Silverhair reluctantly got to her feet. "I’m comfortable here," she mumbled.
You never would listen. Another voice, somewhere behind her. Turning her head sluggishly, Silverhair saw this was a strange Cow indeed, with one shattered tusk and a trunk severed close to the root. The Cow was lowering her head and butting at Silverhair’s buttocks, trying to nudge her forward.
The others, the Bull and the ancient Cow, had clustered to either side of her. They were huddling her, she realized.
Silverhair took a single, resentful step. "I just want to be left alone."
The Bull growled. If you don’t stop squealing like a calf I’ll paddle your behind. Now move.
So, one painful step after another, her trunk dangling over the ground, Silverhair walked on. She leaned on one reassuring flank, then the other; and the gentle nudging of the mutilated head behind her impelled her forward.
And the strange animal that walked upright stalked alongside her, just beyond reach of the mammoths, and his strange sharp objects glinted in his paw.
But it was not over. Still the land stretched ahead of her, curving over the limb of the planet.
Sometimes she thought she heard contact rumbles, and her hopes would briefly lift. But the sound was remote, uncertain, and she couldn’t tell if it was real or just imagination.
She came to a place of frost heave, where ice domes as high as her belly had formed in the soil, ringed by shattered rock. This land was difficult to cross, and there was little food, for nothing could grow here.
One by one, the mammoths who had escorted her fell away: the ancient Cow, the crusty old Bull, the mutilated face that had bumped encouragingly at her rump.
Even the faint trace of contact rumbles died away. Perhaps it had only been thunder.
At last she was alone with the animal that walked upright. It glided alongside her, as effortless as a shadow, waiting for her to fall.
She staggered on until the frost heave was behind her.
She stopped, and looked around dimly. She had come to a plain of black volcanic rock, barely broken even by lichen. It was a hard, uncompromising land, no place for the living.
She kneeled once more, and let her chest sink to the ground, and then her tusks, which supported her head.
Here, then, she thought. Here it ends.
There was nobody here, no scent of mammoth on this barren land: no one to perform the Remembering ceremony for her and her calf. Well, then, she must do it for herself. She cast about with her trunk. But there was nothing to be had — no twigs or grass — nothing save a few loose stones, scattered over this bony landscape. She picked these up and dropped them on her back. Then she reached to her belly and tore out some hair, and scattered it over her spine.
…Silverhair… Silverhair…
A mammoth stood before her, tugging at her trunk.
She pulled back impatiently. "Go away," she mumbled. She had had enough of meddling ghosts.
But this mammoth was small, and it seemed to hop about before her, touching her trunk and mouth and tusks. Silverhair, is it really you? Silverhair… Silverhair…
"Silverhair."
It was her nephew. Croptail. And beyond him she could see the great boulder shape of Owlheart, a cloud of flesh and fur and tusk.
She could smell them. They were real. Relief flooded her, and a great weakness fell on her, making her tremble.
She looked around, meaning to warn Owlheart about the strange, upright-walking animal. But for now, it had vanished.
Foxeye stroked her back and touched her mouth and trunk, and brought her food and water. Owlheart tended her wounds, stripping off the mud Silverhair had plastered there, washing the deepest of the cuts and covering them once more with fresh mud. She laid her trunk against Silverhair’s belly hair, listening to the small life that was growing within. Even Croptail helped, in his clumsy way.
But the little one, Sunfire, was too young even to remember her aunt; the calf stood a few paces away from this battered, bloody stranger, her eyes wide as the Moon.
Later, Silverhair would marvel at Owlheart’s patience. The Matriarch must have been bursting with questions. Yet, as the sun completed many cycles in the sky, Owlheart allowed Silverhair to reserve all her energy for recovery.
Silverhair tried to understand what had happened to her on the long walk home, but even as she tried to recall fragments of it, they would slip away, like bees from a flower.
She did wonder, though, why there hadn’t been a fourth ghost out there helping her: a young Bull with a damaged ear…
At last Owlheart came to her.
"You know you’ve been lucky. A couple of those wounds on your legs were down to the very bone. But now you’re healing. Kilukpuk must be watching over you, child."
Silverhair raised her trunk wearily. "I wish she’d watch a bit more carefully, then."
"How much do you remember?"
"Everything — I think — until those Lost captured me and tied my legs to the stakes. After that it gets a little blurred. Until Snagtooth…"
"Start at the beginning."
And so, in shards and fragments, Silverhair told the Matriarch her story.
When she was done, Owlheart was grim. "It is just as it says in the Cycle. It was like this in the time of Longtusk, when the Lost would wait for us to die, then eat our flesh, and shelter from the rain in caves made of our skin, and burn our bones for warmth. And they will not stop there. They will take more and more, their twisted hunger never sated."
"Then what should we do?" Owlheart raised her trunk and sniffed the air. "For a long time we have been sheltered, here on this Island, where few Lost ever came. But now they know we are here, we can only flee."
"Flee? But where?"
Owlheart turned her face away from the sun, and the ice-laden wind whipped at her fur.
"North," she said. "We must go north, as mammoths always have."
16
The Glaciers
The migration began the next day.
Owlheart allowed many stops, for feeding and resting and passing dung; and when the midnight sun rolled along the horizon, they slept. But when the mammoths moved, Owlheart had them sweep across the tundra at a handsome pace. They ran in the thin warmth of the noon sun, and they ran in the long shadows of midnight.
Foxeye shepherded her calf Sunfire, coaxing her to feed and pass dung and sleep. Croptail strayed farther afield. He would dash ahead of the rest, pawing at the grass and rock with his trunk, and run in wide circles around the group as if to deter any wolves. Owlheart caught Silverhair’s eye, and an unspoken message passed between the Cows. He’s following his instinct. What he’s doing is the right thing for a young Bull. But keep an eye on him; he’s no Eggtusk yet.
It was the height of summer now. The air above the endless bogs hummed with millions of gnats, midges, mosquitoes. The mosquitoes would hover in smoke-like dancing columns before homing in on a mammoth’s body heat with remarkable accuracy, until their victim was smothered by an extremely uncomfortable cloak of insect life. Blackflies were almost as much of a pest as mosquitoes, for they seemed able to penetrate the most dense layers of fur in their search for exposed skin — not just the soft parts, but even the harder skin of Silverhair’s feet. They would stab their mouthparts through the skin to suck out the blood that sustained them, and the poison they injected into Silverhair’s skin to keep the blood flowing freely caused swelling and intolerable itching.