‘Lusa?’ Kallik said. ‘Are you OK?’

For a moment Lusa stared at her as if she didn’t recognise her; then her eyes cleared and she relaxed. ‘I’m fine, Kallik,’ she replied. ‘I just had a weird dream. We were trying to chase the metal bird, and it changed into Ujurak.’ She hesitated, scuffling her paws in the marshy grass. ‘We’ve lost him, haven’t we?’

‘I guess we have,’ Kallik whispered.

She didn’t want to talk about their friend. Lusa sat and hunched in on herself, her eyes gazing into the distance. Kallik couldn’t bear to see her look of desolation.

‘Come on,’ she said, giving the little black bear a nudge. ‘We need to eat. Let’s go and look for food.’

For a moment she thought Lusa was going to refuse. Then the black bear let out a sigh. ‘OK,’ she agreed listlessly.

A stiff breeze was blowing along the ridge, but sunlight lit the valley slopes in front of them.

‘Suppose we go down a bit,’ Kallik suggested. ‘It’ll be warmer there, and we can get out of the wind.’

Lusa trailed behind her as Kallik led the way down the slope into the next valley. At the bottom a lake reflected the sky; around its edge trees and long grass offered the bears some shelter where they could forage among the berry bushes.

Kallik kept a lookout for the best berries and guided Lusa towards them. They had foraged together like this countless times before, but now Kallik couldn’t hide from herself that something was missing. The berries seemed tasteless, but it was too hard to work up the enthusiasm to go hunting for other prey. We need Toklo and Ujurak, she thought. We should be four, not two.

A pebbly spit of ground jutted out into the lake. Kallik padded along it to the end and gazed down into the water, wondering whether she could catch a fish. But she didn’t see any flash of silver; the water was clear and empty.

Dipping her snout to take a drink, Kallik turned back to see Lusa standing forlornly at the edge of the lake. She quickened her pace to return to the black cub.

‘I can’t see any fish,’ she reported. ‘Are you still hungry? We could look for grubs under some of these stones.’ She pointed her snout at a scattering of flat rocks a little further around the lake.

Lusa shrugged. ‘If you want.’

The sun rose in the sky and began to sink again as the two she-bears halfheartedly searched for grubs. Later, their bellies full, Kallik and Lusa sat beside the lake, watching the shadows lengthen.

‘We should find somewhere to den for the night,’ Kallik said. ‘Maybe there’ll be a sheltered spot among the trees.’

‘I guess we can look,’ Lusa replied.