“At least we’ll eat something,” she remarked, “even if Yakone doesn’t find any prey.”
It was fully dark by the time Yakone came back, a plump goose dangling from his jaws. As the warm prey-scent flooded over Kallik, she wondered whether Ujurak’s spirit might have taken goose form, but between her exhaustion and the growls of hunger from her belly she couldn’t bring herself to believe it.
Ujurak wouldn’t do that to us, she told herself as her teeth sank into the juicy prey. She remembered how certain Toklo had been that Ujurak wouldn’t want them to starve.
Lusa crouched beside the white bears, gnawing on the roots she had dug up. Then they huddled together in the snow-den. Not even her anxiety about Toklo could stop Kallik from falling into sleep.
The next morning Kallik awoke with a vague sense that something was wrong. Cold light filtered into the snowy hollow, where Lusa still slept with her paws wrapped over her snout. Kallik blinked, shaking off her drowsiness, and the memory of what had happened struck her like a gust of storm wind. Then she realized that instead of three bears in the temporary den, there were only two.
We’ve lost Toklo! And now Yakone has gone, too!
Careful not to wake Lusa, Kallik struggled to her paws. Inside she felt colder than the snow-covered landscape outside the den. Has Yakone really left us? Was it all too hard for him, so he’s gone back to his friends on Star Island?
Stumbling out into the open, Kallik narrowed her eyes against the biting wind and looked around. She bit back a joyful cry of relief as she spotted Yakone loping easily across the snow toward her. As he drew closer, she could make out a triumphant gleam in his eyes.
“Guess what?” he panted as he drew to a halt in front of her. “I’ve found a hollow place!”
“That’s great!” Kallik yelped, with a sharp twinge of guilt that she hadn’t trusted Yakone to stay with them. “Where?”
“Come on, and I’ll show you.”
“Okay. Let me wake Lusa.”
Optimism flooded over Kallik as she prodded the little black bear awake. With Yakone’s special skills they would soon find a way underground; it felt as though Toklo were only a few pawsteps away.
“Hurry up, Lusa,” she urged as the black bear rubbed snow over her eyes and muzzle to wake herself up. “We’re going to find Toklo!”
Yakone retraced his pawsteps to a humped, uneven stretch of snow. He halted at the foot of a snowy bank, where Kallik could see a few scrape marks, as if he had already begun digging experimentally. Kallik walked toward him, trying to listen to her pawsteps to see if she could sense the hollow place, but she still couldn’t tell any difference from the rest of the snow.
“Under there,” Yakone said, pointing with his muzzle. “We’ll need to dig down, but we must be careful. There’s a hole there, but I’m not sure how big it is.”
Kallik nodded. All three bears began digging cautiously at the snow, pawful by pawful.
“I can feel something!” Lusa exclaimed.
Scrabbling excitedly, she uncovered the edge of a piece of wood. To Kallik’s amazement, it wasn’t the branch of a tree. It looked as if it had been cut and squared.
“No-claws did that,” she said, stopping abruptly with a paw raised to take the next scoop of snow.
Yakone backed off a pace. “No-claws, here?”
“We’re not so far from that BlackPath,” Lusa reminded him, still scraping vigorously to reveal more of the wood.
Kallik sniffed the air. “I can’t smell no-claws,” she said. “Just that weird scent—a bit like firebeasts.”
She began digging again, and after a moment’s hesitation Yakone joined her, pushing the snow aside with powerful paws. Soon they could see that the wood was part of a slab lining a hole with square sides. It led into the side of the snow-bank, stretching downward into darkness.
Lusa’s eyes stretched wide. “It’s not a hole; it’s a tunnel!”
Kallik snuffed at the dank air that flowed out of the opening. “It’s that smell again,” she muttered, wrinkling her nose in disgust. “But it’s a lot stronger here. Whatever is causing it must be down there.”
“Flat-faces must have made this.” Lusa had stepped into the mouth of the tunnel and was peering curiously into the blackness. “But there’s no scent of them.” She took another pace forward. “Toklo! Toklo!”
There was no response.
Lusa glanced back over her shoulder. “The tunnel is leading roughly the right way, toward where Toklo fell into the hole,” she pointed out. “Let’s go!”
“No, wait—” Kallik felt uneasy about stepping into the dark, enclosed space when they had no way of knowing if Toklo was down there.
But Lusa paid no attention. She was already heading deep into the ground, her black fur seeming to melt into the darkness. Kallik knew that she had to follow. She couldn’t allow her friend to explore the fearful tunnel by herself. But she had to force her paws to carry her forward.
White bears belong in the open, with the sky stretching above us, she thought. Not cramped up in underground passages, away from the light and the snow.
“Do we really have to go down there?” Yakone asked, reluctance evident in his voice and the doubtful look on his face.
Kallik detected a hint of jealousy in his tone. “Toklo’s my friend,” she replied. “And so is Lusa. I can’t let them down.”
Kallik was building her nerve to head down the tunnel when she spotted four stones a couple of pawsteps inside. Two white stones, very close together. A smaller black stone a paw’s width away from them. And farther away still, on the edge of the fading light, a rough brown stone. There was no doubt in her mind that each stone represented a bear. Had Ujurak put them there?
“Look!” Kallik breathed. “A sign! Now I know this is the way we have to go.”
With a bewildered Yakone just behind her, she plunged into the tunnel and followed Lusa.
CHAPTER TEN
Lusa
Lusa padded along the tunnel, letting her feet guide her. The hole led straight down with a gentle slope; the floor was made of flat, beaten earth, easy on her paws. The weird smell was all around her, and she shuddered at the thought of it soaking into her fur.
Behind her she could hear the pawsteps of Kallik and Yakone. She felt reassured by the thought that her friends were following her, but when she glanced back over her shoulder, she couldn’t see them in the pitch darkness.
“Toklo!” she called again, her voice sounding puny and insignificant in the black depths ahead of her. “Toklo, it’s me, Lusa! Are you there?”
Still no reply. Stifling a whimper of fear, Lusa plodded on. For a while she didn’t seem to be getting anywhere. She could see nothing, and she could hear nothing except for the pad of her own paws and the paws of her friends behind her, and now and then a drip of water that seemed to echo unnaturally loudly.
Then Lusa began to realize that the darkness wasn’t quite as thick as before. A pale gray light was seeping down the tunnel in front of her, growing brighter as she walked forward. There was enough light that soon she could see the tunnel walls and roof, still lined with slabs of wood holding back the earth and stone, and the smooth brown floor that was littered with twisted scraps of metal glinting in the half-light. There was only one creature Lusa knew that would leave behind something like that.
“Why were flat-faces all the way down here?” she wondered out loud. “What were they doing?”
“I don’t know.” Kallik pressed up close behind Lusa as the light grew stronger. “I hope we don’t meet any.”
A few pawsteps farther on, Lusa discovered the source of the light. High above her head was a ragged-edged hole, partly blocked with snow that turned the light shining through it to pale silver.
“Is that where Toklo fell through?” Kallik asked. “Why isn’t he here?” She raised her voice. “Toklo!”
“No, this can’t be the place,” Lusa responded. “There hasn’t been time for snow to block Toklo’s
hole again. And there’s no fresh snowfall down here. That must be a different hole.”
Kallik sighed. “How many holes are there?”
Yakone stretched his neck out and pressed his snout reassuringly against her side. “Don’t worry. We’ll find Toklo.”
For a moment all three bears stood gazing up at the hole, as if it might tell them something. Lusa was the first to break away, though her heart sank as the light began to die away behind them again, leaving them to face the unbroken darkness once more.
Before the last of the light had vanished, Lusa became aware of faintly moving air ruffling her fur, and she halted at a spot where the tunnel they had been following split into two. A slight breeze, barely noticeable, came from one of them.
“Now what do we do?” she wailed, gazing in confusion from one dark hole to the other. “How do we know which way to go?”
Kallik squeezed past her and sniffed at one of the openings, then the other, before turning back to Lusa and shaking her head hopelessly. “There’s no scent of bear either way.”
Turning back toward the nearer of the two tunnels, she let out a roar. “Toklo!”
Lusa waited, her belly churning with anxiety, until the sound had died away, then tried the other tunnel. “Toklo! Please—answer us!”
But there was no sound except the eerie echoes of Lusa’s voice, nothing to tell them which tunnel they should follow.
“Let’s think,” Yakone said. His calm voice helped to draw Lusa back from the edge of panic. “The tunnel has led us straight so far…. That means Toklo should be somewhere in that direction.” He pointed with one paw to the nearer tunnel.
“Are you sure?” Kallik asked doubtfully. “I’d have thought he’d be over here.” She angled her snout toward the other tunnel. “This is where the breeze is coming from.”
Lusa wanted to stamp her paws with frustration. “We can’t stand here forever!” she burst out. “If Toklo’s hurt, we don’t know how much time he has left. We have to choose.”
“That way, then.” Kallik pointed toward the tunnel Yakone had chosen. “I’m all confused down here.”
Relieved to be moving again, Lusa let Yakone take the lead into the darkness of the tunnel he had chosen. The path sloped down more deeply; a chill tingled through every hair on Lusa’s pelt as she thought of the weight of earth above their heads.
Toklo didn’t fall this far, she thought worriedly. We’ll never find him down here.
“Toklo! Toklo!” she called again and again, but the only answer came from the tiny sounds of the tunnel: the dripping of water, the creaking of wood, and now and then the rattle of a falling pebble.
Suddenly Yakone let out a grunt. Unable to see in the pitch blackness, Lusa blundered into his hind legs.
“Sorry,” she muttered. “What’s the matter, Yakone? Why have you stopped?”
“The tunnel’s blocked,” the white bear reported.
“What?” Kallik’s voice came from behind. “It can’t be! What’s blocking it?”
There was a pause; Lusa could hear Yakone snuffling, and picked up the strong scent of earth.
“Rock and soil,” Yakone replied after a few moments. “It’s packed solid from top to bottom. We can’t get any farther this way.”
“But what if Toklo is trapped behind it?” Lusa asked, horror chilling her to the tips of her paws.
“Then he’s trapped.” Yakone’s voice was flat. “There’s nothing we can do.”
“Okay, we have to go back to where the tunnel divided, and try the other direction.” Kallik’s voice was determined, and Lusa found her hope beginning to revive. “Come on.”
Lusa stifled a sigh as she began to slog back the way they had come, the tunnel sloping upward this time. There was no point in calling for Toklo; they already knew he wasn’t along this path.
It seemed a long time before Lusa could make out Kallik’s outline against the faint light from up ahead, and they came back to the place where the tunnel divided. For a horrible few moments Lusa wasn’t sure which was the tunnel they had come in by and which was the one they hadn’t explored yet. Then she remembered that they had come past the place where the light filtered in, and she headed for the remaining opening, the one that was darker.
“It’s this way! Hurry!”
But all three were growing tired, and it was hard for Lusa to keep her paws moving. She couldn’t help thinking of how good it would be to curl up against the tunnel wall and go to sleep. It was almost cozy down here, out of the wind and snow. But when she let her eyes close and her knees start to sag, she jerked awake as if cold water had been poured down her neck. How could she go to sleep when Toklo might be in great danger? She couldn’t close her eyes until they had found him.
Not far along the new passage, they came to a place where Lusa felt cold air flowing over her fur again, coming from one side. The light was long gone, but she realized that they must have reached another tunnel opening.
“Maybe we should go that way,” Yakone suggested. “It might lead us closer to where Toklo fell.”
Lusa stopped herself from pointing out that Yakone had already made one bad choice, when he’d led them down the blocked tunnel. She knew it wasn’t his fault.
“I think we should keep to the main passage,” Kallik said nervously. “How will we ever find our way out if we keep turning?”
Lusa nodded, then realized that her friend couldn’t see her. “You’re right,” she said out loud. “We’ll keep going. But if we can’t find Toklo this way, then we’ll come back and try this other tunnel.”
As they continued, Lusa became encouraged to realize that they were gradually moving upward again; she hadn’t liked the deeper pathway at all. Even better, before long she realized that she could see her own paws, trudging steadily along the earth floor. Blinking, she looked up and saw a light shining along the passage ahead.
“Hurry!” she called to the white bears behind her. “This one might be Toklo’s hole!”
But as she picked up her pace and drew closer to the light source, she realized that she was wrong. This hole was smaller than the one where Toklo had fallen, and once again there was no fresh snow beneath it. She halted, looking up in frustration.
“We could get out here,” Kallik said as she padded up. There was an edge to her voice; Lusa guessed that she was reaching the limit of her willingness to be so far underground.
“We don’t want to get out,” Lusa retorted. “Not before we find Toklo.”
“I don’t mean we would give up,” Kallik said hastily. “Just that we could get out for a moment to see where we are.”
“This hole is too small,” Yakone commented, looking up. “Not even Lusa could get out that way.”
“My head could, though!” New energy flooded through Lusa at the thought of getting some sense of direction in these endless tunnels. “Yakone, stand underneath the hole. I’m going to climb on your back—if you don’t mind,” she added.
Yakone padded forward until he was directly underneath the hole. “It’s fine. Come on.”
Lusa scrambled up onto his broad shoulders and balanced there while she thrust her head upward, breaking through the crust of snow that blocked the hole. Blinking, she looked around. The light outside seemed very bright after the darkness of the tunnels, but as Lusa’s eyes grew used to it, she realized that the day was already fading. Worse still, nothing looked familiar. There was no sign of the BlackPath they had crossed just before Toklo fell, not even the distant sounds of firebeasts. She was looking out at the familiar landscape of thorns, rocks, and snow, but she couldn’t recognize any of it.
She pulled her head in again and slid down from Yakone’s back. “It all looks the same,” she admitted, her voice full of despair. “We could be close to where Toklo fell, or we could be skylengths away. I just don’t know.”
“Then we have to keep on looking,” Kallik said, lowering her head to touch Lusa comfortingly on her shoulder.
“Okay.” Lusa br
aced herself, then set off once more plodding down the tunnel, with the two white bears just behind. The light from the hole faded until they were left in darkness once more.
This is so hard, Lusa thought as she groped her way forward, trying not to bump against the tunnel walls. She wished desperately that Ujurak were still with them. He could have changed into a rabbit or a worm or a centipede, or some other animal that was comfortable underground, and helped to guide them.
Are you here, Ujurak? she asked silently. We need you. Please come and help us.
She longed to see the star-bear in some form, but there was nothing else alive in the tunnels that could possibly be Ujurak.
There’s just the three of us, Lusa thought. Then she gave herself a shake. Just the three of us, and Toklo.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Toklo
Toklo let out a groan and opened his eyes. At first everything was dark, and terror washed over him as he stared into the blackness. Am I blind? Oh, spirits, no!
Then gradually he began to make out his surroundings. He was lying on a flat earth floor, half buried in dirt and small stones and melting snow. Looking up, he saw the hole above his head, and beyond that the night sky.
What happened? he wondered. What am I doing down here?
Then he remembered. He and his friends had crossed the BlackPath, and he had bounded forward into the wilderness, eager to get away from the flat-faces and everything they made. The last thing he could recall was the ground giving way under his paws.
“I fell,” he mumbled to himself. “Through that hole and right down here.” Toklo blinked up at the hole, bewilderment rushing through him like an eddying stream. They wouldn’t have left me down here. “Hey, Lusa! Kallik!”
Moving his head sent pain clawing through it, and every muscle in his body shrieked in protest as he staggered to his paws and shook the snow and earth from his pelt.
“Lusa!” Toklo roared as loudly as he could. “Kallik!”
The only response was more snow dislodging from the edges of the hole and spattering on top of his head. Toklo backed away from the shower. If the snow above him collapsed completely, he could be crushed under it.