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.