And as the mud baked in the sun, the twigs and grasses turned into a thick layer of orange-brown fur, which Prima knew would keep her warm through the long Tundra nights. And so these changes were also good.
But again Meridi mocked her sister. "You are fat and short, little Prima, and now you are covered with the ugliest fur I have ever seen. Look at my rock-smooth skin, and weep!"
All of this Prima endured.
At the end of the third summer, Ganesha presented her two daughters to the Family.
She said: "I will not serve as your Matriarch any longer, for I grow tired and my teeth grow soft. Now, if you wish, you can choose to stay with Meridi, who will lead you deeper into the Forest. Or you can join Prima, and learn to live on the Tundra, as she has. Neither course is easy. But I have taught you that the art of traveling is to pick the least dangerous path."
And she had Prima and Meridi stand before the assembled Family.
There was Meridi, tall and bare and lean and beautiful, promising the mammoths that if they followed her — and the teachings of the Cycle — they would enjoy rich foliage and deep green shade, just as they had always known. And there was Prima, a squat, fat, round bundle of brown fur, who promised only hardship, and whose life would not follow the Cycle.
It will not surprise you that most of the Family chose to stay with beautiful Meridi and the Cycle.
But a few chose Prima, and the future.
So the sisters parted. They never saw each other again.
SOON THE TREES WERE DYING, just as Ganesha had foreseen. Meridi and her folk were forced to venture farther and farther south.
At last Meridi came to a place where Cousins lived already. They were Calves of Probos, like us, but they had chosen to live in the lush warm south many Great-Years ago. They called themselves elephants. And though the elephants recall the Oath of Kilukpuk, they would not allow the Meridi and her mammoths to share their Forest.
All of Meridi's renowned beauty made absolutely no difference.
As the Cold settled on the Earth and the Forest died away, Meridi and her Family dwindled.
Meridi died, hungry and cold and without calves.
And now not one of her beautiful kind is left on the Earth.
Meanwhile Prima took her handful of followers out onto the Tundra. It was hard and cold, but they learned to savor the subtle flavors of the Tundra grasses, and Prima helped them become as she was — as we are now.
And her calves, and her calves' calves, roamed over the northern half of our planet.
Ganesha, you see (concluded Silverhair), was not like other Matriarchs.
Some say Ganesha was a dark figure — perhaps with something of the Lost about her — for she defied the Cycle itself. Well, if that is so, it was a fusion that brought courage and wisdom.
For Ganesha found a way for her daughter Prima to change, to become fit for the new, cold world that was emerging from inside its mask of Forest. None of this was in the Cycle before Ganesha. But she was not afraid to look beyond the Cycle if it did not help her.
And now the story of Ganesha is itself part of the Cycle, and always will be, so she can teach us with her wisdom.
Thus, through paradox, the Cycle renews itself...
No, Icebones (said Silverhair), the story isn't done yet. I will tell you what became of Ganesha herself!
Of course, she could not follow Prima, for Ganesha had grown up in the Forest, like her mother before her, and her mother before that, in a great line spanning many hundreds of Great-Years.
And so — when the Cold came, and the Forest dwindled — Ganesha sank to her knees, and died, and her Family mourned for many days.
But as long as the Cycle is told, Ganesha will be remembered.
15
The Huddle
SILVERHAIR HEARD the ugly cawing of the Lost.
She turned and looked back along the beach. She could see sparks of red light breaking away from the dim glow of the camp. Evidently they had done with Snagtooth, and were pursuing her once more.
She staggered along the beach. But her hind legs were still tightly bound up, and she moved with a clumsy shuffle. The stolen mammoth skin lay on her back; she could feel it, heavy as guilt.
By the low sunlight she could see the pack ice that still lingered in the Channel, ghostly blue. She could smell the sharp salt brine of the sea; and the lapping of the water on the shingle was a soothing, regular sound, so different from the days of clamor she had endured. But the cliff alongside her was steep and obviously impenetrable, even were she fully fit.
She came to a place where the cliff face had crumbled and fallen in great cracked slabs. Perhaps a stream had once run there.
She turned and began to climb up the rough valley, away from the beach.
It was difficult, for the big stones were slippery with kelp fronds. The ropes that bound her hind legs snagged and caught at the rocks...
Something exploded out of the sky.
She trumpeted in alarm. She heard a flapping like giant wings — but wings that beat faster than any bird's. And there was light, a pool of illumination that hurtled the length of the beach.
Silverhair cowered. Air gushed over her, as if from some tamed windstorm, washing over her face and back; the air stank like a tar pit.
The source of the beam was a thing of straight lines and transparent bubbles, with great wings that whirled above it. It was a great bird, of light and noise.
The Lost had forgotten Silverhair. They went running toward the light-bird, waving their paws.
Carefully, still hobbled by the ropes on her hind legs, Silverhair limped away toward the heart of the Island.
SHE FOUND A STREAM, trickling between an outcrop of broken, worn rocks. The first suck of water was so cold and sharp, it sent lances of pain along her dry, inflamed nostrils. She raised her trunk to her mouth. She coughed explosively; her dry throat expelled every drop of the water. When the coughing fit was done, she tried again. The water seemed to burn her throat as it coursed toward her stomach, but she swallowed hard, refusing to allow her body to reject this bounty.
She used her tusks to get the ropes off her hind legs, and then bathed her wounds. The rope burns had indeed turned brown and gray with poison. She washed them clean and caked them with the thin mud she managed to scrape from the bed of the stream.
She cast about for grass. She found it difficult to grasp the tussocks that grew sparsely there, so stiff had her abused trunk become. The grass felt dry, and her tongue, swollen and sore, could detect no flavor.
Another dry, racking cough, and the grass, half-chewed, was expelled.
But she did not give up. There was a calf in her belly, sleeping calmly, trusting her to nurture it to the moment of its birth and then beyond. If she must train herself to live again, she would do it.
So she found more grass and kept trying, until she managed to keep some food in her stomach.
When she had eaten, she found a natural hollow in the ground. She reached over her shoulder for the skins, and she laid the pathetic remnants at the base of the hole.
She spent long heartbeats touching the skins with her trunk, trying to Remember Eggtusk, and the ancient mammoths from whom these skins had been stolen. But the strange, odorless texture of the Lost lay over the skins; and the way they had been scraped and dried, punctured, and stitched together made them seem deeply unnatural.
There was little of Eggtusk left here.
When it was done she limped around the hollow, rumbling her mourning, and she poked at the low mound of remains.
She longed to stay there, and she longed to sleep.
She could feel her strength dissipating, even as she stood here. She had to return to the Family: to tell them what had become of Snagtooth and mighty Eggtusk, and to help Owlheart with whatever the Matriarch decided they must do.
She turned to the north and began the long walk home.
SHE WAS A BOULDER OF FLESH and bone and fur that stomped stolidly over the
blooming summer land, ignoring this shimmering belts of flowers, oblivious to the lemmings she startled from their burrows. As she walked, the warm wind from the south blew the last of her winter coat off her back, so that hair coiled into the air like spindrift from the sea.
She might have looked sullen, for she walked with her head lowered. But such is the habit of mammoths; Silverhair was inspecting the vegetation for the richest grass, which she cropped as often as she could manage.
But the food clogged in her throat as if it were a ball of hair and dirt. Her dung was hard and dry, sharp with barely digested grass. And the cold, though diminishing as the summer advanced, seemed to pierce her deeply.
Her sleep was fragmented, snatches she caught while shivering against rock outcrops, fearful of wolves and Lost.
The world map in her head was now more of a curse than a blessing. She could imagine the scope and rocky sweep of the Island, sense — from their contact rumbles and stamping — where the Family was clustered, far to the north.
She was just a pebble against this bitter panorama. And her own mind and heart — cluttered with the agonizing memories of Eggtusk and Snagtooth and Lop-Ear, and with dread visions of the Lost and their light-bird, and with hopes and fears for the growing child inside her — were dwarfed, made insignificant by the pitiless immensity of the land.
As the sun wheeled in the sky she felt as if her contact with the world was loosening, as if the heavy pads of her feet were leaving the ground; she was a mammoth turning as light as the pollen of the tundra flowers that bloomed around her.
A storm descended.
A black cloud closed around her. The wind seemed to slap at her, each gust a fresh, violent blow. Her fur was plastered against her face. The ice dust hurled by the wind was sharp, and dug into her flesh. She could see barely more than a few paces; she was driving herself through a bubble of light that fluctuated around her.
The storm blew out. But her strength was severely sapped.
She felt she could march no more.
She stopped, and let the sun's warmth play on her back.
After the storm, the sky was cloaked with a thin overcast. The sun's light was diffused, so that the air shimmered brightly all around her, and nothing cast a shadow. The sun, high to the north, shone dimly through the haze, and was flanked by a ghostly pair of sun dogs, reflections from ice crystals in the air.
The shadowless light was opalescent, strange and beautiful.
She wasn't sure where she was, which way she should go. But she could smell water; there was a stream, and pools of ice melt, and the grass grew thickly.
It was a good place to stay. Perhaps her dung would help this place flourish.
On a ground carpeted with bright yellow Arctic daisies, she sank to her knees. The pain in her legs ceased to clamor. She would feed soon, and drink. But first she would sleep.
She rested her tusks on the ground and closed her eyes. She could feel the spin of the rocky Earth that bore her through space, sense it carry her beneath the brightness of the sun.
But a deeper cold lay beneath, a cold that sucked at her.
Something made her open her eyes.
She saw a strange animal, standing unnaturally on its hind legs, brandishing a stick at her. In its paws it held something that glittered like ice, small and sharp.
She felt a nudging around her body, under her spine and at her buttocks.
Irritated, she raised her head.
A huge Bull was trying to dig his tusks under her belly. By the oozing sores of Kilukpuk's cracked and bleeding moles, but you're a heavy great boulder of a Cow, little Silverhair. Come — on — come—
She tried to ignore him. After all, he wasn't real. "Go away," she said.
But we can't, you see, child. Another mammoth — this time a massive, ancient Cow who moved stiffly, as if plagued by arthritis — stood at her other side. It isn't your day to die. Don't you know that? Your story isn't done yet. And she tugged at Silverhair's tusks with her trunk.
Silverhair reluctantly got to her feet. "I'm comfortable here," she mumbled.
You never would listen. Another voice, somewhere behind her. Turning her head sluggishly, Silverhair saw this was a strange Cow indeed, with one shattered tusk and a trunk severed close to the root. The Cow was lowering her head and butting at Silverhair's buttocks, trying to nudge her forward.
The others, the Bull and the ancient Cow, had clustered to either side of her. They were huddling her, she realized.
Silverhair took a single, resentful step. "I just want to be left alone."
The Bull growled. If you don't stop squealing like a calf I'll paddle your behind. Now move.
So, one painful step after another, her trunk dangling over the ground, Silverhair walked on. She leaned on one reassuring flank, then the other; and the gentle nudging of the mutilated head behind her impelled her forward.
And the strange animal that walked upright stalked alongside her, just beyond reach of the mammoths, and his strange sharp objects glinted in his paw.
BUT IT WAS NOT OVER. Still the land stretched ahead of her, curving over the limb of the planet.
Sometimes she thought she heard contact rumbles, and her hopes would briefly lift. But the sound was remote, uncertain, and she couldn't tell if it was real or just imagination.
She came to a place of frost heave, where ice domes as high as her belly had formed in the soil, ringed by shattered rock. This land was difficult to cross, and there was little food, for nothing could grow here.
One by one, the mammoths who had escorted her fell away: the ancient Cow, the crusty old Bull, the mutilated face that had bumped encouragingly at her rump.
Even the faint trace of contact rumbles died away. Perhaps it had only been thunder.
At last she was alone with the animal that walked upright. It glided alongside her, as effortless as a shadow, waiting for her to fall.
She staggered on until the frost heave was behind her.
She stopped, and looked around dimly. She had come to a plain of black volcanic rock, barely broken even by lichen. It was a hard, uncompromising land, no place for the living.
She kneeled once more, and let her chest sink to the ground, and then her tusks, which supported her head.
Here, then, she thought. Here it ends.
There was nobody here, no scent of mammoth on this barren land: no one to perform the Remembering ceremony for her and her calf. Well, then, she must do it for herself. She cast about with her trunk. But there was nothing to be had — no twigs or grass — nothing save a few loose stones, scattered over this bony landscape. She picked these up and dropped them on her back. Then she reached to her belly and tore out some hair, and scattered it over her spine.
...Silverhair... Silverhair...
A mammoth stood before her, tugging at her trunk.
She pulled back impatiently. "Go away," she mumbled. She had had enough of meddling ghosts.
But this mammoth was small, and it seemed to hop about before her, touching her trunk and mouth and tusks. Silverhair, is it really you? Silverhair... Silverhair...
"Silverhair."
It was her nephew. Croptail. And beyond him she could see the great boulder shape of Owlheart, a cloud of flesh and fur and tusk.
She could smell them. They were real. Relief flooded her, and a great weakness fell on her, making her tremble.
She looked around, meaning to warn Owlheart about the strange, upright-walking animal. But for now, it had vanished.
FOXEYE STROKED HER BACK and touched her mouth and trunk, and brought her food and water. Owlheart tended her wounds, stripping off the mud Silverhair had plastered there, washing the deepest of the cuts and covering them once more with fresh mud. She laid her trunk against Silverhair's belly hair, listening to the small life that was growing within. Even Croptail helped, in his clumsy way.
But the little one, Sunfire, was too young even to remember her aunt; the calf stood a few paces away from this batter
ed, bloody stranger, her eyes wide as the Moon.
Later, Silverhair would marvel at Owlheart's patience. The Matriarch must have been bursting with questions. Yet, as the sun completed many cycles in the sky, Owlheart allowed Silverhair to reserve all her energy for recovery.
Silverhair tried to understand what had happened to her on the long walk home, but even as she tried to recall fragments of it, they would slip away, like bees from a flower.
She did wonder, though, why there hadn't been a fourth ghost out there helping her: a young Bull with a damaged ear...
At last Owlheart came to her.
"You know you've been lucky. A couple of those wounds on your legs were down to the very bone. But now you're healing. Kilukpuk must be watching over you, child."
Silverhair raised her trunk wearily. "I wish she'd watch a bit more carefully, then."
"How much do you remember?"
"Everything — I think — until those Lost captured me and tied my legs to the stakes. After that it gets a little blurred. Until Snagtooth..."
"Start at the beginning."
And so, in shards and fragments, Silverhair told the Matriarch her story.
When she was done, Owlheart was grim. "It is just as it says in the Cycle. It was like this in the time of Longtusk, when the Lost would wait for us to die, then eat our flesh, and shelter from the rain in caves made of our skin, and burn our bones for warmth. And they will not stop there. They will take more and more, their twisted hunger never sated."
"Then what should we do?" Owlheart raised her trunk and sniffed the air. "For a long time we have been sheltered, here on this Island, where few Lost ever came. But now they know we are here, we can only flee."
"Flee? But where?"
Owlheart turned her face away from the sun, and the ice-laden wind whipped at her fur.
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