Extinct Doesn't Mean Forever (12 page)

A raspy bray rises over the herd.
Old Mother.

The bulls check themselves then move aside. Soon they are once more smashing their faces into one another. Ah, youth.

I practice my lines as I approach her.

“It is an honor, Old Mother. You and your herd look fit.”

She regards me with a watery eye, tugs stalks of grass from the ground, and stuffs them into her mouth.

 
“Fit to rot,” she says, munching. “But I do love sweet talk. Your grandfather was a sweet talker. Just twenty years ago he stood right where you are, complimenting me on my calf’s fine dark brown —”

“We’re leaving.”

Her trunk drops, and she lets it fall all the way to the ground, as if that had been her intention all along. She pulls up more grass.

“Leaving for good,” I continue.
“Across the river.
Man hunts our food, steals carcasses,
even
hunts us. But we’ve waited too long and now we need your help.”

“Really.”

“And you need ours.” I go over the flooding, men throwing down spears, and how if more of us make the
journey,
more of us are likely to survive.

She takes it all in, keeping her thoughts hidden.

“You’ll be remembered on both sides of the river,” I blurt.

She smiles. “Clever. That comes from your mother.”

“So will you help us? Together we’ll rush the gap.”

“No.”

My ears sag.

“We mammoths make for much easier targets than bears.”

I look at the ground. I was foolish to think I could sneak that by her. “But—”

“
But
I have a better plan. A group of you short-faced bears will rush the men — if they are there. While you fight, the rest of us will cross the river.”

Having just attempted to lay most of the sacrifice on the mammoths, I can’t make an issue of how her plan lays disproportionate death on us — not without causing an argument that may ruin it all. Some of the bulls edge closer, and mothers nudge their calves away.

“Why not send some of those bulls?” There is meekness in my voice, and I grimace inwardly.

To my surprise she says, “Very well, we’ll have a contest.”

I try to look puzzled. I’m not sure that I succeed. “What kind?”

“A memory contest.”

I laugh, unable to control myself, and I actually use a paw to wipe the smile from under my snout.

“Really now,” I say. “The mammoths can remember when these hills were mountains.”

Old Mother looks defeated. “Well, it was worth a try.” She lets a smile seep in. “We’ll do a rock drop.”

I nod. I make arrangements and turn to leave.

“Oh, Kerg, just one more thing.
A pride of lions is stalking us. They’re making some of the younger mothers nervous. Be a dear and shoo them away.”

My mouth hangs open.

She smiles sweetly at a young bull who has sauntered to within a few paces of me. “Of course, Kerg, we could always remain here one more year, perhaps two.”

A fly enters my mouth, and I clamp down and swallow the filthy thing. Then I go searching for lions.

~~~

I wander the lowlands scanning the potholes, scanning the cattails, even scanning the sky. I draw a long breath through my nose. There are no lions. A patch of water grass trembles. I take an even longer breath, letting the humid air linger.

Clever, aren’t they.

“Come out, lion. I know you’re in there.”

A young, mud-covered lion rises from a pothole.
The prince Felos.

I laugh. “You look like a drowned prairie turkey.”

He bounds from the mud and stops a few paces from me. Lionesses saunter up to his side, eyes on me. One licks the mud from his neck, her tongue making long strokes from his shoulder up to his mane. He purrs, somehow maintaining his ferocity. But lines of ribs push through his skin, and I fill in the gaps. His father is dead, either killed by man or by man-caused starvation. Felos is struggling to keep his pride fed.

I shouldn’t smile, but I do. “Covering
yourself
in mud. Well that’s a new one.”

Felos licks the lioness. She purrs. “New situations require new tactics.”

“Does this mean you’re actually going to hunt for yourself?”

Felos roars, revealing he still has plenty of strength left in him. All of their eyes glow, like a den of snakes in twilight. If I take even a half step back they’ll pounce. They pause, waiting to see what I’ll do. I feel my windpipe contract under an imaginary lioness’s jaws, but I don’t move.

“Enough! We are busy here. Pass on, bear!”

I clear my throat and manage a half step forward. “Listen Felos, I won’t be long. Old Mother just asked me to say that they’re on to you, and you won’t be getting anything from them.”

Felos sinks back on his haunches and bats a mosquito. He lets dejection show for the blink of an eye.

“The camels should be on the move,” I continue. “Why not try them?”

“Camels are so fast,” he whines.

As I start to leave, a lioness whispers in Felos’s ear. He leaps to my side.

“Why are you helping Old Mother? She can do nothing for you.”

My eyes lock on his. They are sunken, and I still see his jutting ribs in my periphery.
“Because we are leaving.
We choose not to battle men any more.”

This surprises him.

As I walk away, he speaks in a sly voice. “Old Bitch they should call her. I’d sooner swallow a tusk than trust her.”

~~~

I tell
Greta
everything.

“Felos is right,” she says, stroking our sleeping Kip. “Don’t trust Old Mother.”

“It’s a bad situation. We’ll all be in danger. We have to help each other.”

“Oh, do you think that is what she is telling her calves? No, she is saying race across the river as fast as you can. Push the bears aside. They have short
legs,
they won’t be able to keep up!”

I motion her to keep her voice down, so as to not wake Kip. She continues in a whisper.

“You’ve seen the men wearing bear claws around their necks. Is that what you want for Kip?”

She leaves out, “Our only surviving cub.” But she pauses, so I can fill that part in.

“But—”

“We owe the mammoths nothing, Kerg.”

“But—”

“The way of the plain is survival. That’s what you’ve always said.”

Before I can respond, she runs her tongue up my cheek. I grow warm and mount her. I try to make it last and I succeed.
But probably only because I am old.

~~~

Bears and mammoths face each other. Between us stands Cape, a filthy condor. His body is as black as a tar pit, his featherless head the color of carrion left in the sun.

The flat stone lies in the dust between us, the image of a rising sun visible on the face-up side. Cape clutches the stone in a rough orange talon, spreads his dark wings, and ascends.

Old Mother speaks, “My mother always picked sun. My mother’s mother always picked sun.” Cape drops the rock. “So I pick sun as well!”

The young bears and mammoths race to the spot where the falling rock will hit.

“Sun!
Old Mother,
it’s
sun!” cries out a bull. “The bears will be the decoy attack!”

Forty brown trunks reach for the blue sky and bray. We bears glare at the ground and murmur. All but one young bear,
who
— as I instructed — scoops up the stone and runs off.

~~~

I watch the sun set over the hills. When I was a cub my father would watch and smile as I slid down the slopes of loose dirt. Once he even did it with me. After five or six slides my dark fur would be covered in the tan dust and I would find my mother wherever she was and pretend I was a lion. “Roar,” I’d say.

Cape slowly spirals down and lands at my side. His breath smells of rotten organs. It does not seem right that such a vile creature has been given the gift of flight. If we had it, the men would never catch us, and we would swoop down and kill them as we wished.

I dig a little and drag the bison carcass – the bird’s reward — from the hole. Cape has his greedy little head in its gut before I let go. When his head returns to the world of the living it is draped in gore. He is so excited he bounces from one leg to the other.
Disgusting.

“So tell me, Kerg, I understand scratching a sun on both sides of the rock, but how did you know that’s what the old beast would pick?”

I smirk. “Does anyone ever pick the blank side?”

He shrugs, and guzzles the bit of intestine hanging from his beak. “Still, to lose on purpose — what are you up to?”

I give him a ferocious look, reminding him that silence is part of the deal, then leave to be with my own kind.

“Oh, just one more thing.”

I slow down, but don’t stop.

“When is the crossing? I wouldn’t want to miss it.”

~~~

Low, dark clouds rumble toward us, a herd of bison trampling the firmament. Fear colors every face — bear and mammoth — and each time the sky flashes Kip pushes his face deeper into his mother’s fur.

Old Mother rocks side to side. “I don’t remember a sky as fierce as this. It’s almost as if it’s chasing us.”

I order the old bears, Bek and Grot, to come with me to attack the men. At Greta’s insistence, I take five young bears as well. Fires burn up on the ledges; they’re like bolts of lightning held in place by old wood and brush. Another gift I wish we had.

We begin our ascent. One of the young bears is transfixed by the flames. I nose him onward but say nothing. Familiarity with fear will serve him well when it is his turn to lead.

Halfway up the cliff I stop. “Wait here.”

My fellow bears look puzzled. Grot begins to speak, but I cut him off with shake of my head. I proceed up the rocky path on my own.

Pointed sticks stab the ground, as numerous as the pigeons that winter chases across the sky. Dirty smelling men block my path. One steps forward. Backlit by fire, he looks like a burning, evil spirit—which is what he is. Bear claws hang around his neck.

“Kerg,” he says with a smile.

“Pu’nah,” I say. I hear the stamping of mammoth feet begin in the distance. “So we have a deal.
Only the mammoths.
And only a few of them.”

Rain falls, hissing as it strikes the fire.

“Of course Kerg, a deal’s a deal.”

Through the wet smoke I smell another, and my lips pull back from my teeth. Pu’nah’s grin widens at my realization. Felos steps forward. A group of lionesses follows him.

“Felos!”
I shout, hoping the other bears will hear me.

He ignores me and says to Pu’nah in a bored voice, “Are there more?”

“I think maybe one or two down the path.”

“Let’s make this quick, shall we? I’m starving.” Felos motions with his
head,
and the lionesses trot off. To me he explains, “An alliance. We don’t kill men, they don’t kill us.” He grins, showing more teeth than I have ever seen in one place. “Our victory feast is tonight.”

Felos’s belly bulges. The men have fed him.
King of the plain, indeed.
He rocks back slightly on his rear legs, preparing to spring. Men raise spears.

“You’re next,” I say. “The men will betray you.”

Just as I betrayed the mammoths
.

Roars and snarls rise up from the slope as the lionesses find there are more bears than one or two. Felos shifts his eyes slightly and gives Pu’nah a look of concern. The sky groans with thunder.

Survival on the plain is mostly running and biting and screaming at storms. But there are a few things one needs to know. First among these is that you never take your eyes off your opponent.

I leap at Felos. He has a more powerful bite, but I am larger. I drive him over, managing to get my snout beneath his jaw, keeping his teeth away from my throat. I bite into his neck and give a sharp shake, and it is over. The men are smiling, spears down, not moving to help their ally. Perhaps it was their plan that we would kill each other.

I no longer hear the roars of lionesses and bears. They could be all dead. The men direct their smiles at me, some with raised spears. The puddle of blood I see before me comes as a surprise. It’s mine. Felos got a claw into my chest. Now I’m happy I killed him.

The ground shakes — not from the heavy thunder but from the footfalls of the mammoths. They are almost to the river. Men line up on the edge of the cliff and raise their spears. One man hurls his, and I hear the death whinny of a young mammoth who has gotten out ahead.

“Pu’nah
wait
!” I cry. “Let them go. Feast on the dead bears and lions tonight.” I hold out my paws. “Have these, the paws of the Dominant, to wear around your neck.”