The current here, far from the friction of the banks of the Channel, was much stronger, and she struggled to keep to her course. As she swam on, she could feel the heat of her body leaching out into the unforgiving sea.
As her warmth leaked away, her energy seemed to dissipate with it.
It was as if this infinity of murky, chill water was the only world she had ever known: as if the world above of air and sunlight and snow, of play and love and death, was just some gaudy dream she had enjoyed before waking to this bleak reality…
Suddenly her trunk filled with water. She coughed, expelling the water through her mouth. She scrabbled at the water until she was able to raise her face and mouth above the surface. She opened her mouth to take a deep, wheezing breath, and glimpsed a deep blue sky.
She must have weakened — let herself sink — perhaps even, bizarrely, slept for a heartbeat.
But already she was sinking again.
She continued to kick, but her legs were exhausted. And when she tried to raise her trunk, she couldn’t reach the air. The surface was receding from her, slow as a setting sun.
Waterlogged, she was sinking. And hope seeped out of her with the last of her warmth. She would die in this endless waste of water, she and her calf.
So the Cycle, after all, culminated in a lie: there would be no rescue for her Family, no glowing future for the mammoths on the Sky Steppe.
She found herself thinking of Lop-ear, that first time they had come to the southern coast: how, in the sunshine, he had teased her and tried to goad her into the water, and told her tall stories of the Calves of Siros. If she had shared Lop-ear’s gift for original thinking, was there any way she could have avoided this fate?
…The Calves of Siros. Suddenly, sinking in the darkness and the cold, she had an idea.
She tried to remember the sounds Lop-ear had made when he had called for the Calves of Siros. She had to get it right; she had only one lungful of air, and would get only one chance at this.
She began a low-pitched whistle, punctuated by higher squeals, squawks, and shrieks. The sound rippled away into the black water around her. She kept up the noise until the last wisp of her air was expended.
Not even an echo replied.
She stopped kicking and let the current carry her. She had fallen so far, the surface was reduced to a vague illumination far above. She could feel the ocean turn her slowly around as she drifted with it.
A deeper blackness was closing around her vision. The pain in her empty lungs, the ache of her exhausted limbs, the vaguer ache of the wounds inflicted by the Lost — all of it began to recede from her, as the cold forced her to shrink deep into the core of her body.
It was almost comfortable. She knew this ordeal would not last much longer…
And now a sheet of hard blackness rose from the depths beneath her. Perhaps this was death, come to meet her.
But she hadn’t expected death to have sleek fur, a fluked tail, stubby flippers, and a small, seal-like head that peered up at her out of the gloom.
The rising surface pushed softly against her feet and belly. She could feel a great body swathed in fat, strong muscles working.
Suddenly she was rising again.
She burst into light and air. It was like being born. She coughed, clearing water from her trunk and mouth, and air roared into her starved lungs.
Gradually the pain in her chest subsided. She was still floating in the water, but now her trunk lay against a great black body, and she was able to hold herself out of the ocean easily. Strong tail flukes held up her head, and the skin under her face was rough as bark.
The creature under her was huge, she realized: at least twice her own body length, and covered with the dense black hair of a seal.
A small head twisted back to look at her. She heard squeals and chirrups, alternating low whistles and high-toned bleats. It was speech: indistinct but nevertheless recognizable.
"…See you I. Paddling through water see you I. Recognize mammoth I. Mammoth better swimmer than old sea cow think I. Understand you?"
"Yes," Silverhair said, and the effort of speech made her cough again. "I understand. Thanks…"
The sea cow’s long muscles rippled. To Silverhair’s surprise, a gull came flapping out of the sky and landed in the middle of the sea cow’s broad back. The gull started to peck at the damp hair, plucking out parasites, and the sea cow wriggled with pleasure. "You here are why? Not roll on tundra do sea cows." The sea cow raised her small muzzle and whistled at her own joke.
"I have to get to the Mainland," said Silverhair.
"Mainland? Kelp good there. Mmm. Kelp." The sea cow looked dreamy. "But not there go sea cows. Why? Lost there."
"You know about the Lost?"
"Lost? Find me they if, drag me from sea they, eat my kidneys they, leave handsome body for gulls they. Terrible, terrible."
"I have met the Lost," said Silverhair.
"Think sea cows all gone Lost. Live in seas in south some Cousins. Here think kill us Lost, long time ago gobble up our kidneys Lost. But wrong they. But not Mainland go to I, kelp or no. Stay by Island. On Island no Lost."
"There are now," said Silverhair grimly.
"Terrible, terrible," said the sea cow, sounding dismayed. "Go to Mainland you, why if Lost there?"
"I have to," said Silverhair. "They took my Family."
The sea cow rolled in the water, almost throwing Silverhair off. "Terrible thing. Terrible Lost. Here. Hold on to me you." The sea cow held out a stubby, clawed flipper, and Silverhair wrapped her trunk around it.
The broad flukes beat, sending up a spray that splashed over Silverhair. The sea cow’s broad, streamlined bulk began to slide easily through the water, oblivious to the current that had defeated Silverhair, unimpeded even by the bulk of an adult mammoth clinging to one flipper. Soon her speed was so great that a bow wave washed around her small, determined head.
Her power was exhilarating.
The sea cow pushed easily through the loose, decaying landfast ice that fringed the shore of the Mainland.
Silverhair’s feet crunched on hard shingle.
She let go of the sea cow’s flipper. She stumbled forward up a steepening slope until she had dragged herself clear of the sea. Already frost was forming on her soaked fur, and she shook herself vigorously. Soon the warmth of the afternoon summer sun was seeping into her.
The sea cow used her stubby flippers to haul herself farther out of the water, so her bulk was lying on the shingle bed, her great broad back exposed. She began munching contentedly on a floating scum of brown kelp fronds. She chewed with a horny plate at the front of her mouth, for she didn’t appear to have any teeth. "Kelp. Mmm. Want some you?"
"Thanks — no."
Now that the sea cow was raised so far out of the water, Silverhair could see how strange she looked: a head and flippers much like a seal’s, but trailing a great bulbous body and a powerful split fluke, as if the front half of a seal had been attached to a beluga whale. Out of the water she was ponderous and looked stranded. Silverhair could see why her kind had been such easy pickings for the Lost, before the sea cows had learned to hide and feign extinction.
Silverhair looked back at the dark, sinuous waters of the Channel. "But for you," she told the sea cow, "I’d still be out there now. There forever."
The sea cow’s fluke beat at the water. "Oath of Kilukpuk. Hyros and Probos and Siros. Forgot that you?"
"No," said Silverhair quietly. "No, we haven’t forgotten." And she was filled with warmth as she realized that one of the most ancient and beautiful passages of the Cycle had been fulfilled, here on this desolate beach.