The tusks had been driven into the ground, so that their tips met at the apex of the shelter. They were joined at the tip by a sleeve of what looked like more bone, to make a continuous arch.
The wall skins, too, had been taken from mammoths, she saw now: flayed from corpses, scraped and cleaned, rust-brown hair still dangling from them. As she looked down, she saw more bones — jaws and shoulder blades and leg bones as thick as tree trunks — driven into the ground to fix the skins in place.
Black dread settled on her as she understood. This shelter was made entirely from mammoth hide and bone. It was like being inside an opened-out corpse.
But the horror was not yet done. Skin-of-Ice was pointing at the ground with his paw.
Resting by the doorway was the massive skull of a mammoth. She recognized it. She was looking into the empty eye sockets of Eggtusk.
Skin-of-Ice was confronting her, his paws spread wide, and he was cawing. She knew that he had brought her here, shown her this final horror, to complete his victory over her.
She began to speak to him. "Skin-of-Ice, it is you who is defeated," she said softly. "For I will not forget what you have done here. And when I put you in the ground, the worms will crawl through your skull and inhabit your emptied chest, as you inhabit these desecrated remains."
For a heartbeat he seemed taken aback — almost as if he understood that she was speaking to him.
Then he raised his goad.
She summoned all her strength, and reared up. The ropes around her neck and forelegs parted.
Skin-of-Ice, evidently realizing his carelessness, fell backwards and sprawled before her.
At last her trunk was free. She raised it and trumpeted. She took a deliberate step toward him.
Even now he showed no fear. He raised a paw and curled it: beckoning her, daring her to approach him.
She stabbed at him with her tusk.
But he was fast. He squirmed sideways.
Her tusk drove into the earth. It hit rock buried there, and she felt its tip splinter and crack.
Skin-of-Ice wriggled away. But a splash of bright fresh red disfigured his side, soaking through the loose skins he wore.
She felt a stab of exultation. She had wounded him.
He scrambled out of the shelter.
She set about wrecking this cave of skin. She trampled on the heap of burning bones. She smashed away the supports that held up the grisly roof. When the layers of flayed skin fell over her, exposing the midnight sky, she shook them away.
All this took mere heartbeats.
Then, with her trunk, she picked up the fragments of skin, and laid them reverently over her back. She found herself breathing hard, her limited reserves of energy already depleted.
She turned to meet her fate.
Beyond the ruins of the hut there was a ring of light: a dozen burning branches held aloft by the paws of the Lost. Several of them had thunder-sticks, which they pointed toward her. She could see their small eyes, sighting along the sticks at her head and belly.
And there was Skin-of-Ice. He was holding his side, but she could see the blood leaking through his fingers.
She tried to calculate. If she charged directly at him, even if the stinging hail from the thunder-sticks caught her, her sheer momentum could not be stopped. And Skin-of-Ice, wounded as he was, would not be able to evade her this time.
She rumbled to her calf. "So it is over," she said. "But the pain will be mine, not yours. You will not see this terrible world of suffering, dominated by these monsters, these Lost. It will be brief, and then we will be together, in the aurora that burns in the sky…"
She lowered her head -
There was a braying, liquid roar.
The Lost scattered and ran, yelling.
A shape loomed out of the shadows: bristling with fur, one tusk held high. It was Snagtooth. Silverhair could see how she trailed the broken length of rope that had restrained her.
Without her trunk Snagtooth was unable to trumpet, but she could roar; and now she roared again. She selected one of the Lost and hurled herself straight toward him. The Lost screamed and raised his thunder-stick. It spat fire, and Silverhair could see blood splash over Snagtooth’s upper thigh. But the wound did not impede her charge.
Snagtooth’s mutilated head rammed directly into the belly of the Lost.
Silverhair heard a single bloody gurgle, the crackle of crushed bone. The Lost was hurled into the air and landed far from the circle of torches.
But this victory was transient. The Lost gathered their courage and turned on Snagtooth. Soon the still air was rent by the noise of thunder-sticks.
Snagtooth reeled. She fell to her knees.
Silverhair screamed: "Snagtooth!"
Through the storm of noise, Silverhair could hear Snagtooth’s rumble. "Remember me…"
And Silverhair understood. In the end, Snagtooth had thrown off her shame. She had chosen to give her life for Silverhair and her calf. Now it was up to Silverhair to get away, to accept that ultimate gift.
She turned away from the noise, the Lost, the fallen, agonized shape of Snagtooth, and slipped away into the silvery Arctic light.
The Lost closed around Snagtooth with their thunder-sticks and ice-claws.
Part 3: Matriarch
The Story of Ganesha the Wise
This (said Silverhair) is the story of Ganesha, who is called the Wise.
I am talking of a time many Great-Years ago — ten, twelve, perhaps more. In those days, the world was quite different, for it was warmer, and much of the land was covered in a rich Forest.
Now, in such a world you or I would be too hot, and there would be little for us to eat. But Ganesha’s Family thought themselves blessed.
For Ganesha’s Family, and their Clan and Kin, had lived for a hundred Great-Years in a world awash with heat, and Ganesha had no need to keep herself warm, as you do. And she ate the rich food of the Forest: grass, moss, fruit, even leaves and bark.
If Ganesha was standing before you now you would think her strange indeed.
Though she had a trunk and tusks, she had little fur; her gray skin was exposed to the cooling air all year round. She had little fat on her lean body, and her ears were large, like huge flapping leaves. And Ganesha was tall — she would have towered over you, little Icebones!
Ganesha had two calves, both Cows, called Prima and Meridi.
Everyone agreed that Meridi was the beauty of the Family: tall, strong, lean, her skin like weathered rock, her trunk as supple as a willow branch. By comparison Prima seemed short and fat and clumsy, her ears and trunk stubby. But Ganesha, of course, loved them both equally, as mothers do.
Now, Ganesha was not called Wise for nothing. She knew the world was changing.
She walked north, to the edge of the Forest, where the trees thinned out, and she looked out over the plains: grassy, endless, stretching to the End of the World. When she was a calf, she remembered clearly, such a walk would have taken many more days.
And if Ganesha stepped out of the Forest, enduring the burning sun of that time, she could see where the Forest had once been. For the land was littered with fallen, rotten trunks and the remnants of roots, within which insects burrowed.
And Ganesha could smell the ice on the wind, see the scudding of clouds across the sky.
The Cycle teaches us of the great Changes that sweep over the world — Changes that come, not in a year or two or ten, not even in the span of a mammoth’s lifetime, but with the passing of the Great-Years.
And that is how Ganesha knew about the great Cold that was sweeping down from out of the north, and how she knew that the Forest was shrinking back to the south, just as the tide recedes from the shore.