‘You know what?’ Toklo snorted. ‘You’ve never known anything but travelling. So you can’t imagine what it’s like to settle down.’ Ujurak had never talked about his BirthDen or his mother, and something had stopped Toklo from asking about them. Did he even have a mother? And if he did, was she a bear or something else? ‘It’ll feel good, I promise,’ he assured Ujurak. ‘Just think – we can make our own territories here and catch a tasty caribou, or a goose, any time we want. We won’t be hungry ever again.’ Surely that was what mattered most of all, after they’d nearly starved in the mountains and been hungry enough to steal flat-face food that Lusa found? Had Ujurak already forgotten what hunger was like?

‘Maybe you’re right,’ Ujurak muttered, not meeting Toklo’s gaze. ‘But I can’t help what I feel. There’s something tugging at me, telling me that we have to go on.’

‘Well, tell it to go on its own!’ Toklo huffed. ‘Can’t you see how great this place is?’

‘We don’t have to talk about this now,’ Lusa broke in. ‘It’s more important to decide where we’ll make our dens for the night. If we don’t hurry up, it’ll be too dark to see where we’re going.’

Toklo let out an irritated snort; it was especially annoying because he had to admit Lusa was right. The sun was going down; this wasn’t the time to stand around arguing. ‘OK, let’s go,’ he said.

He led the way to the top of a ridge in the foothills. Beyond it the ground sloped down into a wide valley. At the valley’s head he could just make out a waterfall, tumbling down from the mountains. On the floor of the valley the waterfall split into countless narrow channels flowing swiftly past a scattering of rocky islands.

‘That looks like a good place,’ said Kallik. ‘If we swam out to one of those islands, nothing could sneak up on us.’

‘And there might be fish,’ Ujurak added hopefully.

Once they reached the edge of the river Toklo could see that they wouldn’t have to swim. The fast-flowing stream ran clear over brown pebbles; when Toklo waded out, it came scarcely halfway up his legs.

The others followed. ‘The water’s freezing!’ Lusa squealed, bounding through it and throwing up fountains of spray.

Toklo veered away from her. ‘Watch it! You’re soaking my fur.’

They headed for one of the biggest islands, a grassy stretch in the middle of the river with a ragged circle of large boulders covering the upstream end. Toklo flopped down gratefully in the shade.

‘Let’s rest. We can fish in the morning. And explore the woods,’ he added when he saw Lusa looking expectantly at him.