Icebones

And none of them were her children, or grandchildren: not one.

Taken from her mother on the Island, she had devoted her life to a quest for Family. Well, she had succeeded. She had built the mammoths into a Family, into Clans. But now the Sky Steppe was taking them away.

…Icebones.

She stopped, struggling to raise her heavy old trunk. The calling voice had been unfamiliar, and it had seemed to come neither from left or right, nor before or behind.

The colors leached out of the world. She felt herself sway.

Icebones. Icebones. "…Icebones."

She looked up. A Bull stood before her — little more than a calf, no taller than she was, his tusks still stubby and untested.

"Woodsmoke?"

"No," he said patiently. "Woodsmoke was the mate of my grandmother, Matriarch. I am Tang-Of-Dust. You recall — as an infant I loved to roll in dust dunes and—"

"Ah, Tang-Of-Dust." But his smell was indistinct, his form in her eyes only a wavering outline. "Always eat the tall grass," she said.

"Matriarch?"

"You are what you eat. That much is obvious to everyone. And the tallest grass dreams of touching the sky, of reaching the aurora. So that is what you must eat…"

Here was a pretty stand of tussock grass. Forgetting Tang-Of-Dust, she bent to inspect it. The tall thin leaves grew as high as her shoulder, rising out of a pedestal of old leaves and roots. Between the tussock clumps burnet grass grew. This sported round red flower heads that swayed gracefully in the breeze. There were other plants scattered more thinly, like ferns and buttercups and dandelions, and many clumps of fungus, some of them bright red or white, their colors a startling contrast to the deep green of the grass.

Just a stand of grass. She couldn’t even smell or taste it. All she could do was see it, as if with age she was turning into one of the Lost. But it was beautiful, intricate, like so much of the world.

She was still herself. She was Icebones, daughter of Silverhair. Nothing would erode that away: the last thing she would retain, even when the world had worn away like her molars.

She said, "He went away, you know."

"Matriarch?"

"Woodsmoke. He was born on the great Migration — did you know that? I suppose wandering was in his blood… At first it wasn’t possible, of course. The world away from the Footfall just got too cold for anything to live. Anything like us, anyhow. But gradually that changed, and off he went. But they say that where his dung fell, grass and trees grew, and the animals and birds that live on them followed. Isn’t that wonderful, Woodsmoke? As if life is spreading out from this deep warm place. He never came back, of course…"

"Yes, Matriarch," the calf said respectfully. But he was growing impatient. "Matriarch, it has changed. In the sky."

She grumbled, "What has changed?"

"The blue star that flies near the sun."

She squinted, compressing failing eyes.

The calf was right, she saw. The familiar blue spark had been replaced by a sliver of silver light.

…And now, quite suddenly, the silver grain winked out — vanished completely, as if it had never been. It small brown companion, abandoned, sailed alone in the sky.

She raised her trunk but could smell nothing, hear nothing. How strange, she thought.

Tang-Of-Dust asked, "What does it mean?"

"I don’t know, child."

"They say that the Lost went there. To the blue light."

"It might be true," she said. And she wondered where they had gone now.

"Some say the Lost were insane. Or evil."

She lowered her heavy head. "No, not evil, not insane… But not like us. In many ways they were arrogant and foolish. But the Lost brought life here. Think of that. We existed a long time before the Lost came, and we will exist for a long time now that they are gone. Theirs was just a brief moment of pain and change and death — but in that moment they gave us a new world. Even if this world is nothing but a dream of Kilukpuk…" She slumped forward, to her knees, and her trunk pooled in the dust. "And, I suppose, by redeeming us, the Lost redeemed themselves. Isn’t that wonderful?"

The calf reached out uncertainly,. "Matriarch. Are you ill?"

Her belly settled onto the dust, and she closed her eyes. "Just tired, Woodsmoke. In a moment we will talk—"

But now there was an explosion of pain in her chest. She gasped and fell forward.

She saw legs all around her, a forest of them, as if she was a newborn calf surrounded by her mother and aunts. That was absurd, for she could hardly be more different from a calf.

She closed her eyes again.

A memory of old age, or a dream of youth? But she tasted blood — or perhaps it was the dry dust of this red world — not a dream, then…

Or perhaps the dream was over.

"Icebones… Icebones…"

Icebones.

She tried to lift her head, to open her eyes, but could not. And yet she thought she saw a mammoth before her: a vast mammoth with dugs the size of mountains, and feet that could stamp great pits in the rock, and tusks like glaciers, and a voice like the song of a world. A mammoth who shone, even though Icebones’s eyes were closed.

Do you know who you are?

"I am Icebones, daughter of Silverhair." That much remained. "I am very tired."

You know who I am?

"Yes. Yes, I know who you are, Kilukpuk."

It’s time to go, little one.

"But my Family needs me."

Now I need you. And Icebones felt a trunk wrap around her head and probe into her dry mouth.

She was lifted up, shedding her body as every spring she had shed her winter coat.

"I am not fit, Matriarch…"

No one is more fit than you. And no one paid a greater price than you. The Lost brought you here, in your Sleep, across a vast gulf. And in that gulf a hard light shines. And you were — damaged.

And Icebones knew Kilukpuk meant her dry womb. "That is why I have no calves."

But every mammoth who lives is your calf. You saved your kind in every way it is possible to be saved: you gave them life, and you gave them back their selves.

"Will there be soft browse? My molars aren’t what they were."

I will show you the softest, sweetest browse that ever was.

"There is no aurora here. Where are we going?"

To where Silverhair is waiting for you. No more questions, now.

The great shining mammoth drew away.

Effortlessly, Icebones followed. And the small red world receded beneath her, folding over on itself until it became a crimson ball splashed with green and blue, before it disappeared into the dark.

Epilogue

Ice still swathes much of the northern ocean, and the southern pole. But the ice is receding. In the ancient highlands of the south the flooded craters and rivers and canals glow blue-green once more. Much of the land is covered by dark forest and broad, sweeping grasslands and steppe — but the primordial crimson of the dust still shines through the green.

This will always be a cold, dry place. This world is too small, too far from the sun. But life is spreading here, year by year: life first brought here by vanished, clever creatures with silver ships and toiling machines, but life now finding its own way on the hard, ancient plains, led by the stately beasts whose calls echo around the planet.

But those calls will never be heard on the summit of the Fire Mountain. That obstinate shoulder of rock still pushes out of the thickening air, just as it always has. From its barren summit the stars can be seen, even at midday.

Here, in the thin air, not even the hardy Ice Mammoths venture. Here, nothing grows.

Nothing, that is, save a solitary dwarf willow, a single splash of green-brown against the ancient crimson rock. Against all odds, the willow's windblown seed has found a trace of water here, high on the Fire Mountain: enough to germinate, and survive.