Longtusk

And Longtusk said to the Fireheads, 'You need a cave like Dreamer’s to fend off the rain. See how warm and comfortable she is? There are many caves in this hillside, and you may take them for your own shelter. Isn’t that right, Dreamer?'

And Dreamer replied, 'Yes, Longtusk' — for all the creatures of the world knew Longtusk—'the caves will be all your friends need, and they may have them.'

And the Fireheads muttered and calculated, for that is their way.

And when Longtusk’s back was turned, they attacked poor Dreamer, and robbed her of her fine cave, and threw her out into the rain.

When he found out what had happened, Longtusk berated the Fireheads for their greed and impatience. 'You could have taken all you needed without stealing Dreamer’s home!'

And the Fireheads said they were sorry. But in their hearts they were not.

Then the Fireheads became thirsty.

So Longtusk took them to the north, where the mammoths lived.

He brought them to a place where the mammoths, in their wisdom, knew that water seeped from deep in the ground. They were digging there with tusks and feet, bringing the water to the surface.

And Longtusk said to the Fireheads, 'You must dig for water as the mammoths do. See how much water there is? And when you have learned what the mammoths have to teach you, you can find water of your own. Isn’t that right, Matriarch?'

And the Matriarch of the mammoth Family said, 'Yes, Longtusk' — for all the mammoths knew Longtusk—'in the ground there is all the water your friends need, and we will teach them how to find it.'

And the Fireheads muttered and calculated, for that is their way.

And when Longtusk’s back was turned, they attacked the poor mammoths, and drove them away, and robbed them of their water.

When he found out what had happened, Longtusk berated the Fireheads. 'You could have found your own water without robbing the mammoths — oh, you are impossible!'

And the Fireheads said they were sorry. But in their hearts they were not.

By now Longtusk knew that all his teaching was wasted on such creatures. He had decided besides that he had spent enough time away from his Clan.

So he turned his back on the Fireheads and walked away, leaving them to fend for themselves. They called to him plaintively, begging him to return, but he would not.

And so Longtusk returned to the mammoths, and became their Patriarch, and…

But that’s another story. Perhaps the greatest of them all.

What happened to the Fireheads without Longtusk’s wisdom, driven only by their own foolishness, cold and wet and thirsty? Nobody knows.

Some say they quickly died out.

And some say they became monsters.

1 The Bone Pit

All around Longtusk, sleeping mastodonts lay like immense boulders. In the summer they preferred to sleep on their backs, exposing their bare feet and bellies to the cool air. From time to time one of them, startled by a noise, would rise smoothly and silently to his feet, like some hairy ghost, before settling back.

But Longtusk could not sleep — even after the months he had been kept here in the Firehead settlement.

He could hear small Firehead footsteps as they pattered across the hard ground, their thin Firehead voices as they came and went on their strange, incomprehensible business. Sometimes he even heard the clear voice of the female cub, Crocus, who — in another life that was long ago and far away — he had saved from freezing.

And, worst of all, he could smell the meat they hung up on frames of wood to dry: rags of brown and purple, laced here and there by pale fat or strings of tendon, some of it even clinging to shards of white bone. Most of the meat came from deer and horse and smaller animals, but there were some larger chunks, great knobbly pieces of bone he couldn’t recognize.

And he could smell the meat that burned, slowly, in the great stone-lined pits in the ground, the billowing greasy black smoke that lingered in the air.

At least he had put aside the panic he had felt continually when he had first been brought here to the Firehead settlement, as every instinct drove him to flee the smoke from the fires. But he would never grow used to that dreadful meat stink. It seemed to have seeped into his very fur, so that he was never free of it.

So Longtusk endured, waiting for morning.

The keepers came in the gray light of dawn. They talked softly and cleared their throats to alert the mastodonts of their approach. The mastodonts stirred, rumbling, and there was a rustle of leathery skin against the hobbles that bound their legs.

Most of the mastodonts were Bulls — not really a bachelor herd, for the tree-browsing mastodonts were more solitary than mammoths, Longtusk had found. But there were Families here too, Cows and calves.

The keepers approached their animals, one by one, talking softly. The mastodonts rumbled and whooshed in response, reaching out with their trunks to search the Fireheads’ layers of fur for tidbits of food. It was a display of affection and submission that never failed to embarrass Longtusk.

This morning the fat little keeper the mastodonts called Lemming approached Longtusk, holding out a juicy strip of bark. And, as he always did, Longtusk rumbled threateningly, curled his trunk and backed away as far as the hobbles knotted tightly around his legs would let him.

Lemming wore trousers and leggings of deer skin, moccasins and a broad hat of a tougher leather, and his clothing was stuffed with dry grass to keep him warm. Bits of grass stuck out around his wide, greasy face as he studied Longtusk, peering into the mammoth’s ears and eyes and mouth.

Jaw Like Rock, his hobbles already loosened, came loping over. With a deft movement he snatched the bark from Lemming’s paw and tucked it into his mouth. 'Waste of good food,' he rumbled as he munched.

'It comes from the paw of a Firehead,' Longtusk said.

'So what? Food is food.'

'I’m not like you.'

'He wasn’t intending you any harm, you know. He was checking your eyes and ears for infection. And he wanted to see your tongue, too.' Jaw opened his mouth and unrolled his own tongue, a leathery black sheet of muscle that dripped with saliva. 'The keepers know that a healthy mastodont has a nice pink tongue umblemished by black spots, brown eyes without a trace of white, the right number of toenails, strong and sturdy joints, a full face and broad forehead… You have all of that; if you were a mastodont you’d be a prize.'

Longtusk growled, impatient with advice.

'You’re the only mammoth we have here, Longtusk. The keepers don’t know what to make of you. Some of them think you can’t be tamed and trained, that you’re too wild. And the Shaman, Smokehat, is jealous of you.'

'Jealous? Why?'

'Because the Fireheads used to believe that mammoths were gods. Some of them seem to think you’re a god. And that takes away from the Shaman’s power. Having you around gives even little Lemming a higher status. Don’t you understand any of this, grazer?'

'No,' said Longtusk bluntly.

'All I’m saying is that if you give him an excuse, the Shaman will have you destroyed. Lemming is fond of you. But you’re going to have to help him, to give him some sign that you’ll cooperate, or else—'

But now, as if to disprove Jaw’s comforting growl, his own keeper approached: Spindle, thin, ugly and brutal. He lashed at Jaw with his stick, apparently punishing the mastodont for his minor theft of the food.

Jaw didn’t so much as flinch.

'Of course,' he rumbled sourly, 'not everything’s wonderful here. But there are ways to make life bearable.'

And he lifted his fat, scarred trunk and sneezed noisily. A gust of looping snot and bark chips sprayed over Spindle, who fell over backward, yelling.

Jaw Like Rock farted contentedly and loped away.

The mastodonts were prepared for another working day. Their hobbles were removed — or merely loosened, in the case of Longtusk and a few others, mastodonts in musth and so prone to irritability. Longtusk was a special case, of course, and he wore his hobbles with a defiant pride. As they worked the keepers were careful to keep away from his tusks, so much more large and powerful than the strongest mastodont’s.

Ten mastodonts, plus Longtusk, were formed up into a loose line. Walks With Thunder was at the head. Lemming sat neatly on the great mastodont’s neck, his fat legs sticking out on either side of Thunder’s broad head.

Lemming tapped Thunder’s scalp and called out, 'Agit!'

Walks With Thunder loped forward, trumpeting to the others to follow him.

The mastodonts obeyed. They were prompted by cries from the keepers — Chai ghoom! Chi! Dhuth!, Right! Left! Stop! — and they were directed by gentle taps of the keepers’ goads: gentle, yes, but Longtusk had learned by hard experience that the keepers also knew exactly where to strike him to inflict a sharp burst of pain, brief and leaving no scar.

Half the mastodonts bore riders. Most of the others carried the equipment the working party would need during the day. Those without riders were led by loose harnesses of rope tied around their heads.

Longtusk, of course, had no rider, and his harness was kept tighter than the rest. Not only that, his trunk was tied to Walks With Thunder’s broad tail, so that he was led along the path like an infant with his mother.

Then they walked slowly out of the Firehead settlement.

The Fireheads had spread far, reshaping the steppe, and they were still building. They had made themselves shelters — like the caves of the Dreamers — but of wood and rock and turf and animal skin. They built huge pits in the ground into which they hurled meat ripped from the carcasses of the creatures they hunted. And the Fireheads had built a great stockade of wood and rock, within which the mastodonts were confined. To Longtusk it was a place of distortion and strangeness, and he was habitually oppressed, crushed by a feeling of confinement and helplessness and bafflement.

But for now they were out of the stockade, and with relief Longtusk found himself on the open steppe. As the sun climbed into a cloud-dusted sky, they soon left behind the noise and stink of the settlement, and walked on steadily south.

The air was misty and full of light. Longtusk saw that it was a mist of life: vast clouds of insects, mosquitoes and blackflies and warble flies and botflies, that rose from the lakes to plague the