The Quest Begins

by Erin Hunter

  There was a clang close by, and Kallik saw that two of the no-claws were walking toward her. She backed into a corner, trying to make herself smaller. The cold, hard columns pressed into her back. There was no way to burrow out. She was completely trapped. The no-claws came closer and closer, then turned and went to the cage of the mangy old ranting bear. The male no-claw pointed something into the cage and there was a short hissing noise.

  Kallik scrambled closer, trying to see what was happening. After a moment, the no-claws opened a door in the columns and pulled out the limp body of the old bear.

  Kallik panicked. The no-claws had killed him! Maybe they were going to kill all of them! She threw herself at the bars, screaming. “Mother!” she howled, slamming her side into the bars with all her force. “Mother, help, please, help me!” She had to get out of here. Maybe she could knock down the columns, or break through them, or…Terror overwhelmed her and she threw herself against the bars again and again.

  At last she collapsed to the ground, exhausted and gasping for breath. The bars hadn’t budged even a clawslength.

  “That’s not going to get you anywhere,” said a voice from the next enclosure. “You should save your energy if you want to get through this.”

  Kallik rolled over and looked up. A full-grown bear was watching her. She seemed to be the same age as Nisa, old enough for cubs, but her eyes were not gentle like Nisa’s, and her voice sounded tired and cross.

  “These cages are impossible to break,” she went on. “Believe me, much bigger bears than you have tried.”

  “Who are you?” Kallik asked. She had a new word now: cage. She didn’t like it.

  There was a pause. “I’m Nanuk,” said the other bear eventually.

  “I’m Kallik. Where are we?”

  “We’re in a no-claw den. This is where they bring all the bears who come too close to their dens.”

  “What are they going to do with us?” Kallik whimpered.

  “Don’t worry,” Nanuk said. “I’ve been here before. They keep us for a while and then take us back to the ice. You’ll be fine as long as you don’t cause any trouble.”

  Kallik hesitated. “Have you seen any cubs like me, on their own? I’m looking for one called Taqqiq. He’s a bit bigger than me and he walks with his paws splayed out like this.” She spread her feet. “He—he’s my brother. When our mother died he ran away, and I’ve been looking for him.”

  Nanuk shook her head. “You’re the only cub I’ve seen this time. This burn-sky has been hungrier than any I can remember. Your brother is probably dead.”

  “No!” Kallik cried. “He isn’t! I won’t believe that. He’s strong, much stronger than me! If I can survive this long, so can he.”

  The older bear studied Kallik for a moment. “I hope you’re right,” she said softly.

  The clanging noise came again, and Kallik saw the two no-claws returning. She retreated to the back of her cage, feeling the hard stone scrape her fur. Her coat must be thinner than usual, because her bones stuck out now, rubbing against the wall. The no-claws came closer, opening her cage but blocking the way out.

  “Nanuk!” Kallik howled. “What are they doing?”

  “Keep still. There’s no point fighting them,” Nanuk growled.

  The no-claw threw something flat and heavy over Kallik’s head. It felt slick, like the skin of a seal, and it was the color of the sky. It trapped her against the floor, and she struggled, yowling, as the no-claw wrapped his forepaws around her and held her still.

  “What are they DOING?” Kallik yelled again. “Stop, STOP IT!” The other no-claw took something strong-smelling and started rubbing it all over Kallik’s fur. It was the same sticky, horrible stuff that she’d noticed on her before. Some of it got in Kallik’s eyes and made them water.

  At last they let her go and left the cage, taking the skin-thing with them. Kallik crouched on the floor, shivering and smelling worse than ever. She gagged on the stench and tried to wipe it off her muzzle, but it was all over her paws, too.

  “Shhh, Kallik, the no-claws are just doing stupid no-claw things,” Nanuk said calmly. “They didn’t hurt you, did they?”

  Outside the cages, the female no-claw pulled a stick on the wall, and slowly the bars between Kallik’s and Nanuk’s cages rose into the air, until Kallik and Nanuk were in one big cage, with no bars between them.

  Kallik could smell Nanuk more clearly now. She reeked of hunger and filth—nothing like the warm, gentle scent of Kallik’s mother.

  “Why did they put that stuff on my fur?” she whimpered.

  “They’re trying to hide your scent from me,” Nanuk explained. “They’re hoping I’ll mistake you for one of my own cubs so that when we get to the ice, I’ll look after you.” Her voice was full of scorn. “No-claws. Hmph! They think they’re the only ones who can talk to one another. I’d never think you were one of my own cubs!”

  “What happened to your cubs?” Kallik asked.

  Nanuk’s eyes clouded, and she moved one paw restlessly over the ground. “I don’t want to talk about that,” she replied.

  Kallik knew from the slump of her shoulders that Nanuk was carrying as much sadness as she was. She could smell it, above the stench of the sticky green stuff. She crept over and stretched her muzzle up to Nanuk and they touched noses. Kallik closed her eyes, comforted by the feeling of Nanuk’s fur brushing against hers.

  Nanuk lay down, curling on her side to allow Kallik to rest against her. “I know you’re not my cub,” she murmured. “And I’m not your mother. But we’re all we have, for now.”

  Kallik drifted off to sleep, feeling safe for the first time since her mother had died.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Lusa

  Golden sunbeams drifted down through the leaves, casting dappled green shadows over the forest floor. A gentle wind swayed the trees with a murmur like voices in the distance. Somewhere not too far away, Lusa could hear the trickle of a stream and smell the tart sweetness of wild berries.

  She padded through the forest, breathing in the fresh air and letting her paws sink into the damp earth. She hadn’t been out in the sunlight in days, and the warmth in her fur made her realize how much she’d missed it.

  The trees were not what she had expected. She stood on her hind legs and studied one of them closely. It was tall and solid, its roots buried deeply in the dirt while its branches soared far up into the sky. She had thought it would look more like a bear. Lusa wondered how much she should believe of what Stella had told her.

  As she dropped onto all fours again, she noticed a tree unlike the others in a clearing nearby. Instead of towering over her, this tree was small and covered in beautiful white blossoms. It looked as if the stars in the sky had been turned into flowers and scattered all over the tree. Lusa hoped that, when she died, she turned into a tree like this. She didn’t want to float down a river like Oka and Tobi. She wanted her spirit to end up in a spray of blossoms.

  She reached up the trunk with her front paws and found some small red fruits dangling from the branches. Using her teeth, she managed to tug one free. As she crunched it, sweet juice flooded her mouth, and the sharp taste of the skin tingled on her tongue. It was much tastier than the flat-face food she’d been scavenging for so long. She even liked it better than the salty potato sticks.

  Suddenly she heard branches snapping behind her. Her heart sped up and she leaped into the tree, climbing in quick bounds the way King had taught her. Hidden among the soft blossoms, she clutched the trunk and peered down.

  A large four-legged animal bounded into the clearing. Long branches grew from its head and its pelt was lots of different shades of brown, dappled like pebbles in a stream. It stood below the tree for a moment, sniffing the air. Lusa could have dropped straight onto its back. The creature looked around nervously, tension quivering through its fur. Lusa could feel the same nervousness making her own limbs tremble. A heartbeat later, the animal sprang away and raced into the trees.
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  Lusa stayed on her branch. She felt safe here. She reached for another fruit and ate it. The smell of the leaves and the blossoms and the tree sap mingled at the back of her throat. She reached again, then stopped, her paws still stretched out.

  Another black bear was gazing at her from the tree trunk. Frozen with alarm, Lusa stared back. For a long moment, neither of them moved. At last, tentatively, Lusa reached out and pushed aside some leaves to see the face better. She let out a huff of embarrassed laughter. It wasn’t a real bear—it was a series of knots and whorls in the bark that looked exactly like a black bear’s face.

  “Hello there,” Lusa whispered, putting her face close to the trunk of the tree. “Were you once a bear?” Perhaps Stella was right after all. She liked the feeling that a spirit was this close to her, watching her. It made her feel less alone.

  She stayed in the tree for a while, letting the sunlight and the smell of the blossoms soak through her. When sunhigh came, she whispered good-bye to the bear face and climbed down. She perked up her ears and went in search of the stream she had heard.

  The glitter of water caught her eye through the trees, and soon she was splashing through the shallows, feeling the smooth, egg-shaped stones turn and tumble under her paws. She bent her head to lap up the water and felt the cool liquid ease the ache in her paws from so many days of walking on hard stone paths.

  Lusa followed the stream. She was sure that it came from the top of the mountain. The ground sloped upward beside it, and the water tasted cold, like melted snow. If she followed it, she’d be traveling up the bear snout mountain toward the Bear Watcher star, in the direction Oka had come from. She was going the right way—and yet the forest was so big, bigger than she’d ever imagined. If she climbed to the top of the tallest tree, she didn’t think she could see to the ends of it. How would she ever find Toklo?

  She stayed with the stream for the rest of that day and the next, traveling in daylight and keeping cool in the shadows under the trees. On her third day in the forest, the stream stopped going straight down the mountain. Now it flowed along the side of it, curving away into the forest. Lusa sat down on the bank, dabbing her paws in the water. The stream was going the wrong way now. She needed to go over the mountain to follow Oka’s path back to Toklo. She would be sad to leave the stream—its bubbling chatter made her feel like she had a friend traveling with her. When she finally got up and walked away into the forest, she was lonelier than ever.

  The days were getting longer and hotter, and the ground underpaw got steeper the farther she went up the mountain. She was grateful to the trees for their cool shade and also for their protection at night. As safe as she felt in the forest, she knew she mustn’t stop being watchful. So at night she climbed up into the trees and slept in their branches, where no grizzlies or wolves or far-wandering flat-faces could find her.

  Five days after she’d entered the forest, Lusa climbed onto a ledge that stuck out over some of the trees. It was a tough scramble up the rocks, but when she reached the ledge and turned around, she saw the world spread out below her. She sat down, awed. Far in the distance she could see the place where the sky met the ground, blurred by thin purple clouds. She could even see the edge of the forest, although it was a long, long way away. Beyond it she could just make out the shapes of flat-face dens and the sharp corners of firebeast paths. Lusa wondered if the Bear Bowl was down there, and if any of her family was looking up at the mountain at that moment, thinking about her.

  Lusa felt a pang of guilt, and her loneliness rose up like a storm filling their water bowls. She hoped her family wasn’t worried about her. She hoped they knew that she had escaped, and that they didn’t think she’d died. She remembered how worried she had been about Ashia when the flat-faces took her away.

  Her ears twitched, picking up an odd noise from nearby. It sounded like buzzing. Lusa got to her paws and lifted her muzzle to sniff the air. It smelled sweet, so sweet it made Lusa wrinkle her nose. A flash of memory came back to her: Stella telling her about something called a Buzzy Tree. “The tree buzzes and buzzes and stings you to keep you away,” she’d said, “but if you keep trying, you can dig out the most delicious, sweet stuff, even better than blueberries.”

  Lusa followed the sound. To her surprise, the buzzing really was coming from a tree. It didn’t look any different from the trees around it, except for a hole halfway up the trunk about the size of Lusa’s head. Small furry bugs were flying in and out of the hole and crawling around the edges. They were bees—Lusa had seen them in the Bear Bowl, hopping from flower to flower. She scrambled up the tree and balanced herself on a thick branch so she could poke her head inside the hole. She reached out with her tongue and felt it touch something warm and sticky…and wonderfully, yummily sweet!

  The buzzing grew louder, and Lusa wondered if the tree was angry with her. Suddenly a wave of bees poured out of the hole and dove at her face. It wasn’t until she felt the first sting that she realized Stella was wrong—it wasn’t the tree doing the buzzing or stinging. It was the bees! But the bees in the Bear Bowl had never buzzed like this or stabbed her with sharp points that she couldn’t even see.

  “Ow!” Lusa cried, swatting at them with her paws. “OW! Stop it!” But she couldn’t resist the taste of the honey, so she stuck her muzzle back into the tree and lapped and lapped until her belly was full, trying to ignore the shocks of pain from the swarming bees.

  When she had eaten enough, she swung herself down out of the tree and stumbled away. Her muzzle was burning from the bee stings and she kept shaking her head, trying to cool it off. But her stomach felt warm and full, and the melting golden sweetness of the honey stayed in her mouth for the rest of the day, so in the end she decided it was worth it.

  Toward evening, as a light mist rolled down off the mountain, turning everything silvery, Lusa spotted a mark on one of the trees. She stood on her hind legs to examine it. It looked like scratches slashed in the bark at a point off the ground about twice her height. She was searching her memory for what her father had said about scratches on a tree when she was distracted by the scent of blueberries from a nearby bush. She followed her nose over and pulled off as many berries as she could eat.

  There were more berries on the next bush, and she kept going, eating whatever she could find. Soon she would need to find a place to sleep, since night was coming on quickly. Already she could see a few stars glimmering in the sky.

  Lusa stopped to sniff a plant with sharp prickles on its leaves and branches. There was some interesting-looking fruit on it, but she would have to be very careful or else she’d be pricked, and her muzzle was still sore from the bee stings. She dabbed her paw at one of the leaves and pulled it back quickly. Maybe if I—

  An aggressive huff interrupted her thoughts. Lusa spun around and came face-to-face with an enormous brown bear. Terror rooted her claws to the ground.

  “You’re in MY territory!” the bear snarled, cuffing her so hard that Lusa was knocked over. He raised himself up on his hind legs until he loomed over her. His teeth were long and fierce and his beady brown eyes glared at her through a tangle of dark brown fur.

  “I’m sorry!” Lusa gasped, scrambling to her paws. “I didn’t mean to—”

  The bear growled and knocked her over again, this time pinning her to the ground. His weight pressed her into the dirt so she could barely breathe, and his claws dug into her skin. He leaned down and whispered in her ear, his foul-smelling breath hot on her muzzle.

  “I guess that makes you my prey.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Toklo

  A cool night breeze ruffled Toklo’s fur, and he looked up at the lonely star, framed by the cliffs rising on either side of him. He wondered if it was laughing at him—tough, independent Toklo burdened with a salmon-headed companion like Ujurak.

  The small cub had led the way out of the valley at a brisk pace, trotting on all day as if he knew exactly where he was going, even though he’d told Toklo h
e didn’t. Now it was nearly moonhigh, and Ujurak was still scrambling along the ravine that led to the next valley. Toklo slipped on a stretch of loose pebbles and they clattered noisily down the slope. Irritated by his own clumsiness—and by the fact that he seemed to be following Ujurak instead of the other way around—he stopped and shook himself.

  “What’s wrong?” Ujurak asked, trotting back to join him. He ran in a circle around Toklo, his tongue lolling out as if he wanted to play. Toklo hunched his shoulders. He didn’t know this cub well enough to play with him, and he was still confused by the shape-changing stories. What if he really was a smooth-pelt? Toklo didn’t want to be rolling around with a grizzly only to find a slippery smooth-pelt in his paws.

  “Where are you going?” he grumbled. “I think we should head up the mountain farther before we get to the next valley. There’s better hunting up the mountains and fewer flat-faces than there are in the valleys.”

  “Sure,” Ujurak said. “I’ve been following that star, but we can keep doing that by going straight up the mountain.”

  He pointed his muzzle at the sky, and Toklo realized with an unpleasant jolt that the cub was talking about the lonely bear spirit star. “You’re following that star?” he said. “Why that one?”

  “I don’t know,” Ujurak admitted. “It’s just a feeling I get. Of all the stars, that’s the one showing me which way to go.”

  It unsettled Toklo that Ujurak was drawn to the same star he was. That was his star, and he didn’t want to share it with another bear.

  “Well, whatever we do,” he said grumpily, “we should rest for the night. It looks like there’s a shelter over there, between those two boulders.”

  “Good idea,” Ujurak said, twitching his ears. Toklo led the way over to the boulders. One was long and flat, with one end resting on the ground and the other leaning up against the second boulder, which was fat and round. The space underneath was just big enough for the cubs to squeeze in. Toklo noticed as he squirmed into the dark hollow that he took up more space than he used to, when he’d shared spots like this with Tobi. He’d been getting bigger without noticing.