The Last Wilderness Read Free

wild bear now, and this was her home. If only Ashia and Yogi could have come with her.
    Toklo reached the rock a snout-length before Kallik. ‘I’ve won!’ he yelled. ‘I’m the fastest!’
    ‘You had a head start!’ Kallik leaped on the younggrizzly and pushed him over; brown and white pelts wrestled, grunting and slapping each other with their paws.
    Meanwhile Ujurak scrambled up on to the boulder and gazed around, towards the distant sea and over the rolling hills they had just left. Lusa thought he looked anxious, as if he was searching for something and couldn’t find it.
    What’s got into his fur? We’ve finally made it to the place he’s been searching for. He should be happy!
    ‘Ujurak, are you OK?’ she asked.
    Ujurak blinked at her, almost as if he didn’t recognise her. ‘What? Oh, sure, Lusa, I’m fine.’
    Lusa wrinkled her nose. There was a tasty scent hanging in the air, something plump and juicy mixed with the cold tang of stone. She rested her front paws on a smooth round rock at the foot of the boulder and pushed until it started to shift. ‘Help me out here, Ujurak! This is a trick that Miki showed me in the forest beside Great Bear Lake.’
    Ujurak leaped down and helped Lusa turn the stone over. They both jumped back as it rolled away to expose a nest of fat, wriggling grubs.
    ‘Try them,’ Lusa invited, taking a mouthful. Theywere much nicer than meat, which felt heavy in her stomach. One quick bite and juices flooded her mouth. There were enough grubs here for a moon! Perhaps she could find a sleeping tree with friendly bear spirits nearby.
    She was distracted from planning her new home by a bark of surprise from Toklo as he and Kallik rolled over and slammed into a low-growing thorn-bush. An Arctic hare that had been sheltering under the branches sprang out of cover and fled; Toklo broke away from Kallik and pounded in pursuit. He cornered the hare against an outcrop of rock and killed it with a single expert blow.
    Lusa bounded up with Kallik and Ujurak, and stood looking down at the limp body of the hare. Its dark chestnut pelt was flecked with white, reminding her that leaftime was drawing to a close; soon the snows would return.
    ‘Good catch,’ said Kallik. ‘But I’m still full from that goose.’
    ‘It’s OK, we can bury the hare until we’re ready to eat it,’ Toklo pointed out. ‘That’s what brown bears do. I once found a stash that another bear had left in the woods.’
    Kallik nodded. ‘That makes sense.’
    It felt strange to Lusa that they had to decide what to do when they had too much food.
But it’s a good problem
, she decided.
Much better than looking for food and not finding any
.
    Toklo had just begun to scrape a hole in the ground when the Arctic fox reappeared and darted forward, right under his paws, and snatched up the hare.
    ‘Hey!’ Toklo swung around threateningly. ‘That’s ours!’
    The fox was already racing away, the prey dragging on the ground between its front paws. Toklo set off in pursuit, but the fox squeezed down a hole and vanished with a flick of his brown-and-white tail. Toklo jabbed his front paw into the burrow, but the fox was obviously out of reach because Toklo soon came padding back. ‘Stupid creature,’ he grumbled.
    ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Lusa said, giving Toklo’s shoulder a friendly poke with her snout. ‘We’ll catch more when we’re ready.’
    Dark clouds had begun to gather above the sea, and an icy wind whipped in, bringing with it the tang of snow. Kallik drank it in deeply, raising her muzzle and taking powerful long breaths.
    ‘The ice is coming,’ she murmured.
    Lusa and the others followed Toklo as he padded over to a pool. Lusa dipped her snout to drink from the ice-fresh water. It tasted different from the water further inland: sharp and salty, with a trace of fish. Lusa wasn’t sure she liked it, but Kallik gulped it down.
    ‘This feels almost like home,’ she said. Her voice grew eager.