Great Bear Lake Read online

  Seekers

  Great Bear Lake

  Erin Hunter

  Dedication

  Special thanks to Cherith Baldry

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Maps

  Chapter One: Lusa

  Chapter Two: Toklo

  Chapter Three: Kallik

  Chapter Four: Lusa

  Chapter Five: Toklo

  Chapter Six: Kallik

  Chapter Seven: Kallik

  Chapter Eight: Lusa

  Chapter Nine: Lusa

  Chapter Ten: Toklo

  Chapter Eleven: Kallik

  Chapter Twelve: Lusa

  Chapter Thirteen: Lusa

  Chapter Fourteen: Lusa

  Chapter Fifteen: Kallik

  Chapter Sixteen: Toklo

  Chapter Seventeen: Kallik

  Chapter Eighteen: Lusa

  Chapter Nineteen: Toklo

  Chapter Twenty: Toklo

  Chapter Twenty-One: Kallik

  Chapter Twenty-Two: Kallik

  Chapter Twenty-Three: Lusa

  Chapter Twenty-Four: Lusa

  Chapter Twenty-Five: Toklo

  Chapter Twenty-Six: Kallik

  Chapter Twenty-Seven: Lusa

  Chapter Twenty-Eight: Toklo

  Chapter Twenty-Nine: Kallik

  Chapter Thirty: Toklo

  Chapter Thirty-One: Lusa

  Chapter Thirty-Two: Kallik

  Chapter Thirty-Three: Toklo

  Chapter Thirty-Four: Lusa

  About the Author

  Other Books by Erin Hunter

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Maps

  CHAPTER ONE

  Lusa

  Lusa stared at the grizzly cub. He was twice her size; in the struggle when she was trapped under his weight, she had thought he would kill her for sure. But she wasn’t scared of him now, as she watched him crouched in front of her with his flanks heaving. Red light from the setting sun trickled through the leaves, speckling Toklo’s brown pelt with spots of burning russet.

  She had found Oka’s missing cub.

  I could have searched for him all my life and never found him. Did the spirits guide me?

  Toklo glared at her. “How do you know my name?”

  “I—I’ve been looking for you,” Lusa stammered. “I’ve come all the way from the Bear Bowl—”

  “The Bear Bowl?” Toklo curled his lip. “What’s that?”

  “It’s a place where bears live,” Lusa explained, on more confident territory now. “Black bears like me, and grizzlies, and huge white bears. Flat-faces feed us and mend us when we get sick, and other flat-faces come and look at us. There are other animals, too,” she added. “Tigers, and flamingos, and animals with long, dangly noses.”

  Toklo interrupted her with a huff of contempt. “You lived with other animals?” he growled disbelievingly. “Flat-faces fed you? Proper bears don’t do that. What sort of bear are you?”

  Lusa felt her belly go tight; he looked really angry, and she knew she wouldn’t be able to fight him off a second time. But she had promised Oka that she would pass on her message to her only surviving cub. “The flat-faces brought your mother to the Bear Bowl. She…she died there.” She decided there was no point making Toklo even angrier by telling him how Oka had been crazed with grief for her lost cubs, so deranged that she had attacked a flat-face. “Before she died she gave me a message for you. She said—”

  Toklo turned away. “I don’t want to hear it!”

  Startled, Lusa took a pace toward him. “But I promised—”

  “I said, I don’t want to hear it! I don’t want to hear anything about that bear. She abandoned me. She is not my mother.” He stalked away, his paws crunching through the dried leaves until he stopped under a twisted fir tree.

  “She was sorry,” Lusa murmured.

  She didn’t think Toklo had heard her. Without looking at her, he snarled, “Go back to the Bear Bowl!”

  Lusa blinked, puzzled. She had risked her life to find him, and to tell him what Oka had wanted him to know. She had expected that Toklo would be grateful to her. Maybe he would even become her friend, so she wouldn’t be on her own anymore. What had she done to make him so hostile?

  She couldn’t go back to the Bear Bowl. The wild was bigger than she had ever imagined, scary and confusing. But it was exciting, too. After the freedom she had known in the last moons, she couldn’t think of returning to the little space where two or three trees made a forest. But what would Toklo do if she didn’t leave? She clamped her jaws shut to stop a whimper from coming out. There was no way she’d show Toklo how scared she was.

  Lusa turned to look at the other brown bear cub, who was sitting watching her with bright interest. She tipped her head on one side, remembering what she had seen just before her struggle with Toklo. She had been chasing a hare, hadn’t she? A growl from her belly reminded her that she was hungrier than she’d ever been in her life. She’d been chasing a hare and it had turned into this cub.

  Her mother hadn’t said anything about hares that turned into bears, or any other animal for that matter. Was this a bear, or a hare? Would it change again? Lusa stared at it suspiciously, looking for long ears suddenly shooting up.

  The brown cub stood up and padded over to her. He was smaller than Toklo, and his eyes were warm and curious. “My name’s Ujurak. You’re Lusa, right?”

  Lusa nodded. “Are…are you a bear or a hare?” she burst out.

  Ujurak lifted his shoulder in a shrug, rippling his shiny brown fur. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I can be lots of other creatures, too. A salmon, an eagle…sometimes I’m a flat-face cub.”

  Lusa stiffened. Would Ujurak be a kind flat-face like the feeders in the Bear Bowl, or one of the dangerous ones who shouted and shot their metal sticks? “Why would you want to be a flat-face?”

  “I don’t exactly want to be anything,” Ujurak replied. “Except a bear, of course. It just happens.” He glanced at Toklo. “I’m trying to control it, but I’m not very good yet.”

  “So you’re really a bear?” Lusa stretched her head up and checked. His ears were definitely small and round right now, nothing like a hare’s.

  “I think so.” Ujurak blinked. “I hope so.”

  Lusa looked around. The trees grew close together here, with little room for berry bushes underneath, but there was no scent of flat-faces or dogs. “Is this Toklo’s territory?” The big grizzly cub looked quite strong enough to score his clawmarks on the trees and defend his feeding ground from other bears.

  “No, we’re on a journey.” An amber glow lit deep in Ujurak’s eyes. “We’re going to the place where the bear spirits dance in the sky.”

  “Where’s that?”

  Ujurak looked at his paws. Definitely bear’s paws, Lusa thought. “We don’t know exactly,” he confessed. “We’re following the stars.” He looked up again. “But I have to get there. However long it takes.”

  Something in Lusa prompted her to reach up and touch her nose to the cub’s furry ear. “You’ll find the place, I know you will.”

  Ujurak turned his head to stare at her. “You understand, don’t you?” he said softly. “Because you kept going until you found Toklo.”

  Lusa nodded. “I promised Oka that I’d find him, and I did.”

  “Are you going to come with us?” Ujurak asked. “To the place where the bear spirits dance?”

  Lusa wondered if Oka’s spirit would be there, and if Oka would tell Toklo herself how much she loved him. Lusa wanted to see that happen more than anything. And she didn’t have anywhere else to go. Besides, she’d been good at finding Toklo, hadn’t she? Perhaps Ujurak would ne
ed her help to find the place he was looking for.

  “Yes, I’ll come,” she announced.

  “Great!” yelped Ujurak, bouncing on his front paws. Even though he was younger than Lusa, he was bigger than her, and she took a step back to avoid getting bounced on.

  “Do you think Toklo will mind?” she asked, looking at the brown bear standing under the fir tree with his back to them. “He doesn’t seem to like me very much.”

  Ujurak followed her gaze. “Toklo doesn’t like anyone very much. Including himself,” he commented quietly.

  Lusa glanced at him in surprise, but before she could say anything Toklo had swung around and pushed his way out from under the spindly branches. He glared at Lusa. “You can’t slow us down,” he warned.

  Lusa bit back a growl. It wasn’t Toklo’s journey, it was Ujurak’s, so he shouldn’t be bossing her around. But she just shook her head. “I’ll keep up,” she promised. Though she hoped they’d stop to eat soon, because her legs were feeling wobbly underneath her grumbling belly.

  Toklo swung his head from side to side. “Why are we standing around here? We need to find shelter for the night.” Without another word he headed into the shadows under the trees. Ujurak trotted after him, his stumpy tail twitching.

  Lusa stood still for a moment. Was this really what she wanted? Being a wild bear didn’t mean traveling who-knew-where with two brown bears, did it? But the only other choice was staying here without them, and she had had enough of being on her own. Even wild bears have company, she reminded herself.

  “Wait for me!” she called, and bounded off to catch up to her new companions.

  Lusa shifted into a more comfortable position and parted her jaws in a huge yawn. Moonlight filtering through the leaves turned her paws to silver. She was curled up in a tree, where two thick branches met the trunk and made a bowl shape just big enough for a small bear.

  She knew she ought to go to sleep, but her pelt prickled with curiosity and every time she closed her eyes, excitement made them fly open again. She had found Toklo, but now she was on another journey—and none of them knew exactly where it would lead.

  Toklo and Ujurak had squeezed themselves into a hollow beneath the roots of the tree. They weren’t asleep, either; Lusa could hear them shifting about and snuffling below her. She caught the deep growl of Toklo’s voice, and craned her neck to hear him more clearly.

  “This is ridiculous,” he was saying. “She can’t stay with us.”

  Lusa’s belly clenched with fear. Was Toklo going to leave her behind after all?

  I don’t care! If they won’t let me travel with them, I’ll just follow them.

  “You said she could come,” Ujurak reminded Toklo.

  “No I didn’t!”

  “Well, you didn’t say she couldn’t.”

  “I’m saying it now,” Toklo replied irritably. “Why should we want a stupid black bear with us? You heard her. She comes from a place where she didn’t have to catch her own prey. Flat-faces fed her, and watched her. What kind of a bear is that?”

  “I think she’s interesting,” Ujurak replied.

  Toklo huffed. “She’s only a black bear. She’ll just slow us down.”

  Lusa wanted to jump out of the tree and confront Toklo. She might not have been born in the wild, but she had managed just fine for moons and moons. She wanted to be a wild bear, even if it meant never going back to the Bear Bowl, and her family. And black bears were better than grizzlies any day! Her father had said that they were the kings of the forest.

  She was bunching her muscles to leap down when Ujurak spoke. His voice was soft, and he sounded older than before.

  “I think I was meant to find Lusa. I think she is meant to come with us.”

  A scoffing noise came from Toklo.

  “If she can’t keep up, she won’t want to stay with us anyway,” Ujurak went on. “But I think the spirits of the bears are waiting for her, just as much as they are waiting for you and me.”

  Above them, Lusa shivered as she crouched on the edge of her sleeping place, staring down into the bear-scented darkness. Was Ujurak right? Were there bear spirits waiting for her?

  But whose—and why?

  CHAPTER TWO

  Toklo

  Toklo shifted restlessly beside Ujurak. The cub was asleep now, letting out gentle snores that fluttered a dead leaf close to his nose. But Toklo’s belly churned as if he had eaten rotfood, and he couldn’t sleep.

  It was all the fault of that black bear! I don’t want her traveling with us. Envy tore at him like a claw. Ujurak is my friend! Why does she have to come and spoil everything? He drew his lips back in the beginnings of a growl. If Ujurak and Lusa liked each other so much, they could travel by themselves. He could be free again to take care of himself.

  Toklo blew out a gusty sigh. It wasn’t as easy as that. Ujurak, curled up in a splash of moonlight, looked small and defenseless; Toklo knew the cub was crazy enough to run into danger without a second thought, let alone what could happen if he turned into the wrong sort of animal. If he continued alone with Lusa, they wouldn’t survive more than a couple of sunrises. He needed someone stronger to help him.

  Why does it have to be me? Toklo shifted again, as if the question was a hard pinecone digging into him. It doesn’t, said a tiny voice inside him. If he stayed with Ujurak, it would be his decision, no one else’s. Toklo looked at Ujurak again. A leaf had drifted down to lie on his shoulder, casting a tiny shadow on his moonlit fur. Toklo remembered another cub covered with leaves—and dirt and sticks as well. His breathing had been soft as moonlight before it faded away, leaving a cold, empty shape beside Toklo.

  “I’m sorry, Tobi,” Toklo whispered. He had watched his brother die, and left him where their mother buried him. He had abandoned one cub that had needed him; he wasn’t going to let that happen again.

  But there was still the problem of Lusa. Peering up into the tree, Toklo could just make out the black cub’s shape, balanced in a crook between two branches with her nose tucked under her paws. Black bears were weak; everyone knew that. They were always scurrying up trees because they were too scared to sleep on the ground. Lusa was as soft as any of them—softer, probably, because she had let flat-faces take care of her.

  Uneasiness stirred in Toklo’s mind. Lusa had come all the way from her Bear Bowl to find him; that had taken courage, he admitted grudgingly. And she knew my mother.

  When he looked at Lusa, Toklo sensed the huge shadow of Oka looming over her. He couldn’t see it, but he knew it was there, like the dark part of the moon. Why did she abandon me? Why couldn’t she look after me, like she looked after Tobi? Toklo dug his claws into the ground. He didn’t want to think about Oka. If Lusa hadn’t come, he would have been able to forget all about her.

  I wish she would go away and leave us in peace! And I’m not going to listen to her stupid message!

  Toklo closed his eyes and scuffled deeper into the dried leaves. But it was a long time before sleep came.

  Toklo heaved himself out of the hollow and shook leaves and pine needles out of his fur. Taking a deep breath, he reveled in all the different scents of the forest: leaves, damp earth, a raccoon that had shuffled past during the night. The air was moist, but the threat of rain had passed, and long claws of sunlight pierced the leaves above his head.

  “It’s a great day for traveling!” Ujurak scrambled out from the shelter of the roots to stand beside Toklo. “Let’s go!”

  For a heartbeat Toklo hoped that Ujurak had forgotten about Lusa. They could sneak off and leave her asleep in the tree. He huffed in disappointment when Ujurak turned back, rearing up to rest his front paws on the tree trunk.

  “Lusa! Hey, Lusa, wake up!”

  “Wha…?” The black cub raised her head and peered sleepily at the ground. Her gaze brightened when she spotted Ujurak. “Is it time to go?”

  She slithered down the tree and stood beside Ujurak. For a fleeting moment Toklo wished that he could climb as skil
lfully as Lusa, but he pushed the thought away. Brown bears were strong; they didn’t need to climb trees.

  “Come on,” he growled.

  He led the way through the forest, padding along softly as he sniffed the air in the hope of prey. The scents of living things—green, furred, and glossy, like berries—flowed around him, drawn up from the ground or wafting down from the trees. He pricked his ears, but the sounds of any small scufflings were drowned out by Ujurak and Lusa bumbling along behind him.

  “Quiet!” he snapped, glancing over one shoulder.

  A flicker of movement in the corner of his eye alerted him; he swung around to spot a ground squirrel streaking across an open patch of grass. Toklo let out a snarl and took off after it. His outstretched claws brushed its tail just as the squirrel dived into its burrow. Roaring, Toklo dug into the ground with his claws. Soil and scraps of grass flew up around him and stung his eyes.

  Then Toklo felt his claws sink into flesh. He snapped the squirrel’s neck with a twist of one paw, and dragged it out of the earth. He dropped the limp body at Ujurak’s paws. “Let’s eat,” he said.

  As he sank his teeth into the warm body he noticed that Lusa was standing a bearlength away, looking longingly at the food but not moving to take any.

  “Come on,” Toklo huffed. “You can share.”

  “Thank you!” Lusa trotted up and crouched down beside Ujurak, tearing off a mouthful of the prey.

  With three of them sharing the squirrel, no bear had quite enough. But that doesn’t matter, Toklo thought. I can find more. He licked the warm blood from his snout and padded away to the shade of a tree, leaving his companions to finish the meal he had provided. He sat contented, sniffing the air. He could trace the musky smell of fox on the bark of the tree. It was stale—the fox would be far away by now. He lifted his snout and sniffed deeper, drawing a new and richer scent into the back of his mouth. It was deer: A deer had passed this way less than a sunrise ago. Toklo stood up, drawing in the scent of deer, letting it show him the way to go. He was proud of the senses that told him where to find food or water, or where there might be danger from flat-faces or other bears. Every bend in the way, every hilltop or valley was filled with meaning, like a voice whispering to him without words. Toklo dipped his shoulders.