Great Bear Lake

by Erin Hunter

  “I hope we can find somewhere dry to sleep,” she murmured to Ujurak.

  Toklo beckoned them over to a hollow near a tumble of rocks, but the grass at the bottom was wet and spongy.

  “This is no good,” Lusa protested. “We’ll get soaking wet.”

  “Then find somewhere better,” Toklo snapped.

  Lusa bit back a sharp retort. They were all tired and anxious; she knew it was important to find somewhere soon, because there was so little time to sleep now that the nights were so short. “But I’m not sleeping in a swamp,” she muttered to herself.

  “What about among the reeds?” Ujurak suggested. “We’d be hidden there.”

  “The reeds are growing in water, bee-brain,” Toklo replied.

  In the end they had to settle for a hump of tussocky grass with only a straggling bush for shelter. Toklo settled down with his back to the others and his paws clamped firmly over his snout. Damp and miserable, Lusa listened to his snoring, and to the quieter breathing of Ujurak. She peered upward for a glimpse of the Bear Watcher, wanting the reassurance she always felt under that quiet gaze, but clouds covered the sky.

  At last she fell into a fitful doze, and was woken in the morning by the splashing of rain on the marshy ground. She crept out from the scant shelter of the bush, trying to shake water from her pelt. In front of her the river stretched out in a silver-gray expanse, reflecting the cloudy sky. Raindrops pitted its flat surface. The far bank was barely visible through the rain.

  Behind her she could hear grunts and rustling as Toklo and Ujurak woke. The big grizzly padded past her without a word, heading toward the river. Ujurak followed him.

  “If we have to swim we won’t get much wetter,” Lusa grumbled to herself.

  Toklo’s ears twitched. “I’m not going to swim. How many more times do I have to tell you?”

  Ujurak found a track leading through the reeds to the edge of the river, where they could drink. The current rolled on, deep and silent, the surface bouncing with raindrops, and rain hid the far bank. Lusa stifled a pang of fear at the mist-shrouded emptiness.

  A loud honking from overhead interrupted her thoughts. Lusa looked up to see a flock of geese swooping down out of the sky. They skimmed the surface of the river with tremendous squawking and clattering, to land on the grass a few bearlengths downstream.

  “Could we catch one, do you think?” Lusa asked hopefully.

  Before any bear could reply, a ripple of movement passed among the geese. Maybe they heard me, Lusa thought. The whole flock took to the air again; she watched as they whirled across the sky, then lined up in a ragged snout shape and flew off downriver to vanish into the mist.

  “They’ve gone,” Lusa said, disappointed. She turned to see if Ujurak was watching the geese, too.

  But the small brown cub had vanished. Wildly she looked up and down the river, but all she could see was Toklo raising his snout from the water and shaking off the drops.

  Lusa ran to his side. “Ujurak has gone! He was standing right beside me.”

  Toklo didn’t reply. He just gazed downriver in the direction the geese had taken.

  Lusa’s belly lurched. “He changed, didn’t he? He’s flying away with the geese.”

  Toklo nodded, then settled down on his haunches and started grooming the knots out of his fur. Lusa watched him for a moment; she felt awkward because Toklo didn’t seem to be bothered by the fact that their companion had vanished. “What if Ujurak doesn’t come back?”

  The big grizzly cub glanced up. “Don’t worry, he will.”

  “But what if he doesn’t? What will we do? We can’t read the signs without him.”

  Toklo didn’t reply, just kept on tugging at a particularly stubborn knot.

  Lusa didn’t dare go on asking. Ujurak had to come back! He was the only one who knew which way to go; he wouldn’t just leave them like this. But she couldn’t stop thinking how much easier it would be to reach the place where the spirits danced if you could wing your way through the sky in the shape of a bird, instead of trudging along on the ground as a bear.

  Finally Toklo seemed satisfied that his pelt was as smooth as he could make it. He looked up and faced Lusa. “Ujurak will come back.” His voice was full of confidence. “I know he will. We don’t have to worry.”

  Lusa was startled by his faith. Toklo hadn’t known Ujurak for much longer than he had known her, and yet he clearly trusted the younger cub. Even if he didn’t trust her, it might be a sign that Toklo wasn’t as scornful of other bears as he pretended to be.

  She nodded. “Then we’ll wait.”

  “You don’t have to,” Toklo said, a rare gentleness in his tone. Lusa could hear the words he hadn’t spoken. But I do.

  He needs Ujurak! The realization broke on Lusa like the sun rising, chasing away the darkness of the night. Compassion for Toklo filled her; he had just proven that no bear could truly exist alone. Not even Oka: Her choice to abandon her cub had driven her mad.

  At least she wasn’t alone when the flat-faces came for her. Lusa knew Oka had been glad of her company that long, echoing night.

  Long grasses grew at the water’s edge, trailing into the river. Lusa tore off a mouthful and chewed it, refreshed by the moist stems. After a few moments, Toklo padded down the bank for another drink, a few bearlengths farther downstream. Then he began to eat the succulent grasses, too.

  Lusa crept along the bank until she was close enough to reach out and touch Toklo’s shoulder with her muzzle.

  Toklo jumped, almost choking on his mouthful of grass. “Don’t sneak up on me like that!” he spluttered. “What do you want?”

  “Why won’t you swim? I know you can. All bears can.”

  Suspicion flared in Toklo’s brown eyes. “What do you want to know for? It’s none of your business.”

  Lusa’s instincts told her to turn away, not to bother him anymore. Instead she gathered her courage. “I thought you might tell me, that’s all.”

  For a long moment, Toklo stared at her. Then he looked down at his paws. “I’m scared,” he confessed.

  “Why?”

  “I—I can feel the spirits trying to drag me under.” He didn’t look up at Lusa. “I think maybe Tobi is trying to drown me, because he’s lonely in the river, or maybe it’s Oka, punishing me because I lived when her favorite cub died.”

  “But Oka wouldn’t do that,” Lusa said, trying to keep her voice steady. “She loved you very much.”

  The two cubs stared at each other for a long moment. Then Toklo turned away, his shoulders hunched. He tore up another mouthful of grass. “I don’t care what my mother felt,” he mumbled.

  Please, Arcturus, Lusa prayed, tell me what to say.

  “Flat-faces brought Oka into the Bear Bowl,” she began. Toklo stiffened, but he didn’t turn to look at her; he just kept champing on the grasses. “She was really thin, as if she’d been starving. She was so unhappy and so angry, and at first I didn’t understand why. She had food and shelter, and the flat-faces were kind, they really were. But Oka didn’t seem to care about getting her strength back. She just wanted to get out, back to the wild. She kept throwing herself at the fences, trying to break her way through.”

  There was no response from Toklo. Lusa just had to believe that he was still listening.

  “I’ve always known bears don’t have to live in a Bear Bowl,” she went on, with an edge to her tone. I’m not as dumb as he thinks! “My father, King, was born in the wild, you know. I always loved hearing his stories of what life was like there. And I thought Oka might have some good stories, too. But she didn’t want to talk to me. She just lay beside the fence with her eyes closed.”

  She wondered whether to tell Toklo about the time when Oka attacked a flat-face. She suspected that Toklo wouldn’t share her feeling that the attack had been a dreadful thing to do; after all, he would have attacked a flat-face cub if Ujurak hadn’t stopped him. But she couldn’t leave it out, because it was why Oka had died without havi
ng a chance to find Toklo.

  “Oka had been in the Bear Bowl for about a moon when she clawed a flat-face,” she continued in a rush. “He’d come to feed her, and she charged at him and knocked him over.” She suppressed a shudder as memories of the flat-face screaming and his blood splashing onto the grass flickered in her mind. “She held him down and clawed him, and he howled in pain. It was terrible.”

  Toklo’s ears twitched; he was certainly listening now. “What does attacking a flat-face have to do with me?”

  “Nothing….” Lusa searched for the right words. “Oka was just so angry that she couldn’t find you again. She had lost both her cubs—how do you think she felt?”

  Toklo gazed out across the river. The rain had eased off and the clouds were breaking up, letting a gleam of sunlight through.

  “Oka told me about you and Tobi.” Lusa pressed on gently. “Because Tobi died, she thought you would die, too, and she couldn’t bear it. That’s why she sent you away to take care of yourself. She was so sorry. She didn’t mean to hurt the flat-face, she was just grieving so much for you and Tobi.”

  A low, throaty sound came from deep in Toklo’s chest, and he turned his head from side to side as if he were trying to shake off a stinging insect. For the first time he looked Lusa full in the face. His brown eyes were clouded.

  Lusa wanted to press herself against his shoulder to comfort him with the warmth of her pelt, but she didn’t quite dare.

  “After the attack, the flat-faces took her away,” she said. “She never came back. They…they wouldn’t have returned her to the wild. Oka knew that. She was thinking about you, all the time. She was sorry for what she did to you. She—”

  “She wasn’t sorry!” Toklo growled. “If she had really cared, she wouldn’t have sent me away.”

  Lusa’s heart sank and she turned her head to look at the river sliding past.

  Then she heard the beating of wings above her head. A goose was swooping down out of the sky, stretching out its legs for a landing. As soon as its feet touched the ground they began to thicken; its body expanded and brown fur flowed over it, swallowing up its feathers. Its wings became forepaws and its beak changed to a snout. Within a heartbeat Ujurak stood in front of them, a few bearlengths from the water’s edge.

  Lusa was too frozen by relief and astonishment to move. Ujurak trotted up to them. “Hi,” he said. “Are you okay?”

  “You came back!” Lusa exclaimed.

  “Of course I came back. Did you think I wouldn’t?” Ujurak gave her a friendly shove. “I’ll always come back.”

  “Where have you been?” Toklo asked. His voice rasped with anger; Lusa wasn’t sure if he was angry with her for telling him about Oka, or with Ujurak for taking off like that without warning.

  “Flying with the geese,” Ujurak replied, his eyes stretching wide. “They are so scared, and hungry. Their nesting grounds are shrinking, and they can find hardly anything to eat as they fly toward them.”

  “But did you see anything useful, like a place to cross the river?” Toklo prompted.

  “Yes,” Ujurak answered, the faraway look in his eyes clearing. “Farther downriver there’s a flat-face bridge made of gray stone. It’s huge, and there are firebeasts using it to cross.”

  “All right, let’s go. Show us where it is.” Ignoring Lusa, Toklo strode off downriver with Ujurak trotting behind him.

  Lusa followed. She wished she could have done more to help Toklo understand his mother’s sorrow. It’s my fault, she told herself. I didn’t say it right.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Toklo

  “Where’s this bridge?” Toklo called, glancing over his shoulder to where Ujurak and Lusa were padding along side by side.

  “I’m not sure,” Ujurak admitted. “Everything looks so different from up in the air.” He paused, then nodded toward a clump of pine trees several bearlengths downriver, on the opposite bank. “I think we’ll see it once we’ve passed those.”

  The rain had changed to a fine drizzle that misted like cobwebs on Toklo’s pelt and trickled through to his skin, chilling him to his bones. “I wish I had wings,” he grunted.

  His belly still churned from the pain of what Lusa had told him, but he wasn’t going to let her see.

  Why should I care what Oka said before she died? She sent me away when I needed her. Nothing will ever change that.

  The river seemed to wind on forever; the bank was covered with wiry grass that felt harsh underpaw, with never a sniff of proper prey. What am I doing here? Toklo grumbled to himself. This isn’t a good place for bears.

  They passed the trees that Ujurak had pointed out, but there was still no sign of the bridge. “Are we ever going to get across?” Toklo muttered. “If we keep on like this for much longer, I’ll have webbed paws.”

  “Sorry.” Ujurak hunched his shoulders. “I guess it doesn’t look so far when you’re flying.”

  The pine trees were out of sight behind them when Toklo’s ears picked up a rumbling noise ahead. It grew louder and louder, until he spotted firebeasts roaring along a BlackPath in an unending stream. They belched out a foul-smelling smoke that caught in Toklo’s throat and made him cough.

  “There.” Ujurak nodded toward the firebeasts.

  Lusa halted. “Wow! I didn’t think there were so many firebeasts, ever!”

  Toklo stopped beside her, limbs stiffening and every hair on his pelt prickling with alarm. Ujurak had said the BlackPath was huge where it crossed the river, but he had never imagined it could be this big. It’s not meant for bears…. Toklo pushed the thought away. They had to keep going; this was the only way they had of crossing.

  When it reached the river, the BlackPath continued, stretching above their heads right across the water to the other side, supported by giant legs of the same shiny stuff the firebeasts were made from.

  “We’ll never get across there now.” Lusa’s fur stood on end and her eyes were scrunched up against the fumes and dust. “We should wait here until night comes. Maybe most of the firebeasts will have gone back to their dens by then.”

  “I’m not waiting here,” Toklo protested, his muscles tightening at the thought of staying out in the open where flat-faces could spot them easily.

  “Let’s go farther down the bank,” Ujurak suggested. “We can hide there.”

  With a grunt of agreement, Toklo went first, scrambling down the riverbank until they reached a clump of bushes not far from the first of the bridge supports. He hadn’t realized how massive they were until he saw it close-up; he had to tilt his head all the way back to see the top. He trotted up and gave it a sniff, but it didn’t have much scent of its own, only the harsh tang of firebeasts.

  Every heartbeat that passed made Toklo more convinced that something was wrong. He wondered if the others felt the same; perhaps they were angry with him for refusing to swim. Gazing out across the greasy brown water, he thought of what Lusa had told him: that Oka loved him, and wished she hadn’t sent him away. That didn’t make him feel any better about swimming. How could his mother not want to drag him under and drown him if she was so desperate to see him again?

  Under the bridge the noise of the firebeasts clanged in his ears until his head hurt and he couldn’t even hear his own thoughts. Toklo retraced his pawprints to where Ujurak and Lusa were nosing among the bushes.

  “It’s not too bad here,” Ujurak said. “We can rest while we wait for nightfall.”

  “Hey, come over here!” Lusa called. “There are masses of berries.”

  Toklo turned to spot a flash of red among the tangling branches. Padding closer, he saw Lusa standing beside a bush heavy with bright scarlet berries. She was reaching up to a branch, her jaws parted to bite down on the succulent fruit.

  “No!” Toklo roared. “Stop!” Belly clenched with terror, he bounded over to her and roughly shouldered her away.

  “Okay,” Lusa said, scrabbling to get her balance and shooting him an aggrieved glare. “You can eat first if y
ou want.”

  Toklo glared back at her. “No one gets to eat them. Those berries are deadly to bears,” he growled. “Don’t you know that? If you eat them you’ll get horrible pains in your belly, and then you’ll die.”

  Lusa began to back away, her annoyance changing to fear that made her eyes as big as moons. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know.”

  “Of course you didn’t,” Toklo huffed, turning his back. She’ll never be a proper bear! He shoved his way through the branches of the nearest bush and settled down close to the trunk with his nose resting on his paws.

  In spite of the firebeast thunder, he dozed and dreamed of walking through his own territory in the forest, leaving his clawmarks on trees to mark his borders. Everywhere he walked belonged to him alone; there were no other bears relying on him to protect them and to find food. Full-fed, he lazed in a clearing with the sun warming his pelt. He could hear the gurgling of a river where he knew he could catch a plump salmon, and see the spot on the ground where a grouse had made her twiggy nest and filled it with eggs. Under a nearby tree was his den, where he could sleep, held safely by the earth.

  He tried to enjoy the feeling of warmth and safety, but something was nagging at him. It niggled him with more and more urgency until he sprang to his paws. “Where are you?” he called to his dream-forest. “What do you want?”

  He took off, charging through the trees, barking as he searched more and more desperately. He didn’t even know what he was looking for.

  “Toklo? Is it time to go on?”

  Lusa’s voice startled him; he realized he must have been barking out loud. He opened his eyes, and the sunlit forest slipped out of his mind. As Lusa scrambled out of their makeshift den, the branches shifted blackly against deep shadows, and Toklo saw that the long daylight had faded. The rumble of firebeasts crossing the bridge had eased, like the far-off rumble of a fading storm. Cautiously he stuck his head out of the bushes. The rain had stopped, though water still welled up around his paws when he trod on the sodden grass.