The Last Wilderness by Erin Hunter Read Free Book Online Page A

wondered what it was for; it didn’t look as if you could eat it. Memories came back to him of playing with Tobi before his brother became too weak. Oka had made up all their games to teach them things they needed to know. Maybe this flat-face game was like that. He tried to remember if he had ever seen full-grown flat-faces doing something with balls.
    As they watched, the door of a larger den opened and another adult female appeared. She shook some flat-face thing that made a loud clanging noise, and called to the bigger cubs. At once they ran across to the den and filed inside. One of them scooped up the ball and took it in with him. The little cub ran back to his father, pointing upward at a squawking flock of geese that swirled overhead before flying across the valley.
    ‘Let’s go now,’ Toklo said as the last of the cubs disappeared and the door of the den closed behind them. ‘I’ve had enough of this. And I’m hungry!’



CHAPTER SEVEN:
Toklo
    T oklo glanced back at Ujurak as he began padding down the hill, away from the flat-face dens, in the direction the geese had taken. The smaller cub looked reluctant to leave.
    ‘Come on, Ujurak,’ he growled, sounding harsher than he meant to. ‘It’s time to be brown bears, remember, hunting and building dens. Looking after ourselves.’
    ‘But I want to watch these flat-faces,’ Ujurak protested. ‘They’re different, somehow.’
    ‘For stars’ sake, flat-faces are flat-faces!’ Toklo retorted. ‘We’re wasting time!’
    ‘OK.’ Ujurak took one last glance at the flat-face dens, then bounded down the hill to Toklo’s side. ‘Let’s hunt.’
    Toklo gave him a friendly shove before leading the way through the valley, back in the direction of the coast. The lingering scent of caribou on the trail made it harder to detect other prey, but as they rounded a jutting spur of the hillside he spotted the geese again, feeding around a lake, their white feathers standing out against the tough grass.
    ‘There.’ Toklo pointed with his snout. ‘Let’s go.’
    On their way across the valley they kept low among the long grasses, wading a shallow stream and hiding behind rocks. But closer to the lake the ground flattened out until there was no other cover between them and their prey, no way of sneaking up without alerting the geese.
    ‘We should get downwind so they don’t pick up our scent,’ Kallik suggested.
    ‘I know.’ Toklo sighed. The wind was blowing from exactly the wrong direction, and it was going to take forever to work their way around without being seen or scented. The geese could be long gone by then.
    He signed to the others to stay back, then flattened himself to the ground as he tried to creep up on the geese. But before he could get near them, the wholeflock rose flapping into the air, letting out raucous cries of alarm.
    They flew a few bearlengths, then settled again and began to feed. With frustration bubbling inside him, Toklo waited for his friends to catch up to him.
    ‘Maybe we should spread out,’ Lusa offered. ‘That way, if they fly away from one of us, someone else might catch one.’
    ‘I suppose we could try,’ Toklo said grudgingly.
    The bears separated so that they were creeping up on the flock of geese from different directions. But it didn’t work. The geese spotted them long before they were close enough to pounce; they took to the air, and when they landed again they were still out of reach.
    ‘This is stupid!’ Toklo growled. His belly was howling with hunger by now; he was so angry with the geese, he could think of nothing but tearing into one and seeing the feathers fly. ‘We need another plan.’
    He beckoned to his friends with a toss of his head. ‘I have an idea,’ he began, when all three were clustered around him. ‘Ujurak, I want you to try a new way of hunting. Turn into a goose; then whenyou’re in the middle of the flock, you can change back into a bear and grab one of them.’
    ‘Toklo,