Obsidian and Stars (Ivory and Bone #2)(5)

I shudder. What would be worse? I ask myself. We’ve seen each other, and we’ve understood. Would it have been better to have never been seen at all?

As the sun drops lower and lower behind us, the wait—this painful, dread-laden wait—goes on. The darkness on the canyon floor deepens. Perception shifts. My eyes become unsure. Is that movement? Yes, yes. Pek, closest to the pass, has slid, almost imperceptibly, nearer. A step. A step. He comes closer, his feet pressing down softly on the gravel beneath them, his body rising higher, out of the shade and into the slanting light.

He is almost in the pass. If he were to run, he might make it out before they had him under their feet.

My gaze floats over the mammoths. There is movement there, too—the swish of a tail, the flick of an ear. A huge dark head tilts sideways, and an eye turns toward Pek before returning to the two gray shapes against the gray rock wall—Kol and his father.

At the back of the herd—closer to the pass, closer to Pek—a trunk rises. Then another. The sun catches two bright white tusks tilted toward the sky. Two spears in the light. The other mammoths listen, their ears alert. Will there be a signal? Is this the moment?

The tusks dip back into shadow. Not yet, the mammoth seems to say. But stay vigilant.

When my focus returns to Kol, he has moved.

He’s come closer.

Cloaked in that moment of unbearable frailty, he took a chance. When the slightest shift might have sent the balance crashing into pieces, he let fear and danger serve him as a distraction.

Like Pek, he has reached the bottom slope of the pass. He’s climbed high enough that his shoulders are now in the sunlight, his dark eyes squinting over a restless, tense smile—a smile sprung from the satisfaction of having achieved this small victory. He has gained a degree of safety, and yet the posture of the mammoths has not changed. Not yet.

But as I watch, changes take shape. Slowly, slowly. There are subtle shifts—the angle of a broad back, the turn of a head, the stomp of a foot.

Movement—small but meaningful movement—ripples across the herd. A few feet shuffle under the strain. Not a strain of fatigue, but of impatience—an impatience born out of inaction. Mammoths are active. Though these stand still, they are full of action. Ponderous, potential action.

My eyes shift to Kol’s face. If a moment ago he felt a bit of satisfaction at his progress, that satisfaction is already gone. His teeth clench. His gaze presses on his father, and his hand rises, as he slowly, carefully, fans the air in a circle in front of his chest, bidding his father to come.

Come on, I think. Follow your sons. Move toward the pass.

He takes the first step, his first tenuous step toward escape. A slow slide of his foot.

I do not raise my eyes to the clouds. I do not look for the shadow of the buzzard. I do not need to. I know.

Everything—on the ground, in the air, far away beyond the camp in the bay—everything is still. The clouds could not possibly roll, the waves on the sea could not possibly stir while Kol’s father edges his foot toward the pass. The sun does not sink. The wind does not blow. I do not breathe.

But then one mammoth takes a step—a hurried, urgent step forward—and motion returns. The clouds shiver in the sky, the buzzard swoops low, diving into the canyon, and I draw a deep breath. One mammoth tramples the rock beneath his feet, and nine mammoths watch him, the hides of their backs twitching.

My eyes go to Kol’s father. He knows that the rules have changed. Motion has broken through, and he will make it his tool. In short even steps, he advances. He is steady, unwavering, full of authority. The mammoth whose feet had shown such impatience a moment ago reverts to his rigid posture. All eyes—ours and theirs—fix on Arem as he takes certain, measured strides.

The soft hides of his boots crush the gravel underfoot, and a low whisper of assent rises from the ground. Yes, yes, yes. Twilight sends the shade of the canyon ever higher up the walls, but he is rising, too. Soon he has climbed to the foot of the gravel pass. Thin streaks of evening sun touch the top of his head, glowing blue in his black hair. He walks with his back to us—keeping his eyes on the mammoths as he draws away from them and moves closer to his sons—but as he climbs he throws a quick glance over his shoulder and meets Kol’s eyes.

And something happens.

Beyond Arem, down in the canyon, the mammoth at the front of the herd lifts his tusks, spreads his ears, and lunges forward. A burst of sound flies from his raised trunk.

Stillness reigns as the echo grows and fades. And then everything moves.

Everything moves.

And everything . . .

Everything . . .

Everything changes.





THREE


The stillness dissolves like a snowflake on water.

As one, the mammoths turn and rush toward us, their feet carrying massive and twitching bodies over the ground. Chev, Seeri, and I clamber over the jagged boulders that border the pass, struggling to get out of the way.

As I climb higher I look behind me, my eyes sweeping the lower end of the pass. Pek scrambles onto the slabs opposite me, out of danger. Farther below I see Kol, and behind him—not far, maybe an arm’s length away—his father.

At the foot of the pass, shadows ripple like water. Everything—the ground, the sky, the sun itself—trembles with the motion of the herd.

Kol does not slow, but he turns. I see him reach back, his hand open for his father. He expects him to take his hand.