Lusa nodded glumly. The four bears headed for the shoreline and stood there with the lake water lapping at their paws.
“Look over there,” Toklo said, angling his head at the nearest island. “See that rock shaped like a crow’s beak? It’s easy to spot, so that’s where we’ll head first.”
“Okay,” Kallik agreed, newly energized now that they had a plan. “Don’t forget that there will be currents. If you feel like you’re being swept away, then swim across the flow.”
Yakone nodded. “And don’t let the cold water bother you,” he added. “It’ll be colder farther from shore, but it’s not cold enough to be dangerous.”
Lusa let out a little snort, half-amused and half-frightened. “So says the ice bear!”
Kallik touched Lusa’s shoulder with her muzzle. “Swim close to me,” she said. “And if you get tired, tell me right away so I can help you.”
“Thanks,” Lusa responded.
Kallik took a deep breath, aware that her friends were doing the same. They exchanged determined glances.
“We can do this,” Toklo said.
“Sure we can.” Yakone nodded confidently.
Together the bears waded into the water and began to swim. The sun was so hot that Kallik reveled in the cool touch of the water slicing through her fur as she headed for the crow’s beak rock jutting up from the nearest island. She swam beside Lusa, but the black bear was paddling strongly and didn’t need any help.
Just as Yakone said, the water grew colder as they swam farther out, and Kallik felt the tug of a current, but she kept the crow’s beak rock in sight, swimming strongly toward it. Glancing back over her shoulder, she saw the shore was already fading behind them.
The waves were growing choppier, and Kallik noticed Lusa spluttering, as if she was tiring. Kallik swam closer to her, but Lusa battled on, churning her legs and holding her muzzle above the water.
“I’m fine!” she gasped.
“It’s not far now,” Kallik encouraged her, seeing the crow’s beak rock looming above her head.
A moment later she felt her paws strike stones. Managing to stand, she gave Lusa a shove forward, until both of them could wade up the island shore, their fur dripping.
“You made it, Lusa!” Kallik exclaimed.
Lusa nodded, too out of breath to speak.
Toklo and Yakone had come ashore together, a few bearlengths away on the far side of the rock, and they padded over to join Kallik and Lusa.
The island was tiny, with a pebbly shoreline and smooth, grassy slopes leading up to a clump of bushes in the center. There were no tracks, no scents of other bears, and Kallik realized they must be the only ones who’d taken this route.
I hope we made the right decision, she thought with a faint prickle of anxiety.
Toklo shook the last of the water out of his pelt. “I don’t know if there’s any prey,” he panted, “but I’m going to take a look.”
“I’ll come with you,” said Yakone.
The two male bears headed away along the waterline, disappearing after a few moments around a shoulder of the hill. Meanwhile Kallik and Lusa found a sheltered spot underneath the beak-shaped rock.
Lusa’s jaws gaped in a massive yawn. “I think I’ll take a nap while we wait.”
She had barely closed her eyes when Toklo and Yakone reappeared, each carrying a duck.
“They were swimming in an inlet just around that bend,” Toklo reported as he dropped his catch. “They had no idea we were creeping up on them.”
“That’s right,” Yakone agreed. “In fact, they hardly had a chance to even know they’d been caught!”
“Nice work,” Kallik commented, her jaws beginning to water as Toklo divided up the prey.
Once the bears had eaten, they settled down to sleep for a while. When they awoke, the sun was close to the horizon, casting scarlet light across the surface of the lake.
“We’d better cross to the next island before it gets dark,” Toklo warned.
He took the lead as they trekked up the slope, past the clump of bushes in the center of the island and down a steeper incline to the opposite shore. A narrow channel separated their island from the next one.
“That doesn’t look too bad,” Toklo commented, as he gazed out at the low-lying stretch of land. “It should be an easy swim before night falls.”
“There isn’t a good landmark to aim for, though,” Yakone pointed out. “Do we really want to do this now?”
Kallik gave Lusa a concerned glance.
“I’m fine,” Lusa said determinedly, clearly aware of Kallik’s anxiety. “I want to keep going.”
“Let’s go, then,” Toklo said, wading out into the water.
As soon as Kallik launched herself into the water, she felt the stronger current. She struck out forcefully, keeping her eyes on Lusa and resisting the pull of the water that threatened to sweep her down the length of the lake.
When she looked back toward the island, cold fear seized her. All she could see was tossing water: the low-lying island had vanished altogether. She couldn’t see where she needed to go.
“Kallik! Lusa!”
Yakone’s voice rang out across the water. Turning her head, Kallik spotted him and Toklo, their heads close together among the waves.
“This way!” Toklo roared.
Kallik nudged Lusa into the lee of her body, trying to protect her from the current. “Stay close to me,” she said, then churned her paws to battle the current and haul herself back in the right direction. But Lusa was struggling. Her strokes were feebler, and Kallik saw her head dip briefly under the water. When she reappeared, she was coughing as if she’d swallowed a chestful of lake.
“Yakone!” Kallik called out. “Lusa needs help!”
Instantly Yakone powered over, speeded by the current, and reached Lusa, who was floundering desperately to keep afloat, her eyes wide with terror. After coming up on the other side of Lusa, he and Kallik supported her with their shoulders as she bobbed in the waves.
“Thanks!” Lusa gasped.
“You’ll be fine,” Yakone reassured her. “We’re almost there.”
Kallik wasn’t sure that was true because she still couldn’t see the island, but Yakone seemed to know which way to go, and Kallik was content to let him lead.
“This way!” Toklo roared again.
Looking up, Kallik realized that the brown bear wasn’t swimming anymore, but standing in water up to his shoulders. She and Yakone headed for him, with Lusa between them, and at last Kallik felt her paws scrape against the lake bottom.
She was massively relieved to feel solid ground beneath her paws, though her legs gave way when she first tried to stand up. She took a deep breath and forced herself through the belly-deep water.
Still supporting Lusa between them, Kallik and Yakone waded out of the water and let the little black bear flop onto the shore, where she crouched with her flanks heaving.
Toklo was waiting for them, his fur slick and dark. “Are you okay?” he asked Lusa.
“Fine,” Lusa croaked, coughing up a mouthful of water.
By now the sun had sunk out of sight, and the last streaks of red were disappearing as clouds massed on the horizon. The island they’d landed on was nothing more than a narrow spit of gravel, only a paw’s width above the waterline. Nothing grew there. To make matters worse, black clouds were gathering around the edges of the sky, and a cold wind had blown up, slapping the water against the pebbly shore. The sharp, bitter taste of rain filled the air.
We can’t stay here, Kallik thought. If a storm blows up, we could be swept away. We need to find shelter.
“We should keep going,” Toklo said, as though he had read her thoughts. He pointed with his snout across a choppy, white-flecked stretch of water to where a far bigger island rose out of the lake. A few trees grew there, surrounded by thick shrubbery. “It’s not far to the next island, and we still have a bit of light.”
“It looks like a good spot for pr
ey,” Yakone remarked, taking in the island in the distance.
Kallik agreed. “What do you think?” she asked Lusa. “Can you make it that far?”
Lusa staggered to her paws and peered across the water to the other island. “I think so,” she said. “I don’t want to stay here.”
“Come on, then,” Toklo urged them, bounding across the strip of land and wading into the water once more. “We should move quickly.”
Kallik exchanged a glance with Yakone. She knew she didn’t need to tell him to keep a careful eye on Lusa as they followed Toklo and headed toward the next island.
Far from being a relief from the heat of the day, the water felt cold and unwelcoming now. But the shore of the next island was steadily growing nearer.
Then Kallik realized that the ominous black clouds had grown. The waves were growing bigger, too, slapping her in the face. The wind picked up, buffeting her around her head and driving the clouds across the sky. A flash of lightning split the gloom, and thunder bellowed overhead. Before Kallik could call a warning to Lusa, the skies opened and rain lashed down so hard the air seemed full of water.
As the waves rose, Kallik lost sight of the island. Fighting down panic, she caught only fleeting glimpses of her friends as the waves swelled up between them.
“Lusa! Lusa!” she shouted, terrified that the black bear wouldn’t be able to cope in the storm-lashed lake. She kept losing sight of her in the chop.
Oh, spirits, help me keep Lusa safe!
She spotted Toklo for a moment, his paws flailing, and Yakone a bearlength away from him, rushing to help. In the next moment a wave crashed down over both of them, and they disappeared.
Kallik let out a roar of panic and anger. Leaving Lusa momentarily, she struggled toward the place where she had last seen them, just as their heads bobbed up again. Toklo was spluttering and cursing, but Yakone was swimming strongly, and in a couple of strokes he was alongside the brown bear, boosting him up.
Kallik immediately turned back to Lusa, but she couldn’t see her through the waves. To make matters worse, a swell lifted Kallik, and to her horror she saw that the island they had been heading for was much farther away than when they started. The storm was sweeping them into the center of the lake. Paddling furiously, she reached Yakone’s side. “Help me find Lusa!” she bellowed over the shrieking of the wind.
Before Yakone could reply, Kallik caught sight of a huge fish, swimming close to the surface and encircling her, Yakone, and Toklo. Is it hunting us? she wondered, fighting back panic. Is it waiting for us to give up?
Then a wave brought the fish closer to Kallik, and she saw that its eyes weren’t the cold eyes of a fish, but those of a scared brown bear. Its gaze was fixed on them, full of distress.
“Ujurak?” Kallik choked out.
The fish kept on circling, and Ujurak’s voice echoed in Kallik’s mind. You shouldn’t have tried to swim across the lake!
With a fresh onset of fear, Kallik realized that it really was the star-bear, but in fish shape he was helpless to rescue them.
“Ujurak, where’s Lusa?” Kallik cried. “Please, find—”
Her words were cut off as another wave arched above her head and crashed down on top of her, driving her down into the lake. Kallik thrashed her legs, not sure where the surface was.
I’m drowning. . . .
Something soft and pale bumped up against Kallik, and she realized that Yakone was beside her. Teeth fastened in her shoulder and dragged her upward. Her head broke the surface, and she gulped painfully at the air.
Then she caught sight of the Ujurak-fish again, pushing a small, dark shape through the water toward her. She spotted a single black paw flailing above the surface.
Lusa!
Kallik plunged forward and stretched to grab Lusa by the scruff of her neck. Using all her strength, she heaved the black bear back to the surface of the water. Lusa coughed and choked as she struggled to breathe. Kallik bumped into Yakone, who was supporting Toklo while the terrified brown bear caught his breath.
Great spirits!
The storm raged on. Clouds hid the stars, and the lake water surged around them, black and hungry.
Is this the end? Kallik wondered. Have we come so far only to die in the wrong lake, so close to the end of our journey?
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Toklo
Toklo battled to stay afloat, hearing bear spirits screaming all around him. Or is it only the howling wind and crashing thunder? He thought he could see Oka and Tobi swimming toward him, but as he struck out to join them, they were lost in the waves. The sky exploded above him, another lightning flash splitting the darkness.
I’m going to drown!
Toklo’s limbs ached with exhaustion, and he could hardly summon the strength to keep moving them. Thank goodness for Yakone in the waves beside him, the white bear shoving him upward with his strong shoulder.
“Hang on to me,” Yakone rasped to Lusa as Kallik pulled the black bear over to him as well.
Lusa seemed almost helpless to obey, so Kallik hoisted her onto Yakone’s back, but the extra weight almost sank him. “Yakone, you can’t—” Kallik shrieked.
“I can!” Yakone insisted, the words gasped out. “I’m fine!”
All four bears huddled together, fighting for their lives against the tumult of wind and water. Toklo had no idea where they were anymore, only that the island they had tried to reach was lost forever in the storm.
Then, to his amazement, a dark shape loomed up ahead amid the towering waves and torrential rain, blacker than the night.
“Another island!” Kallik exclaimed.
But as she spoke, a flash of lightning crackled across the sky. It lit up the vast shape beside them, and they saw that it was not an island, but a swimming firebeast, wallowing to and fro as the waves tossed it. As the lightning faded away, the firebeast lurched toward the bears. Toklo let out a howl of terror, afraid it was attacking them. Suddenly Yakone’s shoulder slipped from under Toklo, and he felt the water beneath him start to drag him down, as if a massive fish was trying to suck him in.
The firebeast loomed closer, and from the way it listed sideways in the water, Toklo realized it was drifting aimlessly, pushed by the current of the lake and the wind. It bobbed beside the bears, apparently unaware they were there. Perhaps it wasn’t attacking them after all.
Instinctively Toklo fought his way upward through the churning water with all the strength he could muster. Something slapped against his head, and he hit out blindly and found his claws snagged in some kind of vine dangling over the side of the firebeast. Gulping in air, he found that he could grab onto it with his front paws and hang out of reach of the hungry waves.
Toklo saw his friends struggling in the angry water a bearlength away. “Over here!” he called to them. “Come and hold on! I don’t think this firebeast wants to hurt us!”
With Kallik and Yakone supporting Lusa between them now, the other bears floundered their way to the side of the firebeast. They crowded around the dangling vine, and Kallik and Yakone managed to grab it with one paw each and still hold on to Lusa, who was limp with exhaustion.
For a few moments they clung there together. Now and again the firebeast would lurch and waves would wash over them, or ram them against the side of the beast, but at least they could breathe and they didn’t have to keep fighting the waves.
Toklo was grateful for the respite, but he didn’t know how long they could hold on. He was getting colder and colder, more and more exhausted.
An idea flickered in his mind like a star in the black night. “Wouldn’t we be safer if we could climb up onto this firebeast?”
Kallik blinked at him through the water streaming down her face. “What if the firebeast realizes we’re here? And what about no-claws? There might be some inside its belly.”
“We’ll drown if we stay here for much longer,” Toklo retorted. “It’s our only hope.”
Yakone nodded. “Toklo’s right.
We have to risk it.”
“I’ll go first and check it out,” Toklo said.
Not waiting for a reply, he began to climb up the vine. It was tough and strong and the strands were woven together in loops, so he had somewhere to put his paws. He was halfway up when the firebeast lurched, swinging him out over the tossing waves. Toklo heard Kallik cry out from below. He felt his paws slipping and grabbed the vine with his teeth for extra security until the firebeast righted itself, flinging Toklo back against its side with a thump that drove the breath out of his body.
“Seal rot!” Toklo muttered, starting to haul himself upward again.
By the time the next wave came, he was almost at the top of the vine. As the wave crashed over Toklo, he managed to dig in his claws and grip the vine with his teeth again. Now he was able to scramble up onto the firebeast’s back. Glancing side to side, he found himself alone, pitching up and down with the firebeast amid the raging water.
Toklo peered over the edge to where his friends were still clinging to the vine. They looked very small and distant among the swollen waves.
“Okay, climb!” he shouted over the noise of the storm. “I don’t see any flat-faces!”
Lusa came first. Toklo wondered where she found the strength to heave herself upward, then noticed Kallik right behind her, boosting her up. As the firebeast dove and plunged, he leaned over the side and managed to get a grip on Lusa’s scruff, tugging hard to help her up the last bearlength. She was almost a dead weight, too sodden and cold to speak, and barely able to put one paw in front of another. As the next wave hit the firebeast, Toklo nearly lost his grip on her.
No! I will not lose her now!
Then the firebeast steadied itself, Lusa scrabbled with her hindpaws, and Toklo heaved until Lusa collapsed beside him on the firebeast’s flat, slippery back. She rolled to one of the firebeast’s flanks and lay there unmoving.
“You can’t kill us!” Toklo bellowed into the wind and driving rain. Looking down again, he saw Kallik was nearly at the top of the vine herself, and he leaned down again as far as he dared to help her. “If the firebeast tilts, just hang on,” he called out to her.