Smoke Mountain

by Erin Hunter

  With each day that passed, Kallik grew more worried. They hadn’t seen any other signs, or anything to suggest that Qopuk was right about where they were going. There was no Big River and no Smoke Mountain in sight. Her paws ached, but more than that, her heart ached as she saw how frustrated and prickly Taqqiq was. She’d heard him mutter more than once that it was crazy to wander blindly like this, following the advice of a dead bear.

  As night fell after a day that had felt even hotter and longer than usual, she stopped to dip her paws in the river. She hated the feeling of dirt clumping in her fur, clogging up her claws. It was nothing like the smooth, clean feeling of ice underpaw. Toklo and Ujurak were far ahead with Lusa, leading the way along the stream with Taqqiq a few bearlengths behind them, shambling grumpily by himself.

  Kallik was relieved to see the sun dipping below the horizon in front of them. It felt like it had been in the sky forever. As the cooler night air moved in, her spirits rose.

  She hurried forward and nudged against Taqqiq. ‘Aren’t you glad the day is over?’ she said. ‘It’s so much cooler at night. And I like seeing the stars twinkling in the sky above us. Don’t you?’ She hoped she didn’t sound too desperate. She wanted to remind him of their earliest days together – and of how lucky they were to have found each other again.

  Taqqiq cast a scornful look at the pink-grey sky. ‘I don’t see any stars.’

  ‘Well, they’ll be out soon,’ Kallik persisted.

  ‘I thought the nights would come sooner once the Longest Day had passed,’ Taqqiq complained. ‘Those old bears at Great Bear Lake went on and on about how that meant the end of the sun’s power and the return of the cold and ice. But the sun still stays up in the sky forever. The nights are too short, and we barely even see the ice spots before the sun comes back and swallows them up. How do we know it will ever get cold again? What if the sun keeps eating the night until all the stars are gone?’

  Kallik was shocked. ‘That can’t happen!’ she said. ‘The night always comes back, and so does the ice. It’s just like Mother told us in the story of Silaluk and the hunters. Don’t you remember?’ She swerved around a jagged-looking rock in her path.

  ‘Then why hasn’t it come back yet?’ Taqqiq challenged. ‘I haven’t seen any ice in moons.’ He splashed his paw down hard in a puddle beside the river, soaking his fur with muddy water.

  ‘It will come back,’ Kallik said, wishing she could sound as sure as their mother always had. ‘Nisa said so.’

  ‘She didn’t know,’ Taqqiq said bitterly. ‘I think the ice spirits have abandoned us. They have gone into the sky and are hiding their faces behind the sun. They’re ashamed because they have no power to help us and there’s nothing they can do to save the ice.’

  ‘Taqqiq . . .’ Kallik began, openly pleading now. She glanced at the dim shapes of the other bears up ahead, their lengthening shadows reaching across the water as they plodded forward. She hoped they couldn’t hear Taqqiq’s anger and despair.

  ‘Don’t you remember?’ Taqqiq said, echoing her words, and now she could hear the deep sadness buried in his voice. ‘Remember the night skies when we were cubs? How bright the stars were, how dark the sky was, and how it went on forever? The snow sparkled under the moon. And we would lie curled up on the clean, cold ice, our noses buried in Mother’s warm fur, listening to her stories –’ His voice cracked and he turned his head away from her.

  ‘I do remember,’ Kallik said softly, pressing closer to share her warmth with him. ‘It was beautiful and safe on the ice. And we played in the snow while Mother watched – you would be the angry walrus chasing me.’

  They stopped walking, and Taqqiq twisted around to bury his nose in her fur. Kallik felt as though her heart were breaking and filling up at the same time. She had never seen him so sad – but her funny, sweet brother was still inside Taqqiq somewhere.

  The water gurgled over pale, flat stones beside them. With a huff, Taqqiq quickly stepped back. His large white paws splashed in the stream. ‘It’s not like that any more,’ he said gruffly. ‘Those days are over. The ice is gone.’ He hunched his shoulders and shambled away, following the other bears.

  Dismayed, Kallik watched him go. Why couldn’t he be glad that at least they had each other? Toklo’s mother and brother had died; Lusa had left her family a long, long way behind to find the brown bears; and she’d never heard Ujurak talk about any family, so perhaps they were all dead too. She and Taqqiq were lucky compared with them. And they also had friends – good friends, not like Salik and those awful cubs Taqqiq had been travelling with before. Surely now things could only get better, and they’d be together when they reached the Endless Ice?

  I wish Mother were here. She’d be able to tell us if burn-sky is supposed to be this long. She started walking again, hurrying to catch up with the others.

  A cool breeze ruffled Kallik’s fur, bringing strange smells with it – smells of firebeasts and no-claws and their odd, burned food. A shiver of anxiety trailed through her fur. Nothing good came from being near no-claws. She saw that Lusa had stopped up ahead, sniffing the air with her twitching black nose. The little black bear must have recognised the scents as well.

  Lusa trotted back and circled around Kallik, sniffing some more before she fell into step beside her. ‘I’m pretty sure there’s a flat-face den nearby,’ the black bear huffed. ‘A big one – did you notice all the smells? And either some really big firebeasts or lots of them, because there’s enough of that smell to make my nose hurt.’

  Kallik nodded. ‘I know what you mean. It feels like burning inside my nose.’

  ‘Yeah, exactly!’ Lusa agreed. ‘How do flat-faces live with them? I’d want to plug my nose with leaves if I had to be that close to firebeasts all the time.’

  ‘We should figure out where the smell is coming from, so we can stay far away from it.’

  ‘Except –’ Lusa broke off and started again. ‘Well, flat-faces have food.’ She wriggled, looking embarrassed. ‘I mean, we’re all hungry, and shouldn’t we eat wherever we can? Besides, it’s the only kind of hunting I’m any good at.’

  ‘Lusa! Kallik!’ Toklo called. Ahead of them, the stream turned left and wound around a tall, grassy hill. Ujurak and Taqqiq waded into the water and started lapping up the sparkling drops. Toklo was standing at the top of the rise above the stream. A kind of orange glow lit up the sky behind him, but it wasn’t the sun, which Kallik could see going down behind the trees in the distance. She hurried up to him with Lusa close behind her.

  ‘Look,’ Toklo said, pointing with his nose.

  Kallik’s heart leaped with mingled fright and excitement. At the edge of the sky loomed the jagged shapes of mountains, vast and tipped with snow. Even from here she thought she could see tendrils of smoke rising from them.

  ‘Smoke Mountain,’ Lusa breathed. ‘The old bear spoke of one mountain. Look, there are loads of them!’

  ‘Dumb old bear,’ Taqqiq muttered.

  ‘Taqqiq, that’s not nice,’ Kallik said.

  ‘It’s true though,’ Taqqiq replied. ‘He didn’t know what he was talking about.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter if it was one mountain or loads of mountains anyway,’ Toklo said. ‘We’re following the river.’

  ‘Qopuk was right!’ Kallik gasped. ‘There’s the Big River!’

  At the foot of the mountains, gleaming orange in the last rays of the setting sun, was a wide stretch of water. Kallik could see the shapes of no-claw dens clustered along the shore. Floating firebeasts belched smoke as they drifted down the river, and odd no-claw constructions poked out of the earth on both banks, tall and spindly but nothing like trees.

  ‘It’s so far,’ Lusa said. ‘Even to get to the Big River – and then to get to the other side where the Wilderness is . . . it looks impossible!’

  ‘We’ll do it one pawstep at a time,’ Toklo told her. Of all of them, he seemed the least awestruck by what stretched in front of them. ‘The way you found me, remembe
r?’

  Kallik’s gaze drifted to the sweep of marshy brown reeds just below them. The stream wandered through the reeds and disappeared under a large BlackPath. Only a short distance away, on the other side of the swampy terrain, was a long, low no-claw den that vibrated with noise. ‘First we have to get past that,’ she said.

  The den stood by itself beside the BlackPath with no other dens anywhere nearby. Bright fire-globes shone from inside and on top of the den, lighting up the flat black earth around it. Several of the biggest firebeasts Kallik had ever seen were huddled outside, side by side, their eyes dark. They were twice the height of a full-grown bear on its hindlegs, silver like water, with tall black or red snouts. These big ones must be a different kind of firebeast than the littler ones that were all one colour, Kallik though, as different as she was from Lusa.

  She stretched her neck up to see to the other side of the BlackPath. The stream emerged again in the middle of some thornbushes over there, then wandered in and out of sight between scattered scrawny trees. If they could get past the den and across the BlackPath, they could keep following the stream straight to the Big River.

  An enormous firebeast came roaring along the BlackPath, its round eyes blazing. It slowed down and then pulled into the space beside the den, rumbling to a stop beside the others. A burly, long-legged no-claw climbed out of it and stomped inside the den, stretching his front legs above him. Loud no-claw noise and mouthwatering smells of meat and salt and unfamiliar food wafted out the open door.

  Kallik thought about the meat she had stolen before getting caught by the no-claws. Her mouth watered as she imagined sinking her teeth into juicy flesh, but she also remembered very clearly the sharp scratch from the no-claw stick, and then waking up in a cage in the big white den. Would these no-claws give her to a metal bird?

  ‘It’s wet and marshy down there, so we’ll have to slog through some mud,’ Lusa said, nodding at the reeds below them, ‘but I think we can follow the path to the den. There are some tall clumps we can hide behind if any flat-faces come out.’

  Kallik shook her head. ‘I don’t want to go anywhere near that place,’ she said, taking a step back. There was no way she was going to risk falling out of the sky again.

  ‘I agree,’ Toklo said. ‘It’s too dangerous.’

  ‘But they have food,’ Lusa pointed out. ‘I know you don’t like it, Toklo, but we have to eat.’

  A white shape was moving down through the marsh, following the stream. In the fading light, at first Kallik couldn’t work out what she was seeing. Then . . .

  ‘Taqqiq!’

  ‘Well, I suppose we may not have a choice,’ Toklo growled. He nodded down the hill. ‘Unless we’re going to let him risk his pelt on his own.’

  Taqqiq didn’t hear Kallik’s call, or if he did, he pretended he didn’t. He kept going, straight towards the no-claw den and all those giant, hulking firebeasts.

  Kallik raced after him, stumbling as the ground sloped down more steeply than she was expecting. The wind blew in her ears, and stinking water splashed around her paws, but she ignored the icky clinging feeling of the mud in her fur. Her muscles ached, but she forced them on. She had to get to Taqqiq before he reached the no-claws. What if he tried to steal their food and they shot him with a firestick?

  Suddenly she felt hard black earth under her paws, the kind that smelled like burning and grew in straight lines to make BlackPaths. She’d reached the big open space around the no-claw den. Three of the large firebeasts were up ahead, glaring right at her. With a squeak of fright, Kallik shot towards a large metal box standing against the back of the no-claw den. It was swamped with strange smells, mostly of rotfood. She bundled into the shadow behind it, where the firebeasts couldn’t see her, and crashed into a pile of warm fur.

  ‘Hey!’ the fur ball said, and she realised that it was Taqqiq.

  ‘Oh, you’re all right,’ she said, panting. ‘I was so afraid one of the firebeasts would hurt you!’

  Taqqiq snorted. ‘I’m not afraid of them! Salik and I dealt with plenty of firebeasts,’ he boasted. ‘They’re really dumb when they’re asleep. You can roar right in their faces and they won’t even move.’

  ‘You tried that?’ Kallik said with a shudder. ‘Why would you want to do that? It’s so dangerous.’

  ‘It’s nothing,’ Taqqiq said, tossing his head. ‘We messed with firebeasts all the time. They never dared to hurt us.’

  Kallik looked around at the shadows. ‘So why are you hiding back here, if you’re so brave?’

  Taqqiq bristled. ‘I’m not hiding!’ He shook himself so his fur fluffed out. ‘I was checking this tiny den for food.’ He nodded at the metal box beside them. ‘I’ve seen them before. Salik found good food in them, anywhere there were lots of firebeasts and no-claws together. But I can’t get it open. I don’t know how he did it.’

  ‘Oh.’ Kallik nosed the box. She’d seen ones like this behind other big no-claw dens, but she’d never tried to open one. ‘How would it work?’

  ‘This top part lifts up,’ Taqqiq said, shoving the box with his paw.

  ‘Maybe if we try to lift it together?’ she suggested. She pressed her paws to the bit of the top that protruded from the metal box. Taqqiq leaned into it with his shoulders and heaved up. To Kallik’s surprise, the box opened and the top slammed back into the wall behind it. Kallik flinched, but there were no sounds of no-claws coming out to see what had made the noise. She couldn’t believe this much noise wouldn’t bring no-claws running, but then again, the noise coming from inside the big den was loud enough to drown out anything.

  ‘There’s nothing here!’ Taqqiq snarled, digging through piles of shiny, soft, flabby stuff and broken no-claw things. He dropped to all paws and scraped his claws along the ground in a frustrated gesture.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Kallik said. ‘We’ll find something.’

  ‘Hrrmph,’ Taqqiq grumbled. He looked around at the den and the firebeasts, then back at her. ‘I’m not just a useless lump of fur, you know.’

  Kallik blinked at him, surprised. ‘I know that.’

  ‘You think those other bears are so great, like they’re the only ones who can find food and figure out which way to go.’ He swiped the metal box with his paw. ‘I survived on my own for a while, just like you did, remember? But you treat me like you think I can’t do anything.’

  ‘That’s not true!’ Kallik said with a pang of guilt. ‘I mean . . . this isn’t the right world for us – of course it’s harder for us to hunt when we’re off the ice.’

  ‘And all you do is complain about my friends,’ Taqqiq persisted, ‘and then drag me off on some other bears’ journey, and then get all mad when I complain about your friends. They’re not even white bears! What do they care about the Endless Ice? Sometimes I think you’ve forgotten that you’re a white bear.’

  Kallik glanced at the reeds near the edge of the denning place. The light from the den was blindingly bright, making it hard to see into the darkness, but she thought she saw the gleam of the other bears’ eyes watching them. She hoped they couldn’t hear this conversation from where they were.

  ‘See!’ Taqqiq snarled. ‘You’re not even listening to me! You’re thinking about them!’

  ‘I’m sorry!’ Kallik protested. ‘I am listening, really.’

  ‘You say you came all this way to look for me, but now that you’ve found me you ignore me and act like I’m some stupid nuisance.’

  ‘Taqqiq,’ Kallik said. She stepped forward to press her nose into his fur, but he jumped away from her, glaring. ‘I’m sorry you feel that way. I don’t mean to treat you badly. I really do want you on this journey with me – and I’m sure our mother does too.’

  Taqqiq snorted. ‘Nisa is dead,’ he growled. ‘We don’t know what she would think.’

  ‘I think she would like them,’ Kallik said, jerking her head at the shadows where her friends were all waiting. ‘They’re brave, like she was.’

  This was the wro
ng thing to say. Taqqiq’s fur fluffed up all across his shoulders and he bared his teeth. ‘You keep saying how brave they are! How great and perfect and wonderful they are! Well, I’m just as good as them! I’m brave too! Here, I’ll prove it!’

  ‘No, don’t!’ Kallik cried, trying to hold him back, but he marched out of the shadows and headed for the nearest firebeast. Kallik peeked out to watch him go. ‘Taqqiq, come back! Leave them alone!’ She looked at the firebeasts’ enormous round black paws and thought how easily they could crush her brother if they wanted to.

  She looked back towards the others again. Were those Lusa’s bright eyes watching from the tall reeds? Were the other bears scared for her brother? Or were they secretly glad that he might not be able to travel with them any more if he got hurt by a firebeast?

  It didn’t matter. She couldn’t let Taqqiq face the firebeasts on his own. He was wrong if he thought they couldn’t guess what Nisa would want. She most definitely wouldn’t want Kallik to abandon her brother now. Digging up every bit of courage she had, she crept after him.

  Taqqiq was standing almost nose-to-nose with the nearest firebeast. It loomed over him, all shiny and hulking and dreadful-smelling. Its two round, blank eyes stared back at Taqqiq.

  Kallik edged up beside him, sniffing the air. The firebeast didn’t move. ‘Is it dead?’ she whispered. ‘But if it’s dead, why doesn’t it fall over?’

  ‘You don’t know anything,’ Taqqiq scoffed. ‘It’s sleeping. That’s what they look like when they sleep. Hey, firebeast! Where’s your fur? Did something claw it off while you were sleeping? You’re so stupid, maybe you haven’t even noticed that you don’t have any fur!’

  ‘Oh, shhh, don’t make it mad!’ Kallik cried.

  ‘It doesn’t even notice,’ Taqqiq said. ‘Firebeasts are so dumb, a seal could probably trick them.’ He said this really loudly, but the firebeast didn’t blink. It stayed perfectly still.