"…The calves are dead." It was Splayfoot, his sister.
Rockheart hesitated.
Gaunt, weakened, Splayfoot came limping toward Longtusk. "The youngest died last winter, when there was no water to be had. That’s your answer, Longtusk. He is different, Matriarch. He has seen things none of us can imagine. And we must listen. I would have died with the others at that drying mud seep — as would you, Rockheart — if not for Longtusk."
The Matriarch rumbled sadly, "Even when we have met Bulls, even when we have mated, our bodies have not borne calves. It is the wisdom of the body. If there is too little food and water the body knows that calves should not come."
"For how long?" Longtusk asked. "Look around you. How long before you all grow too old to conceive?" He glared at them wildly, and trumpeted his challenge. "Which of you will be the last to die here, alone?"
Rockheart, growling, prepared another lunge at Longtusk, but the Matriarch stopped him. Anguished, angry, she rumbled, "What would you have me do?"
Longtusk said, "There may be a way. A place to go. Beyond the reach of the ice — and even of the Fireheads." Shuddering, trying to ignore the pain of his temple and broken tusk, he looked to the east, thinking of the geese.
Rockheart roared his disgust. "And must we follow you, Firehead monster? Shall we call you Patriarch? There has never been such an animal. Not in all the long years of the Cycle—"
"He is right," Splayfoot insisted. "The spring blizzards kill our calves. The ice storms of the autumn kill those who are heavy with next year’s calves. None of us can bear the heat of summer. And when the seeps and water holes ice over in the winter, too thickly for us to break through, we fight each other for the water, to the death… We can’t stay here. He is right."
Threetusk came pushing between them, his spindly extra tusk coated with mud. He looked up at Longtusk with trunk raised. "Take me! Oh, take me!"
The arguments continued, for the rest of that day and into the night, and even beyond that.
The day was bright and clear and cold. The sun was surrounded by a great halo of light that arced above the horizon, bright yellow against a muddy purple sky. It was a sign of the icecap, Longtusk knew.
It was an invitation — and a challenge.
He drew a deep breath through his trunk, and the cleanness of the air filled him with exhilaration.
"It is time," he rumbled, loud enough for all to hear.
And the mammoths began to prepare for the separation.
The Family was to be split in two by Longtusk’s project: calf separated from parent, sibling from sibling. And, though it was never stated, a deep truth was understood by all here — that the sundered Family would never be reunited, for those who walked with Longtusk into the cold mists of the east would never come back this way.
Willow pulled on all his clothing, stuffed his jacket and hat and boots with grass for insulation against the cold, and collected together his tools and strips of dried meat. Once he had understood that Longtusk was planning to move on, the Dreamer had been making his own preparations. He had made himself simple tools, spears and stone axes, and he disappeared for days at a time, returning with the fruits of his hunting: small mammals, rabbits and voles. He ate the flesh or dried it, stored the bones as raw material for tools, and used the skin, dried and scraped, to make himself new clothing.
Soon he had become as healthy and equipped as Longtusk could recall — much better than during his time as a creature of the Fireheads. It dismayed Longtusk to think that he, and the mastodonts, had received so much better treatment at the paws of the Fireheads than Willow, their close cousin.
He sought out his mother, the Matriarch.
She wrapped her trunk in his and reached out to ruffle the topknot of fur on his head, just as she had when he was a calf — even though he had grown so tall she now had to reach high up to do so. "Such a short time," she said. "I’ve only just found you, and now we are to be parted again. And this time—"
"I know."
"Maybe we’ll both be right," she said. "Perhaps there really is a warm island of steppe floating in the icecap. And maybe the Fireheads and the weather will spare those who stay here, and we will flourish again. That way there will be plenty of mammoths in the future to argue about who was right and wrong. Won’t it be wonderful?"
"Mother—"
She slipped her trunk into his mouth. "No more talking. Go."
Go, little grazer. Was he destined always to flee, to move on from those who cared for him?
This time, he promised himself grimly, this time is the last, whatever the outcome. Wherever I finish up will be my home — and my grave.
They gathered together: Longtusk, Rockheart, Splayfoot, the bold Bull calf Threetusk, and two young Cows. Just six of them, three Bulls and three Cows, to challenge the icecap — six mammoths, and Willow, the Dreamer.
As they stood in a dismal huddle at the fringe of the Family, the whole venture seemed impossible to Longtusk, absurd.
But here was Rockheart, the last to pledge his commitment to the trek: "You won’t get through a day without me to show you the way, you overfed milk-tusk." Longtusk’s spirit rose as he looked at the huge tusker — gaunt and bony, but a great slab of strength and determination and wisdom.
Now Rockheart raised his trunk. "You taste that?"
"Salt water. Blown from the sea…"
"Yes," said Rockheart. "But it comes from both north and south."
The mammoths would cross the land bridge between Asia and America much too close to its central line for Longtusk to be able to see the encroaching oceans to north and south. But sight is the least of a mammoth’s senses, and, on this bright clear day, Longtusk could taste the traces of salt spray in the air, hear the rush of wind over the ocean, sense the crash of breakers on the twin shorelines.
The neck of land they had to cross seemed fragile to him, easily sundered, and he wondered again about the wisdom of what they were attempting.
But this was no time for doubt.
"From the old land to the new," he said boldly.
"From old to new," Rockheart rumbled.
Longtusk began to march to the east. He could feel the powerful footsteps of the others as they followed him.
It had begun.
3
The Trek
To show his own determination he chose to lead, that first day.
But at the start of the second day, without a word, he quietly deferred to Rockheart, letting the old tusker, with his superior instincts and understanding of the country, go first. That decision paid off many times — especially after the mammoth trails petered out, and the land became increasingly broken and unpredictable.
Willow preferred to walk during the day; it kept him strong and alert. But the mammoths, needing little sleep, would walk through much of the night, and then Willow would ride on Longtusk’s back, muttering his strange dreams. The other mammoths watched in suspicious amazement, unable to understand how a mammoth could allow such a squat little creature onto his back.
There were animals here: musk oxen, horses, bison, even camels, passing in great herds on the horizon. They glimpsed some carnivores — wolves, lions, a saber-tooth cat that sent a shudder of recognition through Longtusk, and a short-faced bear, fat and ugly, which came lumbering from a limestone cave. The predators watched them pass, silently speculating after the manner of their kind, seeking weakness among potential prey.
They saw no other mammoths, no Fireheads, no Dreamers.
They paused to rest and feed in an isolated island of steppe vegetation: a mosaic of grass with flowering plants and herbs like marsh marigolds, harebells and golden saxifrage, and sparse trees like ground willow, few reaching higher than a mammoth’s belly hair.