The three mammoths raised their trunks and tails and ran and spun around. They urinated and defecated in a tight ring, their dung merging in a circle of brown warmth on the ground. Old Eggtusk was the clumsiest of the three, of course, but what he lacked in elegance he made up for in his massive enthusiasm.
Now they touched one another. Silverhair clicked tusks with Eggtusk, and — with more enthusiasm — touched Lop-ear’s face and mouth, wrapping her trunk over his head and rubbing at his scalp hair. She found the musth glands in his cheeks and slowly snaked her trunk across them, reading his subtle chemical language, while he rubbed her forehead; then they pulled back their trunks and entangled them in a tight knot.
A human observer would have seen only three mammoths dancing in their baffling circles, trumpeting and growling and stomping, even emitting high-pitched, bird-like squeaks with their trunks.
Perhaps, with patience, she might have deduced some simple patterns: the humming sound that indicated a warning, a roar that was a signal to attack, the whistling that means that one of the Family is injured or in distress.
But mammoth speech is based not just on the sounds they make — from the ground-shaking stomps and low-pitched rumbles, bellows, trumpets, and growls, to the highest chirrups of their trunks — but also on the complex dances of their bodies, and changes in how they smell or breathe or scratch, even the deep throb of their pulses. All of this makes mammoth speech richer than any human language.
"…Hello!" Silverhair was calling. "Hello! I’m so glad to see you! Hello!"
"Silverhair," Eggtusk growled, failing to mask his pleasure at seeing her again. "Last back as usual. By Kilukpuk’s mite-ridden left ear, I swear you’re more Bull than Cow."
"Oh, Eggtusk, you can’t keep that up." And she laid her trunk over Eggtusk’s head and began to tickle him behind his ear with her delicate trunk-fingers. "Plenty of mites in this ear too."
He growled in pleasure and shook his head; his hair, matted with mud, moved in great lanks over his eyes. "You won’t be able to run away when you have your own calf. You just bear that in mind. You should be watching and learning from your sister."
"I know, I know," she said. But she kept up her tickling, for she knew his scolding wasn’t serious. A new birth was too rare and infrequent an event for anyone to maintain ill-humor for long.
Rare and infrequent — but not so rare as what she’d seen on the sea, she thought, remembering. "Lop-ear. You’ve got to come with me." She wrapped her trunk around his, and tugged.
He laughed and flicked back his lifeless ear. "What is it, Silver-hair?"
"I saw the strangest thing in the sea. To the south, from the headland. It was like an ice floe — but it wasn’t; it was too dark for that. And there were animals on it — or rather inside it — like seals—"
Lop-ear was watching her fondly. He was a year older than Silverhair. Although he wouldn’t reach his full height until he was forty years old, he was already tall, and his shoulders were broad and strong, his brown eyes like pools of autumn sunlight.
But Eggtusk snorted. "By Kilukpuk’s snot-crusted nostril, what are you talking about, Silverhair? Why can’t you wander off and find something useful — like nice warm water for us to drink?"
"The animals were cupped inside the floating thing, for it was hollow, like—" She had no language to describe what she’d seen. So she released Lop-ear’s trunk and ripped a fingerful of trampled grass from the ground. Carefully, sheltering the blades from the wind, she cupped the grass. "Like this!"
Lop-ear looked puzzled.
Eggtusk was frowning. "Seals, you say?"
"But they weren’t seals," she said. "They had four flippers each — or rather, legs — that were stuck out at angles, like broken twigs. And heads, big round heads… You do believe me, don’t you?"
Eggtusk was serious now. He said, "I don’t like the sound of that. Not one bit."
Silverhair didn’t understand. "Why not?"
But now, from the circle of Cows, Foxeye, her sister, cried out.
Lop-ear pushed Silverhair’s backside gently with his trunk. "Go on, Silverhair. You can’t stay with us Bulls. Your place is with your sister."
And so Silverhair, with a mix of fascination and reluctance, walked to the center of the Family, where the Cows were gathered around her sister.
At the heart of the group was massive Owlheart — Silverhair’s grandmother, the Matriarch of them all — and like a shadow behind her was Wolfnose. Wolfnose, Owlheart’s mother, had once been Matriarch, but now she was so old that her name, given her for the sharpness of her sense of smell as a calf, seemed no more than a sad joke.
Before Owlheart’s tree-trunk legs, a Cow lay on her side on the ground. It was Foxeye, Silverhair’s sister, who was close to birthing.
Owlheart lifted her great head and fixed Silverhair with a steady, intense glare; for a few heartbeats, Silverhair saw in her the ghost of the patient predator bird after whom the Matriarch had been named. "Silverhair! Where have you been?" She added such a deep rumble to her voice that Silverhair felt her chest quiver.
"To the headland. I was just—"
"I don’t care," said Owlheart.
Given the question, it wasn’t a logical answer. But then, Silverhair reflected, if you’re the Matriarch, you don’t have to be logical.
Now Snagtooth — Silverhair’s aunt, Owlheart’s daughter — was standing before her. "About time, Silverhair," she snapped, and she spat out a bit of enamel that had broken off the misshapen molar that grew out of the left side of her mouth. Snagtooth was tall for a Cow: big, intimidating, unpredictably angry.
"Leave me alone, Snagtooth."
Croptail pushed his way between Snagtooth’s legs to Silverhair. "Silverhair! Silverhair!" Croptail was Foxeye’s first calf. He was a third-molar — on his third set of teeth — born ten years earlier. He was a skinny, uncertain ball of orange hair with a peculiar stub of a tail. Kept away from his mother during this birth, he looked lost and frightened. "I’m hungry, Silverhair." He pushed his mouth into her fur, looking for her nipples.
Gently she tried to nudge him away. "I can’t feed you, child."
The little Bull’s voice was plaintive. "But Momma is sick."
"No, she isn’t. But when she has the new baby, you’ll have to feed yourself. You’ll have to find grass and—"
Snagtooth was still growling at Silverhair. "…You always were unreliable. My sister would be ashamed."
Silverhair squared up to her sour-eyed aunt. "Don’t you talk about my mother."
"I’ll say what I like."
"It’s only because you can’t have calves of your own, no matter how many Bulls you take. That’s why you’re as bitter as last summer’s bark. Everybody knows it—"
"Why, you little—"
Owlheart stepped between them, her great trunk working back and forth. "Are you two Bulls in musth? Snagtooth, take the calf."
"But she—"
Owlheart reared up to her full height, and towered over Snagtooth. "Do not question me, daughter. Take him."
Snagtooth subsided. She dug an impatient trunk into the mat of fur under Silverhair’s belly and pulled out a squealing Croptail.
At last, Silverhair was able to reach Foxeye. Her sister was lying on her side, her back legs flexing uncomfortably, the swell in her belly obvious. Her fur was muddy and matted with dew and sweat.
Silverhair entwined her trunk with her sister’s. "I’m sorry I’m so late."
"Don’t be," said Foxeye weakly. Her small, sharp eyes were, today, brown pools of tears, and the dugs that protruded from the damp, flattened fur over her chest were swollen with milk. "I wish mother were here."