The Last Wilderness (5 page)

As the view opened up and they could see the plain once more, they disturbed a flock of snow geese. The birds went whirling up into the sky, filling the air with the clamour of their wings and their harsh cries.

Kallik paused to watch as the flock formed into a ragged wedge-shape and flew off across the open ground. Her excitement rose as her gaze followed them and she saw the edge of the ocean, the blue
waves stretching to the horizon where she could see the tempting shimmer of ice.

‘Come on!’ she called to Lusa and Ujurak. ‘It’s not far now!’

She quickened her pace until she was bounding along, with her friends panting after her, splashing through the river’s wandering channels. Mounds of tough, springy grass grew up to the water’s edge, delicate wild flowers dancing among them. High in the pale sky, a golden eagle hovered.

The light strengthened as the sun rose, turning the surface of the water to dazzling silver. The darkly forested slopes were far behind them now, and Kallik shivered with anticipation at the cries of seabirds coming from up ahead. As the river neared the ocean, she left the bank and struck across the shore at an angle until she could stand at the very edge, with seawater lapping at her paws. The air was laden with the scents of ice and fish.

‘Home . . .’ she whispered.

Narrowing her eyes, Kallik peered at the ice in the distance. Its frosty glimmer merged with the haze at the bottom of the sky.
Can I swim out to it yet?
she wondered.
It seems very far away
. . .

‘Kallik . . .’ Lusa said nervously behind her.

Kallik turned her head to see Lusa and Ujurak backing away, staring at something further along the shore. Following their gaze, she spotted another white bear with two half-grown cubs, trundling along the shoreline towards them. For a moment a pang of sorrow stabbed at her belly.
That should have been Nisa and Taqqiq and me
. . .

Lusa and Ujurak, wary of a strange bear so much bigger than they were, scurried to take shelter behind a nearby thornbush, but Kallik stayed where she was until the she-bear and her cubs came up to her. ‘Greetings,’ she said, dipping her head respectfully to the mother bear. ‘Are you going on to the ice?’

The she-bear’s eyes widened in shock as she gazed at Kallik. ‘You’re so thin, young one!’ she exclaimed. ‘Where have you come from?’

‘From another sea, a long way away,’ Kallik replied. ‘The ice melted there, so I crossed the land to Great Bear Lake, and then to here. I was looking for the Place of Everlasting Ice.’

‘You have come so far!’ The mother bear breathed out the words in amazement, while her two cubs
stared at Kallik as if she were Silaluk herself, come down from the sky. ‘I’ve only ever met one other bear who made that journey from the other Frozen Sea. Her name was Siqiniq; she was very wise.’

‘I know Siqiniq!’ Kallik exclaimed joyfully. ‘I met her at Great Bear Lake. She was my friend.’

The mother bear dipped her head. ‘I’m glad to hear Siqiniq still lives. I was only a cub when I met her, but I’ve never forgotten her. How did you manage the journey?’ she went on. ‘So many skylengths, and alone!’

‘I wasn’t alone,’ Kallik replied. ‘Not all the way. I had friends with me.’ She pointed with her snout toward Ujurak and Lusa, who were peering out anxiously from behind the thornbush.

The she-bear flinched, instinctively stepping between them and her cubs, who huddled behind their mother. ‘A brown bear and a black bear?’ she growled. ‘What are they doing so close to the sea? Those kinds don’t often come down to the shore.’

‘They won’t try to hurt you, or your cubs,’ Kallik assured her. ‘They’re just waiting for me and they’ve helped me come all this way. But now I think my journey’s at an end.’ She turned again to gaze out to
sea. ‘I’ve found what I was searching for. The Place of Everlasting Ice.’

Was the ice closer than when she had first seen it? Kallik wasn’t sure, but her longing to swim out to it, to be part of that cold, white world again, was so strong that she could taste it. ‘Are you going to the ice?’ she asked the she-bear.

‘Not yet,’ the she-bear answered. ‘I’ll wait until my cubs are stronger first.’

Kallik eyed the two cubs. They looked strong to her already, plump and healthy, so different from the wretchedly thin bears she had seen on the shore of the Melting Sea and at Great Bear Lake. With their mother to take care of them, they were sure to reach the ice soon.

Longingly Kallik gazed out at the ice again. Its pull was overwhelming; her ears filled with the murmurings of the ice-spirits, the sound of ice crystals forming in the water. The ice seemed to have drawn closer already. Kallik felt as if she could stretch out her snout and touch it. Her paws carried her into the sea; she could feel the cold touch of the waves as they lapped around her legs. Her excitement rising, she waded deeper into the icy water.

Then she halted abruptly as a huge paw rested on her back. ‘Wait, little one,’ came the voice of the mother bear. ‘The ice will soon return.’

The whispering of the spirits faded, drowned by the cries of seabirds and the rush of wind in Kallik’s ears. She became aware once more of the wide stretch of open sea that separated her from the ice.

Kallik wrenched herself free from the lure of the ice. She was standing several bearlengths from the shore, the waves washing against her belly fur. Beside her, the she-bear watched her with worried bright eyes.

‘Sorry,’ Kallik said hoarsely, beginning to head back to shore. ‘You’re right. I’ll wait.’ Wading out of the sea, she shook water from her pelt and dipped her head to the mother bear. ‘Thank you.’

‘You’re welcome, young one,’ the mother bear replied. ‘Maybe we will meet again, on the ice.’

‘I hope so,’ Kallik replied.

Calling her cubs to her, the mother bear trudged off along the shore. With one more curious stare at Kallik, the cubs followed, their stubby tails bobbing as they scampered over the stones. Kallik glanced across to where Lusa and Ujurak were still
peering anxiously from behind the bush.

‘Are you OK?’ Lusa called.

‘Fine,’ Kallik replied, plodding up the beach to join them.

Their concern for her filled her with warmth, but she knew that however much she loved them, the pull of the ice was stronger. For the first time, she realised that when the ice came close enough to the shore, she would be able to leave them without regret.

My path is different from theirs
, she told herself.
Soon I must go where they can’t follow
.

L
usa, Kallik and Ujurak turned back towards the low hills. Lusa kept close to Kallik’s side and her anxiety gradually ebbed away. For a few heart-stopping moments she had thought that her friend was going to leave her forever and swim out towards the glittering ice on the horizon. Relief had flooded over her when Kallik had turned back.

But she’ll go as soon as the ice reaches the shore
, a small inner voice nagged at her.

Lusa pushed the thought away. She would deal with parting from Kallik when it happened, and not before. For a while they wandered along, following the line of the shore. Ujurak bounded down to the water’s edge to sniff at a piece of wood washed up on the pebbles, only to bounce out of the way as a bigger
wave surged in and swirled around his paws.

‘I’m soaked!’ he exclaimed, trotting back towards his friends, scattering shining water drops from his fur.

Kallik nudged his shoulder with her snout. ‘Now do you know how wonderful it is to have your paws in the ocean?’

Ujurak wrinkled his nose. ‘The water doesn’t taste very nice,’ he commented, licking droplets from his muzzle.

Kallik snorted. ‘You don’t have to drink it!’

Gradually they veered inland, heading back towards the hills, stopping where the pebbly beach gave way to scrub so they could strip a thornbush of its berries. Halfway through her second mouthful, Lusa realised she could hear a tremendous rattling and clacking coming from beyond the ridge.

‘What’s
that
?’ Kallik barked.

‘Let’s go and see!’ Ujurak bounded ahead, halting at the top of the slope. ‘Look!’ he exclaimed as Lusa and Kallik scrambled up beside him.

Lusa stared down into the next valley at the moving river of caribou, massed so close together that she could hardly see the ground they were walking on. The loud rattling was coming from their feet as they
headed away from the coast, many times louder and faster than the rattling from the lazily ambling caribou they’d seen the day before.

‘Where are they all going?’ Kallik asked, putting her head on one side. ‘There’s nothing chasing them.’

Lusa shrugged. She had no idea what could have prompted the herd to move off all together like this. Did they feel Ujurak’s urge to travel, or the powerful pull that was drawing Kallik back to the ice?

‘Toklo will be disappointed,’ she said. ‘He wanted to hunt them.’

While she was speaking, she spotted a flat-face den at one side of the valley. It was built of tree trunks, and it blended so well into the landscape that Lusa hadn’t noticed it until now. Her heart began to race. She gave Kallik a nudge with her snout. ‘Look over there.’

Kallik’s eyes stretched wide with dismay. ‘That’s a flat-face den! There aren’t supposed to be any flat-faces here.’

Looking more closely, Lusa spotted flat-face pelts strung on a line at one side of the den, and a wisp of smoke coming from a round thing like a tree stump on the roof.

‘There’s something odd . . .’ she muttered.

Snuffing the air, she figured out what was different about this den. There was no smell of BlackPaths around it, or the heavy scent of the flowers flat-faces grew in their gardens. The den didn’t just blend into the valley because it was made from tree trunks; it didn’t even have a distinctive flat-face scent. ‘Maybe these flat-faces aren’t dangerous,’ Ujurak suggested hopefully.

‘Aren’t flat-faces always dangerous?’ Kallik huffed.

As they stood peering down at the den, the door was flung wide and a young flat-face cub burst into the open. He was pointing at the caribou herd and yelling something in a high-pitched voice. An older female flat-face followed the cub outside, along with a broad-shouldered flat-face male. All three of them wore pelts made of the same grey-brown fur as the caribou; the little cub had a brightly coloured pelt on his head.

The female flat-face called the cub back to her, and all three of them watched the herd as they walked past. Lusa, Ujurak and Kallik crouched side by side in the long grass, their gaze fixed on the little group.

‘They haven’t seen us,’ Kallik whispered. ‘Do you think we should go?’

‘I can’t see any firesticks –’ Lusa began, breaking off when she noticed a familiar shape lying in the shadow of a rock not far from the flat-face den.
Toklo!

Ujurak spotted him at the same moment. ‘There’s Toklo,’ he announced cheerfully. ‘Let’s sneak up on him and surprise him.’

‘Not in front of the flat-faces, fluff-brain,’ Lusa retorted.

At first she thought that Toklo was asleep, but then she noticed that his ears were alert. He was watching the caribou, muscles tensed, ready to spring into the hunt. But before he could move, Lusa noticed the little flat-face cub running towards the rock where the brown bear was hiding. With his gaze fixed on the caribou, Toklo hadn’t seen him.

‘Ujurak, look!’ Lusa exclaimed, her heart beginning to thump with panic. She remembered the time when Toklo had been so desperate for food he had almost attacked another flat-face cub. What would he do now, if the little flat-face interrupted his hunt? ‘We’ve got to do something!’ she went on. ‘Ujurak –’

She swung round towards her friend, only to see a
young caribou hurrying down the slope to join the herd, his feet clicking briskly. Horns were sprouting from his head as he trotted away.

‘Oh, no!’ she exclaimed, annoyance mingling with her fear. ‘Ujurak’s done it again!’

Turning back to the rock, Lusa saw that the young flat-face had scampered up to Toklo and was reaching out to him. Toklo looked up in surprise, then stretched out his muzzle towards the cub. Was he preparing to launch himself forward? Lusa and Kallik were too far away to do anything. Lusa dug her claws into the ground, flinching at the thought of Toklo’s jaws closing on the cub’s paw, but all the grizzly did was to sniff suspiciously at the little flat-face’s fur coat. The flat-face cub didn’t look scared at all.

‘Toklo doesn’t know what to make of him,’ Kallik commented, amusement in her voice.

Lusa’s heartbeat steadied as she realised that Toklo wasn’t going to hurt the cub. He was pressing himself back against the rock while the little flat-face patted him with one paw, letting out happy cries. Lusa snorted as she imagined Toklo huffing with vexation. He was trapped, helpless as a rabbit, by a tiny flat-face!

At the same time, the last of the caribou herd disappeared up the valley; the clattering sound died away and only the trampled ground showed where they had passed. Toklo had missed his chance of prey.

The flat-face cub turned away from Toklo and scrambled up to the top of the rock. Suddenly he tottered and fell over, letting out a loud cry. Lusa could see a rip in the pelt that covered his hind legs, and blood trickling out of it. Toklo leaped backwards in alarm.