Island of Shadows (20 page)

“This looks like the sort of place where prey might be hiding,” he told Nanulak. “But I suppose you know that as well as I do.”

Nanulak nodded. “All sorts of little animals might live in the cracks,” he replied. “They're no more than a mouthful, though. If we're lucky—” He stopped suddenly, raising his muzzle and sniffing.

Toklo caught the scent at the same moment. “Fox!” he breathed out. He drew in a long breath, trying to pinpoint the scent.

Nanulak angled his head toward a thorn thicket. “In there.”

Toklo gazed at the thorns for a moment, fighting frustration. Their pelts would be ripped off if they tried to go in after the fox. They would have to wait for the fox to come out.

“I know what to do,” Nanulak suggested. “I'll creep around the other side of the thorns and scare the fox. It'll run out this way, and you can catch it.”

“Good idea!” Toklo said.

Nanulak slid away, plowing through the snow until he disappeared around the thicket. Toklo stayed where he was, poised to attack. Suddenly a loud roar erupted from the opposite side of the thorns. An instant later the branches parted and the fox darted out into the open.

Baring his teeth, Toklo leaped at it with a roar of his own. Terrified, the fox spun around, only to see Nanulak galloping toward it from behind the thicket. The fox tried to flee, but before it had taken a single pawstep Toklo was on it, swiping a forepaw across its head. The fox collapsed, a limp heap in the snow.

“Got it!” Toklo exclaimed.

“We did it together,” Nanulak responded. “We make a terrific team, Toklo.”

Nanulak dragged the fox back to where Kallik and Yakone had finished hollowing out the den. Lusa was already curled up inside.

Kallik padded up to give the fox an admiring sniff. “Did you catch this, Nanulak?”

“We both did,” Nanulak replied. “Come and share it.”

As they gathered around the prey, Toklo was happy to see Nanulak making more of an effort to get along with the white bears.
He's bound to feel closer to me because we look most alike
, he thought.
But it's good that he wants to be friends with Kallik and Yakone, too
.
He has to learn to trust all of us equally if he wants to travel with us.

The snow that Nanulak and Kallik had predicted began to fall shortly after they set out the following morning. The soft white flakes grew thicker and thicker, and a wind rose, until the bears were battling their way into the teeth of a blizzard. Yakone carried Lusa on his back again. Toklo felt as if the cold were a huge bear fastening its claws around him, dragging him backward. Every pawstep was a massive effort. The white bears handled it better, though Toklo noticed that even they were shivering. Nanulak plodded on uncomplainingly, more at home in the snow than Toklo.

“This is hopeless,” Yakone said. The white male had taken the lead; now he turned and waited for the others to catch up. “We've got to find some shelter and wait the storm out.”

Toklo gazed into the whirling snow. “I can't see a bearlength in front of my nose,” he complained. “How are we going to find shelter in this?”

“We'll just have to keep going until we do,” Kallik said resignedly.

Toklo hunched his shoulders and faced into the biting wind. “Come on, then.” To his relief, before they had taken many more pawsteps, he spotted something dark looming through the snow. “There's something up ahead,” he said.

A little farther, and he could see that their path was blocked by a sheer cliff face. Rocks jutted outward, forming a shallow cave underneath.

“There!” Kallik exclaimed, bounding past Toklo to stand under the overhang. “We can wait here until the storm dies down.”

Toklo stumbled after her, thankful to be out of the buffeting wind. Nanulak pressed in beside him, and Yakone followed, letting Lusa slide from his back to the ground.

“The snow's thin back here,” Kallik went on, exploring the back of the overhang. “Why don't we scrape it away? It'll be so much warmer if we do that.”

Toklo wanted to grumble that he was already asleep on his paws, but he bit the words back. It would be worth a bit of extra effort to be comfortable, especially if the storm kept them stuck here for days. He attacked the nearest snow pile, thrusting it out into the open with powerful sweeps of his claws. All the others—even Lusa, who was yawning widely as she scraped—joined him, until they had exposed the bare face of the rock and the sandy floor of the cave.

“Look at this,” Lusa said, sounding suddenly more alert. She was pointing at the cave wall with one paw.

Toklo craned his neck to see what she had found. His pelt prickled with shock as he recognized markings on the wall, like the ones they had found in the cave on Star Island, the Place of the Selamiut. These weren't as clear, though, as if bad weather had scoured them away. He could only just make out spiky figures that he thought represented flat-faces.

“Why are they here?” Kallik asked, a trace of awe in her voice. “Are they supposed to tell us something?”

Toklo felt a touch of the same awe as he remembered the markings in the other cave. In the Place of the Selamiut were images of flat-faces and their dens, and pictures of caribou. Most amazing of all, there were images of the four of them: Lusa and Kallik, Ujurak and Toklo himself. But the images here were faint; Toklo couldn't tell if they were meant to be bears, let alone pictures of him and his companions.

“I don't think they mean anything,” he grunted. “I can't even see what they're supposed to be.”

“What are they, anyway?” Nanulak asked, going up to one of the nearest marks and sniffing at it.

“Images,” Kallik explained. “We think no-claws made them.”

“Oh, no-claws!” Nanulak turned away dismissively. “Who cares about them?”

Toklo examined the marks for a moment more, but he still couldn't see any meaning in them. He let himself flop down onto the cave floor; the others huddled around him at the back of the overhang, listening to the storm raging outside.

“The wind sounds angry,” Lusa murmured from where she was curled up between Toklo and Kallik. “It's like a huge voice, roaring at us.”

“You shouldn't imagine things,” Kallik warned. Toklo thought she sounded edgy, as if she couldn't help agreeing with Lusa, even though she wouldn't admit it. “It's only wind.”

Toklo was just grateful to have found somewhere to rest. Doing his best to ignore the gaping hole in his belly, he closed his eyes and tried to sleep.

Waking from an uncomfortable doze, Toklo was first aware of the silence. The wind had dropped. He opened his eyes on a glare of white snow-light; when his eyes grew used to the brightness, he saw that much more snow had fallen overnight. Huge powdery drifts had blown in under the overhang, sealing him and his companions into the cave.

“It's a good thing we weren't sleeping outside,” he muttered as he began rousing the others.

Together they thrust their way through the fresh snow and into the open. A shallow valley, now a vast expanse of white, stretched in front of them, glittering under the pale, low sun. Thin clouds drifted across an icy blue sky.

Suddenly Nanulak stiffened, staring past Toklo with wide, frightened eyes. “White bears!” he whispered.

Toklo turned to gaze across the valley. A group of white bears—a large male, a couple of females, and a half-grown cub—were walking toward them, plowing their way through the snow.

“They're looking for me!” Nanulak whimpered. “Don't let them get me!”

“Are those the bears who attacked you?” Yakone asked.

“I don't know,” Nanulak replied, shivering. “I don't remember. But all the white bears on this island are really unfriendly. They fight with the brown bears all the time.”

“Then get back into the shelter and stay there, Nanulak,” Toklo ordered.

Nanulak ducked behind the mounds of snow, while Kallik and Yakone moved to screen the gaps they had made as they pushed their way out.

Lusa came to stand beside Toklo, blinking worriedly. “Do you think the white bears would attack us to get to Nanulak?” she asked.

“We'll make sure that doesn't happen,” Yakone said grimly.

It was the first time Yakone had spoken up in Nanulak's defense, and Toklo flashed a glance of respect at the white bear. Kallik was gazing at him admiringly, and she moved a little closer to him so that their pelts brushed.

“I'm not going to be told what to do by strangers,” Yakone added.

Toklo turned to face the group of bears as they drew closer, fixing the male, who was in the lead, with a fierce glare.
If they're looking for trouble, they can have it. They're not going to hurt Nanulak!

But the bears had veered aside and didn't seem to notice Toklo or the others. They padded past, several bearlengths away. Even so, Toklo remained braced for an attack, and he didn't relax until they were well away, heading farther down the slope into the valley.

“Good riddance,” he muttered.

Nanulak crept back outside to watch the departing bears. “They're gone!” he said with a sigh of relief. “You were so brave, Toklo!”

The younger bear's praise warmed him, even though he knew he hadn't done anything. “They weren't a problem,” he said gruffly. “Anyway, it's all over now. I'm going to hunt.”

“I'll come with you,” Nanulak said instantly.

“No, stay here.” Kallik padded up and nudged him back toward the cave. “You don't want to meet the white bears when you're alone with Toklo, do you?”

“Toklo would look after me,” Nanulak muttered, resisting Kallik's gentle push.

Even though Toklo was pleased that the younger bear trusted him, he knew Kallik was right. “I can't fight every white bear on the island myself,” he pointed out. “It's far better for you to stay in hiding. Lusa had better stay here, too.”

“But I'd like to hunt with you today,” Lusa objected.

“In all this snow?” Toklo butted her affectionately in the shoulder with his muzzle. “We'd lose you in a drift and never find you again.”

Lusa bared her teeth in a mock snarl. But she didn't protest again before heading through the gap, back into the cave.

Nanulak stayed where he was, looking sulky.

“You too,” Toklo ordered, not in the mood for any more argument.

To his relief, Nanulak seemed to accept that, and followed Lusa with no more than a disgusted snort.

“Kallik and I will hunt this way,” Yakone said, pointing his muzzle in a different direction from the one the white bears had taken.

“Great. Good luck,” Toklo replied. He decided to follow the line of the cliff, beside the overhang, still keeping well away from where the white bears had disappeared.
We were lucky that they didn't spot us. I want to keep it that way.

Toklo floundered through the deep, powdery snow, which rose higher than his belly. The thick white stuff masked any possible prey-scents. Looking around, Toklo realized that the whole landscape was different. Briefly he was afraid of getting lost, until he realized that he could follow his own trail back to the cave.

He was beginning to despair of catching anything when he picked up the scent of some small animal and spotted its tracks, tiny prints that told him the creature wouldn't be nearly enough to fill even one bear's belly.

But it's better than nothing.

Toklo set off after the animal, flinging the snow aside as he thrust his way through it. “Spirit-cursed drifts!” he muttered to himself.

Finally Toklo spotted the creature, skittering light-footed across the surface of the snow. It was something he'd never seen before, brown and furry, like a big mouse. Launching himself through the snow, claws outstretched, he pounced.

But instead of feeling his paws close around his prey, Toklo found himself swallowed up in a fluffy white sea. Snow was in his mouth, his eyes, his nose, and he thrashed helplessly. Above his head, he heard the creature let out a triumphant squeak, and he pictured it running away to safety.

Seal rot!

Then Toklo heard another sound above him: the deep bark of a strange bear.

“You'll never catch anything like that.”