Read Online Great Bear Lake by Erin Hunter - Free Book Online

forgotten by living bears. But he still remembered his mother and Tobi,so that meant their spirits must still be in the river. Toklo just wanted to forget them, forget what had happened—but how could he, when Lusa kept shoving them in his face?
    The thought of plunging into the river with the spirits of his dead mother and brother had filled him with horror. Perhaps they were angry with him because they had died while he was still alive. And when Lusa and Ujurak forced him to swim, he had felt Oka’s and Tobi’s dead claws hooking into his fur, trying to pull him down to the bottom of the river until the water gushed into his jaws and everything went black….
    â€œAre you okay?” Lusa asked, jolting him back to the present. The concern in her dark eyes reminded Toklo all over again of how scared he had been as the river closed over his head.
    â€œOf course I am,” he growled. “At least, I will be when we find some food. I’ve almost forgotten what meat tastes like.”
    â€œSo have I.” Lusa sighed. “I guess I could find some berries in the forest.”
    â€œBerries aren’t proper food for a bear,” Toklo retorted. “You can eat them if you like, but I want something a lot more satisfying.” His jaws watered as he remembered the taste of salmon; what was the good of a river if there weren’t any fish in it?
    Ujurak gazed longingly downstream. Toklo could see that he just wanted to move on.
    â€œWe can’t travel if we don’t eat,” he told the smaller cub. He padded away from the others, his muzzle raised to sniff out prey. Spotting some white smears along the side of the BlackPath, he added, “Look, that’s salt. We should lick it up.It won’t fill us, but it’s better than nothing.”
    â€œSalt?” Lusa remembered the flat-faces hanging up a block of the white stuff for the bears in the Bear Bowl to lick. “Did the flat-faces put it here for us?”
    â€œThey put it here, but not for us bears, that’s for sure. And don’t ask why ,” Toklo snapped as Lusa opened her jaws to speak again. “I don’t know why flat-faces do what they do. They’re crazy—even crazier than black bears.”
    To his relief, Lusa kept quiet as all three bears stepped warily out onto the BlackPath to lick up the patches of salt. Toklo sniffed in disgust as his tongue swiped over it; the white stuff was cold and dirty—so dirty that in some places he could hardly distinguish it from the BlackPath. But it’s better than nothing .
    He remembered the day Oka had found salt like this, and told him and Tobi that it was good to eat. For once Tobi hadn’t complained, and they had all stayed together, eating companionably, until—
    â€œRun!” Ujurak squealed.
    Toklo looked up to see a huge blue firebeast bearing down on him. Terror pounded through him; he leaped away and bounded across the BlackPath to the safety of the other side. The firebeast roared past with a high-pitched howling; Toklo didn’t dare move until the sound had died away into the distance.
    Looking around, he spotted Ujurak still on the other side of the BlackPath, next to the river. “Are you okay?” he called.
    â€œFine,” Ujurak replied, huffing out his breath.
    Toklo’s belly lurched with relief when he realized that the younger cub wasn’t hurt. Lusa had climbed the wooded bank beside the BlackPath and was clinging to a low branch on the nearest tree. She scrambled down as the noise of the firebeast dwindled away, and trotted back to the bank to stand beside Toklo.
    â€œThat was close!” she panted. “Was the firebeast hunting us?”
    â€œNo,” Toklo growled. “But it would have flattened us if we got in its way. They don’t care.”
    Ujurak set a paw on the BlackPath, about to cross, when Toklo heard the rumble of another approaching firebeast. “Keep