All this Longtusk saw in glimpses, as the Moon cycled in the sky. But as a growing mammoth he was not exactly inconspicuous; and whenever the Dreamers saw him they would shout and jab sticks and hurl rocks until he went away. They were not mammoth hunters by habit, but Longtusk knew they could easily kill him if they chose, or if he seemed threatening enough. He recoiled from their weapons, and their hostility — a hostility that seemed shared by all except Willow.
Willow remained with the females and their brood. But he seemed somehow distanced, older than the rest of the infants, often the subject of an irritable cuff from one female or another. Perhaps that was why Willow’s behavior was different from the others, why he had been moved to risk his own life to save a mammoth’s. Longtusk wondered if Willow, like Longtusk himself, was reaching a cusp, preparing to leave his mother and her sisters and seek out the male hunter groups.
The strange idea that he and Willow might have something in common was obscurely comforting.
As winter drew in, the nights grew long and deep, the days brief.
There was a spate of early snow storms. The air here was sucked dry by the icecap, and there was little fresh snow. But ground blizzards, with old snow picked up by heavy winds, frequently occurred. So, when it snowed, it was usually in the midst of a ferocious wind storm that might persist for days.
Longtusk endured the blizzards. He felt the snow’s weight gather on his back, but he knew he was protected. His body generated its own heat by slowly burning the fat reserves he had stored up during the summer. That heat was trapped with remarkable efficiency by his shell of fur and guard hairs — so well, in fact, that snow that fell on his back did not melt.
Still, in the worst of the weather, he could do nothing but stand in his shell of snow and endure. Any movement would have burned up the fat reserves whose primary use was keeping him alive. But even so, despite his hoarding of his reserves, he felt himself being depleted, bit by bit, as the winter drew in.
When the weather relented, Longtusk traveled even farther than before in search of food.
In some places the wind kept patches of sun-cured summer grass free of heavy snow. When he uncovered the ground to feed, he was followed by Arctic hares or ptarmigan, seeking willow buds and insects.
But the land had emptied. The migrant animals like the deer had gone far south to warmer climes, and the Arctic foxes had retreated to sea ice, living exclusively from the remnants of polar bear kills. Some life persisted, nevertheless. There were lemmings that burrowed beneath the snow, ptarmigans that dove into drifts for insulation, even plants that managed to flourish in pockets of warm air beneath the ice.
In these days of darkness and cold and windblown snow, everything was slowed. To extend a trunk tip or open an eye, unprotected by fur, could lead to agonizing pain. Any bit of moisture would turn to crystals, creating an ice fog; when he walked a cloud hung over him, shining with light.
Once he saw a snowy owl gliding silently past, and its breath trailed after it in the air.
One fiercely cold day he walked along the river valley near the Dreamers’ caves, seeking water. But he found the river here had run dry.
The river had iced over. But the ice crust had broken and fallen in, and the valley floor beneath was dry. The river had first frozen over, but then the watershed farther upstream had frozen, and the water beneath the ice crust had stopped flowing. The river had drained away, leaving the unsupported crust above.
Longtusk climbed down to the river bed, the bones of fish crunching beneath his feet, grubbing for water in the cold mud.
He followed the dry bed until he reached the lake, and there, at last, he drank deeply.
But a few days later, the lake froze over.
Longtusk bent to the water’s edge and tried to crack the ice with his tusks. The ice splintered and starred as he scraped. But close to the bank, where the ice clung to the muddy bottom, there was too little water beneath to satisfy his thirst. And he knew that if he ventured farther out the ice could crack under him, and he could become trapped in the mud, even drown.
He walked along the shore, seeking a place he knew where the water ran over big chunks of black rock. But even this waterfall had frozen over; great lumps and streamers of white ice clung to the rocks.
He could survive on little food — but he needed water.
He lacked a detailed knowledge of this landscape. He had no idea where he might find frozen-over ponds whose crusts might be thin enough to break with his tusks; nor did he have the skills to discover new water sources for himself.
He was cut off from the wisdom of the Clan. He knew he had much to learn about the land and how to survive — and nobody was here to teach him.
For days, lacking any better idea, he survived on nothing but dribbles of muddy, half-frozen lake bed ooze, and his strength dwindled further.
But then, when he returned hopefully to the lake, he found a wide area of it had been cleared of ice. Without hesitation Longtusk splashed out into the water, ignoring its sharp cold as it soaked into the hair of his legs. He dipped his trunk into the clear liquid and sucked it up gratefully.
The break in the ice was suspiciously neat, a half-disc like a waning Moon. Its inner rim looked chipped and scarred — as if by the paw of a Dreamer.
This cleared pool was not natural; it must be the work of his only friend, the Dreamer cub Willow, who must have seen his distress and decided to help him. Despite the chill of the brief winter day, Longtusk felt warmed.
But soon the winter’s cold bit harder.
A savage wind from the north, spilling off the flanks of the ice sheet itself, howled across the battered, exposed land. Dust closed around him, shutting out the brief slivers of daylight. This storm brought little snow, but it drove great billows of dust and sand from the pulverized lands uncovered by the retreating ice.
This was an age of savage weather, dominated by the huge masses of cold air that lingered over the immense polar ice sheets, driven to instability by the accelerating warming of the climate. This hard, dry storm, Longtusk knew, might last for months.
He saw no sign of the Dreamers. They must have been sheltering in their caves.
As for himself, he could only push his body against the rocks of the river bank and try to endure.
The days of the storm wore on. He had nothing to drink but scraps of ice and snow, which anyhow chilled him as much as nourished him; and he couldn’t even recall when he had last found anything to eat.
Frost gathered around his mouth and trunk tip and gummed up his eyes. A deep shivering worked its way into his bones.
It was the wind that did the damage. Still air wouldn’t have been so bad, for a thin layer of warm air would have gathered around his body. But the wind, impatient and snatching, stole each scrap of heat his body produced, casting it into the south, gone, useless.
If he was with his Family they would have huddled now, gathered in a group, the youngest calves at the center of the huddle, the adults taking their turns on the outside of the group, facing into the wind. Thanks to the Family, few mammoths would perish in such a storm.
But here, alone, Longtusk had no others to help him and protect him: only these mute, uncaring rocks.
And he knew it wasn’t enough.
The shivering went away, and the cold started to penetrate deep into the core of his body. When it got there, he would quietly slide into a final sleep, not to wake again until he reached the aurora.
But perhaps that wouldn’t be so bad. Perhaps there he would find his mother and his sister and even that bullying oaf Rockheart, whom he would now never get a chance to best.
As the cold gathered around his heart, he felt almost peaceful.
…There was something warm and soft at the tip of his trunk. It was tugging at him. He tried to open his eyes, but they were shut by ice. He shook his head, rumbling, and forced his eyelids to open with a soft crackle.
Sand and grit immediately dug into his opened eyes. The storm still raged all around him.
Something stood before him, a bundle of fur, upright. Brown eyes peered.
It was Willow. And, with one fur-wrapped paw, the Dreamer cub was tugging at Longtusk’s trunk, urging him to follow.
Longtusk had almost reached the blank numbness of death, and it had been comfortable. If he returned to the land of life, he would face all its complexities: choices, hardship, pain. If only Willow let him alone… Just a little longer…
But you are Longtusk. Surely the greatest hero of them all is destined for a better death than this: alone, ignored, frozen by the mindless wind. Take your chance, Longtusk!
His trunk-fingers slipped into Willow’s palm.
It was difficult to walk. His joints had become stiff, so deeply had the cold penetrated them. And when he moved out of the shelter of the rocks, the wind battered him unhindered.
But it wasn’t easy for the Dreamer cub either. He felt Willow stagger, but the cub pulled himself upright against Longtusk.
They seemed to walk for a very long time.
At last they reached a place where the wind was diminished. And Longtusk felt a deep warmth radiating over his face and chest.
He was in the mouth of one of the caves. Willow was standing beside him, pulling off his furs in great frosty grit-laden bundles.
The cave was a well of red light and warmth. Flaps of animal skin had been fixed over this cave mouth. Perhaps they were supposed to drape over the entrance, keeping its warmth inside, like the flap of skin over a mammoth’s anus.
The warmth came from fire, he realized suddenly: a fire that burned, smokily, in a circle of stones.
He recoiled, instinctive fear rising anew in him. But behind him, the Beringian night howled its fury.
There was no place for him out there. Despite the fire, he forced himself to stay still.
There were many Dreamers here: females, males, infants. They lay on the floor of the cave, fat and sleepy, all of them slabs of muscle. The females clustered together with their infants away from the males, who lay on their backs snoring. Some were naked; others wore light skins around their shoulders and waists. Their bare skin looked greasy, as if it had been coated by the fat of some dead animal — perhaps to keep in their bodies’ warmth.
One of the dozing males stirred, perhaps disturbed by the wind that leaked in through the open skins. It was Stripeskull, his red and yellow scalp unmistakable.
His eyes grew large as he saw a mammoth standing in the cave entrance, immense tusk shadows striped over the walls.
With surprising grace Stripeskull rolled to his feet and barked out guttural noises. Other males woke up, blinking and rubbing their eyes; when they saw Longtusk they quickly got to their hind legs, grabbing sticks of wood and sharp stones.
…Then the males fell back, making retching noises and waving their paws before their faces.
Longtusk realized that he had just defecated, as mammoths do many times a day, barely conscious of it. He looked back. His dung was a pile of tubular bricks, acrid, immense. He tried to push it outside the cave. But he succeeded only in smearing the hot, sticky stuff over the cave floor.
Willow was going forward to meet Stripeskull. They jabbered at each other in a fast, complex flow; they made gestures too with their heads and paws. It was obviously a language, Longtusk realized, like the mammoths’ language of trumpets, growls, stomps and postures. But he had absolutely no idea what they were saying to each other. Perhaps even the frequent cuffs about the head which Stripeskull delivered to Willow were like the mammoths’ subtle code of touch and rubbing. But from the way Willow was rubbing his head it was obvious the blows were also meant to hurt.
Lacking any alternative, exhausted, Longtusk stood in the cave mouth and awaited his fate.
