The Burning Horizon

by Erin Hunter

  “We have to do something to help her,” he said.

  “There’s nothing we can do,” Toklo responded grimly. “If we tried to get to her, we would all be trapped. All we can do is follow the crevasse and hope we can help her out at the end.”

  Yakone nodded reluctantly. Side by side the two bears padded along the edge of the crevasse toward the end that was closest. Though he was trying to stay calm for Yakone’s sake, Toklo’s head was reeling. First Lusa, now Kallik! Am I going to lose every one of my friends?

  “It’s all my fault,” he muttered. “I shouldn’t have made us come onto the glacier to begin with. If we’d headed down into the trees, we could have avoided the flat-faces more safely and kept the caribou in sight. Now we’ve lost Kallik, and the caribou herd that was leading us to Lusa will soon be long gone.”

  “It’s not your fault,” Yakone insisted, overhearing him. “We were all rushing, and if my dumb paw hadn’t held us up . . .”

  “You can’t help being injured—” Toklo began, then broke off as he spotted another wide crack zigzagging across the ice, branching from Kallik’s crevasse. He ran over to it and peered down into the dark depths. “Kallik!” he roared. “Kallik!”

  Yakone joined him, and both bears bellowed their friend’s name until they were hoarse. But there was no reply, only the echoes of their own voices.

  “We have no way of knowing if she’s making any progress. Maybe she’s trapped down there . . . or worse,” Yakone said, his eyes full of fear.

  “Don’t think that!” Toklo snapped. “Maybe she just hasn’t reached this part yet.” I have to believe that, he told himself determinedly. “We’re here, Kallik! Keep going!” he called out again, just in case their friend could hear him.

  This crack that crossed Kallik’s crevasse was wider than the one they had jumped before. They decided Toklo would make the leap first, so he would be there to help Yakone on the other side. Toklo took a long run up to it and drew on all his strength as he pushed off into a leap. He landed safely, wincing as his paws thumped onto the rough surface. Then he turned to help Yakone.

  The white male was already launching himself into the air. He came down on the very edge of the crack, letting out a yelp of pain as his wounded paw hit the ice. His hindpaws were perilously close to thin air, and Toklo grabbed his shoulder fur to haul him clear.

  “Thanks!” Yakone panted.

  “Do you need to rest?” Toklo asked, glancing at Yakone’s injured paw, which was oozing blood again.

  “I’m not going to rest for a single moment until we find Kallik!” Yakone growled.

  Toklo nodded. “You’re right. Let’s keep going.”

  His belly was bawling with hunger, and he knew that Yakone must be just as famished. His mouth was dry, too, and both bears paused briefly to lick moisture from the ice. It hardly helped.

  We can’t waste time hunting, Toklo thought. Besides, there’s no prey out here, only a bird swooping overhead now and then.

  More and more rifts in the ice crossed their path, and Toklo was afraid that they would lose Kallik’s crevasse in the confusing crisscrossing gaps, or when they had to leave the edge of it to skirt around boulders or tall ice ridges. His fear and sense of urgency was growing with every pawstep. We have to believe she’ll make it to the end, he thought, struggling with a horrible picture in his mind of Kallik stuck and helpless. If we’re not there when she gets out, she might think we’ve left her behind.

  “Look!” Yakone pointed ahead with his muzzle.

  Toklo’s brief hope that the white bear had spotted Kallik died as he saw a herd of flat-faces clambering up the glacier, tied together with vines like the first group they had seen, and prodding at the ice with sharp sticks. Their bright-red pelts were like spots of blood on the surface of the glacier.

  “They’re up here, too? That’s all we need!” he groaned.

  “We have to hide,” hissed Yakone.

  But when Toklo looked around, he couldn’t see a single place where they could take cover from the flat-faces. Between them and the looming mountain ridge, the glacier was strewn with boulders too small to duck behind, and the folds of ice weren’t high enough to hide them, either.

  The two bears stopped in panic as the flat-faces drew closer, calling to one another in their high, bird-like voices. Toklo could feel the ice trembling under his paws from their thumping pawsteps and the blows from their pointed sticks. All of Toklo’s instincts were telling him to run before the flat-faces spotted them, but he knew that if they did, they would never find Kallik’s crevasse again. Indecision and near panic froze his paws to the ground.

  Then Yakone pointed downward with his snout toward a small crack in the ice. “We’ll have to hide down there.”

  Toklo stared in disbelief. “We’ll fall . . . we’ll be trapped like Kallik.”

  “We won’t fall.” Yakone was trying to sound confident. “It’s big enough to hide us, but too narrow for us to fall down. Now go!” He gave Toklo a shove.

  Every hair on Toklo’s pelt was bristling with terror as he lowered himself haunches first into the crack. It felt like a mouth gaping to swallow him up. The crack was just wide enough for him to fit through, and though Yakone was right that it narrowed just below his body, he still felt as if the glacier was pulling him down into its creaking, whispering belly. He picked up a stale, stony smell from the cold, empty air beneath him.

  Yakone almost squashed Toklo as he eased down into the crack beside him. Both bears dug their claws into the ice, clinging to the lip of the crevasse as the flat-faces trekked past, chattering and puffing. Toklo held his breath and listened to the sounds of the flat-faces as they faded into the distance. Then to his horror he felt his back claws sliding and chips of ice crumbling away under his weight.

  “I’m slipping!” he gasped. “I’ve got to get out!”

  Instantly Yakone clawed his way out of the crack and grabbed Toklo’s scruff in his jaws, hauling him upward. Toklo scrabbled frantically with his hindpaws and collapsed, panting, on the surface of the glacier. Exhaustion and fear made his head whirl, and he was shaking beneath his fur. Yakone looked just as bad, his fur filthy, his wounded paw bleeding again, and his eyes filled with fear.

  “Great spirits, Ujurak, where are you? Can’t you see what’s happening?” Toklo muttered, feeling anger building inside him. “Or have you given up any hope of saving us?”

  Yakone rested a paw on his shoulder. “We can’t give up,” he said. “Not on Kallik, not on Lusa. And not on Ujurak.”

  Toklo let out a long sigh. “You’re right,” he grunted, hauling himself to his paws.

  Dusk was falling as the bears set out again. The terrain grew rockier and rougher, and their pace dropped as they drew close to the edge of the glacier. Their paws slipped on the sloping surface, and boulders or folds in the ice made it hard to follow the edge of Kallik’s crevasse. They kept on calling out to her in case she was close enough to hear them, but there was never a reply.

  “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!”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Lusa

  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?”

&nbs
p; “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.