Longtusk was entranced.
He couldn’t help contrast the calf’s deep physical exploration of the unfamiliar object with the way a Firehead cub would study something new — just looking at it. For a mammoth calf, the look of something was only the most superficial aspect of it: the beginning of getting to know the object, not the end.
Longtusk rumbled softly. Even after so long in the nunatak, such behaviors still charmed and fascinated him. He’d spent too much of his life away from his own kind, he thought sadly, and that had left scars on his soul that would never, surely, be healed. He wondered if there was anything more important in the world than to watch a new-born calf with her mother, lapping at a stream with her tongue, too young even to know how to use her trunk to suck up water…
Now Saxifrage recalled he was there. She abandoned the tusk fragment and ran to him, dashing under his belly.
He tried to turn, but his legs were stiff as tree-trunks nowadays, his great tusks so heavy they made his head droop if he wasn’t careful; and in his rheumy vision the calf was just a blur of orange-brown fur, running around his feet and under his grizzled belly hair.
As the calf made another pass he looped down his trunk, grabbed her around the waist and lifted her high in the air, ignoring the protests from his neck muscles. She trumpeted her delight, a thin noise just at the edge of his hearing.
He set her down before him once more, and she stepped through the forest of his curling tusks. Her calf fur was orange, bright against his own guard hairs, blackened and gray with age.
She said, "Longtusk, I’m going to be your mate."
He snorted. "I’d be impressed if I hadn’t heard you say the same thing to that old buffer Threetusk yesterday."
"I didn’t! Anyway I didn’t mean it. Why do they call him Threetusk? He only has two tusks, a big one and that spindly little one."
"Well, that’s a long story," said Longtusk. "You see, long ago — long before you were born, even before Threetusk became the leader of the bachelor herd, in fact — he got in an argument with one of his sons, called Barktrunk—"
"Why was he called that?"
"It doesn’t matter."
"Where is Barktrunk? I never met him."
"Well, he died. That was before you were born too. But that’s another story. You see, the first time Barktrunk came into musth—"
"What does musth mean?"
Longtusk growled. "Ask your mother. Now, where was I? Barktrunk. Now Barktrunk did some digging — just over there, where those rocks are piled up — and he found a new spring of water, and he said we should all drink it at once. He wanted to show us how important and clever he was, you see. Especially the Cows."
"Why the Cows?"
"Ask your mother! Anyway — what was I saying? — yes, the water. But Threetusk, his father, came over and tasted a little of the water, just on the tip of his trunk, and he said no, this water has too much sulfur. He said so to everybody, right in front of Barktrunk."
"I bet Barktrunk didn’t like that."
"He didn’t. And they got into a fight. Now in those days Threetusk was big and strong, not the broken-down grass-sucking old wreck he is now, and you can tell him I said so. It should have been easy for Threetusk to win. But there was an accident. Barktrunk came at him like this" — he feinted stiffly—"but Threetusk dodged, and knocked his head like this" — a deft sideways swipe, but slower than a glacier, he thought sourly—"and that was when it happened. Threetusk got one of his tusks stuck in a cleft in the rock. Just over there. When he was trying to get free the tusk broke off. Maybe that was one of the bits of it you were playing with just now. And then—"
But Saxifrage was running around in circles, trying to catch her own tail. Longtusk rumbled softly; he had lost his audience again.
"You listen to Longtusk," said Horsetail, Saxifrage’s mother, who had come lumbering up. Named for the long graceful hairs that streamed across her rump, this daughter of Splayfoot was the Matriarch now — she had been since Splayfoot’s death, some years ago, when his sister’s proud heart, strained by her dismal experiences, had at last failed her. Horsetail pulled her calf under her belly fur, where Saxifrage began to hunt for a nipple. "I’m sorry, Patriarch," she said respectfully. "Everybody knows you need time to work on those willow leaves these days."
"Not that much time," he growled. "And I do wish—"
"Try not to bite, Saxifrage!"
I do wish you’d listen to me, he thought.
But, thinking back, he was sure he had ignored almost all of what everybody had had to say to him, back when he was a calf — even Walks With Thunder, probably.
Remarkable to think that the last time he saw him, Thunder had actually been younger than Longtusk was now. How on Earth had he got so old? Where had the years gone? And…
And he was maundering again, and now the calf was nipping at his toes.
Saxifrage said, "Longtusk is going to mate with me when I’m old enough."
Horsetail rumbled her embarrassment, flapping her small ears.
Longtusk said, "I’m flattered, Saxifrage. But you’ll have to find someone closer to your own age, that’s all."
"Why? Mother says you’re a great hero and will go on forever, like the rocks of the nunatak."
Again Horsetail harrumphed her embarrassment.
"Your mother’s right about most of that," said Longtusk wryly. "But — not forever. Look." He kneeled down before the calf, ignoring warning stabs of pain from his knees, and opened his mouth. "What’s in here?"
Saxifrage probed with her trunk at his teeth and huge black tongue. "Grass. A bit of old twig stick under your tongue—"
"My teeth, calf," he growled. "Feel my teeth."
She reached in, and he felt the soft tip of her trunk run over the upper surfaces of his long lower teeth.
He said, "Can you feel how worn they are? That’s because of all the grass and herbs and twigs I’ve eaten."
"Everybody’s teeth get worn down," said Saxifrage, wrinkling her trunk. "You just grow more. My mother says—"
"But," said Longtusk heavily, "I’ve gotten so old I don’t have more teeth to grow. This is my last set. Soon they will be too worn to eat with. And then…"
The calf looked confused and distressed. He reached out and stroked the topknot of her scalp with his trunk.
She said, "Will you at least try to keep from dying until I’m big enough? I wouldn’t have thought that was too much to ask."
Longtusk eyed Horsetail; that was one of her favorite admonitions, he knew. "All right," he said. "I’ll try. Just for you."
"Now come on," said Horsetail, tugging at her calf’s trunk. "Time for a drink. And you really mustn’t bother the Patriarch so much."
"I told you," he said. "She wasn’t bothering me. And don’t call me Patriarch. I’m just an old fool of a Bull. That Patriarch business was long ago…"
But Horsetail was leading her calf to a stream which bubbled from the rocks; a group of mammoths was already clustered there, their loosening winter coats rising in a cloud around them. "Whatever you say, Patriarch."
Longtusk growled.