Island of Shadows (6 page)

Soon he'll find some food for me! Luscious berries … crunchy nuts … mmm…

Trekking in Toklo's pawsteps, Lusa thought she could hear the roar of rising wind, yet the air around her was barely moving.

“What's that?” she asked.

Toklo glanced around, then shrugged. “I have no idea.”

Kallik and Yakone were talking quietly together as they padded side by side, a bearlength behind Lusa. Either they hadn't heard the noise, or they weren't bothered by it. Lusa tried to tell herself there was nothing to worry about, but the noise grew louder until it sounded like thunder rolling overhead.

Eventually Toklo halted. “For the spirits' sake …” he muttered.

Lusa stared around until she spotted a brightly colored speck on the horizon, and she jerked her muzzle toward it. “Look—over there!”

Toklo peered in the direction she was pointing. “It could be a firebeast.”

Kallik and Yakone halted, too, and the four bears waited for the creature to come nearer.

“With all the ice to choose from, it looks as if it's heading straight for us,” Toklo grumbled.

As the firebeast drew closer, Lusa could see it more clearly. The lower part of its body was black, with red stripes down the side. The upper part was the warm reddish brown of earth and it stretched up higher and higher, level after level.

“It's a firebeast in the shape of a mountain!” she breathed out.

The noise was clearer, too. Along with the roaring there was a loud cracking sound, and she could see something dark lapping at the bottom edge of the firebeast. Splinters of ice bobbed wildly on churned-up water, shining with grease. There was a harsh tang in the air, and Lusa remembered the reek of oil they had encountered in the Last Great Wilderness.

Toklo let out a roar. “It's breaking through the ice!
Run!
”

Cold terror paralyzed Lusa for a heartbeat.

“Run, bee-brain!” Toklo charged into her, pushing her away from the route of the firebeast.

At the same moment, she heard the crack of a firestick. Glancing up at the firebeast, she spotted a flat-face leaning over the side, high above her. He was so far away that the firestick in his hand looked no bigger than a twig, but she heard it crack again, and chips of ice spurted up a pawlength from Toklo. The brown bear let out a defiant roar, and fled.

Lusa scrambled after him, her paws slipping on the ice in her panic. The firebeast seemed to be approaching much faster now, the huge red and black shape looming over her. The ice began to break under her paws, slopping water over her legs; she leaped over it and ran on.

“Keep together!” Kallik howled. “We can't get split up!”

The ice was breaking up all around Lusa. The roar and crash of the firebeast filled the air. Her friends' voices, and the crack of the firestick, were drowned in it. Lusa caught a glimpse of Toklo balancing precariously on a tiny chunk of ice, then jumping onto a bigger ice floe beside it, but she couldn't see Kallik and Yakone.

Suddenly Lusa couldn't run any farther. A gap too wide to leap had opened up between her and the more solid ice beyond. The floe where she was standing tossed up and down in the churning water, and she struggled to keep her balance.

“Help!” she wailed.

All around her, chunks of ice were smashing against one another as the water heaved from the passage of the firebeast. Lusa knew that if she fell in, she would be crushed among them. A wave broke over her, soaking her fur. Her paws slipped, and she clawed helplessly at the smooth surface of the ice. She breathed in the stink of oil.

“Help!” she called again.

She felt something bump against her ice floe and let out a squeal of panic. Then she saw Yakone in the water, swimming strongly and pushing her chunk of ice with his muzzle. He propelled it through the tossing waves until it nudged against a more solid stretch, where Toklo and Kallik were waiting.

Lusa jumped off the ice floe, landed awkwardly, and crouched shivering in the snow.

Kallik bent over her. “Are you okay?”

“I think so,” Lusa croaked.

Yakone heaved himself out of the water and gave himself a good shake, then padded over to Lusa and touched her shoulder with his muzzle. “Okay now?”

Lusa nodded. “Thank you, Yakone. That was really brave.”

Kallik was looking at the white male with shining eyes, while Toklo ducked his head, half embarrassed.

“Yeah, it was great,” he grunted. “Thanks, Yakone. Lusa's an annoying little chatterbox, but I'd be sorry if we lost her.”

The firebeast was still grinding past, shouldering its way through the ice. Suddenly more ice chips spurted up around the bears' paws; Lusa hadn't heard the crack above the thundering roar of the firebeast, but she could see two flat-faces leaning over the side now, their firesticks pointing toward her and her friends.

“We've got to get out of here,” Toklo said roughly. “Fast!”

Toklo looked around, wrenching his head
so fast that his neck hurt. There was nowhere on the ice to take cover from the flat-faces and their firesticks. The ice they were standing on was beginning to split, dark cracks running across it. Toklo could feel it shuddering beneath his paws. His heart pounded as he imagined the huge firebeast swerving to come after them.

“Swim!” Yakone roared suddenly. “We've got to swim!”

He was pointing across the channel through the ice that the firebeast had left behind it. Toklo stared in disbelief at the churning water with the sheen of oil on its surface, and the chunks of ice that tossed and crashed against one another.

“Yakone's right,” Kallik said, as another shot from the firesticks whined over the bears' heads. “We need to get to the other side of the firebeast, away from the firesticks.”

Toklo understood. But it wasn't as easy as the white bears seemed to think. “Lusa can't swim that far,” he objected, glancing down at the shivering black bear. “She's exhausted already. I'm not leaving her.”

Lusa raised her head. “I'll be okay,” she insisted, but her voice was shaking.

“Sure you will,” Kallik said. “We'll help you.”

“Toklo, just go!” Yakone growled.

Toklo knew this was no time for argument. Bounding over the crumbling ice, he plunged into the water and struck out strongly for the other side of the channel. Glancing back, he saw that Lusa was swimming with Kallik on one side of her and Yakone on the other.

If there are bear spirits in these waters, help us now!
he begged.

The firebeast loomed above him. It was moving away, but Toklo couldn't help expecting it to change direction at any moment and come roaring back to swallow them. At least they were out of the flat-faces' line of fire.

And there won't be any orca
, he thought.
The firebeast will have scared anything away for skylengths!

His paws paddling frantically, Toklo reached the other side of the channel and tried to scramble out of the water. At first the ice broke away under his weight, and the sea surged around him as he flopped back into it. Fighting back panic, he kept going, breaking a new channel until at last he reached a place where the ice was thick enough to support him. He hauled himself out and looked around for his companions.

Kallik had climbed out of the water a few bearlengths farther down the channel. She was leaning over to help Lusa out, while Yakone gave the little black bear a boost on his shoulders.

Toklo bounded over and got a grip on Lusa beside Kallik, helping to haul her over the rim of the ice. Lusa collapsed, water streaming from her black fur. She retched miserably and coughed up a few mouthfuls of the oily water.

“Thanks,” she choked out. “I'll be fine.”

Kallik stood watching the firebeast as it roared away and the water in the channel gradually grew still. “I think it got fed up with chasing us,” she said. “After all, we're not much prey for a thing that size.”

Toklo nodded, beginning to relax as the noise died away and the firebeast dwindled into the distance. “Good riddance,” he muttered.

Yakone clambered out of the water and padded up. “Hey, Toklo, you're bleeding,” he said. “It must have been those firesticks.”

Toklo started. “What?”

Yakone angled his snout toward Toklo's shoulder. Twisting his head to look, Toklo saw a furrow through his fur, and a reddish scratch on the flesh underneath. Blood was oozing out of it, trickling through his pelt and dripping into a scarlet puddle on the ice.

“I didn't notice,” he said. In the biting cold he could hardly feel the sting of the wound. “It's nothing.”

“It's not nothing,” Yakone argued. “You might not be badly hurt, but you'll leave a trail of blood, and that could attract hostile white bears.”

Toklo took a breath, determined not to lose his temper at being bossed around. Yakone had been right about swimming the channel, and he was right about this. “I'll take care of it,” he responded.

“I wish Ujurak were here. He knew all about healing,” Kallik fretted.

“Yeah, he'd have known which herb would stop the bleeding,” Lusa put in, reviving enough to give Toklo's injury an anxious sniff.

Toklo crushed down the memory of Ujurak and let his gaze travel around the desolate landscape. “Lusa, this is the ice,” he pointed out. “There are no herbs. In any case, the scratch will heal soon enough,” he added impatiently.

He twisted his head again and drew his tongue along the wound, only to jerk away with a growl deep in his throat. Touching his freezing fur had given him a burning pain in his tongue, far worse than the sting of the scratch.

“Toklo, what's the matter?” Lusa asked.

“It burns,” Toklo said. “I won't do that again.”

Instead, he scooped up a pawful of snow and packed it down over the wound, hoping that would be enough to stop the bleeding. Cold stabbed through him, but he held the snow in place until it was tightly wadded into his fur. He hoped it would stay there once he started to move.

“Well?” he demanded, meeting his friends' worried gazes. “What are we waiting for?”

This time Toklo let Yakone take the lead as they plodded away from the channel. The firebeast vanished into the distance, and soon the channel it had broken was no more than a dark line behind them on the ice. The reek of oil faded, though some of it still clung to their fur.

When the daylight began to ebb, there was still no sign of land anywhere on the endless ice. Toklo's shoulder ached, though at least his wound had stopped bleeding. Kallik and Yakone quested from side to side, looking for seal holes, but they'd had no luck when darkness put an end to their search.

“Ujurak, are you there?” Toklo heard Lusa speaking softly. “Give us another sign, please.”

Toklo glanced up hopefully, half expecting to spot Ujurak's starry shape galloping toward them. But there was no response to the black bear's plea, and his tiny shoot of hope withered and died.

Curled up to sleep in the open, Toklo felt a furry body huddling next to him. A warm tongue rasped busily over his wound. He half opened his eyes to see who it was, but it was too dark to make out more than a humped shape beside him. He let out a grunt of gratitude, then gave a long sigh as he relaxed. The gentle licking continued until he drifted into sleep.

When Toklo woke next morning, it was already light, and the cloud cover overhead was beginning to break up. Lusa was sitting next to him, thoughtfully washing her paws. She glanced over at Toklo as he sat up in alarm.

“Where are Kallik and Yakone?” he asked.

“They went to see if they could find some prey,” Lusa responded calmly. “Look, they're coming back.”

Glancing around, Toklo spotted the two white bears trekking over the ice toward them. Shame swept over him; obviously his companions had let him sleep so he could rest his wound. It felt much better already, enough for him to be able to help the others hunt.