The Burning Horizon (17 page)

“I really don't want to stay on the glacier overnight,” Toklo said, gazing around uneasily at the frozen river. In the still air the creaking and groaning sounds seemed louder, and the ice glowed eerily in the dim light.
I just know I can feel it shifting under my paws.

“I don't like it, either,” Yakone responded. “But we can't leave Kallik.”

Suddenly Yakone stopped walking. “Toklo. Look!”

Just up ahead, the crevasse they had been following dwindled to the tiniest crack.

Toklo gazed at it in despair.
Even if Kallik made it this far, there's no way she could get out.

“Are you sure this is Kallik's crevasse?” he asked Yakone, hoping for even the slightest possibility that somewhere they had taken a wrong turn.

“I'm sure,” Yakone replied heavily, panic in his voice. “But maybe we should search the others.”

Together the two bears skirted along the top of the glacier's edge, looking for other cracks that could possibly be Kallik's. Plenty of dark rifts zigzagged across the surface, but none of them went in the direction where Kallik had fallen.

For a moment Toklo felt too frightened to take a step. He loathed this waste of creaking ice and its treacherous crevasses, and he was rapidly losing all hope of finding Kallik.

But we
have
to find her! We can't lose Kallik, too!

Toklo forced himself to walk back to the skinny end of the crevasse, peering down it and trying to figure out what to do while Yakone continued to pad restlessly along the edge of the glacier, looking for other places where Kallik might emerge from the ice. Toklo waited for him, scanning the frozen waste for the shape of a white bear who never appeared.

At last Yakone limped back to Toklo's side. His eyes were full of despair, and he was clearly struggling to keep his voice even. “We should find somewhere to rest for the night,” he said. “We'll keep looking for her when it's light.”

“No, we should go farther back and look for other cracks where she might have broken off in another direction,” Toklo argued. “You said you wouldn't rest for a moment until we found her.”

“I was wrong.” Yakone's voice was stern. “What good will we be to Kallik or Lusa if we starve or refuse to sleep? Kallik is smart enough to stop and rest when night falls. We won't lose her if we take time to do the same.”

Toklo could see the sense in what Yakone said and allowed the white male to nudge him toward the edge of the glacier. Together they scrambled and slithered down the ice floe until their paws hit rock and soil. Toklo felt a massive relief to have earth under his pads. As he paused for a moment to catch his breath, he noticed a dark-brown mass moving just above the tree line in the distance.

“Yakone, look!” he shouted with a surge of relief. “It's the caribou! We haven't lost them after all!” Then he looked back to see the glacier looming vast and impenetrable above him,
and his brief excitement leaked away.

But Kallik is still somewhere under there. . . .

Yakone led the way to a scatter of boulders a short distance from the foot of the glacier where a few scrawny bushes grew. Turning around and around in the middle of the bushes, Yakone trampled down a sleeping-place. Then he clambered out from the branches and disappeared into the gathering darkness without saying a word.

Toklo just stood gazing up at the glacier, peering through the gloom in the hope of seeing a white shape emerging from the gray ice, until Yakone returned with a ptarmigan in his jaws.

“It's not much, but it'll have to do,” he said, dropping the tawny bird at Toklo's paws.

When they had shared the bird, the bears settled down in their makeshift den. Yakone curled himself around Toklo, and though Toklo thought worry would keep him awake, he slid swiftly into sleep.

He dreamed that he was standing on the Endless Ice, its gleaming surface stretching around him as far as he could see. He was all alone; above him, the night sky glittered with stars. He could hear a faint whispering, like wind sweeping across the frozen surface, but no breeze stirred his fur. Toklo pricked his ears and turned his head. The whispering grew louder, more desperate, until he was surrounded by shrieks of despair and fear.

To his horror, they were coming from the ice beneath his paws.

“Help me! I'm trapped!”

“Help me!”

“Don't leave me here!”

Looking down, Toklo bit back a cry of dismay. Kallik, Lusa, and Yakone were staring up at him with huge, terrified eyes beneath the barrier of ice.

“I'm here! I'll get you out!” Toklo bellowed. He reared up on his hind legs and plunged down on the ice, battering it with his front paws. Three pairs of eyes watched unblinking, in mute alarm. But though Toklo scrabbled at the ice until his claws broke and his paws began to bleed, he couldn't break through to free his friends.

There must be a way!
he thought.

He ran back and forth, searching for a crack in the ice, a seal hole, anything to help him shatter the glimmering surface.

“Ujurak, where are you?” he roared.

Then cold horror bit even deeper as he saw the tiny starlit bear trapped and desperate beneath the ice beside his friends. He stared helplessly up at Toklo, looking even smaller than when he was alive. On his shoulders his brown fur had vanished and was replaced by glimmering fish scales, as if he had been frozen in a last desperate attempt to change shape.

“Ujurak,” Toklo whispered. “You can't be stuck, too!”

Toklo forced himself to tip back his head and look up at the sky. There was nothing but darkness where Ujurak's star-shape should have been. Toklo was left cold and alone, while all his friends began to sink down into the shadowy ocean.

“No!” Toklo roared. He hurled himself down at the ice again, battering and clawing at the surface. “Wait! Don't go! I'll come with you!”

He thought he could read an accusation in their staring eyes.

You didn't help us. . . .

Toklo woke with a jolt, clawing at the stones beneath the branches of their makeshift den. Yakone was sitting beside him, looking troubled.

“Are you okay?” he barked.

Toklo sat up, breathing deeply as shudders of horror rippled through his body. A surge of relief struck him as he realized that he still had Yakone. “Just a bad dream,” he replied.

Yakone pushed his way out from the middle of the bushes, and Toklo followed him into the chilly gray dawn. Mist covered the ground, and in the distance they could just make out the dark herd of the caribou, already heading away. The sound of their clicking feet came faintly through the air.

Toklo and Yakone gazed at each other. When Toklo had seen the caribou after reaching the end of the glacier, it had felt like a miracle that he'd found them again. Was this their last chance to follow them? Toklo could tell Yakone was wondering the same thing.

“What do we do?” Yakone asked. “Follow the caribou to find Lusa, or stay here and keep looking for Kallik?”

I know what Yakone wants to do,
Toklo thought, seeing the longing in the white bear's eyes as he turned to scan the ice.
But what about Lusa?

“We can't leave Kallik under the glacier,” he whispered.

Yakone met his gaze, his eyes full of despair. “But if we lose the caribou, we lose Lusa, too.”

For a moment Toklo felt as if a massive claw was tearing him apart.
I want to save them both, but how can I?

Then, looking up, Toklo spotted stars just showing in the pale sky and caught his breath in wonder as he recognized the outline. This was Ursa, the gigantic star-bear he had seen in the cave on Star Island. Her markings had swelled out of the cave wall and soared into the sky, with Ujurak in his starry form beside her. Now the star-bear seemed to beckon Toklo onward, reassuring him that she would guide him to Lusa.

Ujurak's message echoed in Toklo's ears once more:
Look for the place where the caribou walk, beneath the stars that shine where the sun will rise.
Toklo gazed at the stars glittering above the horizon that lightened first at dawn.

“It's Ursa!” he choked out. “Ujurak's mother. He told us what to look for right from the start. We don't need the caribou. We can follow the stars to Lusa instead!”

Pale dawn light trickled down from
the gap high in the wall of the den, but Lusa was already pacing up and down her cage impatiently. Her movement roused the coyote, which drew its lips back in a snarl as it rose and shook its pelt. Lusa bared her teeth at it.

Stay out of my fur, mangepelt!

The short night had reminded Lusa how close the Longest Day must be, and she knew she was still far away from Great Bear Lake.
Surely Toklo and Kallik and Yakone won't give up on me. This
has
to be the day I escape!

“What's wrong with you?” Taktuq grumbled from where he was lying in an untidy huddle beside the bars that separated their cages. “How can a bear get any sleep with you prowling up and down like you have ants in your pelt?”

“Sorry,” Lusa said. She halted for a moment before starting her pacing again.

“If you get better, the flat-faces might release you anyway,” Taktuq pointed out. “Isn't that good enough?”

Lusa thought about that for a moment. Her head was hardly hurting at all this morning, and her legs thrummed with energy.
But how long will it be before the flat-faces think I'm well enough?
“No, I can't wait any longer,” Lusa replied. “I have to escape. I just need to get them to let me out of the pen, like they do the fox.”

Taktuq let out a grunt. “Well, don't lose your temper again,” he said. “Head for their voices if you hear them, but don't get too close. And remember you'll have to win over the young flat-face,” he added. “I've listened to all three of them for a long time, and I know the big ones are very protective of it.”

Lusa thought that over. “Do the flat-faces ever let you out of your cage?” she asked.

Taktuq turned his face away. “Not anymore,” he murmured.

Lusa sensed that she shouldn't ask any more questions.
Maybe something happened. . . . Maybe Taktuq lashed out like I did at first.

The older flat-faces came in to check out the animals, and a few moments later Lusa heard the flap to the outside clicking open. She pushed her way through and scampered across the enclosure to where the flat-faces had left her bowl of fruit. The coyote emerged at the same time as Lusa. It hurled itself at the mesh between them, snapping and snarling, and Lusa glanced back to hiss at it before bounding on.

While she was eating her fruit, she kept an eye out for the young flat-face. When the little one finally appeared, she headed straight for the fox, playing with it through the mesh but not taking it out of the pen. The fox yipped, a flash of russet fur spinning in circles.

Lusa dug her claws into the ground in impatience as she peered down the cages and watched.
Leave that stupid fox alone and pay attention to
me
!

But the young flat-face stayed beside the fox until a large white firebeast growled across the grass and up to the enclosures. The two gray-furred flat-faces got out of it and opened up an enclosure containing an eagle perched on a tree stump. The bird let out a harsh cry and flapped its wings as the flat-faces approached it, then settled again without trying to fly away.

Lusa watched, fascinated, as the older flat-faces wrapped the eagle in a furless pelt.
I wouldn't want to get that close to it,
she thought, remembering the huge birds she had seen in the mountains.
Eagles are scary!

The flat-faces put the eagle into a small cage made of silver mesh like the walls of the enclosures, then loaded it into the white firebeast. As they started to climb into the firebeast's belly, the young flat-face came running up, barking something at them. The gray-furred male said something and gestured to her, then climbed into the firebeast, which woke up and slowly rolled away.

The young flat-face walked off, her head drooping dejectedly. Lusa yelped to attract her attention, but she disappeared into one of the small flat-face dens. Lusa let out a tiny growl of frustration.

For a while she played in the enclosure, knowing that she had to be ready at all times to show off for the flat-faces. She ran along the log and leaped off it, imagining that she was
crossing a deep-set stream. Scrambling up again, she turned in a circle, balancing on her hind legs and stamping her paws to keep her muscles from stiffening up.

Taktuq let out huffs of amusement as she scurried around, as if he realized how hard she was playing, while the coyote snarled and threw itself at the mesh. Lusa ignored it.
Smelly thing! I wish they'd put
you
in the firebeast and take you away!

At sunhigh, Lusa was ready to retreat into the den for some shade. But as she crossed the grass toward the flap, the young flat-face reappeared. Lusa halted and watched her.