Chapter Twenty-One

GHOST JUMPED AS A golden bird took flight from a branch above his head with a loud cry. The leaves above rustled as the bird passed through them and vanished from sight. Ghost stared after it, but there were too many branches and too many leaves—almost as soon as it had moved, it was just gone.

There had been birds on the mountain, and plenty of other creatures too, but they had all seemed to stay far away from the leopards and from each other. Down here in this strange green-and-gold land, there seemed to be animals everywhere he looked—beetles, birds, small rodents. He’d even glimpsed a monkey, on a distant hill, swinging from the branch of a tree.

In the forest beyond the mountain, it was warm, and it was damp. Moss grew across the rocks, not even seeming to need earth to root itself in. The ground was soft, and parts of it were wet and stuck to his paws, getting into his fur. Instead of slick ice that could cause a fall, here there was deep mud that seemed to want to suck him in and keep him forever. The hills were just as steep, though not so high, and there were so many trees. Even looking down from the high places, half the time he couldn’t see the horizon for all the leaves.

It wasn’t bad, exactly, but he wasn’t sure he liked it. He felt crammed into a space that wasn’t big enough for him.

“I miss the snow,” Shiver said. She shook herself, and cleaned her muzzle with one large paw. “It’s sticky here.”

“We’ll get used to it,” Ghost said. “There’s more prey here, anyway. There must be. We just have to figure out how to hunt it.”

And anyway, he thought, we can’t go back.

“I wonder what Snowstorm and Frost are doing,” Shiver said softly.

Ghost had been trying not to wonder that. Whatever he pictured his siblings doing, whether they were still mourning Winter or had moved on with their lives, it made him sad to think about it. “Probably hunting,” he said stiffly. “And we should do the same. I don’t really want to eat bugs again, even if they were easy to catch.”

“Me neither!” Shiver agreed. “Maybe we should split up. Double our chances.”

Ghost felt his heart sink, but then he shook himself. There was no use being sad about it—he was no leopard, and Shiver would do better by herself, even if she had to stop to catch her breath all the time.

“Good idea,” he said. Then he added, almost to himself, “Perhaps I’ll figure out how a bear is supposed to hunt.”

“Right!” Shiver said brightly, and licked his cheek. “I’ll go this way, you go that way, and I’ll meet you back here to share what we catch. It’ll be fine. Just don’t get lost!”

Ghost nodded. He looked around, as Shiver slipped away into the bushes, and tried to study where they were. But everything looked the same to him—trees and rocks, and then more trees. He guessed he would have to make sure to follow his own scent back, or find Shiver’s. He could still do that, even if there were a lot of unfamiliar sounds and scents in this strange place.

He started walking, moving slowly and sniffing the air as he went. Unlike the bare slopes of the White Spine, he soon found a prey-scent—and then another, and another, and one that might have been the same one but might just have been very similar. They crisscrossed over the forest floor in such a confusing mess that he sat back on his haunches and scratched at his nose for a moment.

He tried to remember all that Winter had said about hunting. It stung to think of her face, but he had to find something to eat. He recalled that she had once said that if there were prey-scents, but no prey, that meant they would come back. All a leopard had to do was conceal themselves somehow, and wait.

Ghost brightened. That had been hard to do on the bare mountainside, but in this crowded forest there were plenty of places to hide. He crawled under a nearby clump of ferns and settled in to wait.

But the longer he sat there, the more restless he felt. The fur on his belly was getting muddy, and beetles crawled over his paws, and then up and over his back. A fly buzzed around his nose, and he tried to huff it away, and then he tried to ignore it, but the longer he lay there, the louder the buzzing seemed to get, until he lost his temper altogether.

“Get off!” he roared, rearing up and swatting at the fly. It flew away, and so did a bird that had landed in a nearby tree, but now took off with a loud squawk.

Ghost sat up in the ferns and sighed. There was certainly no point staying here now that he’d alerted every prey creature anywhere nearby. He clumsily climbed out of the bush and walked away, shaking his head. If this was how bears were supposed to hunt, he wasn’t a much better bear than he had been a leopard.

As he was walking, he heard a strange sound. It sounded like the splashing that the snow made in the summer when it melted and ran down between the rocks. But he could see no water nearby. Puzzled, and happy to have something to distract him from his search for prey, he decided to follow the sound.

It grew louder as he walked downhill, over the mossy rocks. The ground became even wetter, and then he came around a huge tree trunk and saw something in front of him that stopped him in his tracks. Between the trees ahead, there was a stream, just like the ones that formed in the mountain. But it was enormous.

Ghost made his way to the edge of the water, treading carefully, not wanting to fall into this monster of a stream. There was another forest on the other side, with more rocks and trees. But the stream seemed to stretch out forever to his left and right, the impossibly large mass of water rushing along. How much water could there be? How far did it go? If he walked along it, would it finally vanish between the rocks like the streams did, or would it just go on and on?

He carefully dipped a paw into the water. It wasn’t as cold as the snowmelt, but it felt good. He suddenly felt thirstier than he ever had before, and he carefully put his face down to the surface and drank. It tasted clear and wonderful. He drank and drank, letting the water splash his face until his fur was wet and his belly was almost full.

“You are thirsty,” called a distant voice. “Have you walked a long way, to be so thirsty?”

Ghost’s head snapped up, sending a shower of droplets through the air. He turned, looking along the bank of the stream to see who had spoken, but there seemed to be nobody there.

“Over here, friend!” the voice said, and Ghost realized it was coming from the other side of the monstrous stream. He peered across, and saw a shape sitting on a rock that jutted out into the water. It was large and rounded, but he recognized it at once.

It was another bear.

For a moment he couldn’t speak, as excitement, fear, and guilt fought each other in his mind. It was the same kind of bear as the one he’d encountered in the cave. In the daylight, he got a clearer look at the markings and saw that there were large circles around the eyes and a stripe over the back and the front legs.

Does he know that bear from the cave? Will he know I hurt it?

But then, he had walked all day, and come so far since the cave, and anyway, how would this bear have crossed the massive expanse of water?

His excitement began to push through his fear.

“My name is Ghost,” he called back.

“By the Dragon,” said the other bear, scratching behind his ear. “I believe you are a panda! A lean and powerful panda, to be certain, and all white.”

“What—what’s a panda?” Ghost asked.

“Why, we both are!” said the panda.

Ghost stared at him, and then looked down at himself. He didn’t have the black markings, and he was more muscular where the other bear was round. But the longer he looked, the more he saw the similarities. Their ears were the same shape, their muzzles the same length.

“I’m a panda,” he whispered. Then he said it again, louder, until he roared it across the water to the bear on the other side, splashing his paws in the stream. “A panda! I’m a panda!”

“Didn’t you know? Was that why you seemed so unhappy when you first came down the hill?”

Ghost’s joy faded a little, and he sat back heavily on his haunches. He felt overwhelmed by all this: the water, the trees, and now this panda—this other panda—who spoke to him so kindly. As if he was worth speaking to.

“I did come from far away,” Ghost said. “I—I lost my mother. I had to leave my littermates—but they weren’t actually my littermates—and my mother, she’s dead, and they were right, I didn’t belong there, I’m not a leopard, and . . .” He stopped, embarrassed at how little sense this must be making to the kindly panda on the opposite bank. “I came a long way,” he said again.

“That sounds very hard,” said the panda. “But I’m so glad we’ve found each other! The Great Dragon must have brought you here. And you may have lost your home, but you’ve just made a new friend. Ghost the panda, my name is Sunset Deepwood.”