Lusa’s thoughts were interrupted by a snort of satisfaction from Toklo. He had his nose down on a scent and set off to track it through the trees. Eventually he halted a couple of bearlengths from a thick clump of berry bushes. Lusa repressed a sigh as she thought how long it would be before the season of delicious berries.

Toklo’s eyes gleamed as he stared at the bushes. “The prey’s in there,” he growled, and added abruptly, “Circle around and guard the other side. And don’t even think about letting it escape.”

Lusa bit back a sharp retort at being treated like a cub with still-wet fur. She just did as she was told, setting her paws down quietly as she skirted the bushes and crouched on the far side of them, ready to grab the prey if it broke into the open. Her nose twitched as she caught a familiar scent beneath that of the prey. Another bear? she wondered. She assumed the scent must be old, for Toklo readied himself without fear or apprehension.

Instead, a roar of fury from Toklo split the silence. Something’s wrong! Lusa thought, springing forward and bursting into the thicket. She almost collided with Toklo, who was clawing at the remains of a dead animal: just bones and a few scraps of the creature’s pelt remained. The air beneath the branches was heavy with the scents of deer and wolves.

“Prey-stealers!” Toklo was almost too enraged to speak. “This deer should have been ours!”

Lusa nosed at the bones. The wolves had already stripped the meat away, and all Toklo had picked up was the scent of the remains. Though Lusa and Toklo chewed the bones for a few moments, there was nothing left to fill their bellies.

“The wolves shouldn’t even be here!” Toklo huffed, throwing his bone to one side. “Bears live in this forest, and the prey should belong to them.”

While he was speaking, Lusa was taking a closer look at their surroundings. As well as the scraps of deer carcass and the pawprints of the wolves, she spotted different prints, and teeth marks on the remains of the deer that were too big to have been made by a wolf. Looking further, she found torn tufts of gray fur, and a spattering of blood on the ground.

“Look at this, Toklo,” she said. “I think the wolves fought with a bear here. And I think the bear won. It got to eat some of the deer, anyway.”

Toklo examined the traces she showed him and looked up with a grunt of satisfaction. “Good job, bear, whoever you are!”

Lusa felt daunted at the thought of a bear so powerful that it could fight off two or three wolves, but she was relieved that Toklo’s bad mood seemed to have passed and he was looking cheerful once more.