The Quest Begins (14 page)

A long sharp claw was prodding
Toklo awake. He blinked and rubbed his eyes. At first he thought it must be his mother waking him, but then he remembered she'd left him by the river. He looked up and a bolt of terror shot through him.

It was the full-grown bear from the day before—the one whose prey he'd stolen. He had a deep scar across his muzzle and an unfriendly look in his eyes.

“What are you doing here, cub?” the bear growled.

“I—I'm—” Toklo stammered.

“Where did you come from?” The bear nodded his head toward the woods, where the pile of prey had been buried. “Did you go through there?”

“No!” Toklo lied. “I came down off that mountain over there. I haven't gone into those woods.”

“Well, you'd better not,” the bear snarled. “This is
my
territory.” He reared up onto his hind legs. “See the marks on this tree?” He indicated a set of deep scratches in the bark. “That
means this place is mine.”

“Fine,” Toklo said. “I didn't know. I won't go in.”

“Go back to where you came from,” the bear growled, dropping to all fours again. “There is nothing for you—or any other bear—here.”

Snarling, he lumbered off into the trees, and Toklo backed away into the meadow, watching the grizzly until he couldn't see him anymore.

The sun rose higher in the sky, heating the earth beneath his paws. He could tell that the season of fishleap was truly beginning. Toklo kept journeying up the mountain, following the line of melting snow, digging up flower bulbs to eat all along the way. Their taste didn't compare to squirrels or hare, but it helped his legs stay fast and strong…which they needed to be in case he encountered other hungry bears with strong feelings about sharing their prey with cubs.

He could smell the scent of prey in the air around him—small animals roused, like him, by the new-growing grasses and flowers. Toward the end of the day, he found a burrow that smelled promising. He paused at the entrance and listened. Not far inside, he could hear muffled shuffling sounds, and the scent of juicy prey made his stomach growl. There was a rabbit inside! Panting with eagerness, he sank his claws into the earth and scrabbled down into the hole, but the rabbit fled out of reach, its feet drumming on the earth. Toklo's stomach rumbled loud as thunder as he drifted off to sleep that night, and he dreamed of sinking his teeth into rabbit flesh.

Three sunrises later, Toklo had made his way near the peak of the mountain. He stayed closer to the open meadows above the tree line to avoid the thick forests in the valley, which all seemed to be claimed by grizzlies already. He had his nose to the ground, sniffing for fresh water, when another rabbit leaped out of the bushes almost directly in front of him. Toklo raced after the rabbit as it fled up a small ridge. His paws pounded on the ground and the wind swept through his fur, making it ripple like grass. As he reached the crest, the rabbit vanished into a hole, and Toklo skidded to a stop. He was at the edge of a path like a huge claw scratch down the side of the mountain. On either side were trees and rocks, covered in snow, but the scratch itself was bristling with bright green shoots, standing out sharply against the bare trees on either side. At the bottom was a heap of snow-covered boulders and snapped tree trunks, as if a bear had kicked them off the top of the mountain and sent them crashing down the steep slope.

Toklo realized that this must be one of the mountain slides his mother had told him about. He looked around nervously, wondering if any other parts of the mountain were about to fall off.

“Listen to the birds,” Oka had said. “They will warn you. If you prick up your ears and hear no birds, run away as fast as you can.”

Toklo twitched his ears. Birds were chattering all around him, singing and whistling at one another. That must mean there was no danger from the mountain here. He sighed with
relief. The claw scratch was alive with the smells of wildflowers, and he scrambled onto it, rooting around for food.

Toklo padded up the scratch, nosing through the mountain grasses and digging up roots. About halfway up, he came around the side of a gray boulder twice his height and nearly crashed into a full-grown grizzly.

“HEY!” the bear roared, standing on its hind legs. “Get out, get out!” He dropped to all fours and leaped at Toklo.

Toklo jumped back with a startled yelp. “I'm not bothering you!” he protested. “There are enough bulbs and roots here for lots of bears.”

“Is that what you think?” the bear snarled. “That just shows what an ignorant cub you are. Get out of here, before I rip your fur.”

“Why can't I stay?” Toklo whined. He was sick of being driven away. How could every pawstep on this mountain be part of some other bear's territory?

“The uplands are not for cubs,” the adult bear said bossily. “Go back down to the valley. Only the strongest bears can hunt up here.” He lunged with his claws outstretched, swiping at Toklo's side. Toklo felt a sting of pain as the claws grazed him, and with a howl, he turned and ran back down the mountain. He could feel the other bear's eyes on him as he stumbled over the rutted earth, his angry gaze pricking the back of Toklo's ears.

Toklo tumbled to a stop at the bottom of the scratch and leaned against a rock, panting. It wasn't fair! His mother should be here to fight for him, to make sure he got enough
food. He could still hear the other bear roaring, so he forced himself to keep going, on down the mountain and into the trees, even though his belly felt pinched and empty.

After a while he heard the sound of firebeasts ahead of him, so he knew there must be a BlackPath close by, like the one in the valley where he'd lived with Oka and Tobi. This valley had many of the same smells—flat-faces, burning and metal, rotfood—but the shape of the mountains around it was different, and there was a river flowing through it that had split off from the one he'd been following earlier. Following the sound of the firebeasts, he clambered down through dark trees until he reached the edge of the BlackPath.

Something was lying on the grass that smelled like rotfood, but it wasn't an animal, as far as Toklo could tell. It looked like moldy bits of lots of different things, wrapped in a thin black skin with no fur. The skin ripped easily when he sliced his claws into it, and what was inside came spilling out along with many confusing scents. Toklo stepped back, wrinkling his nose, trying to sort out the different smells. It definitely seemed like there was
something
in there he could eat.

He found a few bones with chewed meat still sticking to them, and he gnawed all the rest of the meat off and crunched the bones with his teeth. Then he found a hollowed-out shape with something sweet inside, and he stuck his tongue in to lick it all up. This wasn't so bad. While he was stretching his tongue to get the last trace of sweet, sticky stuff, a blast of noise came from a firebeast racing past, and Toklo jumped. His muzzle scraped against a sharp metal edge and he felt his
skin tear. The new stabbing pain in his mouth joined the throbbing in his side where the bear had clawed him.

Toklo backed away from the rotfood and padded back into the forest, climbing up the slope through the trees. Blood was dripping from his muzzle, warm and salty, and as soon as he found a snowbank, he stuck his nose in it. When his nose felt numb, he pulled it out and dug himself a shallow hole in the ground. He curled up and pressed his nose into the earth, breathing in the warmth and the clean growing scents of the dirt until sleep finally overtook him.

The next day, the firebeasts were quieter on the BlackPath, and Toklo was able to hear the splash of the river in the woods behind him. He followed the noise until he reached the bank and carefully stepped into the water. This river was smaller, shallower, and faster than the one where he'd tried fishing for salmon with his mother. The banks were made of soft earth that crumbled, instead of pebbles that sloped straight into the water. Toklo stood with his back to the current, watching the reflections dance and sparkle on the surface. He tried to listen for the bear spirits, but all he could hear was the rushing and splashing around his paws.

All at once, something silver slithered between his paws. Toklo was so surprised, he reacted instinctively and leaped for it. He landed on his belly in the water, soaking his fur, and the fish twisted away just out of reach, vanishing downriver.

But I was close!
Toklo thought. He scrambled onto his feet and waited for another one to come by. Before long, he spotted the flash of movement again and dove at it. Once again,
he ended up flat on his belly with a noseful of river water. He stood up, shaking his head. Every time he dove, water splashed in his eyes so he couldn't see anything. But he couldn't think of another way to do it.

Toklo tried to catch fish for the rest of the day. There was no shortage of fish—almost every time he stood up, another one darted between his paws. But that just made it even more frustrating when he couldn't catch any. At last he stomped up the bank and sat on a rock, glaring at the river. He could see the dark shapes of fish flitting past, casting shadows on the riverbed. They seemed happy and unafraid, as if they knew they had nothing to fear from him.

“Thanks a lot, river spirits,” Toklo muttered. “Fat lot of good you are. Can't you do anything useful, like send a fish to my paws? Stupid bunch of weasel-brains. You're as useless as a black bear. Longsleeping, squirrel-faced, hollow-headed salmon-brains!”

The river kept burbling past, ignoring him. Toklo got up and began following it, pacing along the bank. The water seemed to be in a hurry, swirling by in a flurry of choppy waves and frothing splashes. He wondered where it was going at such a fast pace, and if all the bear spirits were going there, too. His mother had said that the bear spirits floated downriver until they reached the end, a place of forgetfulness where they faded from every bear's memory.

Well, if that's where Tobi's trying to go, he hasn't gotten there yet,
Toklo thought. He certainly hadn't forgotten about his brother, although he wanted to. Every time he remembered the sad
scrap of fur lying in the half-built den, alone, Toklo had to remind himself that he didn't
want
Tobi here, whining and dragging his paws and feeling ill all the time. He wished Tobi would hurry up and get to the end of the river so Toklo could stop thinking about him.

A noise ahead snapped him out of his thoughts. Toklo crept up the slope until he was hidden from the river by a thick line of bushes. He edged along to a place where he could peer through at the water below. Not three bearlengths from him, a brown she-bear was standing in the shallows with two cubs. The cubs were wrestling, splashing in the river and dunking each other underwater.

“Little ones,” their mother scolded gently, “this is not the time for playing. Pay attention to me.”

The bigger, darker cub obediently sat down, but the smaller one, with a patch of light blond fur across her shoulders, couldn't resist swatting one last splash of water at him.

“Hey!” the bigger cub protested.

“SIT,” their mother ordered. They both snapped to attention, watching her.

“Now watch me,” the mother bear said. She paced through the water until she found a spot where boulders channeled the current directly between her paws. She stood and waited, her head lowered to stare at the water, but it wasn't very long before she pounced. When she lifted her head, she held a fat, flapping salmon between her teeth. She shook it hard until it stopped flapping about. Then the mother bear brought it over to her cubs.

“The trick is to look before you jump,” she explained, dropping the fish on the pebbles beside them. “Don't pounce on where you see the fish—pounce on the spot where it's going, because by the time you land, that's where it will be. Take a moment to plan it out, because as soon as you move, the water will splash in your eyes and you'll have to rely on your paws to find it and hold it down.”

Toklo pricked up his ears. He hadn't thought of that…. He had just leaped as soon as he saw anything move. He curled his lip. How could he know what to do, anyway? Oka should have taught him.

The cubs were splashing through the shallows, chasing after their mother and trying to imitate her. The smaller cub kept batting hopefully at the water with her paws. Toklo could see that she didn't have enough patience for this task yet. Like him, she would jump before thinking, sending cascades of water over herself and her brother.

But the bigger cub stood calmly, staring at the river. Toklo's paws prickled with tension as he waited, feeling every whisker on his body quiver. When the cub finally leaped and emerged from the water with a fish in his mouth, Toklo wanted to shout with triumph. The cub had done it! He'd caught a fish!

“Good job, Fochik!” his mother praised him. “That was terrific!”

“Wow,” said his little sister, circling her brother. “Maybe you're not such a slippery-paws after all.”

“Thanks, Aylen,” the cub said.

Toklo watched Fochik drag the fish to the edge of the river,
using his claws to keep it from being dragged away in the current. The cub nudged the salmon's body with his muzzle until it lodged on some stones, just out of reach of the water. Toklo narrowed his eyes, thinking. He could steal that fish. The cubs were smaller than him, so he wasn't afraid of fighting them if they tried to stop him. The mother bear was a different matter, but she was back in the stream, watching the current—Toklo could slip in and out before she even noticed. It wasn't as if the bears would go hungry if he took this fish. The she-bear would just catch more for them. He needed that fish more than they did because he didn't have a mother.

He snuck through the shadows of the bushes until he was less than a bearlength from the riverbank. Aylen was scampering around her brother at the edge of the water, begging for a bite. “Come on!” Toklo heard her cry. “Just a little! Let me try it!”