Longtusk

The Cows had clustered around Skyhump, their Matriarch, and were walking northward in a loose " slow cluster. They grazed steppe grass as they walked, for mammoths must feed for most of the day, and they left behind compact trails of dung.

The Clan stretched around him as far as the eye could see, right across the landscape to east and west, a wave of muscle and fat and deep brown hair patiently washing northward. Skyhump's small Family of little more than twenty individuals -- Cows with their calves and a few young males -- was linked to the greater Clan by the kinship of sisters and daughters and female cousins. Where they passed, the mammoths cut swathes through the tall green-gold grass, and the ground shuddered with their footsteps.

Longtusk felt a brief surge of pride and affection. This was his Clan, and it was, after all, a magnificent thing to be part of it -- to be a mammoth.

But now here was his mother, shadowed by that pest Splayfoot, and his sense of belonging dissipated.

Milkbreath slapped his rump with her trunk, as if he were still a calf himself. "Where have you been? ... Never mind. Can't you see we're getting separated from the Family? We have to hear what she has to say."

"Who? Skyhump?"

Milkbreath snorted. "No. Pinkface. The Matriarch of Matriarchs. Don't you know anything? ... Never mind. Come on!"

So Longtusk hurried after his mother.

They joined a cluster of Cows, tall and old: Matriarchs all, slow and stately in their years and wisdom. He was much too short to see past them.

But his mother was entranced. "Look," she said softly. "There she is. They say she is a direct descendant of the great Kilukpuk. They say she was burned in a great blaze made by the Fireheads, and she was the only one of her Family to survive..."

He could still see nothing. But when he shut out the noise -- the squeal of calves, the constant background thunder of mammoths walking, eating, defecating -- he could hear...