Icebones

She had never forgotten how bleakly bereft she had felt on that rocky hillside, when she first woke from her u

With a final shuddering tremble, the ground around the great fracture gave way. Layers of rock lifted like a lid. Angry water spilled into the valley, pounding on the eroded boulders, shattering ancient stones that might not have been disturbed since the world was young.

A wall of dirty, rust-brown water fell on them, hard and heavy.

As the setting sun began finally to glint through the remnant haze, the mammoths separated stiffly. They were cold, hungry, bruised, utterly bedraggled.

Water, turbulent and red-brown with mud, still surged around their island. Immense waves, echoes of the mighty fracture, surged up and down the ancient valley.

But already the flood water had begun to recede. Much of it was draining away through the ancient cha

The very shape of this island had changed, its battered walls crumbled away under the onslaught.

The Lost remake worlds, Icebones thought. But they do not stay remade. Soon the things the Lost have built here, all the bridges and pipelines and Nests and the toiling beetles, will collapse and erode away. And when the dust has silted up even their marvelous straight-edged canal, the ancient face of the Sky Steppe will emerge once more, timeless and indomitable.

The Lost are powerful. But the making of a world will forever be beyond them, a foolish dream.

By the light of a fat, dust-laden pink sunset, the mammoths scrambled down the island’s newly carved sides, and across the valley floor. By the time they got to the higher ground they were so coated in sticky red-black mud Icebones could barely raise her legs.

"What now, Matriarch?" "What should we do?" "Where should we go?"

These questions emerged from a continuing communal rumble, for the voices of a true Family were always raised together, in an unending wash of communication — as if, emerging from consensus, every phrase began with the pronoun "we."

"Thunder, you are our ears and nostrils. Which way?"

He stood straight and still, sniffing the wind, feeling the shape of the world. At length he said, "South. South and east. That way lies the Footfall of Kilukpuk."

"Very well. Spiral, you are our strength. Shall we begin the walk?"

"We are ready, Matriarch."

Icebones made the summons rumble, a long, drawn-out growl: "Let’s go, let’s go."

Gradually their rumbles merged once more, as they tasted readiness on each other’s breath. "We are ready." "We are together." "Let’s go, let’s go."

Icebones strode forward, ignoring the pain in her shoulder — which, since it now affected only a small part of her greater, shared body, was as nothing. The other mammoths began to move with her, their trunks exploring the rocky red ground beneath their feet, just as a true Family should. Icebones felt affirmed, exulting.

But as they climbed away from the valley, and as Icebones made out the high bleak land that still lay before them, she sensed that they would yet need to call on all their shared strength and courage if they were to survive.

…And then, clinging to an outcrop of rock at the fringe of this harsh southern upland, she found a fragment of hair: pale brown, ragged, snagged from some creature who had come this way. She pulled the hair loose with her trunk and tasted it curiously. Though it was soaked through, the hair had a stale, burning smell that she recognized immediately.

The hair had belonged to the Ragged One.

Part 3: Footfall

The Story of the Great Crossing

The Cycle is made up of the oldest stories in the world. It tells all that has befallen the mammoths, and its wisdom is as perfect as time can make it.

But now I want to tell you one of the youngest stories in the Cycle. It is the story of how the mammoths came to the Sky Steppe.

It is the story of Silverhair, who was the last Matriarch of the Old Steppe.

It is the story of the first Matriarch of the Sky Steppe.

It is a story of mammoths, and Lost.

For generations the last mammoths had lived on an Island. Silverhair was their Matriarch.

The Lost were everywhere. But the Lost had never found the Island, and the mammoths lived undisturbed.

No mammoth lived anywhere else. Not one.

But now, at last, the Lost had come to the Island.

Though most of these Lost showed no wish to hunt the mammoths or kill them or drive them away, they kept them in boxes and watched them with their predators’ eyes, all day and all night.

Silverhair knew that mammoths ca

But Silverhair was old and tired. She had spent all her strength keeping her Family alive. She was in despair, and ashamed of her weakness.

One night Kilukpuk came down from the aurora. And Kilukpuk said Silverhair must not be ashamed, for she had fought hard all her life. And she must not despair.

Silverhair snorted. "This world is full of Lost. We have nowhere to live. What is there left for me but despair?"

"But there is another world," Kilukpuk told her. "It is a place where there will be room for many mammoths. And mammoths will live there until the sun itself grows cold."

Silverhair asked tiredly, "Where is this marvelous place?"

And Kilukpuk said, "Why, have you forgotten your Cycle? It is the Sky Steppe."

Silverhair knew about the Sky Steppe, of course. She had seen it float in the sky, bright and red — just as her world, which we call the Old Steppe, once floated in our sky, bright and blue. And, indeed, the Cycle promised that one day mammoths would walk free on the Sky Steppe.

But Silverhair was weary and old, for she could not believe even mighty Kilukpuk. She said, "And how are the mammoths to get there? Will they sprout wings and fly like geese?"

"No," said Kilukpuk gently. "There is a way. But it is hard."

It would be the work of the Lost, said Kilukpuk. What else could it be? For the Lost owned the world, all of it.

Calves would be taken from their mothers’ bodies, unborn. They would be put in ice, and sent into the sky in shining seeds, and taken to the Sky Steppe. That way many calves could be carried, to be spilled out on the red soil of the Sky Steppe, as if being born.

The bereft mothers would never know their calves, and the calves never know their mothers.

This was very strange — typical of the Lost’s eerie cleverness — and Silverhair could not understand. "How will the calves learn how to use their trunks, how to find water and food? If they have no Matriarch, who will lead and protect them?"

"That is the second thing I have to tell you," said Kilukpuk. "And this too is very hard."

And Kilukpuk said that Silverhair’s calf — her only calf — would also be taken. For that calf, already half-grown, was to be Matriarch to all the new calves who would tumble from the shining seeds to the red soil. That calf, daughter of the last Matriarch of the Old Steppe, would be the first Matriarch of the Sky Steppe.

"You must teach her, Silverhair," said Kilukpuk. "As I taught my Calves to speak, and to find water and food, and to live as a Family. You must teach her to be a Matriarch, so she can teach those who follow her."