The Burning Horizon (24 page)

Then three faces appeared from the shadows on the opposite side of the clearing. Lusa stared at them: two white faces, one brown. For a moment she felt her heart stop.
Am I seeing things?

“Kallik?” she whispered, springing to her paws. “Toklo? Yakone? Is it really you?”

“Lusa!” barked the tired-looking brown bear in the lead, and Lusa bounded forward, suddenly feeling as if she could run forever. She had found them!

Kallik, Yakone, and Toklo raced forward as well, and Lusa met them in the middle of the clearing. They pressed around her, covering her face with licks, pressing their muzzles into her shoulders until Lusa could hardly breathe. Delight pulsed through her; she wanted to leap up into the sky or sing like a bird, and even that wouldn't have been enough to express her happiness.

“I've found you!” she exclaimed.
Thank you, Ujurak. Thank you, caribou.

Kallik hooked Lusa's paws out from under her, rolling her over on the soft grass and flopping down on top of her. Lusa wrestled joyfully with her old friend, feeling as if she was enveloped in a gentle white cloud. All her fear and weariness
had evaporated like dew in sunlight.

“Where have you been?” Kallik demanded, lifting her head and looking down at her. “Oh, Lusa, we've been so worried. We thought you were with us when we escaped from the mules, but you'd simply disappeared. We followed your trail to the edge of the BlackPath, but it got lost among firebeast tracks.”

“We thought you must have been captured by a firebeast,” Toklo added. “Did that really happen?”

Lusa nodded. “I can't remember much about it,” she told them. “I was kicked in the head by a mule, and the firebeast took me on its back to a den with a lot of other animals and birds.”

Kallik looked puzzled. “Why would a firebeast do that?”

“There were flat-faces with it,” Lusa explained. “Flat-faces who look after animals that are sick or injured. I met a blind bear there . . . a black bear like me. His name was Taktuq. He seemed to like living there, but all I could think about was getting back into the wild.”

“So how did you escape?” Yakone asked, giving Lusa a friendly nudge.

“I made friends with a young flat-face,” Lusa said. “I made her think I was cute, by acting funny for her. I felt like such a cloud-brain, but it worked! She took me out of my cage on a vine—”

“A vine?” Yakone looked confused.

Lusa shrugged. “Some sort of flat-face thing. But there was a coyote, and it got out of its pen, too, and I had to fight it.”
Shock throbbed through her at the memory.
I don't know how I did that!

“You fought a coyote?” Kallik looked appalled. “Are you hurt?” She began to sniff Lusa all over.

“No, I
beat
it. I wish you three had seen me! And then I ran and ran, and then I got lost in some corn. It was awful! Then finally I found the caribou trail. I'd had a dream about them, so I knew I had to follow their path. Thank the spirits Ujurak showed me which way to go! But what happened to you?” Lusa sprang to her paws again. “Tell me everything!”

“We looked for you,” Toklo began, “and then Ujurak told us that we should find the caribou.”

“And we figured out that meant we should follow them,” Kallik added.

Lusa gave an excited little bounce. “Ujurak told me
not
to follow them!”

“We crossed a glacier.” Yakone took up the story. “And Kallik fell down a crevasse.”

Lusa stared at her friend in alarm. For a moment she felt as scared as if she had been there to see Kallik fall, even though Kallik was standing in front of her, alive and well.

“I've never been so afraid,” Kallik said. “But Ujurak was with me, and he helped me to get out.”

“We kept coming across flat-faces, so we started traveling at night,” Toklo went on. “Even when we lost the caribou trail, Ujurak and Ursa showed us the way with their stars. We sheltered in a flat-face den and got trapped there. . . .”

“Stupid flat-faces,” Yakone rumbled. “Why can't they make dens you can get out of without half killing yourself?”

“And then we followed the caribou tracks into this forest,” Kallik concluded, nodding to the trees behind her. She glanced at Toklo and Yakone. “It was strange, because once we entered the trees we all felt this urge to go as fast as we could without stopping to hunt or rest, as if our paws just knew where we should be.”

“I felt that, too!” Lusa squeaked.

“It must have been Ujurak again,” Yakone said. “We would never have found each other without him.”

The four bears huddled together. Lusa felt like she wanted to touch all their pelts at once. She never wanted to take her eyes off them ever again.

“We can't lose each other again,” Kallik murmured, echoing Lusa's thoughts.

Toklo was the first to step back from their huddle. “It'll be dark soon,” he pointed out. “I think we should spend the night here.” As the others murmured agreement, he added, “Lusa, what's the land like beyond these trees?”

“Open and flat, with grass and scrubby bushes. I didn't see any flat-faces and only a couple of firebeasts, but I don't think there's much prey, either.”

“Okay,” Toklo decided. “We'll hunt now, and eat well. Lusa, do you want to come with us to hunt?”

Lusa nodded. “I'm not letting you out of my sight!”

The bears headed into the trees. Lusa was still too stunned
by joy to pay much attention to the hunt, but it wasn't long before Toklo spotted a grouse roosting in a clump of ferns.

Every hair on Lusa's pelt quivered with delight as she and her friends spread out into their familiar hunting pattern. When they had surrounded the grouse, Yakone let out a growl to drive it out of its nest. Lusa blocked it as it took off in her direction, making it swerve toward Kallik and Toklo. They both leaped toward it at the same time, though it was Kallik who straightened up with the bird in her jaws.

When they had carried their prey back to the clearing, Lusa accepted a small portion of the grouse, just for the fun of sharing, then satisfied her hunger with fern roots while her friends divided the rest of the bird. They all kept casting quick sidelong glances at one another as they ate, as if they couldn't believe they were all together again.

By the time they had finished eating, the sunlight had faded and shadows gathered under the trees. The bears settled down to sleep, curling up together in the soft grass.

“I was so scared I'd lost you,” Toklo confided to Lusa as he folded his warm bulk around her. His voice quavered. “I promised to take you to Great Bear Lake, and I almost failed.” He buried his snout in Lusa's fur as if he was too ashamed to look at her.

“But you didn't fail. And you're not responsible for me,” Lusa told him gently. “Haven't I just proved that I can survive on my own?” She shuddered at the memory of escaping from the flat-face den and felt Toklo shift closer to her.

“You did well, Lusa.”

“Besides, in spite of everything,” Lusa continued, “we found each other again. This is
our
journey,” she continued. “We will finish it together. Ujurak will make sure of that.”

Kallik yawned and stretched, awakened by
the early morning light. This was the second sunrise since they had been reunited with Lusa, and the others were still sound asleep in the grassy hollow where they had made a den for the night.

I feel like I've hardly had time to close my eyes,
she grumbled to herself.
The nights are so short now.

Rubbing a paw over her face to wake herself up, Kallik thought about the days ahead.
We found Lusa, just as Ujurak promised. Now we have to find Great Bear Lake. And maybe I'll see Taqqiq again and hear his news about the Melting Sea.

Kallik's paws prickled with urgency. The days were so long, and the nights passed so quickly, that she knew they must be close to the Longest Day.

She was distracted from her thoughts by Toklo, who lumbered to his paws beside her and gave Yakone and Lusa a sharp prod. “Come on,” he ordered. “It's time to go.”

“I'm still sleepy . . .” Lusa mumbled.

Yakone stretched out his paws and let his jaws gape in a
massive yawn. “Me too,” he said to Lusa. “But maybe walking will wake us up.”

They set out across the swath of grassland that stretched empty and windswept ahead of them. Outcrops of no-claw dens were rare in this open landscape, and the bears skirted them without any trouble. The grass was soft underpaw, soothing their scraped pads, and in spite of Lusa's concerns they found just enough ground-nesting birds to keep them from going hungry. Water was more of a problem, though, and the bears learned to lick the dew off the blades of grass just before the sun rose and dried up all the moisture.

Now that they were heading for Great Bear Lake, they had veered away from the caribou trail. Toklo took the lead, regularly checking the angle of the sun and the direction of the mountain slopes, and at night, the position of the Pathway Star, leading them gently on.

We're lucky he remembers the way from the last time he traveled to the lake,
Kallik thought.
We don't have time to get lost again.

“Yakone's paw doesn't seem to be hurting him much,” Kallik pointed out to Lusa, who was walking beside her. “He's hardly limping at all.”

Lusa nodded, though there was a shadow of anxiety in her eyes. “I hope that means the infection has cleared up,” she said. “I don't think I could find any herbs to treat him with out here.”

Yakone glanced back over his shoulder. “Don't worry. I'm fine.”

As the sun rose higher in the sky and the day grew hotter,
the bears paused for a short rest. Kallik sat down beside Yakone in a small patch of shade cast by a thornbush.

“I'll be glad when the gathering's over and we can go back to Star Island,” she panted.

Yakone murmured agreement. “It'll be good to see my family again. Even Unalaq!”

Kallik wasn't sure that she was looking forward to meeting the troublemaking bear again, even if he was Yakone's brother. But she felt a stirring of excitement about their return to the island.
I can't wait to make a real home for myself after all this traveling. . . .

“They'll be surprised to see us, that's for sure,” Yakone continued.

Toklo gave him a friendly shove. “At least you won't have a black and a brown bear tagging along this time.”

Kallik knew Toklo was just joking around, but sadness passed over her like the flicker of a black wing as she thought about how finding her home would mean leaving her friends, perhaps forever.

I'll never stop missing Lusa and Toklo!

Anxious to get to the lake, none of the bears wanted to rest for long, and soon they set out again, trudging up a long, shallow slope that led up to a ridge. When they reached the top, they halted.

“Wow, look at that!” Lusa exclaimed.

More wind-ruffled grassland unrolled in front of them, but this time three vast rivers sliced through it, with only narrow stretches of dry land between them.

“Toklo, did you cross these rivers last time?” Yakone asked.

Toklo looked puzzled. “I think we crossed one of them . . . but it must have been farther upstream.”

Kallik felt a faint stir of worry that Toklo couldn't remember the rivers from before, but her concern was lost beneath the tempting thought of swimming in cool water.

“Come on!” she called. “Let's race!”

All four bears sped up as they galloped down the hill, pushed through the bushes that edged the first river and plunged into the cool, greenish-brown water. The river was broad, but the current was gentle, and Kallik felt no fear as she pushed out into the middle.

Yakone appeared in the water beside her, swimming strongly. “Let's fish!” he puffed.

The two white bears dove below the surface side by side. In the underwater dimness, Kallik could see silver flickers as fish darted past her. She lunged at one of them and snapped her jaws closed on it. Kallik kicked out with her hind legs and pushed herself back to the surface, keeping a firm grip on her fish. Shaking drops from her ears, she spotted Lusa and Toklo making their way across the placid water. They both looked like they were enjoying the cool water after the relentless heat of the sun.

Yakone's head broke the surface beside Kallik. He, too, had a flapping fish in his jaws. Together they made for the far shore, flicking water from their fur as they waded up the bank.

“That was easy!” Kallik exclaimed, dropping her fish in front of Toklo and Lusa.

Lusa's eyes gleamed. “You're great fish hunters!”

“And we're so clean now!” Kallik declared, looking down at her spotless, streaming fur.

Toklo wasn't so pleased. The white bears could now be seen from the far horizon, and his pelt prickled with anxiety.