been a lethal torrent, no less intimidating than the Channel that faced her now. She longed to turn and flee back to the land, to abandon this quest.
But she knew this was only the beginning.
Deliberately she took another step forward. The ice, cracking, brushed against her chest. She lifted her head back as far as she could go, trying to keep her eyes and mouth out of the water. But at last the water was too deep, and it closed over her head.
The cold was shocking, like a physical blow, so intense it made her gasp.
She forced herself to open her eyes.
The water was gray-green, and its surface was a glimmering sheet above her. She could see floating ice, thin gray slabs of it over her head.
She thrust her trunk through the surface so that it protruded from the water. She blew hard to clear her trunk of water, and sucked in deep lungfuls of clean, salty air. She could feel her chest drag against the heavy pressure of the water, which was trying, it seemed, to crush her ribs like a trampled egg. But she could breathe.
She was floating in the water, submerged save for her trunk, her body hair waving around her. Instinctively she surged forward, dragging at the water with her forelegs, kicking with her hind legs. Soon she could see she was pushing through the clumps of ice that littered the surface, and the air was whistling easily into her lungs.
All she had to do was keep this up for the unknown time it would take to cross the Channel — and overcome the savage current and whatever other dangers might lurk in the deeper water — and emerge, exhausted, onto a beach crawling with Lost…
Enough. She clung to the Cycle:
On she swam, into the silent dark, alone.
The sun was low to the west, and it showed as a glimmering disk suspended above the water’s rippling surface. She knew that as long as she kept the sun to her right side, she would continue to head south, toward the Mainland.
Away from the coast the pack ice formed a more solid mass, though there were still leads of open water, and holes broken through by melting, or perhaps by seals and bears.
She took a deep breath, pulled down her trunk, and ducked beneath the ice. She would have to swim underwater between the airholes as if she were a seal herself.
She drifted under a ceiling of ice that stretched as far as she could see. A carpet of green-brown algae clung to the ceiling, turning the light a dim green; but in places where the algae grew less thinly, the light came through a clearer blue-white.
And there were creatures grazing on this inverted underwater tundra: tiny shrimp-like creatures that clung to the algae ceiling, and comb jellies that drifted by, trailing long tentacles. She could see that the tentacles were coated with fine, hair-like cilia that pulsed in the current, sparkling with fragmented color.
The comb jellies, unperturbed by the strange, clumsy intruder, sailed off into the darker water like the shadows of clouds.
She approached an airhole. The sunlit water under the hole was bright with dust. But when she drew near she saw that the 'dust' was a crowd of tiny, translucent animals. She reached the airhole and her head bobbed out of the water’s chill, oily calm, into the chaotic clamor of light above -
And a polar bear’s upraised paw cuffed at her head.
Silverhair trumpeted in alarm.
The bear, just as startled, slithered backward over the ice floe, its black eyes fixed on this unexpected intruder.
Silverhair panted, her breath frosting. 'Sorry I’m not a fat seal for you,' she said. And she took another deep breath and ducked back into the sea’s oleaginous gloom.
The going got harder as she headed farther out to sea.
The ice was very thick here, and huge water-carved blocks and pinnacles were suspended from the ceiling. Salty brine, trapped within the ice, was leaking down to cause this strange, beautiful effect. It was like swimming through a series of caves.
She had to swim an alarmingly long way between airholes.
Once, a seal fearlessly approached Silverhair. It seemed to swim with barely a flick of its sleek body — an embarrassing comparison to Silverhair’s untidy scrambling — and the ringed pattern of its skin rippled in the water. The seal studied her with jet-black eyes, then turned and swam lazily into the murky distance.
She neared the ice-edge with relief, for she would be able to breathe continually when she passed it. But there was a great deal of activity here. She glimpsed the white forms of beluga whales sliding in a neat diamond formation through the water. Occasionally there were the brief, spectacular dives of birds hunting fish, brief explosions from the world of light and air above into this calm darkness.
She drove herself on, past the ice-edge, and into open water.
There was no ice above her now, and no bottom visible beneath her, and she soon left behind the busy life of the ice-edge: there was just herself, alone, suspended in an unending three- dimensional expanse of chill, resisting water.
The current here, far from the friction of the banks of the Channel, was much stronger, and she struggled to keep to her course. As she swam on, she could feel the heat of her body leaching out into the unforgiving sea.
As her warmth leaked away, her energy seemed to dissipate with it.
It was as if this infinity of murky, chill water was the only world she had ever known: as if the world above of air and sunlight and snow, of play and love and death, was just some gaudy dream she had enjoyed before waking to this bleak reality…
Suddenly her trunk filled with water. She coughed, expelling the water through her mouth. She scrabbled at the water until she was able to raise her face and mouth above the surface. She opened her mouth to take a deep, wheezing breath, and glimpsed a deep blue sky.
She must have weakened — let herself sink — perhaps even, bizarrely, slept for a heartbeat.
But already she was sinking again.
She continued to kick, but her legs were exhausted. And when she tried to raise her trunk, she couldn’t reach the air. The surface was receding from her, slow as a setting sun.
Waterlogged, she was sinking. And hope seeped out of her with the last of her warmth. She would die in this endless waste of water, she and her calf.
So the Cycle, after all, culminated in a lie: there would be no rescue for her Family, no glowing future for the mammoths on the Sky Steppe.
She found herself thinking of Lop-ear, that first time they had come to the southern coast: how, in the sunshine, he had teased her and tried to goad her into the water, and told her tall stories of the Calves of Siros. If she had shared Lop-ear’s gift for original thinking, was there any way she could have avoided this fate?
She tried to remember the sounds Lop-ear had made when he had called for the Calves of Siros. She had to get it right; she had only one lungful of air, and would get only one chance at this.
She began a low-pitched whistle, punctuated by higher squeals, squawks, and shrieks. The sound rippled away into the black water around her. She kept up the noise until the last wisp of her air was expended.
Not even an echo replied.
She stopped kicking and let the current carry her. She had fallen so far, the surface was reduced to a vague illumination far above. She could feel the ocean turn her slowly around as she drifted with it.
A deeper blackness was closing around her vision. The pain in her empty lungs, the ache of her exhausted limbs, the vaguer ache of the wounds inflicted by the Lost — all of it began to recede from her, as the cold forced her to shrink deep into the core of her body.
It was almost comfortable. She knew this ordeal would not last much longer…
And now a sheet of hard blackness rose from the depths beneath her. Perhaps this was death, come to meet her.
But she hadn’t expected death to have sleek fur, a fluked tail, stubby flippers, and a small, seal-like head that peered up at her out of the gloom.
The rising surface pushed softly against her feet and belly. She could feel a great body swathed in fat, strong muscles working.
Suddenly she was rising again.
She burst into light and air. It was like being born. She coughed, clearing water from her trunk and mouth, and air roared into her starved lungs.
Gradually the pain in her chest subsided. She was still floating in the water, but now her trunk lay against a great black body, and she was able to hold herself out of the ocean easily. Strong tail flukes held up her head, and the skin under her face was rough as bark.
The creature under her was huge, she realized: at least twice her own body length, and covered with the dense black hair of a seal.
A small head twisted back to look at her. She heard squeals and chirrups, alternating low whistles and high-toned bleats. It was
'…See you I. Paddling through water see you I. Recognize mammoth I. Mammoth better swimmer than old sea cow think I. Understand you?'
'Yes,' Silverhair said, and the effort of speech made her cough again. 'I understand. Thanks…'
The sea cow’s long muscles rippled. To Silverhair’s surprise, a gull came flapping out of the sky and landed in the middle of the sea cow’s broad back. The gull started to peck at the damp hair, plucking out parasites, and the sea cow wriggled with pleasure. 'You here are why? Not roll on tundra do sea cows.' The sea cow raised her small muzzle and whistled at her own joke.
'I have to get to the Mainland,' said Silverhair.
'Mainland? Kelp good there. Mmm. Kelp.' The sea cow looked dreamy. 'But not there go sea cows. Why?
'You know about the Lost?'
'Lost? Find me they if, drag me from sea they, eat my kidneys they, leave handsome body for gulls they. Terrible, terrible.'
'I have met the Lost,' said Silverhair.
'Think sea cows all gone Lost. Live in seas in south some Cousins. Here think kill us Lost, long time ago gobble up our kidneys Lost. But wrong they. But not Mainland go to I, kelp or no. Stay by Island. On Island no Lost.'
'There are now,' said Silverhair grimly.
'Terrible, terrible,' said the sea cow, sounding dismayed. 'Go to Mainland you, why if Lost there?'
'I have to,' said Silverhair. 'They took my Family.'
The sea cow rolled in the water, almost throwing Silverhair off. 'Terrible thing. Terrible Lost. Here. Hold on to me you.' The sea cow held out a stubby, clawed flipper, and Silverhair wrapped her trunk around it.
The broad flukes beat, sending up a spray that splashed over Silverhair. The sea cow’s broad, streamlined bulk began to slide easily through the water, oblivious to the current that had defeated Silverhair, unimpeded even by the bulk of an adult mammoth clinging to one flipper. Soon her speed was so great that a bow wave washed around her small, determined head.
Her power was exhilarating.
