Encouraged by the presence of her ancestors, she walked on into the dark, and the gathering breeze.

And after only a little more time, she emerged from a rocky mouth into summer daylight.

The fresh air and the light brought her relief, but no joy.

She clung to Owlheart’s instructions about seeking out help, about joining with another Family, if it could be found. So she began a wide detour toward the southeast of the Island. There was a place she had visited as a calf, many years ago, where the land was hummocky and uneven, and there were many deep, small ponds. Here — held the wisdom of the Clan — even in the hardest winter, it was often possible to smash through the thinner ice with a blow from a tusk and reach liquid water.

And there, she hoped, she would find signs of the other Families of the Clan: if not the mammoths themselves, then at least evidence that they had been there recently, and maybe some clue about which way they had gone, and where she could find them.

If not there, she thought grimly, then nowhere.

But as she worked her way south, still she saw no signs of other mammoth Families.

She walked on, doggedly.

The tundra was still alive with flowers. There were bright purple saxifrages, and mountain avens and cushions of moss campion studded with tiny white blossoms. Silverhair found a cluster of Arctic poppies, their cup-shaped yellow heads turning to the sun; they were drenched with dew from a summer fog that had rolled over them, bringing them valuable moisture. Even on otherwise barren ground, the grass grew thick and green around the mouths of Arctic fox burrows, places fed by dung and food remains perhaps for centuries.

All the plants were adapted to the extreme cold, dryness, and searing winds of the Island. They grew in clumps: tussocks, carpets, and rosettes, and their leaves were thick and waxy, which helped them retain their water.

But already the summer was past its peak.

The insect life was dying back. The hordes of midges, mosquitoes, and blackflies were gone; the adults, having laid their eggs long ago, were all gone, leaving the larvae to winter in the soil or pond water. Spiders and mites were seeking shelter in the soil or the litter of decaying lichen and vegetation.

Birth, a brief life of light and struggle, rapid death. Silverhair sensed the mass of the baby inside her, and her heart was heavy. Would she be able to give her own child even as much as this, as the short lives of the summer creatures?

Through the briefly teeming landscape, oblivious to the riot of color, Silverhair walked stolidly on.

Seeking to build up her strength for whatever lay ahead, she took care to feed, drink, and pass dung properly. Feeding was, briefly, a pleasure at this time of year, for the berries were ripe. She munched on the bright red cranberries, yellow cloudberries, midnight blue bilberries, and inky-black crowberries that clustered on leathery plants. But there was a tinge of sadness about this treat, for the ripening berries were another sign of the autumn that was already close.

After a few days she could hear the soft lapping of water, smell the thick scummy greenness of the life that gathered in the deep ponds of this corner of the Island.

But there was still no sign of mammoth: no stomping, no contact rumbles, no smell of fur and milk.

And at last she came to the place of the ponds, and her heart sank. For she found herself treading on the bones of a young mammoth.

When he died he — or she — must have been about the same age as Croptail. The scavengers and the frost had left little of the youngster’s skin and fur, and the cartilage, tendon, and ligament had been stripped from the bones, which were separated and scattered. Some of the bones bore teeth marks, and some had been broken open, she saw, by a wolf or fox eager to suck the nourishing, fatty marrow from inside.

He must have been dead for months.

She touched the scattered bones with her feet, in a brief moment of Remembering. But she knew she could not linger. For ahead of her, she saw now — between herself and the glimmering surface of the ponds — was a field full of stripped and scattered bones.

She walked forward with caution and dread.

Soon there were so many bones, so badly scattered, it was impossible even to pick out individuals. Still, she could see from their size that most of those who had died here had been youngsters — even infants. As she approached the ponds, the bones were larger — just as dead, but the bones of older calves and adults.

The tundra here was badly trampled, and all but stripped bare of grass and shrubs; even months of growth hadn’t been enough for it to recover. The bones, too, were badly scattered and trampled. She found crushed skulls, ribs smashed and scored with the marks of mammoth soles. And she saw snapped-off tusks, evidence of brief and bitter battles.

There had been little Remembering here, she saw with sadness. It was as the Cycle teaches: Where water vanishes, sanity soon follows.

It was becoming horribly clear what had happened in this place.

As the pressure to find water had grown, so the discipline of this Family had broken down. Probably the youngest — pushed away from the water holes by their older siblings, even their parents, and too small anyway to reach the water through thick ice with their little tusks — had gone first. Then the oldest and weakest of the adults.

The diminishing survivors had trampled over the bodies of their relatives — perhaps even digging through the fallen corpses to get to the precious liquid — until they, in their turn, had succumbed.

It had been a rich time for the scavengers and the cubs of Aglu.

The destruction was not thorough; few of the bones close to the water had been gnawed by the wolves, she saw. But then, there had been no need to root in rotting corpses for sustenance; the wolves had only to wait for another mammoth to fall and offer them warm, fresh meat and marrow.

At last she reached the ponds at the heart of this grisly tableau. The ponds brimmed, their surfaces thick with green summer life, swarms of insects buzzing over their surfaces. Their fecundity mocked the mammoths who must have come here in the depths of the dry winter, desperate for the water that could have kept them alive.

Silverhair realized that, but for the wisdom of Owlheart, her own Family might have succumbed like this.

Silverhair stood tall and surveyed the tundra. The land was teeming with life, the hum of insects, the lap of water, the cries of birds and small mammals.

But nowhere was there the voice of a mammoth.

With these bones, Silverhair knew at last that the fears of Lop-ear and Wolfnose were confirmed. Ten thousand years after Longtusk had led his Family here, there were no more mammoths on the Island. The winter’s dryness had taken the last of the Families — the last but her own.

And now those few survivors were in the hands of the remorseless Lost.

She was alone: the only mammoth in all the world who was alive, and still free to act.

She shivered, for she knew that all of her people’s history funneled through her mind and heart now. If she failed, then so would the mammoths, for all time.

…And yet, hadn’t she already failed? In her foolishness she had ignored the teaching of the Cycle, and had gone to seek out the Lost. By doing that she had made them aware of the existence of her Family — had caused the deaths of Eggtusk and Lop-ear and Snagtooth and Owlheart, and the trapping of Foxeye and her cubs — all of it was her fault.

She sank to the bone-littered ground, heavy with despair.

Alone, desolate, with no Matriarch to guide her — as she’d been trained since she was a calf — she turned to the Cycle.