But she was thirsty, and forced herself to drink her fill.
Soon the others joined her and drank with more apparent enjoyment, for they were more used to accepting water from the Lost than she was.
Chaser-Of-Frogs called, "Bones-Of-Ice. Come stand here."
Icebones complied, and, following Chaser-Of-Frogs’s urging, leaned gently against a pipe that was almost as tall as she was. The pipe was warm.
Chaser-Of-Frogs barked amusement. "The pipe contains warm water. The water comes from lodes of warmth buried deep under the skin of the world. And that is what keeps the Nest alive," she said. "You see?"
"Not really," admitted Icebones.
"I do," said Thunder unexpectedly. "Didn’t Longtusk stamp his feet and draw heat from the ground, to keep his Family alive…?"
Now Chaser-Of-Frogs wandered away from the water plant. Grunting, she began pawing at the ground with her forefeet. With clumsy swipes, the Swamp-Mammoth had soon wiped clear a wide area of the floor.
Icebones saw there were shapes embedded in the shining floor. She leaned down to see better, and blew away more dust with delicate sweeps of her trunk.
She saw leaves, stuck inside the shining floor surface. The leaves were gray and colorless, and they lay in thick sheets, one over the other. She stroked the floor with her trunk, but she touched only the hard, odorless floor surface.
"What do you think of that?" Chaser-Of-Frogs demanded proudly.
"They are like no tree I have ever seen."
"Now look over here." Swamp-Mammoth led Icebones to another place, where she swept aside the dust once more.
Here, inside the floor, Icebones saw the shells of animals from the sea — and bones. They were pretty, regular shapes, she thought, sharing a six-fold pattern: six leaves, six stubby limbs, six petals.
Chaser-Of-Frogs said gently, "These are the bones of creatures who lived here long, long ago — before the Lost ever came here. When you die, Bones-Of-Ice, you will be covered by mud and dust that will squeeze you flat. Until—"
"Until I become like this," Icebones said, awed. "Where I was born, the bones of mammoths lay thick in the ground. I thought there were no bones here — just as there are no mammoth trails. But I was wrong."
"These are not the bones of our kind, Cousin. I was not always the Mother of the Big Pond. The Mother before me said that her Mother saw the Lost and their toiling beetles dig this strange bone-filled rock out of the Gouge wall — deep down, at its lowest layers. These squashed animals died long ago, you see. And nothing lived after them, so nothing was laid down over them but bare, dead rock, a great thickness of it. And the Lost took the bony rock and put it here."
"Why?"
"Chaser-Of-Frogs grunted. "Who knows why the Lost do as they do?"
Icebones pondered the meaning of the rock. She pressed, frustrated, at the impenetrable surface, longing to touch and smell the ancient plants, to hear the voices of the animals.
Long ago there was life here. There had been trees, and living oceans, and beasts that roamed the crimson lands. But their world died. The oceans froze over and dried up, and the air cooled, and the last rain fell, and the last snow… Now all that was left of them was here, in this rock, compressed flat by time.
Clumsily, self-consciously, Chaser-Of-Frogs turned her back and pawed at the ground, trying to touch the bones with her hind feet.
"You are Remembering," Icebones said.
Chaser-Of-Frogs stopped, panting — used to her lethargic life in the mud, she got out of breath easily — and she looked up at Icebones with her small hard eyes. "Do you think we are foolish?"
"No. I think you are wise."
Chaser-Of-Frogs eyed her. "Bones-Of-Ice, I am done here. I am a poor fighter of wolves. I must go back before dark. You will go on. Just follow the canal."
Suddenly the thought of being without the squat, humorous, courageous Swamp-Mammoth seemed unbearable. Impulsively Icebones twined her trunk around the other’s. "Come with us."
Chaser-Of-Frogs snorted. "What for, Cousin?"
"The world is dying — just as it died before, ending the lives of those buried creatures…" Icebones explained how she was leading the mammoths to the basin she had called the Footfall of Kilukpuk, the deepest place in the world, where she hoped enough air and water would pool to keep the mammoths alive. "Come with us."
"Me?" Chaser-Of-Frogs grunted, self-deprecating. "Look at me. I can scarcely trudge over an ice-flat plain for half a day before I am exhausted. How could I walk around the world?"
"I’m serious—"
"So am I," Chaser-Of-Frogs snapped. "Bones-Of-Ice, I am no fool. I can smell it myself. Every year the line of trees creeps further down the Gouge wall. Every year our ponds shrink, just that bit more. Every year I see more animals migrate one way up the Gouge then come back the other. But look at me, Bones-Of-Ice. I could not contemplate such a trek as yours… Not yet, anyhow. I smell wisdom on you, young Bones-Of-Ice, but you have much to learn. You see, my calves are not yet desperate enough."
"I don’t see what desperation has to do with it."
Chaser-Of-Frogs said bluntly, "A trek to your Footfall pit would kill most of us. That is the truth. And that is why we must be desperate before we accept such suffering."
Icebones was taken aback. "We will help you."
"Why should you? You never knew us before. We aren’t your kind. We aren’t even like you."
"We are Cousins, and we are bound by the Oath of Kilukpuk."
Chaser-Of-Frogs grunted. "My dear Bones-Of-Ice, you have enough to do." The Swamp-Mammoth waddled away, toward the light of the setting sun. "I’ll tell you what. I will seek out your scent at the Footfall. And if those piss-drinkers from the Pond of Evening get there before me, make sure you save the best pond for me…"
The next morning the Lost-made canal, which had guided them eastward for so long, finished its course.
Icebones stood at its head, before a square-edged termination whose regularity made her shudder. From here the canal arced back toward the west, a line of water straight as a sunbeam all the way to the horizon. She glimpsed the Nest of the Lost. In the uncertain light of the morning, the fruits of the light-trees were glowing in broken rows. Beetles clanked to and fro once more, opening their mouths for anybody who wanted to ride in them, and the food places opened, sending out thick smells of meat and drink for anybody who cared to call. But nobody came, nobody but the gulls.
There was a flash of light, a distant crack like thunder.
Flinching, Icebones raised her trunk.
The sun was buried in a dense layer of mist and blue ice clouds at the eastern horizon, a band of light framed by the Gouge’s silhouetted walls. The sky was clear, the world as peaceful as it ever got. What storm comes out of a clear sky…?
Now there was another flash. She peered to the east, where she thought the flash had come from.
The sun was swimming in the sky, sliding from side to side and pulsating in size. A line of light darted down from the sun’s disc, connecting it to the ground, like a huge glowing trunk reaching down through the dusty air. She heard a remote sound, deep and complex — like a landslide, or the cracking of a rock under frost or heat.
She blinked her eyes, seeking to clear them of water. When she stared again into the sun she could see its disc quite clearly, whole and round and unperturbed.
She lowered her head, searching for grass and water, trying to forget the strangeness, to put aside her deep unease.
They were in difficult country.
The Gouge floor was crumpled into ridges and eroded hillocks, pitted by depressions where water pooled, and littered with vast pocked boulders. Progress was slow, and all the mammoths were weary and fractious.
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