Icebones Read online

  "More," said Icebones. "Thunder, hold the tree over the pit."

  So Thunder held out the broken branches while Spiral, Icebones and Breeze all worked to pluck and pop the fat fruits.

  With every brief gust of air the agitation of the weed increased. But they were soon running out of fruit, and Autumn's eyes were rolling upwards. Icebones growled, despairing.

  And then, quite suddenly, the weed slid away from Autumn. With an eerie sucking noise its tendrils reached up, like blood-gorged worms, to the dark breathing-tree branches above it.

  "Let it have the branches, Thunder! But keep hold of the root—"

  The weed knotted itself around the branches, moving with a slow, slithering, eerie stealth.

  When the last of its tendrils had slid off Autumn's prone form, Spiral and Thunder hurled the tree as hard and as far as they could. The tangle of branches went spinning through the thin air, taking the crimson mass of the weed with it. Its blood-sap leaked in a cold rain that froze as soon as it touched the ice.

  3

  The Ice Mammoths

  THEY WERE SUSPENDED in dense, eerie silence — not a bird cry, not the scuffle of a lemming or the call of a fox — nothing but bright red rock and purple sky and six toiling mammoths.

  There was nothing to eat, nothing to drink.

  All of them were gaunt now, their hair thinning. Their ribs and shoulder blades and knees stuck out of their flesh, and their bony heads looked huge, as if they were gaining wisdom, even as their bodies shriveled.

  And day after day wore away.

  They came to another lake, much smaller. They walked down to it, slow and weary.

  This time the water was frozen down to its base. The ice was worn away — not melted, but sublimated: over the years the ice had evaporated without first turning to water. The mammoths ground at this stone-hard deeply cold stuff, seeking crushed fragments they could pop into their mouths.

  Around the lake they found scraps of vegetation. But the trees were dead, without leaves, and their trunks were hollowed out, and the grass blades broke easily in trunk fingers, dried out like straw.

  Thunder, frustrated, picked up a rock and slammed it against another. Both rocks broke open with sharp cracks.

  Icebones explored the expose surfaces, sniffing. There was green in the rock, she saw: a thin layer of it, shading to yellow-brown, buried a little way inside the rock itself, following the eroded contours of its surface. Perhaps it was lichen, or moss. The green growing things must shelter here, trapping sunlight and whatever scraps of water settled on the rock. But when Icebones scraped out some of the green-stained rock with a tusk tip, she found nothing but salty grains that ground against her molars, with not a trace of water or nourishment.

  She flung away the rock. She felt angry, resentful at being reduced to scraping at a bit of stone. And then she felt a twinge of shame at having destroyed the refuge of this tiny, patient scrap of life.

  The lake was fringed by dried and cracked mud. Walking there, Icebones found herself picking over the scattered and gnawed bones of deer, bison, lemmings, and horses, and they spoke to her of the grisly story that had unfolded here.

  But there was hope, she saw. Some footprints in the mud led away from the deadly betrayal of the pond and off to the south, before vanishing into the red dust. Perhaps some instinct among these frightened, foolish animals had guided them the way Icebones knew the mammoths must travel, to the deep sanctuary of the Footfall.

  Exploring the mud with her trunk tip, Icebones found one very strange set of prints. They were round, like mammoth footprints, but much smaller and smoother. These creatures had come here after the rest had died off, for bits of bone were to be found crushed into the strange prints. And, here and there, these anonymous visitors had dug deep holes — like water holes, but deeper than she could reach with her trunk.

  She noticed Spiral. The tall Cow was standing alone on the ice at the edge of the lake, her trunk tucked defensively under her head. She was gazing at a brown, shapeless lump that lay huddled on the rock shore.

  Thunder stood by her, wrapping his trunk over Spiral's head to comfort her.

  Spiral said, "I was working the ice. I didn't even notice that at first. It doesn't even smell..."

  That was a dead animal. It was a goat, Icebones thought — or rather it had once been a goat, for it was clearly long dead. It lay on its back, its head held up stiffly into the air as if it was staring at the sky. Its skin seemed to be mostly intact, even retaining much of its hair, but it was drawn tight over bones and lumpy flesh. The goat's mouth was open. The skin of its face had drawn back, exposing the teeth and a white sheet of jaw bone.

  The goat had even kept its eyes. Exposed by the shrinking-back of its skin, the eyeballs were just globes of yellow-white, with a texture like soft fungus.

  "It must have lost its way," said Thunder gently.

  "It died here," said Icebones. "But there are no wolves or foxes or carrion birds to eat its flesh. Not even the flies which feast on the dead. And its body dried out."

  Spiral prodded the corpse with her spiraling tusks. It shifted and rocked, rigid, like a piece of wood. "Will we finish up dried out and dead like this? And then who will Remember us?"

  "We are not lost," Thunder growled. "We are not goats. We are mammoth. We will find the way."

  THEY STAYED A DAY and a night at the pond, gnawing at bitter ice.

  Then they moved on.

  They frequently came across blood weed.

  It was difficult to spot. The weed gave off little odor, and its blood-red color almost exactly matched the harsh crimson of the underlying rock and dust — which was probably no accident.

  The mammoths found bits of bone, cleansed of flesh, in the weeds' traps, but all such traces were old. Even the weeds had not fed or drunk for a long time. Icebones wondered if these plants could last forever, waiting for the occasional fall of unwary migrant animals into their patient maws.

  Icebones came across a new kind of plant, nestled in a hollow. It was like a flower blossom, cupped like an upturned skull, and its tight-folded petals were waxy and stiff. The whole thing was as wide as a mammoth's footprint, and about as deep. A sheet of some shining, translucent substance coated the top of the blossom, sealing it off. Under the translucent sheet Icebones thought she saw a glint of green.

  Cautiously she popped the covering sheet with the tip of her tusk. The sheet shriveled back, breaking up into threads that dried and snapped. A small puff of moisture escaped, a trace of water that instantly frosted on the petals. A spider scuttled at the base of the blossom.

  Icebones scraped off the frost eagerly and plunged her moist trunk tip into her mouth. It was barely a trace, but it tasted delicious, reviving her spirit a great deal more than it nourished her body. She picked the flower apart and chewed it carefully. Despite that trace of green there was little flavor or nourishment to be had, and she spat it out.

  She called the others, and they soon found more of the plants.

  Each plant sheltered spiders, which made the moisture-trapping lids that allowed the green hearts of the plants to grow. So each flower was like a tiny Family, she thought, spiders and plant working together to keep each other alive.

  It was Thunder who came up with the best way to use the flowers. He opened his mouth wide and pushed the whole plant in lid first. Then he bit to pop the lid, and so was able to suck down every bit of the trapped moisture. But he had to scrape off bits of spiderweb that clung to his mouth and trunk, and Icebones saw spiders scrambling away into his fur.

  Spiral made a hoot of disgust. "Eating spiderweb. How disgusting."

  Icebones found another plant and, deliberately, plucked it and thrust it into her mouth. "Spiders won't kill you. Thirst will. You will all do as Thunder does—"

  Suddenly Thunder stood tall, trunk raised, his small ears spread.

  The others froze in their tracks — every one of them, flighty Spiral, Autumn with her aching ribs, Breeze with h
er scored back, even restless, growing, ever-hungry. Woodsmoke, as still as if they had been shaped from the ancient rock itself. Icebones found a moment to be proud of them, for a disciplined silence, vital to any prey animal, was a characteristic of a well-run Family.

  And then she heard what had disturbed Thunder. It was a scraping, as if something was digging deep into the ground.

  "But," Autumn murmured, "what kind of animal makes burrowing noises like that?"

  Thunder said, "There is a crater rim ahead. It hides us from the source of the noise. I will go ahead alone, and—"

  "No, brave Thunder. We are safer together." Icebones stepped toward the crater ridge. "Let's go, let's go."

  The other mammoths quickly formed up behind her. They climbed the shallow, much-eroded crater rim.

  Icebones paused when she got to the rim's flattened top, her trunk raised.

  In the crater basin, heavy heads lifted slowly.

  THUNDER PEALED OUT a bright trumpet. He hurried forward, scattering dust and bits of rock. Icebones, more warily, clambered down the slope, keeping her trunk raised.

  Mammoths — at least that was her first impression. They were heavy, dark, hairy creatures, spread over the basin. She saw several adults — Cows? — clustered together around a stand of breathing trees, digging at the roots. A black-faced calf poked its head out through the dense hairs beneath its mother's belly, curious like all calves. Further away there were looser groupings of what she supposed were Bulls.

  As Thunder approached, the Cows lifted their trunks out of the holes they had dug. Their trunks were broad but very long, longer than any adult mammoth Icebones had met before. Their tusks were short and stubby. They huddled closer together, the adults forming a solid phalanx before the stand of trees.

  They looked like mammoths. They behaved as mammoths might. But they did not smell like mammoths. And as Icebones worked her way down the slope, her sense of unease deepened.

  Woodsmoke had wandered away from his mother. Two calves peered at him from a forest of thick black hair. The adults watched him suspiciously, but no mammoth would be hostile to a calf, however strange. Soon Woodsmoke had locked his trunk around a calf's trunk, and was tugging vigorously.

  Icebones announced clearly, "I am Icebones, daughter of Silverhair. Who is Matriarch here?"

  The strange mammoths rumbled, heads nodding and bodies swaying, as if in confusion.

  At length a mammoth stepped forward. "My name is Cold-As-Sky. I do not know you. You are not of our Clan."

  Cold-As-Sky was about Icebones's size, as round and solid as a boulder. Her hair was black and thick. There was a thick ridged brow on her forehead, sheltering small orange eyes. She had a broad hump on her back, and when she took a breath, deep and slow, that hump swelled up, as if she carried a second set of lungs there. Her long trunk lay thickly coiled on the rock at her feet. Her voice was as deep as the ground's own songs.

  Icebones stepped forward tentatively. "We have come far."

  "You are not like us."

  "No," Icebones said sadly. "We are not like you." As unlike, in a different way, as the Swamp-Mammoths had been unlike Icebones and her Family. "And yet we are Cousins. You speak the language of Kilukpuk."

  Just as Chaser-Of-Frogs had reacted to the ancient name, so Cold-As-Sky looked briefly startled. But her curiosity was soon replaced by her apparently customary hostility. "We speak as we have always spoken."

  Her language, in fact, was indistinct. This Ice Mammoth spoke only with the deep thrumming of her chest and belly, omitting the higher sounds, the chirrups and snorts and mewls a mammoth would make with her trunk and throat. But her voice, deep and vibrant, would carry easily through the rocks, Icebones realized. This was a mammoth made for this high cold place, where the air was thin, and only rocks could be heard.

  Cold-As-Sky said now, "You call yourself my Cousin. What are you doing here? Do you intend to steal my air trees?"

  Air trees — breathing trees? "No," said Icebones wearily. "But we are hungry and thirsty."

  "Go back to where you came from."

  "We cannot go back," Thunder said.

  Icebones stepped forward and reached out with her trunk. "We are Cousins."

  Cold-As-Sky growled, but did not back away.

  Icebones probed at the other's face. That black hair was dense and slippery, and as cold as the rock beneath her feet. She finally found flesh, deep within the layers of hair. The flesh was cold and hard, and covered in fine, crisscross ridges. She pinched it with her trunk fingers. The other did not react — as if the flesh was without sensation, like scar tissue. The trunk itself was very wide and bulbous near the face, with vast black nostrils.

  To her shock, Icebones saw that Cold-As-Sky's trunk tip was lined with small white teeth. The teeth were set in a bony jaw, like a tiny mouth at the end of her trunk.

  Cold-As-Sky's mouth was a gaping blue-black cavern. Even her tongue was blue. Icebones touched that tongue now — and tasted water.

  Cold-As-Sky growled again, pulling back. "Your trunk is hot and wet. You are a creature of the warmth and the thick air and the running water." Her immense trunk folded up, becoming a fat, stubby tube. "This is not your place."

  Icebones's anger battled with pride — and desperation. "I tasted water on your lips. Please, Cousin—"

  "And you have water," Thunder said, stepping forward menacingly.

  Cold-As-Sky snorted contempt, a hollow sound which echoed from the recesses of vast sinuses, "If you want water, take it. Come." And she turned and began to push her way through the solid wall her Family had made.

  Wary, Icebones followed, with Thunder at her side.

  They came to the stand of breathing trees. Icebones saw that the Ice Mammoths had burrowed into the hard rocky ground at their roots. One Cow was kneeling, her body a black ball of shining hair, and her trunk was stretched out, pushed deep into the ground.

  Icebones probed into one of the holes with her own trunk. It was much deeper than she could reach. But, around its rim, she saw traces of frost.

  Icebones imagined those strange trunk-tip teeth digging into the rock and permafrost, chipping bit by bit toward the water that lay far, far below. With such a long trunk, Icebones saw, mammoths could survive even in this frozen wasteland, where the water lay very deep indeed.

  "If you want water," Cold-As-Sky said, "dig for it as we do."

  Now Autumn walked up, grand, dignified, rumbling. "You can see that is impossible for us."

  "Then you will go thirsty."

  "You have calves," Autumn said harshly. "You are mammoth."

  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 wis
tful 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 channel. The ground was broken into heaped-up fragments, as if the water, draining away, had left behind a vast underground cavern into which the land had collapsed. But the fallen rocks were very old, heavily pitted and eroded and covered with dust. And when the mammoths dug deeper into the ground they found it riddled with broad tunnels — but they were dry, hollowed out like ancient bones, as if the water that made them had long disappeared.