

“They might be,” Lusa objected. “Okay, okay,” she went on, before Toklo could tell her what a squirrel-brained idea that was. “I wasn't going to let them see me anyway. They might catch me and take me back to the Bear Bowl.”

As they drew closer to the flat-faces the strange yelping voices got louder. A delicious scent trickled into Toklo's nostrils. He had never smelled anything quite like it before, but he knew what it was. Food!

Following the scent, he pushed his way into the bushes until he came to the edge of a clearing, and peered out through the branches. Lusa and Ujurak crowded up behind him; Lusa wriggled up to his side so that she could see clearly.

Four flat-faces were in the clearing: two full-grown adults and two cubs. Just beyond them was a kind of den made out of green pelts, and they were all crouched around a squat flat-face thing made out of the same shiny silver stuff as the firebeasts; it gave out a glow of heat.

Lusa looked closely at each of the flat-faces. “I don't
recognize them,” she said at last. “I don't think they came to see me when I was in the Bear Bowl.”

The mother flat-face lifted a chunk of hot meat out of the object in the middle, and handed pieces to her two cubs. That was what had smelled so good. The older cub took an enormous bite. Toklo's belly rumbled. He scanned the clearing for danger. He couldn't see any metal sticks like the ones that had wounded Ujurak, but they could be hidden. Then he noticed that the smaller flat-face cub had wandered off into the bushes, his food held lightly in his pale pink paw.

Setting his paws down carefully, Toklo began to follow, skirting the clearing until he reached the place where it had entered the bushes. Lusa and Ujurak padded after him, a little way behind. The scent of the food drew Toklo closer, until he spotted the cub squatting down in the shelter of a clump of ferns, staring at a butterfly perched on a grass stem in front of him.

Hunger blurred Toklo's vision until all he could focus on was the chunk of meat in the flat-face cub's paw. He braced himself, ready to pounce, imagining his jaws closing around the delicious-smelling food. In just one heartbeat, the meat would be in his mouth….

Suddenly something barreled into his side, knocking him over with a force that drove the breath out of his body. He let out a yelp as he landed among thorns. Scrambling back to his paws, he saw Ujurak standing in front of him, his brown eyes furious.

“That isn't the way to get food,” the cub barked.

At the same moment a sharp call came from one of the full-grown flat-faces in the clearing. The flat-face cub leaped up and ran off, taking the precious food with him.

Toklo took a step forward until he loomed over Ujurak, a low growl coming from deep in his throat. “What do you think you're doing?”

Ujurak stared back at him without flinching. “What you were doing is wrong. There'll be other food.”

“But I'm hungry
now
,” Toklo complained. “I nearly had it! We have to eat!”

“I know. But bears must not harm flat-faces.”

“Why not? We have to survive somehow,” Toklo insisted. He caught a glimpse of Lusa peering nervously around a bush. “It's up to me to make sure of it. Or do you want to see how well you can get on without me?”

“No, Toklo, I know we need you,” Ujurak said. “But that doesn't change anything.”

“I don't see why.” Toklo lifted his muzzle and sniffed the air. He could still smell the flat-face food and, beneath it, another scent. It was warm and milky—the scent of the flat-face cub. Toklo's belly rumbled. “We could hunt the little flat-faces.”

Ujurak stepped closer to Toklo, his eyes fierce. “Flat-faces are not prey,” he growled.

Toklo reared up on his hind legs. “Who says?”

“Do you think we can fight against the deathsticks, Toklo?”

Toklo remembered the crack of the deathsticks and the blood that blossomed out of Ujurak's shoulder. He dropped to
all four paws again, feeling as if the air had been knocked out of him. He stared at Ujurak. “There's nothing more important than survival,” he said. “If you haven't learned that, then you're not a real bear.”

“I
am
,” Ujurak growled. “And that's why I'll only hunt real bear prey.”

“And what would you know about that?” Toklo snarled. “You wander around with your head in the clouds, dreaming about stars and spirits. But clouds won't fill our bellies. So don't tell me what to do.”

Toklo turned his back, then stomped off a few bearlengths into the trees. He heard rustling behind him and the sound of Lusa and Ujurak whispering together. After a moment, Lusa said pleadingly, “Toklo, the flat-faces have gone.”

Toklo turned to see the other cubs behind him, gazing at him with pleading eyes. Without speaking, he swung around and headed back toward the BlackPath and the river. Lusa and Ujurak caught up to him, and all three walked on together in awkward silence.

The daylight was fading at last. The sun was dipping behind the trees. Clouds of gnats hovered in the air and around the cubs' heads; Toklo twitched his ears as he padded through them. His paws felt ready to fall off with tiredness; the days went on forever now, and the time for rest at night was so short. Would the days keep getting longer and longer?
What happens when there's no night anymore?
he wondered. Would they have to learn to stay awake all the time?

Ujurak, who was in the lead, halted in a clump of trees
growing beside the BlackPath. “This might be a good place to spend the night,” he suggested.

Toklo paused at the edge of the trees and sniffed the air. There was no scent of flat-faces, apart from the harsh tang of the firebeasts that still passed by a few bearlengths away. There was no scent of other bears, either.

“It's as good as anywhere,” he agreed gruffly.

Ujurak gave him an awkward nod, and Lusa scurried up the nearest tree and disappeared among the branches.

Toklo gazed longingly at an inviting hollow among the roots of the tree. A little way away he could hear Ujurak making himself a nest. He was dizzy with weariness, but he knew he couldn't sleep yet. If they didn't eat, they would soon be too weak to go on traveling.

Turning his back on the BlackPath, Toklo padded into the forest. Red light from the setting sun washed over the ground, and the trees cast long black shadows across his path. Sniffing deeply, he picked up the scent of prey and spotted a squirrel scuffling about among the roots of a tree. With a growl of triumph Toklo hurled himself at it and batted it over the head with one huge paw. He swallowed the small body in a few famished gulps. For a few heartbeats he stood still to enjoy the easing of his hunger pangs. Then guilt crept up on him, like ants burrowing into his pelt. What about the others, who had gone to sleep hungry? Did he have to hunt for them, too? Was it really right for bears to journey together? They were supposed to live alone, or at least stick to their own kind. Maybe the journey to find the place where the spirits danced
was meant for just Ujurak.