by Erin Hunter
In the next enclosure, one of the giant white bears was swimming around and around in a circle, from one lump of stone to the next. Lusa had seen it do this for hours. The white bears were even less friendly than the grizzly, who lived on his own and didn’t say much. Lusa didn’t know their names. The white bears stayed on their island of gray stone or in the chilly water and ignored the bears on either side of them. Lusa was fine with that; they were nearly three times her mother’s size, and she sometimes got the feeling that they’d be perfectly happy to have her for dinner instead of the slabs of meat the flat-faces threw over the wall.
Her nose was beginning to itch. Lost in thought about the white bears, she forgot about the competition and reached up to scratch it.
“Ha!” Yogi yelped, jumping to his paws. “You moved! I win!”
“Oh,” Lusa said, feeling foolish. “Well, it doesn’t matter anyway. If a grizzly spotted me, I would just run up a tree. I can climb much better than any old brown bear!”
“Let’s ask Stella to tell us the story of the Bear Tree again,” Yogi suggested, flicking his ears.
The two cubs bounded across to Stella. She was older than they were, but younger than King, and she had lots of excellent stories about bears out in the wild, even though she’d never lived there herself. She had come from another zoo, where the bears had told her many things about life outside of the Fences. Her fur was a reddish brown, not dark black like Lusa’s or Yogi’s.
“Stella, Stella!” the cubs called.
“Tell us the story of the bear that turned into the tallest tree in the forest,” Yogi begged.
“Please?” Lusa added.
The older bear snorted and sat down, lifting her front paws and raising her muzzle in the air, as if sniffing the wind. “Can you smell the forest?” Stella murmured.
The cubs lifted their noses into the air, flaring their nostrils. A million scents flooded Lusa’s nose. She could smell all the flat-faces pressing through the zoo. She could smell the mouthwatering scent of flat-face food, and the tangy, almost-flower scent of their brightly colored pelts. She could smell many unfamiliar animals as well. Even though she’d never met them, she knew they were alive from the way their scent changed as they moved around their dens. She wondered what they looked like, and whether they’d be friendly or scary. And she could smell green things growing, but she didn’t know if that was the forest that Stella meant.
“Maybe,” Yogi said. “I can smell something.”
“With your nose, it could be anything,” Lusa teased.
“A long time ago,” Stella said, ignoring them, “this whole land was covered in forest, and bears roamed freely wherever they wanted to go.”
“What happened to it?” Lusa asked. “Where did the forest go?”
“Well, the flat-faces came and changed the land,” Stella said, “but there is still forest out there, a long way away—like where King was found.”
“Tell us about the forest,” Yogi asked. “What does it look like?”
“There are trees as far as you can see, reaching in every direction, farther than any bear can run in a day.”
“Even a brown bear?” Lusa asked. She’d heard about how fast grizzlies could run, although the one next door mostly lay around grumbling.
“Even a brown bear,” Stella said. “And inside every one of those trees is the spirit of a bear.”
“Are there that many bears in the world?” Lusa breathed.
“There used to be,” Stella said. “And one of them lived right here in the Bowl, long ago, before you were born.”
“What happened to him?” Yogi asked.
“He grew old—very old,” Stella said. “He was much older than King. His muzzle was grizzled with gray fur, and when he walked he creaked like the branches of a tree in the wind.”
“What was his name?” Lusa asked.
Stella stopped and thought for a moment, scratching her ear with one paw. “His name was Old Bear,” she said. Lusa wondered if she was making that up. “Anyway, one day we came out for our morning meal, and he was lying under his favorite tree. He used to sit in its branches all day long, but on this day, he was just lying there on the ground. We went over and poked him with our paws and our noses, but he didn’t move. His scent had changed, too. He was dead.”
Lusa and Yogi both shivered, shaking the chills out of their fur.
“The flat-faces came in and took him away, but we could feel his spirit was still here in the Bowl. It whooshed around us like the wind all that day, making our fur prickle and our claws sting like ice. And then, as the sun was sinking beyond the edge of the Bowl, we saw something new in the pattern of the bark on the tallest tree in the Forest.”
“What was it?” Yogi asked, wide-eyed.
“It was the face of a bear,” Stella said. “You can see it on the side that faces the Mountains. The spirit of Old Bear lives in that tree still.”
Lusa and Yogi stared at the tallest tree in awe, wondering if Old Bear’s spirit was staring back at them. Lusa thought she wouldn’t like to be trapped in a tree. She’d rather have paws for running and a nose for smelling.
“Let’s go look for the face,” Lusa suggested, and Yogi bounded after her over to the trunk of the tree. They padded around it in a circle, staring at the knots in the trunk. Lusa stopped and lifted onto her hind legs, peering at the bark.
“I think I see it!” she cried. “I see a face!”
Yogi stood up beside her. He tilted his head. “I don’t see anything,” he rumbled.
“It’s right there,” Lusa insisted, waving her paw. “See, this is his eye, and this—” As she leaned forward to bat the small black spot that looked like a bear’s nose, suddenly it moved!
“It’s alive!” Lusa yelped, leaping back. “Old Bear is coming out of the tree!” She fled to the nearest boulder, her heart thumping wildly. But when she turned around, Yogi was rolling on the ground laughing.
“What’s so funny?” Lusa demanded.
“It’s a beetle,” Yogi huffed. “You ran away from a beetle!”
“Oh.” Lusa sat down and licked her paw. “I knew that.”
Just then the bears heard a voice calling their names in the flat-face language. Two of the feeders had come to the edge of the railing with the bears’ evening meal. Yogi ran over immediately, grunting with pleasure, and the other bears followed. King lumbered to his paws slowly and wandered over. He always ate last, and Lusa knew, like the other bears, that she should leave the least rotten fruit for him, since he was the biggest and oldest bear in the Bowl.
Lusa picked through the berries, choosing the ones she liked best. With a cooing sound, one of the feeders reached down and scratched her back with a long stick. Lusa wriggled happily, letting him get to all the parts that itched. She was still full from the morning meal and didn’t really care if she ate or not tonight.
As the flat-faces moved on to the grizzly bear, Yogi found a rotten apple and nudged it toward Lusa.
“Yuck,” Lusa said, kicking it back to him. “No rotten apples for me, thanks.”
“Now, now,” Stella said. “That’s no way to show respect for your food.”
“Do we show respect for it by eating it?” Lusa asked cheekily. She’d heard Stella’s “respect” lectures before, but she found it hard to believe there was any connection between noble bear spirits and the chunks of broken fruit the flat-faces tossed onto the ground for them.
“You should always treat anything from nature with respect,” Stella said, “even when you eat it. You never know when it might have the spirit of a bear inside it.”
“Oh, no!” Lusa cried, pretending to act horrified. “A bear spirit! I don’t want to eat any of those. I’ll never be able to eat apples again.” She flounced back to the log. Stella and Yogi laughed.
A few stars came out as the sun went down, but most of them were hard to see in the orange glow from the flat-face lights. King ambled back to the boulders, where he slept outside. The othe
r bears preferred the dens of white stone at the back of the Bowl, where they could be sure they wouldn’t be rained on suddenly in the middle of the night. King was the only one who didn’t like being indoors. Ashia had explained to Lusa that he didn’t like the walls’ straight edges, or the feeling of being trapped, but Lusa didn’t understand. Inside the den it was quiet and warm. Out there, you could hear the grizzly bear grunting and the white bears snoring and insects buzzing around your ears all night long.
She rolled onto her back and looked up at the sky through the clear, hard square in the roof. One bright star hung there, always watching her, night after night. It was the only one she could always see, and it never seemed to move.
“Stella?” Lusa asked. “Do you know anything about that star?”
“That is the Bear Watcher,” Stella murmured sleepily. “Like us, it has found a good place and it stays there, never wandering.”
“Tell us more,” Yogi prompted. “Is it the spirit of a bear?”
“Don’t be silly,” Stella said. “Bear spirits live in the trees. But my mother did once tell me the story of a little bear cub in the sky.”
“A bear cub in the sky?” Lusa echoed.
“Yes.” Stella wrinkled her nose as if she was trying to remember. “She keeps the bright star in her tail, but there’s a big brown bear who wants that star for his own. So he chases the little black bear around and around the sky…but he never gets the star, because black bears are too clever, even if they are smaller than other bears.”
“So the little bear gets to keep the star,” Lusa said, pleased. She was sure she could be fast and clever, too. Certainly more clever than Yogi or the fat brown bear next door.
Stella had fallen asleep, making drowsy buzzing noises through her nose. Yogi was licking his paws, digging his teeth in between his claws to get at the last sticky bits of fruit.
Lusa didn’t feel tired. She scrambled to her paws again and padded outside, hoping she could see the little black bear and the big brown bear running around and around. She padded over to the Mountains and stood on the tallest boulder, craning her neck to look up at the night sky.
The only star she could see was the motionless bright one, twinkling down at her.
Lusa sat on her haunches and gazed up at it—the little bear watching the Bear Watcher.
CHAPTER THREE
Toklo
Toklo crouched in the long grass. All around him the trees waved softly, and he could feel the breeze ruffling his shaggy brown coat.
Toklo opened his mouth and breathed in the musky smell of prey. He twitched his ears at the sound of snapping pine needles and let his breathing slow down until it matched the sighing of the wind. Then, with lightning quickness, he charged, sinking his claws into rabbit flesh. The creature squirmed and flailed, trying to get away, but Toklo’s long, razor-sharp claws pierced its fur and pinned it to the ground. With a fierce snarl, the grizzly bear cub sank his teeth into the rabbit’s neck.
“Toklo! Toklo, MOVE!”
His mother’s voice jerked Toklo’s attention back to the real world. He let go of the log he’d been pretending was a rabbit and looked up.
A firebeast was charging straight at him!
Toklo scrambled backward as fast as he could, making it to the nearby grass just as the firebeast roared past, missing him by only a few pawlengths. Horrible black smoke filled the air as it shot by, spraying brown slush from the puddles over his fur.
“Blech!” Toklo spat, rubbing his face with his paws. The taste of the firebeast’s fumes was all over his tongue and up his nose. For a moment he couldn’t smell anything except the beast and burning.
“Toklo, you troublesome cub!” His mother lumbered over and cuffed him on the head, making his ears ring. “How many times have I told you to stay away from the BlackPath? You could have been killed!”
“I could have scared away the firebeast,” Toklo muttered. “I’ve been working on my angry face, see?” He raised himself on his back legs and bellowed, baring his sharp teeth.
“Nothing scares the firebeasts,” Oka snarled. “And you’ll never be as big as they are, so don’t even think about fighting them.”
Toklo wished he could be that big. Then nobody would ever scold him or tell him what to do or make him eat dandelions. He’d been following his mother through the valley all day, and they had barely found anything to eat. Although the season of fishleap was almost here, drifts of snow still covered the ground around the mountains, looking from a distance like piles of white fur on the rocks. But here and there it was melting, revealing patches of dirt and feeble bits of grass where snowdrops and dandelions poked through.
“Why can’t you be quiet and obedient like your brother?” Oka grumbled. She swung her head around to look at her younger son, huddled beneath a tree.
“Obedient?” Toklo scoffed. “You mean weak.”
“Tobi’s sick,” Oka growled. “He needs food. Gather some dandelions for him, and eat some yourself instead of rolling into the BlackPath like a blind deer.”
“I don’t like dandelions,” Toklo complained. “They’re all smushed up and full of dirt and they taste like metal and smoke. Yuck!” He pawed at his nose, wishing he had a real rabbit.
“We can’t afford to be picky,” Oka said, digging through the snow with her giant claws. “Food is scarce enough. You have to eat whatever we can find, or you will starve to death.”
Toklo snorted. Tobi ate whatever he was given, and he was doing much worse than Toklo, so Toklo thought being fussy was just fine. He couldn’t understand what was wrong with Tobi. All he did was lie around looking sad and moaning.
Toklo dug up a few dandelion stems and padded over to his brother. The damp grass under the tree tickled his paws as he nudged Tobi’s side.
“Come on, Tobi, eat these,” Toklo said. “Or else you’ll be too tired to keep walking—again—and Mother will probably blame me for not feeding you.”
Tobi opened his dark brown eyes and gazed up at his brother. He pressed his front paws into the ground and lifted himself weakly up to a wobbly standing position. He leaned over and put his mouth around a dandelion, which he chewed as if it were a chunk of stone.
Toklo sighed. Tobi was useless and he had been his whole life, as far as Toklo could remember. He was too small and too tired to do anything fun. He couldn’t hunt. He couldn’t feed himself. He couldn’t play-wrestle. He couldn’t even walk faster than a caterpillar.
If it were just me and Mother, Toklo thought, forcing himself to eat one of the dandelions, we could run right across the mountains and chase rabbits and eat anything we wanted. His fur burned with resentment. Tobi got all the attention and all the praise, but he was nothing but a burden. Toklo was the one who would grow up to be a real bear. He was the one who would take care of them all once he was big enough.
Oka shambled over, sniffing the air and warily eyeing the BlackPath. Toklo could feel the rumble under their paws that meant that another firebeast was coming.
“Let’s keep moving,” she said. “I think we’ve dug up all the dandelions here.”
Finally! Toklo woofed happily and broke into a run, galloping up the hill into the woods. There were much more interesting smells coming from up the mountain. In the valley where they’d always lived, the smells of the flat-faces and their firebeasts covered everything else.
“Toklo!” his mother said sharply. “Come back here. We’re going this way.”
The bear cub’s shoulders slumped. “But, Mother,” he whined. “I want to go into the mountains and catch a goat. I’m sure I could if you let me try!”
“Tobi will never make it up that slope,” Oka pointed out. “And it will be too cold in the mountains for him. We have to stay low until the snow melts, when it’ll be easier for him to travel up there.”
Toklo stood up on his back legs and pawed at his ears, trying to hide his frustration. It wasn’t fair! Stupid Tobi. Every decision they made was all about him.
“Let’s check the sides of the BlackPath,” Oka said. “If we’re lucky, one of the firebeasts might have abandoned some prey.”
“Fine,” Toklo said, sprinting ahead along the edge of the BlackPath. He liked the feeling of leading the others, of being the one who decided where to go, even if he wasn’t really in charge. Oka followed, helping Tobi plod along beside her and nudging him forward every few steps with her muzzle. Toklo stayed in the shadow of the trees, keeping at least a bearslength away from the BlackPath. He’d never seen a firebeast leave the BlackPath before, but he thought they probably could if they wanted to.
The roaring and growling from the firebeasts started to hurt Toklo’s ears, especially as more and more of them raced past. Toklo couldn’t pick up any prey scents, and the sounds of the forest were completely drowned out. The rustling and pattering from under the snow, where mice and other tiny creatures lived, usually made his mouth water and his heart beat faster. Here, there was nothing to get him excited.
After a long time, Oka barked to catch his attention. He turned and saw what she had spotted: a deer carcass lying by the side of the BlackPath. He hadn’t noticed it because it didn’t smell like prey or like any kind of food.
But he followed his mother and helped her drag the dead deer off the BlackPath and back into the trees. He sank his teeth into the flesh with a shudder, feeling the frozen meat crunch in his jaws, and dug his paws into the ground to pull it backward. As soon as they were under the tree cover, he dropped the carcass and wiped his tongue with his paws.
“That is disgusting,” he announced.
“We’re lucky to find any meat at all,” his mother said. “Here, Tobi, take a bite.” Dutifully, the smaller cub tugged free a piece of ragged flesh and swallowed it.
Toklo tried to do the same. He bit into the deer’s haunch, but it was hard to tear apart the frozen, dead meat, and once he did get a mouthful, he couldn’t bring himself to swallow it. He spat out the meat and sat up.
“I can’t!” he said, backing away from the carcass. “It’s the most horrible, awful, disgusting, dreadful thing I’ve ever tasted in my whole life.”