She wrapped her trunk around a thick tuft of sedge and twisted it out of the mud. It pulled free with a satisfying "splock" and she raised it into her mouth. She chewed in pleasure, savoring the sweet green juice of the new sprouts, the pleasant crunch of the bog mud. The soft fresh food was a relief. Her teeth were old and worn and she had lost one on the left side two years ago. Throughout the long winter she had been wincing as she gnawed the dry lichens and the few shriveled remains of last year’s ferns she had been able to scrape laboriously from beneath the snow.
The winter had been long, but not as long or as cold as she remembered from her youth, when there had been many of her kind dotting the wind-swept steppes, their long hair blowing in the icy wind off the blue wall of ice glinting on the northern horizon. Then the trumpeting of the big males had resounded over the plains, keeping the herd together, each aware of the locations of the others, though scattered out of sight in the valleys of the milk-white rivers that flowed down from the ice.
How long had it been since she had heard that sound? Ten years, twelve? There had been that angry bellow that had come down the wind, sending her hurrying across the hills in search of another of her kind. There had been a time in her youth when her blood would have warmed to that male voice, or if she had been with one of her children, she would have hurried away, for the huge males sometimes killed the offspring of other males. But on this occasion she had been so overjoyed to hear another voice she had rushed to find him. It had been over a year since she had encountered anyone at all. When she came to him at last, she found an old male, her own age at least, lying on his side beside a small stream. He had raised his huge shaggy head to look at her as she waded across to him. His eyes were glazed with pain and exhaustion. A long straight spear protruded from between his ribs and his thick fur was matted with blackened blood.
He raised his trunk to her and she brought her own down so the sensitive tips met. They sniffed deeply, and she recognized him as of the Pine Clan from far to the west. Many years ago her older sister had mated with a Pine Clan male, and the scent brought back bittersweet memories of happier times. She knew he was smelling her Muskeg Clan breath. There had been a time in their youth when this meeting might have led to an exciting violent/tender lovemaking and he would have filled her womb with new life. Now they were both old and he was dying and they were the last of their kind. She had stood looking helplessly down at him, her trunk moving tenderly around the terrible wound. She took hold of the stick and tried to gently pull it, but he groaned in pain and a fresh gush of bright red blood ran down his side.
They both knew there was nothing that could be done, and so she had stood beside him while he slowly weakened and his life drained out of him. It had taken days and he had suffered terribly, but it gave her pleasure to be beside him, knowing he was glad she was there, taking pleasure in being able to give him some comfort. When it was over she had stood there for two more days beside his rapidly freezing body, reluctant to leave him. She did not know of any others of her kind, and she had no direction in which to walk.
One night a year after that she had been awakened by a faint cry of pain in the distance, just at the limit of hearing. It was female, short and sharp and not repeated, so she was not even clear from which direction it had come. But she kept repeating the sound in her mind, savoring the sound of another voice. She had thought she was the last of all her ancient kind, but somewhere out there in the dark another had walked through the lonely years. She had no way to find her now, and perhaps she had heard only her death cry. But the thought that another female had been out there all these years filled her with sadness that they had not found each other. What joy it would have been to walk together - to lean against each other’s warmth in the endless bitter winter nights.
After that she had spent the summers purposely looking for any others. But each time she came in sight of one of the ancient favored grazing areas, she found it empty. She would spend a day or two at each one, picking listlessly at the forage, her great ears spread to catch the sound of returning voices. As she chewed, her mind was filled with scenes of past joys - the great herds, the thunder of their feet as they moved, the deep rumbles of their voices, the youngsters gamboling amongst their legs, the sweet hot joy of mating, the suck of a young one at her breasts. But after a few days she would think of another of the traditional spots where for uncounted millennia the people had gathered, and she would set off again.
But it had been many years now since she had seen any trace of her race other than the occasional heaps of whitening bones, the huge massive skulls sinking into the tundra, their twelve-foot tusks smooth under her stroking trunk. Sometimes, from the scent of the rotting fur or the shape of the tusks, she recognized the individual who had died there, and grieved anew.
But in recent years her hips had begun to ache more and more, and she could not wander such long distances. Nonetheless, she continued to move from one traditional site to the next, feeling it important to maintain the old ways. She took pleasure in pacing the ancient pathways of her people, trails worn deep into the permafrost by countless centuries of massive feet, but now overgrown and barely visible.
At first light this morning she had at last reached this bog, first smelling it from miles away yesterday. It had been a long winter and she was very hungry. She had long since lost the habit of checking the area first to see if she was alone. She had given a little snuffle of pleasure and waded joyously out into the sticky mud, her great round feet sinking pleasantly into the muck. Since then she had been happily munching, her mind for once free of her constant loneliness. Perhaps that was why she had abandoned her usual caution.
She paused in her browsing, suddenly uneasy. She couldn’t say what had disturbed her. Some unnamed sense, bred into her kind over the long millennia they had grazed these icy steppes, warned her that danger was near. She raised her trunk high over her head, rotating it to taste the icy wind that swept down from the north, bitter even on this fine spring morning. She could smell the clean sharp bite of the ice, though the mile-high walls of dirty blue-white ice were many days walk away. There was the ripe smell of the mud and the fresh green scent of the grass and ferns. Behind all this was a faint trace of the musky scent of reindeer somewhere close by, but nothing else.
Why then did she tingle with this sense of danger? Looking around, she saw several reindeer on a hillside nearby. There was certainly no reason to fear them. They were stupid, harmless creatures, not worth a second look. There were no wolves within miles, though even in her aged state, she did not think they would be a danger to her. One sweep of her tusks or a well-placed foot would easily crush a wolf. The only thing she really feared was the new animals, the small ones with the sharp sticks that had killed so many of her people. But their scent was very distinctive and easily recognized at a great distance. Besides, she hadn’t seen a trace of them in years. They had suddenly appeared a few generations ago, had butchered her people savagely, and then apparently disappeared again. Perhaps now that her people were all gone, they had returned to wherever they had come from.
Still she felt uneasy, and she peered around again, a clump of grass dangling from her mouth. Nothing had changed, except the reindeer were closer now. They were moving slowly down the hill toward her. When she looked at them, they were either motionless or had their heads down to graze. But each time she looked away and back again, they were closer. Something seemed unusual about their motion or their shapes, but her eyes weren’t as good as they had been, and she couldn’t decide what was wrong with them. Their silent approach from downwind made her uncomfortable. She swallowed a last bite and started walking slowly away from the reindeer toward the opposite side of the bog.
There came a series of bird calls - a ptarmigan’s low chirp; a hawk’s whistle. The sound came from the direction of the reindeer, but she didn’t see any birds nearby. There was something wrong with the way they moved. Her alarm grew, and she quickened her pace. Suddenly the reindeer changed. In some way she didn’t understand, their skins fell away and they turned into the small hunter animals, her only enemy. They leaped down the hillside toward her, carrying their long sticks. Only then could she smell them, the rank stink of their sweat emerging from the warm familiar scent of the deer.
The hunters divided into two groups and circled around the edges of the bog. They were not very fast, and normally she could easily outrun them in the open. She tried to break into a gallop, but the bog was freshly thawed and the yielding mud clutched at her feet. She moved as quickly as she could, and suddenly they cried out to each other. Her heart went suddenly cold within her. The voice of the hunters was unlike that of any other animal, but once heard, it could never be forgotten.
She had first heard it as a youngster, when the entire Muskeg Clan was together at the Bear River. The sentries had picked up a strange scent and called a warning. Everyone raised their trunks as one. She had imitated them, and smelled a strange odor totally unlike anything she had experienced before. Suddenly the herd, all two hundred and fifty of them, had turned and bolted. Before she knew what had happened, they were all running. Terrified, she had galloped as fast as she could, while immense feet pounded the ground around her. That’s when, even over that thunder, she had first heard the voices of the hunters. There was a scream of pain, and she looked back to see one of the females falling back, clearly in agony. The youngster stopped, expecting the herd to circle back to help her, as they always did when someone fell or was ill. When the wolves attacked, the adult males always circled the herd and stood with their fearsome tusks thrust outward. They were so immense and so powerful that few wolves attempted the circle, and none more than once. She looked up at a big male running past her and was astonished at the look of fear in his huge eye. They were all running, not to help, but dashing away as fast as they could run. She was shocked to her core that anything could frighten the big males. They had always seemed infinitely powerful. She looked back and had a quick glimpse of the hunters gathering around the wounded one; then her mother caught her and drove her roughly on.
Since then she had seen dozens of her people killed by these strange hunters, and always they had made those eerie calls. Now they were after her, and it all came down to a simple matter of speed and footing. If she could reach open ground she should be able to outrun them. But it was going to be close. The hunters were surprisingly fast with their ungainly two-legged gait. Everything about them was strange and disturbing: their smell, their noises, the way they stood and moved, even their odd fur of different colors, almost as if they had been assembled out of fragments of other animals.
She felt the ground grow firmer beneath her feet, and she plunged on. She was going to make it! But it had been years since she had run, and sharp pains shot through her hips and back with each jolting step. She gasped for breath, forcing herself to go on. She had no choice; the hunters were on both sides of her, racing to cut her off. In her prime she could have outrun these small weak things easily, or turned on them and thrown them screaming into the sky on her tusks. The image gave her strength, but now, though she was out of the mud, she still felt as if she were pushing through chest-deep snow. She couldn’t make herself go any faster, and slowly the hunters pulled ahead.
She ran on, but there came a moment when she knew she had lost. They knew it too, and called to each other with triumph in their voices. In another minute two of them in her path. One held his spear out threateningly, but the other stood doubled over, trying to catch his breath. She realized they were as tired as she, had pushed themselves to their limit to catch her. It gave her some wry pride as she slowed and stopped. There were just two of them now. Looking around, she saw that members of their pack had dropped off and now lined the banks of the bog, watching her with their strange flat faces. She moved back out into the center, out of the range of their spears.
Now that she could see them clearly, she was sure they were all young males, some of them not yet adults. No doubt they were a hunting party that had come upon her trail and followed her for some time. They didn’t seem eager to come in after her. She doubted if any of them had ever hunted one of her people before. She herself hadn’t seen another of her kind since before these hunters were born. For all she knew, she was the last of her people in all the world.
The thought struck her like a blow. She had never considered it consciously before, but she realized now the idea had been hovering there for a long time. She knew she was the last of her Clan, but she had no idea how many other clans there were. She had always believed that there could be others, somewhere far away. But it had been so many years now that she could no longer pretend. She felt that if there were others she would somehow sense their presence. But she was alone, and had been for so long she couldn’t remember what it had felt like to be with others.
She remembered them, though. She remembered their faces, their scents, their voices. They remained present all around her: her mother, her friends, her lovers, and all her children. She could remember how each one had died. She even remembered the old chief of the clan who had died her first summer. How terrified she had been of his fierce eye, his overwhelming presence. She remembered the beautiful male from the Porcupine Clan she had met at the autumn gathering when she was six and in her prime. She could sense the ancient land all around her. She felt it sweep outward from her, with its hills and bogs, its rocky crests and flowered meadows. She knew where the best ferns grew in the spring and the best berries in the summer. She knew where salt could be found, and where the people congregated for the mating in the fall.
All these things existed now only in her mind - all the knowledge of the ancient ones, the heroes who had lived long ago, the kindnesses shared, the loved ones mourned. She carried all the knowledge of her race within her; their ancient wanderings in the west, the great passage of the narrows where the ice came nearly down to the sea, the peopling of this new world a thousand generations ago. When she was gone they would all be gone forever. She felt a great weight descend on her. She could not let it all disappear.
She was pulled from her reverie by the hunters calling to each other. They seemed excited, nervous. She could smell the fear on them. None of them could have killed one of her people before. Their fathers perhaps, certainly their grandparents. But to these young males, she must be a beast of legend, the mightiest creature to walk the land. No doubt they dreamed they would be famous hunters if they killed her. She hoped to disappoint them, but she could see no way out. They were spaced at equal distances around the bog, perhaps a hundred yards apart. She knew she wasn’t fast enough to break through the circle. If she tried it, several of them would be there to oppose her, and she knew all too well the power of their spears. She was too old to hope to defeat them.
Perhaps they wouldn’t come into the bog after her. Could she wait them out? She would have plenty to eat, while they would grow colder and hungrier. Would they give up and leave? She didn’t think so. She knew them too well. But even if she escaped these hunters, what then? She was old, she was unlikely to survive another winter. Then she would die anyway, slowly freezing in the darkness, more alone than anyone else had ever been.
Then she would have to fight. She remembered her earlier surge of strength when she had imagined how sweet it would feel to kill one of them. It would bring some small measure of justice to her lost people; some revenge for her children, who should have grown old and died surrounded by their own children. Her heart warmed to the thought.
Then let it end here. Let her die in battle, like one of the heroes of old. Let her bones lie here, in this valley, a monument to all her race. She turned slowly and examined each hunter in turn. Which one would it be? One was little more than a child. He trembled as he clutched his spear, twice as tall as he. She could trample him in an instant, drive him into the mud like a stone before the others could catch her. But no, it shouldn’t end like that. She turned around again, and found the strongest of them. He was the tallest at least, and he stood watching her calmly, leaning on his spear, confident in his strength and skill. Still, he was young, and could not have many big kills to his credit - certainly nothing the size of her.
She turned to face him and drew herself up to her full height. She was only a female, not the biggest even in her family, and shrunken now with age. Still she towered twice his height and had been in more battles than he had years. He seemed to sense the change in her, for he straightened up and lowered his spear. He could not know she was the last of all her kind, that she bore all their lives, all their hatred for him and his kind. He would not be facing one old worn-out female, but all the mighty bulls who had ever lived. She raised her head and gave a mighty trumpet, a challenge and a lament. It echoed across the steppes, the last time that sound would ever be heard in the world. Then she lowered her head and began trotting toward him. She was no longer aware of the pain in her hips, nor the tiredness in her legs. She broke into a run, the ground shaking beneath her, water spraying from her feet. She was dimly aware of the other hunters rushing forward, but they would not catch her before they met. She had her eyes locked on those of the young man. Something passed between them, and each saw his own death approaching. Suddenly her years of despair, her rage, fell away. These were the hated enemies of her people, the murderers of her children. But they were alive, and they would live on after her. They would tell others of this day, and she would not be forgotten - none of the people would be forgotten. And at the end, she was no longer alone.
copyright 2004 by Brian K. Crawford