Seekers #6: Spirits in the Stars by Erin Hunter Read Free Book Online

reminded him.
    Lusa felt optimistic as they set out, enjoying the dazzle of sunlight on the snow. With Toklo in the lead, they crossed a valley, pausing to dip their snouts for a drink from a half-frozen stream.
    “I’ve almost forgotten what running water sounds like,” Lusa remarked, listening to the gurgle of the icy current, so different from the silent depths of the sea.
    Splashing through the stream, the bears headed across an open space where snow and earth had been churned together.
    “The musk oxen have been here,” Ujurak said as he peered at the hoofprints.
    “There are so many of them!” Kallik exclaimed.
    Toklo swiped his tongue around his jaws. “Good!”
    They were still too full to think of tracking down the musk oxen, so they kept going to the far side of the valley. Here the ground sloped steeply upward to a ridge, but when they tried to climb, the loose snow gave way beneath their paws, and they slid helplessly back again.
    “Now who’s stuck?” Lusa teased as Toklo pawed his way out of a drift, scattering snow as he shook his pelt.
    Toklo just growled in annoyance.
    They tried again and again, and before long Lusa was too wet and exhausted to think about teasing anymore. “There has to be an easier way than this,” she muttered as she struggled to climb through thick snow.
    Glancing around to make sure she hadn’t lost sight of her friends, she realized that Kallik wasn’t with them. Anxiety stabbed through her, until she spotted the white bear farther up the valley, nosing around at the bottom of the slope.
    “Look over here!” Kallik called.
    Lusa trudged over and found Kallik standing at the mouth of a gully leading upward, where broken rocks poked out of the covering of snow.
    “This looks easier,” Kallik went on.
    The two she-bears waited while Toklo and Ujurak came plodding over. Toklo gazed up the gully, then nodded. “It seems to cut through the ridge,” he said. “We might as well try it.”
    Kallik took the lead, bounding easily up the broken rocks. Lusa found it harder—sometimes she had to bunch her muscles for a long leap—but she kept going, her breath puffing out in clouds in the cold air.
    A breeze was blowing from the top of the gully; Lusa picked up a salt tang carried along with it and realized that they were heading toward the sea.
    As they reached the top of the gully, Kallik halted suddenly.
    “What can you see?” Lusa asked.
    She scrambled up to peer out from behind her friend; Ujurak and Toklo caught up a moment later.
    In front of Kallik the ground leveled out, stretching in front of them for many bearlengths until it stopped abruptly. The salt tang of the sea was even stronger.
    “Cliffs,” Ujurak murmured. “We can’t go that way. They’ll just lead us down to the sea again, if we don’t fall off and break our necks.”
    “Hey, look!” Toklo pointed with his snout toward the edge of the cliffs.
    Lusa spotted a white bear struggling through the snow, dragging the body of a seal behind her. The seal left a furrow in the snow, smeared with blood.
    “I’m surprised there are so many white bears on this island,” Kallik murmured, looking puzzled. “Mostly we live alone on the ice. We don’t stay together once we’re full-grown.”
    Lusa shrugged. “Well, these ones do.”
    “Let’s chase her off,” Toklo suggested, bouncing a little on his paws. “Then we can steal her catch.”
    Kallik gave him a shove. “What’s the point? If there are seals around here, we can hunt them fresh.”
    “And not risk a fight,” Lusa added.
    Toklo shrugged. “Okay.”
    “We could go and talk to her, though,” Ujurak pointed out. “She might be able to tell us something useful.”
    When the bears emerged from the gully, they had hardly covered a bearlength before the white she-bear turned and saw them. She stared at them for a moment, her eyes wide with alarm; then she lumbered back the way she had come, abandoning her catch in the snow.
    “It’s