“So will you help us? Together we’ll rush the gap.”
“No.”
My ears sag.
“We mammoths make for much easier targets than bears.”
I look at the ground. I was foolish to think I could sneak that by her. “But—”
“But I have a better plan. A group of you short-faced bears will rush the men — if they are there. While you fight, the rest of us will cross the river.”
Having just attempted to lay most of the sacrifice on the mammoths, I can’t make an issue of how her plan lays disproportionate death on us — not without causing an argument that may ruin it all. Some of the bulls edge closer, and mothers nudge their calves away.
“Why not send some of those bulls?” There is meekness in my voice, and I grimace inwardly.
To my surprise she says, “Very well, we’ll have a contest.”
I try to look puzzled. I’m not sure that I succeed. “What kind?”
“A memory contest.”
I laugh, unable to control myself, and I actually use a paw to wipe the smile from under my snout.
“Really now,” I say. “The mammoths can remember when these hills were mountains.”
Old Mother looks defeated. “Well, it was worth a try.” She lets a smile seep in. “We’ll do a rock drop.”
I nod. I make arrangements and turn to leave.
“Oh, Kerg, just one more thing. A pride of lions is stalking us. They’re making some of the younger mothers nervous. Be a dear and shoo them away.”
My mouth hangs open.
She smiles sweetly at a young bull who has sauntered to within a few paces of me. “Of course, Kerg, we could always remain here one more year, perhaps two.”
A fly enters my mouth, and I clamp down and swallow the filthy thing. Then I go searching for lions.
~~~
I wander the lowlands scanning the potholes, scanning the cattails, even scanning the sky. I draw a long breath through my nose. There are no lions. A patch of water grass trembles. I take an even longer breath, letting the humid air linger.
Clever, aren’t they.
“Come out, lion. I know you’re in there.”
A young, mud-covered lion rises from a pothole. The prince Felos.
I laugh. “You look like a drowned prairie turkey.”
He bounds from the mud and stops a few paces from me. Lionesses saunter up to his side, eyes on me. One licks the mud from his neck, her tongue making long strokes from his shoulder up to his mane. He purrs, somehow maintaining his ferocity. But lines of ribs push through his skin, and I fill in the gaps. His father is dead, either killed by man or by man-caused starvation. Felos is struggling to keep his pride fed.
I shouldn’t smile, but I do. “Covering yourself in mud. Well that’s a new one.”
Felos licks the lioness. She purrs. “New situations require new tactics.”
“Does this mean you’re actually going to hunt for yourself?”
Felos roars, revealing he still has plenty of strength left in him. All of their eyes glow, like a den of snakes in twilight. If I take even a half step back they’ll pounce. They pause, waiting to see what I’ll do. I feel my windpipe contract under an imaginary lioness’s jaws, but I don’t move.
“Enough! We are busy here. Pass on, bear!”
I clear my throat and manage a half step forward. “Listen Felos, I won’t be long. Old Mother just asked me to say that they’re on to you, and you won’t be getting anything from them.”
Felos sinks back on his haunches and bats a mosquito. He lets dejection show for the blink of an eye.
“The camels should be on the move,” I continue. “Why not try them?”
“Camels are so fast,” he whines.
As I start to leave, a lioness whispers in Felos’s ear. He leaps to my side.
“Why are you helping Old Mother? She can do nothing for you.”
My eyes lock on his. They are sunken, and I still see his jutting ribs in my periphery. “Because we are leaving. We choose not to battle men any more.”
This surprises him.
As I walk away, he speaks in a sly voice. “Old Bitch they should call her. I’d sooner swallow a tusk than trust her.”
~~~
I tell Greta everything.
“Felos is right,” she says, stroking our sleeping Kip. “Don’t trust Old Mother.”
“It’s a bad situation. We’ll all be in danger. We have to help each other.”
“Oh, do you think that is what she is telling her calves? No, she is saying race across the river as fast as you can. Push the bears aside. They have short legs, they won’t be able to keep up!”
I motion her to keep her voice down, so as to not wake Kip. She continues in a whisper.
“You’ve seen the men wearing bear claws around their necks. Is that what you want for Kip?”
She leaves out, “Our only surviving cub.” But she pauses, so I can fill that part in.
“But—”
“We owe the mammoths nothing, Kerg.”
“But—”
“The way of the plain is survival. That’s what you’ve always said.”
Before I can respond, she runs her tongue up my cheek. I grow warm and mount her. I try to make it last and I succeed. But probably only because I am old.
~~~
Bears and mammoths face each other. Between us stands Cape, a filthy condor. His body is as black as a tar pit, his featherless head the color of carrion left in the sun.
The flat stone lies in the dust between us, the image of a rising sun visible on the face-up side. Cape clutches the stone in a rough orange talon, spreads his dark wings, and ascends.
Old Mother speaks, “My mother always picked sun. My mother’s mother always picked sun.” Cape drops the rock. “So I pick sun as well!”
The young bears and mammoths race to the spot where the falling rock will hit.
“Sun! Old Mother, it’s sun!” cries out a bull. “The bears will be the decoy attack!”
Forty brown trunks reach for the blue sky and bray. We bears glare at the ground and murmur. All but one young bear, who — as I instructed — scoops up
