Kalus stood at the beginning of the plain. In one hand he held the snares he meant to set, but in the other was his spear, which stubborn optimism had told him to bring. And at his feet were the tracks of the tiger. Studying them more closely, he saw that despite the sharp climb up from the gorge, there was no blood from its injured hind leg, and only a trace of a limp. The cub sniffed at the familiar prints, recognizing their scent.

Kalus felt a sudden surge of desire. An impulse had come to him, and he acted upon it at once. Hiding his traps behind a stone, he dropped down on one knee beside the cub. With his hand he indicated the tracks, then the line they followed into the distance.

'Alaska. These tracks. Avatar. We follow. AVATAR.'

The cub looked back at him, confused. But after repeating the gestures, the name of the tiger, and finally, walking along its visible trail, Kalus made her understand. Nose to the ground, she began to pursue the trail ahead of him, always urged to greater speed by her master.

Together they covered the distance swiftly, running whenever the snow and his strength permitted it.

For Kalus knew the tiger had set out the night before, and he had only the daylight to find it.

If only its hunt had been successful.

It was perhaps midday when he stood at the top of the same long hill, looking down with lesser eyes upon the valley and the clearing by the stream. He had begun to despair of his chances, knowing it would take nearly the rest of the day just to make his way back to the warmth and safety of the cave. Almost he had let the hill turn him back. But he, too, felt the stubborn need to persevere.

Here, if the read the signs right, the cat had suddenly crouched and begun to stalk. His shielded eyes strained against the blinding white, up and down the stream, searching for any further sign. But all such effort was defeated by the hard glare of the noon sun. Perhaps if he made his eyes like a quiet pool, in which any movement would be as a pebble dropping into gla.s.sy waters.....

Movement. His eyes shifted to the source. Again. The branches of a leafless tree, no, the tree itself, moved under the weight of some large animal, disturbing the snow-layered pines around it. At the edge of the clearing, on the far side of the stream. A short distance in front of it the snow had been mangled and stained, as by a recent kill.

He cut a swath straight towards it, risking much that the creature in the tree was his own, self-named Avatar, proud hunter of the frozen woodlands. He came to the stream, and lifting both his garments and the startled cub, waded across. The shaking of branches had not ceased, and now as he gained the far bank and set down the cub, a m.u.f.fled growl was added to it. He froze, spear lifted. But the sound had been neither sudden, nor seemed in any way to correspond with his movements. And at last, his eyes describing the scene, he lowered his spear with a surge of pride and grat.i.tude. It was his ally, the tiger, struggling to lift a large buck into the crotch of a trembling beech.

'Avatar!'

The great cat gave a sudden snarl, and dropping its prey, loosed its hold on the tree and leapt down to face him. All done in an instant, and with such angry determination that the man-child's eyes went wide, and he took a step back in spite of himself.

The tiger, too, felt a moment of confusion. For here was something not stamped into the racial memory of instinct. Kalus it knew, as the creature who fed and protected him at need. He felt an a.s.sociation to him, even a kind of closeness. But he was also the first creature to disturb him at his part-eaten kill, and those feelings were strong and immediate.

Kalus seemed to understand this, because he stood silent and made no further move, staying the cub, who would have stepped freely to the meat her friend had provided.

The tiger looked at the tree, then at the man. He vaguely recalled his mother, coming upon the scene of another tiger's kill, and the way it had first snarled, then yielded, allowing her to eat..... At last he solved the puzzle. Searching the forest behind him for any sign of danger, he moved away from the buck and remained standing, patient but alert, leaving the other to eat his fill.

Kalus came forward steadily, and with a further greeting, began to cut away at the untouched back legs (which a more experienced predator would have eaten first, but which were ideal for his purposes). He worked hard and diligently with the hunter's knife, trying at the same time not to jerk the carca.s.s, which might arouse the tiger, at intervals shooing away the cub.

He felt as he did so an almost irrational need of haste, which went beyond his concern for the tiger or the long journey home. He could not have explained it. There was time to meet his ends. No, it was more the aggressiveness of the act itself which put him on his guard. After so many days of caution and yielding, to have been so bold, and come to such a reward..... And whether superst.i.tion or sixth sense, his one desire at that moment was to take his portion and be gone.

As the last stubborn tendon surrendered its hold of the second leg, he straightened his back with a sudden glow of pride and happiness. He wanted to walk right up to his companion, a thing which he had never done, and box his ears in relief and brotherly affection.

But in the same instant the shadow behind his fears took flesh, as with a mad crash a large grizzly split through a wall of bushes, not forty feet away. And as it growlingly surveyed them with but a moment's consideration, the tiger recognized his old enemy.

Fear rose instantly in the man-child, but stronger was his cornered rage. A mindless brute, who knew nothing of his struggles and yearnings, blindly sought to steal what had cost him so dearly, and in so doing, rend or even kill both himself and his closest companions.

Knowing that to run would be the greater danger, and goaded by his pa.s.sion, he lifted his spear and cried out in fury, standing his ground and preparing for the inevitable charge. The tiger seemed to feel much the same emotion, for it too snarled threateningly, and even began to move forward.

But in the dim perceptions of the monster there also burned dark fires.

This land was his, as was any in which he walked, and he would not be defied. His victory over the tiger still lived in him, and the man-child was beyond his experience. He was a prince of power, and aggression his only creed. Coming close in short, growling breaths, he raised up his quivering bulk for battle, and on his hind legs advanced toward the tiger.

Whatever the poetic or philosophical may say, in Nature, as well as in Man's darkened nature, strength is often (and only) by cornered strength defeated. As the full eight-foot carriage of the bear began to lower toward the mortal and extinguishable flesh of his friend, Kalus felt the terrible white fire that lives in every creature whose dearest are threatened, take hold of him. And as the tiger drew back and raised its extending claws in answer, he drove his spear deep into the grizzly's brawny neck and shoulder. Nor did he draw away in the face of its fury, but drove in against the scruff, pinning its head while the tiger's slashing blows fell unmercifully.

Pulling back the shaft as the spearhead lost its bite, he drove it this time into the bristling shoulder, and with a strength he would not have thought in him, from both point of pain and pressure, drove the thousand pound menace onto its side.

This was all the tiger needed. Slashing and biting, braving the peril of its roaring jaws, he tore away at the vital streams of his foe until they spilled recklessly, and the raging heart that drove them was betrayed in a self-defeating carnage of red. The bear lurched forward, dying.

Kalus stepped back, panting, his heart near exploding with the effort and fear, while the tiger yet leered over his fallen enemy, unsure of its end. Then the bear's eyes faded, and all was silence.

The cub whimpered out from its hiding place, looking to Kalus for some sign of rea.s.surance. He knelt down and caressed her head against him, feeling much the same need himself. Then turned to face his ally, feeling a fierce kinship as deep and true as any he had ever experienced.

At last the tiger stepped back, and raising its head, gave a growl of pride and possession that told any who cared to listen that this land was his, and his alone. Kalus stepped back, acknowledging this, and with a surge of bittersweet emotion, realized that his friend had ascended to the magnificent freedom of a creature of the Wild. . .but also that it no longer needed him.

'You've done it,' he said quietly, and with such feeling that the pent-up emotions burst forth in a flood of tears. Then he shook off all weakness, lifted the legs of the deer, and looked one last time at his friend.

'Fly well, my Avatar. My spirit is always with you.'

Kalus turned sadly toward home, and followed by the wolf, was away.

Chapter 30

It was a quiet morning, and for the first time in weary days uncounted, a truly mild one as well. The sun shone warm and wet, there was little breeze, and this time, Kalus knew, it was no illusion. Winter was on the wane. If he had possessed a calendar, the day might have been called March 12.

And though the inexorable changing of the seasons brought with it new concerns and dangers, he resolved this day to feel some small satisfaction in his victory over the Cold World. Perhaps victory was not the right word, since the primal elements knew no intelligence, and felt no pain. Still.....

Sylviana came out to join him on the ledge, which through the softening snow, was once more discernible as the same from which she had first surveyed the confines of her new existence, and the untamable world that was to be the only home of her adulthood. Putting her hand through Kalus' arm and nestling against him, both felt emotion stir inside them, as sleeping dreams and fears alike, awoke to the possibilities of the coming Spring.

The two looked at each other. And without speaking, both knew that the mountains they had been forced to climb were too high, the valleys they had endured, too abysmal and black. Somehow a quieter s.p.a.ce must be found, where they could rest and recover their spirits, and climb no higher feeling than gentle warm affection and peace. Such, at least, was their desire.

'I miss the tiger,' said Kalus quietly. 'I knew he would have to go. But still.'

'I miss Akar,' she began. Then suddenly striking upon the heart of her emotions. 'I miss my FATHER.' Tears welled in her eyes.