Great Bear Lake Page 5

  “Over here!” Ujurak called.

  Lusa thanked the spirits when she saw a narrow spit of pebbles in the middle of the river. Ujurak was standing at the very edge of the little island with river water washing around his paws.

  “That way!” Lusa summoned all her energy and thrust Toklo across the current, propelling him through the water with very little help from the grizzly’s feeble flailing paws.

  Ujurak had found a dead branch lying on the pebbles; he grabbed one end in his jaws and rolled it into the water. Gulping and choking, Toklo managed to sink his claws into the branch and drag himself toward Ujurak, while Lusa pushed him into the shallows where they could both touch the bottom and heave themselves out.

  Toklo shook himself, sending drops of water flying into the air in an arc around him.

  “Are you okay?” Lusa checked.

  Toklo coughed up another mouthful of water. “I’m fine. I’d have figured it out on my own.” He paused a moment, then added ungraciously, “Thanks.”

  “You did well,” Lusa said quietly.

  Toklo held her gaze for a heartbeat, then hesitated at the water’s edge before wading back into the river.

  “Where are you going now?” Lusa asked, alarmed. “You need to rest before we head for the other bank.”

  Toklo turned to look back at her. “I told you, brown bears don’t need to swim. I’m going to catch a fish.”

  Lusa watched him until he stopped with water halfway up his legs. The current tugged at his chestnut-brown belly hair, but he stood without moving, his gaze fixed on the water. Satisfied that he was okay, Lusa let herself sink to the ground. It felt good to rest her aching legs; she loved swimming, but not when she had to push along a much bigger bear who didn’t know how to help himself.

  “You did great back there!” Ujurak shook the water out of his pelt and flopped down beside her on the pebbles. “You swim really well. I changed into a salmon once, but it’s more fun swimming as a bear.”

  Lusa felt a jolt of fear deep in her belly. “You changed into a salmon? What if a bear had eaten you?”

  “Toklo made sure they didn’t,” Ujurak replied.

  Lusa glanced at Toklo’s hunched shape in the river, and wondered if she would trust the grizzly as much as that. He was so determined to do things on his own, she sometimes thought he didn’t want companions.

  “You can trust him, you know,” Ujurak insisted, as if he had guessed her thoughts. “He’s angry, but not with us.”

  No, he’s angry with his mother. But if he’d just listen to what Oka wanted me to tell him, he wouldn’t need to be so angry anymore.

  She stretched out beside Ujurak, licking the sore place on her shoulder where Toklo had scratched her, and letting the slanting rays of the sun warm her pelt. She watched impatiently for Toklo to come back with a salmon. But when the grizzly cub finally turned and waded out of the river, his jaws were empty.

  “Didn’t you catch anything?” she asked, dismayed. Her belly felt emptier than ever.

  “There’s nothing to catch,” Toklo growled. “There are no fish here.”

  Ujurak’s eyes widened in alarm. He scrambled to his paws and led the way across to the other side of the pebbly spit of land. “We have to keep going,” he urged.

  “I’m not getting back into that river,” Toklo stated.

  “What?” Lusa stared at him in dismay. He’d proven he could swim, hadn’t he? What was wrong now? “We can’t stay here. Come on, Toklo. I’ll help you.”

  “No.” For once Toklo wasn’t getting angry, but his voice held a quiet determination that Lusa sensed she couldn’t argue with. “I’m not swimming again, and that’s that.”

  Lusa exchanged a glance with Ujurak. “What are we going to do?”

  “We have to stay together,” Ujurak said decidedly. “Let’s follow this bank of pebbles and see where it leads.”

  They crunched their way along the narrow spit in the middle of the river, first heading downstream, in the direction of the current. Just around a curve in the river, the pebbles sloped down until they sank beneath the surface of the water. Toklo didn’t say anything, but Ujurak turned around and headed back the way they had come. They passed the place where they had come ashore and continued upstream with Ujurak in the lead. Sunlight bouncing off the water dazzled Lusa’s eyes, so she could hardly see where she was putting her paws. Anxiety nagged at her like a bear gnawing its prey. What would they do if they couldn’t get to the other side of the river without getting wet? Would she and Ujurak be strong enough to push Toklo into the river and force him to swim?

  As they padded on, Lusa noticed that Ujurak kept casting uneasy glances across the river, and sometimes back over his shoulder. She picked up her pace to catch up to him.

  “What’s the matter?”

  Ujurak shook his head frustratedly. “We should be going the other way.”

  “Well, it’s okay,” Lusa reassured him. “We haven’t lost the path. Once we get across, we’ll go the right way again.”

  Ujurak didn’t argue, but he still looked uncertain, and his pawsteps dragged as if a current like the river was trying to pull him back. Lusa padded beside him, brushing his pelt with hers in an effort to encourage him. After a while the pebbly spit of land grew so narrow that she was afraid it was coming to an end; the bears walked single file, the outsides of their paws touching the water on either side. Toklo, who was in front now, said nothing, just plodded onward with his head down. Just when Lusa was about to point out that they might have to swim anyway, the spit of stones widened out again. It drew closer to the opposite bank, but the channel between was still too wide to leap, and looked too deep to wade.

  “There’s something up ahead!” Ujurak called. He pushed past Toklo and broke into a trot.

  Lusa bounded after him and made out a long, dark shape stretching from the far bank. When she caught up to Ujurak she saw that it was an old fallen tree. The branches and leaves had been washed away, and even the bark was mostly stripped off. Only the bare silvery trunk remained, the root end resting on the bank and the narrower end, where branches had grown, on the pebbles.

  “See?” Toklo said, joining them. “I knew we wouldn’t have to swim.”

  Lusa didn’t reply. She studied the tree carefully; it made a very narrow bridge across the channel, and she thought they might have trouble keeping their balance. She would much rather swim, but she didn’t want to make Toklo angry again. He obviously wasn’t going to get back into the river. Although the tree trunk might not give him a choice if it tipped him off….

  “I’ll go first,” she offered, scrambling up to dig her claws into the trunk. She figured that since she was the smallest and lightest, it made sense for her to test the bridge.

  Dark green moss grew on the trunk, making the barkless surface slippery. Are you there, bear spirit? she asked silently, resting her front paw questioningly against the tree. She didn’t know what happened to bear spirits whose trees fell or were cut down. Perhaps that was when they went to dance in the sky. If you’re still here, please help us, she begged.

  Carefully setting one paw in front of another she headed out across the channel. The trunk bounced under her weight, scaring her at first. But what’s going to happen, bee-brain? If you fall in, you can swim!

  Heartened by that thought, she moved faster, and soon got close enough to leap down onto the grassy bank at the far side.

  “Come on!” she called to the others. “You’ll be fine!”

  Ujurak was already climbing onto the trunk, squeezing through the few remaining root stubs. He crossed with quick, neat pawsteps, apparently unworried by the movement of the tree beneath his paws.

  He let out a sigh of relief as he joined Lusa on the bank. “Now we can find the right path again!”

  Lusa watched Toklo as he clambered onto the trunk and began to make his way unsteadily across. On the island, the end of the trunk sank more deeply into the stones, making a rough grinding sound. Under his h
eavier weight the trunk bounced harder; Toklo had to drive his claws into the wood at every pawstep to stop himself from toppling off. When he was halfway across, Lusa heard an ominous creaking, as if the trunk was about to break.

  Suddenly the tree lurched to one side. Toklo toppled sideways; his hind legs dangled over the surface of the water while he clung on with his forelegs wrapped around the trunk.

  “Hang on, Toklo!” Lusa leaped back onto the trunk and began making her way along the wildly bouncing tree.

  Toklo scrabbled with his hindpaws, but he couldn’t get a grip on the slippery wood. Lusa reached him, sank her teeth into his scruff and hauled upward, digging her claws into the trunk. For a few terrified heartbeats she thought his weight would pull her into the river, but at last he managed to get one hindpaw, then the other, up onto the trunk.

  “Okay!” he gasped. “Give me some room.”

  Lusa let go his scruff. She could see real fear in Toklo’s eyes, and wondered why he was so terrified of deep water. It was such a strange thing for grizzlies to be afraid of. Unable to turn around on the narrow trunk, she edged backward and Toklo followed her, breathing hard. Lusa kept her gaze locked with his, as if she could hold him steady and draw him to safety with her eyes. The creaking sound came again, louder now, and she braced herself for the trunk to crack and pitch them both into the river.

  “Lusa, you’ve made it. You can jump down now.” Ujurak’s voice came from behind her.

  Lusa looked down to see the grassy bank beneath her. She leaped off beside Ujurak, stumbling because she had to jump backward. Toklo, still over the water, tottered again and let out a grunt of fear. Ujurak sprang up beside him and steadied him with his shoulder.

  The tree trunk rolled underneath them and started to crash down into the river. Water surged up; Ujurak jumped to safety but Toklo slipped, clinging to the crumbling edge of the bank while his hindquarters dangled into the stream.

  “I can’t hold on!” he yelped.

  Lusa reached over and fastened her teeth in the thick fur on his shoulder. Ujurak grabbed him on the other side and they heaved together. Scrabbling with his hindpaws, Toklo pushed himself upward and collapsed ungracefully on the bank.

  Lusa padded a few pawsteps up the bank and looked around. She was standing on a narrow strip of grass on the edge of a stone path; as she watched, a red firebeast roared by, filling the air with its noise and harsh smell. The bright glare of its eyes flashed across Lusa and was gone. Beyond the stone path, a grassy bank led up into more trees.

  “Which way now?” she asked Ujurak. She felt exhausted; every muscle in her body ached and her belly was bawling with hunger. But she knew that they couldn’t stay here, so close to the firebeasts.

  Ujurak’s eyes were dark and desolate, and he did not reply.

  Anxiety clawed at Lusa’s belly. “What’s the matter?”

  “Why were there no fish in the river?” Ujurak whimpered. “Where have they gone?”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Toklo

  Relief surged through Toklo as he dragged himself away from the river and onto a narrow strip of grass alongside a BlackPath. Beyond the BlackPath, a tree-covered slope led steeply upward. A few bearlengths farther away from the river, Ujurak and Lusa were waiting for him, their fur buffeted by the wind of the flat-faces’ firebeasts as they roared past.

  Instead of joining them, Toklo shook earth from his pelt, then flopped down again, panting, on the grass. He had hated crossing the hungry river on the fallen tree trunk, but he hated swimming even more. Ujurak liked it, but Ujurak was strange in a lot of ways, and as for Lusa…what did she know about being a brown bear? Toklo was furious that Lusa was better at swimming than he was, and more furious still that she had helped him, as if he were a feeble cub who couldn’t manage on his own. He wouldn’t let her know how scared he had been.

  Oka had told him that the spirits of dead bears drifted down the river to a faraway land where they could be forgotten by living bears. But he still remembered his mother and Tobi, so that meant their spirits must still be in the river. Toklo just wanted to forget them, forget what had happened—but how could he, when Lusa kept shoving them in his face?

  The thought of plunging into the river with the spirits of his dead mother and brother had filled him with horror. Perhaps they were angry with him because they had died while he was still alive. And when Lusa and Ujurak forced him to swim, he had felt Oka’s and Tobi’s dead claws hooking into his fur, trying to pull him down to the bottom of the river until the water gushed into his jaws and everything went black….

  “Are you okay?” Lusa asked, jolting him back to the present. The concern in her dark eyes reminded Toklo all over again of how scared he had been as the river closed over his head.

  “Of course I am,” he growled. “At least, I will be when we find some food. I’ve almost forgotten what meat tastes like.”

  “So have I.” Lusa sighed. “I guess I could find some berries in the forest.”

  “Berries aren’t proper food for a bear,” Toklo retorted. “You can eat them if you like, but I want something a lot more satisfying.” His jaws watered as he remembered the taste of salmon; what was the good of a river if there weren’t any fish in it?

  Ujurak gazed longingly downstream. Toklo could see that he just wanted to move on.

  “We can’t travel if we don’t eat,” he told the smaller cub. He padded away from the others, his muzzle raised to sniff out prey. Spotting some white smears along the side of the BlackPath, he added, “Look, that’s salt. We should lick it up. It won’t fill us, but it’s better than nothing.”

  “Salt?” Lusa remembered the flat-faces hanging up a block of the white stuff for the bears in the Bear Bowl to lick. “Did the flat-faces put it here for us?”

  “They put it here, but not for us bears, that’s for sure. And don’t ask why,” Toklo snapped as Lusa opened her jaws to speak again. “I don’t know why flat-faces do what they do. They’re crazy—even crazier than black bears.”

  To his relief, Lusa kept quiet as all three bears stepped warily out onto the BlackPath to lick up the patches of salt. Toklo sniffed in disgust as his tongue swiped over it; the white stuff was cold and dirty—so dirty that in some places he could hardly distinguish it from the BlackPath. But it’s better than nothing.

  He remembered the day Oka had found salt like this, and told him and Tobi that it was good to eat. For once Tobi hadn’t complained, and they had all stayed together, eating companionably, until—

  “Run!” Ujurak squealed.

  Toklo looked up to see a huge blue firebeast bearing down on him. Terror pounded through him; he leaped away and bounded across the BlackPath to the safety of the other side. The firebeast roared past with a high-pitched howling; Toklo didn’t dare move until the sound had died away into the distance.

  Looking around, he spotted Ujurak still on the other side of the BlackPath, next to the river. “Are you okay?” he called.

  “Fine,” Ujurak replied, huffing out his breath.

  Toklo’s belly lurched with relief when he realized that the younger cub wasn’t hurt. Lusa had climbed the wooded bank beside the BlackPath and was clinging to a low branch on the nearest tree. She scrambled down as the noise of the firebeast dwindled away, and trotted back to the bank to stand beside Toklo.

  “That was close!” she panted. “Was the firebeast hunting us?”

  “No,” Toklo growled. “But it would have flattened us if we got in its way. They don’t care.”

  Ujurak set a paw on the BlackPath, about to cross, when Toklo heard the rumble of another approaching firebeast. “Keep back!” he barked. Ujurak jumped backward, his eyes full of alarm as the creature roared past.

  Toklo waited until the sound had died away. “Okay, come now,” he told Ujurak. “It’s safe, but run fast.”

  Ujurak bounded quickly across the BlackPath. “Thanks, Toklo,” he said. There was a look of disgust on his face, and he kept passing his tongue over h
is lips as if he could taste something bad. “Those things stink!”

  “Which way should we go now?” Lusa asked. “Up here?” She took a couple of paces up the bank.

  Ujurak stood still and closed his eyes.

  “Here we go again,” Toklo sighed, glancing back at the blue-gray ridge of mountains in the distance, then at the river curling away through woods and hills.

  Ujurak opened his eyes. “We must follow the direction of the river,” he told them, and padded away.

  Toklo huffed and set off after him with Lusa at his side.

  Gradually the steep bank beside the BlackPath sank into a gentle slope and then to flat ground covered in trees and bushes. As they padded along, Toklo began to hear something other than the wind in the trees and the roar of firebeasts; his ears pricked as he recognized the sound of flat-face voices.

  “Flat-faces!” Lusa exclaimed at the same moment.

  “Stay back,” Toklo warned her, not sure if she would expect these flat-faces to feed her like the ones in the Bear Bowl. “They won’t be friendly to bears.”

  “They might be,” Lusa objected. “Okay, okay,” she went on, before Toklo could tell her what a squirrel-brained idea that was. “I wasn’t going to let them see me anyway. They might catch me and take me back to the Bear Bowl.”

  As they drew closer to the flat-faces the strange yelping voices got louder. A delicious scent trickled into Toklo’s nostrils. He had never smelled anything quite like it before, but he knew what it was. Food!

  Following the scent, he pushed his way into the bushes until he came to the edge of a clearing, and peered out through the branches. Lusa and Ujurak crowded up behind him; Lusa wriggled up to his side so that she could see clearly.

  Four flat-faces were in the clearing: two full-grown adults and two cubs. Just beyond them was a kind of den made out of green pelts, and they were all crouched around a squat flat-face thing made out of the same shiny silver stuff as the firebeasts; it gave out a glow of heat.