by Erin Hunter
A brown bear was padding toward him through the snow, coming from the direction of the cave. Everything else—the mound of snow covering Ujurak’s body, the figures of Lusa and Kallik huddled together a couple of bearlengths away—had grown blurry and indistinct.
Toklo focused his gaze on the approaching bear. Incredulously he recognized her powerful shoulders and claws, and the scars on her muzzle.
“Mother!” he exclaimed.
Oka halted on the other side of Ujurak’s body and gazed at Toklo, with all the love in her eyes he had longed to see when he was a cub. “I am so very proud of you,” she said. “You are the reason that Ujurak made it this far. He fulfilled his destiny because of you.”
Toklo couldn’t accept his mother’s comfort. “His destiny wasn’t to be squashed under the snow,” he growled.
“His destiny was to save this island,” Oka told him. “And he has achieved that, thanks to you. All those times you fought to save him, caught food for him, kept him out of danger? You brought him here, just as you were always destined to.”
Rage surged up inside Toklo. “But it wasn’t enough! If I could bring him here, why couldn’t I take him home again?”
Blinking sadly, Oka looked down at the mound of snow that concealed Ujurak’s body. “We can’t save everyone,” she whispered. “Not all of the time.”
She’s remembering what happened to Tobi, Toklo thought, regret sweeping over him that nothing he or his mother could do had kept his little brother alive.
“I tried so hard.” His voice was hoarse with grief. “I wanted Tobi to live.”
“I know you did,” Oka replied, raising her head to meet his gaze once more. “And I let you down when I left you to fend for yourself. You will never know how sorry I am for that.”
“Now I think I do,” Toklo replied. He understood his mother’s rage and her sense of failure after Tobi died, because his own heart was shattered. “I just feel so . . . empty.”
Oka’s eyes shone with the fire of stars. “You are not empty!” she insisted. “You have the spirit of the wild inside you. Ujurak taught you so much: Now you owe it to him to take that spirit back to the forests where you were born, to be a truly wild brown bear, with your own territory and your own cubs.”
“I don’t think I want to,” Toklo replied. “Without Ujurak it just doesn’t seem worth it.”
The fire in Oka’s eyes died away, leaving a gentle warmth. “Once you thought you’d lost me and Tobi forever, didn’t you? And yet you carry us with you always, you still speak to us, and we are always here when you need us. It will be the same with Ujurak.”
Wishing that what his mother said might be true, Toklo didn’t know how to respond. While he was still searching for words, a smaller bear, unseen until now, slipped out from behind Oka. At first Toklo didn’t know who he was. Then his jaws gaped in astonishment as he recognized Tobi: not the scrawny, sickly cub he had been, but strong and healthy, his eyes glimmering with amusement at his brother’s surprise.
“I’m very proud of you, too, Toklo,” Tobi said. “Ujurak was very lucky to have you as his big brother on his journey.”
“Remember your BirthDen,” Oka went on. “The trees, the waterfall, the open meadows rich with flowers and prey, where you and Tobi played together. All that is waiting for you.” She paused, and when she continued, her voice had grown deeper and more serious. “You have done what you needed to do for Ujurak. Now go and find your home.”
She stretched out her neck to Toklo, and he leaned toward her. Above the snowy mound that concealed Ujurak’s body, their muzzles touched.
“I will,” Toklo said. “I promise.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Ujurak
Ujurak’s eyes fluttered open. Around him everything was dark and silent. The terror and pain when the avalanche hit him in his musk-ox shape, the rush of power he had felt as he moved the boulder to save his friends, had all ebbed away. His body didn’t hurt anymore; instead he was filled with a great calm.
Blinking, Ujurak tried to work out where he was. The darkness was too thick for him to make out any scenery around him; he couldn’t even feel solid ground underneath him.
Then a burst of starlight dazzled his eyes. When his vision cleared, he saw Ursa looming over him, her fur glowing with the light of many stars. She lowered her nose to touch Ujurak’s. “You have done well, little one,” she murmured.
Ujurak’s gladness at seeing his mother warred inside him with his sense of failure. “No, you’re wrong,” he responded. “I haven’t saved the wild. I don’t even understand what that means—not really.”
“Look into my eyes,” Ursa told him.
Ujurak gazed up and felt as if he were falling into those starry depths like a leaping salmon falling back into a pool. The darkness rippled away, and he found himself traveling: He saw brown bears in a lush forest, rearing on their hindpaws as they challenged one another; a family of black bears digging for grubs under a bush that was heavy with bright berries; a white bear resting on an iceberg, with the body of a plump seal lying beside her paws.
As he watched, he began to understand; he could sense a new wildness and determination entering the hearts of all the bears. By saving the island and the cave of the Selamiut, he had kept open the door between living bears and their ancestors. He had preserved the free spirit that was so important to every bear. If the cave had been destroyed, the spark at the heart of every bear would have died.
Ursa’s voice spoke close to him, taking on a warm affection. “And see what has happened to your friends.”
Now Ujurak found that he could see the companions of his wanderings from the distance of death, as if he were looking down on them from the sky. “I wish I hadn’t needed to leave them,” he said sadly. “They’re going to think I’m dead, and I’m not, am I?”
“No, you’re not,” Ursa responded, touching his shoulder with her muzzle. “And they will come to understand that. Look closely now.”
Ujurak focused once more on his three friends. He realized that each of them had been transformed by their journey. He knew them as closely as if he could walk in their skins: Toklo, who had become a steadfast champion, strong and brave and willing to protect any bear weaker than himself; Lusa, who had embraced the wild in her journey to find Oka’s lost cub; Kallik, who was ready to nurture future generations of white bears.
“They are truly wild bears now,” Ursa said, “and they will show others whose paths they cross what wild bears can be.”
Ujurak’s visions faded, and he returned to the place of darkness, lit by the starlight of his mother’s fur. Ursa beckoned to him, and he rose to his paws at her side.
“Now you are home,” she said. “I have been waiting for you for such a long time, my precious cub. Come, walk in the sky with me, and know that I am very proud of you.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Lusa
Lusa stood in snow that reached almost to her belly fur, but the grief inside her was colder still. The day was drawing to an end, shadows shrouding the peaks as the last traces of sunlight faded from the sky.
“Ujurak is dead!” Lusa whispered to herself, gazing down at his limp body, where gently falling snowflakes were already beginning to cover the few scraps of brown fur still visible after Toklo had buried him. She couldn’t make her mind move away from that terrible truth.
“Lusa.” Toklo gave her a gentle nudge. “We have to go into the cave now.”
Lusa scarcely heard him, and she couldn’t make her paws move until Toklo gave her a harder nudge.
“Come on,” he urged her. “We can’t do any more for Ujurak now.”
Slowly Lusa began to move, one pawstep at a time, stumbling through the snow with Toklo a solid, reassuring presence at her side.
“I’m going to check on Kissimi,” Kallik said, hurrying on ahead.
Lusa couldn’t bring herself to care about the cub, or anything else. How will we get home without Ujurak? she asked herself. H
e brought us to this place; he can’t abandon us now!
“He knew he might die, so he should have been more careful,” she growled to Toklo.
“Ujurak couldn’t escape his own destiny,” Toklo responded gruffly, “any more than we can. He wouldn’t have brought us here if we were all going to die.”
Lusa wished she believed Toklo was convinced by what he said. She trudged after him into the cave, limping on her grazed hind leg, wishing that the pain of her wound would blot out the pain in her heart.
They padded along the entrance tunnel and reached the big cavern, where Kallik was bending over Kissimi, covering him with loving licks. “You see, I came back,” she assured him. “I won’t leave you again.”
Kissimi looked around, blinking bright eyes. “Where Uj’rak?” he asked.
Kallik hesitated, glancing at the others. For a moment Lusa thought she wouldn’t be able to reply. “It’s okay,” she murmured at last. “He had to go away.”
It’s not okay, Lusa thought mutinously. Nothing will ever be okay again. Ujurak is dead.
She padded over to the far corner of the cave where the pictures of the four bears were on the wall, vaguely feeling that she wanted to see all four of them together again. But when she reached it, she stared in disbelief. Instead of four bears there were only three: one black, one white, one brown.
“No!” she screamed. “Toklo, come and look at this!”
Toklo padded over to her and stared at the picture, his jaws gaping as he realized that one brown bear was missing. Then he looked more closely and pointed with his snout at the stars in the sky above the bear images.
“Look,” he said hoarsely. “They’re different.”
Lusa stared where he pointed and saw that more stars had appeared. The shape of Ursa was still there, but now she had a smaller white-dotted shape at her heels.
“Do you think—?” Lusa whispered.
She broke off, blinking. The white star markings had started to hurt her eyes, and she realized with a gasp of amazement that they had begun to glow, brighter and brighter until they blazed with the white radiance of real stars.
They weren’t markings on the wall anymore. They swelled to fill the whole cave, and two star-bears stood there, one gigantic, one smaller, with starlit fur and the wisdom of oceans swimming in their eyes.
“Ursa and Ujurak!” Toklo choked out the words.
Kallik had joined her friends, and all three bears watched openmouthed as the star-bears dipped their heads and padded silently toward the mouth of the cave.
Lusa was the first to speak, out of surging joy and excitement. “Come on! We have to follow them.”
Outside, darkness had fallen, and starlight glimmered on the debris-strewn valley. While Lusa and the others watched from the cave entrance, the two star-bears padded forward into the snow.
“Look!” Lusa whispered. “They aren’t leaving any pawprints!”
Suddenly the starry bears began to run, skimming faster and faster over the snow, then soaring into the air. As they rose higher, their fur and the details of their legs, paws, and muzzles faded, until only their starry outlines were left. Gracefully they galloped higher and higher, until they merged with the rest of the stars and became the familiar constellations that had guided the bears throughout their journey.
“Ujurak has gone home,” Kallik whispered.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Kallik
As Kallik gazed up at the stars, they seemed to glow more brightly. Then she noticed a strange wispy light rising from the horizon at the top of the valley. At first it was the pale pink of approaching sunrise, rapidly deepening to the crimson of ripe berries.
“What’s happening?” she muttered. “Is that no-claw place on fire?”
But then the brilliantly colored wisps grew thicker and began to billow upward into the sky. Rivers of color cascaded down to meet them: streams of gold and forest green and the icy blue of the sky above the Endless Ice.
“It’s the spirits!” Lusa’s voice was awestruck. “The spirits have come back!”
Kallik’s breath came faster, and her heart thumped in her chest like a captive bird. She felt she could stand there forever, watching the swaths of color spread until the whole sky vibrated with them.
The spirits are dancing again. They haven’t abandoned us. We saved the wild and brought them back to us.
A dazzling tongue of fire swooped down from the sky and lapped around Kallik’s neck and shoulders. She flinched away, expecting to feel the searing pain of burning, but the touch was a gentle caress.
Nisa’s voice spoke softly in her ear. “You have done well, little one. I am so proud of you.”
And while Kallik blinked in wonder at her mother’s words, another shining coil of light encircled her, and another voice spoke.
“My name is Sura. You saved the life of my cub, and I can never thank you enough. And you have saved his home, too.” The voice fell silent, then began again. “I trust you to know what to do now.”
Kallik gazed down at Kissimi, who had tottered out behind them and was staring openmouthed at the torrents of colored fire that flowed across the sky. He raised his head to meet her gaze.
“Wow!” he squeaked.
“These are your ancestors, Kissimi,” Kallik told him, dipping her head to touch his shoulder with the tip of her snout. “They will be here forever, watching over you, guarding your home, keeping you safe. Don’t ever forget them.”
Straightening up, she took a deep breath and turned to the others. “Tomorrow I must take Kissimi home,” she announced.
Lusa cocked her head to one side. “To the Frozen Sea?”
“No.” Kallik found the words hard to say, but she knew that she had no choice. “His home is here, on this island.”
Toklo gave her a long, solemn look. “You’re doing the right thing,” he said, his voice unusually gentle.
“I hope so,” Kallik responded.
The bears spent the night huddled together in a corner of the cave. Kallik woke as the pale snow-light began to filter down through the hole in the roof. Her companions were stirring beside her: Toklo heaved himself up and gave his pelt a good scratch, while Lusa parted her jaws in an enormous yawn and stared around blearily as if she wasn’t sure where she was.
Kallik woke Kissimi with a gentle prod in his flank; the tiny cub’s eyes blinked open, and he gazed up at her with such love in his eyes that Kallik’s heart almost failed her.
Can I really do this?
“Come on, little one,” she murmured. “There are some bears that you must meet.”
“Brown bears?” Kissimi asked, with a glance at Toklo.
“No, white bears, just like you.”
Kallik felt as if a splinter of ice were wedged inside her heart. But she knew that Kissimi belonged here on the island, with his kin. Crouching down, she nudged the little cub onto her shoulders and led the way out of the cave for the last time.
Outside, the wind had dropped, and everything was still. The sun shone in a pale sky, its light gleaming on the tumbled surface of the snow. The mound Toklo had built to cover Ujurak’s body had gone, and the body itself had vanished, too; there was nothing left of it, not even a tuft of fur.
The bears halted a moment, heads bowed. Kallik remembered the wonder she had felt as she’d seen Ujurak’s transformation into stars; it still wasn’t enough to blot out her sadness that her friend would never travel with them again.
After a few moments in silent reflection the bears headed for the top of the valley, stumbling over the remains of the avalanche. When they reached the crest, Toklo took the lead, making a wide circle around the wreckage of the oil rig. The no-claw structure was in ruins, and no-claws were picking their way among the wreckage. Kallik glanced sideways to watch as they hauled away splintered wood and twisted metal and dumped them into the back of huge firebeasts.
Good, Kallik thought. Take it away and don’t ever come back. The island does not want you here.
Leaving the destruction behind them, the bears trekked across the snowy whiteness in dazzling sunlight. It seemed the journey back passed more quickly, perhaps because she knew that every pawstep was leading her to her final parting with Kissimi. Of course time felt as if it were going too fast.
They stopped on the hillside above the no-claw denning area and shared an Arctic hare that Lusa and Toklo caught together. It had been so long since they had eaten that Kallik’s belly was flapping like a fish tail, but it was hard to choke down the mouthfuls. She chewed up some of the meat for Kissimi and gently stroked his flank with one paw while he ate.
Oh, my little cub! I’m going to miss you more than I can say.
Kallik wanted her paws to move more and more slowly as the bears approached the new hunting ground in the bay. As they headed down the hill toward the frozen river, two white bears came running to meet them. Kallik recognized Tunerq and Illa.
They halted in front of Kallik and the others; their manner was reserved, and she could tell from the wary expressions in their eyes that they could quickly turn hostile.
Kallik braced herself for the confrontation. She knew that Yakone had seen her carrying Kissimi away while Toklo was fighting with Unalaq.
Did Yakone tell the other bears? she wondered. Do all of them know what I did?
Tunerq was the first to speak, his voice curt and unfriendly. “Is it true what Unalaq said?” he demanded.
Kallik swallowed nervously. This is it.
“That you fought him on our hunting ground?” Illa added, looking straight at Toklo. “You shouldn’t have done that. Those are our seals.”
Kallik blinked, puzzled. So this isn’t about Kissimi . . . ?
Toklo took a pace forward to face the island bears. “That didn’t give Unalaq the right to treat us like trespassers,” he grunted. “We saved those seals from the poisoned water!”
“That’s right,” Lusa put in, coming to stand beside Toklo. “Aga was expecting me, remember?”
Tunerq and Illa glanced at each other, shuffling their paws in embarrassment. Kallik realized that they were much more open to reason than Unalaq.