He drove his shoulder against the nearest of the metal cans and it tipped over. As the lid came off Lusa grabbed it with her forepaws and lowered it quietly to the ground. Flat-face rubbish spilled out of the can; water flooded Kallik’s jaws as she picked up the scent of meat.

Lusa pawed excitedly through the heap of rubbish. ‘There’s fruit, and some sort of green stuff . . . oh, and these potato sticks! Try them, they’re really good.’

She pushed a few stumpy bits of potato towards Kallik, and some to Toklo, then munched her own share enthusiastically. Kallik glanced at Toklo, who was giving the potato sticks a suspicious sniff, then tried one for herself. The taste was strong and salty; Kallik couldn’t quite understand why Lusa liked them so much. But hey, it’s food! she thought, swallowing the rest.

The can yielded a few scraps of meat which Toklo and Kallik shared, while Lusa gulped down the fruit.

‘Don’t even think about it,’ Toklo said as Lusa eyed the next can in the row. ‘We’ve wasted too much time already. Now that we’ve eaten, we have to go.’

Lusa nodded reluctantly. As they turned to leave, Kallik raised her snout for one last sniff. Beyond the smell of oil and rubbish, she could pick up the scent of blood coming from the big white den, mixed with something hard and strange. The combination made her fur bristle.

But there was another scent too. Faint, almost drowned by the rest, but unmistakable . . . Ujurak!

‘Lusa! Toklo! Wait!’ Kallik called.

Already several bearlengths away, her friends looked back. ‘What is it?’ Toklo grunted.

‘I can smell Ujurak!’

The other two bears came bounding back to her; Lusa’s eyes glowed with eagerness as she sniffed the air. ‘You’re right! But where is he?’

Looking up, Kallik saw that far above her head one of the windows of the den was propped open. ‘Maybe he’s in there? Ujurak! Ujurak!’

‘It’s us! We’re down here!’ Lusa added.

But no one came to the window.

‘Maybe the flat-faces are keeping him in a cage,’ Toklo growled.

‘We’ve got to get inside and look for him,’ Lusa declared.

At the thought of entering yet another flat-face den, a shiver passed through Kallik from nose to claws. Fear lodged in her belly like a hard stone. But she wasn’t going to let her friends down, and when Lusa set off along the side of the den, looking for a way in, she forced her paws to follow. She was encouraged by Toklo’s bulk as the young grizzly padded beside her. Flat-faces will think twice before they mess with him!

As they came around the corner of the den, they saw yellow light seeping out from around a door, but the door itself was firmly closed. Kallik and her friends paused on the edge of the light.