"What do you mean?"
"I thought Spiral might have run off to join that ranting fool. I found the calf two days ago. I thought he might come in useful. So I kept him distracted until now."
Icebones was astonished. "How can you think in such a devious way?"
"Just be glad I am on your side," Thunder said modestly.
Cold-As-Sky snorted. "But what of us, Icebones?" The Ice Mammoths were breathing fast, their blue tongues lolling. To them, Icebones recalled, the thin, clean air of the Footfall was dense and clammy and much, much too hot. Cold-As-Sky said, "If I join you, I die. If the Tree makes your world, it destroys ours."
Autumn turned on the Ragged One. "You see why they followed you? Even these strange creatures cared nothing for the Lost, for your dreams. All they wanted was to smash the Tree, for they understood its importance, as Icebones did. You are a fool — you let them use you—"
Icebones touched Autumn’s trunk to still her.
Thunder said unexpectedly, "But you need not die, Cold-As-Sky."
The Ice Mammoths inspected him suspiciously.
In brief phrases — illustrated with much stamping and growling — he told them of the Fire Mountain, where he had been born. "It is high," he said. "Higher than your High Plains, the highest place in all the world. No matter how hard this Tree breathes, that Mountain’s summit will still be a place of cold and thinness and ice."
Cold-As-Sky said to Icebones, "Is this true?"
Icebones glanced at the Ragged One. "She knows it to be true. We walked to the summit, and saw breathing trees… Yes, you could live there, Cold-As-Sky."
"But it is half a world away."
Now Breeze’s calf stepped forward. "I will lead you," said Woodsmoke brightly. "I have walked half the world. I will show you how."
Breeze cuffed him affectionately but proudly, for he stood tall and determined.
Cold-As-Sky rumbled, and her Ice Mammoths clustered around her.
Then, hesitantly, Cold-As-Sky stepped forward and stood behind Icebones. Her Family followed.
The Ice Mammoths smelled of ice and iron.
At last the Ragged One was left isolated.
It is done, Icebones thought. Her sense of relief was overwhelming, leaving her weak.
"You have defeated me," said the Ragged One bleakly.
"No. We are not Bulls battling over a Cow. There is no defeat, no victory. Be with our Family."
"You don’t understand," said the Ragged One. "You have never understood. I cannot become part of your We."
"That isn’t true—"
"But it is, in a way," said Chaser-Of-Frogs.
"This muddy thing is right, Icebones," said Cold-As-Sky, ignoring Chaser-Of-Frogs’s bristling. "She is mammoth, yet she is not — just as we are.
"I told you we have our own legend, our own memories. We know we were set down on a world where nothing could live — nothing but ourselves, and the blood weed and other plants which feed us. And we recall the first of us all — for those first had no mothers."
Chaser-Of-Frogs said grimly, "I hate to ally myself with one so ugly as this, but our memory is the same. In the beginning there were no mothers. There was no Cow, no oestrus, no consort dance, no mating…"
"Then how did you come to be?"
"The Lost made us," Cold-As-Sky said simply. "They took the bones of mammoths who died long ago, and ground them in the blood of others — remote Cousins called elephants who lived in the warm places. And, out of the mixing, came—"
"Us," said Chaser-Of-Frogs sourly.
"It was not enough for the Lost that they brought mammoths to this place," said Cold-As-Sky bitterly. "They had to make us into things of their own."
Icebones asked, "But why? Why would they do this?"
Autumn growled, "Perhaps they were in musth, and sought to impress their females."
"No," said the Ragged One. "They loved us. They loved the idea of us. This is what I believe. They wanted to remake us, to bring us back from the extinction to which they almost drove us, to give us this new world where there would be room for us to browse."
Autumn walked up to the Ragged One and ruffled her sparse, untidy hair. "If it was love, they loved us too much," she said gruffly.
"And that is why you sought to wreck the world," Icebones said, understanding at last. "That is why you wanted the Lost back so badly. Because they made you."
"Enough," said Autumn. "Give this up. Join us now."
The Ragged One hesitated, agitated, distressed. She reached out to Autumn, raising her trunk — and, briefly, Icebones believed it might be possible.
But then the Ragged One trumpeted wildly. She pushed past the Ice Mammoths and lumbered away.
Icebones made to go after her, but Autumn held her back with her long, strong trunk. In a moment the Ragged One was lost among the mammoths — and Icebones sensed that she would never see her again.
The mammoths began to disperse.
"It is done, Icebones," Autumn said. "The shadow of the Lost is gone at last. This is our world now."
"Yes. It is done…"
And the last of Icebones’s strength drained into the red dust. The colors leached out of the world, and her head filled with a sharp ringing. She would have fallen, if not for the support of her Family.
A watching human would only have seen the mammoths gather, heard nothing but an intense and mysterious rumbling and growling and stamping and clicking of tusks.
She would never have known that the destiny of a world had been tested, and determined.
7
The Dream of Kilukpuk
The Song of Oestrus disturbed Icebones, startling her awake.
She sniffed the air querulously.
It was cold and damp. The sun was dim, or so it seemed to her. Perhaps another winter was coming, though it seemed no more than heartbeats since spring was done.
But then the seasons were shorter on this hard little world. Or were they longer? She could not recall.
Time flowed strangely here, like water, like blood. Sometimes it seemed that her life had fled as rapidly as the fleeting summers, for here she was, suddenly a last-molar, barely able to chew the softest grass anymore, her senses and her memories as eroded as her teeth.
Ah, but sometimes she thought she was young again, young and imagining how it would be to be broken-down old mammoth, here in this green hollow, the navel of the world.
Young dreaming of old age, or dotard dreaming of youth? Perhaps, in the end, it made no difference. Perhaps there was no past or present, young or old; perhaps life was just a single moment, a unity, like a pebble taken into the mouth to ward off thirst, inspected by the tongue from every angle…
Anyhow, whether the world was growing cold or not, she certainly was.
She lumbered toward the Breathing Tree.
Soon she was wheezing with the effort of the walk, and her shoulder ached, never properly healed from its ancient injury. Close to the Tree’s roots, where hot air gushed and warm water flowed, the Swamp-Mammoths had made their wallows. She would find some company there, and perhaps would try a little grass, or even a willow bud. And she would ruminate a while with Autumn. Ah, but poor, stolid Autumn was long dead, and she had forgotten again.
She saw a herd of caribou. They preferred to live out their lives at the fringe of the great forests of warmer climes, but came to the steppe to breed. They crossed a stream, splashing and pawing at the water, so that sunlit droplets rose up all around them. Their movements were hasty, nervous, skittish, like horses.