Smoke Mountain (2 page)

‘But you did what you were trying to do,' Lusa reminded her as they quickened their pace, both of them thirsty after the night's walking. ‘You found your brother.'

‘Yes, I did,' Kallik said.
Although that didn't go quite the way I expected it to
.

Toklo swung his shaggy head around to watch
them scramble across the rocks towards him. His brown eyes were expressionless, as if he didn't care if they made it or not. Kallik wished she knew how she could make him like her. Maybe if she proved that she could be useful . . . or if Toklo realised that Taqqiq was not as bad as he thought.

The stream bubbled icy and cold against Kallik's paws. She wished it were deeper so she could lie down in it and cool off.

‘Brrrrr!' Lusa huffed as she dabbed her paw in the water. She lapped up a few drops, her long pink tongue flicking in and out. ‘It's freezing!'

‘It's perfect,' Kallik said. She buried her nose in the water and then shook her head as Taqqiq caught up with her, spraying him with icy droplets. ‘Taqqiq, it feels like snow, doesn't it?'

‘Not really,' Taqqiq growled. ‘You told me we were going to find real snow. How do we even know there will be snow in this direction? At least back at the Melting Sea we know there
was
snow, once.'

‘It'll snow again here some time,' Ujurak said. He looked up at the cloudless pink-and-grey sky. ‘I mean, maybe not soon. But I know it will, once fishleap is over.'

‘Fishleap?' Taqqiq curled his lip. ‘What is that?'

‘Black bears call it leaftime,' Lusa jumped in. ‘When the days are long and hot.'

‘Oh – they mean burn-sky,' Kallik said to Taqqiq. ‘We just have to wait for snow-sky to return.'

‘
If
it returns,' Taqqiq muttered. He raked his claws across the bare rocks with a harsh grating sound. Kallik winced.

‘Why don't we just keep going?' Toklo suggested, and Kallik could hear the forced patience in his voice. ‘Lusa, there's a tree up ahead. Maybe you could climb it and tell us what's in front of us.' He jerked his head at a tall, scraggly tree that stood on its own among the rocks. The rocky slope of the hill kept going up beyond it, covered in patches of yellow grass and a few leafy green bushes.

‘Sure!' Lusa agreed. She bounded across the stream and trotted over to the tree. Her paws flashed as she leaped on to the trunk. In a few moments, she was racing up through the branches.

‘Wow,' Kallik said. ‘She climbs fast!'

‘Doesn't she?' Toklo said, giving Taqqiq a faintly smug look.

Taqqiq snorted. ‘I suppose black bears have to be
good at something – they're useless otherwise.'

Kallik could see the fur rising on Toklo's shoulders. ‘Taqqiq,' she said quickly, ‘do you smell any prey? It would be great to eat before we move on.'

Her brother sniffed the air. His eyes narrowed. ‘Maybe . . .' He began pacing up the stream towards a clump of bushes.

‘Toklo,' Ujurak said in a low voice, ‘I could have changed into a bird and scouted ahead for us.'

‘I know,' Toklo said, glancing at Kallik. ‘But I thought Lusa would like to be useful.' Kallik saw his eyes go to Taqqiq, and she realised that the real reason was that Toklo didn't want her brother to know that Ujurak could change shape . . . at least, not yet. She sighed. There wasn't anything she could say; Taqqiq hadn't exactly given them a reason to trust him, not after he and his friends had stolen a black bear cub at the Longest Day Gathering. It would take time, that was all – that and for Taqqiq to stop being so difficult.

Toklo splashed across the stream and headed for Lusa's tree, with Ujurak a few pawsteps behind him. Kallik let the water bubble around her paws for a few more moments before she waded out on to the
rocks. She took a deep breath and noticed a faint scent on the air.
Prey!

Dropping into a crouch, she crept forward on silent paws, her nose twitching. There was a dip in the rocks downstream surrounded by tall, dry grass. Something could be hiding in that grass . . . something edible.

If I could catch some prey for us, wouldn't Toklo be pleased!
Kallik held her breath, trying to edge forward without scraping her claws against the rocks. Her stomach growled and scratchy thistles tickled her belly fur. For a moment it seemed like the world went still, just as out on the ice when Nisa had waited for seals to pop out of their breathing holes.

Kallik inhaled again, and this time she recognised the scent: it was a bird, the kind that built their nests on the ground. Now she could see the flutter of brown feathers behind the tall grass. It hadn't noticed her yet. She crept forward another pawstep.

Suddenly she felt vibrations in the rocks under her paws. With a bellow, Taqqiq shot past her and threw himself at the patch of grass. His mouth was open and his claws outstretched. There was an
explosion of squawks, and the bird burst out of the grass, scattering feathers in all directions. With an outraged shriek, the bird shot away into the sky. In despair, Kallik watched it flapping away into the distance. It was plump and young-looking, and would have made the best meal she'd had in a while. Now she was even hungrier.

‘Stupid birds,' Taqqiq said. He shook himself and backed out of the tall grass. ‘Salik was really good at catching those.'

Good at catching birds and harmless black bears, you mean
, Kallik thought bitterly. She blamed Taqqiq's friend Salik for turning her brother into this unfriendly, arrogant monster. Salik had acted like he was the leader of a group of young white bears who had insulted every bear at the gathering and tried to provoke war against the black bears. They had been nothing but trouble, and Kallik had been horrified when she realised one of them was her brother, whom she had been looking for ever since their mother was killed by orcas, out on the ice.

Taqqiq sat down in the grass and began scratching an itch behind his ears. Kallik turned away and saw
Toklo watching them from under the tree. He must have seen the bird escape. She padded up to him. ‘Sorry,' she whispered.

Toklo pawed at the tree roots. ‘It's all right,' he said gruffly.

Lusa scrambled down from the upper branches and dropped to the ground beside them. ‘It looks like this hill keeps going up to a ridge pretty far ahead of us. I think I saw trees off to the left. And I saw lots of bears leaving the lake behind us. There's a white bear several bearlengths to our right, going kind of in the same direction as us, but heading that way.' She pointed with her nose to where the stream came from, between two large boulders higher up the hill to their right.

‘A white bear?' Kallik said uneasily. Had one of Taqqiq's friends decided to follow them?

‘Not one I recognised,' Lusa told her, and Kallik knew she was thinking of Salik too. ‘I think it was a female. There was a cub with her.'

‘Well, we don't want to run into them,' Toklo said. ‘We can't afford to share any prey in this area. We should stay away from other bears if we can.'

It's going to be hard enough to feed five of us travelling
together
, Kallik thought.
Especially if Taqqiq and I are such useless hunters
. She was grateful that Toklo didn't say so out loud, but she was afraid he was thinking the same thing.

‘We keep going up,' Ujurak said, pacing around the tree. Taqqiq gave him a suspicious look, his massive shoulders hunched. But as the small brown bear scrambled over the rocks, Taqqiq followed him. Ujurak glanced back when he heard the white bear's claws clicking against the boulders. His gaze was questioning, as if he wasn't sure why Taqqiq was there.

Kallik dropped back to walk beside Lusa again. It was strange how she felt so much more comfortable with this little black bear than with her own brother.

‘I'm sure Taqqiq just needs time to get used to us,' she blurted out after they'd walked for a moment in silence. A bird trilled from somewhere nearby, as if mocking them for losing their prey earlier.

Lusa looked surprised. ‘Well, yes,' she said. ‘I mean, he's been travelling with those . . . other bears for so long. He probably misses them.'

Kallik stepped over a tuft of sharp-looking
grass. ‘How could he miss those awful bears?' she said. ‘You all are much nicer.'

‘I bet Toklo would be surprised to hear you call him nice,' Lusa barked with amusement. ‘But he really is, deep down.'

‘So is Taqqiq,' Kallik insisted. Lusa dipped her head, not arguing. But as they kept going up the slope, feeling the sun warm the cold rocks under their paws, Kallik wondered. Was it too late for Taqqiq? Had it been a good idea to make him come with them? Or had he changed too much to be the brother she had known on the ice?

T
oklo was glad to be travelling once more, away from Great Bear Lake and the gathering of bears. He had felt trapped on the lakeshore, with too many bears telling him how to act and what he had to believe in. The only time he had felt free and strong was when he had swum to Paw Print Island, to prove to the Great Bear in the sky that brown bears deserved to have fish in the rivers and territories of their own. He had fought Shoteka there, and won. He was equal to any brown bear; he had nothing more to prove.

The sun rose higher in the sky as they climbed the rocky ridge. They hadn't passed a tree since the one Lusa had climbed; nor had they seen any more streams. There was no shade up here, and the plants
were dry and withered. But it felt good to be with his companions again. It even felt good to be following the strange brown cub, Ujurak.

‘I don't think he knows where he's going,' Taqqiq muttered.

Toklo shot a sideways glance at Taqqiq. The white bear's shoulders rolled as he paced forward, his eyes narrowed against the bright sun.

‘Yes, he does,' Toklo corrected him. This was one
companion
he could happily have left behind at the lake, he thought.

Lusa let out a little sigh, and Kallik looked anxiously at Toklo.

At least Kallik wasn't so bad. She had walked all night without a single complaint, though her paws had turned brown with dirt and her fur was matted and dusty. Toklo thought his pelt was equally stained, but it didn't show as much against his russet-brown coat.

Lusa padded beside Kallik as if they'd known each other since their BirthDens. They had been chattering nonstop since leaving Great Bear Lake, as far as Toklo could tell. There had been a lot more peace and quiet when it was just Toklo and
Ujurak travelling together.

‘You really flew?' Lusa was saying. ‘In the sky?'

‘Well, I wasn't flying,' Kallik explained. ‘I was being carried by a giant metal bird.'

Lusa's eyes were enormous. ‘That must have been the biggest bird in the world!'

‘It was like a flying firebeast,' Kallik said. ‘It had the same kind of smell, of burning and no-claws.'

‘I've seen lots of no-claws – I mean flat-faces,' Lusa said. ‘Flat-faces were the ones who brought us food and let us live in the Bear Bowl.'

‘And they never hurt you?'

‘No, never,' Lusa said, shaking her head. Then she paused, and something darkened in her gaze. She looked at Toklo, and he knew she was thinking about his mother, Oka, who was taken away by the flat-faces after she attacked one of them. ‘They . . . they fed us and gave us somewhere to live,' she repeated.

Toklo's muscles ached from all his swimming the day before in Great Bear Lake. Oka had come to him during the swim, Oka and his little brother, Tobi, who had died before they reached the Great Salmon River. They had saved Toklo from drowning in the
waves and given him the courage to make it all the way to the island. After moons of believing that if he went out of his depth in water, his mother and brother would drown him so that his spirit could join theirs, they had shown that they loved him and wanted him to stay alive. He missed them even more now.

As he climbed, listening to the chatter of the she-bears, he let his head hang and stared down at his paws. He felt tired, though he would never let the others know that, especially Taqqiq.

‘Oomph!' He walked right into the white bear, who had stopped on a wide, flat boulder.

‘Hey,' Taqqiq snarled, flexing his claws. ‘Watch where you're going. Are brown bears blind as well as stupid?'

Toklo took a step back, swallowing a snarl. The rocks here levelled off into a shallow ridge cresting the top of the hill before it began to slope down again. Ujurak was standing on one of the tall grey boulders, staring down at the landscape spread out before them. Toklo scrambled up to join him.

A rocky plain rolled out below them, shifting from grey stone to rippling green grass further out to the
edge of the sky. Narrowing his eyes against the wind, Toklo spotted a few small lakes and darker green patches that were probably trees in the distance.