The Last Wilderness (7 page)

‘There.’ Toklo pointed with his snout. ‘Let’s go.’

On their way across the valley they kept low among the long grasses, wading a shallow stream and hiding behind rocks. But closer to the lake the ground flattened out until there was no other cover between them and their prey, no way of sneaking up without alerting the geese.

‘We should get downwind so they don’t pick up our scent,’ Kallik suggested.

‘I know.’ Toklo sighed. The wind was blowing from exactly the wrong direction, and it was going to take forever to work their way around without being seen or scented. The geese could be long gone by then.

He signed to the others to stay back, then flattened himself to the ground as he tried to creep up on the geese. But before he could get near them, the whole
flock rose flapping into the air, letting out raucous cries of alarm.

They flew a few bearlengths, then settled again and began to feed. With frustration bubbling inside him, Toklo waited for his friends to catch up to him.

‘Maybe we should spread out,’ Lusa offered. ‘That way, if they fly away from one of us, someone else might catch one.’

‘I suppose we could try,’ Toklo said grudgingly.

The bears separated so that they were creeping up on the flock of geese from different directions. But it didn’t work. The geese spotted them long before they were close enough to pounce; they took to the air, and when they landed again they were still out of reach.

‘This is stupid!’ Toklo growled. His belly was howling with hunger by now; he was so angry with the geese, he could think of nothing but tearing into one and seeing the feathers fly. ‘We need another plan.’

He beckoned to his friends with a toss of his head. ‘I have an idea,’ he began, when all three were clustered around him. ‘Ujurak, I want you to try a new way of hunting. Turn into a goose; then when
you’re in the middle of the flock, you can change back into a bear and grab one of them.’

‘Toklo, that’s brilliant!’ Lusa exclaimed.

‘It’s worth a try,’ Kallik agreed.

But to Toklo’s dismay, Ujurak was looking uncertain.
What’s wrong with the fluff-ball now?

‘I don’t know . . .’ Ujurak sounded guilty, his brown eyes unhappy. ‘When I change, I . . . I really turn into the creature that I become. I think the same thoughts as they do and I feel what they feel. They’re not prey any more. I can’t imagine hunting them.’

‘That’s ridiculous!’ Toklo snorted. ‘You’re a bear all the time, right? Even when you’re in the shape of something else? So you need to do what a bear does, and right now, bears are hunting these geese.’

Ujurak shrugged doubtfully.

‘Go on, Ujurak,’ Kallik begged him, her eyes sparkling. ‘It’ll be fun!’

‘Try it.’ Lusa poked Ujurak’s shoulder with her snout. ‘I want to see you surprise those geese!’

Ujurak hesitated a little longer, staring at his paws, then took a deep breath and looked up. ‘OK, I’ll do it.’

‘Great!’ Toklo was relieved that the smaller cub
had come to his senses at last. He had to have this weird power for a reason, right? What better reason than helping to catch food?

Ujurak stood still for a moment, staring at the geese. Then his neck grew longer and thinner; his snout shrank and changed into a beak. His body became smaller, while his forelegs stretched out into wings. A ripple passed across his brown fur as it changed into white feathers. His hind legs grew spindly, with webbed feet instead of paws. At last, with a harsh cry, a snow goose took off, circled in the air above the bears’ heads, and then flew over and alighted among the flock.

‘I’ll never get used to that,’ Lusa whispered.

Toklo kept his gaze fixed on the flock. They were feeding so close together, he was already uncertain which goose was Ujurak. And there was no sign of him transforming back into a bear again.

‘What’s he waiting for?’ Toklo said irritably. ‘Can’t he remember that he’s really a bear?’

Kallik was scanning the flock, her eyes narrowed.

‘I think that’s him,’ she said, pointing with her snout. ‘The big one, with the brown mark on his side.’

Lusa shook her head. ‘I didn’t notice any brown mark when he flew off.’

Toklo scraped his claws on the ground. There was still no sign of any of the geese turning back into a bear.

‘Toklo, do you think we should call him –’ Lusa began.

A sudden clamour of honking and squawking from the geese interrupted her. The whole flock took off: not the short flutter to another feeding ground this time, but whirling high up into the air.

‘Now what?’ Toklo asked, exasperated.

‘Look!’ Kallik pricked her ears. ‘A wolf!’

Following her gaze, Toklo spotted the lean grey shape at the opposite side of the lake. It was stalking toward the flock, but as the birds rose into the air the wolf leaped forward, snarling, only to halt in frustration as the geese circled overhead.

I know how it feels
, Toklo thought.

His annoyance grew when, instead of settling again, the geese formed into an irregular wedge-shape and flew off, heading for the distant seashore. There wasn’t a single one left by the lake.

‘Ujurak’s gone with them!’ Kallik exclaimed.

‘Oh, no!’ Lusa’s voice was filled with dismay. ‘I wish he wouldn’t keep going off like this.’

‘Stupid squirrel-brain,’ Toklo muttered. ‘One of these days, he’ll disappear and not be able to find us again.’

Kallik let out a sigh. ‘Do you think we’d better follow him?’

‘Maybe we should.’ Toklo broke into a gallop, chasing after the departing geese. ‘Come on!’

Lusa and Kallik bounded along by his side. Seeing the bears charging towards him, the wolf leaped back, startled, then turned tail and fled to the trees at the far side of the valley.

Good riddance!
Toklo snarled inwardly. He remembered being chased by wolves, back in the mountains with Lusa and Ujurak. It felt good to be big and fierce enough now to scare off a full-grown wolf.

‘Ujurak! Ujurak!’ he bellowed out loud. ‘Come back!’

U
jurak’s wings beat strongly as he sliced through the sky above the lake. The wolf had dwindled to a grey speck at the edge of the water. Memories thronged his mind, though they were not his memories: bright, ravenous eyes, sharp teeth and snapping jaws, and the spattering of blood on white feathers. Vaguely he remembered a time when his own fangs had sunk into goose flesh, but it seemed as if that had happened to another creature, a long time ago.

Faint cries came from below; glancing down, Ujurak saw three small shapes bounding along in the wake of the flock. Black, white, and brown . . . briefly Ujurak felt puzzled. He thought he should have remembered who they were, and why they were
calling to him. But his confusion was swallowed up in the joy of his escape from the wolf, and the power of his wings as they cut through the air.

Around him the rest of the flock switched places and overtook one another until they were flying in a ragged triangle, heading for the ocean. Ujurak found himself about halfway down one side.

‘Fly! Fly far! Leave wolf behind!’ The honking cries of the geese surrounded him; Ujurak realised that the commands were coming from the lead goose and rippling from one bird to the next down both sides of the triangle.

‘Fly far! Fly!’ he croaked as the harsh cry reached him.

The hills fell away behind them and the coastal plain opened up ahead of the flock as the geese winged their way towards the sea.

‘Feed well now!’ Another command swept down the line of geese from their leader at the front.

‘Soon fly to other home! Feel sun on feathers!’

‘Other home . . . sun . . . feed well . . .’

As the geese passed the words back and forth, Ujurak could almost feel the warmth of the sun’s
rays soaking into his frail bird-bones, and the longing to fly to this other home gripped him like a claw.

The sunlit vision distracted him so completely that he forgot to concentrate on his flying. A more powerful wingbeat sent him blundering into the goose ahead of him. Both birds fluttered and rolled in the air, trying to regain their balance. For a few dizzying moments the earth and sky whirled around Ujurak; he didn’t know which way to fly. A third goose, following just behind, lost its rhythm too, and flapped wildly to recover.

‘Slug-brain!’ the first goose hissed at Ujurak. ‘Did you just hatch, or what?’

‘Slug-brain . . . slug-brain . . .’ The insult rippled on down the line.

‘Sorry!’ Ujurak struggled to regain his place. Beating his wings to propel himself forward was a lot harder now that he was outside the wedge. Air currents tugged at him and buffeted him around the sky. With a massive effort he caught up to the rest of the flock and found another place within the wedge. Flying was instantly easier as he rode in the rush of air created by the goose in front of him.

The two others found places, glaring at Ujurak and then ignoring him. Ujurak reminded himself to stay out of their feathers once the flock landed.

Whirling behind the leader, Ujurak spotted an eerie shadow on the far horizon. It looked as if a storm cloud had sunk to earth. There were flashes of light inside it and some kind of solid structure that Ujurak couldn’t see clearly.

‘Bad place!’ the goose leader honked as he veered away from it. ‘No food! Bitter water!’

‘Bad . . . bitter . . .’ the rest of the flock repeated.

‘Noisy beasts! Landwalkers! Never go there!’ the leader ordered.

‘Never go there . . .’

Ujurak didn’t know what the geese were talking about, but their words called up a feeling of dread inside him. He remembered that the very first time he had set paw in this place –
Paw? Not wings?
– he had felt uneasy. He had known that this wasn’t where the journey was supposed to end. Now the feeling of uneasiness intensified; all he wanted was to flee far away on strong wings so that he could put the ominous shadows out of his mind forever.

Instead he swooped down with the rest of the flock
to land in a brackish meadow close to the water’s edge. Seaweed was strewn all along the waterline; Ujurak’s feathers prickled with anticipation as he spotted the tasty green and brown heaps, and he realised how hungry the flight had made him. He splashed across the muddy grass, shouldering his way through the crowd of geese, and began to feed.

Gulping down the first delicious strands, he remembered that there might be danger here too. He raised his head, casting quick glances from side to side, all his senses alert for enemies. But he couldn’t detect any wolves here; there were no bears close by, and no foxes either. No landwalkers. For the time being the flock was safe.

Ujurak lowered his head and tucked into the seaweed again. His pangs of hunger began to fade as he filled his belly. Then as he stretched out his neck to swallow a big clump of seaweed, he felt something hard hidden inside it. He retched, trying to get rid of it. Instead he felt a sharp pain as something stabbed into his throat from the inside.

Lowering his head, he tried to cough up the obstruction, and spotted a long, thin tendril trailing from his beak. It was clear and so fine that he had
not seen it tangled up with the seaweed. Ujurak’s throat spasmed and he broke into a burst of racking coughs as he struggled to free the tendril from his throat. Blood spurted out of his beak and the stabbing pain grew worse.

‘Help!’ he choked out. ‘I can’t . . . I can’t breathe . . .’

The geese around him turned to give him sharp, suspicious looks, and when they saw he was in trouble they edged away from him. Ujurak realised despairingly that there was nothing they could do to help. He raised one foot in an effort to pull at the tendril, but the webbed pad swiped uselessly across it; unbalanced, he fell over on one side, flapping his wings in a panic.

A wave bigger than the rest washed over him, half lifting him as it retreated, washing strands of seaweed over him. The world was growing dark, clouds swirling around him.

Change
. . . an inner voice told him.
You won’t survive like this
.

Ujurak wasn’t sure what the voice meant, but he stretched his limbs and soon his white feathers blurred, and brown fur flowed over his body. Still,
his strength was ebbing fast. He gave one last hacking cough that shook his whole body, then let his head drop and lay limply in the surf, his blood flowing into the sea foam on the edge of the waves.