Toklo paused before replying. “I can smell another brown bear,” he told her, shifting his paws uneasily. “The scent’s pretty strong, and that might mean we’re trespassing on its territory. It might be Old Grizzly, the bear Maniitok warned us about.”

Kallik tasted the air and realized that Toklo was right. She had been so relieved to find the track that she hadn’t thought to check for scent. “But if the bear’s not here now . . .” she began, reluctant to accept that they couldn’t use the route she had found.

“We don’t know that,” Toklo snapped. “And even if you’re right, he could come back at any time. We’ll have to go the other way.”

Kallik wondered what was making Toklo so irritable. The night before he had been determined that no bear was going to push them around. But Kallik knew there was no point in arguing when he was in this mood. “Okay,” she sighed. “But how are we going to get Yakone up there?”

“We’ll do it together,” Toklo told her, back to his old supportive self now that the decision had been made.

The struggle up the hill was worse than Kallik could have imagined. Yakone was barely conscious, a dead weight that could only be raised by Kallik pushing from behind while Toklo gripped Yakone’s shoulder in his jaws and hauled him upward. Lusa scurried past them to the top of the slope, where she stood with her head raised, scanning the forest for any approaching threat.

But they reached the ridge without seeing any trace of wolves, and although there was bear scent here, too, the bear itself did not appear. The mountains loomed larger on the horizon, so close that Kallik almost felt she could reach out a paw and touch them. Looking down the slope on the far side of the ridge, she could see the hollow Toklo had told them about. It was deep and narrow, overhung by bushes, an easy place to hide while they rested overnight. Best of all, they reached it by an easy scramble down a fern-covered slope.

By the time they were hidden under the sheltering bushes, the sun was going down. Kallik was thankful for the cool of the evening, though it didn’t seem to help Yakone much. The white bear lay muttering and twitching, then at last sank into a quieter sleep. His breath was so shallow that Kallik kept checking to make sure his chest was still moving up and down.

As they settled down to sleep, a mournful howling broke out from somewhere above them.

“Wolves!” Lusa stiffened, her black fur standing on end. “They sound closer than last night,” she added.

More howls followed the first, breaking out in all directions at once, so that Kallik felt as if they were surrounded.

“Definitely closer,” Lusa said.