Icebones

Cold-As-Sky flinched, and Icebones saw that the Oath of Kilukpuk, which demanded loyalty between Cousins, was not forgotten here.

But nevertheless Cold-As-Sky said, "Your calves are not my calves. Your kind has come this way before — a strange ragged-haired one, mumbling—"

Autumn said sharply, "She has been this way?"

Icebones said, "If you will not give us water, will you guide us? We are going south. We seek a great pit in the ground, where the warmth may linger."

"I have heard its song in the rocks." Cold-As-Sky stamped the ground and nodded her head. "You will fall into the pit and its rocks will cover you bones… if you ever reach it, for the way is hard."

"Which way?"

Cold-As-Sky turned to the southeast. Icebones looked, and felt the slow wash of echoes from the hard folded landscapes there.

"I can feel it," Thunder said, dismayed. "Broken land… Great chains of mountains… One crater rim after another… It will be the hardest we have encountered yet."

Autumn said grimly, "The Footfall of Kilukpuk made a mighty splash."

"No matter how difficult, that is our trail," said Icebones.

Woodsmoke had been playing with a calf of the Ice Mammoths, pulling at her trunk as if trying to drag the other out from the forest of her parents’ legs. Now Breeze pulled him away. Woodsmoke looked back regretfully to a small round face, a pair of wistful orange eyes.

Autumn said to Cold-As-Sky, "Why are you so hostile? We have done you no harm."

"This world was ours," growled Cold-As-Sky, her voice deep as thunder. "Once it was all like this. The blood weed and the air tree flourished everywhere, and there were vast Clans, covering the land… Then the warmth came, and you came. And we were forced to retreat to this hard, rocky land, where our calves fall into the pits of the blood weed. But now the warmth is dying, and you are dying with it. And soon I will walk on your bones, and the bones of your calves."

That strange perversion of the rite of Remembering made Icebones shudder. But she said, "We did not bring the warmth. We did not banish the cold. If you are hurt, we did not hurt you. We are your Cousins."

It seemed to Icebones that Cold-As-Sky was about to respond. But then she turned away, and the Ice Mammoths returned to their deep holes in the ground.

Icebones said, "Let’s go, let’s go." And, with one determined footstep after another, she began the steady plod toward the southeast, where distant mountains cast long jagged shadows.

4

The Dust

I know it is hard, little Icebones. But you have walked your mammoths around the world. And there is only a little further to go.

"But that last ‘little further’ may be the hardest of all, Boaster."

Don’t call me Boaster! Tell me about the land…

And she hesitated, for this land was like nothing she had experienced, either in her old life before the Sleep, or even here in this strange, cold world. For this land had been warped by the great impact which had created the Footfall of Kilukpuk itself.

She stood at the head of an ancient water-carved cha

All around her there were hills, great clumps of them, grouped into chains like the wrinkles of an ancient mammoth. But the mountains were eroded to a weary smoothness, and they were extensively punctured and smashed by younger, smaller craters.

Thunder, his listening skills developing all the time, said he thought that around the central basin there were — not the single chain of rim mountains that surrounded most craters — five concentric rings of mountains, vast ripples in the rock thrown up by the giant primordial splash. Lacing through these rim-mountain chains were vast, shallow cha

Around Icebones, the Family was rooting desultorily at the unpromising, hummocky ground. Icebones felt an unreasonable stab of impatience with this little group of gaunt, helpless mammoths.

She thought of the Clan gatherings Silverhair had told her of, when Families and bachelor herds would congregate on great green-waving steppes, so many mammoths they turned the air golden with their shining hair, and for days on end they would talk and fight and mate…

But such gatherings had been even before Silverhair’s time. This starving group was perhaps the only true mammoths in half a world, and Icebones knew she had no choice but to accept her lot.

Boaster rumbled softly, still waiting for her reply.

"It is a very old land, Boaster," she said at last. "And, like an old mammoth, it is ill-tempered when disturbed."

It is an old world, I think, much disturbed by the Lost.

But now Thunder was calling, his voice a deep uncomfortable growl.

"I must go. Graze well, Boaster."

And you, little Icebones…

Thunder was standing on a slight rise, staring to the south, trunk raised. She saw that wind, blowing from that direction, was ruffling the hair around his face. "Can you taste it?"

Peering south, she made out a hard black line that spread right along the horizon, separating the crimson land from the purple sky. The wind touched her face. It was harsh and gritty. She raised her trunk, exposing its sensitive tip. When she put the tip in her mouth she could taste iron.

"Dust," she said. "Like the storm in the Gouge."

"Yes. It is a storm, and it carries a vast cloud of dust. And it is coming toward us."

Icebones felt her strength dissipate, like water ru

"You are alert, Thunder. We rely on your senses."

But this time her praise made little impact, for his worry was profound.

The light grew muddled, as if the day itself was confused. Gradually the wind picked up, blustering in their faces and whipping dust devils before it.

The storm front grew into a towering hall, a curtain that was deep crimson-black at its base and a wispy pink-gray at the top, hanging from the sky like the guard hairs of some vast mammoth. Icebones could hear the crack and grumble of thunder, and the ragged wisps at the top of the sheet of air whipped and churned angrily. It was an awesome display of raw power.

Icebones had decided that the mammoths should not try to move. They were already badly weakened by hunger and thirst and cold. She tried to ensure they rested, gathering their energy, just as the storm did.

The mammoths had nothing to say to each other. They merely stood, bruised, dismayed, waiting for the storm to break on them.

There was a moment of stillness. Even the wind died briefly. Icebones could see her own shadow at her feet.

When she looked up she could see the sun. It shone fitfully through veils of black cloud and dust that raced across the sky, churning and thrashing.

And then the sun vanished, and the air exploded.

Gusts as hard as rock battered at Icebones’s face and legs and neck, and the dust they carried scoured mercilessly at her hair and exposed flesh. It was as if she was in a bubble inside the dust, a bubble that was flying sideways through the air. The sun showed only in glimpses between tall, scudding clouds, and lightning crackled far above her, casting deep purple glows through layers of cloud and dust.