“No!” Lusa retorted. Maybe just a bit. “But you haven’t done anything to show that you’re a friend yet.”

“I saved you from the wolves, didn’t I?” Aiyanna asked, sounding faintly annoyed.

“No, you helped us save Chogan from the wolves,” Lusa pointed out. “What do you know about him, anyway?”

Aiyanna shrugged. “Not much. When I came here with my mother from the other side of the ridge, Chogan made it pretty clear that we weren’t to go anywhere near his territory. He never got along with the other bears around here.”

“Toklo used to know Chogan when he was a tiny cub.” Somehow, without intending it, Lusa found herself sitting beside Aiyanna and telling her part of the story Toklo had told her. “Chogan forced Oka, Toklo’s mother, off his territory, along with her cubs, Toklo and Tobi.”

Aiyanna snorted. “Sounds like Chogan,” she commented. “So where’s Tobi?”

“On your territory.”

Aiyanna looked startled. “What?”

“He wasn’t strong,” Lusa explained. “He died when he was still a cub. His burial mound is under an overhanging rock on your territory. Toklo tried to see it, but you wouldn’t let him.”

“He never said that’s what he wanted to see!” Aiyanna protested.

Lusa shrugged. “Well, he wouldn’t tell you, would he?”

“So what did Toklo do after Chogan drove him away?” Aiyanna asked. “And what happened to Oka? She isn’t one of the she-bears I’ve met around here.”

Lusa knew that Toklo might not approve of her sharing his whole story with Aiyanna. But the brown she-bear seemed so sympathetic that before Lusa knew it, the words were tumbling out.

She told Aiyanna how Oka had abandoned Toklo after his brother died, because she thought he would die, too, and she couldn’t face losing both of them. “So she was brought to the Bear Bowl—”

“What’s a Bear Bowl?” Aiyanna interrupted.

“It’s a place where bears live and flat-faces go to look at them,” Lusa explained.

Aiyanna rolled her eyes. “Flat-faces are weird.”

“Yes, well . . . That’s where I met Oka. She was so sad, and so scared for the cub she had left behind. I promised her I would escape and find Toklo, and give him a message from her. And I did that, and then we met Kallik at Great Bear Lake, and ended up traveling all the way to the Endless Ice.”

“Wow!” Aiyanna stared at Lusa in astonishment. “You guys have been everywhere!”

Lusa realized she might have said too much. But Aiyanna is really easy to talk to. “Yeah, we’ve been traveling for a whole suncircle,” she admitted. “But now it’s time to go home.”

“And that’s why Toklo came here? Because it’s where he was born?”

Lusa nodded. “But everything is different,” she said. “The wolves have taken over the forest, and there’s no room for a new territory.”