She tried to sense the new life budding inside her — did it have limbs yet? did it have a trunk? — but she could sense only its glowing, heavy warmth.

At last, one dark and cloudy midnight, the situation came to a head.

Skin-of-Ice approached her. She saw that he staggered slightly. His hairless head was slick and shining with sweat. In his paw he held a glittering flask, already half-empty. He raised it in his paw, almost as a mammoth would raise a trunkful of water. But he drank clumsily, as a mammoth never would, and the fluid spilled over his chin and neck.

She had no idea what the clear fluid was. It certainly wasn’t water, for its smell was thin and sharp, like mold. Surely it would only serve to rot him from within. But perhaps that explained why, when the Lost forced this liquid down their throats, they would dance, shout, fight, fall into an uncomfortable sleep far from their nests near the fires or in the artificial caves. Sometimes — she could tell from the stink — they even fouled themselves.

And it was when the clear liquid was inside him that Skin-of-Ice would cause Silverhair the most pain.

He wiped away the mess on his face with his paw. He stalked before her, eyeing her, calculating. Then he turned and barked at the other Lost. Two of them emerged from one of their improvised caves, reluctant, staggering a little. They yapped at Skin-of-Ice, as if protesting. But Skin-of-Ice began to yell at them once more, pointing to the bindings on Silverhair’s legs, and then pointing behind him.

Silverhair stood stolidly in her trap. It was obvious she was to face some new horror. Whatever it was, she swore to herself, though she could not mask her weakness, she would show no fear.

The Lost, reluctantly obeying Skin-of-Ice, clustered around the stakes that trapped Silverhair’s legs and loosened the ropes. Her wounds, with their encrusted blood and scab tissue and half-healed flesh, were ripped open.

Released, her right foreleg crumpled and she dropped to one knee. The blood that flowed in her knees and hips, joints that had been held stiff and unmoving for so long, felt like fire.

But for the first time since being brought to this place, Silverhair’s legs were free. She stood straight with a great effort.

Now the Lost started to prod at her, and to pull at her ropes. She tried to resist, but she was so weakened, the feeble muscles of these Lost were sufficient to make her walk.

She moved one leg forward, then another. The pain in her hips and shoulders had a stabbing intensity.

But the pain began to ease.

Silverhair had always been blessed by good health, and her constitution was tough — designed, after all, to survive without shelter the rigors of an Arctic winter. Even now she could feel the first inklings of a recovery that might come quickly — if she were ever given the chance.

But still, it hurt.

Her strength was returning. But she did not let her limp become less pronounced. Nor did she raise her head, or fight against the ropes. It occurred to her it might be useful if the Lost did not know how strong she was.

As they passed a fire, Skin-of-Ice pulled out burning branches. He kept one himself and passed the others to his companions. Soon the patch of littered beach was illuminated by overlapping, shifting circles of blood-red light, vivid in the subdued midnight glow.

They led her past Snagtooth. Her aunt was still tied loosely by the rope dangling from her neck. The stump of her severed trunk was ugly, but it seemed to be healing over.

Snagtooth turned away.

Silverhair walked on, flanked by the Lost, led by the capering gait of Skin-of-Ice in the flickering light of the torches.

They were dragging her to another shelter: a dome shape a little bigger than the rest. The shelter stank of mammoth. She felt her dry trunk curl.

The other Lost backed away, leaving her with Skin-of-Ice. Almost trustingly, he reached up and grabbed one of the ropes that led to the tight noose around her neck. Feigning weakness, she allowed herself to be led forward toward the shelter.

Skin-of-Ice shielded his torch and led her through the shelter’s entrance. It was so narrow, her flanks brushed its sides.

She felt something soft. It felt like hair: like a mammoth’s winter coat.

Inside the shelter was utter darkness, relieved only slightly by a disk of indigo sky that showed through a rent in the roof. The stench of death was almost overpowering.

She wondered dully what the Lost was planning. Perhaps this was the place where Skin-of-Ice would, at last, kill her.

He bent and flicked his torch over a small pile in the middle of the floor. It looked like twigs and branches. A fire started. At first smoke billowed up, and there was a stink of fat. But then the smoke cleared, and the fire burned with a clear, steady light.

She saw that the fire was built from bone shards, smashed and broken. Mammoth bones.

The fire’s light grew.

The walls of this shelter were made of some kind of skin, and their supports were curved, and gleamed, white as snow.

The supports were mammoth tusks.

The tusks had been driven into the ground, so that their tips met at the apex of the shelter. They were joined at the tip by a sleeve of what looked like more bone, to make a continuous arch.

The wall skins, too, had been taken from mammoths, she saw now: flayed from corpses, scraped and cleaned, rust-brown hair still dangling from them. As she looked down, she saw more bones — jaws and shoulder blades and leg bones as thick as tree trunks — driven into the ground to fix the skins in place.

Black dread settled on her as she understood. This shelter was made entirely from mammoth hide and bone. It was like being inside an opened-out corpse.

But the horror was not yet done. Skin-of-Ice was pointing at the ground with his paw.

Resting by the doorway was the massive skull of a mammoth. She recognized it. She was looking into the empty eye sockets of Eggtusk.

Skin-of-Ice was confronting her, his paws spread wide, and he was cawing. She knew that he had brought her here, shown her this final horror, to complete his victory over her.

She began to speak to him. "Skin-of-Ice, it is you who is defeated," she said softly. "For I will not forget what you have done here. And when I put you in the ground, the worms will crawl through your skull and inhabit your emptied chest, as you inhabit these desecrated remains."

For a heartbeat he seemed taken aback — almost as if he understood that she was speaking to him.

Then he raised his goad.

She summoned all her strength, and reared up. The ropes around her neck and forelegs parted.

Skin-of-Ice, evidently realizing his carelessness, fell backwards and sprawled before her.

At last her trunk was free. She raised it and trumpeted. She took a deliberate step toward him.

Even now he showed no fear. He raised a paw and curled it: beckoning her, daring her to approach him.

She stabbed at him with her tusk.

But he was fast. He squirmed sideways.

Her tusk drove into the earth. It hit rock buried there, and she felt its tip splinter and crack.

Skin-of-Ice wriggled away. But a splash of bright fresh red disfigured his side, soaking through the loose skins he wore.

She felt a stab of exultation. She had wounded him.

He scrambled out of the shelter.

She set about wrecking this cave of skin. She trampled on the heap of burning bones. She smashed away the supports that held up the grisly roof. When the layers of flayed skin fell over her, exposing the midnight sky, she shook them away.

All this took mere heartbeats.

Then, with her trunk, she picked up the fragments of skin, and laid them reverently over her back. She found herself breathing hard, her limited reserves of energy already depleted.