His eyes glittered with fury; Kallik was half afraid of him when he was like this, but she knew that he was angry with Ujurak only because he was so worried about him.

‘Maybe we’re making a fuss about nothing,’ she ventured. ‘Ujurak has always come back before.’

‘That’s right.’ Lusa’s dark eyes sparkled. ‘He’s been a gull, and an eagle . . . and do you remember, Toklo, when he was a mule deer and led the wolves away from us? That was before you joined us,’ she added to Kallik.

‘Yes,’ Toklo snapped, still looking annoyed. ‘We had to wait forever for him to turn up again.’

‘But he did turn up,’ Lusa insisted. ‘And if he hadn’t changed, we would have been wolf-prey. He’ll remember this time, like he always has before.’

Toklo snorted. ‘I just wish he’d remember he’s supposed to be hunting for us.’

‘All right, suppose we creep up on him,’ Lusa suggested. ‘There are bushes and rocks we can use for cover.’

‘We can try,’ the young grizzly agreed.

He took the lead, treading softly from one clump of thornbushes to the next, as carefully as if he was stalking prey. Kallik and Lusa stayed hard on his paws. Eventually they reached the shelter of a dip in the ground where long grasses grew around a brackish pool. A stretch of open ground separated them from the flock.

Toklo dipped his snout into the pool for a quick drink. ‘This is where we have to show ourselves,’ he announced, shaking drops from his fur. ‘We’ll run among the geese and call Ujurak’s name. The rest of the flock will fly off, but if we’re lucky, Ujurak will stay behind.’

‘And if we’re not lucky?’ Lusa asked.

‘Then he can stay a goose for all I care!’ Toklo retorted.

Lusa exchanged a glance with Kallik. ‘He doesn’t mean it,’ she murmured.

Toklo snorted and burst out of the hollow, yelling, ‘Ujurak! Ujurak!’

‘Ujurak, it’s us!’ Kallik cried as she raced after the brown bear with Lusa at her side.

As Toklo had predicted, the geese took to the air again. The sky seemed full of wildly beating wings. Kallik’s heart slammed into her throat as she saw not a single white bird left on the seashore.

Then Lusa exclaimed, ‘Ujurak!’

She pointed with her snout, and Kallik made out a brown, humped shape lying in the surf; at first glance she’d taken it for a spit of sand. Now she realised it was a small brown bear, lying motionless on his side as the waves washed around him.

‘What happened to him?’ she panted as all three bears bounded towards him. ‘Did he fall? Did he forget how to fly?’