Excitement welled up inside Kallik. She pushed her way into the open and looked up to where the last of the trees petered out and the mountains continued in jagged peaks of rocks and snow, outlined against a wide blue sky. The night before it had been too dark to see them. But Kallik’s excitement faded as she and Yakone set out again. The slope quickly became much steeper, and she found it was a struggle to keep on trudging upward. She could see Yakone was having the same trouble.

“It feels like a long time since we had to walk every day,” she panted, “even though it’s only been half a moon. We’re not fit anymore!”

Just before sunhigh, they reached the last of the trees. Kallik felt a momentary pang of uncertainty as she gazed out at the bare, snowy expanse ahead of her. I know I can hunt in trees now, she thought. Should we have stayed down there?

A bird called from one of the trees behind her, and Kallik was tempted to turn back and catch it. No, she decided, her doubts giving way to determination. I’m a white bear. That’s not where I find my food.

“I don’t like the look of the rocks up ahead,” Yakone pointed out. “They seem more like a cliff than a hillside. How are we going to get up there?”

Kallik’s heart sank as she saw that Yakone was right. A sheer cliff ran right across their path, stretching into the distance in both directions. “We’ll have to walk along until we find a way up,” she said, not liking the idea at all. “It could take forever.”

“Let’s take a closer look,” Yakone suggested. “The wolves got down here somehow, so there must be a path. . . .”

He padded right up to the foot of the cliff and searched carefully along it, sticking his snout into cracks and around boulders. Kallik watched him, afraid that he was wasting his time. She was beginning to get impatient when Yakone turned back to her. “Over here!” he called.

Kallik scrambled up the last few bearlengths of the slope to join him, and saw a narrow shaft cut into the cliff. It was almost as steep as the precipice itself, but rocks jutted out all the way up.

“Those would make good pawholds,” Kallik murmured, half to herself.

Snow had drifted into crevices and at the side of the shaft, but it had been trampled by the passage of many paws. There was a strong reek of wolf.

“This must be the route the wolves used,” Yakone said, sounding pleased to be proved right. “But the scent is old and stale. . . . I guess it’s been a long time since they came down to live in the forest.”