Great Bear Lake (18 page)

“No!” she spluttered, getting a mouthful of lake water. “Stop it!”

The pummeling stopped and she heard pawsteps splashing away. Scrambling to her feet, water streaming from her pelt, she spotted a young male bear heading back to land with her fish in his jaws.

“Hey!” she yelled. “I caught that! Give it back!”

The bear ignored her. Furious, Kallik splashed after him. He had joined three other young bears at the water's edge; they tore her fish into pieces and gulped it down before Kallik could reach them.

Kallik's belly was bawling with hunger and every hair on her pelt was hot with rage as she stood stiff-legged at the edge of the lake. “Thieves!” she snarled. “Why can't you catch your own fish?”

The young bear who had attacked her glanced around. “Shut up, seal-brain.”

Kallik got a good look at him for the first time. Something about him was oddly familiar…the shape of his ears…the way he ran with his paws splayed out…. No, he was too big.

But I'm bigger now, too
.

“Hey, Taqqiq, that was a good catch!” one of the other bears said, nudging him with his shoulder. “Can you get us another one?”

Kallik caught her breath.
It
is
him!
“Taqqiq!” she cried. “Taqqiq!”

Her brother narrowed his eyes. “Who are you? How do you know my name?”

“I'm…I'm Kallik,” she stammered. “Your sister.”

“My sister's dead,” Taqqiq growled. “She and my mother were killed by orca.”

His companions were gaping at Kallik; one of them nudged Taqqiq. “Ignore her, she's crazy.”

“I'm not crazy. I'm
alive
. Nisa pushed me onto the ice before the orca dragged her down. But you were on the other side of the water, and I couldn't get back to you.”

Taqqiq padded over to her, his huge feet crunching on the pebbles, then stretched out his neck and sniffed her. “You
are
Kallik,” he whispered, his eyes widening.

“Of course I am!” said Kallik. “And I found you!”

Taqqiq glanced at his friends, then back at Kallik. “What are you doing here?” he hissed. “I didn't ask you to come looking for me!”

Kallik felt her heart turn to ice and her legs went very wobbly, as if they weren't going to hold her up for much longer. This wasn't how she had imagined her reunion with her brother.

“Are you staying there all day?” one of the other bears growled. “We're going to look for some more food. If you want any, you'd better come.” He padded away, closely flanked by the other two.

Taqqiq turned and followed them up the shore. “Leave me alone,” he snarled to Kallik over his shoulder. “I have my own friends now.”

“Wait!” Kallik called after him. “What are you doing? It's
wrong to steal food. Why can't you catch your own, like our mother taught us?”

Taqqiq stopped and curled his lip, revealing strong yellow teeth. “Things are different now. If Nisa wanted to show us how to survive her way, she shouldn't have died and left us alone.”

“Our mother didn't choose to die.” Kallik's heart twisted at the bitterness in her brother's voice. “Her spirit is still here, watching over us.”

But Taqqiq kept walking up the beach and didn't look back.

Kallik gazed after him, the cold lake water washing around her paws. In all the times she had imagined finding her brother at the end of her long, long journey, she had never once dreamed that he would not be pleased to see her.

“I can't stay in this tree
forever,” Lusa decided.

She felt too exposed at the top of the tree; the sight of so much open space made her dizzy—and frightened. She had never imagined that the trees would just
end
, that there would be endless empty land with no bear spirits at all. She scrambled down into the thicker branches to crouch in a fork where she could keep watch on the ground below. No bear padded past, though she could still hear the murmur of voices from the big clearing. In spite of her anxiety about the end of the trees, her pelt prickled with excitement at the thought of meeting real wild black bears.
I wonder if any of them knew King?

Lusa had just begun to climb farther down when something big crashed into the tree above her. The branches waved wildly and Lusa lost her balance, swinging upside down from the branch with the ground rocking sickeningly above her head. Letting out a squeal of shock, she clung on with her hind claws, remembering how her father had told her that
black bears never fall out of trees.
Not unless some bee-brain shakes it around
.

As the branches grew still again, she looked up. Another black bear cub had appeared in the tree above her. He was gazing down at her with bright curiosity in his eyes.

“Sorry,” he yelped. “Are you okay? I didn't see you there.”

You didn't try looking
. Lusa bit back the sharp retort. “I'm fine,” she puffed, clambering up onto the branch again. “You startled me, that's all.”

The other cub peered at her more closely. “I haven't seen you before, have I? My name's Miki.”

“I'm Lusa.”

Miki scrambled down the tree until he could crouch on the branch next to her, so close that their pelts brushed. He reminded Lusa a bit of Yogi. He was younger and smaller, but he had the same splash of white fur on his chest.

“So you just got here?” he said. “Have you come far?”

“A long way,” Lusa replied. “All the way from the Bear Bowl.”

Miki put his head on one side. His ears were round and very fluffy, like the rest of him. “What's a Bear Bowl?”

Lusa wondered if she should have admitted right away that she wasn't a wild bear. But Miki would be bound to find out sooner or later. She wouldn't be able to hide that she didn't know all the things the other bears knew.

“A Bear Bowl is a place where flat-faces keep bears,” she explained. “They feed us and look after us.”

Miki looked confused; he raised one paw to scratch his ear. “I always knew flat-faces were weird. What do they do that for?”

“So other flat-faces can come and look at us, I think,” said Lusa. “They were quite friendly.”

Miki let out a disbelieving huff. “I don't like flat-faces. My mother and father went into some flat-face dens to look for food. And they never came back.” His eyes glazed with grief as he added, “It was on the way here. They told me to wait under a bush at the edge of the dens. I waited and waited, but they didn't come.”

“Oh, that's terrible!” Lusa knew how hard it had been for her to leave Aisha and King behind. It must be much, much worse to lose your parents and not know what had happened to them, or whether they were still alive. “What did you do?” she asked.

“I went into the dens to look for them.” Miki was rigid with sadness. “But I couldn't find them. The trail of their scent stopped in a place that smelled sharp and smoky. Then I met some other bears. They said I should go with them, that they'd look after me now. I didn't want to at first, but…I knew I'd never see my mother and father again. As well as the smoky smell, I could smell blood. I…I just hope they didn't hurt for long.”

Lusa leaned over to push her muzzle into the fur on Miki's shoulder. “I'm glad you didn't have to travel alone,” she murmured.

“But you came here alone, didn't you?” Miki asked, shaking
himself as if his bad memories could be flicked off his pelt like water.

“No, I traveled with other bears.” Lusa wasn't ready to admit that they were brown bears.

To her relief, Miki didn't ask her where those bears were now. He sat up, balancing on the branch as it swayed. “I'm starving!” he announced. “Let's go find something to eat.”

“Okay.” Lusa followed him as he bounded down the tree, her stomach growling.

“You're a great climber!” Miki exclaimed as she landed neatly beside him.

Lusa stretched up proudly. “My father, King, taught me, back in the Bear Bowl.”

Miki lifted his muzzle into the air and drew in a huge breath. Lusa copied him; there was a tang on the air that reminded her of the scent of the fruit in the Bear Bowl.

“Over there?” she suggested, pointing with her nose.

“Hey, well scented. Let's go!”

Miki bounded off, with Lusa hard on his paws, weaving among the trees until they came to a more open space. The ground sloped upward, covered with low-growing bushes; they had glossy green leaves and bright red berries. The sharp tang surrounded Lusa now and her mouth watered.

Other black bears were already feeding in the thicket, stripping the berries from the branches with sharp pointed teeth. Not far from Lusa two adult bears were bending the branches down so that their young cubs could reach the fruit.

“Don't gulp them too fast,” the mother bear said. “If you
do, they'll give you a bellyache.”

Miki plunged into the nearest bushes under the trees and began to munch the berries. Lusa checked at the edge of the bushes. “Won't they mind?” she asked, jerking her head in the direction of the other bears.

“No, 'course not,” Miki reassured her. “We have to take what we can get. Come on,” he urged as Lusa still hesitated. “They'll all be gone if you don't hurry.”

Lusa padded up to the nearest bush and tore off a mouthful of the berries.
Yuck!
She curled back her top lip. The berries looked juicy, but they were hard and dusty, and close up she could see that the sun had shriveled some of them. But if the other bears were eating them, so must she, because it meant there wasn't a better supply of berries somewhere else.

“There should be more than this,” Miki muttered.

“It's so long since I saw any berries worth eating, these don't taste too bad,” Lusa admitted, stretching up to reach the fruit growing on the topmost branch.

Miki grunted. “The bears you came with can't have been much good at finding them,” he mumbled through a mouthful.

A few other bears had arrived, standing at the edge of the thicket and huffing anxiously as they looked for a clear space where they could feed.

“About time,” one of them complained as Lusa and Miki finished stripping their share of berries from the bush and padded back under the trees.

They settled down in the shadows. The light was fading
out of the sky, and the forest was growing darker. The bear spirits whispered softly above Lusa's head as she licked berry pips from her paws. She wondered if they were saying sorry for the meager food supply.

Miki blew out a long breath. “I'm still hungry!” he complained. He hauled himself to his paws and padded a couple of bearlengths to a moss-covered stone at the foot of a nearby tree. “Hang on, I think there might be something under here….”

Lusa joined him, puzzled. It looked like a perfectly ordinary stone. “You can't eat that,” she said. “Unless you mean the moss is good to eat?”

“Well, it would be okay if you were really hungry,” Miki said. “But I can show you something better. Watch.”

He hooked a paw under the stone and flipped it over. Lusa peered down; the soil he had exposed was covered with fat white wriggling things. They smelled damp and earthy.

“What are those?” she asked.

Miki's brown eyes shone. “Grubs. They're pretty good. You want to try?”

“Mmm…” Lusa's mouth watered again. “They smell really juicy!”

She and Miki crouched down at the edge of the soil and began to eat. Lusa crunched up the grubs, enjoying the way they burst in her mouth and the taste of the fat white bodies. “They're really good!” she exclaimed.

Behind her she heard the pad of pawsteps, and a voice whining, “My tummy's empty!” Turning her head, Lusa saw a
thin she-bear with a cub even smaller than Lusa and Miki.

The cub was butting its mother in the side. “I'm
hungry
! I want something to eat
now
!”

“I'm looking for food.” The mother bear sounded harassed. “You'll have to wait till I find something.”

Reluctantly Lusa got up from the soil patch, where there were still plenty of grubs left. “Come on,” she said to the she-bear. “You can have some of these.”

The she-bear gazed at her in disbelief, while her cub instantly darted forward and plunged its muzzle into the wriggling grubs. “It's okay,” Lusa said softly. The mother bear gave her a quick, awkward nod and crouched to eat beside her cub.

Miki got up and joined Lusa. “You must have bees in your brain!” he muttered into her ear. “Giving away food? No bear would care if you starved to death.”

Lusa looked at him. “But I would care if another bear starved to death because of me.”

Miki sighed, swiping his tongue around his muzzle. “I guess we've had enough for now.” Giving Lusa a nudge, he added, “Let's climb.”

Lusa yawned; she really wanted to curl up and sleep. But she followed Miki to the nearest tree, watching how expertly he raced up the trunk to a high branch. Lusa bounded up after him, pleased that she was nearly as good as he was.

From up here, she could see above the other pines to the shore of the lake. Black bears were emerging from the trees, each with a spray of leaves and berries in their jaws. They laid
them at the water's edge, beginning to form a twiggy barrier just out of reach of the waves.

“What are they doing?” she called to Miki, who was clinging to a swaying branch on the other side of the trunk.

“I think they're getting ready for the ceremony,” he replied. “I've never seen it before, but the bears I came here with told me about it. At dawn, we'll all gather by the lakeshore, and the oldest bear will welcome the sun on the Longest Day.”

“What are the berries for?” Lusa's stomach growled at the thought of all that food, even dry and dusty berries, just lying there.

“To honor the spirits.” He didn't tell her how, exactly, and Lusa suspected he didn't know. “I'm going to sleep,” he added with a huge yawn. “It's safe up here. The brown bears won't bother us.” His voice sank to a whisper. “One of the bears I traveled with said she'd seen a grizzly bear kill a black cub and eat it!” He shivered. “Best to stay away from them.”

“Grizzlies don't eat black bears!” Lusa protested.

“How do you know?” Miki twitched his ears in surprise. “Were there brown bears in your Bear Bowl?”

“Y-yes.”

“And you all lived together?” Miki sounded disbelieving.

“Not exactly.” Lusa squirmed; Miki's questions felt like ants crawling in her pelt. “The brown bears were in a different part of the Bowl. We could talk to them through the fence, though.”

“So they
might
have eaten you, if they could have gotten at you.” Miki sounded triumphant, as if he had proved his point.
“The flat-faces knew, or why would they keep the brown bears away from you? That proves they're bad.”

“No, they're not!” Lusa blurted out, irritation getting the better of her. “I traveled here with two brown bears, actually.”
At least, I suppose Ujurak is a brown bear. Most of the time
. “So I
do
know what they're like. They looked after me and fed me. We were friends.”

“Friends?” Miki's eyes stretched wide. “I've never heard of that before. Whatever made you want to travel with grizzlies?”

“It's a long story,” Lusa began. Quickly she told Miki how Oka had come to the Bear Bowl, and sent Lusa to find her son Toklo with a message. “When I found him, he was with another grizzly cub, called Ujurak. He's the most amazing bear!” She leaned closer to Miki, eager to make him understand just how remarkable Ujurak was. “He knows stuff other bears don't know, and he's on a journey to find the place where the spirits dance in the sky. I didn't have anywhere else to go, so I decided to go with him and Toklo.” She was about to tell him how Ujurak could change into other animals and even birds, but Miki interrupted her.

“Well, you've found black bears now,” he said, as if that was all that mattered. “So this is where you belong.” He shifted on the branch until he had wedged himself into a comfortable position, and closed his eyes. Almost at once his slow, regular breathing told Lusa he was asleep. He wasn't interested in hearing about brown bears. He was a black bear: He obviously thought Lusa was only traveling with brown bears until she
found bears just like her.

Lusa settled down with her pelt pressed close to his, but she stayed awake, listening to the murmured conversations of the black bears nearby in the forest.