places the pits were overwhelmed by frozen rock flows, as if the pitted landscape had been formed long ago, and then this younger rock poured over it to harden in place.
It was difficult country. But Icebones feared that the terrain further east of here might be more difficult still. Looking that way from the higher ridges, she could see deep shadows and broken walls, hear complex, booming echoes.
And at night she thought she heard the low rumble of some vast animal, echoing from tortuous cliffs.
Difficult, yes. And now they had the calf to consider.
Woodsmoke trotted beside his mother or his grandmother, stumbling frequently. He was still coated with the short underfur from his birth, topped now by a thin layer of pink-red overfur. His back was round, lacking the slope and distinctive shoulder hump he would develop later in life. Though he had been born with the ancient language of all Kilukpuk’s children, there were many things he had to learn. He couldn’t yet use his trunk to gather food, or even to drink. For now he was completely dependent on milk, which he drew from his mother’s nipple with his mouth — the only time in his life when he would use his mouth directly to feed.
The calf slowed them down; there was no doubt about that. They had had to wait several days at the birthing place while mother and calf recovered, and even now the group could walk no faster than the calf could manage.
But Icebones would not have done without him. Woodsmoke was quickly becoming the focus of the group, this nascent Family. He would run from one to the other, ignorant and uncaring of their obscure adult disputes. Only the Ragged One refused to respond to his unformed charms.
His favorite was his aunt, Spiral.
She would lower her trunk and let him clamber on it or pull it. Or she would lie on the ground and let him climb up over her belly, digging his tiny feet into her guard hairs, determined and dogged, as if she was some great warm rock. In her turn, Spiral would forgive Woodsmoke anything — even when he dribbled urine into her fine coat, of which she was so proud.
Icebones was surprised by this; it showed a side of Spiral she hadn’t suspected. Finally, she thought she understood. She sought an opportunity to speak to the Cow.
'Spiral —
At first Spiral would not reply. She walked along with something of her old haughtiness, head held high, her handsome tusks bright in the cold sunlight. But at length she said, 'Yes. If you must know. I have given birth to two calves. Both Bulls. I watched the calves learn to walk, and I suckled them. But soon, when they were no older than Woodsmoke is now, they were taken away.' She said this flatly, without emotion.
'They were taken by the Lost? What cruelty.'
'They were not — cruel. They were taking the calves to a place that would be better for them.' She shook her head, and her delicate trunk rippled. 'And when my calves were gone, each time, I was stroked and praised by the Lost, and given treats, and—'
'Where are the calves now?'
'Surely they are dead,' she said harshly. 'The Sickness killed so many.'
'You can’t know that.'
'It does not hurt.' And she trumpeted brightly, as if joyful. But it was a thin, cold sound.
The little calf came blundering over to Spiral in his tangled, uncoordinated way, seeking to play. But she pushed him away with a gentle shove of her trunk. 'I have no need of
Icebones brought him back. 'I know,' she said carefully. 'But he needs you.'
And, tentatively, Spiral wrapped her trunk around the little calf’s small, smooth head.
The pits in the ground became deeper and more fragmented, and began to merge. Soon Icebones was walking through a deepening gully. The walls grew steadily steeper around her, and the floor, littered with broken rocks, tilted downward sharply. Soon Icebones’s front legs were aching, and her foot pads and trunk tip were scratched raw by the hard-edged rocks.
The gully gave way to a more complex landscape still, a place of branching chasms and tall cliffs. It was the cracked land she had sensed from afar, and dreaded.
Icebones found herself walking through a flat-bottomed valley so deep and sheer-walled that she was immersed in cold shadow, even though she could see a stripe of pinkish daylight sky far above her. The walls, steep above her, were heavily eroded. They were made of layers of hard red-gray sandstone and blue-black lava, and here and there they had slumped tiredly into landslides.
In some places the walls had collapsed altogether, leaving spires and isolated mesas, so that she wandered through a forest of rock, carved into eerie, spindly shapes by the endless wind.
In the weak light the mammoths were rounded, indistinct forms, shuffling gloomily. The ground was littered with sand dunes and rock from the crumbled walls, so the going was difficult and slow. They were all unhappy: mammoths were creatures of the open steppe, and it was against their instincts to be enclosed by high walls.
But the chasm was short. Soon it opened out — but only into a branching array of more deep gorges, separated by tall, sharp-edged walls. Icebones stamped her feet and rumbled. But the walls of this increasingly complex maze sent back only muddled and confusing echoes.
The nights were the worst. The stars and disconcerting moons crossed the sky, but the mammoths were stranded in a deep shadowed darkness.
Icebones tried to keep them moving. But because of the calf’s weariness that proved to be impossible, and they were forced to endure the dark huddled closely around Breeze, while her calf napped peacefully in the forest of her legs.
In the darkest night, Icebones heard deep, brooding rumbles. All the mammoths heard it, she thought, but none would speak of it, as if fearful of making it real.
In the daytime Icebones, weary and befuddled, strove to keep moving east.
This maze of chasms was a pattern of grooves cut deep into the land, as if by the claws of some great predator, so that the plain high above their heads was cut into sunlit islands, each separate from the others.
Spiral said, 'I have become a creature of the ground like a lemming, able only to peer up at the sunlight above.' And her grumble was joined by the others.
It was as if it was somehow Icebones’s fault that they were having such difficulties. It was utterly unfair, of course. But then, she thought gloomily, nobody had promised her that being a Matriarch was anything to do with fairness.
'I will tell you stories from the Cycle.'
That met with a general groan.
But Icebones said, 'The Cycle is our story —
The mammoths still grumbled, but the noise was subdued, and suffused by the soft pads of their feet, the growls of their bellies, gentle burps and farts. Even the little calf trotting at Icebones’s side listened intently. Woodsmoke was still too young to understand much of what she said. But he was responding to the rhythm of her language, as she hoped they all would.
The Ragged One continued to keep apart.
'At last,' Icebones went on, 'the mammoths had nowhere else to go. The land gave way to a great frozen ocean where nothing could live but seals and other ugly creatures. It seemed that soon the mammoths would be overwhelmed by the Lost.
'But Longtusk found a way. There was a bridge of land that spanned the ocean, from one great steppe to another. And, on the far side of the bridge, there were no Lost — only open steppe, where the mammoths could grow and breed and live. So Longtusk gathered the mammoths of his Clan, and said to them—'
Something dropped before her, huge and heavy and dark. It opened a cavernous mouth and screamed. She glimpsed rows of sharp teeth.
Without thinking she lunged forward — she felt the rasp of fur on her tusks, the squelch of soft flesh breaking — and the creature screamed louder yet.
And then, in an instant, it was gone, leaving her with the stink of blood in her nostrils, and the echo of that deadly scream rattling from the walls around her.
She stood there, shaking like a frightened calf.
The mammoths had scattered. The calf had been left alone, and he was turning back and forth, little trunk raised, mewling pitifully. 'Scared… scared…'
Icebones said, 'We must stay together. That — thing — was probably after the calf.'
Spiral was stiff with rage and fear. 'Enough of your talk,' she said. 'The Ragged One is right. This is not your world, Icebones. You did not know we would meet such a creature here, did you?'
'If we squabble it will pick us off one by one.' Icebones raised her tusks, which still dripped red blood. 'Is that what you want?'
At last Autumn rumbled, 'She is right. The calf is probably its main target, for he is weakest, and slowest. Breeze, come to him.'
Breeze stepped forward and tucked her calf beneath her legs. Woodsmoke tried to suckle, but Breeze pushed him back. The rest of the mammoths clustered around mother and calf.
'We will go on,' insisted Icebones. 'This warren of chasms will not last forever. If everyone keeps their trunk high, we will survive.'
They were reluctant, fretful, afraid. But nobody had a better suggestion. And so they began to move forward once more. The calf’s mewling was muffled by the legs and belly fur of its mother, and the adult mammoths rumbled uneasily, their deep sounds echoing heavily from the sheer ravine walls.
Thunder walked beside Icebones. 'What do you think it was?'
'Perhaps it was some kind of cat. There are stories of great cats in the Cycle — Longtusk himself fought such a beast. Perhaps it has grown fat by destroying everything else living here, like the whale in the Ocean of the North. But I have never seen a cat, for none lived on the Island. Many of the animals mentioned in the old Cycle stories are long gone…'
Icebones saw that the stripe of sky visible far above her head was already fading to a deep orange-pink.
'Soon it will be dark,' the Ragged One said softly. 'And then we will make a story of our own. Won’t we, Matriarch?'
They came to another branch in the chasm system. This time Icebones faced three intersecting ravines, each sheer-walled and littered with loose rock, each leading only to further complexity — and each empty, as far as she could see.
We must continue east, she told herself. If we don’t achieve that much, everything else is lost. She stepped forward and led them into the central chasm.
There was a bellow. The mammoths stumbled back, trunks raised in alarm.
This time the creature had dropped from above, onto Autumn’s back. The mammoth was pawing the ground and trumpeting. She lifted her head in a vain effort to reach her tormentor with her tusks or trunk.
The creature was only dimly visible in the shadows, but Icebones glimpsed hard, front-facing yellow eyes, that black bloody mouth, and claws that gleamed white and dug deep into Autumn’s flesh, causing blood to well and drip down her heavy hair.
Autumn blundered against the chasm wall. The cat creature yowled its protest. But it was ripped away from her back, its claws leaving a final set of gouges.
Icebones lunged forward, trumpeting, tusks held high.
The cat raised itself to its full height, yellow eyes fixed on Icebones. It was spindly, but its body was a sleek slab of muscle. It opened its huge mouth and hissed. And it leapt with astonishing agility up the chasm wall.
Again the mammoths were left in sudden silence.
