The Burning Horizon (13 page)

Instantly the two older flat-faces dashed forward and pulled the younger one away, making shocked noises. The male grabbed a pronged stick and came toward Lusa with it. Lusa ignored him, clinging to the mesh while she tried to loosen it with her teeth and claws. But the next moment the male flat-face had pushed her gently to the ground with the end of the stick.

Lusa scrambled back onto her paws and roared at the flat-face. “You have to let me out of here!” she growled, biting at the end of the stick in a fit of anger.

The young flat-face wailed something to the older female.

“Stop it,” Taktuq said. “Calm down. You're scaring them.”

“They can't keep me here!” Lusa protested.

“They can,” Taktuq contradicted her flatly.

The three flat-faces left in a hurry, the two older ones pushing the young one ahead of them.

“Come back!” Lusa barked after them. “Let me out! I have to find my friends!”

Fury erupted in Lusa's brain with the force of an exploding star. She stormed around her enclosure, ramming into the wooden shelter and knocking it over. She lashed out at the water bucket, spilling the water, and raked her claws down the log that lay on the ground.

I have to get out! I have to get out!

But all Lusa's fit of rage did was exhaust her. She collapsed on the ground, her head throbbing and her heart racing.

Taktuq pressed himself against the mesh until some of his fur poked through and brushed her side. “Steady, little one,”
he grunted, his voice unexpectedly gentle. “You're obviously not badly hurt. Perhaps they'll let you go.”

Lusa raised her head. “I can't wait for the flat-faces to decide,” she said. “I have to escape
now
!”

“You won't do that by scaring them,” Taktuq told her. He was silent for a few moments, then added, “Sit up, Lusa. I want to show you something.”

Weary and discouraged, Lusa pushed herself up from the ground. “What?”

“Watch the fox down there,” Taktuq said, pointing with his snout down the line of enclosures. “I've heard the flat-faces talking to it. They treat it like a friend, from what I can tell.”

Lusa spotted a small brown fox several cages away.
Taktuq knows it's there? He can hear and scent so much!

The young female flat-face had reappeared and was heading toward the fox. Lusa watched, her interest piqued, as the young female opened a full-size door in the mesh and walked up to the animal. The fox leaped to its paws and ran over to her with an eager
yip
.

Taktuq's right!
Lusa thought, astonished.

The young flat-face stooped down and stroked the fox's head, then fastened some kind of vine around its neck and guided it out of the enclosure with gentle tugs.

“She's letting it out!” Lusa exclaimed. A memory flashed into her head of seeing flat-faces walking like this with dogs, more than once on her journey. “It's like . . . like a dog!”

Beyond the mesh was a wide stretch of grass, where the fox and the flat-face played happily together, running alongside
each other and jumping over logs laid on the ground.

“Why doesn't the fox bite through the vine and escape?” Lusa wondered aloud. “It could, easily. They're just running up and down.”

“Maybe it likes being here,” Taktuq responded.

How can it, if it is wild?
Lusa thought.

Tired and discouraged, Lusa let her snout rest on her paws. Throbbing pain struck through her head where the mule had kicked her, and her legs felt too heavy for her to move. For a long time she dozed there on the grass, half listening to the sounds of birds and animals around her.

When Lusa woke, the daylight was beginning to fade, and a few stars had appeared. She lay on her back and stared up at them, but because darkness hadn't fallen, it was hard to make out any shapes. Then, as Lusa watched, some of the stars seemed to blaze extra bright, as if they were trying to catch her attention. Huge, glittering outlines began to appear against the darkening sky.
Oh . . . that's Ujurak! And his mother!
Clear above her head, they shone more brightly than any of the other stars.

That must be a sign from Ujurak,
Lusa thought, quivering with excitement.
He knows where I am! He's watching over me!
She waited to see if Ujurak would speak to her, but no words came into her mind. Still, she felt a surge of hope.
I just need the flat-faces to let me out of the cage; then it would be much easier to escape.

Lusa let out a long sigh. “I won't be here much longer!”

“I know what you're thinking,” Taktuq grunted. “Do you really think you can persuade the flat-faces to trust you?
You're a bear, not a little fox! And you scared them today.”

Lusa knew he was right; she was furious with herself for being so fluff-brained.
But I'm not giving up. I know what to do now, and I'm going to try. . . .

Night fell, and with clouds covering
the moon, it became too difficult for the bears to continue traveling. Peering ahead through the darkness, Toklo realized that the caribou must have stopped, too. The clicking noise of their paws had fallen silent, and instead he could hear crunching as the animals grazed, along with the occasional bellow. His jaws watered as strong caribou scent was carried to him on the breeze.

“We could sneak down there,” Toklo muttered, half to himself, “and pick one off, right on the edge of the herd. The rest of them wouldn't know a thing about it.”

“I told you before,” Kallik spoke sternly as she padded up beside Toklo. “We
need
the caribou. We'll have to hunt for something else instead.”

“Okay, okay,” Toklo grumbled.

“I'll go,” Yakone offered, his white pelt fading swiftly into the darkness.

Meanwhile, Toklo and Kallik began to prepare a den in a thicket of berry bushes at the edge of the trees. As Toklo
trampled down the undergrowth to make a flat place to sleep, he spotted some berries growing on one of the nearby bushes. His belly ached with hunger, so he pulled off a cluster and chomped it down, curling his lip at the bitter taste.

“Lusa would enjoy them,” he murmured. “I hope she has enough to eat, wherever she is.”

By the time the den was ready, Yakone had returned with a couple of ground squirrels.
They're not as satisfying as a caribou would be,
Toklo thought as he tore off his share of the meat, though he didn't say so out loud to Yakone.

When the food was finished, the two white bears curled up and went to sleep, but Toklo stayed awake for a while, watching the clouds drift across the night sky. In the gaps between them he caught glimpses of Ujurak and Ursa, and though he couldn't sense Ujurak anywhere close to him, he was sure that those stars were shining the brightest, reassuring them that they were on the right track.

“We are coming, Lusa,” he whispered.

Toklo slept at last, but it seemed he had barely closed his eyes before he was roused by Yakone stirring beside him.

“The nights are so short a bear can hardly get a wink of sleep,” the white male grumbled as he raised his head and peered around blearily.

“That's why we have to hurry up and find Lusa,” Toklo responded. “The Longest Day can't be far off.”

With a nod to each other, the two bears heaved themselves to their paws and slipped into the trees, muzzles raised and jaws open for any sign of prey.

Yakone tilted his snout toward a clump of long grass, and Toklo spotted the outline of a grouse in the gray dawn light. Setting his paws down as lightly as he could, he crept around in a wide circle until he was in position on the other side of the bird.

Growling fiercely, Yakone leaped forward. The grouse shot upward with a loud alarm call, heading straight for Toklo, who swatted it out of the air with one paw. Feeling thoroughly satisfied, he picked up his catch and carried it back to Kallik with Yakone padding by his side.

“We're a good team,” Yakone commented.

Once they had eaten, the bears had to wait for the caribou to set out again. Toklo found a spot on an overhanging bluff where he had a good view of the herd. One or two of them were already on the move. Toklo spotted a young calf dart away from its mother and come skittering on unsteady legs almost as far as the bottom of the bluff where he was crouching. His paws itched to leap down on top of it, but he stayed where he was.

Kallik would claw my pelt off if I touched it!

A moment later the mother caribou let out a bellow and galloped up to her calf, chasing it back into the herd again. At the same time Toklo noticed that an old bull had wandered away from the group to pull at the leaves of a sage bush. Two younger males followed it and guided it back, just as the mother had done with her calf.

They look after each other,
Toklo thought, surprised. He had always thought of caribou as stupid and couldn't imagine
how they recognized one another when their herds were so big.
Weird . . . But I don't care what they do
,
just as long as they guide us to Lusa.

The caribou started moving at last, and the bears followed. The sun rose higher in the sky, but it wasn't hot like it had been earlier in their journey. Toklo was relieved to see that the white bears were moving confidently over the icy patches that became more frequent as they headed closer to the glacier. A cold wind swept over them from the ice field; Kallik and Yakone raised their muzzles and sniffed at it happily.

It was almost sunhigh when they reached the glacier. Toklo eyed it warily, trying to hide how daunted he felt by the wall of ice that loomed above him. It was like a river that had been frozen and cut off midflow. But it was stained and dirty, dotted with stones and boulders. Instead of the sound of water, the vast body of ice creaked and strained, sounding like tree branches rubbing together, or rocks grinding over sand. Toklo hoped they wouldn't have to go any closer to the ice. He didn't trust it; it was too much like a living creature, waiting and watching the puny bears pass by.

He was relieved when the caribou skirted the edge of the glacier, and the bears trekked after them. But before they had gone far, Toklo spotted a long line of flat-faces heading alongside the glacier, their bright pelts standing out against the gray-white of the ice. They were fastened together with long vines, just like the mules had been on the day the bears lost Lusa.

“What are they doing now?” Toklo muttered.

“I don't know,” Kallik responded, “but we'd better avoid them.”

Toklo let out a low growl from deep in his throat. He knew Kallik was right, but that meant heading away from the caribou's direct route to find somewhere they could hide. The flat land beside the glacier offered no cover at all.

The caribou flowed on like a river, unstoppable and single-minded, apparently unaware of the flat-faces, who were much closer to the edge of the glacier. The flat-faces paused to watch the caribou for several moments, then moved on, getting closer and closer to the bears.

Yakone let out a growl, bunching his muscles as if he was ready to attack.

“No!” Kallik said sharply. “They might have firesticks!”

“Do you have a better idea?” Yakone asked.

Toklo cast a final desperate glance around and came to a decision. “We'll have to climb onto the glacier.”

Kallik narrowed her eyes at the massive boulders that edged the creaking river of ice, then turned to look at Yakone. Toklo knew that she was wondering whether he would be able to handle the hard scramble.

“Fine,” Yakone said firmly, as if he, too, understood what Kallik was thinking. “Let's go, before the flat-faces get any closer.”

Giant boulders loomed up in front of the bears as they approached the glacier. For a moment Toklo worried about being able to hoist themselves over the smooth contours, slick
with melting ice. Then he spotted a gap between two of the biggest rocks.

“This way!” he called.

The gap was narrow, and Toklo felt his fur brushing the rock walls on either side. Ahead of him the ice spilled down in frozen waves with smaller chunks of rock trapped inside it, which provided pawholds for them to climb.

Toklo clambered up as quickly as he could and turned to fasten his teeth in Yakone's scruff to help him up the last bearlength. Kallik followed, panting, and all three bears crowded together behind another boulder, listening to the chatter of the flat-faces as they passed by below.

“That was close,” Yakone breathed out.

“Now that we're up here, maybe we should stay,” Kallik suggested as the noise of the flat-faces began to die away. “Yakone and I can travel more easily on the ice, and we'll be safe from flat-faces.”

“But what about the caribou?” Toklo asked. “They won't come up here, and we can't risk losing them.”

“We won't,” Kallik replied confidently. “We'll be traveling alongside them and can easily keep up.”