Smoke Mountain

by Erin Hunter

  Light spilled from holes in many of the dens, and if Lusa strained her ears, now and then she could hear flat-face voices murmuring. Often the light had a bluish tinge, and sometimes she spotted flat-faces inside staring at tiny flat-faces inside a brightly lit box.

  She waited until they came to a den that was dark. There was no firebeast outside, and no sound coming from the den. Cautiously she crept over the short grass in front of the den and followed the faint scent of food around to the side, where a small space separated the den from the fence running alongside. Here she found what she was looking for: three tall silver cans standing outside a door.

  ‘Shhh,’ she cautioned the others as they joined her. Toklo wrinkled his nose at the can.

  ‘Flat-face food,’ he grumbled. ‘I thought we talked about how real bears don’t need to steal food from flat-faces.’

  Lusa was about to retort sharply when, to her surprise, Kallik spoke up.

  ‘I’d rather eat than starve,’ the white bear said. ‘And we need our strength to cross the Big River. Besides, no-claws have so much food that they just throw it away. I think it’s all right to eat it – if we’re really, really careful. I once stole some meat from a no-claw den, and that’s how they caught me.’ Her eyes were huge with fear, in spite of her brave words, and her fur quivered as if she were trying not to shake. Lusa blinked at her friend, hoping she could tell how much she appreciated her support.

  ‘We’ll be careful. Kallik’s right; we have to eat where we can. It’ll be better this time,’ Lusa reassured Toklo. ‘I don’t think there are any flat-faces in this den right now.’

  Toklo swung his head around, his gaze darting across the unnaturally short grass. ‘Well, hurry up then.’

  Lusa slid her claws under the lid of the can and prised it off, grabbing it in her mouth so it wouldn’t clatter on the hard ground. She stuck her nose inside and found two shiny black skins stuffed full of flat-face rubbish. She dragged one out into the open, tipping over the can but pressing her body against it so it made only a small hollow thud when it hit the ground.

  She sliced open the skin with her claws, and all four bear cubs examined what fell out. There were a few squashed blueberries in a clear container. Lusa clawed it away from the rest of the rubbish and licked up half the blueberries, then offered the rest to Kallik. The white bear’s eyes widened as she ate them. The berries left little dark blue smears on the fur around her mouth.

  ‘Yum,’ she whispered. ‘I didn’t know that no-claws ate berries.’

  ‘They eat everything,’ Lusa said.

  ‘How about this?’ Ujurak asked, nosing something over to Lusa. ‘Can we eat it?’

  It looked like a fluffy bit of crust with part of it chewed off. Lusa had eaten lots of these while she was raiding metal cans. ‘Yes, they’re good,’ she said. ‘Usually a little salty.’

  She found a few more in the skin, which they all shared. In the second skin they lucked into several half-eaten bits of meat. Some of it was long and round like a stick, and covered in salty red sauce that tasted faintly like tomatoes, which Lusa had eaten a lot in the Bear Bowl. Some of it was flat and brown and stuck between two pieces of bread, also covered in the same red sauce. Lusa remembered finding that sauce on the potato sticks she liked, but there weren’t any potato sticks in these cans.

  ‘Why does their meat taste so funny?’ Toklo growled.

  ‘Because they burn it before they eat it,’ Lusa said. ‘I don’t know why.’

  Toklo huffed. ‘I would rather catch a fish.’

  ‘Or a seal,’ Kallik said wistfully. ‘But at least I’m not so hungry any more. Thanks, Lusa.’

  Lusa wriggled with pleasure. If they had to deal with flat-face dens, she thought it was only fair to take the food the flat-faces didn’t seem to want. If Toklo wanted to wait until he could catch a salmon, he was welcome.

  There weren’t many fences around the flat-face dens here, so for a while Lusa led them behind the dens, out of sight of the BlackPath. The grass was soft and springy under their paws. They didn’t have to climb to get from one den to the next, which was a relief to Lusa – she wasn’t sure how good a climber Kallik would be, and it was easier to escape when you weren’t surrounded by a fence.

  They were creeping behind a large white den that looked empty when suddenly there was a roar, and a bright beam of light sliced through the dark in front of them. Lusa squeaked and bundled backwards, shoving the others into the shadows up against the den. The light swept up the tiny BlackPath beside the den as a firebeast charged off the bigger BlackPath on to the hard, flat surface.

  ‘Did it see us?’ Kallik whispered in Lusa’s ear. ‘Is it coming for us?’

  ‘Shh,’ Toklo hissed. ‘Stay very still.’ Lusa held her breath and closed her eyes. Please don’t eat us. Please don’t eat us.

  With a coughing sputter, the firebeast stopped beside the den. The light blazing out of its eyes vanished, and its roar dwindled into a murmur, then silence.

  ‘What happened?’ Ujurak whispered. Lusa peeked out between her paws.

  A flat-face male climbed out of the side of the firebeast. He hurried up to the den and disappeared inside. The door slammed behind him.

  Everything was still.

  ‘It didn’t see us,’ Lusa breathed. ‘And now it’s asleep.’

  Her ears were ringing from the noise of the firebeast. As they started to clear, she heard something else. She stood on her hind legs and pricked her big round ears.

  ‘Water!’ she cried. ‘I hear the river!’

  She squeezed past the slumbering firebeast, being careful not to brush against it, and down to the BlackPath, which crossed another BlackPath where the dens were pressed closer together. Lusa sped up, hoping to get through to the river before they were spotted. She heard the rumble of a firebeast and broke into a run to get away before it reached them, leading the others around a den and into the grassy space behind it.

  As they tumbled into the dimly lit area enclosed by bushes with neat, even edges, a ferocious noise split the quiet night. Lusa saw the glint of fangs as a massive dog leaped out of the shadows, barking madly. Kallik yelped and turned to run. Toklo’s fur fluffed up, and he stood with his paws braced, snarling and ready to fight.

  ‘Wait!’ Lusa barked at both of them. She had spotted something the others hadn’t. Her heart thudded as she hoped she was right. She stood her ground, her eyes shut tight, as the dog hurtled towards her. His jaws snapped at the air, but just before he reached her, something jerked him back with a clanking sound. The dog’s barks were cut off with a yelp. Lusa slowly opened her eyes.

  ‘See? It’s chained to that tree,’ she said, nodding at the long metal vine that held the dog out of reach. Its eyes rolled and its tongue hung out as it strained to get to her, but it couldn’t move any nearer. She took a long, shuddering breath. Phew.

  ‘Wow,’ Toklo said, and he actually sounded impressed.

  A light came on inside the den. Lusa shoved her friends back into the bushes, where they crouched, holding their breath, as a flat-face stormed out the back door and shouted at the dog.

  ‘Poor thing,’ Ujurak said. ‘He was just trying to warn the flat-face about us.’

  ‘I say it serves him right.’ Toklo snorted. ‘Picking a fight with me! I’d like to see him try!’

  Lusa’s ears perked up as the dog stopped barking and the flat-face went back inside. There was a rushing, bubbling noise very nearby. ‘Do you hear that?’ she whispered. ‘I think we’re close to the river!’

  She pushed through the bushes to the other side and ran across the grass behind the next den. The others followed her as she ducked under a low-hanging branch, slipped between two dens, trotted across a small BlackPath, and darted around a big square patch of BlackPath that smelled like firebeasts had been hulking there all day.

  Lusa came to a halt when her paws hit wet sand and stared down the slope that stretched below her. Just as the other cubs crowded up behind her, the clou
ds parted and a thin, pale moon came out, glimmering on the river right in front of them. They’d reached the Big River that Qopuk had told them about! Now they just had to follow it to the Ice Sea, and they’d be well on their way to the Last Great Wilderness.

  ‘Good job finding it, Lusa,’ Kallik said. ‘I’d have got all turned round in the middle of all those no-claw dens.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Toklo rumbled. ‘Well done.’

  Lusa glowed with pride. They had made it through the flat-face denning place.

  But her happiness drained away as she looked down at the dark, fast-flowing water only a few bearlengths from her paws. She swallowed hard. This had to be the Big River . . . there couldn’t be any rivers bigger than this!

  ‘It’s huge!’ she squeaked.

  They all stared at the vast stretch of water. It was too dark to see the other side. Lusa didn’t think she’d ever seen anything like it – Great Bear Lake was enormous too, but that was a lake; it was supposed to be big, and lakes didn’t have strong currents that could wash a bear away. She thought of rivers as being a sensible size that a bear could swim across without drowning. Kind of like watery BlackPaths – dangerous, but not impossible to cross.

  But this . . . this was terrifying!

  CHAPTER ELEVEN:

  Toklo

  It was eerily quiet on the mudflats. Toklo could hear the faint hum of firebeasts in the distance and an occasional sharp, lonely bark that he thought might be the dog they’d passed. Smoke Mountain loomed on the far side of the river.

  ‘Are we sure this is a river?’ Lusa said. ‘I mean . . . it’s so . . . it’s so . . . big.’ She stood up on her hind legs and stretched her neck up, trying to see the opposite bank.

  Kallik sludged forward through the wet, clingy mud and tentatively lapped up a mouthful of water. She looked back at the others and nodded. ‘It’s not salty. It tastes yucky, but it’s not the sea or anything.’

  ‘And from the current you can tell it’s a river,’ Ujurak pointed out. ‘Just a really . . . really big one.’

  Toklo was no longer afraid of swimming. His fear of water spirits was gone after Great Bear Lake, where he heard the voices of his mother, Oka, and brother, Tobi. But that didn’t mean he’d lost all his fear of drowning. The dark river in front of him stretched as far as he could see. And it wasn’t still like the lake when he’d swum out to Paw Print Island. The cubs would have to fight hard to avoid being swept away by the currents. He wondered if there were any brown bear spirits in the river . . . Even if there were, he wouldn’t count on their being any help.

  He could just make out branches and bits of flat-face debris floating down the river, faster than a bear could run. Further out, he glimpsed some kind of structure rising from the water, silhouetted in the pale moonlight. Is that a tree? he wondered.

  ‘Are you sure we have to cross this river?’ he asked Ujurak. ‘You said the old white bear told you to follow the river to the Ice Sea. Can’t we do that on this side?’

  Ujurak shook his head. ‘The Last Great Wilderness is on that side,’ he said. ‘We will have to cross this river somewhere to get to it, and Qopuk said this was the only place where we could.’

  Toklo stared at the thick black water. ‘There’s got to be an easier way,’ he muttered.

  ‘We have to trust Qopuk,’ Ujurak said in a voice that sounded strangely high and squawky. Toklo turned and saw that grey and white feathers were popping out through Ujurak’s fur. His limbs shrank into his torso, and wings sprouted as his snout turned into a beak.

  ‘I thought you said you’d try not to change,’ Toklo growled.

  ‘Going to scout,’ Ujurak managed to croak before his bear features disappeared completely. A scrawny, bedraggled seagull now stood on the sandy shore beside them. With a vigorous flap, Ujurak launched himself into the air and soared away over the river.

  ‘Gosh,’ Kallik said, watching him go. ‘I wish we could all do that!’

  ‘It’d be a lot easier than swimming!’ Lusa agreed.

  Toklo wasn’t sure. Flying didn’t look particularly easy or safe to him. He would much rather keep all his paws on the ground, thank you very much.

  They waited uneasily on the exposed bank of the river. Toklo swivelled his head from side to side, jumping at every small sound. He wished there was something to hide under. If something came at them, there was nowhere to go except back up to the dens – or straight into the river.

  Normally Toklo was comfortable beside rivers. He liked the speeding rush of water and smooth river stones under his paws, and he loved fishing – and eating fish – more than anything. Perhaps tomorrow he would catch a fish in the river as they followed it to the sea. But this river, or at least this part of the river, felt strange and unfriendly to him. Instead of the murmur of bear spirits, he heard the sucking and slapping of water against flat-face constructions. Its scent was grimy and metallic, not sweet and fishy and clean, the way it should be.

  Toklo spotted a greyish shape in the sky, growing bigger as it got closer. He lost it for a moment in the shadow of Smoke Mountain, and then it reappeared again as the Ujurak-gull swooped down and landed next to them. His feathers quivered as they turned brown and smoothed out into fur again. He waved his growing snout, eager to talk.

  ‘Qopuk was right,’ he burst out as soon as he could. ‘This spot is different from the rest of the river. I flew up and down a long way to see if there was anywhere else. But this is the spot.’ He stretched his forelegs stiffly. ‘Flying is tiring.’

  ‘How do you know this is the right place?’ Toklo asked.

  ‘There are small islands all the way across,’ Ujurak said, pointing with his snout out at the river.

  ‘There are?’ Lusa said, squinting to see them through the darkness. ‘Are there any flat-face dens on them? Or firebeasts?’

  ‘No, they’re empty. There are some flat-face metal things, but they aren’t doing anything. We can use the islands to rest, so we don’t have to swim the whole way without stopping,’ Ujurak explained.

  ‘Hmmph,’ Toklo grumbled. ‘It still sounds weasel-brained to me.’

  ‘We can do it,’ Kallik said. ‘I’m a strong swimmer. I’ll stay near Lusa and make sure she doesn’t get swept away.’

  ‘You should change back into a seagull and fly across,’ Toklo said gruffly to Ujurak. As much as he hated his friend’s changes, he wanted him to be safe. ‘Then you can keep an eye on us and warn us if anyone gets caught in the current.’

  ‘Good idea,’ Ujurak said, dipping his head. ‘Will you be all right?’

  ‘We will,’ Lusa said. ‘Right, Toklo? Let’s go before the flat-faces wake up and see us.’

  Ujurak slipped back into the gull’s feathers and lifted off into the sky. Toklo led the other two cubs down to the water’s edge.

  The river smelled sharp and dirty, as if there were firebeasts swimming in it. Toklo shuddered. That was a horrible thought – firebeasts lurking in the dark water. He’d never seen any orcas like the ones in Kallik’s story of her mother’s death, but he pictured them like big, wet firebeasts with teeth. He shoved that image aside as he waded into the water. Their journey – wherever they were going – continued on the other side, so they had to cross. Light from some of the flat-face dens lit up bits of the river further out, so he could see that it was brown, with swirls of dirt kicked up from the bottom. Flat-face waste floated past, bumping around his legs.

  He glanced back to make sure the other two cubs were right behind him. Taking a deep breath, he launched himself forward until his paws struck off the bottom and he began paddling. The force of the current took his breath away. It seemed to grab his fur with strong, hooked claws as it tried to haul him downriver. His paws churned as he drove forward. A gull swooped overhead, and he nearly snarled at it before he realised it was Ujurak, pointing the way to the first island. Squinting and snorting to keep water out of his nose, Toklo lifted his snout and realised he could see a bulky shape looming out of the water below
the seagull. The island!

  He barked to let the others know, hoping they could hear him and that they would spot the island up ahead. He tried to twist about in the water to see them, but he only caught a glimpse of Kallik’s white fur before the current yanked him around and he had to focus on swimming again. Lusa was too small and dark to spot, he told himself; that was why he couldn’t see her. But surely she was back there.

  At first glance the island didn’t seem so far away, but the more he paddled, the further it seemed to be. So much of his strength was used up simply not being swept away, but he kept swimming, forcing himself across the surging waves until his paws stubbed against gritty sand. He dragged himself up on the island’s shore and collapsed on the pebbles. Sticky black liquid was splattered over the stones, smelling of firebeasts. A huge, square flat-face construction loomed over him, bigger than their dens, with long limbs like bones reaching into the sky. Toklo remembered the story of the giant flat-face and shuddered, even as he reminded himself that he didn’t believe in that kind of cloudfluff.

  Catching his breath, he hauled himself to his feet and spotted Kallik stumbling through the shallow water. Bobbing in the water beside her was a small, dark shape that he guessed was Lusa’s head. Kallik nudged her shoulder under Lusa’s paws, supporting her up on to the shore. The two cubs crawled out of the river and flopped down beside him. Water streamed from Lusa’s fur, soaking the sand underneath her.

  ‘Brrrrr,’ she muttered. ‘Kallik, you don’t even look wet!’

  It was true; the water seemed to run right off Kallik’s fur. The bigger bear shook herself vigorously. ‘That’s just how white-bear fur is,’ Kallik said.

  The Ujurak-gull landed nearby.

  ‘How many more islands?’ Lusa asked, panting.

  The gull turned one beady, bright eye on her, then the other. It flapped its wings as if to say either, I don’t know, or, Lots and lots. Neither answer made Toklo feel better. He looked back at the shore where the flat-face dens glowed. Then he looked ahead and spotted the same tall metal bones rising over the next island. It was reassuring to be able to see it . . . but daunting to see how far it was. He just wanted to lie down and fall asleep.