Island of Shadows

by Erin Hunter

  Yakone looked puzzled. “You found your way before.”

  “But Ujurak was with us then.”

  Yakone’s blank look made Kallik realize that this was no explanation at all, as far as he was concerned. “Ujurak was … special.” She looked for the words that would make her friend understand. “Sometimes he seemed so young and inexperienced, as if he’d just stepped out of his BirthDen. And at other times he was so wise. When we were with him, we were often lost, but somehow he always seemed to know where we should go next.” Her voice shook as she remembered the bright young bear. “And he had such confidence that we would end up in the right place.”

  “I think I see,” Yakone said slowly, though Kallik wasn’t sure that he did. “But why is it so different now? This time you know where you’re going. Home! It shouldn’t be so hard.”

  Kallik sighed. “I told you, everything looks the same. I don’t know if we’re traveling in the right direction. For all I know, we’ve gotten spun around, and we’re heading back to Star Island.”

  “No, not possible.” Yakone gave her shoulder a comforting nudge with his muzzle. “If we were going back there, I’d know.”

  Kallik was slightly reassured by what Yakone said. She wanted to enjoy the journey, and her fur tingled with excitement when she thought of reaching the Frozen Sea again and finding Taqqiq. And it was great to have Yakone with her. But her anxieties outweighed all that.

  We might be wandering here forever!

  Yakone gave her another nudge. “See that snowbank up ahead?”

  Kallik nodded.

  “Race you!”

  Yakone took off in a flurry of snow and ice crystals. Kallik bounded after him, reveling in the feeling of her muscles bunching and stretching, her powerful legs eating up the distance. She reached the snowbank a bearlength ahead of Yakone. Scooping up a pawful of snow, she spun around and flung it at him. Laughter bubbled up inside her at the expression of surprise on his face.

  “I’ll get you for that!” he threatened.

  “You’ll have to catch me first!”

  With a growl of mock fury, Yakone launched himself at her. Kallik slipped to one side, and he plowed straight into the snowbank. His paws threw up clots of snow as he scrabbled to get out. Then he turned and in the same movement flung a cloud of snow into Kallik’s face.

  She ducked, loving the icy spatter of snow on her muzzle and forehead. I haven’t had such fun since I played with Taqqiq!

  “Look, Lusa, we’ve found a couple of white-bear cubs.” Toklo’s voice came from behind Kallik; to her relief he sounded amused. “Do you think they’d make a good meal?”

  “I’d like to see you try,” Kallik challenged him, spinning around to confront the brown bear. She would have sprung at him and bowled him over for a play-fight, but she remembered in time about his injured shoulder.

  Yakone scrambled up out of the snow, shaking it from his fur. “White bears aren’t good to eat,” he said, baring his teeth. “They’re far too tough.”

  Kallik shot Toklo a swift glance and was relieved to see that the grizzly hadn’t taken Yakone’s bared teeth as a threat. The two males faced each other with amusement in their eyes. Good! she thought. We’ll get along a lot better if Toklo doesn’t feel he has to compete with Yakone all the time.

  As the journey over the ice continued, Kallik began to feel as if she had known Yakone all her life. Or was it just that they shared the same instincts, along with the same white fur? When they hunted together, they seemed to know each other’s ideas before speaking them aloud. And it was great to share her thoughts with another white bear. However close she felt to Lusa and Toklo, their true homes were under different skies, far from the ice, and she couldn’t expect them to see the world as she did.

  “It was so hard when the Frozen Sea melted,” she remarked to Yakone as they padded together across the ice. “I didn’t know how to find food on land. Lusa and Toklo helped me when I got to know them, but for a long time before that I was on my own.”

  Yakone nodded, with a grunt to tell Kallik he was listening.

  “We all met at Great Bear Lake,” Kallik went on. “You remember, I told you how Taqqiq was there with the bears who stole food. You’ve never seen so many bears all together! White bears and brown and black bears… They had all traveled there for the Longest Day, and an old white bear called Siqiniq spoke the words of a ceremony. I wish you’d been there, Yakone!”

  “So do I,” Yakone replied.

  He sounded brusque, as if he didn’t want Kallik to go on talking.

  Have I said something to upset him? Kallik wondered. Maybe he’s just not interested.

  She cast a nervous glance at Yakone, admiring his strong muscles and reddish-tinged pelt, but asking herself if she really knew him as well as she thought.

  A moment later, Yakone exclaimed, “Look—a seal hole!” and cast her a look bright with friendliness before bounding off across the ice.

  Kallik followed, still not sure if she had imagined Yakone’s brief coldness.

  A few sunrises later, Kallik woke with a new scent in her nose. The other bears were still sleeping, huddled around her, and she edged away carefully before rising to her paws and giving the air a good sniff.

  Land!

  Excitedly she bounded back to the others and began prodding them awake. “There’s land ahead! I can smell it!” she announced.

  Toklo swatted at her sleepily with one paw. “Okay. Great,” he muttered.

  Kallik prodded him again. “Wake up, Toklo! Land!”

  Lusa had scrambled up and was staring around through bleary eyes. “Land? Where?”

  “I can’t see it yet,” Kallik replied. “But I know it’s there.”

  “Kallik’s right,” Yakone agreed. He gave the air a deep sniff, then swiveled around until he chose a direction. “That way.”

  Toklo, awake at last, lumbered to his paws and stood beside him. “I can smell it, too,” he said after a moment. He let out a satisfied sigh. “Let’s go. I can’t wait to get my claws on some real prey!”

  Dark clouds were low on the horizon in the direction they were heading, and for a long time they couldn’t see anything but the ice stretching out in front of them. At last the clouds began to clear, and Kallik spotted bulky snow-covered hills looming up in the distance.

  “That’s a pretty big island!” Toklo exclaimed, halting to stare at it.

  Though she didn’t say so, Kallik thought that the line of the hills looked familiar. The Frozen Sea could be just beyond that range. I might be really close to home—and Taqqiq!

  The bears bounded forward, running faster and faster in their eagerness to reach the land. Even Lusa somehow found the energy to keep up. Anticipation surged through Kallik as she splashed through pools of melting ice and the shore grew nearer with every pawstep.

  But when she was only a few bearlengths away from the beach, Kallik’s excitement suddenly died. She halted and let the other bears gallop past her. Her belly hurt as if she had swallowed a stone, and there was a chill underneath her fur. The snowy hills that lay across their path suddenly felt unwelcoming, as if something were warning her not to set paw there.

  There’s something here that doesn’t feel right. Is this how Ujurak felt when he saw a sign?

  Then she gave her fur a good shake. I’m just imagining things. This is the land we’ve hoped for, with prey and somewhere to shelter and the right kind of food for Lusa. And it must be the way to the Frozen Sea.

  But Kallik’s paws still felt heavy as she padded forward to join her companions on the beach.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Lusa

  As Lusa’s paws felt the stony beach under the snow, her belly began to howl for something to eat that wasn’t meat. Desperately she bounded across the stretch of pebbles and scrambled up the slope beyond, stopping to scrape the snow aside when she thought there must be soil underneath.

  Before she had dug far, she spotted a flicker of movement out of the corne
r of her eye. Looking up, she saw two black dots against the white background, and she realized that she was looking at an Arctic hare, almost invisible in its white pelt.

  “Is that you, Ujurak?” she called, heading toward it. I knew he would come and help me find leaves and roots. I hope they’re tasty!

  As Lusa drew closer, the hare leaped up and began to run. Where it had been sitting she found a hole in the snow, stretching right down to some grass.

  “Thanks, Ujurak!” Lusa exclaimed aloud, scrabbling to enlarge the hole.

  As she spoke, Toklo sprang past her, racing after the hare. Lusa watched, horror-stricken. “No, Toklo, stop!” she yelled.

  But it was too late. Toklo didn’t hear her. He caught up to the hare and swiped it with one massive paw. The hare fell to the ground and lay limp.

  Lusa bounded over to him and gave the hare a tentative prod. It was definitely dead, its neck broken. “You killed Ujurak!” she howled.

  “What? That’s cloud-brained…” Toklo’s voice died away, and he looked up at Lusa, his eyes stricken. “It’s a hare!” he insisted.

  “I think it was Ujurak,” Lusa said quietly. “He showed me a place I could dig down through the snow to find food.”

  “What? No!”

  Kallik and Yakone trotted up. Kallik bent her head to sniff at the body of the hare. “Are you sure?” she asked Lusa.

  “Not sure … but I think it was him.”

  “But Ujurak is already dead, right?” Yakone put in, sounding bewildered. “So how can you kill him again?”

  “Ujurak could take any shape he wanted to when he was with us, so maybe he can still do that,” Kallik explained. “I think he was the bird who showed us the seal hole, back on the ice. So I guess if his spirit took the shape of a real animal, he could be killed again.”

  “He didn’t!” Toklo’s voice rose to a desperate roar. “It’s a hare! It’s prey!”

  “You can’t eat it,” Lusa whimpered. She thought her heart would crack with pain at losing Ujurak again and sorrow for the guilt she could see rising in Toklo.

  Toklo stood for a moment looking down at the body of the hare. Then he began scraping at the snow until he had dug a hole big enough to bury it. Taking the hare’s fur gently between his teeth, he dragged it into the hole and began to cover it with snow.

  “Good-bye, Ujurak,” Lusa murmured. “I hope your spirit can find its way back to the stars.”

  When the hare was completely buried, all four bears stood silently for a moment beside the tiny mound of snow. Lusa glanced at Toklo and Kallik and saw her own sorrow reflected in their eyes. Then without a word they swung around and began to trek away, farther inland. When Lusa looked back after a few pawsteps, she couldn’t even distinguish the burial place from the surrounding snow.

  Hunger still gnawed at her belly, but the death of the hare-Ujurak had upset her so deeply that she couldn’t find the energy to dig under the snow for more roots and leaves. The excitement and optimism she had felt when she was racing toward the island was long gone. It felt as though that had happened to another bear, a long time ago.

  Maybe starting out so badly is an omen, she thought. There must be more trouble ahead.

  The land sloped gently upward; the surface was uneven, as the snow hid rocks or humps in the ground, and here and there a boulder broke the surface like a dark island in a white sea. Looking ahead, Lusa could see a ridge of snow-covered hills lying across their path, and beyond them in the distance the steep slopes of mountains, their sharp peaks cutting the sky.

  “I’m pretty sure I recognize those hills,” Kallik said hopefully. “The Frozen Sea could be just on the other side.”

  “But isn’t the Frozen Sea much farther than that?” Lusa objected, remembering the long journey they had made to Star Island.

  “We’re not going back the same way, though,” Kallik pointed out. Her gaze was fixed on the hills ahead, but Lusa thought she could make out worry in her eyes. She wasn’t as excited as Lusa would have expected her to be if she thought she was really close to home.

  Is there something Kallik’s not telling me? Lusa wondered. Does she feel something bad about this island, too?

  As they trekked on, Lusa kept spotting the marks of animals in the snow: bird tracks and the pawprints of hares, and bigger prints that must have been made by other bears.

  “The hunting should be good around here,” Yakone remarked.

  “But how can we hunt?” Toklo demanded fiercely, speaking for the first time since leaving the shore. “Any animal might be Ujurak coming back to us again.”

  “But…” Yakone sounded as confused as he always did when the bears talked about Ujurak. “You said you killed him and buried him back there.”

  Toklo shook his head savagely but didn’t respond.

  “If Ujurak could come back once, he could come back again,” Lusa explained, though she wasn’t sure how to make Yakone understand when she wasn’t sure she understood herself. All she knew was that Ujurak hadn’t abandoned them when he rose from outside the cave on Star Island and took his place among the stars.

  “Well, then, if he comes back, we haven’t really killed him,” Yakone pointed out practically.

  “We haven’t killed him forever,” Lusa replied. “But it must hurt, being killed. None of us would want to hurt Ujurak.”

  “No, but…” Yakone shook his head, baffled. “His stars are always up in the sky, aren’t they? I’ve watched you all looking out for him at night. So how can he be down here as well?”

  “I don’t know,” Kallik admitted. “When he was with us on our first journey, the stars were always there, too. It’s as if he can be in two places at once.”

  “That’s right,” Lusa said. “Yakone, Toklo’s right when he says that any of the animals we meet could be Ujurak in another shape.”

  “But how are we supposed to recognize him?” Yakone asked.

  “We can’t!” Toklo burst out in a frustrated roar, halting and facing the other bears. “Ujurak always caused problems when he was alive, and he’s still causing them now that he’s dead.”

  “But that’s just it. Is he really dead?” Lusa pressed herself comfortingly against Toklo’s shoulder, but the brown bear shied away from her and stood with his back turned, staring down at the snow.

  “I don’t know,” he replied, his voice thick and choked. “Is he? Or has he turned into stars? He’s not a brown bear anymore. Maybe he never was one.”

  Lusa knew that Toklo had tried to hide his grief and the turmoil in his mind about Ujurak’s death. He thought that he always had to be strong.

  “Ujurak was our friend,” she murmured. “Does it really matter what he was?”

  “It matters to me,” Toklo snarled. “If he really was that hare, then I killed him!”

  “But you couldn’t have known,” Kallik said, her eyes warm with sympathy.

  “I should have known,” Toklo retorted. “Lusa did.”

  Kallik glanced at Lusa, shaking her head. There didn’t seem to be any way of jerking Toklo out of his grief and anger.

  Yakone broke the silence. “None of this helps us decide what to do now,” he stated. “We have to hunt, or starve.”

  Toklo swung around on him, his teeth bared. “Then I’ll starve,” he growled. “You can do what you want. Kill him again. What do you care? He wasn’t your friend.”

  Yakone reared back, startled. “Hey, I never said I wanted to kill him.”

  Kallik sighed, touching Yakone’s shoulder briefly with her muzzle. “We’d better go on,” she said. “Maybe Ujurak’s spirit will find a way to tell us where he is.”

  Toklo snorted but didn’t protest, and took the lead as they set out again toward the snow-covered ridge. Before they had gone very much farther, they came to a swathe of level ground cutting across the rocky landscape, with deep furrows running along it through the dirty snow. Lusa sniffed the air and picked up the faint tang of oil.

  “I think this is a BlackPath,”
she said. “That means there are flat-faces somewhere nearby.”

  “Oh, seal rot!” Yakone exclaimed. “Can’t we ever get away from no-claws?”

  “I think you’re right,” Kallik told Lusa. “Those furrows could be the marks of firebeast paws.”

  Lusa dug down into the snow until her claws scraped the hard surface of the BlackPath. “Let’s follow it,” she suggested.

  “Follow it?” Toklo stared at her. “Now I know your brain is full of cloudfluff!”

  “No, it’s not,” Lusa responded. “Don’t you see? If we follow the BlackPath, we’ll get to the flat-face dens, and then we can find some food.”

  “No-claw food again?” Yakone asked disapprovingly.

  Kallik blinked. “Lusa, I really don’t want to do that.”

  “We have to eat something,” Lusa pointed out. “And if we find flat-face food, at least we can be sure that it’s not Ujurak. It has to be better than starving.”

  “Well … okay,” Kallik conceded. “What do you think, Toklo?”

  “I think bears and flat-faces don’t mix,” Toklo replied, then added reluctantly, “but it might be the best plan, for now.”

  “Okay,” Kallik agreed.

  Yakone shrugged, but Lusa could tell he was still uneasy.

  Cautiously the bears began to pad along the edge of the BlackPath. Lusa kept her ears pricked for the sound of firebeasts, but the only things she heard were the whisper of wind over the snow and the distant cries of seabirds high above. They were still heading for the range of hills, though not by the most direct route. The BlackPath curved around a wide, flat space that Lusa guessed was a frozen lake, then up a shallow slope and more steeply down into a valley beyond.

  “There!” Kallik called out as they reached the top of the slope. “I can see the no-claw dens.”

  Lusa plodded up beside her and looked out across the valley. On the opposite side she could just make out a large flat-face denning area; it was hard to see, because most of the dens had white walls, and snow covered the roofs.