Smoke Mountain Read Free

was thinking about his mother, Oka, who was taken away by the flat-faces after she attacked one of them. ‘They . . . they fed us and gave us somewhere to live,’ she repeated.
    Toklo’s muscles ached from all his swimming the day before in Great Bear Lake. Oka had come to him during the swim, Oka and his little brother, Tobi, who had died before they reached the Great Salmon River. They had saved Toklo from drowning in thewaves and given him the courage to make it all the way to the island. After moons of believing that if he went out of his depth in water, his mother and brother would drown him so that his spirit could join theirs, they had shown that they loved him and wanted him to stay alive. He missed them even more now.
    As he climbed, listening to the chatter of the she-bears, he let his head hang and stared down at his paws. He felt tired, though he would never let the others know that, especially Taqqiq.
    â€˜Oomph!’ He walked right into the white bear, who had stopped on a wide, flat boulder.
    â€˜Hey,’ Taqqiq snarled, flexing his claws. ‘Watch where you’re going. Are brown bears blind as well as stupid?’
    Toklo took a step back, swallowing a snarl. The rocks here levelled off into a shallow ridge cresting the top of the hill before it began to slope down again. Ujurak was standing on one of the tall grey boulders, staring down at the landscape spread out before them. Toklo scrambled up to join him.
    A rocky plain rolled out below them, shifting from grey stone to rippling green grass further out to theedge of the sky. Narrowing his eyes against the wind, Toklo spotted a few small lakes and darker green patches that were probably trees in the distance.
    Ujurak lifted his black nose and sniffed the wind. A hawk soared overhead, far up in the thin trail of clouds that stretched across the bright blue sky. Toklo saw Ujurak watching it and felt a stab of alarm. What if the bear cub suddenly transformed and flew away?
Please don’t do that
, Toklo prayed. Then Ujurak lowered his muzzle, and Toklo let out a sigh of relief.
    The other bears clambered up beside them. Toklo glanced at each one – a brown bear that wasn’t always a brown bear, black and white she-bears that couldn’t stop talking, and a white bear with wasps for brains. He watched Taqqiq out of the corner of his eye. What would
he
make of Ujurak turning into a bird, or a frog, or a mouse? Who knew? It was probably best Taqqiq didn’t find out.
    Toklo shook his head to clear his thoughts and stared down at the landscape below. Ujurak was no doubt trying to read the ‘signs’ he kept talking about. One direction seemed more obvious toToklo, since it led to a small lake surrounded by trees at the bottom of the hill, but in his experience that usually meant Ujurak would choose to go the opposite way.
    â€˜That way,’ Ujurak announced at last. Sure enough, he pointed with his nose at the craggy rocks that led down to the open plain, which stretched far into the distance before reaching any water.
    â€˜What?’ Taqqiq objected as Ujurak took a step forward. ‘Are you as dumb as a seal? There’s nothing in that direction for
skylengths
!’
    â€˜Taqqiq!’ Kallik said, hunching her shoulders. ‘Don’t be rude.’
    â€˜What’s a seal? Is it like a flat-face?’ Lusa asked curiously. ‘What’s a skylength?’
    â€˜It’s the distance from here to the edge of the sky,’ Kallik said, nodding at the horizon ahead of them. ‘And a seal is . . . um . . . like a big, blubbery squirrel. Only better-tasting. And without any fur.’
    Taqqiq was looking scornfully at his sister. ‘Look down there.’ He jerked his head at the wood below. ‘There’s a lake and trees. We could probably find prey. I’m
starving
.’
    â€˜No,’ Toklo said, although his belly was rumbling.He was irritated that Taqqiq had the same