But she knew it was her duty to face the Ragged One.
Autumn and Boaster knew it too, of course.
Autumn growled, "It would be help if we knew what that wretched creature wanted. I’m sure it has nothing to do with being mammoth."
Boaster rumbled, "It is disturbing how many here think back nostalgically to the days when the Lost ran our lives for us. That is why those addled fools follow her."
Icebones said, "But the way of the Cycle is often harsh. Even we, on the High Plains, turned back from confronting the final truth… I cannot blame these others."
She spotted Breeze, who had come into oestrus. She was walking fast, holding her head tall. Her eyes were wide amber drops. She was being pursued by a large, grizzled Bull, his tusks scarred and chipped. Dark fluid leaked from his musth glands and down his face, and he dribbled urine as he walked.
A little further away, two younger Bulls were challenging each other, raising their tusks and shaking their heads. But they both must know that whoever won their battle would not gain access to Breeze while the battered old tusker claimed her.
Breeze and the victorious tusker began a kind of dance. She would walk away, glancing over her shoulder, and he would follow, rumbling. But then he would hold back, as if testing her willingness and desire, and in response she slowed.
Beyond this central pair and the two young competing Bulls was a ring of more males, eight or ten of them — some of them massive, many sporting savage scars and shattered tusks. Further away still more Bulls watched the central couple jealously, standing still as rocks.
The whole circle of Bulls, young and old, was held in place around Breeze, trapped by invisible forces of lust and jealousy and fear.
"It is the consort," Autumn observed. "So the ancient dance continues."
"As it should," Icebones said.
Boaster growled and pawed the ground, his huge trunk swaying. A sad unspoken thought passed between Boaster and Icebones: she had still not come into oestrus, and they both feared now that the dryness at her core would never be broken.
Autumn, oblivious to this, said, "I only wish that Spiral could find some happiness too."
Icebones understood her regret. Spiral had come into oestrus soon after Icebones’s mammoths had arrived here in the Footfall. She was tall and handsome, and the Bulls could tell from her complex scents that she had borne healthy calves before. But though Spiral had attracted an even larger consort retinue than Breeze, in the end she had brayed at her winning suitor and fled, refusing his advances.
"She will come to no harm," said Boaster. "She is proud and difficult, but she is beautiful."
"Ah," Autumn said, rather grandly. "But she wrestles with problems you may not imagine, child…"
"Just as," came a muddy voice, "you big hairy animals can barely imagine the troubles I have."
Icebones turned. A squat creature was waddling toward her, its peculiarly naked skin covered in drying mud. It raised a small stubby trunk.
Icebones limped forward, inordinately pleased. "Chaser-Of-Frogs!"
The Mother of the Swamp-Mammoths looked up at Boaster with small black eyes and burped proudly. Boaster trumpeted, startled, and he backed away from the stubby form.
Chaser-Of-Frogs said, "Without me, you know, these clumsy oafs would be blundering around that Gouge still." She reached up with her trunk and probed at Icebones’s belly. "But your journey was hard too. You are a bag of skin. And," she said more gently, probing at Icebones’s dry dugs, "you have other problems, I fear."
Icebones gave a brief rumble of regret. But she insisted, "What of you, Chaser-Of-Frogs? I thought you would never leave that muddy pond."
"My Family has found a new pond now." She raised her trunk toward a shallow lake nearby.
Icebones heard and smelled more Swamp-Mammoths burrowing gratefully into the muddy pond floor. Their wet backs gleamed in the sun like logs, and their protruding eyes blinked slowly. Mammoths stood around these new arrivals, trunks raised in curiosity, and a clutch of ducks swam away indignantly.
There were perhaps a dozen Swamp-Mammoths in the lake.
Icebones said softly, "This is all?"
Chaser-Of-Frogs said grimly, "We both knew how it would be, Bones-Of-Ice. Most would not follow. Of those who set out, those who died first were the old and the young, our calves… It was hard, Bones-Of-Ice. So hard."
Autumn rumbled, "We faced the same choice — and failed — and our bones would now be scoured by the dust storms of the high plain, our line extinct, if not for good fortune…"
"The mammoth dies, but mammoths live on," Icebones said softly.
But now Boaster stiffened. He was looking to the north, his tusks raised, and he trumpeted.
There was a sound of feet, purposefully walking. And on the northern horizon a black cloud hugged the ground, like the approach of a storm.
Icebones, with deep reluctance, turned that way. When she raised her trunk she could smell a tang of blood and staleness.
It was no storm. It was mammoth: a great herd of them, and they walked through the billowing crimson dust raised by their own powerful footfalls.
Calves ran squealing in search of their mothers. Bulls broke off from their jousting and backed away, grumbling. Even Breeze’s consort circle was broken up.
"It is as if a cloud has come across the sun," Autumn said.
But Icebones stood straight. For, in the lead of the marching mammoths, gray hair flying wispy in the wind, was the Ragged One.
It was time. Relief flooded Icebones.
One more trial, Icebones. Just one more. Then you can rest.
She gathered her strength.
The Ragged One trumpeted, her loose hair wafting around her strange gray-pink face. She was gaunt, her ribs protruding beneath her sparse hair. Her face was scarred, her tusks badly chipped.
"So, Icebones," the Ragged One said, "you survived. And you did not kill any more mammoths on your journey."
Before Icebones could reply, Autumn raised her trunk. "Spiral," she said softly. "Daughter — is that you?"
From behind the Ragged One, Spiral stepped forward, head held high, her beautiful tusks gleaming.
Autumn rumbled her dismay.
Icebones growled to the Ragged One, "Say what it is you want here. And say what you have promised these mammoths who follow you."
"That is simple," the Ragged One said. "I have told them I will bring back the Lost."
Icebones immediately sensed the hopeful, longing mood of the mass of mammoths who had followed the Ragged One — and, to her shock, she even sensed a stirring of doubt in Boaster, who stood at her side.
For a heartbeat she felt giddy, weak, as if she might fall. This was a dangerous moment indeed: a moment that could decide the future of the species, here on this rocky steppe — and all that she could bring to bear was her own failing strength.
Spiral called thinly, "The Lost gave us life, Icebones. What have you to offer us but a jumble of myths, suffering and death — as my own sister died, as we nearly died?"
There was a great rumbling from the mass of mammoths behind her.
"I have nothing to offer you," Icebones said. "Nothing but the truth, and dignity."
The Ragged One snorted contempt. "I cannot eat truth. I cannot drink dignity."
Autumn demanded, "How do you imagine you will call back the Lost from the sky?"
The Ragged One walked up to the giant Breathing Tree. Its mottled bark loomed above her like a wall. Grunting, she slashed at the bark with her tusks.
The gouged wood leaked a blood-red sap.