Silverhair

Skin-of-Ice came to Snagtooth, so close she could surely have gutted him with a single flick of her remaining tusk. But Snagtooth dipped her head and let the Lost touch her. He brought her food: pawfuls of grass that he lifted up to her, and water in a shell-like container that he carried from a stream. Passively Snagtooth dipped her trunk into the shell thing. She even lifted her trunk, and Silverhair watched her tongue flick out, pink and moist, to accept the grass from the paw of her captor.

With the watery sun once more climbing the sky, Silverhair saw, in her bleary vision, that Skin-of-Ice had come to stand before her.

He reached toward her with one paw, as if making to stroke her as he had Snagtooth. But Silverhair rumbled and pulled her head away from him.

Before she had time even to see its approach his goad had slapped at her cheek. She could feel the scabs that had crusted over her earlier wounds break open once more, and the pain was so intense she could not help but cry out.

Now Skin-of-Ice turned to his companions and gestured with his goad.

Immediately the pressure around her throat and across her back intensified. She was forced to kneel in the dirt. Under her belly hair, she could feel the stale warmth of her own dung.

And now Skin-of-Ice stepped forward. She could feel him grab her hair, step on one kneeling leg, and hoist himself up onto her back so that he was sitting astride her. The Lost around her were cawing and slapping their paws together, in evident approval of Skin-of-Ice’s antics.

She strained her muscles and tried to dislodge him, but she could not stand, let alone rear; she could not remove this maddening, tormenting worm from her back.

Now the pressure of the ropes lessened, and the Lost came forward and began to prod at her belly. Reluctant though she was to do anything in response to their vicious commands, she clambered slowly to her feet. She could feel Skin-of-Ice wrap his paws in her long hair to keep from falling off as she did so.

The Lost moved around behind her, and she could feel a new load being added to her back: something unmoving that had to be tied in place with ropes around her belly.

She could not see what this load was. But she could smell it. It was the remnants of Eggtusk: bones, skin, and dismembered meat.

She tried to shake the load loose, but the ropes were too tight.

The Lost moved around her belly, loosening the ropes that bound up her legs. Skin-of-Ice pulled her ears and slapped at her with his own goad. The Lost before her dragged at the ropes around her head and trunk.

What they intended was obvious. They wanted her to walk with them to their nest at the south of the Island, to carry the dishonored, mutilated corpse for them.

But she stood firm. She could not escape, but, even as weak as she was, the Lost were not strong enough to haul her against her will.

But now a new rope was attached to her neck. A pair of Lost pulled it across the tundra, and attached it to the collar around Snagtooth’s neck.

One of the Lost held Snagtooth’s trunk in his paw, but otherwise, she was under no duress or goad. Led by the Lost, Snagtooth began to walk, deliberately, to the south. The rope between the two mammoths stretched taut, and began to drag at Silverhair’s neck. And the monster on her back lashed at her with his goad.

Silverhair’s feet slipped on the dusty ground. She took one step, then another. She could resist the feeble muscles of any number of the Lost, but weak and starved as she was, not the hauling of an adult mammoth.

She tried to call to Snagtooth. "Why are you doing this? How can you help them?"

But her voice was weak and muffled. Snagtooth did not hear, or perhaps chose not to; she kept her face firmly turned to the south.

As she stumbled forward from step to step, constantly impeded by the ropes that still loped between her legs, Silverhair felt her shame was complete.

They reached the coast, not far from the place where Silverhair had first encountered Skin-of-Ice.

Silverhair was hauled along the beach.

She saw, groggily, that the season was well advanced. The sea was full of noise and motion. The remnant ice was breaking up quickly, with bangs and cracks. Small icebergs were swept past in the current. She saw a berg strike pack ice ahead and rear up out of the water, before falling back with a ponderous splash.

She was led past a floe where a large male polar bear lay silently beside a seal’s breathing hole. With startling sudde

It seemed to Silverhair that the seal was still alive. Silverhair was dragged away from the bear and its victim. Even the Lost, she realized, were wise enough to watch the bear with caution.

At the top of the beach, away from the reach of the tide, the Lost had made their nest.

There were more Lost here. They moved forward, hesitantly, but with curiosity. They approached Snagtooth, and she allowed them to touch her trunk and tug at the fur of her belly. Even when one of them prodded the stump of her broken tusk, an action that must have been agonizingly painful, she did little more than flinch.

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 ski

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 ski

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, pi