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 glassy 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 muffled 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 gratitude. It was his ally, the tiger, struggling to lift a large buck into the crotch of a trembling beech.