River of Lost Bears (15 page)

“Really?” Yakone halted. “Look how easily they move through this bear-trap.” He kicked a trailing bramble with his paw. “We're like fish on ice here.”

Kallik felt unease tug at her belly. “Do you wish you'd stayed on the Melting Sea?”

Yakone dropped his gaze. “You wanted to stay with your friends,” he grunted. “And I promised to come with you.”

“They're your friends, too,” Kallik reminded him.

Yakone glanced at the other bears. “I know.”

“They'll be the best friends you'll ever have, if you let them,” she urged. Toklo and Lusa were far more than friends to her. They were her family now. She glanced sideways at Yakone. Would
he
ever feel that way about them? “Please let them be that for you, too, Yakone,” she begged. What if she
had
been killed on the BlackPath? Yakone would need their friendship more than ever.

Ahead, Toklo paused and lifted his nose. “Can you hear that?” Lusa grabbed onto his fur with her forepaws to stop from slipping off.

“What is it?” Kallik hurried forward, ears pricked. The forest hummed with a noise that sounded like the buzzing of giant bees.

“Where's it coming from?” Yakone scanned the trees.

Toklo flicked his snout forward. “Over there.”

“How can you tell?” Yakone cocked his head. Kallik understood his confusion. On the vast stretches of ice, it was easy to work out where noises came from. In the woods, sounds bounced from tree to tree until they sounded like they came from every direction at once.

“I don't like it,” Chenoa muttered, a shiver running through her body.

“It sounds like firebeasts,” Lusa said.

Toklo shook his head. “It's not growly enough.”

“Firebeast
cubs
?” Lusa guessed.

Kallik touched her nose to Lusa's flank. “I don't think they have cubs.”

Toklo shifted his paws; Lusa rocked on his shoulders. “Let's head for the shore,” Toklo suggested.

Chenoa frowned. “Do you think we'll be safe there?”

“At least we can escape into the water if we have to.” Kallik glanced anxiously at Yakone. Was this new danger going to make him more bad-tempered? Perhaps he should never have agreed to come. She shook the thought away. Yakone was brave and loyal. And he was her friend. Of course he had to come.

Toklo headed through the trees toward the river. Kallik could glimpse it already, flashing between the trunks. The land sloped downward under their paws, growing steeper and stonier. As they broke from the trees, it hardened to rock.

“Careful!” Toklo warned as he jarred to a halt. They were standing on the brink of a short, steep cliff.

Kallik peered over the edge. The river churned below, its shallows lapping a narrow, rocky shore. “How do we get down there?”

Chenoa hurried along the cliff top, sending grit showering over the edge. “There's a track here.” She stopped and looked down. Jutting rocks made a steep path down to the shore. She headed down it, and Kallik flinched as more stones rattled down onto the beach.

“It's very narrow,” Yakone muttered.

“You can climb an iceberg,” Kallik reminded him. “Just stick your claws in and pray to the spirits.”

“They're back at the Melting Sea,” he grunted.

Kallik ignored him and marched past Toklo. Following Chenoa, she started down the narrow slope. It was little more than rocks clustered into a steep-sided pile. The cliff scraped one flank while spray whipped the other. Kallik focused on her paws, claws stretched as they slid on loose grit. Her heart lurched as she leaped across a gap, landing clumsily on the rock beyond.

“Come on, Kallik!” Chenoa had reached the beach and was calling from below. “You can do it!”

Taking a deep breath, Kallik scrabbled down the last three boulders and crunched onto the shore. A yelp made her turn. Lusa was clinging to Toklo's shoulders, wide-eyed, as the brown bear gingerly followed the path down.

“Careful!” Kallik called. “Watch your—”

She broke off with a gasp as the rock gave way and Toklo's hindpaw slid from under him. Stones showered Kallik's face. She shook them off and stared upward in horror.

Toklo was wobbling on three paws while he scrabbled for the edge with his flailing hindpaw. Lusa was barely hanging on, her legs dangling over Toklo's flank.

“Stay still!” Yakone roared from the top. Weaving his way down the slope, he caught up with Toklo and nipped the brown bear's stubby tail between his jaws. As Yakone held tight, Toklo lifted his hindpaw and placed it firmly back on the path. He leaned against the rock while Lusa scrambled back onto his shoulders.

Kallik's heart leaped in her chest. “By all the spirits!”

“We're okay!” Toklo called down. Slowly, he moved forward with Lusa clinging on. Yakone let go of his tail and followed close behind.

Kallik sighed with relief as the bears reached the bottom. “Lusa, are you all right?”

“I think so,” she said in a small voice.

Kallik sniffed the black bear; fear-scent mingled with the smell of blood. Her wound was still seeping. “Chenoa.” Kallik glanced over her shoulder. “Can you keep a lookout for more hornwort?”

Chenoa nodded, her eyes bright.

“Are you okay, Toklo?” Kallik touched her muzzle to his.

“I'm fine.” Toklo pulled away. His eyes glittered. The slip on the path had scared him.

“You've been carrying Lusa for a while,” Kallik pointed out. “Let me take her.”

“I'll do it.” Chenoa pushed between them. “I haven't carried her yet.”

Lusa huffed, amused. “I'll forget how to walk if you all carry me.”

“No way.” Chenoa pushed close to Toklo, and Lusa hauled herself from one bear to the other. Kallik saw Chenoa's legs wobble for a moment, before she bravely trudged on as if Lusa were as light as a cub. “Once I find you some more hornwort,
you
can carry
me
.”

Lusa poked her with a paw. “You just wait. One day I'll be big enough to carry Toklo!”

“I'd like to see that!” Chenoa set off upstream, snorting.

“Toklo?” Kallik searched his gaze. “Are you sure you're okay?”

“I nearly dropped her.” He dipped his head, avoiding her gaze.

“But you didn't,” Kallik soothed.

Yakone padded past them.

Toklo blinked. “Thanks for helping me.”

Yakone shrugged. “You'd do the same for me.” He followed Chenoa as she bounced from rock to rock along the narrow shore. Kallik hurried to catch up with him. There was just enough room to walk side by side, but where the rocks rose and fell, they had to take it in turns to jump the gaps.

They spoke little, concentrating on their paws. Kallik could still hear the angry buzzing from the forest, despite the river's roar. But it gradually faded behind them, and her shoulders relaxed.

The craggy shore gave way to smooth rocks, then a wide pebble beach. Toklo hurried past and caught up to Lusa and Chenoa.

“I miss the murmuring of the ice.” Yakone's soft words surprised Kallik.

She nodded. “And the taste of salt in the air.”

“At least it's stopped raining.” Yakone looked up. Dark clouds streaked toward the horizon where the sun touched the treetops, setting the forest alight. Shadows crept across the shore.

Toklo turned and called across the beach. “We should stop for the night.” He headed through a clump of knotweed into the forest. “Let's find somewhere to sleep before we hunt.”

Yakone frowned as Toklo disappeared. “Not
another
night in the forest,” he grunted. “Can't I sleep on the shore?”

“We have to sleep together,” Kallik pointed out. “It's safer. And it'll be warmer for Lusa among the trees.”

“I can't wait till we're back where we belong.” Yakone padded heavily toward the trees, disappearing through the knotweed after Toklo.

“Look, look!” Lusa's voice rang from the woods. Kallik hurried to see. The black bear was limping around a fallen tree.

Chenoa was sniffing the hollow where the roots had been torn from the ground. “Soft, warm earth!” she exclaimed. She slithered into the dip and looked up at the wall of roots jutting above. “It's perfect to shelter us for the night.”

Lusa tugged a thin root and began gnawing at it. “Still sweet!” she announced happily.

Toklo nodded. “You'll be able to see the river through the trees, Kallik.”

Yakone sighed. “It's no ice-den, but it'll do.”

Toklo headed for the shore. “Who wants to fish?”

“I'm happy here.” Lusa didn't look up from the root she was happily chewing.

“Chenoa?” Toklo beckoned her with his muzzle. “The shallows look like good fishing. Do you want to join me?”

“Yes, please.” Chenoa shook out her fur.

Kallik guessed she wasn't used to having a pelt full of dust from traveling. Her own fur itched with it. “Let's try fishing the deep currents, Yakone.”

Yakone's gaze brightened. “I bet there are some fish worth catching there.”

Kallik chortled. “We might find one as big as a seal.” She headed for the shore, pebbles crunching underpaw as she reached the wide beach. Toklo and Chenoa were already splashing in the shallows. Kallik headed straight for deeper water, relieved to see Yakone bounding past her. A decent meal would cheer him up. And the water was freezing. He'd like that.

As the waves lapped her shoulders, Kallik dove beneath the surface, heading for the fast channels in the middle of the river. The tug of the water was exhilarating, like a mother pulling her cub in for its first swim. Kallik let it draw her downstream, watching bubbles swirl around her. Twirling, she spun through the water. Sky and river blurred as she tumbled. The water swept through her fur, rinsing away the dirt and cooling her weary muscles. Bobbing to the surface, she floated on her back. The blue sky arced above her as an eddy swirled her around. Kallik kicked out with her powerful hind legs and dove under again. Swimming against the current, she pushed down to the riverbed. She was used to the black, bottomless sea, but here she could see rocks and pebbles streaming with weed, like a tiny landscape spread out beneath her. A fat sturgeon nibbled on a trailing plant, holding its place in the current with slow flicks of its tail. Kallik lunged and clamped her jaws around its belly. It was dead by the time she burst through the surface, and she carried it ashore, her neck aching with the weight of it.

Lusa stood on the beach. “Wow! That's huge!”

Toklo and Chenoa waded in the shallows. They hardly looked up as Kallik strode past and dropped the sturgeon at Lusa's paws.

“Guard it while I catch another.” Kallik tossed her head, spattering Lusa with water.

“You love the river, don't you?” Lusa called as Kallik headed back to the water.

“It's not bad,” she admitted.

Toklo ran his paw through the water as she passed. “The spirits of brown bears enter the river when they die,” he was saying.

Chenoa stared into the shallows. “Really?”

Kallik slowed, pricking her ears.

“They are swept along with the fish that fed them and gave them life,” Toklo explained to the wide-eyed black bear.

Kallik plunged into the depths once more, water blurring her sight. If she slept in the forest, she wouldn't see the stars. How would she see her mother glittering among the other stars, now that the ice had melted and set her spirit free? Had Nisa met Ujurak in the night sky?

A trout darted past, and she whipped around and grabbed it with her claws. Snapping it with her jaws, she held it fast till she'd caught another. Then she swam back to shore.

Yakone was still fishing far out as Kallik dropped her catch beside Lusa. She could see his white pelt cresting like a wave in the water.

“Lusa!” Toklo was trotting toward them, Chenoa at his side. The young she-bear held green stalks in her mouth.

“Hornwort!” Kallik recognized the shape of the leaves, and as they reached her, she detected the familiar scent.

Chenoa chewed the leaves to pulp and smoothed them into Lusa's wounds. Lusa winced, and Kallik peered at her rump anxiously.

“It's okay,” Chenoa reassured her. “There's less swelling. It's healing well.”

“What about the bleeding?” Kallik whispered. She didn't want to worry Lusa.

“Just a crack in the scab,” Chenoa promised. “The hornwort will stop it from going bad.”

Kallik sat down, and Lusa leaned against her. As they stared out across the river, Chenoa sniffed at the sturgeon.

“Take a bite,” Kallik offered.

Toklo sat back on his haunches and scooped up a trout. “Can I eat this?”

Kallik chuffed. “Of course.”