From the top of the slope they had just climbed, a narrow plain stretched in front of them. Beyond it the hills rose up again, fold upon fold, higher and more daunting than before. A biting wind swept across the plain, swirling up the snow in clouds of ice crystals.
“Is that really the way we have to go?” Lusa whined, joining them again with scraps of bark clinging to the fur around her muzzle. “I’m tired.”
“It’s that or go back,” Kallik said.
“Come on.” Toklo heaved himself to his paws. “We’ll find somewhere to make a den for the night. The climb won’t look so bad in the morning.”
The plain had only a thin covering of snow, and the rocks beneath were sharp underpaw. The wind probed their fur with cold claws; it still carried the faint scent of firebeasts. Toklo’s wound had started stinging again after he leaped to catch the goose, but he plodded doggedly forward, scanning the mountains ahead for some sign of shelter. As the hills drew closer, he spotted a narrow valley leading upward, a deep furrow between snowy slopes. “That could be a frozen stream,” he said, veering toward it.
“If we go that way, it will make the climb easier,” Kallik added.
Toklo could tell she was trying to sound optimistic. By the time they reached the mouth of the valley, Lusa was stumbling along with her head down; Kallik guided her around rocks, letting the smaller bear lean on her shoulder. At last Toklo spotted a gap between overhanging rocks, leading into a shallow cave. Thorns grew in front of it, sheltering it from the wind.
“Over here,” he said, staggering toward it.
As he drew closer, Toklo noticed that the snow in front of the cave was churned up, and at one side of the gap was a pile of frozen droppings. Sniffing suspiciously, he picked up the scent of bear, but to his relief it was stale.
“It looks as if this was a bears’ den once,” he said. “But they haven’t been here for a long time.”
It was a squeeze for all four bears to fit inside the cave, but bundled up together they were at least warm. Sighing, Toklo let himself relax, and sleep flowed over him like a surging sea.
Toklo woke to see pale sunlight shining on the snow outside the den. His friends were still sleeping. Wriggling out of the cave, he brushed past the sheltering thorn trees and stood looking up the valley.
His ears pricked at the sound of running water. I was right, he thought. There is a stream. He padded across a stretch of stony ground until he came to the water’s edge. Scraping away the snow, he saw dark air bubbles beneath the surface of the ice, and he slammed a paw down hard. The ice crunched under his claws, and he thrust his muzzle into the hole and took a long drink.
Gasping at the cold, he looked up again, with icy drops of water spinning away from his muzzle. Kallik was just emerging from the cave, with Yakone behind her.
“Come and have a drink,” Toklo invited her.
“It is a stream!” Kallik exclaimed, and added hopefully, “I don’t suppose there are any fish?”
Toklo shook his head. “The water’s too shallow. There might be a few minnows, but they’re not enough to fill our bellies. We’ll have to share Lusa’s leaves this morning,” he added, nodding toward the thorns that sheltered the den.
Yakone gave the twisted branches a shocked look and let out a disgusted snort. “I’m not eating trees!”
Kallik butted his shoulder with her muzzle. “You’ll get used to it,” she assured him.
Toklo wondered about that. More and more he doubted that the white bear from Star Island would be able to cope with the harsh demands of their journey. You’ll soon find out who’s the real leader around here. Toklo knew he shouldn’t feel pleased at the thought of Yakone having problems, but he couldn’t quite crush the feeling down.
Kallik roused Lusa, who blundered her way out of the den as if she was only half awake. Toklo felt another twinge of anxiety as he realized that the small black bear was still struggling against the longsleep. But we have to keep going, he told himself. And at least there’s better food for Lusa here on land.
All four bears crowded around to strip leaves and bark from the thornbushes. Yakone kept passing his tongue over his jaws as if he didn’t like the taste. “I can’t believe I’m eating this!” he grumbled.
After a last long drink from the place where Toklo had broken the ice, the bears set off upstream. The valley led them into the hills at a steep angle, with rocky, snow-covered slopes on either side. The tracks of birds and hares stippled the snow, but Toklo didn’t think of hunting. The nagging fear that he had killed Ujurak—and might kill him a second time—never left him.
As the valley grew narrower and the top of the hill drew closer, Toklo became aware of a low rumbling sound that grew louder the higher they climbed. It wasn’t continuous, but came and went without any obvious reason. Finally he halted.
“What is that?” he asked.
His companions stopped to listen.
“It sounds like thunder,” Kallik said after a moment.
Toklo glanced up at the sky, which was clear except for a few wisps of cloud. “Not thunder,” he muttered.
“If I didn’t know better, I’d think it was firebeasts,” Lusa ventured. “But there can’t be firebeasts out here.”
Toklo shrugged. “It doesn’t seem to be doing us any harm.”
The rumbling grew louder still as they plodded upward. Before they had traveled many more bearlengths, Toklo saw that the narrow valley ended in a mysterious dark hole; as they drew closer, he saw that the hole was lined with reddish stones, each one squared and regular.
“Flat-faces made that,” he murmured, a prickle of apprehension running through his fur.
“What are no-claws doing out here?” Yakone asked, as if he could hardly believe what he was seeing.
His last words were drowned out by another long rumble, which grew louder and louder until it sounded as if it were almost overhead, then dwindled away into the distance.
“What is that?” Lusa’s eyes were wide and scared.
Kallik scrambled up the steep valley side until she reached the top. Toklo heard her exclaim, “Great spirits!” Turning to look down at her companions, she added, “You were right, Lusa. That noise is firebeasts. There’s a BlackPath up here.”
Toklo gaped with astonishment. “What?”
“Come and see,” Kallik replied.
Toklo clawed his way up the slope, with Lusa and Yakone just behind. Wind buffeted their fur as they stood on the edge of the BlackPath. It appeared from behind a shoulder of the hills, ran straight past the place where they were standing, then curved away and vanished behind a steep, rocky bluff.
“What do no-claws want up here?” Yakone asked, disgust in his voice. “Isn’t there anywhere left for bears?”
“I’ll never understand what flat-faces want,” Toklo responded, in sympathy for once with Yakone. “All we can do is cross the BlackPath and then get as far away from it as we can.”
“Okay.” Yakone started forward, only to leap backward as another firebeast roared into view and swept past them, churning up the half-melted snow that covered the surface of the BlackPath.
“Wait till it’s safe,” Toklo growled.
Yakone didn’t reply, too busy shaking off the snowmelt spattering his white fur.
“That hole down below looks as if it goes right under the BlackPath. Maybe we should go that way,” Lusa suggested.
“You can if you want to,” Toklo replied. “But Kallik and Yakone and I would probably get stuck down there.”
“No,” Lusa said. “I’ll stay with you.”
“Wait on the edge,” Toklo instructed the others. “When I say ‘now,’ we’ll run.”
As he finished speaking, he heard the distant rumble of another firebeast. He waited until it roared past and the sound died away again. When he could hear nothing but the whistling of the wind, he growled, “Now!”
Kallik and Yakone leaped past him, side by side, and Lusa bounded after them. Toklo followed once he
was sure that the little black bear could keep up the pace. The other three stopped at the other side of the BlackPath, but Toklo kept running. All he wanted was to leave the flat-faces and their firebeasts far behind him.
Ahead of him stretched a rocky wilderness, a jumble of rocks and snow and thorn thickets, stretching up to yet another fold of the mountains. Its emptiness and peace drew Toklo forward as if his paws had a life of their own.
“Come on!” he called, glancing back over his shoulder at the others. “This way!”
Suddenly full of energy at the thought that he was leaving the flat-faces far behind him, Toklo scrambled up to the top of a boulder and launched himself onto a stretch of unbroken snow. But when he landed on the white surface, his paws broke through into emptiness. There was nothing solid underneath, only billows of snow surging around him as if he had leaped into the sea. Toklo let out a startled roar as he fell with snow pouring down around him. His paws lashed out in a vain effort to find somewhere he could grab on and stop himself. Then he struck something hard, and all the world went black.
CHAPTER NINE
Kallik
Kallik froze with horror as she heard Toklo’s roar of alarm and saw him plunge downward in a shower of snow.
“No!” Lusa halted, staring in shock at the place where Toklo had vanished. There was a large hole there now, with snow still crumbling from the edges and falling into the darkness below. “The ground just opened up and swallowed Toklo like he was a beetle!”
“Where did he go?” Kallik asked. She had never seen anything as terrifying as the way the ground had gaped open without warning and eaten Toklo.
“Let’s take a look,” Yakone suggested, padding forward.
Kallik exchanged a nervous glance with Lusa. “Be careful,” she said as she followed Yakone.
Drawing closer, checking that the ground was solid at each pawstep, she studied the jagged hole. As Yakone leaned over, trying to peer into the depths, the snow began to give way under his paws.
“Help!” he roared.
Kallik sank her jaws into the fur on Yakone’s flank and dug her paws into the ground as she dragged him back. She realized that Lusa was tugging at him from the other side, but the white bear was heavy, and Kallik could feel her paws beginning to slip. Yakone scrabbled to find firm ground, sending more showers of snow down into the hole. Just as Kallik was beginning to think she couldn’t support his weight for a moment more, he found a pawhold and stumbled backward.
“Thanks.” Yakone’s breath came in huge gasps. “I thought I was gone for sure.”
More cautiously, Kallik edged forward and peered down into the hole, Lusa at her shoulder.
“Toklo! Toklo, can you hear us?” Kallik called.
There was no reply from below. Down at the bottom of the hole Kallik could see the glimmer of the fresh snowfall, but no sign of Toklo. She called his name again, but there was no sound or movement.
“I—I’m afraid he might be dead,” she whispered, drawing back again from the hole.
Yakone nodded solemnly. “Sometimes white bears are lost if they fall through cracks in the ice. I think Toklo has been lost beneath the ground.” He raised his head to look up at the sky. “Spirits, take care of the spirit of our friend Toklo—”
“No!” Lusa exclaimed, interrupting Yakone’s prayer. “Toklo isn’t dead. I won’t believe it.”
“Lusa…” Kallik began.
“You don’t see him, do you? So he might be okay,” Lusa said. “He might be lying under all that snow, injured and waiting for us to help him.”
“You would have to go underground to find him,” Yakone objected.
Lusa glared at him. “Then that’s what I’ll do.”
Kallik’s heart began to pound with fear, but she knew that if her friend went beneath the earth to find Toklo, that she would go with her. Lusa’s right, she thought. I won’t believe Toklo is dead. Not after all we’ve been through together.
Yakone was stamping his paws in the snow and casting doubtful glances at the hole where Toklo had disappeared. “Tell her she’s being cloud-brained,” he said to Kallik. “You know we can’t go down there. It’s too risky. If Toklo was hurt in the fall, we could be hurt, too. Or we might land on top of him.”
Kallik didn’t like disagreeing with Yakone, but she knew that she couldn’t turn away and leave Toklo underground. “I’m sorry, but I’m with Lusa,” she said. “We have to do something. Toklo needs our help.”
“Besides, we’re not going to jump down the hole,” Lusa added. “That would be cloud-brained. We’ll have to find another way of getting to him.”
Yakone stared at the she-bears as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “White bears don’t belong underground,” he told Kallik. “Our place is under the open sky, or in a snow-den.”
“I’m not suggesting we live there,” Kallik snapped. “Yakone, I have to do this for Toklo.”
Yakone blinked, surprised, and looked away.
Another kind of apprehension tingled through Kallik’s fur. Am I going to lose Yakone over this? She knew that if she left Lusa and Toklo behind, and journeyed on with Yakone toward the Frozen Sea, she would never forgive herself. “You don’t have to come with us,” she added.
Yakone let out a gusty sigh. “I had no idea what I was getting into when I started this journey with you,” he said, touching Kallik’s shoulder with his muzzle. “All right. Maybe my brain is full of cloudfluff, too, but I’ll come with you.”
Warmth flooded through Kallik. “Thank you!”
Lusa had been shifting her paws impatiently as she listened. “Remember those caves on Smoke Mountain?” she said to Kallik. “They stretched a long way back into the ground. If Toklo’s hole reaches farther than this gap at the top—”
“Then we might be able to get to him from a different entrance!” Kallik interrupted, suddenly understanding. “We have to look for a cave opening.” Her optimism died as she gazed around at the landscape. As far as she could see, there was nothing but snow-covered rocks and hummocks, with a thorn tree or boulder here and there.
“How are we going to find another hole, unless we fall into it?” she asked bleakly.
“I think I can help,” Yakone told her. “I can tell whether the snow or the ground under my paws is thick, or whether it might be hollow.”
“You can?” Kallik was astonished. “How do you know that?”
“The older bears on Star Island taught me,” Yakone explained. “They teach all the cubs. I’m surprised you don’t know how to listen to your pawsteps.”
Maybe I would, if I hadn’t lost Nisa when I was so young, Kallik thought, an unexpected pang of loss stabbing through her.
“Can you teach me?” she asked.
“I’ll try,” Yakone replied. “You have to learn how to sense the differences in the ground through your paws.”
Kallik shook her head. She wasn’t sure she understood.
“Like this.” Yakone brought one paw down on the snow. “Listen and feel what the snow is telling you.”
Kallik copied him, but she wasn’t sure what she was supposed to hear. “It just feels like snow to me,” she confessed.
“Now over here.” Yakone carefully approached the hole, though he kept well away from the edge. He brought a paw down again. “Doesn’t that feel different? If I’d been listening to my pawsteps earlier, I wouldn’t have started to fall.”
Kallik tried it, but she wasn’t sure that her paws felt any different. “I’m not getting it,” she said apologetically.
“I’m not teaching it very well,” Yakone admitted. “It’s hard to explain. It’s just something I’ve known how to do since I was a cub.”
“Do you think we can start looking for another entrance?” Lusa interrupted. “Toklo could be dying down there! And you’re up here trying to listen to snow!”
“Sorry.” Kallik felt guilty for getting distracted. “Yakone, where do you think the best place to start looking for another hole w
ould be?”
Yakone scanned the ground around the hole where Toklo had fallen, and risked another glimpse into the depths. “It’s hard to tell how far the space stretches, with all this piled-up snow,” he murmured.
“If it’s anything like the caves on Smoke Mountain, it’s more likely to curve than go straight,” Kallik mused. “Over in this direction, maybe,” she added, sketching out a line with one paw.
“Do you think there’s smoke and fire underground here, too?” Lusa asked, suddenly alarmed. “Toklo might be burning up!”
“There’s nothing coming out of the hole,” Kallik reassured her. She sniffed the air for the smell of smoke, and picked up a faint tang that reminded her of firebeasts. “The air smells funny, but in a different way.”
Lusa nodded uneasily. “I hope you’re right.”
“Okay,” Yakone said briskly. “I’m going to walk around and see if I can find a place where the ground feels hollow. Maybe you two better wait here. We don’t want someone else falling in.”
Lusa and Kallik looked at each other. “We want to help,” Lusa said. “We’ll be careful.”
All three bears began testing the ground, but without success. Kallik was concentrating so hard on feeling the snow like Yakone instructed that she began to feel as if every pawstep were an effort. Raising her head to look at the sky, she realized that the daylight was dying.
“We’ll have to stop and rest for the night,” she said reluctantly. “We can’t help Toklo if we’re exhausted.”
“But—” Lusa scrabbled with her front paws in the snow, then let out a huge sigh. “Okay.”
Yakone nodded. “We need to eat, too. I’ll go hunt.” He strode away.
While he was gone, Kallik and Lusa dug out a den in one of the snowbanks, and Lusa uncovered some roots while she was digging.