Great Bear Lake by Erin Hunter

Author:Erin Hunter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Kallik

Kallik woke up blinking in bright sunlight. She lay huddled at the base of the rock; her pelt and the muddy ground all around her steamed gently as the hot rays dried them out. For a few moments she kept still, letting the warmth soak through her fur, then she tried to stand. Wincing as she stretched stiff muscles, Kallik looked for the Arctic fox, but it had gone. She tried to stifle a pang of loss. It’s only a fox.

An enticing scent tickled Kallik’s nostrils. Food! Her belly rumbled and saliva flooded her jaws as her gaze fell on the body of a hare, stretched out on the ground beside her. The scent told her it was freshly killed.

Puzzled and a little afraid, Kallik looked around. She longed to sink her teeth into the prey, but she knew what a risk it could be to eat another bear’s kill. She pictured a huge white bear roaring as it bore down on her, its claws outstretched. Then she spotted the fox, its eyes gleaming from underneath the low branches of a thornbush.

Warmth flooded over Kallik. “You caught it, didn’t you?” she said.

The fox twitched its ears.

She had sheltered the fox during the storm, and now it had brought her a gift. That was what friends did for each other. She had a friend!

“Thank you,” she said, dipping her head.

She tore at the delicious hare meat, savoring every mouthful as she felt it slide warm into her belly. It tasted even better because the Arctic fox had brought it for her.

Kallik was so hungry that she could have eaten the hare twice over. But she stopped when a haunch was left, and backed well away. She wondered if the fox trusted her enough to come close now that the desperate need for shelter from the storm was past. It crept up, more confidently now, and settled down to eat with a bright-eyed glance at Kallik.

With her belly full, Kallik set out again. I am on the Claw Path! she thought, excitement fluttering inside her. As she trekked, she began to notice large pawprints and droppings, and the occasional bunch of white hairs snagged on a bush. She knew that other bears had passed this way. Here and there, she found a few berries, but she guessed that most of the bushes along the Claw Path had been stripped by the bears who had gone before her. The fox had watched her leave the rock where they had spent the night, and she didn’t know if it was still following her, out of sight. She hoped it was, but she knew that she had to concentrate on her journey, not the fox’s, and at last she was sure she was going the right way.

“Thank you, spirits, for guiding me here,” she whispered.

The sun was sliding down the sky when Kallik spotted movement on the ground a few bearlengths ahead of her. Padding forward curiously, she spotted a snow goose fluttering in a muddy hollow.

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