The Burning Horizon

by Erin Hunter

  “I hope Lusa has food and shelter,” Kallik said.

  Yakone nodded, his eyes solemn. “If she’s somewhere out there alone . . . Anything could have happened to her.”

  Kallik knew what Yakone was suggesting but didn’t dare let herself think that Lusa could be beyond rescuing. “Ujurak wouldn’t send us to find her if she was dead,” she told Yakone. “We have to trust him.”

  “I trust you,” Yakone responded. “And that means I know this is the right thing to do.”

  Kallik leaned into him, grateful for his strength and understanding. “Come on, let’s hunt,” she said.

  As the bears spread out quietly among the trees, Kallik was the first to spot prey. A ground squirrel was scrabbling in the roots of a mountain maple, and she killed it quickly with a single blow of her paw.

  “Thank you, spirits, for this prey,” she murmured, then called to her friends to come and share.

  Though the squirrel barely took the edge off their hunger, none of the bears wanted to spend any more time hunting.

  “We can catch something else on the way,” Toklo said.

  By now the stars had faded and a glow on the horizon showed where the sun would rise. Kallik and the others headed toward it.

  Toklo took the lead, and almost at once began to take them upward again. “Lusa and I traveled along the peaks the last time we made the journey to Great Bear Lake,” he told the others. “There are fewer trees up there so you can see more clearly, and there aren’t as many flat-faces.”

  As they climbed higher in the cool dawn, Kallik felt new strength flowing into her legs. The clean-tasting air invigorated her, a welcome change after the suffocating heat from the last few days of walking. It didn’t take long to leave the thick forest behind, entering a region of steep slopes and tilted slabs of rock, where the occasional stunted tree or sparse bushes were all that managed to root themselves in the thin soil.

  Toklo seemed tireless as he hauled himself over boulders and plunged down into the steep ravines that crossed their path. He never faltered, as though he knew exactly where he was going.

  The air was so still and silent around them, without even the sound of birdsong or falling water, that Kallik felt as though the three of them were all that moved in that bleak landscape beneath the blue sky and scudding white clouds.

  She and Yakone walked side by side in Toklo’s pawsteps. A particularly hard scramble led them up onto the ridge at the very top of the mountain, where Yakone paused briefly, puffing out his breath.

  “Are you okay?” Kallik prompted. “Is your paw hurting?”

  Yakone shook his head and started to follow Toklo again. “My paw’s fine. But I’m frightened for Lusa. How will we ever find her among all this?” He swung his head around, taking in the huge stretches of the mountains. “Firebeasts can travel so much faster than us. She could be all the way to the Melting Sea by now!”

  Kallik paused. “But you’ll keep on looking for her, right?” she asked in a small voice.

  Yakone padded on for a few more paces, then glanced sideways at Kallik. “I have faith in Ujurak to get us there,” he grunted. “It’s just that . . . the mountains are so big, and Lusa is so small.”

  “I know.” Kallik touched Yakone’s shoulder with her muzzle. “But we will find her. I’m sure we will. We have Ujurak’s help now.”

  A little farther on, the craggy slopes leveled out into a rocky plateau, where small creeping plants struggled to grow in the cracks.

  “I remember this place!” Toklo exclaimed, coming to a halt. “It’s where Ujurak turned into a goat.”

  “I wish I could turn into one,” Yakone said, with a rueful glance at his stunted paw. “I’d do a lot better among all these rocks.”

  Crossing the flat plateau was easy, but after that they reached a place where the ridge became too spiky for them to walk, and they had to scramble down until they reached a path a few bearlengths below.

  “I remember this place, too,” Toklo said, sniffing. “It’s where we were chased by wolves. Ujurak turned into a mule deer and led them away.”

  “Do you think there are still wolves here?” Kallik asked nervously.

  “If there are, we’ll give them something to remember,” Toklo responded grimly. “We’re a lot bigger than Lusa and I were back then. . . .”

  His voice trailed off and he paused, his eyes clouding with sadness. Kallik knew he must be wrestling with the fact that neither Ujurak nor Lusa was with them now.

  “It’s not your fault that we’ve lost them,” Kallik pointed out gently. “And we’ll find Lusa again.”

  “We were so close to the end of our journeys!” Toklo snarled, stamping on a scrap of dead branch that splintered under his paw.

  “Exactly,” Kallik said. “And Ujurak won’t let us finish without Lusa.”

  Toklo hesitated, his spurt of angry despair fading. Then he swung around and headed along the path once more.

  The mention of wolves had made Kallik more alert, and before long she began to pick up traces of scent like that of abandoned prey, or blood on the pelt of a predator. “Toklo . . .” she began.

  “I know,” Toklo growled. “I can smell it, too. But it’s stale scent . . . a day or two old. There aren’t any wolves around now.”

  “I’d still be happier if we got away from here,” Kallik said, remembering their fierce battles against the wolves in Toklo’s forest.

  “The wolves might have left some prey behind,” Yakone suggested. “I’m getting hungry, and I haven’t seen a single thing to eat up here.”

  Toklo thought for a moment. “No,” he decided at last. “It’s not worth the risk to follow the scent. We’ll look for a place to turn off this path, and then try to hunt.”

  But at first there seemed to be no way of getting off their narrow trail. Sheer rock stretched upward on one side, while on the other the ground fell away in a precipice to the pine forests below. Kallik’s fur began to prickle with anxiety as the wolf scent grew stronger. Like it or not, the bears seemed to be heading right for them.

  Sunhigh was almost upon them when they spotted a narrow gully leading upward. It wasn’t a direction that would likely lead them to food, but at least they’d get a good look at their surroundings—and get off the wolf trail. Toklo immediately began scrambling up, scattering loose stones from his paws as he clambered higher. Kallik held back to let Yakone go next.

  If he slips because of his injured paw, I’ll be there to catch him.

  But the white bear hauled himself up behind Toklo without any trouble. Kallik brought up the rear, trying not to think about the plunging drop behind her.

  Up on the ridge, the bears stood still with the wind tugging at their fur while they looked out across the landscape ahead. On the opposite side of the ridge the slopes were gentler, and not far below was the dark line of the pine forest.

  “Let’s go that way,” Toklo said, with a jerk of his head toward the trees. “There should be prey there.”

  As they descended among the trunks, Kallik heard a muffled roaring sound, which grew louder as they walked. They followed a stony path through the trees and emerged beside a foaming stream that thundered down in a sheer, narrow cascade into a pool below. The air was full of spray and the scent of water.

  Cautiously, because the rocks beside the waterfall were slick with moisture, the bears scrambled down to the edge of the pool. As Kallik bent her head to drink, relishing the cold taste, she imagined how wonderful it would feel to plunge right into it and feel the icy torrent soaking into her fur.

  Without hesitating, she slid off the rocks and lowered herself into the pool. The churning water tossed her to and fro, but she battled it with strong paws, exhilarated by the struggle. She could feel the force of the stream lifting away the grit from her fur.

  “Come on, Yakone!” she called.

  Yakone plunged into the water and surfaced beside Kallik with a whoosh, splashing water into her face.

  “I’ll get you
for that!” she spluttered, diving at him.

  Yakone ducked down and reappeared on Kallik’s other side. “You can try!”

  But Kallik knew that they couldn’t go on playing forever. She turned to swim back to the rocks, and almost at once caught sight of a silver flicker in the white foam of the pool. Snapping her jaws instinctively, she closed her teeth on a fish. Satisfied, Kallik hauled herself out of the pool with water streaming from her pelt and dropped the fish at Toklo’s paws. Toklo’s eyes gleamed as he looked at her prey.

  “Nice catch,” he said. “Now we don’t need to waste time hunting.”

  The bears shared the fish—a plump trout—and set out again, among the trees.

  “We can’t keep traveling this far down from the ridge,” Toklo muttered after a short while. “The trees close us in, and we can’t see where we have to go. Now that we’ve eaten, we need to find a way back up.”

  Beams of sunlight slanted at an angle through the pine trees, and Kallik realized that the day was drawing to an end. We’ll have to make a den for the night soon. Before long a path opened up, winding its way through the trees and eventually bringing the bears out onto the edge of a long plateau that stretched in front of them as far as they could see. Trees encircled it, but the ground ahead was clear except for small rocks scattered across it with larger outcrops of boulders here and there.

  Toklo was peering into the distance. “What’s that?” he asked, pointing with his snout.

  Looking in that direction, Kallik saw a cloud of dust billowing into the air. At the same moment, she felt the ground vibrating through her pads. Yakone let out a grunt of surprise; clearly he could feel it, too.

  “There are a lot of animals in that cloud,” he said.

  “I’m going to get a better look.” Toklo headed for the nearest pine tree and began to haul himself up the trunk. “We need Lusa,” he huffed. “She’s the best at climbing.”

  Kallik felt a renewed pang of loss as she watched Toklo heaving himself slowly from branch to branch and remembered how nimbly Lusa could bound up a tree trunk.

  A moment later Toklo’s voice came down in a joyful bellow. “Caribou! We’ve found the caribou! Ujurak said we had to track them down in order to find Lusa!”

  For a moment Kallik could hardly believe it. Can it really be that easy?

  Toklo half fell, half scrambled down from the tree, and the bears set off again, heading in the direction of the caribou herd. The floor of the plateau was littered with stones and bigger boulders, and here and there were pools of ice. Kallik sniffed the air; it was much colder here, and a thin wind ruffled their fur, tasting of ice and stone.

  “This is better,” she said, beginning to feel more hopeful at the familiar tang.

  “Yeah.” Yakone’s voice was full of satisfaction. “It almost feels like home.”

  The bears picked up their pace until the caribou came into sight. The herd was heading away from them, with stragglers pausing to graze. The sound of their clicking feet carried faintly on the wind.

  “So where’s Lusa?” Toklo asked, halting and gazing around.

  Yakone raised his head and let out a mighty bellow. “Lusa! Lusa!”

  His roar echoed around the plateau, but no small black bear emerged from among the rocks.

  Toklo clawed at the ground in frustration. “She should be here! Something isn’t right.”

  Kallik fought back despair and tried to focus on what was important: finding Lusa. “Toklo, what did Ujurak say exactly?” she asked.

  Toklo hesitated, clearly deep in thought. “He told me to look for the place where the caribou walk,” he replied at last. “And he said we should find the caribou. But we’ve done that, and Lusa isn’t here!”

  “Then Ujurak didn’t actually say that Lusa would be with the caribou?” Kallik persisted. When Toklo shook his head, understanding began to grow inside her. “Don’t you see, Toklo? This is a sign, like the ones Ujurak followed before.” Turning to Yakone, she explained quickly, “Ujurak was always good at spotting signs, like the shape of trees or the position of rocks, that told us which way to go.”

  Toklo huffed out a breath. “So the caribou are another sign, showing us which way to go. If we want to find Lusa, we have to follow the caribou!”

  “Well, that shouldn’t be too hard,” said Yakone. “We can hardly lose a herd that size!”

  “Let’s go!” Kallik urged.

  She took the lead as they set out, picking up the pace again so that they drew closer to the herd. But as they emerged from the gap between two huge boulders, Toklo stopped, his gaze fixed on an outlier of the herd that was tearing at the leaves of a spiky bush. He swiped his tongue around his jaws.

  “Don’t even think about it,” Kallik warned him. “If we try to hunt, we could spook the whole herd. They might stampede in the wrong direction.”

  Toklo heaved a long sigh. “I suppose you’re right. But I really want to sink my teeth into a nice fat caribou.”

  “You’ll just have to keep wanting,” Kallik retorted sharply. “For now, these caribou aren’t prey. They’re our guides.”

  “So where are they leading us?” Yakone asked.

  Kallik shook her head in confusion. “I have no idea. But it must be where Lusa is, and that’s good enough for me. I trust Ujurak.”

  The bears padded along in the wake of the caribou, keeping their distance so as not to spook the herd.

  “It’s a good thing we’re downwind of them,” Toklo commented.

  The landscape gradually changed, the flat plateau surrounded now by mountains, the topmost ridges still streaked with snow. Between two of the peaks Kallik spotted a wide river of ice leading away into the distance. Ridges of ice like frozen waves reflected the dying sun, and the dark cracks of crevasses zigzagged across it.

  “It’s a glacier!” she exclaimed.

  “Wow!” Yakone said. “There’s a glacier on Star Island, but it’s much smaller than that one.”

  It’s like a sign, Kallik thought. A wonderful sign to tell us that we’re on the right track.

  Toklo tipped his head to one side. “We didn’t come this way last time.” He glanced around and finally pointed his snout toward another ridge, not far off, running in the same direction as the glacier. “I think we traveled along there.”

  “Then we’re going the same way, more or less,” Kallik said. “I think the glacier is another sign,” she added, voicing her earlier thought. “Showing us the way, just like all the other signs we’ve seen on our journey.”

  The caribou continued their trek toward the glacier, and the bears followed. As they walked on, the landscape continued to change. A glittering turquoise lake appeared below them, and big white birds swooped overhead. Kallik took long breaths of the cold air.

  It’s almost like being back on the ice!

  Suddenly a new sound jerked her back to the present, sharp and jarring in the peaceful dusk.

  Flat-faces!

  Their raucous chatter was the first warning the bears had that flat-faces were nearby. A moment later a small herd of them wearing brightly colored pelts appeared along a path that zigzagged down from the nearest ridge.

  “Hide!” Toklo ordered.

  Kallik glanced around wildly. They had come too far away from the trees to reach them without being spotted, and the flat plain didn’t offer much cover big enough to hide three bears.

  “There!” Yakone hissed, jerking his muzzle toward a cluster of rocks a few bearlengths away.

  He took the lead as the bears galloped toward the rocks and forced themselves into a tiny space beneath an overhang. Crushed together, they peered out at the flat-faces.

  Kallik couldn’t believe that they were really hidden in their narrow refuge. She felt like the flat-faces would spot them at any moment, and waited tensely for their bellowing to break out.

  I can’t see any firesticks, but that doesn’t mean these flat-faces don’t have any.

  But the flat-faces passed by, chatterin
g happily, not paying any attention to the bears.

  “Honestly,” Toklo muttered, scrambling out from the overhang when the sounds of the flat-faces’ pawsteps had died away, “are they blind and deaf? Couldn’t they even scent us?”

  “I don’t think they can scent anything with those tiny snouts, thank the stars,” Kallik said, shaking her pelt.

  Yakone was gazing around. “We have to rethink our route to stay away from the flat-faces,” he decided. “The caribou aren’t moving as fast as us, so that means we can take a longer route with more shelter.”

  Toklo nodded. “Back among the rocks,” he agreed. “Then we can hide more easily if we need to.”

  Together the bears left the open plateau and climbed part of the way up to the ridge. They had to scramble among rocks and around trees, and sometimes plunge through patches of snow to get to more comfortable ground. Kallik’s pelt prickled with the effort of staying alert for the signs of more flat-faces. The awful creatures are everywhere!

  As they rounded a bramble thicket, a sudden squawk startled them as a grouse exploded from the ground and battered its wings around Toklo’s head. Toklo lashed out a paw, but the bird swerved away and vanished into the trees. Kallik’s heart pounded as they gazed after it.

  “Too bad I wasn’t faster,” Toklo grunted. “That would have helped to fill our bellies.”

  “Never mind the grouse,” Yakone said, padding onward. “What about the caribou? We can’t see them from here. I’m afraid we’ve gone too high.”

  Toklo led the way through a patch of scrubby bushes to a jutting rock where they could look down onto the plateau. There was the caribou herd. Toklo gave a grunt of satisfaction at the sight of them, very small from this distance, surrounded by their dust cloud.

  “We haven’t lost them,” he said.

  Watching the progress of the caribou, Kallik felt a new surge of determination.

  Hold on, Lusa! We’re coming!

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Lusa

  A shaft of burning light pierced Lusa’s skull. Slowly she struggled back to consciousness and saw that a beam of sunlight was shining through a gap in the wall, high over her head. The noise of animals and birds filled the air.