River of Lost Bears (19 page)

Toklo blinked. He had to tip his head right back to see the top of the water, which loomed above them. The sides of the gorge were even higher here, taller than several trees end to end.

Yakone stood still. “It's like a glacier come to life,” he whispered.

“No, it's a waterfall!” Toklo stared, suddenly realizing that the cliffs were ringing with its roar. Rainbows rose from its spray. It was a spectacular sight, but Toklo felt disappointment drag at his belly. The river had led them to a dead end, but the water had to be coming from somewhere. The river must continue on the other side of the falls. “We'll have to go back and climb through the forest,” he said heavily.

Kallik's eyes clouded. “You mean, go back to where the gorge starts? It'll be a long way around.”

Yakone had walked farther upstream and was staring at the tumbled rocks on either side of the waterfall. “Couldn't we climb up there?” he said.

Toklo narrowed his eyes. The rocks shone like silver, slick with spray. “We'd never get a grip on that stone.” Their claws weren't meant for digging into rock. What if one of them fell?

“It'll take an extra day's walking to go around,” Yakone pressed.

Kallik caught Toklo's eye. “Let's at least get closer and see if there's a way up the cliffs.”

Toklo studied the distance. It wouldn't take that long to walk to the falls, and if there truly was a way up the side, it would save retracing their steps. The tug in his belly toward the mountains made Toklo feel it would be physically painful to turn back in search of a different route. “Okay, we'll take a look,” he grunted.

They trekked in single file along the narrow strip of shore. The water came right up to the sides of the gorge in several places, meaning they had to splash through, resisting the pull of the current. The river grew more and more turbulent as they neared the end of the gorge, splashing and frothing until the bears' pelts dripped and they had to screw up their eyes against the spray. The noise of the falling water was so deafening that they couldn't speak to one another. Toklo started to wonder if they'd even make it to the bottom of the cliffs.

Then Yakone, who was ahead of him, stopped abruptly. Toklo almost crashed into the white bear's haunches. He peered around Yakone's bulk and saw they were as near to the cliffs as they could get without being lost in the tumultuous falling water, which filled the entire width of the gorge. The bears huddled together on the tiny patch of shore. They had to bellow to make themselves heard above the roar of the falls.

Kallik tipped back her head and stared at the rocks that were visible above the mist of tumbling water. “I think we could do it!” she barked. “I can see plenty of pawholds.”

Toklo followed her gaze. The gorge rose in a steep face beside the falls, but there were lots of ledges and jutting stones.

Chenoa stroked the wet stone under her paws, smoothed by countless moons of spray. “It's more slippery than ice,” she warned. “And we'll be right inside the falling water for the first half of the climb.”

Toklo squinted through the mist. He could just make out the end of the gorge where their climb would start. It would be worse than rain; it would be like being underwater.
Will we
drown
?
he wondered. “It's going to be dangerous,” he said. “Yakone, what do you think?”

He shifted sideways to let the white bear move up. Yakone stared at the cliff. “Without the water, it wouldn't be too difficult,” he commented.

“We've been wet before,” Kallik pointed out. “I vote for trying.”

Toklo looked at Lusa. “What about you?”

Lusa bristled and lifted herself to her full height. “I'll be fine! Kallik's right, we've been soaked to the skin before.”

Chenoa leaned close to the little black bear. “And I'm here to help you,” she reminded Lusa.

Lusa snorted. “I think you'll find that
I'm
here to help
you
!” The black bears huffed with amusement.

“If we're going to do it, there's no point waiting any longer and getting even wetter,” Kallik said. “Come on.” She started padding into the spray. Her white pelt was almost instantly swallowed up.

Chenoa and Lusa bounded after her, dark shadows inside the mist. They slipped past Kallik and launched themselves at the rock face. Toklo hissed, but Yakone said, “Let them lead. That way we can keep an eye on them, and they can set the pace.”

Chenoa scrambled up the first few rocks, finding pawholds on the pitted stone. Lusa followed closely, using the same nooks to pull herself up. Kallik took a slightly different route, able to use pawholds that were farther apart. Toklo hesitated by the foot of the cliff, tipping his head back as he strained to see the top. It was clouded in spray and seemed farther away than the clouds. He felt Yakone nudge him.

“Go on,” the white bear grunted. “We'll be okay.”

Toklo heaved himself onto the first rock and stretched up for pawholds. The stone felt perilously slippery beneath his pads, but suddenly his paws lodged in a smooth-edged crevice and he was able to pull himself quite easily up to the next jutting boulder. He tried not to look at the falling water thundering past him a bearlength away. Its speed made him dizzy. His ears throbbed at the sound. He fixed his gaze on the rock immediately above him and concentrated on keeping his balance and finding new pawholds—front paws, then back paws, front, then back.

Before long, his claws ached as he pulled himself up, from ledge to ledge. He lost sight of the others in the spray, but he could hear the black bears calling encouragement to each other. Chenoa was leading them through a zigzagging route across the rock, but she was finding firm ledges with easy pawholds. Just above Toklo, Kallik was silent, only letting out the occasional grunt as she heaved herself up. Toklo realized that the black bears were finding this easier than the others because of their lighter bodies.

Suddenly his head emerged above the cloud of spray. The air was still soaked in tiny droplets, but he could see the trees beside him more clearly now. He risked a glance upward. They were nearly at the top! The cliff ended abruptly just a few bearlengths ahead, giving way to gray, sullen sky. Lusa was hopping from rock to rock as though they were branches. Chenoa was just above her, swarming up the cliff like a lizard.

Toklo focused on a pawhold a muzzlelength above his reach. Pushing off with his hind legs, he sprang up and clamped his forepaws around the ledge and dragged himself up. Relieved, he tumbled onto a wide shelf of rock and stopped to catch his breath. It was much quieter here. His pelt dripped and his paws stung.
Not much farther,
he told himself, over the sound of his racing heart.

There was a shriek from above. “We made it!” Chenoa cheered.

“Come on, slow slugs!” Lusa called down.

Toklo hauled himself to his paws and studied the last stretch of rock. The quickest route was directly upward, using the overhanging lip above his current ledge. Leaning back, Toklo could just see Kallik vanishing over the very top of the cliff. He heard yelps of delight from the black bears. Looking over his shoulder, he saw Yakone scrambling up closer to the edge of the forest, his paws slipping on loose stones.

“Careful!” Toklo warned. Yakone just grunted.

Toklo reared up on his hindpaws and stretched his front paws over the edge of the lip above him. His claws sank into the tiny grooves on the surface of the rock. He lifted his hindpaws briefly, testing his weight, then took a deep breath and pushed as hard as he could. For a moment, his body swung in empty air, and Toklo caught a glimpse of the pounding mist far below. His claws slipped on the ledge, and he let out a snarl. Digging in once more, he heaved his belly over the lip and rolled sideways onto the rock. He looked up, panting heavily, to see Lusa and Chenoa peering down at him. Their eyes were huge with terror.

“Did you think you could fly?” Chenoa squeaked.

Toklo was too out of breath to speak. He scrambled over the last rocks and pulled himself onto the cliff top. Just a bearlength away, the river was as smooth as a trout as it slid over the edge of the cliff.

“That was fun!” Chenoa bounced on her paws.

“Are you okay, Toklo?” Lusa sniffed him.

“Fine,” Toklo puffed. He padded away from the edge and sat beside Yakone, who had arrived a few moments before him. “We made it,” Toklo breathed.

Yakone nodded. “I knew we would.”

The river looked wide and peaceful beside them, slipping gracefully toward the waterfall before it tumbled down. Toklo wondered what happened to the fish. Did they know there was a drop, or did the river just sweep them over?

“Come on.” He felt uneasy being so close to the edge. The others jumped up, complaining mildly of sore claws and scratched pads, and followed Toklo upriver. The shore was hard going, the uneven rocks jolting his legs as he hopped down one boulder, then climbed the next. He glanced back, checking on the others. Chenoa and Lusa were helping each other, steadying, nudging, and sidestepping as they scrambled along the beach. Kallik and Yakone walked in single file. Yakone's gaze was dark as he brought up the rear; he was concentrating hard on every step, on a surface that couldn't have been more different from cool, smooth ice.

Toklo wrinkled his nose. He could smell the fragrant tang of flat-face food, tinged with BlackPath stench. He stopped, pelt twitching. The trees were retreating from the shoreline, leaving a wide-open space, and he could make out a herd of bright pelts farther upstream.

Flat-faces.

He stopped. “Look,” he hissed over his shoulder.

Lusa caught up with him. “Why are they here?”

Ahead, the shore was swarming with flat-faces. They crowded right to the edge, wrapped against the chill in thick, colorful pelts, pointing at the river as it disappeared over the falls. Bright white flashes exploded among them, curiously silent apart from shrieks from the flat-faces.

Toklo flinched. “They've got firesticks!”

“No.” Lusa pressed against him. “There's no noise, is there? And the lights are much smaller. The flat-faces who came to the Bear Bowl made flashes like that,” she explained. “They come from flash boxes.”

Toklo stared. “What are flash boxes?”

“Dunno,” Lusa snorted. “But they seemed to make the flat-faces happy. They flashed at everything. Now they're flashing at the waterfall.”

“Everywhere we go, we trip over flat-faces!” Yakone stopped behind them. “It's not like the ice.”

“I know,” Toklo agreed. “Perhaps we're crossing their migration path.”

Beside the flat-faces, a wide stretch of BlackPath was crowded with firebeasts of every size and color.

Kallik reached Yakone, ears twitching. “A flat-face colony, guarded by firebeasts!”

“How will we get past it?” Yakone growled.

“We could head into the woods and circle around,” Toklo suggested.

“No!” Chenoa gulped. “There'll be BlackPaths all over the woods if that many firebeasts are here.” She began to back away, as if she was seriously considering retracing her route down the cliff.

“It's okay.” Lusa nuzzled her.

“But she's right,” Yakone muttered. “There's probably a tangle of BlackPaths through there, all full of flat-faces and firebeasts.”

“What are we going to do?” Kallik asked. “There's no way past them.”

Toklo gazed across the river. The far shore was empty. It was wider and more pebbly than where they stood now, though not as wide as where the flat-faces stood. But that meant the trees were closer to the water, offering good cover if they needed to hide, and a source of prey. “It would be better if we could travel on that side of the river,” Toklo pointed out. He studied the flat, shining surface of the river. “We could swim across.”

“I don't know. The currents are probably stronger than they look,” Kallik warned. “And it's a long way to swim when we're tired.”

“There are rocks showing above the water.” Lusa pointed out wide, smooth stones dotting the river. “We could use them to rest between swims.”

Toklo's gaze flicked from one boulder to the next. They were widely spaced, but they reached right across. The water moved swiftly around them. He narrowed his eyes, judging the distance from the boulders to the edge of the waterfall. Kallik and Yakone were strong swimmers; Chenoa was young but had been raised by the river and knew its currents better than any of them. But would Lusa be strong enough?

“Lusa?”

She whipped around, dragging her attention from the water.

“Do you think you can make it?”

“Yes, I really do.” Lusa lifted her muzzle. “The water's moving steadily. It'll be like swimming from the ice to land.”

“But not as cold,” Kallik put in.

That's true.
Toklo knew that Lusa had faced greater dangers than this. “Let's aim for that boulder first.” Toklo flicked his snout toward a flat-topped rock a few bearlengths out. “There won't be room for all of us at the same time, so you two go first. If you think the currents are too strong, let us know.” He glanced from Kallik to Yakone. “Okay?”