Great Bear Lake Read Free

scraps of grass flew up around him and stung his eyes.
    Then Toklo felt his claws sink into flesh. He snapped the squirrel’s neck with a twist of one paw, and dragged it out of the earth. He dropped the limp body at Ujurak’s paws. “Let’s eat,” he said.
    As he sank his teeth into the warm body he noticed that Lusa was standing a bearlength away, looking longingly at the food but not moving to take any.
    â€œCome on,” Toklo huffed. “You can share.”
    â€œThank you!” Lusa trotted up and crouched down beside Ujurak, tearing off a mouthful of the prey.
    With three of them sharing the squirrel, no bear had quite enough. But that doesn’t matter, Toklo thought. I can find more . He licked the warm blood from his snout and padded awayto the shade of a tree, leaving his companions to finish the meal he had provided. He sat contented, sniffing the air. He could trace the musky smell of fox on the bark of the tree. It was stale—the fox would be far away by now. He lifted his snout and sniffed deeper, drawing a new and richer scent into the back of his mouth. It was deer: A deer had passed this way less than a sunrise ago. Toklo stood up, drawing in the scent of deer, letting it show him the way to go. He was proud of the senses that told him where to find food or water, or where there might be danger from flat-faces or other bears. Every bend in the way, every hilltop or valley was filled with meaning, like a voice whispering to him without words. Toklo dipped his shoulders.
    â€œTime to move,” he said.
    â€œFollow me,” Ujurak called. He turned off the trail and bounded up a steep slope, away from the scent of deer.
    â€œUjurak!” Toklo called. “You’re going the wrong way!”
    But the little brown cub continued up the slope, kicking up stones and mud behind him.
    Toklo looked at Lusa. “Come on!” He didn’t want her to think that he disagreed with Ujurak about which way they should go. She needed to understand that he and Ujurak were on the same journey— their journey, not Lusa’s—and she was just tagging along. Besides, there’d be other deer to catch.
    He ran after Ujurak, with Lusa following a short distance behind. As they climbed, the trees gradually gave way to bushes and scrub, and then to a bare mountain slope of broken rocks. Thin grass and an occasional twisted shrub grewin the cracks between the rocks. A stiff breeze drove clouds across the sky; the rocks cast long shadows as the sun dipped toward the horizon.
    â€œWait for me!” Lusa called.
    Ujurak stopped at the top of the slope. He was gazing ahead with the wind buffeting his fur. Toklo climbed up beside him. In front of him, he could see mountain after mountain, like ripples of long grass stretching away into the misty distance. Their rocky peaks formed an unbroken ridge high in the sky. On either side, bare slopes fell away to sunlit lowlands, the shadows of clouds scudding across green woods and fields.
    There was a scuffling sound and a patter of small stones as Lusa scrambled up to join them. “We can see the whole world!” she gasped.
    She was gazing around her with a mixture of wonder and fear, as if the vastness of the view were going to swallow her up. Toklo almost felt the same—compared with the sweep of ground in front of them, they were just tiny fleabites—but he pushed the thought away. Brown bears weren’t scared of mountains!
    â€œAre we heading down there?” he asked Ujurak.
    The smaller cub shook his head. “Our way lies along the Sky Ridge.”
    â€œWhat?” Toklo gazed along the line of rocky peaks that stretched into the distance as far as he could see. “But there’s no prey up here. There’s nowhere to shelter—”
    â€œWe still have to go this way,” Ujurak insisted.
    â€œHow do you know?” Lusa asked curiously.
    â€œI don’t know ,” Ujurak