The Last Wilderness (8 page)

K
allik pounded along the valley, desperately trying to keep the departing flock of geese in sight. Already they were almost a skylength away. Toklo ran beside her, while Lusa raced along a bearlength behind. Toklo had given up shouting for Ujurak to come back; he seemed to be saving all his breath for the chase.

Pebbles and gritty soil stung Kallik’s paws as she ran in a wild zigzag, changing direction to follow the flock whirling above her. Her chest heaved as she fought for air.

What if they fly out of sight? Will Ujurak be able to find his way back?

The geese left the hills behind and flew on towards the coastal plain. They followed the line of
the shore for a little way, then to Kallik’s relief alighted on a smooth stretch of grass reaching down to the water’s edge.

Thank you, Silaluk!

Toklo halted, and Kallik drew to a stop beside him. A moment later Lusa came panting up.

‘What do we do now?’ the little black bear gasped. ‘If we just dash up to them, the whole flock will take off again.’

‘I know,’ Toklo growled. ‘Somehow we have to get closer to them. If we call out so that Ujurak hears us, he might remember he’s a bear.’

His eyes glittered with fury; Kallik was half afraid of him when he was like this, but she knew that he was angry with Ujurak only because he was so worried about him.

‘Maybe we’re making a fuss about nothing,’ she ventured. ‘Ujurak has always come back before.’

‘That’s right.’ Lusa’s dark eyes sparkled. ‘He’s been a gull, and an eagle . . . and do you remember, Toklo, when he was a mule deer and led the wolves away from us? That was before you joined us,’ she added to Kallik.

‘Yes,’ Toklo snapped, still looking annoyed. ‘We
had to wait forever for him to turn up again.’

‘But he
did
turn up,’ Lusa insisted. ‘And if he hadn’t changed, we would have been wolf-prey. He’ll remember this time, like he always has before.’

Toklo snorted. ‘I just wish he’d remember he’s supposed to be hunting for us.’

‘All right, suppose we creep up on him,’ Lusa suggested. ‘There are bushes and rocks we can use for cover.’

‘We can try,’ the young grizzly agreed.

He took the lead, treading softly from one clump of thornbushes to the next, as carefully as if he was stalking prey. Kallik and Lusa stayed hard on his paws. Eventually they reached the shelter of a dip in the ground where long grasses grew around a brackish pool. A stretch of open ground separated them from the flock.

Toklo dipped his snout into the pool for a quick drink. ‘This is where we have to show ourselves,’ he announced, shaking drops from his fur. ‘We’ll run among the geese and call Ujurak’s name. The rest of the flock will fly off, but if we’re lucky, Ujurak will stay behind.’

‘And if we’re not lucky?’ Lusa asked.

‘Then he can stay a goose for all I care!’ Toklo retorted.

Lusa exchanged a glance with Kallik. ‘He doesn’t mean it,’ she murmured.

Toklo snorted and burst out of the hollow, yelling, ‘Ujurak! Ujurak!’

‘Ujurak, it’s us!’ Kallik cried as she raced after the brown bear with Lusa at her side.

As Toklo had predicted, the geese took to the air again. The sky seemed full of wildly beating wings. Kallik’s heart slammed into her throat as she saw not a single white bird left on the seashore.

Then Lusa exclaimed, ‘Ujurak!’

She pointed with her snout, and Kallik made out a brown, humped shape lying in the surf; at first glance she’d taken it for a spit of sand. Now she realised it was a small brown bear, lying motionless on his side as the waves washed around him.

‘What happened to him?’ she panted as all three bears bounded towards him. ‘Did he fall? Did he forget how to fly?’

Toklo was the first to reach their friend, and nosed him carefully from snout to tail, while Kallik and Lusa looked on in horror. Ujurak hadn’t stirred as
they approached, hadn’t even lifted his head to look at them.

‘He’s not dead,’ Toklo pronounced at last. ‘I can feel him breathing, but I don’t know what’s the matter with him.’

Kallik bent down and sniffed Ujurak’s sodden fur. His eyes were closed, and she had to watch carefully to see the faint rise and fall of his body as he breathed. Blood trickled from his mouth, dark and glossy against the seawater.

Then she noticed something shiny coming out of Ujurak’s mouth along with the blood. She felt as cold as if an ice storm were blowing around her. ‘Look!’ she whispered.

‘What’s that?’ Lusa asked, stretching her neck to sniff the shiny stuff.

Toklo came up to see, and planted a paw on the shiny tendril. ‘He’s swallowed something,’ he said. ‘I’ll see if I can pull it out.’

‘No, don’t!’ Kallik flinched as Toklo swung round to face her, shock and worry flashing in his eyes. ‘Nisa told me about this stuff when we were together on the ice. It’s called . . . fishing line. Flat-faces use it to pull fish out of the sea. Nisa told me it’s really dangerous.’

Toklo poked the line with one paw. ‘How do you catch a fish with that?’

‘There’s a hook on the other end,’ Kallik explained, blinking as she pictured what was happening to Ujurak right now. ‘I think Ujurak has it stuck in his throat. That must be where the blood is coming from.’

‘So what are we going to do?’ Lusa squeaked.

‘Don’t pull it, to begin with,’ Kallik ordered. ‘That will just push the hook in deeper.’

‘Are we supposed to let him die in front of us?’ Toklo growled.

‘Of course not . . . Lusa, your paws are smallest. Can you reach down Ujurak’s throat?’

‘I’ll try.’

Kallik levered Ujurak’s jaws open with her paws. When she tilted his head back – his eyes didn’t open – she could see the line trailing down his throat, mixed up with scraps of half-chewed seaweed. Lusa tried to squeeze her paw into Ujurak’s mouth, but it was clear right away that she couldn’t reach far enough down his throat to find the hook.

‘It’s no use.’ Kallik let Ujurak’s jaws close, and gently drew one paw down the side of his neck. He gave a muffled, rasping cough and then lay still again.
Kallik stared hopelessly at Lusa and Toklo. Their friend was dying, and there was nothing they could do. Ujurak would know which herbs might help, maybe even how to get the hook out without hurting him more. But Ujurak couldn’t help himself, and they were useless without him.

‘We can’t help him,’ said Lusa, echoing Kallik’s thoughts, ‘but I think the flat-faces would know what to do.’

‘Oh, right,’ Toklo grumbled. ‘Like flat-faces would care about a bear.’

‘They will!’ Lusa insisted. She sounded so certain that a tiny spark of hope flared up inside Kallik. ‘Back in the Bear Bowl, there were flat-faces who healed bears. They took my mother away and made her better when she was sick.’

‘We’re not in the Bear Bowl now, in case you haven’t noticed,’ Toklo pointed out.

‘And we don’t know if there are any flat-faces who heal bears here,’ Kallik added, her spark of hope ready to be snuffed out.

‘But we know they heal other flat-faces,’ Lusa retorted. ‘Remember the little cub who fell over and cut his leg? Later on we saw him running around,
quite well again. That flat-face den where his father took him must be where the flat-face healer lives.’

‘And how does that help Ujurak?’ Toklo asked.

But Kallik had already understood what Lusa meant. ‘If Ujurak can turn into a flat-face –’ she said slowly.

‘Then we can take him to the healer,’ Lusa finished, her eyes shining. ‘And the healer will help him.’

Toklo grunted. ‘He was a flat-face cub when I first met him. But I don’t know if he’ll be able to change now.’

Kallik nudged Ujurak’s shoulder with her snout. ‘Come on, Ujurak, wake up! You have to be a flat-face.’

Ujurak didn’t move. Toklo shouldered Kallik aside and gave Ujurak a sharper prod. ‘Wake up!’

Ujurak moaned faintly and more blood trickled out of his mouth. His eyes flickered open, glazed with pain; he stared at his friends as if he didn’t recognise them. A grating sound came from his throat.

‘Don’t try to talk,’ Kallik said, bending over him. ‘You’re hurt. But you have to turn into a flat-face so we can help you.’

Ujurak blinked slowly, as if he didn’t understand.
Kallik peered at him, looking for the first signs of change, but he was definitely still a bear.

‘It’s no use, he can’t –’ Toklo began.

‘He can and he
will
.’ Kallik wouldn’t let any of them give up yet. ‘Come on, Ujurak. You know what a flat-face looks like. Please try.’

‘You don’t have any fur, and your skin is pink,’ Lusa added, crouching down beside Ujurak on the other side from Kallik. ‘Your face is flat.’

‘Don’t worry, we’ll stay close.’ Kallik pressed herself against Ujurak’s flank, feeling the cold of his sea-soaked fur. ‘We won’t let the flat-faces hurt you.’

A hoarse groan came from Ujurak. Very slowly, Kallik saw his fur start to melt away, until his body was patched with brown and pink. His legs grew thinner, twitching with pain as they transformed. Kallik watched with a mix of pity and wonder as her friend’s forepaws stretched and divided, cramping into claw-shapes. Ujurak let out another cry of pain, higher pitched this time, as his snout shrank and his ears twisted and flattened. At last the remaining patches of brown fur vanished, except for a tangle covering his head.

Kallik gazed down at the frail flat-face cub lying in
front of her with the waves washing around him. He had lost consciousness again in the final stage of his transformation. His breath was faint and shallow. The fishing line still trailed from his mouth, with a froth of pink blood around his face.

‘Come on,’ Lusa barked. ‘He’ll die if we don’t get moving.’

‘I’ll carry him,’ Kallik offered.

‘No, I will.’ Toklo stepped forward, looking stunned. Kallik could understand; Ujurak’s transformations were usually so easy, and he looked as if he enjoyed them. This had been full of pain and had taken every last scrap of his strength.

‘OK, Toklo, lie down here,’ Lusa instructed him.

The grizzly cub obeyed. Together Lusa and Kallik pushed Ujurak on to Toklo’s back. The brown bear rose to his paws with the pink flat-face cub draped over his shoulders; slowly and steadily he set off on the long trek back to the valley where they had seen the flat-face denning place. The sun was sinking, its sullen red gleams piercing through stormy grey clouds. Kallik knew instinctively that they had to get Ujurak to shelter before darkness fell. An injured flat-face cub, with no warm coat of fur, could never
survive the cold night. That was the shape Ujurak needed to be in to be healed, but he seemed so vulnerable and frail in it!

She and Lusa plodded along on either side, ready to catch Ujurak if he started to fall off. Kallik remembered how she and Taqqiq used to ride on their mother Nisa’s back. But that had been fun, one of the games on the ice with her brother that Kallik missed so much. This was more like the time Toklo had carried Lusa on his back after she was struck by the firebeast. They had been so afraid that Lusa would die, and now they were in another desperate race – this time to save Ujurak’s life.

Ujurak shifted slightly, and Kallik rested her muzzle on his leg to keep him in place. She could feel how cold he was. She had always thought of flat-face skin as pink, but Ujurak was pale as snow, with a blue tinge like ice under the moon. He was still deeply unconscious, his head lolling.

‘His spirit is ready to go,’ she whispered in horror.

‘He’ll be OK,’ Lusa tried to reassure her. ‘The flat-face healer will know what to do.’

But Kallik couldn’t share Lusa’s optimism, or her confidence in the skill of flat-faces. She had watched
Nisa and Nanuk die, even though she would have given anything to save them. Now Ujurak was fighting for his life.

As the bears trudged past the lone flat-face hut where they had first seen the cub, the first drops of rain began to fall; within moments it became a downpour. Wind drove it into their faces; their fur was soaked and the caribou trail they were following became a river of mud.

Toklo let out a growl. ‘This is all we need!’

The rain was bouncing off Ujurak’s unprotected body, plastering his remaining fur close to his head. Kallik clamped her jaws on a howl of distress. She knew that the fragile cub needed warmth and shelter; instead the rain might be washing away his last chance of life. She couldn’t even see if he was breathing any more.

When they finally rounded the last curve of the valley and came within sight of the flat-face denning area, there was no one to be seen.

‘They’re all keeping dry in their dens,’ Kallik murmured.

‘So what do we do with Ujurak?’ Toklo asked. ‘We need to get him into shelter, fast.’

‘That’s where the little cub came out,’ Lusa said, pointing with her snout towards one of the wooden dens. ‘The healer must live there.’

Without replying, Toklo veered from the caribou trail and plodded up to the door of the den. He crouched down; very gently Lusa and Kallik pulled Ujurak off his back and let him lie on the ground in front of the door. Kallik realised that he was still breathing, but his breath seemed shallow and quick.

‘Come on,’ Toklo said, rising to his paws again. ‘Let’s get out of here. We don’t want the flat-faces to spot us.’

He bounded off toward the shelter of a rocky outcrop at the edge of the caribou trail. Lusa raced after him. Before she joined them, Kallik let out a long, low-pitched howl.

‘Help! Our friend is hurt! Come, quickly!’

Then, without looking back, she followed the others. As soon as she reached the rock where the others were hiding, Kallik poked her head out of cover to see what was happening. The door of the flat-face den stayed closed.

‘What if the flat-face isn’t there?’ she whispered to Lusa, who was peering out beside her.

‘He is. He’s got to be!’ The small black bear spat each word out through gritted teeth.

Still there was no movement from inside the den. Pain gripped Kallik’s belly as she saw how small and vulnerable Ujurak looked, huddled on the ground with rain running down his bare, pale skin.