The mammoths found bits of bone, cleansed of flesh, in the weeds’ traps, but all such traces were old. Even the weeds had not fed or drunk for a long time. Icebones wondered if these plants could last forever, waiting for the occasional fall of unwary migrant animals into their patient maws.
Icebones came across a new kind of plant, nestled in a hollow. It was like a flower blossom, cupped like an upturned skull, and its tight-folded petals were waxy and stiff. The whole thing was as wide as a mammoth’s footprint, and about as deep. A sheet of some shining, translucent substance coated the top of the blossom, sealing it off. Under the translucent sheet Icebones thought she saw a glint of green.
Cautiously she popped the covering sheet with the tip of her tusk. The sheet shriveled back, breaking up into threads that dried and snapped. A small puff of moisture escaped, a trace of water that instantly frosted on the petals. A spider scuttled at the base of the blossom.
Icebones scraped off the frost eagerly and plunged her moist trunk tip into her mouth. It was barely a trace, but it tasted delicious, reviving her spirit a great deal more than it nourished her body. She picked the flower apart and chewed it carefully. Despite that trace of green there was little flavor or nourishment to be had, and she spat it out.
She called the others, and they soon found more of the plants.
Each plant sheltered spiders, which made the moisture-trapping lids that allowed the green hearts of the plants to grow. So each flower was like a tiny Family, she thought, spiders and plant working together to keep each other alive.
It was Thunder who came up with the best way to use the flowers. He opened his mouth wide and pushed the whole plant in lid first. Then he bit to pop the lid, and so was able to suck down every bit of the trapped moisture. But he had to scrape off bits of spiderweb that clung to his mouth and trunk, and Icebones saw spiders scrambling away into his fur.
Spiral made a hoot of disgust. "Eating spiderweb. How disgusting."
Icebones found another plant and, deliberately, plucked it and thrust it into her mouth. "Spiders won’t kill you. Thirst will. You will all do as Thunder does—"
Suddenly Thunder stood tall, trunk raised, his small ears spread.
The others froze in their tracks — every one of them, flighty Spiral, Autumn with her aching ribs, Breeze with her scored back, even restless, growing, ever-hungry. Woodsmoke, as still as if they had been shaped from the ancient rock itself. Icebones found a moment to be proud of them, for a disciplined silence, vital to any prey animal, was a characteristic of a well-run Family.
And then she heard what had disturbed Thunder. It was a scraping, as if something was digging deep into the ground.
"But," Autumn murmured, "what kind of animal makes burrowing noises like that?"
Thunder said, "There is a crater rim ahead. It hides us from the source of the noise. I will go ahead alone, and—"
"No, brave Thunder. We are safer together." Icebones stepped toward the crater ridge. "Let’s go, let’s go."
The other mammoths quickly formed up behind her. They climbed the shallow, much-eroded crater rim.
Icebones paused when she got to the rim’s flattened top, her trunk raised.
In the crater basin, heavy heads lifted slowly.
Thunder pealed out a bright trumpet. He hurried forward, scattering dust and bits of rock. Icebones, more warily, clambered down the slope, keeping her trunk raised.
Mammoths — at least that was her first impression. They were heavy, dark, hairy creatures, spread over the basin. She saw several adults — Cows? — clustered together around a stand of breathing trees, digging at the roots. A black-faced calf poked its head out through the dense hairs beneath its mother’s belly, curious like all calves. Further away there were looser groupings of what she supposed were Bulls.
As Thunder approached, the Cows lifted their trunks out of the holes they had dug. Their trunks were broad but very long, longer than any adult mammoth Icebones had met before. Their tusks were short and stubby. They huddled closer together, the adults forming a solid phalanx before the stand of trees.
They looked like mammoths. They behaved as mammoths might. But they did not smell like mammoths. And as Icebones worked her way down the slope, her sense of unease deepened.
Woodsmoke had wandered away from his mother. Two calves peered at him from a forest of thick black hair. The adults watched him suspiciously, but no mammoth would be hostile to a calf, however strange. Soon Woodsmoke had locked his trunk around a calf’s trunk, and was tugging vigorously.
Icebones announced clearly, "I am Icebones, daughter of Silverhair. Who is Matriarch here?"
The strange mammoths rumbled, heads nodding and bodies swaying, as if in confusion.
At length a mammoth stepped forward. "My name is Cold-As-Sky. I do not know you. You are not of our Clan."
Cold-As-Sky was about Icebones’s size, as round and solid as a boulder. Her hair was black and thick. There was a thick ridged brow on her forehead, sheltering small orange eyes. She had a broad hump on her back, and when she took a breath, deep and slow, that hump swelled up, as if she carried a second set of lungs there. Her long trunk lay thickly coiled on the rock at her feet. Her voice was as deep as the ground’s own songs.
Icebones stepped forward tentatively. "We have come far."
"You are not like us."
"No," Icebones said sadly. "We are not like you." As unlike, in a different way, as the Swamp-Mammoths had been unlike Icebones and her Family. "And yet we are Cousins. You speak the language of Kilukpuk."
Just as Chaser-Of-Frogs had reacted to the ancient name, so Cold-As-Sky looked briefly startled. But her curiosity was soon replaced by her apparently customary hostility. "We speak as we have always spoken."
Her language, in fact, was indistinct. This Ice Mammoth spoke only with the deep thrumming of her chest and belly, omitting the higher sounds, the chirrups and snorts and mewls a mammoth would make with her trunk and throat. But her voice, deep and vibrant, would carry easily through the rocks, Icebones realized. This was a mammoth made for this high cold place, where the air was thin, and only rocks could be heard.
Cold-As-Sky said now, "You call yourself my Cousin. What are you doing here? Do you intend to steal my air trees?"
Air trees — breathing trees? "No," said Icebones wearily. "But we are hungry and thirsty."
"Go back to where you came from."
"We cannot go back," Thunder said.
Icebones stepped forward and reached out with her trunk. "We are Cousins."
Cold-As-Sky growled, but did not back away.
Icebones probed at the other’s face. That black hair was dense and slippery, and as cold as the rock beneath her feet. She finally found flesh, deep within the layers of hair. The flesh was cold and hard, and covered in fine, crisscross ridges. She pinched it with her trunk fingers. The other did not react — as if the flesh was without sensation, like scar tissue. The trunk itself was very wide and bulbous near the face, with vast black nostrils.
To her shock, Icebones saw that Cold-As-Sky’s trunk tip was lined with small white teeth. The teeth were set in a bony jaw, like a tiny mouth at the end of her trunk.
Cold-As-Sky’s mouth was a gaping blue-black cavern. Even her tongue was blue. Icebones touched that tongue now — and tasted water.
Cold-As-Sky growled again, pulling back. "Your trunk is hot and wet. You are a creature of the warmth and the thick air and the running water." Her immense trunk folded up, becoming a fat, stubby tube. "This is not your place."
Icebones’s anger battled with pride — and desperation. "I tasted water on your lips. Please, Cousin—"