Fire in the Sky Read Free

are,” Toklo grunted. Lusa tilted her head in surprise. “I mean, I’m not very scared,” he amended. “Just a little bit. Only because it’s squirrel-brained to leave the land, where all the prey and shelter are. Brown and black bears don’t belong on the ice. But I figure we have to trust Ujurak. He’s led us all the way here, and we’re still in one piece.”
    “Yes,” Lusa murmured, turning her gaze to the shambling bulk of the shape-shifting bear ahead of them. “He hasn’t let us down so far.”
    “There’s not enough room to be a bear on land anymore,” Toklo went on in a low growl. His eyes were focused on the dark, blurred line of mountains on the horizon. “Perhaps there will be room for us out there, on the empty ice.” He snorted. “There should be room. There isn’t anything else out there.”
    Lusa was about to tell him she’d been thinking the same thing, when something pale and warm loomed ahead of her, and she collided with Kallik’s haunches. The white bear hadstopped with Ujurak beside a clump of thornbushes. Ujurak was nosing around them, checking for prickles in the grass, or sharp-edged stones, or anything else that would make this a bad place to rest for the night. Lusa was beyond caring; she was so tired, she imagined she could sleep quite comfortably on a BlackPath.
    She felt a flash of anxiety that Kallik had overheard her and Toklo worrying about the ice.
    “I can’t wait to see your home,” she whispered, pressing her nose into the white bear’s fur. That was true—she did want to understand where her friend came from, even if it frightened her.
    Kallik nuzzled her gently. “You’re going to love it, Lusa,” she promised. “You’ll see. No firebeasts, no smoke, no oil. Nothing to tempt the no-claws out there. Just you and the wind and the feeling of cool under your paws. It’s the best place ever.”
    Lusa didn’t argue, but right then she would have thought anywhere she could close her eyes was the best place ever. The grass here was tall and soft, and the bushes hid them from the strong gusts of wind off the sea, as long as they didn’t get close enough to the branches for the thorns to stab them. Small flecks of white drifted through the air, glimmering in the moonlight. It was starting to snow. In Lusa’s fuzzy head, it just seemed like a soft, cozy blanket settling on her fur.
    She flopped down, and by the time the others were settled snugly around her, she was fast asleep.
     
    A murmur of chattering voices surrounded her, too high and fast for her to understand. Lusa pawed at her eyes and sat up, then stopped with a gasp.
    Flat-faces!
    Lots and lots of flat-faces were peering down at her, their pale, furless faces blank.
    Lusa spun around to wake up her friends and realized they were gone. Gone also were the thornbushes and the smell of the sea, replaced by sloping gray walls and a tall, familiar tree with wide-spaced branches, and a group of bears she’d never expected to see again.
    She was in the Bear Bowl. Lusa relaxed, letting the tension out of her shoulders. This was just a dream. She’d visited the Bear Bowl in her sleep once before, when she’d been told to save the wild. Nothing to be scared of, just her mind wandering through her memories. There hadn’t been so many flat-faces in her last dream. Lusa stood up on her hindpaws to look at them. She remembered how they used to point at her and laugh in their high, chattering way when she danced—especially the flat-face cubs. She tried waving her paws and wiggling her snout in the air. Maybe they would throw her blueberries if she did that. Even dream blueberries would be better than none.
    But the flat-faces just stared at her in silence. Their faces were as blank and cold as the stone gray walls. They didn’t care what she did.
    Lusa dropped to her paws. “Hrrrmph,” she muttered. “Well, I don’t care about you, either.” She turned her back on them,trying to hide the uneasy shiver that