Smoke Mountain (12 page)

‘Other kinds of bears!' Lusa exclaimed. ‘Like what – green bears? Pink bears?'

‘Maybe bears that are black
and
white!' Kallik said.

‘I think that would look very elegant,' Lusa teased.

‘Would you two hush up back there?' Toklo called. ‘Chatter, chatter, chatter! Are you bears or are you magpies?'

Lusa and Kallik exchanged amused looks. Then Kallik's eyes darkened. ‘Lusa,
I
saw a sign. I'm sure of it.'

‘You did?' Lusa stared at her in amazement. ‘When?'

‘This morning,' Kallik said. ‘One of the stars in the sky was blinking. And it was
moving
– in the same direction we're going! I think it was a message from the spirits to tell us we're going the right way.'

Lusa bounced on her paws. ‘I bet you're right! That sounds exactly like a sign!'

It was getting close to sunhigh when they reached a BlackPath on the outskirts of the flat-face denning place. This cluster of dens was much smaller than the one around the Bear Bowl where Lusa had grown up. But it smelled strongly of flat-faces and firebeasts, and they could hear the clatter and hum of sounds that always came from flat-face dens. Lusa's fur felt as if it were crackling from the sharp energy in the air. She shook herself from nose to tail.

They stopped in the shadow of a tree that was surrounded by bramble bushes. Lusa touched her nose to the bark, wondering if the spirit inside was bothered by having the flat-face denning place so near by. There were several trees on this side of the BlackPath, but not many on the other side, around the dens.

‘Let's hide in here until it gets darker,' Toklo suggested, clawing some of the brambles aside. ‘It'll be easier to get through to the Big River when more of the flat-faces and firebeasts are sleeping.'

‘If only it stayed darker for longer,' Ujurak said
nervously. ‘I hope we can get across the river before they all wake up.'

Lusa's belly rumbled as she crawled into the dark space under the bushes. She felt hot and grubby and absolutely starving. Kallik's heavy fur pressed against hers as they squeezed out of sight of the BlackPath, and Lusa wished briefly that she could throw herself into Great Bear Lake just for a moment. Then her fur might not be so dusty and itchy.

There's plenty of swimming ahead
, she reminded herself, thinking of what Qopuk had said about the vast, dangerous Big River.
Be careful what you wish for
.

T
he four bears settled down, and Lusa drowsed with her head on her paws, listening to the rumble of firebeasts a few bearlengths away. Their smell muddled all her senses, and her half-waking dreams were full of their glowing eyes as they prowled. Every so often, she peeped out from the bush; it seemed the sun was stuck in the sky, trapping them in their prickly hiding place forever.

Slowly, the shadows lengthened and the sky darkened. Bright fire-globes began to blink on in the flat-face dens across the BlackPath, one after another. A twilight gloom settled over the denning place.

Toklo got to his paws and stretched. He started turning over rocks and scratching in the dirt,
looking for grubs to eat. ‘Let's get far away from these smelly, noisy, firestick-popping flat-faces as quickly as we can,' he growled.

‘Not all flat-faces are
all
bad,' Lusa said, thinking of the kind, friendly ones who had fed her in the Bear Bowl. Her friends gave her astonished looks. ‘Well, I suppose most of them are,' she amended.

‘It's not that they're bad,' Ujurak said with a thoughtful look, as if he were trying to puzzle it out. ‘They just don't think about what they do.'

‘Sounds bad to me,' Toklo grumbled. ‘Let's go.'

‘Maybe Lusa should lead us,' Ujurak said, nodding at her.

‘Me?' Lusa squeaked.

‘You travelled through a place like this when you escaped the Bear Bowl, right?' Ujurak said.

Lusa looked at the other two cubs. Toklo lowered his head to her, and Kallik nodded too. Her friends really trusted her. She hoped they were right. Leaving the Bear Bowl seemed like forever ago. Somehow that flat-face place had seemed more familiar than this one. Perhaps that was because she'd seen part of it from the top of Old Bear's tree.

Lusa scrambled out of the bushes and braced her
shoulders. She just had to concentrate. She remembered the dens and BlackPaths she'd run through after leaving the Bear Bowl. One thing she had certainly learned – to trust her nose. She looked up and down the BlackPath, lifting her nose to the wind.

The breeze coming from one direction was thick with tangled scents of firebeasts and food: piles and piles of flat-face food being burned, in that funny way flat-faces had of setting everything on fire before they ate it. Her belly growled, and part of her longed to go that way. Perhaps if they were careful, some of that food could be theirs.

But she knew that where there were lots of firebeasts and lots of food in one place, there would also be lots of flat-faces – lots of
awake
flat-faces. It would be safer to sneak behind some of the quieter dens and search those big cans of rotfood they kept outside. They needed to get through the denning place without being noticed; that was the most important thing. If flat-faces saw them, they might loose firebeasts on them, or try to hurt them, or worst of all, catch her and take her back to the Bear Bowl. Lusa didn't want to give up on her journey
when she'd come so far. And she especially didn't want to lose her friends.

In the gloom, she led the others across the BlackPath and turned the other way, following the curve of the BlackPath past big, glowing dens until she found a smaller BlackPath branching off in the direction of the river. Here the smells and noises were more muted and the dens were smaller, with soft grass and leafy green trees between them.

The little BlackPath had raised stone paths on either side, shadowed by tall bushes with tiny purple or pink or blue flowers that ran around the edges of the dens. The ground felt hard and strangely flat under Lusa's paws as they slunk along, pressing close to these bushes. It was easier than walking through grass, because it didn't trip her up, but it was hot and sticky, and her paws started to itch.

She sniffed each firebeast as they crept past, but almost all the ones they saw seemed to be slumbering outside the dens. Their hard pelts were silver or red or green or bright blue or black – Lusa even saw one that was yellow like sunlight. She wondered if they got along or if they were friends only with firebeasts of their own colour.

They saw no flat-faces outside. A few firebeasts crawled past on the BlackPath, but it was so quiet that Lusa heard them coming from far away and could duck into the bushes with the others close behind her.

Light spilled from holes in many of the dens, and if Lusa strained her ears, now and then she could hear flat-face voices murmuring. Often the light had a bluish tinge, and sometimes she spotted flat-faces inside staring at tiny flat-faces inside a brightly lit box.

She waited until they came to a den that was dark. There was no firebeast outside, and no sound coming from the den. Cautiously she crept over the short grass in front of the den and followed the faint scent of food around to the side, where a small space separated the den from the fence running alongside. Here she found what she was looking for: three tall silver cans standing outside a door.

‘Shhh,' she cautioned the others as they joined her. Toklo wrinkled his nose at the can.

‘Flat-face food,' he grumbled. ‘I thought we talked about how real bears don't need to steal food from flat-faces.'

Lusa was about to retort sharply when, to her surprise, Kallik spoke up.

‘I'd rather eat than starve,' the white bear said. ‘And we need our strength to cross the Big River. Besides, no-claws have so much food that they just throw it away. I think it's all right to eat it – if we're really, really careful. I once stole some meat from a no-claw den, and that's how they caught me.' Her eyes were huge with fear, in spite of her brave words, and her fur quivered as if she were trying not to shake. Lusa blinked at her friend, hoping she could tell how much she appreciated her support.

‘We'll be careful. Kallik's right; we have to eat where we can. It'll be better this time,' Lusa reassured Toklo. ‘I don't think there are any flat-faces in this den right now.'

Toklo swung his head around, his gaze darting across the unnaturally short grass. ‘Well, hurry up then.'

Lusa slid her claws under the lid of the can and prised it off, grabbing it in her mouth so it wouldn't clatter on the hard ground. She stuck her nose inside and found two shiny black skins stuffed full of flat-face rubbish. She dragged one out into the open,
tipping over the can but pressing her body against it so it made only a small hollow thud when it hit the ground.

She sliced open the skin with her claws, and all four bear cubs examined what fell out. There were a few squashed blueberries in a clear container. Lusa clawed it away from the rest of the rubbish and licked up half the blueberries, then offered the rest to Kallik. The white bear's eyes widened as she ate them. The berries left little dark blue smears on the fur around her mouth.

‘Yum,' she whispered. ‘I didn't know that no-claws ate berries.'

‘They eat
everything
,' Lusa said.

‘How about this?' Ujurak asked, nosing something over to Lusa. ‘Can we eat it?'

It looked like a fluffy bit of crust with part of it chewed off. Lusa had eaten lots of these while she was raiding metal cans. ‘Yes, they're good,' she said. ‘Usually a little salty.'

She found a few more in the skin, which they all shared. In the second skin they lucked into several half-eaten bits of meat. Some of it was long and round like a stick, and covered in salty red sauce
that tasted faintly like tomatoes, which Lusa had eaten a lot in the Bear Bowl. Some of it was flat and brown and stuck between two pieces of bread, also covered in the same red sauce. Lusa remembered finding that sauce on the potato sticks she liked, but there weren't any potato sticks in these cans.

‘Why does their meat taste so funny?' Toklo growled.

‘Because they burn it before they eat it,' Lusa said. ‘I don't know why.'

Toklo huffed. ‘I would rather catch a fish.'

‘Or a seal,' Kallik said wistfully. ‘But at least I'm not so hungry any more. Thanks, Lusa.'

Lusa wriggled with pleasure. If they
had
to deal with flat-face dens, she thought it was only fair to take the food the flat-faces didn't seem to want. If Toklo wanted to wait until he could catch a salmon, he was welcome.

There weren't many fences around the flat-face dens here, so for a while Lusa led them behind the dens, out of sight of the BlackPath. The grass was soft and springy under their paws. They didn't have to climb to get from one den to the next, which was a relief to Lusa – she wasn't sure how good a climber
Kallik would be, and it was easier to escape when you weren't surrounded by a fence.

They were creeping behind a large white den that looked empty when suddenly there was a roar, and a bright beam of light sliced through the dark in front of them. Lusa squeaked and bundled backwards, shoving the others into the shadows up against the den. The light swept up the tiny BlackPath beside the den as a firebeast charged off the bigger BlackPath on to the hard, flat surface.

‘Did it see us?' Kallik whispered in Lusa's ear. ‘Is it coming for us?'

‘Shh,' Toklo hissed. ‘Stay very still.' Lusa held her breath and closed her eyes.
Please don't eat us. Please don't eat us
.

With a coughing sputter, the firebeast stopped beside the den. The light blazing out of its eyes vanished, and its roar dwindled into a murmur, then silence.

‘What happened?' Ujurak whispered. Lusa peeked out between her paws.

A flat-face male climbed out of the side of the firebeast. He hurried up to the den and disappeared inside. The door slammed behind him.

Everything was still.

‘It didn't see us,' Lusa breathed. ‘And now it's asleep.'

Her ears were ringing from the noise of the firebeast. As they started to clear, she heard something else. She stood on her hind legs and pricked her big round ears.

‘Water!' she cried. ‘I hear the river!'

She squeezed past the slumbering firebeast, being careful not to brush against it, and down to the BlackPath, which crossed another BlackPath where the dens were pressed closer together. Lusa sped up, hoping to get through to the river before they were spotted. She heard the rumble of a firebeast and broke into a run to get away before it reached them, leading the others around a den and into the grassy space behind it.

As they tumbled into the dimly lit area enclosed by bushes with neat, even edges, a ferocious noise split the quiet night. Lusa saw the glint of fangs as a massive dog leaped out of the shadows, barking madly. Kallik yelped and turned to run. Toklo's fur fluffed up, and he stood with his paws braced, snarling and ready to fight.