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was a fir tree and its bark hung down in shreds. Huge gouges had been cut into the trunk by something almost three metres tall – considerably bigger than either of the boys.
    ‘Uh-oh,’ he muttered. ‘I wondered when we’d find one of these.’
    ‘That’s bear sign,’ Tikaani said flatly, studying the damaged wood.
    Bear sign indeed, Beck agreed inwardly. The bear had treated the tree like a giant scratching post. Claws fifteen centimetres long had shredded the wood like it was cardboard. The animal had been looking for insects under the bark.
    He glanced at his friend. ‘Have you seen bears before?’
    He wasn’t surprised Tikaani recognized it for what it was. Beck had been trained in what to do in bear country but had never actually met one. Tikaani, growing up in Anakat, could hardly not have.
    ‘Sometimes, yeah, a long way away. But then I always do
this
.’ Tikaani whacked his stick against the nearest trunk and grinned.
    Beck nodded. Tikaani had described the best way to travel in bear country. Make plenty of noise and the bears would probably –
probably
– keep away.
    ‘They stay away from crowds and they don’t come into town at all,’ Tikaani went on. ‘Which is just one reason why I really prefer living somewhere like Anchorage. Apart from, you know, the hot and cold running water and the central heating and the electricity that doesn’t go off because the generator broke down
again
.’
    Beck spotted one obvious flaw in Tikaani’s logic . . .
    ‘We’re not a crowd and we’re not in a town,’ he pointed out. ‘They might not be so scared of us.’
    Tikaani pulled a face. ‘OK, plan B: you keep eye contact, you back away slowly. Dad says that sometimes a bear will stand on its back legs but that just means it’s curious and wants to get a better look at you. It doesn’t mean it’s going to attack. And sometimes, too, they’ll bluff a bit. They’ll chomp their teeth and they’ll slap the ground like they’re going to attack, but they’re just trying to frighten you. Which,’ he added with feeling, ‘would work. I’d be terrified.’
    Beck nodded again. So far, so good. ‘They just want to work out who’s dominant,’ he explained. ‘But what if, after all that, they still come at you? Like, it’s a mother bear and you just got between her and her cubs?’
    Which is about the stupidest place to be in the whole world . . .
Mother bears, Beck knew, weren’t interested in dominance. Just in seeing off the threat.
    Tikaani’s pleased expression froze. Then he thumped the nearest tree twice as hard with his stick. ‘OK. Then we, uh . . . we . . .’ He looked pleadingly at Beck, who raised an eyebrow. ‘Run away?’
    Oops
. It looked like they had got to the edges of Tikaani’s education.
    ‘Only if you want to be dinner,’ Beck said. ‘They can out-run you, out-swim you . . .’
    Tikaani glanced up at the nearest tree.
    ‘. . . and definitely out-climb you,’ Beck finished.
    ‘So what do we do?’ Tikaani muttered.
    ‘OK. Brown bears . . .’
    ‘Grizzlies.’
    ‘Grizzlies, call ’em whatever – for them, you lie down.’
    ‘Huh?’ Tikaani stared at him.
    ‘Play dead. Curl up, lie on your side’ – Beck clasped both hands behind his neck – ‘and put your hands like this. You’re protecting all your squishy bits—’
    ‘Is that a technical term?’
    ‘– and you’re really showing it you’re not a threat. But you have to stay like that. They may try to chew your pack or knock you about a bit. If you put up any kind of fight, that’s just going to annoy them.’
    ‘And that
works
?’
    ‘That’s what the Sami told me. But that was brown bears. Black bears – you only get them in North America and they like to make the point that they’re different to their sissy Old World cousins.’
    ‘How?’ Tikaani asked suspiciously.
    ‘Well, they’re less likely to attack in the first place – but if they do, it’s probably because they’re hungry and