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.