Island of Shadows (8 page)

But it was too late. Toklo didn't hear her. He caught up to the hare and swiped it with one massive paw. The hare fell to the ground and lay limp.

Lusa bounded over to him and gave the hare a tentative prod. It was definitely dead, its neck broken. “You killed Ujurak!” she howled.

“What? That's cloud-brained…” Toklo's voice died away, and he looked up at Lusa, his eyes stricken. “It's a hare!” he insisted.

“I think it was Ujurak,” Lusa said quietly. “He showed me a place I could dig down through the snow to find food.”

“What? No!”

Kallik and Yakone trotted up. Kallik bent her head to sniff at the body of the hare. “Are you sure?” she asked Lusa.

“Not
sure
… but I think it was him.”

“But Ujurak is already dead, right?” Yakone put in, sounding bewildered. “So how can you kill him again?”

“Ujurak could take any shape he wanted to when he was with us, so maybe he can still do that,” Kallik explained. “I think he was the bird who showed us the seal hole, back on the ice. So I guess if his spirit took the shape of a real animal, he could be killed again.”

“He didn't!” Toklo's voice rose to a desperate roar. “It's a hare! It's prey!”

“You can't eat it,” Lusa whimpered. She thought her heart would crack with pain at losing Ujurak again and sorrow for the guilt she could see rising in Toklo.

Toklo stood for a moment looking down at the body of the hare. Then he began scraping at the snow until he had dug a hole big enough to bury it. Taking the hare's fur gently between his teeth, he dragged it into the hole and began to cover it with snow.

“Good-bye, Ujurak,” Lusa murmured. “I hope your spirit can find its way back to the stars.”

When the hare was completely buried, all four bears stood silently for a moment beside the tiny mound of snow. Lusa glanced at Toklo and Kallik and saw her own sorrow reflected in their eyes. Then without a word they swung around and began to trek away, farther inland. When Lusa looked back after a few pawsteps, she couldn't even distinguish the burial place from the surrounding snow.

Hunger still gnawed at her belly, but the death of the hare-Ujurak had upset her so deeply that she couldn't find the energy to dig under the snow for more roots and leaves. The excitement and optimism she had felt when she was racing toward the island was long gone. It felt as though that had happened to another bear, a long time ago.

Maybe starting out so badly is an omen
, she thought.
There must be more trouble ahead.

The land sloped gently upward; the surface was uneven, as the snow hid rocks or humps in the ground, and here and there a boulder broke the surface like a dark island in a white sea. Looking ahead, Lusa could see a ridge of snow-covered hills lying across their path, and beyond them in the distance the steep slopes of mountains, their sharp peaks cutting the sky.

“I'm pretty sure I recognize those hills,” Kallik said hopefully. “The Frozen Sea could be just on the other side.”

“But isn't the Frozen Sea much farther than that?” Lusa objected, remembering the long journey they had made to Star Island.

“We're not going back the same way, though,” Kallik pointed out. Her gaze was fixed on the hills ahead, but Lusa thought she could make out worry in her eyes. She wasn't as excited as Lusa would have expected her to be if she thought she was really close to home.

Is there something Kallik's not telling me?
Lusa wondered.
Does she feel something bad about this island, too?

As they trekked on, Lusa kept spotting the marks of animals in the snow: bird tracks and the pawprints of hares, and bigger prints that must have been made by other bears.

“The hunting should be good around here,” Yakone remarked.

“But how can we hunt?” Toklo demanded fiercely, speaking for the first time since leaving the shore. “Any animal might be Ujurak coming back to us again.”

“But…” Yakone sounded as confused as he always did when the bears talked about Ujurak. “You said you killed him and buried him back there.”

Toklo shook his head savagely but didn't respond.

“If Ujurak could come back once, he could come back again,” Lusa explained, though she wasn't sure how to make Yakone understand when she wasn't sure she understood herself. All she knew was that Ujurak hadn't abandoned them when he rose from outside the cave on Star Island and took his place among the stars.

“Well, then, if he comes back, we haven't really killed him,” Yakone pointed out practically.

“We haven't killed him
forever
,” Lusa replied. “But it must hurt, being killed. None of us would want to hurt Ujurak.”

“No, but…” Yakone shook his head, baffled. “His stars are always up in the sky, aren't they? I've watched you all looking out for him at night. So how can he be down here as well?”

“I don't know,” Kallik admitted. “When he was with us on our first journey, the stars were always there, too. It's as if he can be in two places at once.”

“That's right,” Lusa said. “Yakone, Toklo's right when he says that any of the animals we meet could be Ujurak in another shape.”

“But how are we supposed to recognize him?” Yakone asked.

“We can't!” Toklo burst out in a frustrated roar, halting and facing the other bears. “Ujurak always caused problems when he was alive, and he's still causing them now that he's dead.”

“But that's just it. Is he really dead?” Lusa pressed herself comfortingly against Toklo's shoulder, but the brown bear shied away from her and stood with his back turned, staring down at the snow.

“I don't know,” he replied, his voice thick and choked. “Is he? Or has he turned into stars? He's not a brown bear anymore. Maybe he never was one.”

Lusa knew that Toklo had tried to hide his grief and the turmoil in his mind about Ujurak's death. He thought that he always had to be strong.

“Ujurak was our friend,” she murmured. “Does it really matter what he was?”

“It matters to me,” Toklo snarled. “If he really was that hare, then I killed him!”

“But you couldn't have known,” Kallik said, her eyes warm with sympathy.

“I
should
have known,” Toklo retorted. “Lusa did.”

Kallik glanced at Lusa, shaking her head. There didn't seem to be any way of jerking Toklo out of his grief and anger.

Yakone broke the silence. “None of this helps us decide what to do now,” he stated. “We
have
to hunt, or starve.”

Toklo swung around on him, his teeth bared. “Then I'll starve,” he growled. “You can do what you want. Kill him again. What do
you
care? He wasn't your friend.”

Yakone reared back, startled. “Hey, I never said I wanted to kill him.”

Kallik sighed, touching Yakone's shoulder briefly with her muzzle. “We'd better go on,” she said. “Maybe Ujurak's spirit will find a way to tell us where he is.”

Toklo snorted but didn't protest, and took the lead as they set out again toward the snow-covered ridge. Before they had gone very much farther, they came to a swathe of level ground cutting across the rocky landscape, with deep furrows running along it through the dirty snow. Lusa sniffed the air and picked up the faint tang of oil.

“I think this is a BlackPath,” she said. “That means there are flat-faces somewhere nearby.”

“Oh, seal rot!” Yakone exclaimed. “Can't we ever get away from no-claws?”

“I think you're right,” Kallik told Lusa. “Those furrows could be the marks of firebeast paws.”

Lusa dug down into the snow until her claws scraped the hard surface of the BlackPath. “Let's follow it,” she suggested.

“Follow it?” Toklo stared at her. “Now I know your brain is full of cloudfluff!”

“No, it's not,” Lusa responded. “Don't you see? If we follow the BlackPath, we'll get to the flat-face dens, and then we can find some food.”

“No-claw food
again
?” Yakone asked disapprovingly.

Kallik blinked. “Lusa, I really don't want to do that.”

“We have to eat something,” Lusa pointed out. “And if we find flat-face food, at least we can be sure that it's not Ujurak. It has to be better than starving.”

“Well … okay,” Kallik conceded. “What do you think, Toklo?”

“I think bears and flat-faces don't mix,” Toklo replied, then added reluctantly, “but it might be the best plan, for now.”

“Okay,” Kallik agreed.

Yakone shrugged, but Lusa could tell he was still uneasy.

Cautiously the bears began to pad along the edge of the BlackPath. Lusa kept her ears pricked for the sound of firebeasts, but the only things she heard were the whisper of wind over the snow and the distant cries of seabirds high above. They were still heading for the range of hills, though not by the most direct route. The BlackPath curved around a wide, flat space that Lusa guessed was a frozen lake, then up a shallow slope and more steeply down into a valley beyond.

“There!” Kallik called out as they reached the top of the slope. “I can see the no-claw dens.”

Lusa plodded up beside her and looked out across the valley. On the opposite side she could just make out a large flat-face denning area; it was hard to see, because most of the dens had white walls, and snow covered the roofs.

“That's a lot of no-claws,” Yakone commented; Lusa thought he sounded nervous. “I've never seen so many dens all in one place.”

There weren't many flat-faces on Star Island
, Lusa recalled. “We'll only go to the edge of them,” she told him. “Just as far as it takes to find something to eat.”

Yakone only grunted.

As they drew closer to the denning place, another, wider BlackPath joined the one they were following. Not far past the junction, Lusa heard the roar of a firebeast coming up from behind, and she leaped to one side as it plowed past through the snow, spattering her fur with filthy snowmelt.

“That was huge!” Yakone exclaimed, staring at the firebeast as it growled away toward the denning place.

“At least it didn't take any notice of us,” Kallik said.

“Let's get away from here,” Toklo growled as the roar of yet another firebeast sounded in the distance. “Now that we can see the flat-face dens, we don't need to follow the BlackPath.”

Without waiting to see if the others agreed, he headed down into the valley, cutting across the open ground toward the nearest dens. Lusa followed, slipping and stumbling down the snow-covered slope, while Kallik and Yakone brought up the rear. By now the daylight was fading, much to Lusa's relief. It would be easier to stay hidden in the flat-face area if it was dark, and there wouldn't be as many firebeasts and flat-faces moving around, either.

The line of hills reared up above the low roofs of the denning area. Lusa thought that they looked ominous, as if they were frowning down on bears and flat-faces alike.

I
really
don't like this place
, she thought.
If Kallik's Frozen Sea is only on the other side of those hills, I don't think I want to stay there.

They had reached the outskirts of the denning area when Lusa heard the roar of another firebeast. She glanced around, but there were no BlackPaths nearby, and the roar was growing louder and louder, battering against her ears.

Then she heard Toklo call out, “Great spirits!”

The brown bear was looking up. Following his gaze, Lusa saw a metal bird screaming across the sky straight for them. But this wasn't like the birds she had seen flying above the Last Great Wilderness, with their whirling metal wings on their heads. This was much bigger; it had rigid wings that stuck out at the sides, and glaring eyes that looked down at her. As Lusa watched, transfixed by terror, curved claws emerged from the underside; she could imagine it swooping down to catch her and carry her off to its nest.

“Run!” she squealed, taking off across the snow.

The metal bird bore down on her. Its screeching filled the whole sky, and in her panic Lusa had no idea where she was running. She glanced up to see the glaring lights above her head, fell over her own paws, and rolled in the snow. Scrambling up, she ran on again, expecting at any moment to feel those cruel talons meeting in her back.

Suddenly the lights vanished. The screaming of the metal bird began to die away. Lusa halted, panting, and realized that she was standing in a narrow pathway between two flat-face dens. She had fled into the denning area. Her heart was pounding so hard she thought it would burst out of her chest, but for the moment she was safe.

Where did the bird go? Did it catch one of the others?

Lusa forced herself to be calm, to steady her breathing, and to look around for the others. The narrow pathway stretched in both directions; a light shone from one end, and a firebeast rolled past. The other end was dark. Sniffing the air, Lusa caught the tang of firebeasts and a faint trace of rotting flat-face food, but there was no scent of bear. She couldn't see any of her friends.