The ‘ball’, Toklo realised, must be the round thing the cubs were kicking. He wondered what it was for; it didn’t look as if you could eat it. Memories came back to him of playing with Tobi before his brother became too weak. Oka had made up all their games to teach them things they needed to know. Maybe this flat-face game was like that. He tried to remember if he had ever seen full-grown flat-faces doing something with balls.

As they watched, the door of a larger den opened and another adult female appeared. She shook some flat-face thing that made a loud clanging noise, and called to the bigger cubs. At once they ran across to the den and filed inside. One of them scooped up the ball and took it in with him. The little cub ran back to his father, pointing upward at a squawking flock of geese that swirled overhead before flying across the valley.

‘Let’s go now,’ Toklo said as the last of the cubs disappeared and the door of the den closed behind them. ‘I’ve had enough of this. And I’m hungry!’

Chapter Seven: Toklo

CHAPTER SEVEN:

Toklo

Toklo glanced back at Ujurak as he began padding down the hill, away from the flat-face dens, in the direction the geese had taken. The smaller cub looked reluctant to leave.

‘Come on, Ujurak,’ he growled, sounding harsher than he meant to. ‘It’s time to be brown bears, remember, hunting and building dens. Looking after ourselves.’

‘But I want to watch these flat-faces,’ Ujurak protested. ‘They’re different, somehow.’

‘For stars’ sake, flat-faces are flat-faces!’ Toklo retorted. ‘We’re wasting time!’

‘OK.’ Ujurak took one last glance at the flat-face dens, then bounded down the hill to Toklo’s side. ‘Let’s hunt.’

Toklo gave him a friendly shove before leading the way through the valley, back in the direction of the coast. The lingering scent of caribou on the trail made it harder to detect other prey, but as they rounded a jutting spur of the hillside he spotted the geese again, feeding around a lake, their white feathers standing out against the tough grass.

‘There.’ Toklo pointed with his snout. ‘Let’s go.’

On their way across the valley they kept low among the long grasses, wading a shallow stream and hiding behind rocks. But closer to the lake the ground flattened out until there was no other cover between them and their prey, no way of sneaking up without alerting the geese.

‘We should get downwind so they don’t pick up our scent,’ Kallik suggested.

‘I know.’ Toklo sighed. The wind was blowing from exactly the wrong direction, and it was going to take forever to work their way around without being seen or scented. The geese could be long gone by then.