Stephen Baxter - Longtusk

It had been so long, so very long. But still, there was something in the set of her head, her carriage -

Something that tugged at his heart.

Hesitantly, she reached out with her trunk and probed his face, eyes, mouth, and dug into his hair.

He knew that touch; the years fell away.

"I thought you were gone to the aurora," she said softly.

"Do I smell of fire?"

"Whatever has become of you, the rain has washed it away. All I can smell is you, Longtusk." She stepped forward and twined her trunk around his.

Through the rain, he could taste the sweet, milky scent of her breath.

"Come." Milkbreath pulled him back to the group, where the huddle was reforming. The other mammoths grumbled and snorted, but Milkbreath trumpeted her anger. "He is my son, and he is returned. Gather around him."

Slowly, they complied. And as the day descended into night and the storm continued to rage, slow, inquisitive trunks nuzzled at his mouth and face.

He felt a surge of warm exhilaration. After all his travels and troubles he was home, home again.

But, even in this moment of warmth, he noticed that there were no small calves at his feet, here at the center of the huddle — no infants at all, in fact.

Even as he greeted his mother, that stark fact dug deep into his mind, infecting it with worry.

The storm blew itself out.

The next day was clear and cold, the sky blue and tall. The water that had poured so enthusiastically from the sky soaked into the ground, quickly, cruelly. But the grassy turf was still waterlogged, and drinking water was easy to find. The mammoths wandered apart, feeding and defecating, shaking the moisture out of their fur.

The spruce that had been struck by lightning was blackened and broken, its ruin still smoking.

Longtusk stayed close to his sister, and, with his mother’s help, encouraged her to eat and drink. Slowly her eyes grew less cloudy.

His mother’s attentiveness, as if he was still a calf, filled a need in him he hadn’t recognized for a long time. He answered as fully as he could all the questions he was asked about his life since he had been split from the Family, and slowly the suspicion of the others wore away. And when he told of the loss of his calf and mate, the suspicion started to turn at last to sympathy.

But there were few here who knew him.

Skyhump, the Matriarch of the Family when he had been born, was long dead now — in fact there had been another Matriarch since, his mother’s elder sister, killed by a fall into a kettle hole, and his mother had succeeded her.

And there was a whole new generation, born since he had left.

There was a Bull calf, for instance, called Threetusk — for the third, spindly ivory spiral that jutted out of his right tusk socket — who seemed fascinated by Longtusk. He would follow Longtusk around, asking him endless questions about the warrior mastodonts like Jaw Like Rock, and he would raise his tusks to Longtusk’s in halfhearted challenge.

Longtusk realized that Threetusk was just how he had been at that age: restless, unhappy with the company of his mother and the other Cows of the Family — not yet ready to join a bachelor herd, but eager to try.

But things were different now. There was no sign of a bachelor herd anywhere nearby for Threetusk to join. Perhaps there was a herd somewhere in this huge land, in another island of nourishing steppe. But how was a juvenile like Threetusk, lacking knowledge of the land, to find his way there in one piece? And if he could not find a herd, what would become of him?…

The Family moved slowly over their patch of steppe, eating sparingly, drinking what they could find. After the first couple of days it was obvious their movements were restricted, and Longtusk took to wandering away from the rest, trying to understand the changed landscape.

He struck out south and east and west.

Each direction he traveled, the complex steppe vegetation soon dwindled out to be replaced by cold desert, or dense coniferous forests, or bland plains of grass. And to the north, of course, there was only the protesting shriek of the ice as it continued its millennial retreat.

And, hard as he listened, he heard no signs of other mammoths.

His Family was isolated in this island of steppe. Other mammoths, Families and bachelor herds, must also be restricted to steppe patches and water holes and other places where they could survive. And the nearest of those islands might be many days’ walk from the others.

This isolation mattered. It made the mammoths fragile, exposed. An illness, a bad winter, even a single fall of heavy snow could take them all, with no place to run.

As they munched at their herbs and grass the others didn’t seem aware of their isolation, the danger it posed for them.

And they didn’t seem aware of the strangest thing of all: there were no young calves here — no squirming bundles of orange fur, wrestling each other or searching for their mothers’ milk and tripping over their trunks.

Longtusk felt a profound sense of unease. And, when he spotted a new skein of geese flapping out of the east, it was an unease that coalesced into a new determination.

He plucked up the courage to speak to his mother.

"There was a Gathering," he said. "When I was a calf. Just before I got lost."

"Yes. The whole Clan was there."

"I saw Pinkface, the Matriarch of Matriarchs. Is she still alive?"

Milkbreath’s trunk tugged at a resistant clump of grass. "There have been several Gatherings since you were lost."

Longtusk said slowly, "That isn’t an answer."

Milkbreath turned to face him, and he was aware of a stiffening among the other Cows close by, his aunts and great-aunts.

He persisted. "When was the last Gathering?"

"Many years ago. It isn’t so easy to travel any more, Longtusk. Especially for the calves and—"

"At the Gathering, the last one. Were there more mammoths — or less?"

Milkbreath snorted her disapproval. "You don’t need to feed me my grass a blade at a time, Longtusk. I can see the drift of your questions."

Rockheart was at his side. "You shouldn’t question the Matriarch. It isn’t the way things are done. Not here."

Milkbreath rumbled, "It’s all right, Rockheart. His education was never finished. Times are hard, Longtusk. The Matriarch of Matriarchs gave us our instructions at the last Gathering. She could foresee the coming changes in the world, the worsening of the weather."

"The collapse of the steppe into these little islands?"

"Yes. Even that. She knew that Gatherings would be difficult or impossible for a long time. She knew there would be fewer of us next year, and fewer still the next after that. But we have endured such changes before, many times, as the ice has come and gone. And we have always survived. It will be hard, but our bodies know the way. That’s the teaching of the Cycle."

"And what about the Fireheads? Did she speak of them?"

"Of course she spoke of the Fireheads, Longtusk. Fireheads come when we are weak and dying. They cut our corpses open for our bones and hearts…"

"But," he said, "there are no Fireheads in the Cycle. Maybe the Fireheads weren’t here when the ice last retreated."

"What does it matter?"

"What I’m saying is that things are different now. The Fireheads are a new threat we haven’t faced before…"

But the Matriarch continued to quote the Cycle. "When I die, I belong to the wolves — or the Fireheads. We must accept the Fireheads, as we accept the warming, and simply endure. In the future, all will be as it was, and there will be great Gatherings again."

Longtusk tried another approach. "When was the last time you heard from the Matriarch of Matriarchs?"