This time Ujurak’s eyes flickered open. For one startling moment he gazed at Lusa and Kallik as if he didn’t know who they were.

He can’t have forgotten us! Kallik thought in dismay.

Then recognition flooded into Ujurak’s face. He reached out and plunged a paw into Lusa’s fur, exclaiming something in flat-face talk. His voice was hoarse, and it seemed to hurt him to speak.

He can’t talk to us any more! Kallik realised. What if he doesn’t understand us, either?

‘Do you remember where you are?’ Lusa asked him urgently. ‘In the flat-face dens beside the caribou trail?’

Ujurak looked puzzled. Lusa exchanged a frustrated glance with Kallik, and then went on, as if somehow she could communicate her desperation to Ujurak, even though they couldn’t understand each other’s language.

‘A metal bird landed here. Some new flat-faces got out, and now they’re all having a gathering in one of the big dens.’

‘We need to leave now,’ Kallik added, her fear rising with every moment they spent inside. ‘Something’s going on, and it’s not safe here any more.’

Ujurak sat up, looking from Lusa to Kallik and back again. His face had cleared, and when he spoke again it was with bear words, though his voice was hoarse and difficult to understand. ‘Yes, I remember.’

Unsteadily he got out of bed and tottered over to the fire, where some flat-face pelts were hanging on a wooden frame. Slowly he put on the pelts; they were too big for him, and he had to roll them up so they didn’t hang over his skinny paws. Kallik noticed that he slipped something small into a pouch in one of the pelts.

‘Why does he need all that flat-face stuff?’ she asked Lusa. ‘If he changed back into a bear, he would have his own pelt.’

Lusa shrugged. ‘Maybe he’s not strong enough to change yet. It’s better that he takes these pelts to keep warm while he’s still a flat-face.’

Ujurak turned back to the bed, stripped off one of the pelts that lay there, and wrapped it around his shoulders. Slowly, still unsteady on his hindpaws, he crossed the room to the door and peered out.

Crowding up beside him, Kallik saw his eyes widen as he spotted the metal bird. The sound of voices was coming from the big den; Ujurak pointed at it and looked at the bears, a question in his eyes. ‘In there?’

‘That’s right,’ Lusa said impatiently. ‘Now let’s go, before they come out and catch us.’ She gave Ujurak a nudge, trying to get him moving.

Ujurak ventured out into the open, padding softly on bare pink paws.

‘At last!’ Lusa muttered, turning down the valley, back in the direction of the plain. ‘Hurry up!’