The Burning Horizon

by Erin Hunter

  “Ow!”

  Cloud-brain! she scolded herself as she opened her eyes and licked her sore paw. But that just proves how hard it would be.

  She started off again, skirting the rock, remembering how skillfully Taktuq had used his hearing to work out what was going on in the den. He had adapted to make the den his home in a way that Lusa knew she never could. Perhaps she’d have been able to once, long ago, but now even her life in the Bear Bowl felt so distant, and she couldn’t remember how she had survived. She remembered her dream of growing glossy black wings and flying across the mountains in the wide-open sky. That was what her spirit had longed to do every day she was in the flat-face den with Taktuq.

  Lusa slithered down a steep slope to the bank of a narrow stream where shallow water chattered over smooth, mossy stones. Dipping her snout, she drank thirstily, then padded forward to let the current cool her paws. The sun was high overhead, beating down on Lusa’s fur. A little farther downstream she spotted a huge rock overhanging the water, and she waded down into the shade. Climbing out onto a sandy spit of land beneath the overhang, she settled down to rest with her nose on her paws. After a while, she drifted into a doze.

  As she dreamed, Lusa became aware of caribou all around her; she was walking in the middle of the herd, swept forward by the unstoppable river of bodies. Bright stars shone down from the night sky. There were no other bears there, only the caribou surrounding her with their clicking feet. Lusa padded calmly with them, her paws fitting neatly into the hoofprints pressed into the earth. I’m going to Great Bear Lake, she thought, a feeling of peace enfolding her. The Pathway Star is showing me the way.

  Lusa woke with a start. The sun had slipped a little farther down in the sky, and its position reminded her that following the caribou trail was actually taking her farther and farther away from Great Bear Lake. She let out a yelp of panic. She had made the decision to head back to the mountains for good reasons, but she was suddenly aware of what a huge risk she was taking, retracing her steps to look for her friends. They could be long gone. They might even be at the lake already! Is it the Longest Day yet? There was so much daylight now, and the nights were so short, that it was hard for Lusa to tell how much longer it would be to the gathering.

  What if I end up back in the mountains alone? she asked herself. Will I have to turn around and come back all this way? She knew that if she reached the mountains without finding the others, by the time she had retraced her steps it could be too late for the Longest Day Gathering. Lusa pictured herself arriving at Great Bear Lake to find it deserted, the gathered bears long gone and the lakeshore desolate. She let out a whimper of despair. I might never see Miki and his family again.

  Then Lusa sat up, bracing herself. I won’t be alone, and I’m not alone now! Ujurak is always with me, even if I can’t see him.

  Lusa reminded herself that she was going this way because it felt right. She couldn’t question the signs now! She had found food and places to sleep ever since she’d left the flat-face den, and in her dream Ujurak had pointed her this way. She was certain that he was watching over her, and felt reassured.

  And I trust myself to read the signs around me, just like Ujurak did. She pulled herself to her paws, took another drink from the stream, and set off again.

  When Lusa reached the top of the next hill, she was confronted by a swath of dark forest unfurling away into the distance. She could just make out more open ground beyond it, but for a while she would be walking among dense trees. A worm of panic began gnawing at Lusa’s belly, though she tried hard to ignore it. It will be so easy to miss the others among the trees!

  But the tracks left by the caribou led straight into the forest, and Lusa’s instinct tugged her forward. A bird piped somewhere ahead of her, as if it was urging her on.

  She headed into the trees. As the thick branches cut off the sunlight, she felt like she was plunging into cool, green water. Her paws stumbled on the hoof-marked ground, but Lusa kept going, even when a bush with bright-red berries seemed to reach out its branches to tempt her to stop.

  A strange sense of urgency filled Lusa now. She felt like she was getting close to something huge, something almost within her grasp.

  As Lusa pushed her way forward, the trees closed up behind her and she was enveloped in the whispering, rustling world of the forest. A gray-and-white bird swooped over her head, almost brushing her fur, and Lusa watched it disappear into the branches. Is that Ujurak, keeping an eye on me? The thought warmed her and gave more energy to her paws.

  The forest fell eerily silent once the bird had vanished. Lusa picked up her pace, loping along faster and faster, until her paws skidded on a loose stone and she fell down a slope, landing hard in a bramble thicket at the bottom.

  “Seal rot!” she spat.

  When Lusa tried to struggle to her paws, the tendrils of bramble coiled around her, seeming to tug her deeper into the thicket. A fresh awareness of how alone she was surged over Lusa, and she barely stopped herself from whimpering.

  Wrenching again at the brambles, Lusa only managed to tear her fur, but then she looked up and spotted a knot in a tree trunk above her head. As she stared, it took on the shape of a bear’s face with warm, kind eyes and a soft, furry muzzle.

  Lusa gasped with wonder. “It’s a bear spirit, watching me!”

  Looking around, she saw more bear faces emerging from the trunks of the trees. You are not alone, they seemed to tell her. We are with you.

  Urged on by their kind encouragement, Lusa calmed herself and withdrew little by little from the thicket, freeing herself from the clinging brambles with small, delicate movements. At last, scratched and missing several tufts of fur, she stood on open ground again.

  “Thank you!” she exclaimed, bowing her head to the bear spirits. “Thank you for saving me. I have to go now, but I’ll never forget you.”

  The caribou trail wound through the trees, and Lusa padded along it without stopping. She knew the bear spirits were still with her. She could feel their encouragement boosting her on, and a breeze whispered through the leaves like gentle voices.

  “Lusa . . . Lusa . . . all will be well. . . .”

  Thin shafts of reddening sunlight angled through the branches, telling Lusa that the sun was going down and the long day coming to an end. Though her legs ached with weariness, her paws still tingled impatiently; she didn’t want to stop for the night. She emerged from the trees in a small clearing filled with soft green grass, and paused there, relishing how the cool grass soothed her paws.

  I could lie down and sleep here—but I feel so close. . . .

  At that moment Lusa heard heavy lumbering noises up ahead, as though some large animals were blundering through the forest.

  More caribou? she wondered, her heart beginning to thump.

  Lusa glanced around, trying to figure out which trees would be best if she had to climb to safety.

  The noises grew closer, and now Lusa could see branches waving as the animals passed through the bushes. She crouched down behind a thick clump of ferns, hoping they would pass by without noticing her.

  Then three faces appeared from the shadows on the opposite side of the clearing. Lusa stared at them: two white faces, one brown. For a moment she felt her heart stop. Am I seeing things?

  “Kallik?” she whispered, springing to her paws. “Toklo? Yakone? Is it really you?”

  “Lusa!” barked the tired-looking brown bear in the lead, and Lusa bounded forward, suddenly feeling as if she could run forever. She had found them!

  Kallik, Yakone, and Toklo raced forward as well, and Lusa met them in the middle of the clearing. They pressed around her, covering her face with licks, pressing their muzzles into her shoulders until Lusa could hardly breathe. Delight pulsed through her; she wanted to leap up into the sky or sing like a bird, and even that wouldn’t have been enough to express her happiness.

  “I’ve found you!” she exclaimed. Thank you, Ujurak. Thank you, caribou.

 
; Kallik hooked Lusa’s paws out from under her, rolling her over on the soft grass and flopping down on top of her. Lusa wrestled joyfully with her old friend, feeling as if she was enveloped in a gentle white cloud. All her fear and weariness had evaporated like dew in sunlight.

  “Where have you been?” Kallik demanded, lifting her head and looking down at her. “Oh, Lusa, we’ve been so worried. We thought you were with us when we escaped from the mules, but you’d simply disappeared. We followed your trail to the edge of the BlackPath, but it got lost among firebeast tracks.”

  “We thought you must have been captured by a firebeast,” Toklo added. “Did that really happen?”

  Lusa nodded. “I can’t remember much about it,” she told them. “I was kicked in the head by a mule, and the firebeast took me on its back to a den with a lot of other animals and birds.”

  Kallik looked puzzled. “Why would a firebeast do that?”

  “There were flat-faces with it,” Lusa explained. “Flat-faces who look after animals that are sick or injured. I met a blind bear there . . . a black bear like me. His name was Taktuq. He seemed to like living there, but all I could think about was getting back into the wild.”

  “So how did you escape?” Yakone asked, giving Lusa a friendly nudge.

  “I made friends with a young flat-face,” Lusa said. “I made her think I was cute, by acting funny for her. I felt like such a cloud-brain, but it worked! She took me out of my cage on a vine—”

  “A vine?” Yakone looked confused.

  Lusa shrugged. “Some sort of flat-face thing. But there was a coyote, and it got out of its pen, too, and I had to fight it.” Shock throbbed through her at the memory. I don’t know how I did that!

  “You fought a coyote?” Kallik looked appalled. “Are you hurt?” She began to sniff Lusa all over.

  “No, I beat it. I wish you three had seen me! And then I ran and ran, and then I got lost in some corn. It was awful! Then finally I found the caribou trail. I’d had a dream about them, so I knew I had to follow their path. Thank the spirits Ujurak showed me which way to go! But what happened to you?” Lusa sprang to her paws again. “Tell me everything!”

  “We looked for you,” Toklo began, “and then Ujurak told us that we should find the caribou.”

  “And we figured out that meant we should follow them,” Kallik added.

  Lusa gave an excited little bounce. “Ujurak told me not to follow them!”

  “We crossed a glacier.” Yakone took up the story. “And Kallik fell down a crevasse.”

  Lusa stared at her friend in alarm. For a moment she felt as scared as if she had been there to see Kallik fall, even though Kallik was standing in front of her, alive and well.

  “I’ve never been so afraid,” Kallik said. “But Ujurak was with me, and he helped me to get out.”

  “We kept coming across flat-faces, so we started traveling at night,” Toklo went on. “Even when we lost the caribou trail, Ujurak and Ursa showed us the way with their stars. We sheltered in a flat-face den and got trapped there. . . .”

  “Stupid flat-faces,” Yakone rumbled. “Why can’t they make dens you can get out of without half killing yourself?”

  “And then we followed the caribou tracks into this forest,” Kallik concluded, nodding to the trees behind her. She glanced at Toklo and Yakone. “It was strange, because once we entered the trees we all felt this urge to go as fast as we could without stopping to hunt or rest, as if our paws just knew where we should be.”

  “I felt that, too!” Lusa squeaked.

  “It must have been Ujurak again,” Yakone said. “We would never have found each other without him.”

  The four bears huddled together. Lusa felt like she wanted to touch all their pelts at once. She never wanted to take her eyes off them ever again.

  “We can’t lose each other again,” Kallik murmured, echoing Lusa’s thoughts.

  Toklo was the first to step back from their huddle. “It’ll be dark soon,” he pointed out. “I think we should spend the night here.” As the others murmured agreement, he added, “Lusa, what’s the land like beyond these trees?”

  “Open and flat, with grass and scrubby bushes. I didn’t see any flat-faces and only a couple of firebeasts, but I don’t think there’s much prey, either.”

  “Okay,” Toklo decided. “We’ll hunt now, and eat well. Lusa, do you want to come with us to hunt?”

  Lusa nodded. “I’m not letting you out of my sight!”

  The bears headed into the trees. Lusa was still too stunned by joy to pay much attention to the hunt, but it wasn’t long before Toklo spotted a grouse roosting in a clump of ferns.

  Every hair on Lusa’s pelt quivered with delight as she and her friends spread out into their familiar hunting pattern. When they had surrounded the grouse, Yakone let out a growl to drive it out of its nest. Lusa blocked it as it took off in her direction, making it swerve toward Kallik and Toklo. They both leaped toward it at the same time, though it was Kallik who straightened up with the bird in her jaws.

  When they had carried their prey back to the clearing, Lusa accepted a small portion of the grouse, just for the fun of sharing, then satisfied her hunger with fern roots while her friends divided the rest of the bird. They all kept casting quick sidelong glances at one another as they ate, as if they couldn’t believe they were all together again.

  By the time they had finished eating, the sunlight had faded and shadows gathered under the trees. The bears settled down to sleep, curling up together in the soft grass.

  “I was so scared I’d lost you,” Toklo confided to Lusa as he folded his warm bulk around her. His voice quavered. “I promised to take you to Great Bear Lake, and I almost failed.” He buried his snout in Lusa’s fur as if he was too ashamed to look at her.

  “But you didn’t fail. And you’re not responsible for me,” Lusa told him gently. “Haven’t I just proved that I can survive on my own?” She shuddered at the memory of escaping from the flat-face den and felt Toklo shift closer to her.

  “You did well, Lusa.”

  “Besides, in spite of everything,” Lusa continued, “we found each other again. This is our journey,” she continued. “We will finish it together. Ujurak will make sure of that.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Kallik

  Kallik yawned and stretched, awakened by the early morning light. This was the second sunrise since they had been reunited with Lusa, and the others were still sound asleep in the grassy hollow where they had made a den for the night.

  I feel like I’ve hardly had time to close my eyes, she grumbled to herself. The nights are so short now.

  Rubbing a paw over her face to wake herself up, Kallik thought about the days ahead. We found Lusa, just as Ujurak promised. Now we have to find Great Bear Lake. And maybe I’ll see Taqqiq again and hear his news about the Melting Sea.

  Kallik’s paws prickled with urgency. The days were so long, and the nights passed so quickly, that she knew they must be close to the Longest Day.

  She was distracted from her thoughts by Toklo, who lumbered to his paws beside her and gave Yakone and Lusa a sharp prod. “Come on,” he ordered. “It’s time to go.”

  “I’m still sleepy . . .” Lusa mumbled.

  Yakone stretched out his paws and let his jaws gape in a massive yawn. “Me too,” he said to Lusa. “But maybe walking will wake us up.”

  They set out across the swath of grassland that stretched empty and windswept ahead of them. Outcrops of no-claw dens were rare in this open landscape, and the bears skirted them without any trouble. The grass was soft underpaw, soothing their scraped pads, and in spite of Lusa’s concerns they found just enough ground-nesting birds to keep them from going hungry. Water was more of a problem, though, and the bears learned to lick the dew off the blades of grass just before the sun rose and dried up all the moisture.

  Now that they were heading for Great Bear Lake, they had veered away from the caribou trail. Toklo took the lead, r
egularly checking the angle of the sun and the direction of the mountain slopes, and at night, the position of the Pathway Star, leading them gently on.

  We’re lucky he remembers the way from the last time he traveled to the lake, Kallik thought. We don’t have time to get lost again.

  “Yakone’s paw doesn’t seem to be hurting him much,” Kallik pointed out to Lusa, who was walking beside her. “He’s hardly limping at all.”

  Lusa nodded, though there was a shadow of anxiety in her eyes. “I hope that means the infection has cleared up,” she said. “I don’t think I could find any herbs to treat him with out here.”

  Yakone glanced back over his shoulder. “Don’t worry. I’m fine.”

  As the sun rose higher in the sky and the day grew hotter, the bears paused for a short rest. Kallik sat down beside Yakone in a small patch of shade cast by a thornbush.

  “I’ll be glad when the gathering’s over and we can go back to Star Island,” she panted.

  Yakone murmured agreement. “It’ll be good to see my family again. Even Unalaq!”

  Kallik wasn’t sure that she was looking forward to meeting the troublemaking bear again, even if he was Yakone’s brother. But she felt a stirring of excitement about their return to the island. I can’t wait to make a real home for myself after all this traveling. . . .

  “They’ll be surprised to see us, that’s for sure,” Yakone continued.

  Toklo gave him a friendly shove. “At least you won’t have a black and a brown bear tagging along this time.”

  Kallik knew Toklo was just joking around, but sadness passed over her like the flicker of a black wing as she thought about how finding her home would mean leaving her friends, perhaps forever.

  I’ll never stop missing Lusa and Toklo!

  Anxious to get to the lake, none of the bears wanted to rest for long, and soon they set out again, trudging up a long, shallow slope that led up to a ridge. When they reached the top, they halted.