Stephen Baxter - Silverhair

Somehow she felt comforted. Even in this place of death, she was not alone; she had the wisdom of all her ancestors back to Kilukpuk, the growing heavy warmth of the creature in her womb, the promise that her calves would one day roam the Sky Steppe.

And that promise, she realized, could be kept only if Foxeye and the calves were still alive. For it seemed there was no other mammoth Family left anywhere in the world, no other Family that could populate that fabulous land of the future.

In that case, it was up to Silverhair — the last free mammoth — to save her Family from the Lost. She would make her way to the south of the Island, to the foul nest of the Lost. And this time she would enter it, not as a weakened, starved captive, but strong and free. She would destroy Skin-of-Ice and all his works. She would keep her promise to Foxeye and free her Family. And then…

And then, the Cycle would guide her once more into the unknown future.

Treading carefully between the scattered heaps of bones, she resumed her steady march south.

At last, after many empty days, she reached the southern coast.

Once more she tramped along the narrow shingle beach. The sky was littered with scattered, glowing clouds, and the calm, flat seascape of floating ice pans perfectly mirrored the sky. Brown kelp streamers lay thickly on the moist stones.

She moved with great caution as she neared the site of the Lost nest, and listened hard for the clattering flap of the light-bird. Her heart pumped. She knew that her best chance would be to surprise the Lost, to charge into their camp and overwhelm them with her flashing tusks.

But there was no noise save the washing of the sea, no smell save the rich salt brine.

No sign of the Lost.

Her plans and speculations dissipated as she reached the nest site.

The camp was abandoned. Only a few blackened scars on the beach showed where the Lost had built their fires; only a few rudimentary shelters remained to show where the Lost had hidden from the rain and wind.

Silverhair ached with frustration. She had been prepared for battle here, and there was no battle to be had. Her blood fizzed through her veins, and her tusks itched with the need to impale the soft belly of a Lost.

She found the stakes to which she had been pinned for so long, still stained black with her blood. And she found the web of black rope that had trapped Foxeye. Rust-brown calf hair was caught in the web. She held the hair to her mouth.

She could taste Sunfire. The Family had been brought here, then.

There was a clatter of whirling wings. She turned, raised her trunk, and trumpeted her defiance.

The noise was indeed the light-bird. But it was far away, she saw: on the other side of the Channel, in fact, hovering over the Mainland, which was clear of fog and storm at last; its ugly noise was brought to her by the vagaries of the breezes.

She understood what had happened. The Lost had returned to the Mainland, from whence they had come.

There was no sign that the Family had died here; if such a slaughter had taken place, the beach would be littered with bones and hair and scraps of flesh and skin. Then — if they were not dead — the mammoths must have been taken to the Mainland too.

If she was to save them, that was where Silverhair must go.

She walked down the beach and stood at the edge of the Channel between Island and Mainland.

In stark contrast to the dry colors of the late summer landscape, a wide stretch of sea was still white: packed solid by flat ice. Along the shoreline, however, was a wide band of clear water interspersed with stranded icebergs, many of them grotesquely shaped by continual melting and refreezing. Ivory gulls perched on the highest bergs, and beside the smaller blocks lodged on the tide-line ran little groups of turnstone and sanderling. The wading birds pecked at Crustacea among the litter of kelp. The best feeding place for the creatures of the sea was the ice-edge, where the ice meets the open sea. She could see many murres working there, their high-pitched calls echoing as their thick bills bobbed into the water. The cries of the birds were overlaid with the deep, powerful breathing of beluga — white whales, their sleek bodies easily as massive as Silverhair’s, and capped by long, spiraling tusks — and narwal, mottled gray, pods of them cruising the ice-edge or diving beneath the ice itself.

A large bearded seal broke the surface near the coast, regarded Silverhair with large, sad eyes, then ducked beneath the ice-strewn water once more.

To get to the Mainland, Silverhair would have to cross this teeming water-world.

She remembered standing on this shore with Lop-ear — her reluctance even to dip her trunk in the sea, his playful calls to the Calves of Siros.

Once, Longtusk had crossed this Channel to bring his Kin to the Island. It had been a great migration, with thousands of mammoths delivered to safety. But the Cycle was silent about how Longtusk did it. Some said he flew across the water. If Silverhair could fly now, she would.

But on one point the Cycle was absolutely clear: Longtusk himself did not survive the passage.

Today, then, she must outdo Longtusk himself.

Silverhair gathered her courage. She stepped forward.

Thin landfast ice crunched around her feet. The water immediately soaked through the thick hair over her legs, and its chill reached her skin. She could feel the water seeping up the hairs dangling from her belly, and more ice broke around her chest.

She stumbled, and suddenly the water flooded over her chest and back, and forced its way into her mouth. She scrambled backward, coughing, a spray of water erupting from her mouth. But she lost her footing again and slipped sideways, and suddenly her head was immersed.

She fought brief panic.

She stood straight and lifted her head out of the water, opened her mouth and took a deep draught of air. The water felt tight around her chest, like a band of ice.

Dread flooded her. She remembered the stream of runoff that had almost killed her as a calf. She had been so small then, and the stream — which she could probably ford easily now — had been a lethal torrent, no less intimidating than the Channel that faced her now. She longed to turn and flee back to the land, to abandon this quest.

But she knew this was only the beginning.

Deliberately she took another step forward. The ice, cracking, brushed against her chest. She lifted her head back as far as she could go, trying to keep her eyes and mouth out of the water. But at last the water was too deep, and it closed over her head.

The cold was shocking, like a physical blow, so intense it made her gasp.

She forced herself to open her eyes.

The water was gray-green, and its surface was a glimmering sheet above her. She could see floating ice, thin gray slabs of it over her head.

She thrust her trunk through the surface so that it protruded from the water. She blew hard to clear her trunk of water, and sucked in deep lungfuls of clean, salty air. She could feel her chest drag against the heavy pressure of the water, which was trying, it seemed, to crush her ribs like a trampled egg. But she could breathe.

She was floating in the water, submerged save for her trunk, her body hair waving around her. Instinctively she surged forward, dragging at the water with her forelegs, kicking with her hind legs. Soon she could see she was pushing through the clumps of ice that littered the surface, and the air was whistling easily into her lungs.

All she had to do was keep this up for the unknown time it would take to cross the Channel — and overcome the savage current and whatever other dangers might lurk in the deeper water — and emerge, exhausted, onto a beach crawling with Lost…