On the jagged peak where Sitka had made his final stand, the snow lay in soft, forgiving drifts. The great ice bridge he had shattered was now a scatter of blue diamonds far below. And there, carved into the living rock by the very bear that had taken his life, was a single shape: an eagle in mid-swoop, its wings spread wide as if to catch the sky.
The funeral rite was simple. No body to wrap in birch bark, no pyre to light. Sitka’s spirit had already left—they all felt it, a strange warmth in the cold air, like a hand on the back of your neck that wasn’t there. Tanana took a lock of fur from a white wolf, a feather from a golden eagle, and a shard of the broken ice bridge. She tied them together with sinew and placed the bundle in a cleft of the rock. brother bear sitka's funeral
The shaman, Tanana, stepped forward. Her voice was old and thin as winter ice, but it carried across the clearing. “A hunter does not flee the shadow. He walks into it and brings back light.” She raised a caribou antler, carved with spirals of stars and salmon. “Sitka walked into the shadow for you, Kenai. For all of us.” On the jagged peak where Sitka had made