Icebones

"What mighty tree will grow when that vast seed falls?"

Now pale dawn light diffused over the dust pool and shone into the heart of the sac, making it glow from within, pink and gray. The floating thing was made of some smooth shining translucent substance, Icebones saw, but it was slack and loose, like the skin around the eyes of a very old mammoth. And its trailing tendril dragged something knotty and silver across the dust, exploring like a trunk, leaving a shallow trench.

Now that the light was striking the sac it was starting to swell and rise, its surface unfolding with a slow, rustling languor. The silver knot scraped over the dust as the tendril slowly uncoiled.

"Perhaps it rises in the day and flies on the wind," Icebones mused. "And then it sinks at night and scrapes its silver fruit on the ground."

"But it has no bones or head," said Thunder. "It cannot choose where it travels, as a mammoth can. It is blown on the wind. What does it travel for? What is it hoping to find?"

Icebones blew dust out of her trunk. "That we will never know—"

The sea’s placid surface erupted before them. Dunes flowed and disintegrated. A great black cylinder rose, and dust fell away with a soft rustle all around.

Icebones stumbled back, and she made to trumpet a warning. But so profound was her shock at this sudden apparition that her throat and trunk seemed to freeze. And besides, what warning could she give.

The cylinder of black-red flesh, twisting out of the dust, was crusted with hard segmented plates. At its apex was a nostril, or mouth: a pit, black as night, lined with six inward-pointing teeth. Dust was falling into that gaping maw, but whatever immense creature lay beneath the surface seemed indifferent. The great mouth folded around the lower portion of the floating sac. Huge, sharp teeth meshed together with a noise like rock on rock, and the sac’s fabric was ground apart effortlessly.

Then the vast pillar twisted and fell back into the dust. It sank quickly out of sight, dragging half the sac and the trailing cable with it.

There were no ripples or waves. The dust ocean was immediately still, with only a new pattern of dunes left to show where the beast had been. The severed upper half of the sac drifted away, tumbling, on breezes that were gathering strength in the morning air.

For heartbeats the two mammoths stood side by side, saying nothing, stunned.

"It was a beast," said Thunder fervently.

"Like a worm. Or a snake."

"Do you think the Lost brought it here from the Old Steppe?"

"I don’t think it has anything to do with the Lost, Thunder. Did it smell of the Lost — or any animal you know? Did you see its teeth?"

"They were very sharp and long."

"But it had six: six teeth, set in a ring." Just as the footprints she saw in the ancient outflow channel had had six toes. Just as the creatures buried in the rock floor of the Nest of the Lost had six leaves and limbs and petals…

She stepped forward, sniffing the chill, thin mist pooling over the flooded crater. "I think our sand worm was here long before the coming of the Lost." Surviving in the dust, where creatures of water and air froze and died as the world cooled — perhaps sleeping away countless years, as the tide of life withdrew from the red rock of the world, waiting patiently until chance brought it a morsel of water or food… "Perhaps the Lost never even knew it was here," she said.

"If they had known they would probably have tried to kill it," said Thunder mournfully. "We should not seek to cross this dust pool."

"No," said Icebones. "No, we shouldn’t do that."

Now the other mammoths were starting to wake. The dawn was filled with the soft sounds of yawns and belches, and the rumbling of half-empty guts.

Icebones and Thunder rejoined their Family.

2 The Blood Weed

The land, folded and cracked and cratered, continued to rise inexorably. There was no water save for occasional patches of dirty, hard-frozen ice, and the rocks were bare even of lichen and mosses. The sky was a deep purple-pink, even at noon, and there was never a cloud to be seen.

Icebone’s shoulder ached with ice-hard clarity, all day and all night. She limped, favoring the shoulder. But over time that only caused secondary aches in the muscles of her legs and back and neck. And if she ever overexerted herself she paid the price in racking, wheezing breaths, aching lungs, and an ominous blackness that closed around her vision.

One day, she thought grimly, that fringe would close completely, and once more she would be immersed in cold darkness — just as she had been before setting foot on this crimson plain — but this time, she feared, it was a darkness that would never clear.

It was a relief for them all when they crested a ridge and found themselves looking down on a deeply incised channel. For the valley contained a flat plain that showed, here and there, the unmistakable white glitter of ice.

Woodsmoke trumpeted loudly. Ignoring his mother’s warning rumbles, the calf ran pell-mell down the rocky slope, scattering dust and bits of loose rock beneath his feet. He reached the ice and began to scrape with his stubby tusks.

The others followed more circumspectly, testing the ground with probing trunk tips before each step. But Thunder was soon enthusiastically spearing the ice with his tusks. More hesitantly, Spiral and Breeze copied him.

Icebones recalled how she had had to show the mammoths how water could be dug out from beneath the mud. To Woodsmoke, born during this great migration, it was a natural thing, something he had grown up with. And perhaps his calves, learning from him, would approach the skill and expertise once enjoyed by the mammoths of her Island.

Icebones longed to join in, but knew she must conserve her strength. To her shame the weakness of the Matriarch had become a constant unspoken truth among the mammoths.

Alone, she walked cautiously onto the ice.

The frozen lake stretched to the end of the valley. To either side red-brown valley walls rose up to jagged ridges. The ice itself, tortured by wind and sunlight, was contorted into towers, pinnacles, gullies and pits, like the surface of a sea frozen in an instant. Heavily laced with dust and bits of rock, the ice was stained pale pink, and the color was deepened by the cold salmon color of the sky; even here on the ice, as everywhere else on these High Plains, she was immersed in redness.

Soon Thunder trumpeted in triumph, "I am through!"

He had dug a roughly circular pit in the ice. The pit, its walls showing the scrape of mammoth tusks, was filled with dirty green-brown water.

All of them hesitated, for by now they had absorbed many Cycle lessons about the dangers of drinking foul water.

At least I can do this much for them, Icebones thought. "I will be first," she said.

With determination she stepped forward and lowered her trunk into the pit. The water was ice cold and smelled stale. Nevertheless she sucked up a trunkful and, with resolution, swallowed it. She said, "It is full of green living things. But I think it is good for us to drink." And she took another long, slow trunkful, as was her right as Matriarch.

Defying Family protocol, as calves often would, Woodsmoke hurried forward, knelt down on the gritty ice, and was next to dip his trunk into the ragged hole. But he could not reach, and he squeaked his frustration.

Autumn brushed him aside and dipped her own mighty trunk into the hole. She took a luxurious mouthful, chewing it slightly and spitting out a residue of slimy green stuff. Then she took another trunk’s load and carefully dribbled the water into Woodsmoke’s eager mouth.

After that, the others crowded around to take their turn.