Silverhair

by Stephen Baxter

  The calves both stared at the body. Little Sunfire's trunk was raised in alarm.

  Foxeye tapped at the calves with her trunk. "Watch now," she said, "and learn. This is how to die."

  Silverhair found herself staring too. The loss she felt was enormous, as if a hole had been gouged out of the sky.

  Owlheart stepped forward, and scraped at the bare ground with her tusks. Then she picked up a fingerful of earth and grass and dropped it on Wolfnose's unresponding flank.

  Silverhair reached down, ripped up some grass, and stepped forward to do the same.

  Soon all the Family followed Owlheart's lead, covering Wolfnose's body with mud, earth, grass, and twigs. Eggtusk kicked and scraped at the soil, sending heaps of it over the carcass. Even the calves tried to help; little Sunfire looked comical as she tottered back and forth to the fallen body with a blade of grass or a scrap of dust.

  As they worked, Silverhair felt a deeper calm settle on her soul. The Cycle said this was how the mammoths — and their Cousins, the Calves of Probos, the world over — had always honored and Remembered their dead. Now Silverhair felt the ancient truth and wisdom of the ceremony seep into her. It was a way to show their love for the spark of Wolfnose, as it floated across the river of darkness to the aurora, leaving the daylight diminished.

  When they were done, the mammoths stood for a little longer over the body, and they swayed restlessly from side to side, the younger ones joining in without thinking.

  Then Owlheart turned away, and quoted a final line from the Cycle: "She belongs to the wolves now."

  She led the Family away. Eggtusk walked at her side, still desolate, his trunk dangling limp between his legs.

  Silverhair looked back once. The mound of Wolfnose's body looked like the yedoma within which she had seen the emerging, ancient corpse.

  Suddenly she saw this scene as it might be Great-Years from now. She saw another mammoth, young and foolish as herself, come lumbering across the plain — to discover Wolfnose's body, stripped by time of flesh and name, emerging once more from the icy ground. It was like a vision of her own life, she thought — as intense as sunlight, as brief as the glimmer of hoarfrost.

  Silverhair sought out Lop-ear. She stroked his musth gland with her trunk, but he shrank back, oddly.

  She turned her face toward the south.

  He hesitated. "Now?"

  "Yes. Now."

  "Shouldn't we tell the others?"

  "What for? They would only stop us."

  She began to walk. Resolutely she did not look back.

  After a few heartbeats she heard his heavy footfalls as he lumbered after her. She hid her grim satisfaction.

  10

  The Time of Musth and Estrus

  ONCE MORE, THEIR WALK took them many days.

  They passed through a valley flanked by eroded mountains.

  It was a valley of water and light. Gently undulating meadows fell away to a central river, which was slow-moving, wide and deep, meandering through a sandy floodplain. To the west the river's numerous tangled channels shimmered in the low sun. Above them the valley sides rose up to become dramatic peaks, the white light blazing off the ice that crowned them. The basalt walls, their sheer rock faces shattered by centuries of frost, had eroded into narrow pinnacles that stood against the sky. Every ledge was coated with orange lichen, nourished by the droppings of geese, whose cackling calls echoed down to the mammoths.

  There was little snow left on the valley floor now, and trickles of water, cool and fresh, ran from the remaining snowbanks. But the ground was still bare, shaded rust-red, ochre, and russet; of the lush vegetation that would soon cover the valley there was still little sign.

  The first bumblebees and butterflies were appearing in the air.

  Silverhair suffered her first mosquito bite of the year. She snapped at the troublesome insect with her tail, but she knew that even if she reached it her effort was futile; millions of its relatives would soon be emerging from the silt at the bottom of ice-covered ponds, where they had spent the winter as larvae.

  The beauty of the valley, the return of life, the calmness of their situation: all of this, as the long day wore on, was having a profound effect on Silverhair. She could feel the flesh and fat gathering comfortably on her bones, her winter coat falling away. Her body responded deeply to the season, surging with oceanic warmth.

  Somewhere within her, seeds were ripening, as if in response to the death she had witnessed. It was estrus; she was thrilled.

  She knew that Lop-ear, too, was ready. As he walked he kept his head held high, his trunk curled. He seethed with irritability and urgency. He dribbled musth from the temporal gland at the top of his head, and he left a trail of strong-smelling urine wherever he walked. He was even making a deep rumble, a sound she had heard before only from much older Bulls. But he seemed consumed by his own inner turmoil and ill-defined longing, and when he spoke to her it was only of their greater concerns: the strange encounter with the Lost that may await them in the south, the possibility of bringing the Family to these richer lands, the disturbing, nagging fact that they were finding no recent signs of other mammoth Families anywhere.

  He spoke of everything but them.

  He was in musth.

  Yet he couldn't see it himself.

  Patiently she kept her counsel and waited for him to understand.

  After many days of walking they came to a ridge that overlooked the southern coast of the Island.

  The world to the south lay displayed before Silverhair, divided into broad stripes, dazzling in her poor vision. Below the blue-gray line of sky was the misty bulk of the Mainland, still obscured by storm clouds. Then came the Channel, a blue-black strip of water bounded by cracked, gleaming pack ice. Below the ridge they were standing on was the shore, a shingle beach fringed by dirty landfast ice.

  The all-pervasive sound rising from the coast was of broken pack ice lifting on and off the shore rocks. Farther away in the open Channel, icebergs drifted: a procession of them, mysterious and awe-inspiring, like clouds brought down to Earth. As the light shifted their contours would suddenly glow iridescent blue. Silverhair's heart was lifted by the stately beauty and strangeness of the bergs; they were the mammoths of the sea, she thought, effortlessly dominating their surroundings, giant and dignified.

  The wind was strong, and its cold penetrated Silverhair's newly exposed underwool. She huddled close to Lop-ear, the wind whipping across her eyes. "There are times when I wish I could keep my winter fur all year around—"

  "Hush," he said, staring. "Look..."

  And there, resting on the shore, was something she had never seen before.

  At first she thought it was the splayed-open body of some giant animal. It had one end coming to a point, the other rounded. Its long, sleek flanks were encrusted with sea plants and streaks of brownish discoloration. And those flanks were torn open, she saw, perhaps ripped by the sea ice. The top of the monster was like a complex, shattered forest, with posts like tree trunks sprouting from each other at all angles.

  The thing was huge: so big, she could have walked around inside its belly.

  Lop-ear was silent, staring at the hulk, his trunk raised in the air.

  She said, "Do you think it's dead?"

  "I don't think it was ever alive," he said bluntly.

  "What, then?"

  "I think you must ask the Lost that," he said. "For something as ugly and unfitting as that could only come from their tortured souls. Perhaps it brought them here."

  "But it's damaged. Perhaps that's why they can't leave." Suddenly she raised her trunk. "I smell something."

  "Yes." He turned, scanning along the coast.

  It was smoke.

  They saw a small fire, confined to a spot on the beach below, close to the foot of the ridge. There was, Silverhair saw, a shape above it: like a tree, bent all the way over to touch the ground. Objects dangled from the tree-thing over the fire.

  Now she coul
d smell something else, carried on the wind. The stink of burning flesh.

  And that bent-over object wasn't a tree, she realized with mounting horror.

  It was a tusk.

  "By Kilukpuk's mercy..."

  Lop-ear was becoming agitated. "That smell of flesh—" His voice was tight and indistinct. "It is all I can do to keep from fleeing."

  "Lop-ear, listen to me." She told him about the body in the yedoma. The way the tusks of the ancient Bull had been hacked away. "Well, now I know what became of those tusks," she said grimly.

  They saw movement on the beach. Two creatures — something like wolves, perhaps, but walking upright, on their hind legs — approached the fire. One of them reached out with its foreleg and prodded at the dangling scraps of flesh. It was using its paw as Silverhair would her trunk, to manipulate the burned flesh.

  To rip a piece off it.

  To lift it to its mouth, and bite into it. Another of the creatures grabbed at the meat, and they fought over it, clumsily.

  She felt bile rise in her throat.

  Without speaking, the two mammoths turned and fled from the ridge, toward the sanctity and calmness of the north.

  THE SUN ROLLED ALONG the mist-shrouded horizon. The Moon rose, a gaunt old crescent, clearly visible in the mysterious, subdued sky of the summer midnight.

  The two mammoths huddled together.

  "They were Lost," Silverhair whispered. "Weren't they? How can I have ever imagined I could deal with them?" Every instinct, every nerve shrieked for her to fly from this place, from the Lost and their scentless, unnatural activities, their slavering like wolves over burned scraps of flesh.

  But Lop-ear didn't reply.

  By the wan light she could see him, apparently unconsciously, reaching into his mouth with his trunk, and tasting her musk. Tasting it for estrus.

  Suddenly it was not a time for talking. And her fear, in this strange, remote place, her residual sadness at Wolfnose's death — all of it transmuted into a powerful longing.

  She rumbled, deeper and lower than ever in her life. Then her tone rose gently, becoming stronger and higher in pitch, then sinking down to silence at the end.

  This was the Song of Estrus. The call would carry many days' walk from here, and was a signal to any Bull who heard it that she was a Cow ready to mate.

  But there was only one Bull she wanted to hear.

  She pulled away from Lop-ear, her head held high. Then she whirled around, backing into him.

  She ran across the shadow-strewn plain, the frosty grass crushing beneath her feet, her breath steaming before her face. She could feel him pursuing her, his own giant footfalls like an echo of her own — but much more than an echo, for as he neared her it was as if the other half of her own soul was joining her.

  She let him catch her.

  He laid his trunk over her shoulder, pulling her back. Still singing, she turned to face him. He was silhouetted in the low light, his body, newly fattened by the spring grass, broad and strong. She stepped from side to side, slowly, and every step she took was mirrored by him. She could see the musth liquid that oozed thickly from the gland on top of his head.

  Then, facing her, he gently laid his trunk on her head and body. She twined her trunk around his, and their mouths met.

  Thus, since the time of Probos, have the mammoths and their Cousins expressed their readiness to mate.

  Now, at last, she let him move behind her.

  He placed his tusks and forelegs on her back, and raised himself up. She knew he was taking most of his weight on his own back legs, but even so his mass was solid, heavy, warm on her back.

  And she felt him enter her.

  When it was over, and his warmth was captured inside her, she entered the mating pandemonium. She rumbled, screamed, trumpeted, defecated, secreted from her musth gland, whirled in a dance that made the ground shake. If other Cows had been present they would have joined in Silverhair's pandemonium, celebrating the deep ancient joy of the mating. It was as if all her experiences — of death and birth and renewed life, of the immense mammoth history that lay behind her — channeled through this moment. The blood surged in her, remaking her like a larva in its cocoon, and she knew she had never been so alive, so joyous, so tied to the Earth.

  This was her summer day; this was her moment. She trumpeted her defiant joy that she was alive.

  And at that moment of greatest joy she saw, climbing high in the midnight sky, a splinter of red light: it was the Sky Steppe, where one day her calves would roam free and without fear.

  AFTERWARD THEY STOOD TOGETHER, their hides matted, their heads touching.

  "You know I will stay with you," he said. "I will guard you from the other Bulls until the end of your estrus."

  That was the way, she knew. Mammoths are not romantic, but Lop-ear would protect his mate until the end of her estrus period, when — she hoped — conception would occur, deep within her. Still, she could not help but mock him. "What other Bulls?"

  "I will defend you even from the great Bull Croptail!" He raised his head, so his tusks flashed in the flat sunlight, and he danced before her as if he were about to go into battle with the Earth itself—

  There was a sharp sound behind them. A cracking twig.

  Mammoths' necks are short, and they cannot easily turn their heads. So Silverhair and Lop-ear lumbered about, to face behind them.

  There was something here, just paces away. Like a narrow, branchless tree, casting a long midnight shadow. Silverhair could smell nothing of it.

  It was a Lost.

  Now it moved. With raised forelegs it lifted some kind of stick and pointed it at them.

  Lop-ear said, "We must not show it fear. And we must not frighten it. It is only a Hotblood, like us, after all." He hesitated. "Perhaps it is injured. Perhaps it is hungry. That might be the meaning of the stick it carries—"

  Dread filled her. "Lop-ear, don't!"

  "It's what we have come for, Silverhair."

  Lop-ear lowered his trunk and stepped forward. From his forehead resounded the contact rumble.

  The apparition took a step back, raised its stick higher. And the stick cracked.

  There was a burst of light, a sound like thunder.

  It was over in an instant. But that crack of light was enough to show her the strange, hairless head of the creature before her. It was the one she had met on the ice floe, the one she had called Skin-of-Ice.

  Lop-ear trumpeted in pain. She turned.

  His trunk was raised, his eyes closed. Some dark liquid was gushing over the fur on his chest. It was blood, and it steamed in the cold air.

  His hind legs gave way, so that he squatted like a defecating wolf, and his trunk dropped.

  She raced to his side. "What has happened to you?"

  But he could not speak. Now blood spewed from his open mouth, dangling in loops from his tongue.

  She ran behind him and began to nudge at his back with her head. "Get up! Get up!"

  He tried; she could feel him padding at the ground with his hind legs, and he lifted his head.

  But there was another thunder-crack.

  Immediately all four of Lop-ear's legs gave way and he slumped to the ground.

  Silverhair staggered back, appalled, terrified. She could not understand what was happening. But she still had Lop-ear's warmth inside her, and she was drawn back to him.

  There was a new sound: a thin, high whoop, almost like a calf's immature trumpeting.

  It was the creature called Skin-of-Ice, she saw. It — he — was holding his thunder-stick in the air above his head, and was yelping out his triumph. And he was standing on the flank of fallen Lop-ear.

  Silverhair felt rage gather in her, deep and uncontrollable. She raised herself up on her hind legs, head high, and trumpeted as loudly as she could.

  Skin-of-Ice raised the thunder-stick, and it cracked, again and again. Stinging, invisible insects flew around her.

  Her mind crumbled into panic, and sh
e fled.

  LATER SHE WOULD REMEMBER little of what followed. Only flashes, like the light from Skin-of-Ice's thunder-stick.

  Sometimes she was alone, fleeing across a shadowed plain.

  Sometimes the Lost pursued her, thin legs working, mysterious thunder-sticks barking.

  Sometimes Lop-ear was there. She spoke to him of the future, the plans they had made. She threatened him with the punishment he would receive from Eggtusk if he didn't get up and come with her back to the Family right now.

  Sometimes she saw a caterpillar, motionless on a willow branch. Then a small opening in its moist hide revealed a small set of jaws: it was a larva of some still smaller insect, eating its host alive from within.

  Sometimes there was only the stink of Lop-ear's cooling blood in her nostrils.

  And always, always, the image of Skin-of-Ice: how the murderous Lost would look when she raised his soft, wormlike body on the tip of her tusks.

  11

  The Rhythms and the Lost

  THE SUN WHEELED ABOVE the horizon, never setting; the endless daylight was pitiless, for Silverhair sought only darkness.

  "Silverhair. Silverhair..."

  The words were like contact rumbles, swimming through the earth. And when she opened her eyes, unrolled her trunk so she could smell again, she could see mammoths before her: Eggtusk, Snagtooth.

  With a part of her mind, she knew that she had tried to find her way north, back to the Family, where they remained on the bleak plain of volcanic rock in the lee of the great Mountains at the End of the World. She recalled the walk only in fragmented glimpses: the clumps of grass she had once grazed with Lop-ear, an old hill whose eroded contours had reminded her of Lop-ear's slumped carcass.

  She tried to focus on Eggtusk's words. "...You must listen to what I'm saying. I understand how you feel. We all do. But death is waiting for each of us. The great turning of life and death..."