Icebones

Epilogue

Ice still swathes much of the northern ocean, and the southern pole. But the ice is receding. In the ancient highlands of the south the flooded craters and rivers and canals glow blue-green once more. Much of the land is covered by dark forest and broad, sweeping grasslands and steppe — but the primordial crimson of the dust still shines through the green.

This will always be a cold, dry place. This world is too small, too far from the sun. But life is spreading here, year by year: life first brought here by vanished, clever creatures with silver ships and toiling machines, but life now finding its own way on the hard, ancient plains, led by the stately beasts whose calls echo around the planet.

But those calls will never be heard on the summit of the Fire Mountain. That obstinate shoulder of rock still pushes out of the thickening air, just as it always has. From its barren summit the stars can be seen, even at midday.

Here, in the thin air, not even the hardy Ice Mammoths venture. Here, nothing grows.

Nothing, that is, save a solitary dwarf willow, a single splash of green-brown against the ancient crimson rock. Against all odds, the willow's windblown seed has found a trace of water here, high on the Fire Mountain: enough to germinate, and survive.

Just a trace of water, trapped in the buried skull of a mammoth.