"The rocks?"
She stamped, hard. "You are not a Lost, who is nothing but a pair of eyes. You can hear much more than you can see, if you try. The shape of the world is in the rocks’ song." She walked back and forth, listening to the ringing of the ground. She could feel the spin of the world, and the huge slow echoes that came back from the massive volcanic rise to the east.
And she could feel how this valley stretched on and on, far beyond the horizon. It was like a great wound, she thought, a wound that stretched around a quarter of the planet’s belly.
Now Thunder was trotting back and forth, trunk high, eyes half-closed, slamming his clumsy feet into the ground. "I can feel it." He trumpeted his pleasure. "The Lost showed me nothing like this."
"The Lost do not understand. This is mammoth."
Growling, stamping, he stalked away.
Autumn walked up to Icebones. She moved stiffly. "You are kind to him."
Icebones rumbled, "He has a good heart."
Autumn walked carefully to the lip of the valley. "It must have been a giant river which carved this valley."
"Perhaps not a river," Icebones said. She recalled how she had stood atop the Fire Mountain with the Ragged One, and had seen how the land was uplifted. "Perhaps the ground was simply broken open."
"However it was formed, this tusk-gouge lies across our path. Can we walk around it?"
"The Gouge stretches far to the east of here. The land at its edge is high and cold and barren. It would be a difficult trek."
Autumn raised her trunk and sniffed the warming air that rose from the Gouge. "I smell water, and grass, and trees," she said. "There is life down there."
"Yes," Icebones mused. "If we can reach the floor, perhaps we will find nourishment. We can follow its length, cutting south across the higher land when we near the Footfall itself."
Autumn walked gingerly along the lip of the Gouge. "There," she said.
Icebones made out an immense slope of tumbled rock, piled up against the Gouge wall, reaching from the deep floor almost to its upper surface. As the sun rose further, casting its wan, pink light, the rock slope cast huge shadows. Perhaps there had been a landslide, she thought, the rocks of the wall shaken free by a tremor of the ground.
She murmured doubtfully, "The rock looks loose and treacherous."
"Yes. But there might be a way. And—"
A piercing trumpet startled them both. The Ragged One came lumbering up to them.
"I heard what you are saying," the Ragged One gasped. "But your trunk does not sniff far, Icebones. There is no need to clamber down into that Gouge and toil along its muddy length."
Autumn asked mildly, "Shall we fly over?"
The Ragged One snorted. "We will walk." And she turned to the west.
When Icebones looked that way she saw a band of pinkish white, picked out by the clear light of the rising sun. It rose from the northern side of the Gouge, on which she stood, and arced smoothly through the air — and it came to rest on the Gouge’s far side.
It was a bridge.
Like everything about this immense canyon, the bridge was huge, and it was far away. It took them half a day just to walk to its foot.
The bridge turned out to be a broad shining sheet that emerged from the pink dust as if it had grown there. It sloped sharply upward, steeply at first, before leveling off. It was wide enough to accommodate four or five mammoths walking abreast.
Icebones probed at its surface with her trunk tip. It was smooth and cold and hard and smelled of nothing. "The Lost made this," she said.
"Of course they did," snapped the Ragged One. "Impatient with the Gouge’s depth and length, they hurled this mighty bridge right across it. What ambition! What vision!"
"They didn’t put anything to eat or drink on it," Autumn said reasonably.
Thunder stepped forward onto the bridge itself, and stamped heavily at its surface. Where he trod, his dirty foot pads left huge round prints on the gleaming floor. "It is fragile, like thin ice. What if it is cracked by frost? This bridge was meant for the Lost. They were small creatures, much smaller than us. If we walk on it, perhaps it will fall."
Icebones rumbled her approval, for the Bull was using the listening skills she had shown him.
But the Ragged One said, "We will rest the night and feed. We will reach the far side in a day’s walk, no more."
Autumn growled doubtfully.
"No," Icebones said decisively. "We should keep away from the things of the Lost. We will climb down the landslide, and—"
"You are a coward and a fool." The Ragged One’s language and posture were clear and determined.
Icebones felt her heart sink. Was this festering sore in their community to be broken open again?
Thunder stepped forward angrily. "Listen to her. The bridge is not safe."
"Safe? What is safe? Did your precious hero Longtusk ask himself if that famous bridge of land was safe?"
"This is not the bridge of Longtusk," Icebones said steadily. "And you are not Longtusk."
The Ragged One stepped back. "I have endured your posturing, Icebones, when it did us no harm. But by your own admission you are no Matriarch. And now your foolish arrogance threatens to lead us into disaster. You others should follow me, not her," she said bluntly.
Autumn, rumbling threateningly, stood by the shoulder of Icebones. "This one is strange to us," she said, "Perhaps she is not yet a Matriarch. But she has displayed wisdom and leadership. And now she is right. There is no need to take the risk of crossing your bridge."
"Icebones gave me my name," Thunder said. "I follow her. You are the arrogant one if you cannot tell this bridge is unsafe." He stood alongside Icebones, and she touched his trunk.
Breeze lumbered toward her mother, her calf tucked safely between her legs. "You are wrong to divide us. This fighting wastes our energy and time."
Icebones rumbled, relieved, gratified by their unexpected support. "Breeze is right. Let us put this behind us—"
"No." The older sister, Spiral, had spoken. "We must finish this terrible journey before we all die of hunger, and before another monster leaps out of the sea or sky or ground to consume us. And the quickest way is to take the bridge."
"It is not safe," Icebones growled.
"So you say," Spiral said angrily. "But it was made by the Lost. What do you know of the Lost, Icebones? They looked after our every need for a long time — for generations — long before you ever came here." And, for a moment, behind the gaunt face and the dirty, matted hair, Icebones saw once again the vain, spoiled creature she had first met. "Shoot? Will you come with me?"
Shoot looked from her mother to her sister and back, dismayed. Then, hesitantly, she stepped up to Spiral.
The Ragged One raised her stubby tusks in triumph. "We will cross the bridge, we three."
"No," Icebones said, gravely anxious. She had not anticipated this turn of events. "We must not break up the Family."
"This is no Family here," said the Ragged One, contemptuous.
"If we stay together we can watch over each other. By splitting us, you endanger us all."
"If that is so, you must drop your foolish pride and let me lead you, like these two."
Icebones rumbled, "I can’t. Because you are leading them to their deaths."
"Then there is nothing more to be said." The Ragged One turned to face the arcing bridge and stalked away. Spiral followed.
Shoot glanced back at her mother, obviously distressed. But she followed her sister’s lead — as, perhaps, she had all her life.