Excerpt:

It was an hour before the second bear entered the cave.  She was old and walked tiredly, hobbling against an arthritic knee.  There were patches in her rumpled fur and signs in the creased black lids around her eyes that her life was now a burden, not a joy.  She’d been coming to this cave on the Tooth of Ragnar every third year of her twenty-one seasons.  In that time she had delivered fire litters of cubs.  This time she was barren and believed she was coming her to sleep her last winter.  The last thing she’d expected to trouble her in death was the prostrate body of a sleeping manchild and the cave lit by orange fire.
            She nudged the body.  There was no response.  She nudged again and this time her snout caught the scent of a bear, next to the manchild’s skin.  The old bear shuffled back and snorted in confusion.  That was her ancestor’s scent.  How could this child be carrying a trace of the female, Sunasala, the fabled mate of Ragnar? That could no be.
            The mountain spoke.  The bear snorted back.  She was used to the island’s rumbling voice, but this groan had a hollow echo to it.  A change of tone meant a change of shape.  A new chamber must have opened somewhere.
            So she hunted around and found what she knew to be a tunnel to a den.  Deep within the dust of countless years, she found the scent of bones: human and bear.
            She shook herself and looked at the girl again, remembering an old den story.  A legend about a red-haired Inuk woman, who walked with bears and devoted her life to them.  A woman so respected by the Council of Nine, that when she had died a bear had been chosen to lay down beside her to protect her on her journey to the far side of the ice.