Suddenly a faint choking sound came from inside the den. Toklo caught his breath. ‘That was Ujurak!’ he exclaimed. ‘He’s not dead.’

The old flat-face bent over Ujurak again. A silver claw-shape flashed in his hand. Toklo’s belly clenched with anxiety as Ujurak’s limbs spasmed and his skinny flat-face arms flailed. Then the Ujurak-cub relaxed, and the flat-face healer straightened up, stretching out a hand to smooth back Ujurak’s tangle of head-fur.

Glancing away from the window, Toklo saw the moon hanging over the forested mountain slopes. Longing gripped him, sharp as a wolf’s fangs. That’s where I belong. Endless forests were the right place for a brown bear; that was where he should be, not hiding here in the shadows, on the fringe of a flatface denning area.

Toklo’s mind flew back to when he and Tobi were tiny cubs, still living in their BirthDen with Oka. He recalled the very first time Oka had taught them how to hunt.

‘See this stick?’ she had said, dropping it in front of them. ‘I want you to pretend it’s a hare. What are you going to do?’

‘Chase it?’ Tobi guessed, his eyes sparkling.

A pang passed through Toklo as he remembered that there had been a time when Tobi hadn’t been so ill. Even though he wasn’t as strong as Toklo, none of them had realised how sickly he was. Oka hadn’t been so anxious about him, and Toklo had been able to love him without being irritated by his weakness.

‘That’s dumb, squirrel-brain!’ Toklo had replied to his brother. ‘You can’t chase a stick. This is what I’m going to do!’

Toklo leaped on the stick and sank his teeth into it, shaking it from side to side and finally dropping it at Oka’s paws. ‘I killed it, didn’t I?’ he yelped.

‘You did,’ Oka growled approvingly. ‘Come on, Tobi, you try.’

Tobi jumped on to the stick, stretching out his front legs to grip it with his claws, but he slipped as he landed and rolled over on his back. The stick went flying.

‘Your hare just escaped,’ Toklo huffed in amusement.

Oka let out an exasperated sigh. ‘Tobi, you’re not trying!’ she scolded. ‘How do you expect to feed yourself when you’re full grown if you don’t learn now?’

Tobi sat up, shaking scraps of leaf-mould off his pelt. ‘I’ll stay with Toklo,’ he replied. ‘Toklo, you won’t let me starve, will you?’

‘Course not,’ Toklo barked. ‘I can catch enough prey for both of us. Watch!’ He pounced on the stick again, and this time it snapped cleanly in two between his paws.