Stephen Baxter - Longtusk

He watched them butcher a deer. They took its flesh to eat and its skin to make clothing. They even used the tough skin of its forelegs for boot uppers and mittens. They made tools and weapons from its bones and antlers. They used the deer’s fat and marrow for fuel for their lamps, and its blood for glue, and its sinews for bindings, lashings and thread. Gradually the deer was reduced to smaller and smaller pieces, until it was scattered around the settlement.

Longtusk saw a mother use her hair to wipe feces from the backside of a cub.

He saw a male take the lower jawbone of a young deer, from which small sharp teeth protruded like pebbles. He sawed off the teeth at their roots, producing a series of beads almost identical in shape, size and texture, and held together by a strip of dried gum. It was a necklace.

He saw an old male pinch the tiny hearts of captive gulls, seeking to kill them without spoiling their feathers. He skinned the birds, turned the empty skins inside out, and wore the intact skins on his feet — feathers inside — within his boots.

Endless detail, endless strangeness — endless horror.

But the Fireheads went about their tasks without joy or enthusiasm. Even the cubs, when they tried to run and play, were snapped at and cuffed. The settlement had become a bowl of subdued quiet, of slow footsteps.

And Longtusk felt increasingly agitated.

It was natural, he told himself. Bedrock had been the most important of the Fireheads; his death brought finality and change. Who wouldn’t be disturbed?

…But he couldn’t help feeling that his inner turmoil was something beyond that. He was aware that his mood showed in the way he walked, ripped his fodder from the ground, snarled at the Firehead cubs who got in his way or tugged too hard at his belly hairs.

At length, he came to understand what he was going through. He felt oddly ashamed, and he kept it to himself.

Still, Walks With Thunder — as so often — seemed more aware of Longtusk’s moods and difficulties than anybody else. And he came to Longtusk, engaging him in a rumbling conversation as they walked, fed, defecated.

"…It’s interesting to see how differently they treat you," Thunder said, as he watched Firehead cubs, wide-eyed, trot after Longtusk. "Differently from us, I mean. You have to understand that you mammoths were once worshipped as gods by these creatures."

"Worshipped?"

"Remember when we found you at the Dreamer caves, how they threw themselves on the ground? There is little wood here. Trees struggle to grow on land freshly exposed by the ice. And so the Fireheads rely on the mammoths — especially your long-dead ancestors — for bones and skin and fur, material to build their huts and make their clothing and burn on their hearths. Without the resources of the mammoths, it’s possible they couldn’t survive here at all."

Longtusk reminded Thunder of the Dreamers, who had lived so modestly in their rocky caves.

"Ah, but the Fireheads are not like the Dreamers," said Thunder. "They would not be content with eking out unchanging lives like pike basking in a pool. And it is this lack of contentment that drives them on… to greatness and to horror alike.

"They’ve discarded those old beliefs, I think; now, a mammoth is just another animal to them. But still you hairy beasts seem to be admired in a way they have never admired us, despite our long association with them. Of course that doesn’t stop them from going north and—" He stopped abruptly.

The north: the old mystery, Longtusk thought, a mystery that had eluded him for years, despite his quizzing of Jaw Like Rock and other mastodonts; it was as if they had been instructed — perhaps by Thunder — to tell him nothing.

"Going north for what?" he asked now. "What do they seek in the north, Thunder?"

"I shouldn’t have spoken… What’s this?" Suddenly Thunder’s trunk reached out to Longtusk’s ear.

Longtusk couldn’t help but flinch as Thunder’s trunk, strong and wiry, probed in his fur until its tip emerged coated in a black, viscous liquid.

"By Kilukpuk’s mighty dugs," Thunder said. "I thought I could smell it. The way you’ve been dribbling urine… You’re in musth. Musth!"

Musth — a state of agitation associated with stress or rut; musth, in which this foul-smelling liquid would ooze from a mammoth’s temporal gland; musth — when a mammoth’s body was temporarily not under his full control.

"No wonder you’re so agitated. And it’s not the first time either, I’ll wager."

Longtusk pulled away, trumpeting his irritation. "I’m an adult now, Thunder, a Bull. I don’t need—"

"It’s one thing to know what musth is and quite another to control it. And you’ve picked a terrible time to start oozing the black stuff. In a few days you’ll play perhaps the most important role of your life."

"What role? I don’t understand."

"With Crocus, of course. It will be tiring, difficult, stressful — even frightening. Through it all you must maintain absolute control — for all our sakes. And you decide now is the time to go into musth… Oh. Neck Like Spruce."

Longtusk felt his trunk curl up. "Who?"

"You can’t fool me, grazer. That’s the name of the pretty little Cow you’ve been courting, isn’t it?"

"Courting? I don’t know what you’re talking about."

"Perhaps you don’t. We don’t always understand ourselves very well. It’s true, nevertheless — and now this." Thunder rumbled sadly. "Longtusk, I’m just an old fool of a mastodont. I’m not even one of your kind. And I know I’ve filled your head with far too much advice over the years."

Longtusk was embarrassed. "I appreciate your help. I always have—"

"Never mind that," said Thunder testily. "Just listen to me, one last time. You and I — we look alike, but we’re very different. Our kinds were separated, and started to grow apart, more than a thousand Great-Years ago. And that is a long, long time, ten times longer than the ice has been prowling the world."

"Why are you telling me this?"

"While you’re in musth — now and in the future — stay away from Neck Like Spruce. Otherwise you’ll both be hurt, terribly hurt."

"I don’t understand, Thunder…"

But Thunder would say no more. Rumbling sadly, he walked slowly away, in search of fresh forage.

Soon the settlement, without throwing off its pall of gloom, began to bustle with activity. Longtusk learned that the Fireheads were preparing for their own form of Remembering ceremony for their fallen leader.

Everything was being rebuilt; everything was changing. It was obvious the Remembering of Bedrock would mark a great change in the affairs of the settlement — and therefore, surely, in Longtusk’s own life as well, a change whose outcome was impossible to predict.

Every surface, of rock and treated skin, was scraped bare and painted with new, vibrant images. And everywhere the Fireheads made their characteristic mark, the outstretched paw. The artist would lay a bare paw, fingers open, against the rock, then suck paint into the mouth and spray it through a small tube and over the paw to make a silhouette.

The most busy Firehead, at this strange time, was the old male the mastodonts called Flamefingers. He was the manufacturer of the finest tools and ornaments of bone, ivory and stone. Flamefingers was fat and comfortable. The skills of his nimble paws had won him a long and comfortable life, insulated from the dangers of the hunt or the hard graft of the storage pits.

Flamefingers had an apprentice. This wretched male cub had to bring his master food and drink, cloths for the old Firehead to blow his cavernous nose, and even hollowed-out bison skulls, pots for the great artisan to urinate in without having to take the trouble to stand up.