Island of Shadows Read Free

and ice and the waste of endless white that stretched around them in every direction. He longed for forests with tall trees and deep undergrowth, and warm air full of the scents of prey. He wanted long days of sunshine, or even cloud and rain, rather than brief moments of daylight where the sun barely peeped over the horizon.
    And instead of Ujurak we have this white bear with us.
    Somehow Toklo had never minded taking direction from Ujurak. Almost from the beginning he had realized that the small brown bear knew more than he did about certain things, in particular which way they needed to go. Even though he had protested some of Ujurak’s weirder decisions, his friend had never been wrong. Except that at the end of their journey, Ujurak had been killed in the avalanche. Had he known all along that this was his destiny, that this was waiting for him when they reached the end of their quest?
    Toklo felt as though every hair on his pelt, every muscle in his body, were groaning in pain because Ujurak had left them. He tried to tell himself that Ujurak wasn’t really dead, that he had returned to his BirthDen among the stars. But it didn’t help.
    We traveled all that way together! Did I really bring him here so that he could gallop up into the sky and become a pattern of stars? Does that mean he wasn’t really a brown bear at all?
    Toklo had never felt so alone, not even when his mother, Oka, had driven him away and he’d had to learn to survive on his own in the forest. Back then he hadn’t known what it meant to have a friend. Only a brother who had died and a mother who had seemed to hate the sight of him.
    The night before, he had looked up at the stars and found the shining outline that was Ujurak, but that hadn’t helped, either. It only made him realize how far away Ujurak was: skylength after skylength, much, much farther than any bear could travel.
    I’d give anything to reach up into the stars and pull Ujurak back down.
    Every night Toklo could look up and see his friend in the stars, but he could never hunt with him or talk to him. He couldn’t pad alongside Ujurak anymore, or roll him over in a playful wrestling match, or watch his eyes light up when Toklo brought a plump goose or a juicy hare for them to share.
    It won’t ever be that way again.
    The bears traveled on through the gray half-light of snow-sky, but the dark hump on the horizon never seemed to come any closer. A few light flakes of snow began to drift down, growing steadily thicker until they blotted out the island altogether. Plodding after the other bears through the swirling blizzard, Toklo slipped into a half dream. He imagined that he could see Ujurak just ahead of him, a small brown shape slipping easily through the dense whiteness. Although Toklo quickened his pace, Ujurak was always too far ahead. At last Toklo lost sight of him in the spiraling white flakes. His heart quickened as the snowfall started to ease and he could see more clearly ahead of him. He searched for a small brown shape against the new snow, for a trail of pawprints leading confidently on. But Ujurak wasn’t there. He had never been there.
    I just imagined it. Because I want to see him again, so much.
    The snow stopped and the sky cleared as the brief day drew to an end. The island was noticeably closer now, with craggy hills rising dark out of the flat expanse of ice. In the thick snow they had veered away from it; as they turned to head directly for it again, Toklo became aware of his freezing cold paws and the lumps of snow clinging to his pelt. His muscles ached with weariness. Intent on following Ujurak, he hadn’t noticed how hard it was to struggle through the blizzard.
    â€œCan we rest for a bit?” Lusa whimpered. “My paws feel like they’re about to fall off.”
    â€œWe may as well stop for the night,” Toklo responded, without giving Yakone the chance to reply. “We won’t reach the island