After many days' walking over this ridged plain, the mammoths at last reached the basin itself.
Quite suddenly, Icebones found herself stepping onto thick loam that gave gently under her weight. When she lifted her foot she could see how she had left a neat round print; the soil here was thick and dense with life.
All around her the green of living things lapped between crimson ridges and mesas, like a rising tide.
The mammoths fanned out over the soft ground, ripping eagerly at mouthfuls of grass, grunting their pleasure and relief.
This lowest basin was a cupped land, a secret land of hills and valleys and glimmering ponds. Icebones made out the rippling sheen of grass, herbivore herds which moved like brown clouds over the ground, and flocks of birds glimmering in the air. And, right at the center of the basin, there was an immense, dense forest, a squat pillar of dark brown that thrust out of the ground, huge indeed to be visible at this distance.
Here, all the ancient drama of impacts and rocks and water had become a setting for the smaller triumphs and tragedies of life.
Woodsmoke ran stiff-legged to the shore of a small lake where geese padded back and forth on ice floes. The mammoth calf went hurtling into the water, trumpeting, hair flying, splashing everywhere. The geese squawked their annoyance and rose in a cloud of rippling wings.
Icebones watched him, envying his vigor.
Woodsmoke, shaking water out of a cloud of new-sprouting guard hairs, ran to Breeze. The calf wrapped his trunk around his mother's leg, a signal that he wished to feed. Welcoming, she lifted her leg, and he raised his trunk and clambered beneath her belly fur, seeking to clamp his mouth on her warm dug.
Icebones might have left him to die on the High Plains.
Warily she explored her own feelings. Woodsmoke's death would have left a hole in her that would never have healed, she thought. But she knew, too, that it would have been right — that she would make the same decision again.
Autumn, more sedately, came to Icebones. "It is a good place. You were right, Icebones."
Together they walked back toward the foothills of the high rocky plain. At the fringe of the broad pool of steppe there was a stretch of mud, frozen hard and bearing the imprint of many vanished hooves and feet.
Icebones sniffed the air. "Yes. It is a good place. But look at this. Even here the tide of life is receding — even here, in the Footfall itself."
Autumn wrapped her trunk over Icebones's. "We are exhausted, Icebones, and so are you. Tomorrow's problems can wait until we are stronger. For today, enjoy the water and the grass and the sweet willow twigs."
"Yes," Icebones said. "You are wise, Autumn, as always—"
They heard a mammoth's greeting rumble.
Immediately both Cows turned that way, trunks raised.
It was a Bull. He was walking out of the central steppe plain toward them. He was no youth like Thunder, but a mature Bull in the prime of his life, a pillar of muscle and rust-brown hair, with two magnificent tusks that curled before his face. He towered over Icebones — taller than any of the mammoths of her Family, taller than any mammoth she had ever encountered before her Sleep.
He gazed down at her, curious, excited. "...Icebones?" His voice was complex, like the voice of every mammoth, a mixture of trunk chirps and snorts, rumblings from his head and chest, and the stamping of his feet. But she recognized the deep undertones that had carried to her around half a world.
"Boaster — Boaster!"
BOASTER PRESSED HIS FOREHEAD against hers. Icebones grasped his trunk and pulled at him this way and that. Then she let go, and they roared and bellowed and ran around each other until they could bump their rumps. Then they stood side by side, swaying, urinating and making dung urgently.
He touched her lips, and lifted his trunk tip to his mouth, tasting her. "It is indeed you, little Icebones."
"Littler than you imagined," she said dryly.
"Yes. But I am not." And he swung around, showing her what hung from his underbelly. "There. Isn't that magnificent?"
She realized, awestruck, that he hadn't been boasting after all... But she said, "You will always be Boaster to me."
He growled. "You are not in oestrus, little Icebones. Have I missed your flowering? Must I wait? Who took you — not that calf?"
Thunder rumbled. "I am no calf. Would you like me to prove it?" And he raised his tusks, challenging the huge Bull.
But Boaster ignored the challenge. He ran his trunk over the younger Bull's head to test his temporal gland and his ears. "You need to do some filling out. But you are a fine, strong Bull. Some day our tusks will clash over a Cow. But not today." And, symbolically, he clicked his tusks against Thunder's.
Thunder backed away, not displeased.
Now more Bulls followed Boaster, fanning out around the Family. Some of them trunk-checked Thunder. "Ah, Thunder. We have heard of you. The great bird killer!" "You are just skin and bones!" "What was it you bested — just a chick, or a full-grown duck?"
Thunder growled and threw his tusks threateningly. "It was a mighty bird whose wings darkened the sky, and whose beak could have cut out your flimsy heart in a moment, weakling..." And he launched into the story of his battle with the skua, only a little elaborated. Gradually the other Bulls drifted closer, at first rumbling and snorting their skepticism, but growing quieter and more respectful as he developed his tale.
Autumn walked up to Icebones. "He will have to defend the reputation he makes for himself. He is not among calves now."
"He is a strong and proud Bull, and he will prosper."
"And there is somebody else who is looking rather proud of herself," Autumn said.
She meant Spiral.
Two of the older Bulls had broken away from the herd, watching each other warily. One of them boldly approached Spiral, trunk outstretched.
Spiral backed away, shaking her head. But she allowed him to place his trunk in her mouth.
The Bull lifted his trunk tip into his own mouth, touching it to a special patch of sensitive tissue there, and inhaled. Immediately he rumbled, "Soon you will be in oestrus. And then I will mate you—"
"I will be the one," said the other Bull. "My brother is weak and foolish." And he nudged his brother with his forehead, pushing him aside.
But now another Bull emerged from the herd, a giant who even outsized Boaster, with yellowed tusks chipped from fighting. "What's this about oestrus? Is it this pretty one? Ignore these calves, pretty Cow. See my tusks. See my strength..."
Spiral turned and trotted away, trunk held high. The huge tusker followed her, still offering his gruff blandishments, and the younger Bulls followed, keeping a wary distance from the tusker and from each other.
"She has barely met an adult Bull in her life," Autumn said. "Yet she plays with them as a calf plays with lumps of mud. She always did relish being the center of attention."
"But the attention of Bulls is better than to be a toy of the Lost."
Now Boaster was tugging at Icebones's tusks. She saw sadly that Boaster, too, was distracted by the scent of the imminent oestrus that came from Spiral — that part of him longed to abandon Icebones and her dry belly, to run after the other Bulls and join in the eternal mating contests. But, loyally, he stayed with her, and his manner was urgent, eager.
"Icebones, come. There is something I must show you. Bring your Family. Come, please..."
She rumbled to the Family a gentle "Let's go," and began to walk at Boaster's side.
After a time, the various members of her Family disengaged themselves from their various concerns, and formed up into a loose line and trotted after her: Autumn alongside Breeze, who shepherded Woodsmoke, and then came Spiral, still followed by her retinue of hopeful Bull attendants.
The only one who did not follow was Thunder, who was already becoming immersed in the society of the Bulls. Icebones felt a stab of sadness and turned away.
Boaster walked easily and gracefully, his belly and trunk swaying,
and his guard hairs shone in the sunlight, full of health. But he walked slowly alongside Icebones, in sympathy with the battered, exhausted mammoth who had come so far.
IT TOOK DAYS TO WALK into the center of the basin.
The land opened out around Icebones. This tremendous crater was more than large enough for its walls to be invisible, hidden by the horizon. Soon Icebones would never have guessed that she was crossing a deep hollow punched into the hide of the world.
It was full of life. Icebones saw the tracks of herds of horses and bison, and the burrowing of lemmings, and the nests of birds. But folds of ancient, tortured rocks showed through the rich lapping soil. And in the stillness of the night, beneath the calls of the wolves and the rumblings of contented mammoths, Icebones could sense the deep fractures that lay beneath the surface of this hugely wounded land.
After a few days the central forest came pushing over the horizon. Soon it was looming high over their heads, a dense mass of wood, topped by foliage that glowed silver-green in the light.
"I don't understand," Icebones said to Boaster. "Mammoths are creatures of the steppe. We like the dwarf trees that grow over the permafrost — willows and birches... What interest have we in a tall forest like this?"
"But it is not a forest," he said gently.
Now Breeze came crowding forward. "It is not a forest," she said. "Icebones, can't you see? Can't you feel its roots? It is a tree — a single, mighty tree!"
Icebones walked forward and peered at the "forest," and she saw that Breeze was right. There were no gaps to be seen in that dense mass of wood. Its single tremendous trunk was supported by huge buttress-like roots. And when she looked up, she saw that the trunk ran tall and clean far beyond the reach of any mammoth, and the tree's foliage was lost, high above her — lost in a wisp of low cloud, she realized, shocked.
"It is a tree higher than the sky," she said. "All the trees here grow tall. But this is the mightiest of all."
Boaster growled. "If it could talk, it might be called Boaster too — what do you think, Icebones? But this is a special tree. Its fruit draws in air."
"It is a breathing tree." She described the trees they had encountered on the High Plain.
"Yes," Boaster said. "But this is their giant cousin. This Breathing Tree is a mammoth among trees." He touched her trunk. "I know how hard your journey was. But this Tree shows that the mightiest of living things can prosper here... If the Tree survives, so will we."
She moved closer to him and wrapped his trunk in hers. "The journey was hard. But you gave me strength when I had none left."
He pulled away, puzzled. "I inspired you? Come with me." He tugged at her trunk. "Come, come and see."
They walked a little away around the Tree's vast cylindrical trunk. It was like walking around a huge rock formation.
And suddenly, before her, there were mammoths.
There were huge old Bulls with chipped tusks, bits of grass clinging to the hairs of their faces, giant scars crossing their flanks and backs. And fat, slow Cows, round-faced calves running at their feet. And young Bulls, their adult tusks just beginning to show like gleams of ice in rock folds. And leaner, loose-haired mammoths whose journey here looked as if it had been as hard as Icebones's.
Around her was the sound of mammoths: the click of tusks, the dry rustle of intertwined trunks, the hiss of their hair and tails — many, many mammoths.
"Can you smell them?" Boaster asked gently. "Can you hear them?"
Icebones was stunned. "Where do they come from?"
"They came from all over this little world. They were abandoned by the Lost, and they were helpless, just as your Family was. If they had stayed in their Lost cages, they would have starved or submitted to the cold — but they didn't know what else to do.
"But your Family was different. They had you. And when you made your decision to bring them here to the Footfall, I knew I had to follow you, with my bachelor herd. Not that I didn't have to crack a few tusks to make them see sense...
"And then, with our calls and stamping, we spread the word to all the mammoths who can hear. Some were reluctant to come, some didn't understand, and some were simply frightened. But none of them faced so hard a journey as you.
"And one by one, Family by Family, they began the great walk, from north, south, west, east..."
"All of these mammoths are here because of me?"
Autumn was at her side. "Because of you, Icebones, Matriarch. Your achievement was mighty. You walked your mammoths around the world. You walked them from the highest place of all, the peak of the Fire Mountain, to the deepest place, this Footfall. It is an achievement that will live forever in the songs of the Cycle."
Weak, overtired, hungry, thirsty, Icebones tried to take in all this — and failed. She wished Silverhair could see her now. She would, at last, be proud.
But there was room in her heart for a stab of doubt. She recalled the fringe of the crater basin, the dried mud there where the tide of life had receded. Could it be that she had drawn these mammoths here on a promise of life and security that, in the end, would not be fulfilled? Perhaps what she had achieved was not an inspiration — but a betrayal.
But now Breeze came trotting up to her, her manner urgent and tense. "Thunder is calling from the edge of the steppe. Can you hear him? Icebones, he says she is coming."
Icebones immediately knew who she meant. And she realized that, whatever her triumph in bringing the mammoths here to the navel of the world, she must gather up her strength for one more challenge.
For, out of the harsh High Plains, the Ragged One was approaching.
6
The Breathing Tree
ICEBONES — STILL LIMPING, still favoring the shoulder she now suspected would never properly heal — liked to walk beside the Tree. Around it the air was dense with the life of the long summer. A great misty fog of aerial plankton, ballooning spiders and delicate larvae drifted over the land in search of places to live.
She stroked the Tree's deep brown bark and listened to the currents of sap that ran within it, considering its mysteries. She sensed how this Tree was dragging heat and water up from the world's depths.
And, slowly, as she began to understand its purpose, she came to believe that this vast Tree was the core of everything...
It took many days for the Ragged One to cross the Footfall.
And she was not alone. She had entered the crater with a mysterious herd of her own. And as she crossed the plain more mammoths were joining her. A determined force was trekking steadily toward the Tree, and Icebones.
Autumn and Boaster stayed with her, her closest companions.
Boaster said, "You do not have to face this Ragged One, little Icebones. Let me drive her off with a thrust of my tusks." And he dipped his head and lunged at an imaginary opponent.
She stroked his face fondly. She knew that though she was slowly regaining some of her health, she would never be as strong as she had been before. She had left her strength and youth, it seemed, up on the High Plains.
But she knew it was her duty to face the Ragged One.
Autumn and Boaster knew it too, of course.
Autumn growled, "It would be help if we knew what that wretched creature wanted. I'm sure it has nothing to do with being mammoth."
Boaster rumbled, "It is disturbing how many here think back nostalgically to the days when the Lost ran our lives for us. That is why those addled fools follow her."
Icebones said, "But the way of the Cycle is often harsh. Even we, on the High Plains, turned back from confronting the final truth... I cannot blame these others."
She spotted Breeze, who had come into oestrus. She was walking fast, holding her head tall. Her eyes were wide amber drops. She was being pursued by a large, grizzled Bull, his tusks scarred and chipped. Dark fluid leaked from his musth glands and down his face, and he dribbled urine as he walked.
A little further away, two younger Bulls were challenging each other, raising their tusks
and shaking their heads. But they both must know that whoever won their battle would not gain access to Breeze while the battered old tusker claimed her.
Breeze and the victorious tusker began a kind of dance. She would walk away, glancing over her shoulder, and he would follow, rumbling. But then he would hold back, as if testing her willingness and desire, and in response she slowed.
Beyond this central pair and the two young competing Bulls was a ring of more males, eight or ten of them — some of them massive, many sporting savage scars and shattered tusks. Further away still more Bulls watched the central couple jealously, standing still as rocks.
The whole circle of Bulls, young and old, was held in place around Breeze, trapped by invisible forces of lust and jealousy and fear.
"It is the consort," Autumn observed. "So the ancient dance continues."
"As it should," Icebones said.
Boaster growled and pawed the ground, his huge trunk swaying. A sad unspoken thought passed between Boaster and Icebones: she had still not come into oestrus, and they both feared now that the dryness at her core would never be broken.
Autumn, oblivious to this, said, "I only wish that Spiral could find some happiness too."
Icebones understood her regret. Spiral had come into oestrus soon after Icebones's mammoths had arrived here in the Footfall. She was tall and handsome, and the Bulls could tell from her complex scents that she had borne healthy calves before. But though Spiral had attracted an even larger consort retinue than Breeze, in the end she had brayed at her winning suitor and fled, refusing his advances.
"She will come to no harm," said Boaster. "She is proud and difficult, but she is beautiful."
"Ah," Autumn said, rather grandly. "But she wrestles with problems you may not imagine, child..."
"Just as," came a muddy voice, "you big hairy animals can barely imagine the troubles I have."
Icebones turned. A squat creature was waddling toward her, its peculiarly naked skin covered in drying mud. It raised a small stubby trunk.
Icebones limped forward, inordinately pleased. "Chaser-Of-Frogs!"
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