Silverhair

'Silverhair, this is a land far away — far to the south, where ice never comes and it never grows cold.'

A contact rumble came washing over the empty ground.

'Mammoths,' she hissed.

'Not exactly.'

And now she saw them: dark shapes moving easily on the horizon, like drifting boulders, huge ears flapping.

One of them turned, as if to face her. It was a Cow. She seemed to be hairless, and her bare skin was like weather-beaten wood. She had no tusks. There was a calf at her side.

Behind her a Family was walking. No, more than a Family — a Clan, perhaps, for there were hundreds of them, the young clustering around the Matriarchs, Bulls flanking the main group. Silverhair could hear liquid contact rumbles, trumpets, and high-pitched squeaks; the Earth seemed to shake with the passage of those giant feet.

'They can’t see us,' Lop-ear said softly.

'They are beautiful. Perhaps Meridi looked like this.'

'Yes. Perhaps.'

'Are they real?'

'Oh, yes,' said Lop-ear. 'They are real. Real — but not free, despite the way it looks. Silverhair, these are elephants.'

'Calves of Probos.'

'Yes. Just as we are. They are many, we are few. But, despite their greater numbers, these Cousins too are under threat from the expansion of the Lost. But the Lost have protected them, and studied them.

'Look — one Family isn’t enough to continue the mammoths. Despite all we’ve achieved, we would die here on the Island, after another generation, two.'

'I know. We need fresh blood.'

'And it is our new Cousins who will provide it. I have seen what the Lost are trying to do, and I think I understand. These Cousins are sufficiently like us for the Lost to be able to mix our blood with theirs…'

'Mix our blood?'

'Something like that. The Lost are trying to assure our future, Silverhair.'

The big Cow turned away from them. She reached down to wrap an affectionate trunk around her suckling calf, and walked on, the calf scurrying at her feet.

Lop-ear touched the wall again and the strange scene disappeared, revealing the windswept tundra once more.

None of the elephants had tusks, Silverhair noted sadly. They had survived, but they had been forced to make their bargain with the Lost.

'Perhaps these Lost really do mean us well,' she said. 'But…'

'Yes?'

'But they will never let us go. Will they?'

'They can’t, Silverhair. Earth is crowded with Lost. There is no room for us.'

At sunset, the weather broke.

Rain began to beat down, and Silverhair knew it was likely to continue for days. A gray mist hung over the green meadows, and the moisture gave the air a texture of mystery and tragedy. It was beautiful, but Silverhair knew what it meant. 'The end of another summer,' she said. 'It goes so quickly. And winter is long…'

Silverhair knew her story was nearly over.

Skin-of-Ice had done her a great deal of damage. She could feel the deep, unclosed wounds inside her — damage that couldn’t be put right, regardless of the clever ministrations of these new Lost. There was only one more summer left in her, perhaps two. But she had no complaint; that would be enough for her to bear and suckle her calf, and teach it the stories from the Cycle.

She even knew what she would call the calf, such was its great weight in her belly. Icebones.

She knew she could never forgive the Lost for the things they had done to her and her Family. Perhaps it was just as well she would soon take that antiquated hatred to her grave.

For the future belonged to the calves, as it always had.

Lop-ear seemed to know what she was thinking. He stood beside her and rubbed her back with his trunk. 'We really are the last, you know. The last of the mammoths.'

'All those who had to die — Eggtusk, Owlheart, Snagtooth…'

'They did not die in vain,' he said gently. 'Every one of them died bravely, fighting to preserve the Family. We will always Remember them.

'But now we have the future ahead of us. And you’re the Matriarch, Silverhair. Just as Owlheart predicted.' He rubbed her belly, over the bump of the unborn calf there. 'It’s up to you to keep the Cycle alive, and help us remember the old ways. Then we’ll be ready when our time comes again.'

'I don’t think I have the strength anymore, Lop-ear.'

'You do. You know you do. And you’ll be remembered. Silverhair, the Cycle — our history — stretches back in time across fifty million years. Its songs tell of the exploits of many heroes. But in all that immense chronicle, there is no hero to match you, Silverhair. One day our calves will run freely on the Sky Steppe, and their lives will be rich beyond our imagining. But they will envy you. For you were the most important mammoth of all. Cupped in the palm of history, caught between past and future, your actions shaped a world…'

She snuggled against him affectionately. 'You always did talk too much, dear Lop-ear. Hush, now.'

The rain lessened, and the scudding clouds broke up, briefly. The setting sun, swollen in the damp air, cast a pink-red glow that seemed to fill the air, and the first stars gleamed.

'Look,' said Lop-ear softly, and he tugged her ear.

She looked up. The Sky Steppe was floating high above the moist tundra, a point of light gleaming fiery red. She stared through the glass wall at the ruddy air. It seemed to her that — just for a heartbeat — the red fire of the Sky Steppe washed down over the world, mixing with the sunset.

But then the clouds closed over the sky, and she was looking out at the dullness of the moist, rainy tundra.

Lop-ear was still talking. '…strange name, but the Lost…'

'What did you say?'

'I was telling you what the Lost call the Sky Steppe. For they see it better than we do, Silverhair. They know much about the land there, even about the two moons that follow it. They call it…' And he raised his head to the light in the sky, and shaped his mouth to utter the strange Lost sound.

'Mars.'

The sky closed over, and snow began to fall steadily. The Arctic summer was over, and Silverhair could feel the bony touch of another long, hard winter.

Epilogue

It is a frozen world.

Though the sun is rising, the sky above is still speckled with stars. There is a flat, sharp, close horizon, a plain of dust and rocks. The rocks are carved by the wind. Everything is stained rust- brown, like dried blood, the shadows long and sharp.

In the east there is a morning star: steady, brilliant, its delicate blue-white distinct against the violet wash of the dawn. Sharp-eyed creatures might see that this is a double star: a faint silver- gray companion circles close to its blue master.

The sun continues to strengthen. It is an elliptical patch of yellow light suspended in a brown sky. But the sun looks small, feeble; this seems a cold, remote place. As the dawn progresses, the dust suspended in the air scatters the light and suffuses everything with a pale salmon hue. At last the gathering light masks the moons.

Two of them.

The land isn’t completely flat. There are low sand dunes, and a soft shadow in the sand. It looks like a shallow ridge.

It is the wall of a crater.

It seems impossible that anything should live here. And yet there is life.

Lichen clings to the crater walls, steadily manufacturing oxygen, and there are tufts of hardy grasses. There are even dwarf willow trees, their branches clinging to the ground…

And there is more.

A vicious wind is rising, lifting the dust into a storm. The horizon is lost now in a pink haze, and the world becomes a washed-out bowl of pink light.

And out of that haze something looms: a mountainous shape, seemingly too massive to move, and yet move it does. As it approaches through the obscuring mist, more of its form becomes visible: a body round as an eroded rock, head dropped down before it, the whole covered in a layer of thick, red-brown hair.

The great head rears up. A trunk comes questing, and immense tusks sweep. An eye opens, warm, brown, intense, startlingly human.

The great trunk lifts, and the woolly mammoth trumpets her ancient songs of blood and wisdom.

Her name is Icebones.