Ujurak thought that the healer’s eyes looked kind, and the touch of his hands was strong and sure. Gradually he relaxed, growing more confident that the flat-face didn’t mean him any harm.

‘What’s your name, little bear?’ Tiinchuu asked.

‘Ujurak.’

‘And how did you come here?’ The healer tilted the cup so that Ujurak could swallow the last drops of tea, and set the cup aside. He rearranged Ujurak’s pillows so that he could sit back supported by them.

‘I was certainly surprised when I found you lying naked on my doorstep,’ he went on. ‘Did you fall from the stars?’

Ujurak’s eyes flew wide with astonishment. Does he really think so? Then he recognised the amusement in Tiinchuu’s eyes and managed to smile.

‘Where did you come from?’ the healer asked, growing more serious.

Ujurak hesitated. ‘I don’t know where I’m from,’ he confessed. ‘I . . . I don’t remember.’

‘Hmm . . .’ Tiinchuu moved away to get a cloth soaked with some fresh-smelling liquid. He sat down on the side of the bed and used the cloth to wipe Ujurak’s face and throat. Ujurak let out a grateful sigh at the cool touch.

‘You’re not a boy, are you?’ the healer said, with a sudden piercing look.

Ujurak thought of the dark cave that had filled with golden light, and the Arctic hare that had pulled him forward, dragged him out of the shadows to the light and the warmth. The spirit of the hare was here now, he could feel it in the man sitting beside him. He’s a hare as well as a flat-face . . .

‘No,’ Ujurak said. ‘I’m a bear.’

He braced himself for the healer to leap away in fear, or tell him that he was lying, but Tiinchuu just blinked. ‘And were you a bear when you swallowed the fishhook?’

‘No, I was a goose.’

Tiinchuu’s eyes widened in surprise. ‘You have the spirit of more than one creature?’

Ujurak nodded. ‘Mostly I’m a bear. But I’ve been a goose, and an eagle, and a mule deer –’

‘Then you’re a shape-shifter?’ the healer interrupted. His gaze was fixed on Ujurak’s face and there was a look of fascination, almost of hunger, in his dark eyes.

‘I . . . I guess so.’ Ujurak put his head on one side. ‘What about you? That hare in the cave . . . that was you, wasn’t it?’

Tiinchuu nodded. ‘You have many shapes, but I have just two: a man, as you see me now, and an Arctic hare. Most of the time I live as a man, but in my dreams I become the hare and learn things I could never know in my human shape.’

Ujurak remembered the feeling of peace in this denning place, the certainty he had that they would not be hunted. ‘Can all the flat-faces here do that?’