The Burning Horizon (19 page)

Gathering her last scraps of energy, Kallik bounded away down the glacier. Her legs shook with weakness from hunger and the effort of climbing out of the crevasse, but she knew she couldn't waste any time.

I have to find the others!
She tried hard to convince herself that they would have waited for her at the bottom of the glacier.
I'm sure they would never leave me here.

As the landscape opened out in front of her, Kallik spotted a dark haze in the distance, on the slopes that led down to the forest, and she recognized the dust cloud they had first seen back in the mountains.

The caribou!

Kallik quickened her pace, straining to see the shapes of two bears following the herd, but it was too far away. The ice between her paws was rough and jagged, dotted with sharp rocks and holes, but she was so desperate to find her friends that she forced herself to run.

She was so eager to keep the caribou in sight that she didn't see another crevasse opening up in front of her. She let out a yelp of terror as she felt herself plummeting into the depths; then all the breath was driven out of her as she thumped down on a boulder that was wedged in the gap.

For a few moments Kallik lay still, getting her breath back and recovering from the shock of falling again. The surface of the glacier was less than a bearlength above her head, and below her was a dark nothingness smelling of ice and rock. Panic throbbed through her.
I'm not going through that again. I can't.

Making sure not to slip, Kallik slowly reared up onto her hindpaws and clawed herself up and out of the crevasse, gripping the rough edges on the inside of the rift. At last she stood safe on the surface again.

Cloud-brain!
she scolded herself.
You have to be more careful.

The blood thrummed in Kallik's ears and her belly was painful from hunger, but she kept going, more slowly and cautiously now. The end of the glacier came into view, a rock-strewn slope emerging from the ice.

Kallik halted, her sides heaving. “Yakone! Toklo!”

Nothing responded to her loud cry. Around her nothing stirred; all she could see were boulders, stones, bushes. . . .

“Yakone! Toklo!” she called again. Her head drooped as her voice echoed around the slope. It felt as if the glacier itself was mocking her, laughing at her isolation.
Don't give up!
Kallik told herself fiercely.
You escaped from the glacier. You can't stop now!

Bracing her shoulders, she padded along the foot of the ice wall, stopping every few paces to bellow the names of her friends. Still there was no reply apart from the echoes.
Keep going.

Walk, call, echo. Walk, call, echo. As the sun crept across the sky, Kallik felt her hopes melt away.
Did they think I was dead? Is that why they didn't wait for me?

“Oh, Yakone, Toklo! Where are you?”

“Kallik?”

The call came from behind her. Spinning around, Kallik saw Toklo racing out from behind a tumble of rocks. Yakone followed him, lurching every time he put his injured paw to the ground.

You waited! You didn't abandon me!
Kallik ran forward to meet them, and all three bears pressed themselves together, letting out joyful yelps and nuzzling one another.

“I thought I'd never find you!” Kallik exclaimed. Her throat felt thick and sore with emotion, and she couldn't stop breathing in the precious fur-scent of her friends.

“We were afraid you were lost down there,” Toklo said, and Yakone added, “We walked to the end of your crevasse, but it disappeared to nothing and you weren't there. How did you get out?”

“I had to go up to the top of the glacier and climb out
there,” Kallik explained. “It wasn't at all like the ice in the ocean. It was empty, like a . . . a dead thing.” She paused, shivering at the memory, then went on, “I almost got stuck down there. I think I might have given up if Ujurak hadn't come to help me.”

“He found you!” Toklo exclaimed.

Kallik nodded. “I think he was afraid, too, but he never left me until I was safe.”

“I'm so sorry that we couldn't help you,” Yakone said. “We didn't know what to do.”

“Well, it's okay now.” Kallik stood back a little and looked at her friends, relishing the feeling of relief that flooded through her.
We found each other,
she thought.
Against all odds, we did it! So maybe that means we can find Lusa, too.
“We should follow the caribou,” Kallik went on. “I saw where they're heading from high up on the glacier.”

She padded forward, ready to go right away, but Toklo stepped forward to block her. “You're not going anywhere until you've had a rest and something to eat,” he told her sternly.

“But—”

Yakone didn't give her a chance to protest. “Toklo's right. You look exhausted, your paws are bleeding, and you haven't eaten for a day.”

“Besides,” Toklo added, “last night we saw Ursa's star-shape in the sky. Even if we lose the caribou, she'll guide us to Lusa.”

Kallik drew in a long breath. “That's wonderful!”

Though she was still impatient to keep looking for Lusa,
Kallik knew that Toklo and Yakone were right. Toklo plunged into the bushes, saying he was going to hunt, while Yakone led Kallik to a trampled sleeping-place among some thorns and made her lie down. While she rested he cleaned her sore paws, rasping gently against them with his tongue. Kallik dozed, giving way to the shadows that clustered at the edge of her thoughts.

Before long Toklo returned with a ground squirrel, and the bears settled down to eat.

“This is good, Toklo,” Kallik said, relishing every bite, “but we really should get going.”
We need to make up for the day we lost because of me,
she added miserably to herself.

“It'll be okay,” Toklo mumbled around a mouthful of squirrel. “We just have to put our trust in the stars.” He gazed up and over the trees, as if he was trying to see the plains beyond and find Lusa playing in a beam of sunlight. “We'll find her.”

Her belly full, Kallik rose to her paws, ready to set out, but Yakone pushed her firmly down again.

“Rest,” he ordered her. “We aren't going anywhere until you've had some sleep.”

Giving in with a sigh, Kallik dozed in the den and woke to see that sunhigh was past. She jumped to her paws. “I didn't mean to sleep so long! Now we really have to leave,” she said. “Lusa's counting on us.”

“Okay,” Yakone responded, nosing carefully down one side of Kallik and then the other and giving her paws a careful check. “You seem fine,” he added, “but you have to promise to let us know if you need to stop.”

“You too,” she retorted, gesturing toward Yakone's injured paw.

Together they set off downhill, leaving the glacier behind and pushing their way through bushes and rough grass until they came to the caribou trail. Toklo led the way, ears pricked and stubby tail twitching as he forced aside the scrub until they were standing at the edge of the hoofprints.

“We may have lost the caribou,” Kallik murmured, “but their trail is easy enough to follow.”

The strong scent of the caribou wreathed around the bears, and a wide swath of hoofprints led on into the distance, scattered with caribou droppings. Ahead was the shadowy line of the forest, clinging to the lower slopes of the ridge.

All three of them fell silent as they headed for the trees.
We could have a long, long way to go before we find Lusa.
Anxiety crept up on Kallik again, her relief and joy at finding Toklo and Yakone fading as she realized the massive task that still lay before them.

Yakone let out a snarl of annoyance as he banged his wounded paw on a stone lodged in the dirt, and when Toklo tangled himself up in some brambles, he threw them off with a roar of fury instead of carefully picking his way out. He was still growling under his breath as he stalked on. Kallik could tell the others shared her anxiety.

Kallik padded beside Toklo, touching her muzzle to his shoulder in a soothing gesture. “We're all worried about Lusa,” she told him. “But we have to stay calm, for our sake as well as hers.”

Toklo cast her a sidelong glance. “I know,” he said. “Sorry.”

For once, Toklo seemed small and young, not like the confident, almost full-grown bear who had guided them this far. Kallik let her shoulder fur brush against his for a few strides.
He looks after all of us, but he needs to be looked after, too.

The ground began to slope upward, and the trek became exhausting in the hot sun. The trees never seemed to get any closer, and their steps lagged as they stirred up dust.

Finally the bears paused to rest at the crest of a hill, staring out over the tops of the trees. Ahead of them the forest stretched as far as they could see. The caribou were so far ahead now that even at this height they couldn't see any sign of them.

“This is it,” Toklo said, pointing with a paw. “Ursa's star-shape would be in that direction, so this is where we leave the caribou trail and head into the trees. We have to trust Ujurak.”

“At least there'll be plenty of prey in there,” Yakone commented.

“But will we be able to see the stars?” Kallik wondered, feeling uneasy at the thought of leaving the strongly marked trail.

Yakone nudged her. “We know Ujurak is with us,” he said quietly. “He'll show us the way.”

Relief from the scorching sunlight washed over the bears as soon as they stepped into the dense shade cast by the pines. At first a deep hush seemed to envelop them, but after a while Kallik began to hear the rustling of tiny creatures and the
whisper of pine needles as something small and light moved over the ground.

Although she belonged out on the ice, Kallik felt at home in the forest.
It's safer here than being exposed on open ground.

Her two companions seemed to feel the same. Their mood lifted and they pressed on more quickly, padding purposefully through the trees.

“I'm so glad we found you,” Yakone said to Kallik as he fell in beside her. “I would never have stopped looking, even if it meant I never returned to Star Island.”

Kallik shuddered. “I don't ever want to be in such an awful place again,” she responded. “I have no idea what I would have done if Ujurak hadn't been with me—and even he was scared.”

Yakone padded closer so that their pelts were brushing. “If Ujurak really means to see us to the end of our journey, then he has his work cut out for him!” he observed, a note of humor in his voice.

Kallik hesitated, then asked, “You believe that Ujurak was with me under the glacier?”

Yakone paused and turned to her, fixing her with a solemn gaze. He nodded. “Yes. He saved your life. I believe that.”

Toklo halted and gestured ahead with his muzzle. Kallik spotted a small deer picking its way through the trees.
Oh yes
. . . she thought, feeling her jaws start to water.

Without needing to say a word, the bears spread out, padding silently over the thick covering of pine needles until they surrounded the deer, which still seemed unaware of them. As they began to close in, the deer gave a start of surprise and
plunged away, heading for the space between Toklo and Kallik. Both bears leaped at it and brought it down, and Toklo gave the killing blow to its neck.

“Thank you, spirits, for this prey,” Kallik said.

The bears ate hungrily, though as the scent of blood rose into the air, Yakone began looking over his shoulder with a wary expression in his eyes.

“There aren't any coyotes around here,” Toklo reassured him. “We would have smelled them by now.”

When their bellies were stuffed, they kept walking until the sun began to set, sending shafts of scarlet light angling through the trees. The shadows thickened as the light faded, but before it was completely dark, the bears came to a small clearing where they could look up through the circle of trees and see the stars. They lay down together in the open and gazed up at Ursa and Ujurak shining down at them. Far from their homes, hardly knowing where their journey would take them next, the bears felt a sense of peacefulness and hope. No harm would come to them tonight, not under the gaze of their star companions.

“I hope Lusa is safe, too,” Kallik whispered.

As soon as Lusa got her
breath back, she crawled out from underneath the thornbush. Sunhigh was long past, and all around her the land was flat and scorched to dusty brown by the heat. Gazing at the expanse made Lusa's head reel, and she could almost feel herself shrinking to nothing more than a tiny dot in this endless landscape.

The flat-face vine was still around Lusa's neck. Determinedly she clawed at it until it snapped, and she kicked the scraps away from her. Then she gave herself a shake and forced herself to think about what to do next.

I need to retrace the route to the mountains, where I last saw the others,
she thought.
They don't know I was taken away by a firebeast. They might still be looking for me there.
A small worm of doubt crawled into her mind.
I
hope
they're still looking for me. . . .
She knew that the journey could take days, because she had no idea how far from the mountains she had come.
It might be quicker to try to find my way to Great Bear Lake from here. The Longest Day could be very soon. But I don't want to finish my journey without the
others. I have to try to find them first.