Island of Shadows

by Erin Hunter

  If we go back, he thought, trying not to think about the long trek they would have to make, it shouldn’t be too hard to find Nanulak’s family. Maybe Ujurak feels the same as I do: that we should put things straight with them before we take Nanulak away forever.

  But can I be sure that’s what the signs are telling me? Toklo shook his head in confusion. Will the others believe me? I can’t expect them to trust me if I can’t trust myself.

  “We’d better look for somewhere to make a den,” Yakone said, as the sun went down.

  Toklo gazed around. They were standing on a bleak hillside that seemed to go on forever; there was no sign of shelter anywhere in the gathering shadows.

  “No thorn trees, no boulders,” Kallik muttered. “And the snow is starting again.”

  “Then where are we going to sleep?” Nanulak asked.

  “Here.” Toklo let himself flop down.

  “In the open?” Nanulak protested. “But—”

  “Do you have a better idea?” Yakone growled. “If you know of a den, show us where it is.”

  Toklo knew that he should defend Nanulak; Yakone didn’t have enough patience with the inexperienced cub. But he was weary from the tip of his snout to his tail, and he simply didn’t have the energy.

  “Things will look better in the morning,” he mumbled, wrapping his paws over his snout.

  He felt Nanulak curl up beside him out of the wind, and Lusa press close on his other side. Gradually a little warmth spread through Toklo’s body, and he drifted into sleep.

  In his dream the unfriendly hillside where they had stopped to rest was transformed into a meadow of waving grass under bright sunlight. Toklo raced across it, reveling in the new strength in his paws.

  Ahead of him was a mule deer; startled by the sight of him, it leaped away and fled. Toklo’s jaws watered in anticipation as he sped after it, cutting the distance between them with powerful bounds. But as he was readying himself for a spring, the mule deer stopped and spun around. Its hooves and antlers disappeared. Its limbs thickened, and brown fur sprouted out of its sleek pelt.

  “Ujurak!” Toklo yelped, skidding to a halt. “I wish you wouldn’t do that! One day you’ll get yourself killed, and—” He broke off, remembering with a jolt of grief that his friend was already dead.

  Ujurak’s eyes shone with affection. Giving Toklo a friendly poke with his snout, he said, “That was a great race, wasn’t it? You’re really fast!”

  Toklo was swept back to the time when they had traveled together, in the early days before they’d met Lusa and Kallik, and he’d had to protect Ujurak and teach him the things a brown bear needed to know.

  “I wish we could travel together again,” he murmured. “But I know this is only a dream.”

  “Not only a dream,” Ujurak corrected him. “Dreams are the way for me to talk to you now.”

  “Then you have something to tell me?” Toklo asked, suddenly hopeful.

  Ujurak nodded, deeply serious now. “You have to go back to the place where you found Nanulak,” he announced.

  “Then I was right! You want me to find Nanulak’s family and make them see what they did to him was wrong!”

  Ujurak blinked thoughtfully. “Nanulak’s story on this island is not over,” he said at last.

  Toklo stared at him, frustration driving out the brief flash of hope. “What do you mean by that? Am I right or not?” Struggling not to drive Ujurak away from him, as he had done in his previous dream, he added, “Are you deliberately blocking our way, to send us back over the ice cap?”

  Ujurak dipped his head, sadness in his eyes. “Some things are meant to be.”

  “That’s no answer!”

  Toklo shivered as Ujurak stretched out his neck to lay his muzzle on his shoulder.

  “Toklo, you’re still my friend,” the star-bear said softly. “Remember the good times we had together? Remember how we trusted each other? You have to trust me now.”

  Looking into his friend’s eyes, Toklo felt his anger die. “It’s like you’re trying to make me choose between you and Nanulak,” he choked out.

  “I wouldn’t ask that,” Ujurak promised. “It’s just that you have much more to learn before you can continue on your journey.”

  “And if we don’t go back?” Toklo challenged him. “If we just keep on going toward the sea?”

  Ujurak gave a tiny shrug as his form began to dissolve into mist. But Toklo didn’t need a reply. The answer was already echoing in his head.

  If we don’t go back, we’ll never reach the sea.

  When Toklo woke, his memory of the dream was still clear, Ujurak’s words running through his mind. He pulled himself to his paws to see Kallik and Yakone standing side by side, gazing across the hillside, while Nanulak sat a bearlength away, scratching himself vigorously. Only Lusa was still curled up asleep.

  Gray dawn light was seeping over the landscape. The clouds were low and threatening, as if they held more snow. Toklo had a brief image of himself and his companions fighting their way through a blizzard.

  “Okay, Ujurak,” he sighed. “You’ve made your point.” Prodding Lusa awake, he called to the others. “I had a dream last night,” he announced as they gathered around him. “Ujurak told me we have to go back to the place where we found Nanulak. He said his story on this island is not over.”

  “What?” Yakone exclaimed, at the same moment as Kallik asked, “Oh, Toklo, are you sure?”

  Toklo nodded. “That’s why it’s been so difficult,” he explained. “All this time, we’ve been going the wrong way.”

  Lusa nodded as she stifled a yawn. “I see,” she murmured. “So those were signs we saw yesterday.” Shivering, she added half to herself, “All that way back again…”

  “Well, I don’t see.” For a moment Nanulak had stood in outraged silence. Now his voice was high-pitched and angry. “I don’t see why we have to slog all the way back, just because of what some dead bear told you in a dream!”

  Toklo rounded on him, then bit back a furious response. It’s not his fault. He doesn’t understand.

  “Well, for once I agree with Nanulak,” Yakone said. “What’s the point of going all that way? It’s been hard enough to get this far.”

  “I told you,” Toklo repeated, trying not to sound impatient. “It’s been hard because we’ve been doing it wrong. Once we turn back, it’ll get easier, I promise.”

  Yakone still looked doubtful. “I wish I could believe you, but…”

  “I believe you, Toklo,” Kallik said, then turned to the white bear. “Ujurak knows these things. If he told Toklo to go back, then that’s what we have to do.”

  “I agree.” Lusa moved closer to Toklo’s side.

  “But I don’t!” Nanulak’s eyes flashed with anger. “Toklo, I can’t believe you want to take me back there! You know the white bears are looking for me.”

  “I won’t let them hurt you,” Toklo began, trying to reassure the younger bear. “Just let them try. I’ll—”

  “They won’t get a chance to hurt me,” Nanulak interrupted, “because I’m not going. Toklo, I thought you were my friend. But if you let me down, then I’ll carry on to the sea by myself.”

  For a moment Toklo was tempted to give in. He hated the idea that he was letting Nanulak down. But his memory of Ujurak returned to give him strength in his resolve. “That’s your choice,” he said quietly. “But I want you to come with us. We have to do this, to show your family they were wrong to drive you away when prey was scarce.”

  Nanulak’s eyes widened in disbelief. “You’d really leave me alone?” He took a deep breath. “All right. I’ll come. But whatever my family says, you’ll still take me to the forests, right? I’m still a brown bear?”

  “Of course,” said Toklo.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Lusa

  Lusa toiled at the back of the group as they retraced their pawsteps toward the center of the island. She couldn’t help wondering how long it would take any of the
m to notice if she disappeared. Kallik and Yakone were padding close together, while Nanulak kept near Toklo’s side. Both pairs of bears obviously belonged together.

  And I don’t belong with either pair, she told herself sadly. Sooner or later they’ll split up, and then who will I go with? Maybe they don’t want me, anyway.

  Kallik and Yakone would settle at the Frozen Sea, while Toklo and Nanulak would journey on until they found a forest where they could claim territory.

  “I just want to be home,” she whispered. “With sunlight, and green trees, and berry bushes…”

  But that wasn’t her home; the only home she had known before the journey had been the Bear Bowl, surrounded by animals that weren’t bears, fed and watched by flat-faces, confined to a space smaller than some of the ice floes they had traveled on. However much Lusa missed her family—Ashia, King, Yogi, Stella—she knew she could never go back to the Bear Bowl. She had to find a new home, a place where black bears could live in the wild, far from flat-faces and silver cans of food scraps. For her, this journey had no ending, or at least not one that she knew of yet.

  She accepted completely that Ujurak had spoken to Toklo in a dream and had told them to retrace their pawsteps. Still, Toklo’s words to Nanulak about showing his family they were wrong had unsettled her. She couldn’t stifle a nagging anxiety that Toklo was looking for revenge against the bears who had abandoned Nanulak. Surely that couldn’t have been what Ujurak meant.

  That is not our battle, she told herself. Looking after Nanulak, helping him find a safe place to live … okay. But not deliberately looking for a fight.

  But for the time being they were far away from where they might expect to find Nanulak’s family. They encountered no white bears, and Lusa’s hopes began to rise. She wasn’t sure if she was imagining it, but there seemed to be a tiny bit more light every day. The threatened snow never fell, and the skies cleared. Lusa felt as if every hair on her pelt were drinking in the sunshine.

  Maybe the sun is on its way back? I’ve missed it so much! And trees… I’m hungry for trees.

  The terrain was easier, too. Toklo had been right about that. Lusa had been afraid that they would have to struggle up and down the ravines again, but somehow they managed to find their way among the crags with no more than a short scramble or a bold leap. Thorn thickets seemed to part to let them through, and the soft snow was soothing for weary paws.

  Food gradually became more plentiful. Lusa felt as if something was guiding her to the right spots to dig down and find leaves or lichen, and she found a few stray berries still clinging to the branches of the thorns. Toklo caught a plump Arctic hare, and Yakone spotted a fish beneath the surface of a frozen pool and broke the ice to hook it out.

  But Nanulak’s reluctance to return seemed to increase with every pawstep he took. He complained all the time about being tired, until even Toklo started to lose patience with him.

  “I don’t want to do this,” he said one night as Kallik and Yakone were digging out a den. “Toklo, we don’t have to stay with these bears. Let them go back if they want to. Let’s go to the sea, just the two of us.”

  Lusa drew in a breath, shocked that Nanulak would even suggest this. Doesn’t he understand anything?

  “We can’t do that, Nanulak,” Toklo replied, with an edge to his voice that hadn’t been there before when he spoke to the younger bear. “We’re doing this because of you. Ujurak said that your story on this island isn’t finished.”

  “Then he’s wrong!” Nanulak insisted. “Why do you listen to him instead of me?”

  “Because Ujurak knows these things,” Lusa replied.

  Nanulak whirled to face her. “What do you know about it? You’re only a black bear!”

  Lusa stared at him, hardly able to believe he’d said that.

  “That’s enough,” Toklo growled. “We’re going back, and that’s that.”

  Nanulak opened his jaws to argue some more, then seemed to realize how angry Toklo was and thought better of it. He stayed in sulky silence until all the bears settled down to sleep.

  As they drew closer to the ice cap, Nanulak’s reluctance gave way to real fear. Lusa noticed that he was always on edge, casting nervous glances in all directions. Even though she didn’t like him any better, she found herself feeling sorry for him.

  “There’s nothing to be afraid of,” she said, falling into step beside him as they followed Toklo up a steep mountain slope.

  “Yes, there is,” Nanulak whimpered. “The white bears will get me, I know they will! We never should have come back.”

  “Toklo knows what he’s doing,” Lusa reassured him, deciding there was no point in mentioning Ujurak. “And he’ll look after you.”

  “But the white bears are big!” Nanulak protested. “Bigger than Toklo.”

  “They might be bigger, but they won’t fight as well as Toklo,” Lusa told him. “Toklo’s the best! He fought a white bear on Star Island. And back when we were at Great Bear Lake—and Toklo was much younger than he is now—he defeated a full-grown grizzly called Shoteka.”

  Nanulak blinked at her. “Really?”

  “Really.”

  To Lusa’s relief, Nanulak brightened up, as if he hadn’t quite believed until then that Toklo could defend him from his enemies. Bounding forward until he reached Toklo’s side, he exclaimed, “Toklo! Tell me about the time you killed a grizzly at Great Bear Lake!”

  “Later,” Toklo replied. “I’m going to hunt now. And I didn’t kill him.”

  “Why not?” Nanulak persisted. “It’s good to kill your enemies.”

  Toklo let out an exasperated sigh. “No, it’s not. Not when you can defeat them without killing them. I’ll tell you all about it when I get back from hunting.”

  “I want to come with you,” Nanulak announced, following in Toklo’s pawsteps as he drew aside from their path and began to sniff the air. “I only feel safe when I’m with you.”

  “Yakone and Kallik will look after you,” Toklo told him; Lusa could tell that he was trying hard not to sound annoyed.

  “But they’re white bears!”

  Toklo sighed again. “Okay, you can come. But you have to keep quiet. No stories until we’ve caught something, okay?”

  “Okay!” Nanulak said happily, bounding at Toklo’s side until the two of them vanished behind a tumbled heap of boulders.

  Kallik took the lead as the remaining bears headed up the hillside. Yakone padded along at her shoulder, then dropped back until he was walking beside Lusa.

  “I want to ask you something,” he announced.

  Lusa blinked up at him curiously.

  “What do you think about the way Toklo treats Nanulak?” the white bear went on. “Why is he so close to him? They’re not kin.”

  Lusa thought for a moment. “You need to understand what it was like for Toklo when he was a cub,” she said at last. “He had a brother, Tobi, who was weak and sick, and eventually he died. Toklo feels guilty that he wasn’t able to save him.”

  Yakone nodded. “So he wants to save Nanulak…”

  “There’s more,” Lusa said. “Toklo’s mother, Oka, was so grief-stricken after Tobi’s death that she drove Toklo away. He had to fend for himself when he was really too young. So I think he feels very close to Nanulak because he was driven away by his family, too.”

  “That makes sense,” Yakone said.

  “That’s why Toklo became so close to Ujurak, too.” Lusa felt a renewed stab of grief. “They were such good friends.”

  “Toklo needs to be needed,” Yakone said. “That’s good. But I wish I could believe that Nanulak deserves him.”

  Lusa grunted in agreement. Talking to Yakone had cleared her own mind. It did make sense that Toklo would try to fill the yawning gap left after his brother, Tobi, had died, and his mother, Oka, had driven him away. She knew that Toklo had to miss his family the same way that Kallik missed hers, and that he surely longed for a new family the same way Lusa longed to see the bears in
the Bear Bowl once more.

  We’re a family now, Lusa thought. Maybe we don’t always like it, or understand it, but that’s what we are. We have to stick together if we’re going to survive.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Kallik

  The journey back along the ridge didn’t seem to take as long as the outward trek, and Kallik found the going much easier when they could travel by day.

  “We’re not hiding anymore,” Toklo had said stoutly. “We’ve done nothing wrong.”

  Besides, the slightly longer days gave more time for hunting and walking. Kallik still didn’t like the island: There were too many shadows, too many unfamiliar things, and she couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something not quite right about it. But she knew that she could survive there for as long as it took to find Nanulak’s family and make them face up to what they had done.

  And I have Yakone with me, she reflected. Warm happiness flooded through her from ears to paws as she looked at the reddish-pelted bear. I can cope with anything as long as we’re together.

  All that worried Kallik was the fact that every pawstep was taking them farther away from the Frozen Sea. “At this rate, we’ll never get there before the ice melts,” she confided to Yakone. She was feeling hungry and tired, and so far that day Toklo hadn’t stopped to hunt at all. “And then we’ll have to survive with empty bellies through the whole of burn-sky.”

  Yakone touched her ear with his nose. “It’ll be okay,” he reassured her.

  Kallik quickened her pace a little, then realized that Yakone had dropped back. She looked around for him, but there was no sign of him.

  “I shouldn’t have been so grumpy,” she muttered. “Oh, spirits, don’t say I’ve driven Yakone away!”

  Her heart sinking into her paws, she trudged after Toklo and Nanulak, all the while glancing around to see if Yakone was coming back. At last she spotted him, galloping up behind them with something dangling from his jaws. As he drew closer, she saw that it was a goose. Yakone’s eyes were alight with triumph.