Silverhair

Lop-ear said, 'And even if we resolve our dominance fights without killing each other — even if all the Cows become pregnant by one or other of us — what then?'

'What do you mean?'

'What of the future? When Sunfire and Croptail and any other calves grow up — and themselves come into estrus and musth — who is to mate with them?' He spun, agitated, his trunk raised as if to ward off invisible enemies. 'Already his mother is pushing Croptail away. That’s as it should be. Soon, in a few years, he will want to leave the Family and search for other Bulls, join a bachelor herd. Just as I did, just as Eggtusk did. But Croptail can’t join the Bulls, for there are no other Bulls. He can’t join a bachelor herd, for there is no herd — none that we have met for a long time, at any rate. And when he is in musth, there will be no Cows but his own sisters and aunts and cousins.'

She reached out to try to calm him. 'Lop-ear—'

But he spun away from her. 'Oh, Kilukpuk! I have this stuff rattling around in my skull all day and all night. I want to stop thinking!'

She was chilled by his words, even as she strove to understand. To think so clearly about the possibilities of the future, of change, is not common in mammoths; embedded in the great rhythms of time, the mammoths live in the here and now. But Lop-ear was no ordinary mammoth.

She took hold of his trunk and forced him to face her. 'Lop-ear — listen to me. Perhaps you’re right in all you say. But you are wrong to despair. When we were trapped by the fire and the runoff, you found a way to save us. It wasn’t a teaching from the Cycle; it wasn’t something the Matriarch showed you. It was a new idea.

'Now we are facing a barrier even more formidable than that stream. There is nothing to guide us in the Cycle. There is nothing the Matriarch can advise us to do. It’s up to us, Lop-ear. We have to seek out the new, and find a way to survive.'

'It’s impossible.'

'No. As Longtusk said, ‘Only death is the end of possibility.’ What we must do is look for answers where nobody has looked before.'

'Where?'

She hesitated, and the vague determination that had long been gathering in her crystallized. 'If Eggtusk is right — that the Lost have come to this Island — then that’s where we must go.'

'The Lost? Silverhair, are you rogue?'

'No. Just determined. Maybe the Lost aren’t the monsters of the Cycle anymore. Maybe there’s some way they can help us.' She tightened her grasp on his trunk. 'We must go south again. Are you with me?'

For long heartbeats he stared into her eyes. Then he said, 'Yes. Oh, Silverhair, yes. I’ll follow you to the End of the World—'

There was an alarmed trumpeting.

Silverhair released Lop-ear’s trunk and they both whirled, trunks held aloft.

Owlheart was running. 'Wolfnose! Wolfnose!'

Silverhair looked back to the west, the way she had come.

Wolfnose, trailing Silverhair’s footsteps, had fallen to her knees.

Her heart surging, Silverhair ran after her Matriarch.

Silverhair, driven by guilt, was first to reach Wolfnose.

The old Cow’s belly and chest were resting against the ground, her legs splayed, and her trunk was pooled before her. Shanks of winter fur were scattered around her. Her eyes were closed, and it seemed to Silverhair that Wolfnose was slowly subsiding, as if the blood and life were leaking out of her into the hard ground.

She reached out and ran her trunk over the old Cow’s face. The skin looked as rough as bark, but it was warm and soft to the touch, and she could hear the soft gurgle of Wolfnose’s breathing.

Wolfnose opened her eyes. They were sunk in pools of black, wrinkled skin. 'Oh, little Silverhair,' she said softly.

'Are you tired?'

'Oh, yes. And hungry, so hungry. Perhaps I’ll sleep now, and then feed a little more…'

She started to tip over.

Silverhair rushed to Wolfnose’s side. Wolfnose’s great weight settled against her flank, slack and lifeless, and Silverhair staggered, barely able to support her.

But now the others were here: Lop-ear, Owlheart, and Eggtusk. Silverhair saw that Owlheart had, with remarkable calm and foresight, carried a trunkful of water with her. She offered dribbles of it to Wolfnose, and Silverhair saw Wolfnose’s pink, cracked tongue uncurl and lap at the cool, clear liquid.

Wolfnose’s eyes flickered open once more. She raised a trunk, so heavy it looked as if it was stuffed with river mud, and she laid it over Owlheart’s scalp. 'You’re a good daughter, Grassfoot…'

The Matriarch said, 'I’ll be a better one when you’re on your feet again.'

Wolfnose shuddered, and a deep, ominous gurgling sounded from her lungs. Silverhair listened in horror; it was as if something had broken inside Wolfnose.

Wolfnose closed her eyes, and her trunk fell away from Owlheart’s head.

Owlheart stepped back, staring at her mother in dismay.

When Eggtusk saw that Owlheart was giving up, he roared defiance. 'By Kilukpuk’s piss-soaked hind leg, you’re not done yet, Cow!'

He ran around Wolfnose and pushed his head between her slack buttocks. Then he dug his heels into the ground and heaved. The massive body rocked. Eggtusk looked up and bellowed to Silverhair and Lop-ear. 'Come on, you lazy calves. Don’t just stand there. Push!'

Lop-ear and Silverhair glanced at each other. Then they braced themselves and pushed at Wolfnose’s sides.

Even after the trials of the winter — during which she had shed more fat than was good for her — Wolfnose was a mature Cow, and very heavy. Silverhair could feel Wolfnose’s ribs grinding as they shoved the slack body upward.

But between them, they managed to lift her off the ground. Wolfnose’s legs straightened out, like cracking tree branches, and her feet settled on the ground.

'That’s it!' Eggtusk bellowed. 'Hold her now!'

But there was no strength in those old legs. Silverhair staggered sideways as Wolfnose’s bulk slid against her body.

Eggtusk cried out, 'No!'

It was too late. Wolfnose slumped to the ground, this time falling on her side.

Eggtusk began pushing at Wolfnose’s buttocks once more. 'Come on! Help me, you dung-heaps! Help me…'

But Wolfnose could not stand again.

Eggtusk crashed to his knees before her. Wolfnose’s eyes, flickering open and closed, swiveled toward him. Eggtusk lifted Wolfnose’s limp trunk onto his tusks. He draped the trunk over his head and put his own trunk into her mouth.

A watching human would have been startled by the familiarity of his choking cries, and the heaving of his chest.

This was love, Silverhair thought, awed. A love of an intensity and depth and timelessness she had never imagined possible. She knew that she would be privileged if, during her life, she ever received or gave such devotion.

And she had never suspected it existed between Eggtusk and Wolfnose.

But Owlheart came to him now. 'No more, Eggtusk.' And Owlheart wrapped her trunk around his face.

Lop-ear was at Silverhair’s side.

'Oh, Lop-ear,' Silverhair said, and her own vision blurred as fat, salty tears welled in her eyes. 'If she hadn’t walked with me all that way to the Plain of Bones — if I hadn’t been so careless as to rush her back, to leave her behind so thoughtlessly — all I wanted was to get back, and—'

'Hush,' he said. 'She wanted to take you to the Plain.'

'I could have said no.'

'And treated her with disrespect? She wouldn’t have wanted that. It’s nobody’s fault. It is her time.' And he twined his trunk in hers, and held her still.

Wolfnose lifted her trunk, shuddered, and slumped. Her breath sighed out of her in a long growl, like a final contact rumble.

Then she was still.

Eggtusk rocked over Wolfnose. He nudged her head with his. He placed his trunk in her mouth, and her trunk in his, and intertwined their trunks. He even walked around behind her and placed his forelegs on her back, as if he were trying to mount her. And he raised his trunk and trumpeted his distress to the empty lands.

Before the end of the day, Owlheart led all the Family to Wolfnose’s body for the Remembering. The sun was low now, and it painted the Earth with gold and fire. Eggtusk, his trunk drooping as he stood over the body, was a noble shadow in Silverhair’s eyes, the stiff hairs of his back catching the liquid light.

The calves both stared at the body. Little Sunfire’s trunk was raised in alarm.

Foxeye tapped at the calves with her trunk. 'Watch now,' she said, 'and learn. This is how to die.'

Silverhair found herself staring too. The loss she felt was enormous, as if a hole had been gouged out of the sky.

Owlheart stepped forward, and scraped at the bare ground with her tusks. Then she picked up a fingerful of earth and grass and dropped it on Wolfnose’s unresponding flank.

Silverhair reached down, ripped up some grass, and stepped forward to do the same.

Soon all the Family followed Owlheart’s lead, covering Wolfnose’s body with mud, earth, grass, and twigs. Eggtusk kicked and scraped at the soil, sending heaps of it over the carcass. Even the calves tried to help; little Sunfire looked comical as she tottered back and forth to the fallen body with a blade of grass or a scrap of dust.

As they worked, Silverhair felt a deeper calm settle on her soul. The Cycle said this was how the mammoths — and their Cousins, the Calves of Probos, the world over — had always honored and Remembered their dead. Now Silverhair felt the ancient truth and wisdom of the ceremony seep into her. It was a way to show their love for the spark of Wolfnose, as it floated across the river of darkness to the aurora, leaving the daylight diminished.

When they were done, the mammoths stood for a little longer over the body, and they swayed restlessly from side to side, the younger ones joining in without thinking.

Then Owlheart turned away, and quoted a final line from the Cycle: 'She belongs to the wolves now.'

She led the Family away. Eggtusk walked at her side, still desolate, his trunk dangling limp between his legs.

Silverhair looked back once. The mound of Wolfnose’s body looked like the yedoma within which she had seen the emerging, ancient corpse.

Suddenly she saw this scene as it might be Great-Years from now. She saw another mammoth, young and foolish as herself, come lumbering across the plain — to discover Wolfnose’s body, stripped by time of flesh and name, emerging once more from the icy ground. It was like a vision of her own life, she thought — as intense as sunlight, as brief as the glimmer of hoarfrost.

Silverhair sought out Lop-ear. She stroked his musth gland with her trunk, but he shrank back, oddly.

She turned her face toward the south.