Icebones

This is not Earth.

There is a flat, sharp, close horizon, a plain of dust and rocks. The rocks are carved by the wind. Everything is stained rust brown, like dried blood, the shadows long and sharp. This is the Sky Steppe. This is Mars.

The time is three thousand years after the birth of Christ. The rocky land rings to the calls of the mammoths. But no human hears them. The colony on Mars has failed and the last colonists have return to Earth. The animals they brought with them as frozen embryos, then raised, have been left to perish on this new world.

But Icebones, daughter of Silverhair, the one adult mammoth taken to Mars, has been released from cryogenic storage by the departing humans. Icebones alone carries the accumulated knowledge of the great story cycle learnt from her mother. Icebones alone can teach the mammoths to survive and flourish without their human keepers. Icebones alone can lead the mammoths to inherit the fabled Sky Steppe.