Island of Shadows (29 page)

A few flakes of snow whirled
in the wind as Toklo stood on a boulder, scanning the hillside. Behind him, his companions huddled together, waiting for him to make a decision.

More days had passed as they toiled across the island, and still there was no sign of the coast. Every path they took would fall away into a sheer cliff or end in a huge wall of rock with no way to get through. Once they found themselves trying to cross another stretch of blasted earth with firebeasts crouching among the devastation. They were all famished and exhausted, their strength ebbing with every day that passed.

“We're lost, aren't we?” Nanulak demanded, jumping up to join Toklo on the boulder. “Admit it!”

“Calm down,” Toklo responded. “We—”

“We have to get off this island!” Panic flared in Nanulak's eyes. “You promised!”

“Then shut up and let Toklo work out where to go,” Yakone put in, giving Nanulak a hard stare.

Oh, great
, Toklo thought.
Now I'll have a fight on my paws, as well as all our other problems.

But Nanulak didn't reply, just glared at Yakone and stood beside Toklo with a sulky look on his face.

I wonder what Ujurak would do if he were here
, Toklo thought.
Would he be able to spot a sign that would put us on the right path again?

He examined the landscape ahead of him more intently, trying to see it through Ujurak's eyes. But between the rough terrain and the unnatural changes the flat-faces had made, it seemed impossible to find a way through. Just in front of Toklo, a clump of tall grass was blowing in the wind, the stalks bent backward in the direction they had come from.

“That's no good,” Toklo muttered. “We've just been there! We want to go on.”

The pawprints of some smaller animal—an Arctic fox, Toklo guessed—crossed in front of him and headed in the same direction, back toward the ice cap and the ridge down the middle of the island. Toklo frowned as he looked at them.

Would Ujurak say that these were signs telling us to go back? That's bee-brained!

The harsh cries of a gaggle of geese startled him, and he looked up to see their ragged triangle passing overhead. They too were heading toward the ice cap.

For a moment Toklo wrestled with doubt.
What if these
are
signs? What if something is telling us to go back?
Then he gave himself a shake.

“Nonsense!” he growled. “We're going on, and that's that!”

“Is something the matter, Toklo?”

Toklo jumped at the sound of the voice, then turned to see Lusa padding up closer to him.

“No, I'm fine,” he retorted, then added more hesitantly, “I was trying to see signs like Ujurak used to, but I'm no good at it. Everything seems to be telling me that we should go back.”

Lusa glanced back at the hills they had struggled to leave behind, and shuddered. “I hope not!” Then she paused and looked up at Toklo, her dark brown eyes round and questioning. “Suppose you're right?” she asked him quietly. “Maybe Ujurak
is
trying to tell you something. Maybe he doesn't want us to go this way.”

“Why wouldn't he?” Toklo huffed. “We have to get off the island. If Ujurak was sending us signs,” he went on, arguing with himself as much as with Lusa, “then the signs would make sense. What good can it possibly do us to go back to the middle of the island, when we're trying to get to the sea?”

“Ujurak would know.” Lusa blinked at him. “Toklo, what if he is trying to help us? We have to listen to him!”

“You're not going on about Ujurak
again
!” Nanulak's voice cut across Lusa's last few words.

“We can talk about Ujurak if we want,” Lusa snapped back at him. “He was our friend!”

Nanulak shrugged. “But he's gone now, and it's not like he was a real bear.”

“He
was
real,” Lusa insisted, turning away. “More real than any of us.”

Toklo crushed down a stab of anger toward Nanulak.
He never knew Ujurak
, he reminded himself.
We can't expect him to understand.
“We thought Ujurak might be sending us signs to guide us,” he explained.

“Why do we need signs?” Nanulak asked. “We know where we're going. We just need to find the way to the ocean!”

Toklo suppressed a sigh.

He was saved from finding a reply by Yakone, who had been studying the landscape. “I think I know how to find the way to the sea. Look at the shape of the snowdrifts,” he pointed out. “They show us the way the wind blows. And we knew where the wind was coming from when we were traveling along the ridge.”

“So we need to keep the wind blowing on us from the same direction!” Kallik exclaimed, grasping Yakone's idea. “That's brilliant!”

“It makes sense,” Toklo grunted. “That means we go this way,” he added, pointing with his snout at an angle down the hillside. “Let's go.”

Signs or no signs
, he reflected,
they'll never follow me if I try to lead them back to the ice cap.

Though the bears made more progress that day, Toklo couldn't convince himself that they had made the right decision. There were no more dangerous ravines, but their journey was full of countless irritations. Sharp stones lay concealed beneath the snow. As they crossed a frozen stream, the ice gave way, plunging them into freezing water. It wasn't deep, but it left them cold and uncomfortable, even the white bears with their thick fur. Later, when they tried to hunt, there was no prey to be seen or smelled.

The whole world seemed to be full of signs pointing the other way: clouds scudding across the sky, thorns that pointed back the way they had come, wind that blew directly into their faces. Toklo felt that everything around them was shrieking,
Go back!
He couldn't take a pawstep without sensing that Ujurak was with him, sending him a message that they had to return.

But are these true signs?
he asked himself over and over again.
Or am I imagining it because I want Ujurak to be with us? I don't want to go back, but I'd do it if I thought Ujurak wanted it
.

Toklo tried to work out why Ujurak might be telling him to go back.
If we do, we might come across Nanulak's family…. Hey, wait! Maybe that's it!

Seeing the mixed-bear family had reminded Toklo that some families were good and kind and loyal to one another. Every bear, including Nanulak, deserved to have a family like that at the start of his life.

No bear should be driven away by his own mother
, Toklo thought, with a sharp pang of pain as he remembered Oka. Indignation rose inside him as he imagined what he might say to the bears who had driven Nanulak away. His paws itched to confront them.

“Nanulak is worth caring for,” he would say. “He's happy with us now. But you've lost him—you've lost an important part of your family. And I hope you're satisfied!”

If we go back
, he thought, trying not to think about the long trek they would have to make,
it shouldn't be too hard to find Nanulak's family. Maybe Ujurak feels the same as I do: that we should put things straight with them before we take Nanulak away forever.

But can I be sure that's what the signs are telling me?
Toklo shook his head in confusion.
Will the others believe me? I can't expect them to trust me if I can't trust myself.

“We'd better look for somewhere to make a den,” Yakone said, as the sun went down.

Toklo gazed around. They were standing on a bleak hillside that seemed to go on forever; there was no sign of shelter anywhere in the gathering shadows.

“No thorn trees, no boulders,” Kallik muttered. “And the snow is starting again.”

“Then where are we going to sleep?” Nanulak asked.

“Here.” Toklo let himself flop down.

“In the open?” Nanulak protested. “But—”

“Do you have a better idea?” Yakone growled. “If you know of a den, show us where it is.”

Toklo knew that he should defend Nanulak; Yakone didn't have enough patience with the inexperienced cub. But he was weary from the tip of his snout to his tail, and he simply didn't have the energy.

“Things will look better in the morning,” he mumbled, wrapping his paws over his snout.

He felt Nanulak curl up beside him out of the wind, and Lusa press close on his other side. Gradually a little warmth spread through Toklo's body, and he drifted into sleep.

In his dream the unfriendly hillside where they had stopped to rest was transformed into a meadow of waving grass under bright sunlight. Toklo raced across it, reveling in the new strength in his paws.

Ahead of him was a mule deer; startled by the sight of him, it leaped away and fled. Toklo's jaws watered in anticipation as he sped after it, cutting the distance between them with powerful bounds. But as he was readying himself for a spring, the mule deer stopped and spun around. Its hooves and antlers disappeared. Its limbs thickened, and brown fur sprouted out of its sleek pelt.

“Ujurak!” Toklo yelped, skidding to a halt. “I wish you wouldn't do that! One day you'll get yourself killed, and—” He broke off, remembering with a jolt of grief that his friend was already dead.

Ujurak's eyes shone with affection. Giving Toklo a friendly poke with his snout, he said, “That was a great race, wasn't it? You're really fast!”

Toklo was swept back to the time when they had traveled together, in the early days before they'd met Lusa and Kallik, and he'd had to protect Ujurak and teach him the things a brown bear needed to know.

“I wish we could travel together again,” he murmured. “But I know this is only a dream.”

“Not
only
a dream,” Ujurak corrected him. “Dreams are the way for me to talk to you now.”

“Then you have something to tell me?” Toklo asked, suddenly hopeful.

Ujurak nodded, deeply serious now. “You have to go back to the place where you found Nanulak,” he announced.

“Then I
was
right! You want me to find Nanulak's family and make them see what they did to him was wrong!”

Ujurak blinked thoughtfully. “Nanulak's story on this island is not over,” he said at last.

Toklo stared at him, frustration driving out the brief flash of hope. “What do you mean by that? Am I right or not?” Struggling not to drive Ujurak away from him, as he had done in his previous dream, he added, “Are you deliberately blocking our way, to send us back over the ice cap?”

Ujurak dipped his head, sadness in his eyes. “Some things are meant to be.”

“That's no answer!”

Toklo shivered as Ujurak stretched out his neck to lay his muzzle on his shoulder.

“Toklo, you're still my friend,” the star-bear said softly. “Remember the good times we had together? Remember how we trusted each other? You have to trust me now.”

Looking into his friend's eyes, Toklo felt his anger die. “It's like you're trying to make me choose between you and Nanulak,” he choked out.

“I wouldn't ask that,” Ujurak promised. “It's just that you have much more to learn before you can continue on your journey.”

“And if we don't go back?” Toklo challenged him. “If we just keep on going toward the sea?”

Ujurak gave a tiny shrug as his form began to dissolve into mist. But Toklo didn't need a reply. The answer was already echoing in his head.

If we don't go back, we'll never reach the sea.

When Toklo woke, his memory of the dream was still clear, Ujurak's words running through his mind. He pulled himself to his paws to see Kallik and Yakone standing side by side, gazing across the hillside, while Nanulak sat a bearlength away, scratching himself vigorously. Only Lusa was still curled up asleep.

Gray dawn light was seeping over the landscape. The clouds were low and threatening, as if they held more snow. Toklo had a brief image of himself and his companions fighting their way through a blizzard.

“Okay, Ujurak,” he sighed. “You've made your point.” Prodding Lusa awake, he called to the others. “I had a dream last night,” he announced as they gathered around him. “Ujurak told me we have to go back to the place where we found Nanulak. He said his story on this island is not over.”

“What?” Yakone exclaimed, at the same moment as Kallik asked, “Oh, Toklo, are you sure?”

Toklo nodded. “That's why it's been so difficult,” he explained. “All this time, we've been going the wrong way.”

Lusa nodded as she stifled a yawn. “I see,” she murmured. “So those
were
signs we saw yesterday.” Shivering, she added half to herself, “All that way back again…”

“Well, I
don't
see.” For a moment Nanulak had stood in outraged silence. Now his voice was high-pitched and angry. “I don't see why we have to slog all the way back, just because of what some dead bear told you in a dream!”