Great Bear Lake Read Online Free PDF Page A

hunter coming after me. When I drank from a pool the water tasted sour, as if it was dying. The deer’s world is getting smaller and sicker, Toklo.”
    â€œAre we going to get sick?” Lusa whimpered, her black eyes round and shiny in the half-light.
    Toklo shrugged. “Not if we do what we always do, and fight to survive. Life is hard. It always has been.”
    Ujurak sighed, and Lusa touched his shoulder with her muzzle, ruffling his fur with her warm breath. A sharp pang of jealousy stabbed through Toklo. He realized that his mouth was dust dry from fear and thirst, and turned away, paddingback to the stream to drink.
    â€œNo!” Ujurak exclaimed. “You can’t drink from there. I told you the water’s sick!”
    â€œBut I’m thirsty!” Toklo retorted. He dipped his muzzle into the cold, fur-soft current, aware all the time of his two companions standing silently behind him. The water tasted fine to him.

CHAPTER THREE
Kallik
    The white bear cub Kallik crouched at the top of the slope, taking a last look at the burning metal bird and the body of Nanuk slumped beside it. She knew that she had to find the place where the spirits danced on the ice, but it was hard to tear herself away from the stubborn, lonely she-bear who had protected her. Nanuk’s fur had been so cold when Kallik woke up, still curled in the curve of the older bear’s belly, after the metal bird fell out of the sky.
    Too dazed to wonder which direction she should take, Kallik began to scramble down the slope on the far side of the ridge. Stinging sleet buffeted her face, making her screw up her eyes; ice-cold mud soaked between her paws and into her pelt. Her whole body ached and pain stabbed through one foreleg whenever she put that paw to the ground.
    At the bottom of the slope rocks poked through the muddy ground, where clumps of tall grasses were bent almost flat by the sweeping wind. Kallik staggered forward for a few more bearlengths, until she stumbled over a slanting rock and rolledinto a hollow. She knew she ought to pull herself to her paws and struggle on, but even raising her head felt like trying to lift an ice floe. Sparkling darkness flooded her eyes; she collapsed on the ground and lay still.
    Kallik was floating, her body and legs as soft as snowflakes drifting through a night without stars or wind or the scent of water.
    Kallik! Kallik!
    What is it, Mother? Kallik looked all around, but nothing broke the darkness: not Nisa’s white pelt, or the twinkling of her mother’s spirit-star. Where are you?
    I am with you, little one, her mother’s voice replied. I am always with you .
    Then why can’t I see you?
    One day you will, her mother told her gently. But not yet .
    Why not? Kallik longed to curl against the warmth of her mother’s belly and listen to her stories again.
    Because there is something you must do. I cannot travel with you, my precious child. You must go on alone .
    I can’t….
    You can. You are strong, little one. You have survived .
    The wind rose, drowning Nisa’s voice.
    No! Kallik cried. Mother, don’t leave me!
    You are strong, Nisa repeated in a sighing breath that was lost in the sound of the wind.
    Kallik’s mind drifted until she thought she was swinging in the net again, far above the ground with the wings of the metal bird clattering overhead. There was fire, she remembered, anda dreadful screeching as the bird fell from the sky. She seemed to hear the screeching all around her now, filling the whole world….
    Her eyes flew open to see a firebeast bearing down on her, roaring as if she were its prey. Instinctively Kallik rolled to one side. The firebeast swept on, roaring and flattening her fur with the wind of its passing.
    Kallik lay without moving, without even breathing, until the firebeast had vanished into the distance and its growling died away. She realized that she was lying beside one of the flat-faces’