Smoke Mountain (27 page)

R
ain splattered in Lusa's eyes, and the wind howled down the mountain as if it were trying to push her off the path. Her heart was racing as fast as her paws. Ahead of her, she could barely see Kallik's haunches pounding along the firebeast's trail. The dirt path here was narrow and bumpy, barely a path at all, and it curved around the mountain with a steep drop-off beside them. Lusa tried not to look down at the sharp rocks and roaring river below. Everything was grey and blurry under the dark covering of clouds, and her paws kept slipping on the muddy tracks of the firebeast.

They skidded around a corner, and for a terrifying moment Lusa's paws flew out from under her. She crashed on to her backside and slid down the next
stretch of slope, scrabbling for a pawhold. The edge of the cliff loomed in front of her.

Ujurak leaped in her way and Lusa smashed into him, but he dug his claws in and stood like a rock to stop her headlong tumble. Lusa breathed a sigh of relief as she scrambled upright again. And then they were off once more, tearing through the firebeast's muddy pawprints.

Toklo, hang on!
Lusa thought.
We're coming for you!
A wild fury drove her paws faster.
They'll see how fast bears can run! Not even the firebeast can escape us!

Lightning ripped the clouds open like a jagged claw. Only a breath later, thunder boomed, so loud it sounded as though the sky were caving in. As the thunder faded, Lusa realised she could hear Kallik around the next bend, shouting something. She threw herself forward and nearly slid right into the muddy white bear.

Kallik was standing at the edge of the path, looking down the slope to the river below. All around her the dirt had deep slashes in it, and mud was spattered higher than a full-grown bear up on the mountainside. Where Kallik was standing, the firebeast tracks veered off the path and plunged down the cliff.

‘Toklo!' Lusa shouted, bounding to Kallik's side and peering into the darkness. ‘Kallik, are they down there? Why did the firebeast leave the path?'

‘Maybe it didn't mean to.' Ujurak puffed as he caught up with them. ‘Look how the mud is churned up, like the firebeast was trying to stay up here. Come on; let's follow it.'

Diving off the cliff sounded like madness, but Lusa was not going to be the one too scared to do it. She held her breath and leaped off the path. As soon as she hit the mud below, she lost control of her paws and went skidding madly down the hill. She covered her head with her front paws and huddled in a ball, praying that none of the things she was crashing into would kill her before she reached Toklo. A tree branch whipped across her face, and her shoulder howled with pain as she bounced off a broken tree stump.

Splash!
Lusa landed head first in the river and struggled to the surface, gasping and spluttering for air. She flailed her paws and felt the sharp stones of the river bottom under her.

When she stood up and shook the water from her eyes, she spotted a large shape lying in the water not far away. It was the firebeast!

‘Toklo!' she yelled, floundering over to it.

‘Lusa!' It was Toklo's voice! He was alive! ‘Lusa!' he shouted. ‘Lusa, help! I'm trapped!'

The water was deeper around the wrecked firebeast, and Lusa had to swim the last bearlength over to it. She couldn't see the flat-faces anywhere. She was sure the firebeast was dead – it was lying on its side with its head buried in the water, its eyes were dim, and it wasn't even struggling to escape. Carefully she hooked her claws into a gash along its side and hung on, peering into the dark water around it.

A flap at the back of the firebeast was wedged open a few pawlengths. Lusa spotted Toklo's nose poking through the small gap.

‘Toklo!' she cried, splashing over and pressing her nose to his.

‘Lusa! Help!' he called again.

The river surged around Lusa's paws, and she realised the back of the firebeast was filling with water.

Splash! Splash!

Lusa heard Kallik and Ujurak tumble into the river behind her. She twisted around and saw them
flounder to their paws, dripping with mud.

‘Kallik!' she yelled. ‘Hurry! We have to open the firebeast!'

‘What?' Kallik gasped, splashing over to Lusa.

‘Toklo's trapped inside.'

Kallik blinked at the firebeast. ‘Let me try.' The white bear braced her paws on the rocks and hooked her claws in the gap. She tugged and heaved, but the flap didn't move. Ujurak tried to add his strength, but his paws slipped on the wet surface and the flap held fast.

‘We're coming, Toklo!' Lusa called.

‘It's stuck! I'm going under the water to look.' Kallik took a deep breath and dived under the firebeast. Lusa let go of her perch and dropped into the river, following Kallik down to the spooky dark mud at the bottom of the river. The current dragged at her fur, and she had to catch on to parts of the firebeast to pull herself forward. It was eerie touching a dead firebeast, but it was even stranger than she expected because it didn't
feel
like a dead animal. Its flesh was hard and slippery under her paws.

Kallik moved like a fish in the water, smooth and
graceful. She looked around at Lusa and pointed with her snout to a giant rock that was wedged up against the flap. The white bear waved her paws, and Lusa realised that she was saying they needed to roll it free.

Mud swirled around the two bears as they sank their paws into the river bottom. In the murky greenish water, Lusa could barely see the bulky shape of the big rock. Her claws scraped painfully against it as she scrabbled to brace herself. Something brushed against her snout, and she nearly sucked in a mouthful of water, but she managed to hold back her yelp. It was only Ujurak, paddling down to wedge himself between them.

Lusa's lungs were starting to ache. She leaned into the rock with all her strength and felt her friends heaving and shoving as well. The rock shifted slightly, stirring up a spiral of muddy silt. Her head was dizzy. She needed air. But so did Toklo. They had to move the rock. The river mud sucked at the boulder while the current tugged on their fur.

River spirits, please help us! This is for Toklo!

Suddenly the rock seemed to pop free from the mud. Lusa fell backwards as it rolled sideways,
knocked into the flap, and landed in a cloud of mud. Paddling madly, she surged back up to the air. Her snout broke the surface and she gasped, blinking in the rain. Kallik and Ujurak popped up beside her.

‘It didn't open!' Kallik cried.

In a flash of panic, Lusa realised the rock had banged into the flap as it fell. The open gap had disappeared, and the back flap of the firebeast had slammed shut again. Now there was nothing holding it closed, but no way to pull it open either. She pressed her nose to the small window in the back, trying to see through the muddy water inside. Kallik and Ujurak started clawing at the sides, trying to find another way in.

‘Lusa,' Toklo called weakly, pounding on the walls of the firebeast. Water swamped over his snout, drowning out his words. The back of the firebeast was flooded, and Toklo didn't have the strength left to keep his nose in the tiny air space left at the top. Lusa scrabbled at the back of the firebeast. What made it open?

A bit of metal stuck out of the bottom flap, and suddenly Lusa remembered the cage she had escaped from, way back at the beginning of her adventure.
She'd pretended to be sick, so the flat-face guides took her out of the Bear Bowl in a cage and left her in a room full of silvery things. Escaping from that cage and climbing out a window had been the first steps of the path she was on now – the first pawsteps towards these friends and the majestic place they were looking for.

And saving the wild
, she thought.

Now she just had to remember how she'd opened that first cage door. It hadn't been too complicated. She pawed at the metal bit and it moved a little. Encouraged, she grabbed it in her teeth and tugged. Ignoring the horrible sharp taste of it, she waggled and pulled on it with ferocious intensity.
Open, you horrid thing
, she thought furiously.
Open and let my friend out!

There was a muffled clang and the door suddenly swung towards Lusa. She let go and shoved it aside with her back paws. In a cloud of swirling mud, she poked her head inside the firebeast.

Toklo had sunk under the water, a limp pile of brown fur.

‘Kallik!' Lusa yelled. ‘Ujurak!' She swam through the door and thrust her head under the water to
grab Toklo's scruff in her teeth. She yanked on him as hard as she could.

Bubbles floated up from Toklo's mouth as his head slowly lifted towards Lusa. His eyes opened and met hers.

Lusa let go of his scruff and head-butted him in the chest, trying to get him to move. His paws seemed to shift with agonising slowness as he pushed himself up. She desperately paddled backwards, dragging him through the door. She felt Ujurak and Kallik swim up behind her and reach past with their front legs, helping Lusa heave Toklo out of the firebeast. In a rush, his heavy body shot through the gap and bobbed up to the surface of the river.

Toklo gasped as air hit his lungs. He came suddenly to life, flailing his paws to stay afloat. Kallik supported him to the side of the firebeast, and he clung to it with his front paws, coughing up water.

‘I knew it!' Ujurak said, paddling in place beside him. ‘I knew you weren't dead! You wouldn't do that to us!'

Toklo spluttered, still catching his breath.

‘Let's get to shore,' Kallik said, shoving her shoulder under Toklo to support him. Lusa took his
other paw and they helped drag him on to the muddy riverbank, where all four cubs collapsed, exhausted and trembling.

Suddenly Lusa sat bolt upright. ‘Where are the flat-faces?' she asked. ‘Did they die with the firebeast?'

‘No,' Toklo mumbled. ‘Not all of them, anyway. Heard them shouting and swimming away.'

‘Then let's get out of here,' Kallik said. She climbed to her paws and shook out her fur, although it did very little good, since the rain was still pelting down through the thin trees around them.

Lusa glanced back at the river. Where did the flat-faces go? She peered into the blinding rain, feeling a shiver of fear that they might be peering back at her.

Then her ears picked up a sound over the drumming raindrops. She leaned forward, listening, and realised that it was a flat-face noise – one of them shouting loudly.

‘I think I hear them,' she said. ‘They sound like they're in trouble.'

Lusa edged closer to the river and peered out at the firebeast. The moon slipped out from behind the clouds for a moment, and she spotted a floundering
shape in the water, just downstream from the firebeast. It was one of the flat-faces; it looked like the current had caught him and dragged him away from the firebeast as he tried to swim to safety. Now he was clinging to a fallen tree trunk. Why didn't he swim free? Couldn't flat-faces swim?

She boosted herself on to a rock and peered up and down the riverbank. Her heart thumped as she spotted two of the other flat-faces. They were lying faceup in the mud only a few bearlengths away from the cubs. Their eyes were closed. But she could see their chests rising and falling. They were still alive. But they weren't getting up to help their friend. Maybe they couldn't.

Lusa looked back at the flat-face still in the river. His paws were turning white as he clutched the tree's branches. In moments he would lose his grip and be washed away. She could see the fur covering his chin, and his pale forehead. He reminded her of one of the feeders from the Bear Bowl – a flat-face who brought her berries and scratched her back.

Part of her still hated this flat-face who had hunted them and captured Toklo and nearly
killed
him, but part of her . . . a big part of her . . . just couldn't let
him die. Bears weren't supposed to kill flat-faces, and if Lusa watched him drown without trying to help him, she would be responsible for his death.

‘Lusa, where are you going?' Kallik cried as Lusa waded into the river.

‘I'm going to help,' Lusa said. She jumped into the deep water with a splash and started paddling fast so the others couldn't stop her.

‘Don't be stupid!' Toklo shouted. ‘Lusa, come back!'

Lusa swam around the firebeast, hanging on to it with her claws when the current felt too strong. Water swamped over her snout and she sneezed.

The flat-face spotted her when she was only pawlengths away. He let out a high-pitched yell of surprise and nearly lost his grip on the tree. She dived under the water and saw that his back paw was caught between two of the tree's submerged branches. He must have got stuck when the current dragged him downstream. That was why he couldn't swim free.

She seized one of the branches with her paws and pulled herself closer. It was a funny feeling, like climbing a tree underwater. She reached to free the
flat-face's paw and he started jerking and splashing around like he thought she was going to eat him.
I
should
eat you!
she thought.
That would serve you right!

Since she didn't think she could touch his paw without getting kicked in the head, she focused her attention on the branches that trapped him. Lusa poked the thinner of the two branches with her front paw, then grabbed it in her teeth and yanked. It snapped off and she nearly spun backwards into the rushing current. But the tree's other branches caught her, holding her so she could regain her grip.

When she finally made it to the surface again, she saw the flat-face swimming away with huge splashing movements. Up on the bank, she saw one of the other flat-faces stand up and start looking around him. He pointed at Lusa and shouted something at his friends. From the way he was searching the mud, Lusa guessed that he was looking for his firestick. Were flat-faces really so dumb that he didn't realise she'd just saved his friend's life?