DARKNESS CAME QUICKLY in the ravine, but the cave was filled with firelight. We sat eating strips of meat from the mammoth that lay dead by the river, the women at one fire, the men at another. What a good, safe cave this is, I thought, looking at its dry walls and high ceiling. What a good place, with so much food, and what good people.
And so I ate happily until I was full, hardly hearing what the other women said because I was listening for Timu, glad every time I heard his voice. Even the harsh laughter of the mammoth hunter men had a good sound to it—and why not? Sitting snugly between Junco and Ethis, with Aunt Teal across the fire giving me a smile from time to time, I laughed too.
I always remembered that night, even after I became a spirit. Sometimes loneliness made me think of it, making me wish that once again I was filling myself with mammoth meat among the many people in the firelit cave. But strangely enough, I thought most often of that night after I joined, for a while, the kindred of the very mammoth we ate.
This came about because of something I saw, something that happened because of hunting and meat. At the start of the first summer after I became a spirit, I saw four mammoth cows and one calf walking in bright moonlight on the plain above the ravine. The cave was full of eager hunters, but the mammoths didn’t seem aware of the danger. Slowly and carefully, but not fearfully, they started down the ravine, down the narrow trail from the plain to the river.
In moments the hunters were out of the cave, and before I knew what was happening, huge rocks were bouncing off the mammoths. With loud cries for help, they crowded together, some trying to turn back while others tried to hurry forward. Suddenly three of them toppled off the trail and plunged to the boulders below. Trunk out and tail up, the fourth cow ran straight for the scattering hunters, and with the calf behind her made for the open plain.
The hunters went in the cave to wait for daylight. No one wanted to walk among injured mammoths at night. The firelit cave echoed with the voices of people praising the shamans, the spirits, and each other.
In the dark ravine the three huge shapes lay still. Feeling almost forced to watch them, I waited a long time. At last, like the back of a trancing person, the back of one mammoth seemed to open like a springfly casing, and a hairy spirit rose out of it. Bracing herself with her trunk and a front leg, then the other front leg, she bent a knee to get a hind foot under herself, then heaved herself up. She hadn’t been standing long before the back of the second mammoth split and the second mammoth-spirit got up beside her.
The two touched trunks, then touched the third mammoth lying on the rocks. Nothing happened. The two mammoth-spirits wandered to the river and idly sprayed their chests and shoulders. In time they wandered back to touch the body of the third mammoth again. Still nothing. The two spirits moved toward the cliffs, where they stood swaying, now and then nosing the plants that grew in cracks of the rocks, now and then pulling a little grass to put in their mouths or to toss on their backs. When the moon went down, red and smoky on the dark horizon and the sky in the east became pale gray, the back of the third mammoth split at last and the huge, hairy spirit clambered out of it. By then the other two had drifted quite a way down the ravine, their rumps to the dawn, but as if they knew the third was ready, they now started walking purposefully, and with the third following they went downriver and out of sight.
I was impressed. Here are animals who understand keeping together, I said to myself. I wanted to know more about them and in the morning, in the form of a raven, I flew out to look for a herd. I found one easily, and circled for a while. But the mammoths were grazing on the plain, far from any tree to roost in. And I couldn’t find the courage to land in deep grass. When I got tired, I had to leave without learning anything about them. Later I tried again in the form of a long-legged bustard. Now to wade through the grass was pleasant and easy, and I found myself catching grasshoppers chased up by the mammoths’ feet. But as a bustard I had trouble paying attention to the mammoths, since my thoughts winked like fireflies on a cold, dark night. Few and dim to start with, they seemed to come from nowhere and I couldn’t tell when one might flash or where it went afterwards. Also, the calves seemed to think I was there for their fun, and they chased me mercilessly. At last I saw that to visit mammoths I should take the form of a mammoth, so one night I did, and found myself on four round feet under the rising moon.
Suddenly I realized that mammoths were calling all around me—none nearby, all far away. Mammoths are noisy animals who squeak and squeal, grunt, trumpet, rumble, and roar, but never before had I heard mammoths make these low, rolling calls, like bison bellowing but louder and deeper. It seemed strange to press my nostrils to the earth while looking over the tops of the birch trees, yet that is what I did, listening to the calls. At first the calls seemed unimportant. Some mammoths were just asking where others were and the others were answering; nothing more. But in time I recognized callers by their voices, and soon I could tell how far away each herd was. For no real reason I pulled some grass and tossed it on my shoulders, then set off to find the nearest of those who called.
While the moon sank to the horizon, I walked over the rolling plain, snatching tufts of grass to eat on my way. At last I heard a loud, low call that was almost a warning, smelled fresh dung and the dense, warm hair of mammoths, and heard the loud grunting and farting of mammoths getting to their feet. Caution told me to go no closer, so I stopped, and although the sky was still not quite light enough for me to see the other mammoths clearly, I let the tip of my trunk roam the air.
Suddenly I caught the strong scent of an elderly female, and then, in the gray dawn light, I made out her huge form against the dark forms of the rest of her herd. All were facing me. Very slowly, my head low and turned aside, I moved toward them respectfully.
The elderly leader waited for me to come near. With her head high and her eyes squinting, her chin tight, her cheeks sucked in, and her lips pressed firmly together, the large mammoth seemed strong-minded. Her ears were small and tattered as if they had been frozen when she was young. Her tusks were long, sweeping out and down, then curving inward and upward, with grooves and scratches on them—tusks far older than mine, which were still growing into their downward curve. By the early light her shedding, patchy hair looked black; it was matted on her flanks but sleek on her chest where her summer coat parted over her breasts, which showed behind her forelegs as the breasts of a woman on her hands and knees show behind her arms. When the gathering light shone through this mammoth’s hair, I saw its red color.
How should I act? Never before had I met someone so old or so important. The huge, grown cows around her were her daughters and granddaughters. Some of the calves were her great-grandchildren. When Graylag was still a boy, the red-haired leader was grown, having children. She had been to places I had never seen, places farther than my thoughts had ever flown, and she brought others with her, however far, to water and food, to shelter and safety. She had given life or saved it more times than anyone knew, and all the huge cows with their half-grown sons and daughters, their young children and their little babies, were the proof of her knowledge.
Filled with respect, I walked up to her, trying to show that however shy she made me, I knew to be polite. Gently I lifted my trunk, first to her lips, then to mine. Now she could see that I realized she wasn’t someone to ignore but someone I should learn about. She stood stiffly while I touched her, but seemed satisfied. Grass I tasted, but also a little acid taste of tension in her mouth. Politely I touched the hole of her temple. Tension there too. I touched her vulva. She was not in season. Was she nursing? Just by looking, I couldn’t tell whether her breasts were full. With the finger of my trunk I gently squeezed one of her nipples, then touched my tongue. She had a little milk, rather thin and watery, but then, she was almost too old to have any milk at all. The taste of a calf’s mouth was also on her breast. A calf, but whose? It seemed not to be hers. Had a calf stolen a little milk from the red-haired leader, or was she nursing someone else’s calf?
Lowering my eyes because of the delicate question, I touched her other breast. Milk was there too, and the taste of the calf’s mouth, not from stealing but from nursing. I looked around for the calf and saw a large young male with bristling hair, whose little tusks already showed. He stared at me very boldly, as if he was used to having his own way. Who was he? Not bothering to hide his dislike of strangers, or of watching the red-haired leader with someone else, he looked a bit spoiled. That made him seem like the child of a leader, even if the taste of his mouth was not like hers.
In time the red-haired leader began to touch me. When she lay her trunk across my shoulders, I made no shrug to throw it off. Instead I kept my head low, and when at last I moved, I moved slowly. I wanted her to see that I honored her and her experience. When she slipped her trunk down my neck and stepped by me, letting me go, I eased myself past the rest of her herd and began to pull grass.
And so I joined the mammoths. That very day, when they moved away to graze, I followed them. They were close kin and I was a stranger, so they didn’t let me come into their herd. In fact they kept their children away from me and wouldn’t call me or wait for me when they moved, but as long as I stayed at the edge of their group and didn’t try to walk into the center, they didn’t chase me off.
Other mammoths also stayed near the herd: some young males, sons of the females in the herd, stayed within easy calling distance although often out of sight, and a few huge old bulls would visit us every now and then. At the beginning of summer their madness was on them, making them reek of the strong musk draining from their temple glands and of the stale urine soaking the hair of their legs. Long before we heard or saw one of them, we would smell him, and then we would wait while his enormous shape, quiet as a storm cloud lifting over the horizon, would rise from a slope ahead of us. Carefully he would run his trunk over some of us, searching for the scent of season, and if he thought he found it, he would gape and press the tip of his trunk on the roof of his mouth. But as it happened, no cow of the red-haired leader’s herd was still in season, although those without nursing babies were pregnant, probably by one of the large, frightening males.
Sometimes one of the large males would stay near us for a while, but the doings of the cows and calves didn’t interest any of the males very deeply. In fact the calves annoyed the males, and sometimes we would look up from our grazing to find that our male visitor was gone.
Every morning we grazed. At midday we drank and wallowed in a meltwater pool on the open plain, and in the afternoon we grazed some more. We made as much noise as we liked, screaming when sudden movements startled us, growling at the calves when they ran into us, and calling loudly and often to other herds, friends and sisters of the red-haired leader who grazed on distant parts of the plain. But around us everything else was quiet except for skylarks and insects and the wind in the grass. Other animals moved away when we came near—even lions, even bison, and even a rhino we met one day, who snorted at us but thought better of snorting again when the red-haired leader waved him away with her trunk. He had no business bothering us, and wasn’t going to let his disposition get him into a battle with a herd of female mammoths. He trotted off. Late at night, when the world was quiet and everything was still, we lay down on our sides. Every night I slept deeply. Every night I dreamed of grass, with the wind making footprints on it as far as I could see. No lions, no people, were in this dream—just grass. Not even in dreams would anyone dare bother us. Never did I feel so safe or sleep so well.
So the summer passed, with the other mammoths never letting me in their herd and never bothering to answer when I called them, but giving me the good of their grazing and the protection of their number just the same. Then the grass seeds ripened into countless delicious mouthfuls, the wind grew cold, and flocks of birds flew above us in the night sky, where the stars showed the way to winter shelter. Now and then we met herds of other mammoths whose voices we knew, greeted them, grazed near them for a time, then drifted apart. But from the very distant calls I knew that some of the herds were leaving the plain for their wintergrounds. These days we listened carefully to any faraway call, and answered all of them. The red-haired leader didn’t want to lose touch with the others.
For the first time her herd seemed somewhat restless, since it was clear that the plain was no place to spend a winter. My mind’s eye saw us out in the open, with nothing to break the freezing wind which would soon pack the dead grass in snow, kneeling on the white plain, scraping desperately with our tusks, trying for any mouthful. But the red-haired leader wasn’t ready to go.
One cold night the red-haired leader led us straight to the river. Everyone seemed nervous because of the hunters, but off we went anyway. There was no flaw in her judgment, I saw when we reached the river. The cave was deserted. Even the spirits of Marmot and Goldeneye had gone to the wintergrounds by the Char. Still, the fact that people had been here at all seemed to anger the red-haired leader, who with her daughters beside her pushed a rock off the cliff. We listened to the echoes of it bounding in the valley below. Then, in single file, we followed the red-haired leader down the trail into the ravine.
At the bottom we found the partly eaten bodies of the three dead mammoths I had seen fall at the beginning of summer. These the red-haired leader and her daughters nosed for a while. Now the dead cows looked lonely, sprawled in the moonlight. With their drawn tusks and broken bones they seemed defenseless. All their thoughts and memories must have spilled from their broken heads. If a bad animal came near to eat more of them, they couldn’t get up to leave on their broken, ruined legs. They couldn’t get water to drink or grass to eat. One of them, I saw, must have been the mother of the male calf who now followed the red-haired leader, because he nosed under her arm at the skin of her dry breast. She couldn’t even move her elbow to let him nurse.
At last the red-haired leader set her foot on the shoulder of one of the dead cows, and winding her trunk around the foreleg, she gave a great pull. Slowly the leg slipped from its socket. Changing her grasp so that the big leg balanced, the red-haired leader walked off with it down the floodplain. Then I saw that other mammoths were also pulling pieces off the dead and carrying the pieces away, some walking upstream, some downstream. We would help the corpses as best we could, I saw. We would hide as much of them as possible. I helped too, pulling loose the bare thighbone of one of the cows and carrying it on my tusks to a bank, where I strewed gravel over it.
After hiding all the pieces we could pry from the bodies, we drank water from the river, sprayed our ears and chests, and left, taking the trail to the plain and walking a long way in the cold wind, with the dry grass brushing our ankles. I smelled snow. Far away, late at night, we stopped to eat, then walked some more before we lay down. I woke in the black night with snow all over me, and stood up as fast as I could, thinking that the others had left me behind. But no—they lay fast asleep all around me, gently snoring. Still, the thought that they might leave without me troubled me, so I stayed awake in the falling snow, dozing on my feet.
For more days than I could count we followed old mammoth trails, crossing the Fire River by breaking our way through the ice. All the way, a few of the young bulls kept near us. We finally came to a place I had never visited, a plain like the plain by the Pine River but in a range of low hills with spruce and larch. It was the red-haired leader’s winterground, and from it she called loudly and long to three or four distant herds of mammoths, who answered her eagerly.
The red-haired leader had chosen her winterground well, since the wind eddied among the hills and kept the snow moving. Almost every day we found a place to graze without much digging. And we didn’t need to go far for water, because we were near one of the small rivers that fed Woman Lake. Each morning we broke a hole in the ice and drank our fill.
I grew a winter coat of oily, heavy hair. Except for my ears and the tip of my trunk I was warm, so I kept my ears close against my head and the tip of my trunk in my mouth or under my arm. This I learned from watching other mammoths. And then at last, one day when the others left me behind and I called, for the first time the red-haired leader answered me. Over here, her voice said. When I found her, she touched my lips and temple to see how I was. This pleased me very much and left me deeply satisfied.
After the mammoths let me into their herd, answering my calls, noticing how I felt, letting me browse near them and play with their calves, I became so content that I might have forgotten all about the people. But one morning, to my great surprise, I found myself in the form of a raven. Somehow the shamans had discovered me. I saw that I had no choice but to go to the Char, to Graylag’s lodge, which I had in life helped join to Swift’s meat-strewn summerground. Unwillingly I let the wind lift me into the freezing sky, and with a last look down on the egg-shaped backs of the scattered, browsing mammoths, I began the long flight, squinting against the burning wind and the glare of the sun on the snow.