Great Bear Lake (2 page)

Toklo shifted restlessly beside Ujurak. The
cub was asleep now, letting out gentle snores that fluttered a dead leaf close to his nose. But Toklo's belly churned as if he had eaten rotfood, and he couldn't sleep.

It was all the fault of that black bear!
I don't want her traveling with us
. Envy tore at him like a claw.
Ujurak is
my
friend! Why does she have to come and spoil everything?
He drew his lips back in the beginnings of a growl. If Ujurak and Lusa liked each other so much, they could travel by themselves. He could be free again to take care of himself.

Toklo blew out a gusty sigh. It wasn't as easy as that. Ujurak, curled up in a splash of moonlight, looked small and defenseless; Toklo knew the cub was crazy enough to run into danger without a second thought, let alone what could happen if he turned into the wrong sort of animal. If he continued alone with Lusa, they wouldn't survive more than a couple of sunrises. He needed someone stronger to help him.

Why does it have to be
me? Toklo shifted again, as if the
question was a hard pinecone digging into him.
It doesn't,
said a tiny voice inside him. If he stayed with Ujurak, it would be his decision, no one else's. Toklo looked at Ujurak again. A leaf had drifted down to lie on his shoulder, casting a tiny shadow on his moonlit fur. Toklo remembered another cub covered with leaves—and dirt and sticks as well. His breathing had been soft as moonlight before it faded away, leaving a cold, empty shape beside Toklo.

“I'm sorry, Tobi,” Toklo whispered. He had watched his brother die, and left him where their mother buried him. He had abandoned one cub that had needed him; he wasn't going to let that happen again.

But there was still the problem of Lusa. Peering up into the tree, Toklo could just make out the black cub's shape, balanced in a crook between two branches with her nose tucked under her paws. Black bears were weak; everyone knew that. They were always scurrying up trees because they were too scared to sleep on the ground. Lusa was as soft as any of them—softer, probably, because she had let flat-faces take care of her.

Uneasiness stirred in Toklo's mind. Lusa had come all the way from her Bear Bowl to find him; that had taken courage, he admitted grudgingly.
And she knew my mother.

When he looked at Lusa, Toklo sensed the huge shadow of Oka looming over her. He couldn't see it, but he knew it was there, like the dark part of the moon.
Why did she abandon me? Why couldn't she look after me, like she looked after Tobi?
Toklo dug his claws into the ground. He didn't want to think about
Oka. If Lusa hadn't come, he would have been able to forget all about her.

I wish she would go away and leave us in peace! And I'm not going to listen to her stupid message!

Toklo closed his eyes and scuffled deeper into the dried leaves. But it was a long time before sleep came.

 

Toklo heaved himself out of the hollow and shook leaves and pine needles out of his fur. Taking a deep breath, he reveled in all the different scents of the forest: leaves, damp earth, a raccoon that had shuffled past during the night. The air was moist, but the threat of rain had passed, and long claws of sunlight pierced the leaves above his head.

“It's a great day for traveling!” Ujurak scrambled out from the shelter of the roots to stand beside Toklo. “Let's go!”

For a heartbeat Toklo hoped that Ujurak had forgotten about Lusa. They could sneak off and leave her asleep in the tree. He huffed in disappointment when Ujurak turned back, rearing up to rest his front paws on the tree trunk.

“Lusa! Hey, Lusa, wake up!”

“Wha…?” The black cub raised her head and peered sleepily at the ground. Her gaze brightened when she spotted Ujurak. “Is it time to go?”

She slithered down the tree and stood beside Ujurak. For a fleeting moment Toklo wished that he could climb as skillfully as Lusa, but he pushed the thought away. Brown bears were strong; they didn't
need
to climb trees.

“Come on,” he growled.

He led the way through the forest, padding along softly as he sniffed the air in the hope of prey. The scents of living things—green, furred, and glossy, like berries—flowed around him, drawn up from the ground or wafting down from the trees. He pricked his ears, but the sounds of any small scufflings were drowned out by Ujurak and Lusa bumbling along behind him.

“Quiet!”
he snapped, glancing over one shoulder.

A flicker of movement in the corner of his eye alerted him; he swung around to spot a ground squirrel streaking across an open patch of grass. Toklo let out a snarl and took off after it. His outstretched claws brushed its tail just as the squirrel dived into its burrow. Roaring, Toklo dug into the ground with his claws. Soil and scraps of grass flew up around him and stung his eyes.

Then Toklo felt his claws sink into flesh. He snapped the squirrel's neck with a twist of one paw, and dragged it out of the earth. He dropped the limp body at Ujurak's paws. “Let's eat,” he said.

As he sank his teeth into the warm body he noticed that Lusa was standing a bearlength away, looking longingly at the food but not moving to take any.

“Come on,” Toklo huffed. “You can share.”

“Thank you!” Lusa trotted up and crouched down beside Ujurak, tearing off a mouthful of the prey.

With three of them sharing the squirrel, no bear had quite enough.
But that doesn't matter,
Toklo thought.
I can find more
. He licked the warm blood from his snout and padded away
to the shade of a tree, leaving his companions to finish the meal he had provided. He sat contented, sniffing the air. He could trace the musky smell of fox on the bark of the tree. It was stale—the fox would be far away by now. He lifted his snout and sniffed deeper, drawing a new and richer scent into the back of his mouth. It was deer: A deer had passed this way less than a sunrise ago. Toklo stood up, drawing in the scent of deer, letting it show him the way to go. He was proud of the senses that told him where to find food or water, or where there might be danger from flat-faces or other bears. Every bend in the way, every hilltop or valley was filled with meaning, like a voice whispering to him without words. Toklo dipped his shoulders.

“Time to move,” he said.

“Follow me,” Ujurak called. He turned off the trail and bounded up a steep slope, away from the scent of deer.

“Ujurak!” Toklo called. “You're going the wrong way!”

But the little brown cub continued up the slope, kicking up stones and mud behind him.

Toklo looked at Lusa. “Come on!” He didn't want her to think that he disagreed with Ujurak about which way they should go. She needed to understand that he and Ujurak were on the same journey—
their
journey, not Lusa's—and she was just tagging along. Besides, there'd be other deer to catch.

He ran after Ujurak, with Lusa following a short distance behind. As they climbed, the trees gradually gave way to bushes and scrub, and then to a bare mountain slope of broken rocks. Thin grass and an occasional twisted shrub grew
in the cracks between the rocks. A stiff breeze drove clouds across the sky; the rocks cast long shadows as the sun dipped toward the horizon.

“Wait for me!” Lusa called.

Ujurak stopped at the top of the slope. He was gazing ahead with the wind buffeting his fur. Toklo climbed up beside him. In front of him, he could see mountain after mountain, like ripples of long grass stretching away into the misty distance. Their rocky peaks formed an unbroken ridge high in the sky. On either side, bare slopes fell away to sunlit lowlands, the shadows of clouds scudding across green woods and fields.

There was a scuffling sound and a patter of small stones as Lusa scrambled up to join them. “We can see the whole world!” she gasped.

She was gazing around her with a mixture of wonder and fear, as if the vastness of the view were going to swallow her up. Toklo almost felt the same—compared with the sweep of ground in front of them, they were just tiny fleabites—but he pushed the thought away. Brown bears weren't scared of mountains!

“Are we heading down there?” he asked Ujurak.

The smaller cub shook his head. “Our way lies along the Sky Ridge.”

“What?” Toklo gazed along the line of rocky peaks that stretched into the distance as far as he could see. “But there's no prey up here. There's nowhere to shelter—”

“We still have to go this way,” Ujurak insisted.

“How do you know?” Lusa asked curiously.

“I don't
know
,” Ujurak replied. “I'm not even sure exactly where we're going. But there are signs I can read, and they tell me that up here we're on the right path.”

Toklo rolled his eyes. Bears looked for places where they would be safe, and where there was plenty to eat. Anything else was just cobwebs and moonshine.
So why are you following him?
a small voice inside him asked; Toklo did his best to ignore it.

“What sort of signs?” Lusa persisted.

Ujurak's eyes were puzzled. “They could be anything…a tree, the scent of water, the way moss grows on a rock…I don't really know how I know, but I understand what I have to do. And most of all, I follow the Pathway Star.”

“The Pathway Star!” Lusa started as if a snake had reared up in front of her. “Do you mean the Bear Watcher? He helped me when I was looking for Toklo.”

Toklo stifled a snort of contempt.

Ujurak turned to face the Sky Ridge. “Even when the star is hidden in the sky, I can feel it there, tugging at my fur….” His voice died away.

“I've felt that, too, exactly the same!” Lusa responded with an excited little bounce. “Maybe we were following the same star! Maybe I was meant to come on this journey, and that's why I was able to find Toklo.”

“And maybe both of you have bees in your brain,” Toklo interrupted. His fur felt hot with resentment at the way the two cubs were digging up things in common—things that he knew were nonsense. The only thing they had in common was
that they spent too much time dreaming. He knew which star they were talking about, but it wasn't leading them anywhere. It lived alone, circled by hostile stars that wouldn't let it rest. He knew how that felt, too.

“Are we going to stand here until we start to grow moss?”

Ujurak gave him an affectionate poke with his snout. “No, we're going now.” He began to lead the way along the ridge.

 

Though Toklo had been uneasy about Ujurak's choice of path, in the days that followed he grew more used to the vast stretches of land spread out on either side of their mountain trail, and the feeling of wind buffeting his fur with nothing but the wide sky overhead. His big worry was the shortage of prey; they lived on roots and insects grubbed up from the scant soil between the boulders, or now and again berries from thornbushes rooted in cracks. Pangs of hunger gripped Toklo's belly from morning to night. At least the black bear didn't complain, but then she was smaller than he was, so she didn't need to eat as much anyway.

Several sunrises into their journey, when the moon had swelled to twice the size it had been when they left the forest behind, the path led them onto a narrow ledge; sheer, spiky rocks stretched upward on one side, while the ground fell away in a dizzying precipice on the other. Toklo led the way. Glancing behind to check on the others, he noticed that Lusa had dropped back a few paces. She was staring up at the sky.

“What's that bird up there?” she called, tilting her muzzle
toward the small dark brown shape hovering far above.

“A golden eagle,” Ujurak replied. “I turned into one once, when we were hunting a goat. I caught it, too.”

“You mean that bird's big enough to catch a goat?” Lusa gasped, still gazing up at the distant shape of the eagle. “It looks so tiny!”

“That's because it's a long way away, butterfly-brain,” Toklo cut in. “Up close, it's big enough to catch nosy, chattering black bear cubs.”

Lusa stared at him, her eyes huge, as if she weren't sure if he meant what he said. Then she relaxed. “You would be racing for cover if there was any danger,” she pointed out. “If it's big enough to catch me, it's big enough to hurt you. We're all safe as long as the eagle stays up in the sky.”

“It's okay,” Ujurak said, brushing her pelt reassuringly. “When I was being the eagle, I could tell what they think, what kind of animals they like to hunt. They don't mess with bears unless they're really tiny.”

“If you're quite ready, can we keep going?” Toklo chafed. The sun was going down in a blaze of fire that stretched right across the sky. He wanted to get off the ledge and find a place to shelter before it was completely dark.

But almost as soon as they set off again, Toklo's paw scuffed against a loose stone at the edge of the path. It fell over the precipice; at once a harsh cry came from below, and the strong beating of wings. A second eagle rose into the sky.

Toklo risked a glance over the edge. A bearlength below was a narrow ledge where three large eggs lay in a twiggy nest.
One each,
he thought, his belly rumbling as he imagined the warm tasty stickiness sliding down his throat. It didn't look too hard to climb down; there were pawholds and—