And she knew now that the ocean beneath her swept all the way to the north: all the way to the axis of the Earth.
Owlheart climbed aboard the floe beside her, making it rock. "It’s a frozen ocean," the Matriarch said.
"Yes. We can’t live here."
"I feared as much," said Owlheart. Her rumble was complex, troubled. "But…"
Silverhair uncertainly wrapped her trunk around Owlheart’s. She was not accustomed to comforting a Matriarch. "I know. You had no choice but to try."
"And now," said Owlheart bitterly, "at the fringe of this cursed frozen sea, we have nowhere to go."
There was a a distant clattering sound, intermittent, carried on the wind. Silverhair turned.
Something — complex, black, and glittering — was flying along the beach from the west. Sweeping directly toward Foxeye and her calves. Sending a clattering noise washing over the ice.
It was the light-bird of the Lost.
17
The Chasm of Ice
The light-bird clattered over their heads like a storm. Owlheart reared up and pawed at the air. There was a stink of burning tar, a wash of downrushing wind from those whirling wings that drove the hair back from Silverhair’s face. She could see Lost — two, three of them — cupped in the bird’s strange crystal belly, staring down at her.
Silverhair and Owlheart hurried back to the shore where Foxeye and her calves waited, cowering.
A faint scent of burning came to them on the salty breeze. The calves, huddling close to their mother, picked it up immediately; they raised their little trunks and trumpeted in alarm.
Silverhair looked along the beach to the west, the way the bird had come. She could see movement, a strange dark rippling speckled with light. And there was a cawing, like gulls.
It was the Lost: a line of them, spread along the beach. And the light was the yellow fire of torches they carried in their paws.
Owlheart rumbled and trumpeted; Silverhair had never seen her so angry. "They pursue us even here? I’ll destroy them all. I’ll drag that monster from the sky and smash it to shards—"
Silverhair wrapped her trunk around the Matriarch’s, and dragged her face forward. "Matriarch. Listen to me. I’ve seen that light-bird before at the camp of the Lost. It makes a lot of noise but it won’t harm us. There—" She looked down the beach, at the approaching line of Lost. "That is what we must fear."
"I will trample them like mangy wolves!"
"No. They will kill you before your tusks can so much as scratch them. Think, Matriarch."
She could see the effort it took for Owlheart to rein in her Bull-like instincts to drive off these puny predators. "Tell me what to do, Silverhair," she said.
"We must run," said Silverhair. "We can outrun the Lost."
"And then?" asked Owlheart bleakly.
"That is for tomorrow. First we must survive today," said Silverhair bluntly.
"Very well. But, whatever happens today—" Owlheart tugged at Silverhair’s trunk, urgently, affectionately. "Remember me," she said, and she turned away.
Stunned, Silverhair watched the Matriarch’s broad back recede.
The coastline was mountainous. Black volcanic rock towered above the fleeing mammoths.
They came to another huge glacier spilling from the Mountains, a cliff of ice that loomed over them. The beach was strewn with shattered ice blocks, and the glacier itself, a sculpture in green and blue, was cracked by giant ravines. The air that spilled down from within the ravines was damp and chill — cold as death, Silverhair thought.
They ran on, the three Cows panting hard, their breath steaming around their faces, the calves mewling and crying as their mother goaded them forward.
The cries of the Lost seemed to grow louder, as if they were gaining on the mammoths. And still the light-bird clattered over their heads, its noise and tarry stink and distorted wind washing over them, driving them all close to panic.
Silverhair wished Lop-ear were here. He would know what to do.
Owlheart shuddered to a halt, staring along the beach. Foxeye and the calves, squealing, slowed behind her.
Silverhair came up to Owlheart. "What is it?…"
The wind swirled, and the stink reached Silverhair. A stink of flesh.
Strung across the beach was a series of heaps of stone and sand and ice. From each pile, oily black smoke rose up to the sky. The fire came from a thick, dark substance plastered over the stones.
What burned there was mammoth.
Silverhair could smell it: bone and meat, and even some hair and skin, bound together by fat and dung. One of the stone heaps was even crowned with a mammoth skull, devoid of flesh and skin and hair.
She recognized it immediately, and recoiled in horror and disgust. It was Eggtusk’s skull.
Foxeye was standing still, shuddering. The two calves were staring wide-eyed at the fires, crying.
"We can’t go through that," growled Owlheart.
Silverhair was battling her own compulsion to flee this grisly horror. "But we must. It’s just stones and fire. We can knock these piles down, and—"
"No." Owlheart trotted back a few paces and stared into the mouth of a great ravine in the glacier. "We’ll go this way. Maybe we’ll find a way through. At least the light-bird won’t be able to chase us there." She prodded Foxeye. "Come on. Bring the calves."
In desperation Silverhair plucked at Owlheart’s tail. "No. Don’t you see? That’s what they want us to do."
Owlheart swiped at her with her tusks, barely missing Silverhair’s scarred cheek. "This is a time to follow me, Silverhair, not to question."
And she turned her back, deliberately, and led her Family into the canyon of ice.
Silverhair looked along the beach. One of the Lost was standing on a boulder before the others, waving his spindly forelegs in a manner of command. Silverhair could see the ice light glint from his bare scalp. It was Skin-of-Ice: the monster of the south, come to pursue her, even here beyond the End of the World. She felt a black despair settle on her soul.
She followed her Matriarch into the ravine.
Immediately the air felt colder, piercing even the mammoths’ thick coats. Immersed in ice, Silverhair felt the sting of frost in her long nostrils, and her breath crackled as it froze in the hair around her mouth.
Impatient to make haste, anxious to keep their footing, the mammoths filed through the chasm, furry boulder-shapes out of place in this realm of sculpted ice. The going was difficult; the ground was littered with slabs and blocks of cracked-off ice, dirty and eroded. With each step, ice blocks clattered or cracked, and the sharp noises echoed in the huge silence.
Walls of ice loomed above Silverhair, sculpted by melt and rainfall into curtains and pinnacles. The daylight was reduced to a strip of blue-gray far above. But it wasn’t dark here, for sunlight filtered through the ice, illuminating the blue-green depths.
It was almost beautiful, she thought.
Silverhair heard a clattering. She looked back to the mouth of the chasm. The light-bird hovered there, black and sinister. As Owl-heart had predicted, the light-bird couldn’t follow them here. Perhaps its whirling wings were too wide to fit within the narrow walls.
But on the ground she could see the skinny limbs of the Lost, the smoky light of their torches, as they clambered over ice blocks.
Owlheart had gone ahead of the others, deeper into the chasm. Now she returned, trumpeting her rage. "There’s no way out. A fall of ice has completely blocked the chasm." She growled. "Our luck is running out, Silverhair."