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they won’t be interested in you playing dead. And they can out-run you . . .’
    ‘And out-climb me and out-swim me, I got that bit . . .’
    ‘. . . So you just have to fight.’
    ‘Fight,’ Tikaani said flatly. ‘I’m not exactly tall. Me, versus a huge bear?’
    ‘Act aggressive,’ Beck told him. ‘Remember, it’s dominance again. You wave your pack or your coat at it, if you have time to get them off. If you don’t, then you jump up and down, you shout, you wave your arms.’ He held his arms above his head and lunged at Tikaani. ‘
Raah!
You have to show it you’re not a push-over – it’s not worth its while to try and eat you.’
    ‘No, it wouldn’t be,’ Tikaani agreed. ‘I bet I taste really, really bad and I’d make sure I told them so.’
    Beck laughed. ‘Just don’t give them the chance to find out!’

CHAPTER 13
    But as the day drew on, they didn’t see any bears at all. Beck made sure they drank from their water supply and ate a little at reasonable intervals, as well as gathering up any berries and mushrooms they passed to carry with them. There was no point in pressing on so fast that they wore themselves out.
    ‘We’re not going to get three regular meals a day,’ he explained. ‘We just graze as we go.’
    Tikaani already knew a lot of the plants, thanks to his grandmother’s teaching. Like the blueberries, which were not easy to find because they grew amongst other plants low down on the ground. The berries were tiny and quivered beneath the fingers at the slightest pressure. If they burst, which was almost inevitable, they stained the fingers with something like sweet-tasting blue ink. They were very moreish.
    Beck introduced him to more of the natural delicacies that they passed. There were the pink-tinted shoots of fireweed, whose name came from the colour of its leaves but suited the strong taste perfectly. And coltsfoot, flat green leaves shaped like the ace of spades that they picked straight off the ground.
    And then there were plants which neither of the boys could identify for sure. They gathered up likely-looking candidates to test later.
    ‘So that’s it,’ Tikaani said flatly when Beck offered him some of the coltsfoot. ‘We’re officially eating plants.’
    Beck looked at him sideways. ‘Berries are plants and you ate those,’ he said mildly.
    ‘True,’ Tikaani conceded with a smile. He nibbled at his leaf and his eyebrows went up. ‘OK, it’s not bad.’ He looked thoughtful. ‘And it was good enough for my ancestors to stay alive long enough to produce me, so maybe I ought to show it a bit more respect.’
    Beck laughed as they set off again. ‘Maybe they should put that on the packaging. “It kept your ancestors alive!”’
    Tikaani fell into step beside him. ‘My granddad would add, “So why are you buying it in a shop?”’
    ‘So he’s not totally in favour of the march of progress?’ Beck asked wryly.
    ‘Not . . . totally.’ Tikaani put in just enough of a pause to emphasize the understatement. He pulled a face. ‘Shops aren’t
traditional
. I mean, I do know that food doesn’t grow in supermarkets, right? Everything you find plastic-wrapped or in a tin used to grow in the soil, with dirt and bacteria and stuff. You buy a packet of minced beef and that means a cow died somewhere, with a lot of blood and gore. That’s how it goes. I just don’t see the big deal about doing it all yourself.’
    He grinned. ‘I remember once I didn’t want to eat something, and he told me, “Your Uncle Kavik risked his life for this food!” and I was, like, “Well, I wish he wouldn’t,” and I got a clipped ear and sent to bed, so it went to waste and Uncle Kavik risked his life for nothing . . .’
    Tikaani sighed. ‘The thing is, if you grow your food on a farm, let someone else do all the catching and cleaning and preparing, and you buy it in a shop, no one has to risk their life and you’ve got time to do other stuff.’
    ‘Such as?’