Ujurak finished eating his share. He was enjoying listening to his friends as they chattered excitedly about their new home. He had brought them here, to a place where they could be safe and well fed and away from flat-faces for the rest of their lives. He was licking his paws, feeling his belly full of warm meat, when a soft voice sounded inside his head. He stiffened as it whispered: Not the end.

Ujurak lifted his head, his pelt prickling as if it were crawling with ants. He quietly rose to his paws and stepped away from his friends, pretending to drink from a pool of water. He flattened his ears and listened in case the voice came again.

He had heard this voice before.

Many moons ago it had spoken to him one cold night under a blaze of stars. Follow the Pathway Star, it had said, and when he had looked up he had seen one star twinkling more brightly than the rest. He had chosen to ignore the voice at first. But it had whispered to him in the quiet moments as he curled up to sleep and before he rose in the morning. You will not travel alone, it had told him.

‘What do you mean? There’s nobody here.’ Ujurak had looked around, seeing nothing but the forest stretching into shadow, as if he were the only bear in the world. They will find you, the voice promised. Then he met the brown bear Toklo, and his question was answered. He’d started to listen to the voice after that. If ever he had doubted the journey they were making, the voice inside his head urged him on, soft and insistent. Over time, he’d thought he’d figured out who it was, reaching to the edge of his memory, the very first things he could remember.

Ujurak lapped the ice-cold water from the pool. Above, a single star glimmered faintly in the dusky grey-blue sky. Not the end, the voice whispered again.

I don’t understand! Ujurak protested silently, gazing up at the Pathway Star.

Then, over the mountains, he saw a tiny black dot moving in the sky – no, there were three black dots. They moved closer, following the line of the ridge, and he could hear a distant buzzing. The dots grew bigger and he saw the flash of evening sunlight on hard silver. Metal birds, he thought with alarm. He glanced back at his companions. They hadn’t noticed the dots in the sky. They were too busy arguing about which was better to live in, trees or caves.

Ujurak watched the metal birds fly away into the distance. The clatter of their wings faded, echoing on the still air. Ujurak’s fur prickled. Metal birds were flat-face things – firebeasts of the air. So what were they doing here? Like Toklo had said about this place: No firebeasts. No flat-faces.