Page 10 of Kian
Two of them had a small calf between them, who leaned against his mother, a content look on his small, woolly face.
The dogsleds were moving slowly, and Kian had to trust that Lyslee was doing a good job keeping the tundra-bear in check.
The massive creature was no real match for a herd, but his foul-smelling breath and mouthful of razor-sharp teeth could easily spook the gentle creatures.
On and on they moved past the herd, which was dozens of animals long, in a sort of uneven, clumpy line, stretching across the tundra. After a few minutes, they approached what looked like the end of the group.
There were only two more up ahead, and one was in trouble.
He glanced over at Kinsley, wondering if she had spotted them yet.
Clearly, she hadn’t. She was grinning from ear to ear, and then shaking her head, as if she couldn’t believe her good fortune in spotting a herd.
“There’s a mother and calf up ahead,” he told her gruffly.
“Why are they separated from the others?” she asked immediately. “Doesn’t that make them more vulnerable to predators?”
“They won’t be for long,” he told her. “The baby will be eaten, and the mother will catch up with her brethren.”
“What?”Kinsley demanded.
“Mammoth are curious,” Kian explained carefully. “We have to be mindful of anything we leave out on the tundra. Of course, we waste very little out here deliberately. It is so difficult to import the things we need.”
“Someone left something dangerous on the tundra?” she asked, narrowing her eyes.
“It looks like a cargo net,” Kian said, nodding. “The calf is hopelessly tangled in it, and there is nothing the mother can do. Even if she stands over her calf, she can’t get him to water. He will die quickly in the jaws of a predator, or slowly of thirst. It is the way of things.”
“Stars, no,” Kinsley breathed.
They continued on in silence for a moment. And she gasped when she finally saw what he had known since they passed the last of the herd.
“You see?” he asked her. “It’s impossible. Turn away if you have to. Sometimes it’s better not to look.”
He was surprised at his own empathy. Kian had never been one to indulge in a woman’s whims.
But he suspected that he might never have known a woman to feel things with such obvious sincerity. The girl’s heart was on her sleeve - for better or for worse.
They were almost beside the pair now.
The baby mammoth lay on the ground, bleating frantically and struggling against the net.
His mother stood above him, front legs spread wide, and her head lowered, close to his. Though she could not speak, her body language was painfully eloquent. Her posture, low and hopeless, and curled around her son, spoke of a sadness that Kian himself could not imagine.
She knew already that her whelp was lost.
He was shocked to find himself feeling pain for her. She was an animal, and this was the natural order of things. Some calves died, and some mothers mourned.
He was just trying to shake off the onset of sudden emotion when he caught movement from the corner of his eye and realized what was happening.
“Kinsley,” he called to her.
But she was already out of the sled, walking briskly up to the mother-son mammoth pair, her own little one strapped to her chest.
“Oh dear, isn’t this a mess?” she asked crisply, placing her hands on her hips, and avoiding eye contact with the mother. “You’ve got yourself all in a tangle, and that just won’t do.”
To Kian’s complete surprise, the two creatures had frozen in place, probably as shocked as he was.
“Well, you’d better have a little snack,” Kinsley decided out loud, pulling something out of her pocket. “All I’ve got is crackers, so I hope you like them.”