Even on first contact with the mammoths, the Lost seemed to have no fear, so secure were they in their dominance of the world around them. Now Silverhair was dragged forward.
The beach was scarred by the blackened remains of fires. She recognized a stack of thunder-sticks, looking no more dangerous than fallen branches. There were little shelters, like caves. They were made of sheets of reddish-brown shiny stuff that appeared to have come from the monstrous hulk she had observed on the shore with Lop-ear, in a time that seemed a Great-Year remote.
There was much she did not understand. There were the straight-edged, hollowed-out boxes from which the Lost extracted their strange, odorless foods. There were the glinting, shining flasks — almost like hollowed-out icicles — from which the Lost would pour a clear liquid down their skinny throats, a liquid over which they fought, which they prized above everything else. There was the box that emitted a deafening, incessant noise, and the other box that glittered with starlike lights, into which one or another of the Lost would bark incessantly.
And all of this strange, horrific place was suffused with the smell of mammoth: dead, decaying, burned mammoth.
The Lost set up four stakes in the ground. They beat them in place with blocks of wood they held in their paws.
Silverhair was led toward the stakes.
One of the Lost walked around her on his skinny hind legs, plucked at the ropes that bound her grisly load to her belly, and stepped in front of her face to inspect her tusks — and stretching her ropes to the limit, she twisted her head and swiped at him. She caught him a glancing blow with the side of her tusk — he was so light and frail, she could barely feel the impact — and he sprawled on the ground before her. He howled and squirmed. She raised her foreleg. In an instant she would crush the rib cage of this mewling creature.
But Skin-of-Ice was there. He grabbed the paw of the one on the ground and dragged him away from her.
The Lost closed rapidly around her. Commanded by Skin-of-Ice, they prodded, poked, and dragged at Silverhair until the four stakes were all around her. Then they tied rope around her legs, so tightly it bit into her flesh, pinning each of her legs to a stake, and she could not move.
14
The Nest of the Lost
The endless day wore on.
Silverhair had could not lie down, not even move. And she wasn’t allowed to sleep. The Lost tormented her continually.
The stake ropes were never released. Though she chafed against them, she only rubbed raw her own flesh; she could feel how the ropes cut to the very bone of her forelegs.
The Lost would give her no water. Soon it felt as if her trunk was shriveling like drying grass, and her chest and belly were dry as the bones that had emerged from the yedoma.
And they tormented her with food. One of them would hold up succulent grass before her, push it toward her mouth, perhaps even allow a blade or two to touch her tongue. Then, invariably, he would snatch the grass away.
Even when there were no Lost with her — when they were all asleep in their artificial caves, the flasks and scraps of half-chewed mammoth meat scattered around their snoring forms — they would set up one of their deafening noise-making boxes beside her, and its unending stomping ensured she could never sleep.
Snagtooth was kept tied up, in full view of Silverhair. But her tether was just a single rope. Her feet were not bound, so she was free to move as far as the rope would allow her, and she was fed with pawfuls of grass and containers of water.
Several times a day, Skin-of-Ice or one of the others would climb on the back of Snagtooth. The Lost would kick at the back of her ears, as if trying to drive her forward or back. Snagtooth was rewarded with mouthfuls of food if she guessed what they wanted correctly, and strikes of a goad — not as severely as they beat Silverhair — if she got it wrong. All this was greeted with hoots of laughter from the staggering, swaying Lost.
Silverhair tried to recall the Cycle, the legends of Kilukpuk and Ganesha and Longtusk; but the Cycle seemed a remote irrelevance in this place of horror. At last Silverhair’s spirit seemed as if it was half-detached from her body, and even the pain of her poisoned wounds receded from her awareness.
When she was left alone, she would look beyond the camp, seeking solace. Somehow it seemed strange that the world was continuing its ancient cycles, regardless of her own suffering and the cruel designs of the Lost. But life was carrying on.
The cliffs above the beach were crowded with thousands of eider, kittiwakes, murres, and fulmars. Every ledge and crevice was packed with nesting birds, and their noise and smell were overwhelming; so many birds circled in the air, they darkened the sky. At the base of the cliffs was a bright carpet of lichens and purple saxifrage, fertilized by the guano from the birds.
Silverhair saw a thick-billed murre taking its turn to sit on its single egg, freeing its partner to seek food at the ice-edge. But when the attention of the murre was distracted, a gull swooped down and easily snatched the egg, swallowing it in a single movement. The distress of the murre pair was obvious, for they might not have time in the short season to raise another egg. Silverhair, despite her own plight, felt a stab of sadness at the small tragedy.
…But then Skin-of-Ice would return, sometimes with a flask of liquid in his paw. He would adjust the ropes that pinned her, perhaps tightening them around some already chafed and painful spot. And then he would devise some new way to hurt her.
Some of the Lost even seemed to show regret for the suffering they caused. They would hurry past the place she was staked with their faces averted. Or they would stand before her and stare at her, their spindly forelegs dangling, their small mouths gaping open; sometimes they would even reach up to her hesitantly, as if to stroke her or feed her.
But not Skin-of-Ice.
He knows I’m conscious, she thought. He knows I’m in here.
He knows what he does hurts me. That’s why he does it. The others may kill us for food or skin or bones, but not this one. He enjoys inflicting pain. And he enjoys humiliating.
His was a deliberate cruelty of a type she had never encountered before. And she knew it would not stop until she bent her head to him, as had Snagtooth.
Or until one of them was dead.
"…Silverhair. Silverhair. Can you hear me?…"
Snagtooth was a silhouette against the dying light of the fire.
"Leave me alone," said Silverhair.
"You don’t understand." Snagtooth was using the contact rumble, a note so deep, it was not muffled by the clatter of the noise-maker beside Silverhair, so deep it would not disturb the light slumbers of the Lost. But Snagtooth’s voice sounded oddly distorted, as if she spoke with a trunk full of water.
"What is there to understand? You have given yourself to the Lost."
"We can’t fight them, Silverhair. Think about what the Cycle says. Once, the mammoths dominated the north of the whole world. But then the Lost came and took it from us — all of it, except the Island. We have to live as they want us to live. We have no choice."
"There is always a choice," rumbled Silverhair.
"I think they want us to work for them. Lifting things, moving things about, in the odd way they have of wanting to reorder everything. But it isn’t so bad. When one of them climbs on your back, you don’t even feel his weight after a while…"
"You do," said Silverhair softly. "Oh, you do."
"They are feeding me well, Silverhair. They cleaned out my abscess. It doesn’t hurt anymore. Can you imagine how that feels?"