"Hungry," he said, his voice a thin, choked mewl. "Cold. Hungry. Oh, let me back…!"
7
The Cracked Land
The calf made the suckling cry, over and over, as if he had been taught it by Kilukpuk herself.
"He needs milk," Icebones said. She hurried to Breeze, who still lay on the ground.
Breeze’s eyes were closed, and she was breathing hard, obviously exhausted. "Woodsmoke," she murmured.
"What?"
"That is what he will be called. For when he was born my head was full of smoke…"
"You must come," Icebones said gently.
"Let me sleep, Icebones…"
The calf opened his mouth and wailed, his voice thin and high. "Cold, cold!"
And now, at last, Icebones was at a loss. "Without milk he will die," she said. "I don’t know what to do."
Autumn came forward, her gait stiff. "Let me." And she gathered the little creature in her trunk and guided him forward, pulling him beneath her legs. Blindly, he snuggled at her belly fur until he found the dugs that dangled between her forelegs. Driven by instinct he clamped his mouth to a nipple and began to suckle greedily.
Icebones, astonished, saw thin, pale milk dribble down his cheek. "Autumn — you have milk. But you are not with calf."
"It began when I saw how weak Breeze was becoming. I don’t know why." She eyed Icebones. "You may be Matriarch," she rumbled softly. "But you don’t know everything, it seems."
"I know that you are a good mother," said Icebones. "For you were there when your daughter, and her calf, needed you most."
The calf — Woodsmoke — squeaked his contentment, and Autumn rumbled softly.
It was strange, Icebones thought: just heartbeats old, and yet the calf had already achieved something immensely important, by redeeming Autumn, his grandmother… Perhaps it was an omen of his life to come.
Spiral and Shoot gathered around their mother protectively, rumbling reassurance. Further away, Thunder stayed with Breeze, stroking her hair with gentle motions of his trunk.
It was a moment of tenderness, of contentment, of togetherness.
But Icebones could not help but look east, trunk raised, toward the difficult country that lay ahead — a country through which she would now have to bring a calf, and a weakened mother.
A wind rose, droning through the clefts in the crater wall, drowning out the reassuring rumbles of the Cows.
Further east, the ground rose steadily. The steppe vegetation grew thinner, and any water was frozen over.
Icebones’s chest began to ache as she took each breath, as it had not since she was high on the Fire Mountain.
They came to a land covered by vast pits.
The pits were shallow and rounded, and dust pooled deep in them. They were like footprints around a dried mud hole — but these "footprints" were huge, taking many paces to cross. In some 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 — you’ve had a calf of your own. That’s why you’re so close to Woodsmoke, isn’t it?"
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 him," she snapped.
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.