Stephen Baxter - Silverhair

The mammoths stood for a heartbeat, studying their work.

Silverhair looked back at Wolfnose. But Wolfnose was obviously drained; she stood with her trunk dangling, eyes closed, rain sleeting off her back.

Silverhair turned to Lop-ear. "It’s your idea, Lop-ear. Tell us what to do next."

Now that he was being taken seriously, Lop-ear looked even more nervous and agitated than before. "More trees! That’s it. Pile them on this one. Any you can find. And anything else — boulders, shrubs…"

Eggtusk growled. "By the lemmings that burrow in the stinking armpits of Kilukpuk, what madness is this?"

Owlheart said dryly, "We may as well see it through, Eggtusk. Come on." And she lumbered farther up the stream, to a tumbled sapling.

With the Matriarch’s implicit approval, the others hurried to work.

Silverhair helped Eggtusk haul another huge tree up the stream. But most of the fallen trees were simply too massive to move.

Lop-ear led them to a small stand of saplings, most of them still upright, and began to barge against the smallest of them with his head. "These will do," he said. "Smash them off and take them to the stream."

Silverhair joined in. This, at least, was familiar. Mammoths will often break and push over young trees; the apparently destructive act serves to clear the land and maintain its openness, and thus the health of the tundra.

So the barrier grew, higgledy-piggledy, with branches and stones and even whole bushes thrown on it, their roots still dripping with dirt. Even little Croptail helped, rolling boulders into the stream where they clattered to rest against the growing pile that lay across the stream.

As the barrier grew, the water of the runoff was evidently having trouble penetrating the thickening mass of foliage, rocks, and dirt. At last the water began to form a brimming pool behind the barrier.

And ahead of it, the stream’s volume was greatly reduced to a sluggish brook that crawled through the muddy channel. Silverhair stared in amazement, suddenly understanding what Lop-ear had intended.

Lop-ear stood on the bank of the stream. His head was smeared with blood and mud, and his belly hairs, soaked through, were beginning to stiffen with frost. But when he looked on his work he raised his trunk and trumpeted with triumph. "That’s it! We can cross now."

"By Kilukpuk’s fetid breath," growled Eggtusk. "It’s muddy, and boggy — it won’t be easy — but yes, we should be able to ford there now. I never expected to say this, Lop-ear, but there may be something useful about you after all."

"We should move fast," said Lop-ear, apparently indifferent to Eggtusk’s praise. "The water is still rising. When it reaches the top of the barrier it will come rushing over, just as hard as before."

"And besides," Silverhair pointed out, "that fire hasn’t stopped burning."

The Matriarch, who had already taken in the situation, brayed a sharp command, and the mammoths prepared for the crossing.

They got Foxeye and the calves across first.

Croptail had no difficulty. He slid down a muddy bank into the water, then emerged to shake himself dry and scramble up the far side to his mother’s waiting trunk. Silverhair heard him squeal in delight, as if it were all a game.

Eggtusk was the key to getting Sunfire across. The great Bull plunged willingly into the river, sinking into freezing mud and water that lapped over his belly. The calf slithered down into the ditch and clambered across Eggtusk’s broad, patient back.

Then, with Sunfire safely across, Lop-ear reached down and thrust forward a foot for Eggtusk to grasp with his trunk. Eggtusk pulled himself out, huffing mightily, with Lop-ear scrambling to hold his position, and Owlheart and Silverhair threw bark and twigs beneath Eggtusk’s feet to help him climb.

Wolfnose was more difficult.

Owlheart tugged gently at her mother’s trunk. "Come now."

Wolfnose opened her eyes within their nests of wrinkles, regarded her daughter, and with a sigh lifted her feet from the clinging, icy mud. The others gathered around her, Eggtusk behind her. But when she came to the slippery bank of the stream, Wolfnose stopped.

"I am weary," said Wolfnose slowly. "Leave me. I will sleep first."

Owlheart stood before her, helpless; and Silverhair felt her heart sink.

But Eggtusk growled, and he began to butt Wolfnose’s backside, quite disrespectfully. "I — have — had — enough — of — this!"

Almost against her will, Wolfnose was soon hobbling down the slippery bank. Silverhair and the others quickly gathered around her, helping her to stay on her feet. Wolfnose splashed, hard, into the cold, turbulent stream that emerged from beneath Lop-ear’s impromptu dam. Once there, breathing heavily, she found it hard to scramble out of the clinging mud. But Eggtusk plunged belly-deep into the mud and shoved gamely at the old Cow’s rear.

At last, with much scrambling, pushing, and pulling, they had Wolfnose safely lodged on the far bank.

Not long after they had crossed, the water came brimming over the barrier, like a trunk emptying into a great mouth. The barrier fell apart, the trees scattering down the renewed stream like twigs, and it was as if the place they had forded had never been.

The storm blew itself out.

Silverhair watched as the fire came billowing across the tundra, at last reaching the bank they had left behind. But as the rain grew more liquid — and as the dry grass was consumed, with rain hissing over the scorched ground — the fire died.

Silverhair and Lop-ear emerged from the forest and stood on the rocky ground overlooking the stream. On the far side of the stream the ground was blackened and steaming, with here and there the burned-out stump of a sapling spruce protruding from the ground.

A spectacular sheet of golden light, from broken clouds at the horizon, shimmered beneath the remaining gray clouds above.

"We’ll have to move on soon," said Lop-ear. "There isn’t anything for us to eat on this stony ground…"

"The fire would have killed us," said Silverhair. She was certain she was right. Without Lop-ear’s strange ingenuity, they would have perished. She looked down at the tree trunks scattered along the length of the runoff stream. "I don’t know how you got the idea. But you saved us."

"Yes," Lop-ear said gloomily. "But maybe Owlheart was right."

"What do you mean?"

"I defied the Cycle. I defied Owlheart. I don’t want that, Silverhair. I don’t want to be different."

"Lop-ear—"

"Maybe there is something of the Lost about me. Something dark."

With that, his eyes deep and troubled, he turned away.

No, thought Silverhair. No, you’re wrong. Wolfnose, old and weary as she is, was able to see the value of new thinking — as was Ganesha the Wise before her.

The Cycle might not be able to guide them through the troubled times to come. It would require minds like Lop-ear’s — new thinking, new solutions — if they were to survive.

She thought of the creature she had seen on the ice floe. One of the Lost, Eggtusk had said.

Her brain seethed with speculation over dangers and opportunities. Somehow, she knew, her destiny was bound up with the ugly, predatory monster she had encountered on that ice floe.

Destiny — or opportunity?

Silverhair surveyed the wreckage of the barrier a little longer. She tried to remember how it had been, what they had done to defeat the river. But already, she could not picture how it had been.

And the runoff stream was dwindling. The glacier ice had been melted by the heat absorbed by the rock faces during the day. But as the sun sank, the rock cooled and the runoff slowed, reducing the torrents and gushes to mere trickles — which would, Silverhair realized ruefully, have been easy to cross.