As night fell, he curled up in the same cramped den under the roots. This isn’t a good place to stay, he decided as he drifted into sleep. Tomorrow I’ll look for somewhere better.

Waking the next day, he realised that the sky above the trees had cleared and sunlight was striking down into the forest. He felt hungry, but the day’s rest had given him new strength, and the pain in his leg had settled into a dull ache.

Toklo felt a lot more cheerful as he climbed through the trees until he had left the BlackPath far behind. As he rounded a thicket of thornbushes he surprised a squirrel nibbling on a nut among the roots of a tree, and killed it with a swift blow to its spine. Gorging himself on the warm prey, he shoved the hardship of the last few days out of his mind.

I’m a brown bear! I can cope with anything.

Eventually he emerged on the top of a ridge and padded along it, enjoying the sensation of wind ruffling his fur. This is more like it, he thought.

At last he realised that he was coming to the end of the ridge. He guessed that beyond it he would look down on the coastal plain again: there would be geese and hares to hunt, and maybe even caribou. His jaws watered and his paws itched as he imagined launching himself at his prey and using his strength and skill to pull it down.

But as the ground fell away beneath his paws, revealing the land beyond, Toklo stopped dead and stared in disbelief. The plain lay in front of him, just as he expected, with the ocean beyond, but it was very different from how he had imagined. Instead of the rich harvest of prey he had hoped for, the whole stretch of land was dotted with flat-face structures: low, flat-roofed dens and tall towers, as far as he could see in all directions. One of the towers had a bright flame spurting from the top. BlackPaths with tubes beside them, like the one he had followed, crossed the area from one flat-face denning place to another and led away into the distance. Nothing moved except for firebeasts, crawling along the BlackPaths.

Toklo took a step backwards, glancing over his shoulder in the direction he had come. I’d better go back, even if I have to meet that grizzly again.

But before he turned away, he heard a distant buzzing sound and spotted a metal bird rising into the sky from the far side of one of the denning places. He paused to watch as it flew towards him, the sun glinting on its hard, shiny pelt. It was flying low, heading for the stretch of open ground between the bottom of the ridge and the nearest of the flat-face structures.