The Ragged One stood with Icebones by the edge of the suddenly treacherous sea. The whale’s tusk broke the surface and cruised to and fro, as if seeking to lure an unwary mammoth back into the water, and where it passed, sheets of ice were cracked and lifted and brushed aside.
"If the Lost created this ocean," Icebones said, "why would they put in it such a monster as that?"
"Perhaps they didn’t," The Ragged One said. "Perhaps it has cruised the waters of this world ocean, eating all the smaller creatures, devouring its rivals, growing larger and larger as it feeds — devouring until nothing was left to challenge it… A monster to suit a giant ocean. If the Lost were here they would surely destroy it."
"But they are not here."
"No."
"You did well," Icebones said.
The Ragged One slapped the water with her trunk, irritably. Evidently she did not welcome Icebones’s praise. "This is not your world," the Ragged One growled. "Just as you said."
Thunder was strutting to and fro, raising and lowering his tusks, his posture an odd mixture of aggression and submission.
Icebones approached him cautiously. "Thunder?"
"Don’t call me that!" He scuffed the dusty beach angrily. "Shoot was threatened, and I ran from danger. I am not Thunder. I am not even a Bull. I am nothing."
"I know that the heart of a great Bull beats inside you. And you are part of this Family, just as much as the others."
"I have no Family. I was taken from my mother when I was a calf."
"Taken? Why?"
"That is what the Lost do. What does it matter?"
"It matters a great deal. A calf should be with his mother."
"I have no Family" he repeated. "You despise me."
"You followed your instinct," she said harshly. "The mammoth dies, but mammoths live on. That’s what the Cycle says. There are times when it is right to sacrifice another’s life to save your own."
The Bull growled bitterly, "Even if that’s true, you saved Shoot, where I failed."
She reached out to him, but he flinched, muttering and rumbling, and stalked away.
She sought out Autumn. The tall, clear-eyed Cow was standing alone.
"The Bull-calf blames himself," Autumn said. "But I led us here, to this vile and useless sea."
"How could you have known? You have lived all your life on your Mountain. It was a worthwhile gamble—"
"Because I led us here my daughter was nearly killed, and we will all starve or die of thirst. If some new monster does not burst out of the ground to devour us first."
Icebones grabbed her trunk. "You must lead us."
Autumn probed at Icebones’s face. "Don’t you understand? I was the Matriarch, for a few brief days, and I have killed us all." And she stumbled away.
The Ragged One, standing alone by the shore, was remote, withdrawn as ever, still mourning her failure to find the Lost on the mountain summit. Thunder and Autumn were both immersed in their private worlds of self-loathing and anger. Breeze was standing at the water’s edge, lost in herself, her swollen belly brushing the languid waves. Shoot was pursuing her sister, regaling her with lurid tales of her encounter with the monster from the sea, while Spiral trotted haughtily away.
None of them will lead, Icebones realized, dismayed. They will stay here on this desolate beach, sulking or fretting or boasting, as the sun rises and falls, and we grow still more thirsty and hungry.
No, Icebones thought. I am not prepared to die. Not yet.
She drew herself up to her full height, and emitted a commanding rumble, as loudly as she could.
The other mammoths turned toward her.
Silverhair, be with me now, she prayed.
"You will pay attention to me," she said.
A flock of ivory gulls, startled by her call, lifted into the air on vast translucent wings.
She kept her voice as deep and loud as she could — although, before these towering mammoths, she felt small and inferior, a squat, noisy calf.
"You were right in your first guesses, when I emerged from my cave of Sleep. I am indeed a Matriarch. On the Old Steppe, where I lived, I was Matriarch of a Family of many mammoths, despite my youth. I led them well, and I was loved and respected."
The Ragged One said slyly, "If this is so, why didn’t you say so before?"
"I wanted to see if you were fit to join my new Family." She raised her trunk, as if sniffing them all. "And I have decided that you are strong mammoths with good hearts. I am your Matriarch. I will listen to you, but you will do as I say."
Autumn had turned away, and Thunder looked merely confused.
Breeze asked, "What should we do?"
"We cannot stay here. There is no food, and the water is foul. The world is growing cold, day by day. But the air, like the water, flows to the deep places. There is a place, far from here, which is deeper than anywhere in the world."
The Ragged One rumbled suspiciously, "Where is this place?"
And Icebones described the great pit on the other side of the world — a hole gouged by a giant impact, a blow so powerful it had made the rocks rise up here, on the planet’s opposite side. "It is called the Footfall of Kilukpuk," she said, thinking fast. "And that is where we will go. There will be pasture for you and your calves. There will even be Bulls for you to run with, Thunder, and for you others to mate with."
The Ragged One brayed. "And this wonderful place is on the other side of the world? So you have never seen or smelled it?"
It was as if she was articulating Icebones’s own doubts.
But Icebones said firmly, "I will lead you there." She raised her trunk, sniffing the air. "We must walk away from the setting sun. We will keep walking east, and in the end we will reach the Footfall. Let’s go," she said, as she had heard her mother say many times to her own Family. "Let’s go, let’s go."
But the mammoths simply watched her, baffled.
So she raised her trunk and trumpeted, and began to walk east, following the line of the old coast, toward a sky that was already turning a deepening purple.
After a few paces she paused and turned. The three sisters, huddled together, were walking after her slowly, tracking her moist footsteps in the dusty sand. A little behind them came Autumn and Thunder, each still distracted, but submissively following the lead Icebones had given.
But now the Ragged One lumbered up to her. "You cannot make this rabble into a Family just by saying it. And you cannot make yourself a Matriarch."
"If you wish to stay here," Icebones said, her voice a deep, coarse rumble, "I will not oppose you."
The Ragged One growled, "If you fail — when you fail — I will be there to remind you of this day."
I know you will, Icebones thought.
The wind was rising now. She saw that it was swirling over the pack ice, lifting spray and bits of loose ice and snow into a great gray spiral, angry and intimidating. The scavenging petrels left their bloody meals and rose into the sky, cawing angrily, their feathers stained red.
6
The Ice Beetle
Heading toward the light of the rising sun, they skirted the shore of the giant ocean. There was better forage to be had a little way to the south, away from the barren coast itself, where soil and water had gathered in hollows.
But the landscape, distorted by the volcanic uplift that lay beneath the Fire Mountain, was flawed and difficult. Deep, sharp-walled valleys cut across their path. Conversely, sometimes the mammoths found themselves laboring over networks of ridges that rose one after the other, like wrinkles in aged flesh.