People of the Nightland(168)
In places, high ground stuck up, catching the great rafts of debris, holding it for a time, until the relentless eastern flow spun it one way or another and bore it relentlessly toward the distant ocean.
“So much water!” Lookingbill whispered under his breath. He swallowed hard. “Where … where is Headswift Village?”
Silvertip pointed. “There. That little knob in the distance.” He turned his eyes on the pinprick amidst the debris-matted water.
“No one who stayed would have lived,” Dipper said softly. “That water’s up to the highest rocks.”
“It’s flowing through the passageways,” Silvertip told them, “eating away at the base. Even the great rocks are collapsing, sinking down. When the water drains away, it will only be a low mound covered with silt.”
“Is that a mammoth?” Dipper pointed to where a single calf stood perched on a shallow island to the east. It kept raising its trunk, as if scenting for its mother. Then it would whirl, splash down into the water where wood had collected. Raising its right foot, it would press anxiously at the floating wood, as if in search of solid footing. Finding none, the calf retreated to the limited sanctuary of the rounded hump of land. Even as they watched, the saturated ground seemed to be sliding under the calf ’s feet. Panicked, it whirled and dashed about in ever smaller circles, destroying its haven as it went.
Ashes swallowed hard. “When will the flood subside?”
“Our children may see it.” Silvertip watched the mammoth calf with a leaden soul. “The trees will slowly wash out into the ocean, carrying the carcasses of dead animals, and those few that survived by clinging to the wood: squirrels, raccoons, some beaver.”
“The size of it,” Lookingbill cried. “It runs all the way to the Ice Giants. What of the Nightland?”
“Gone,” Silvertip told him. “Washed away. Their corpses have already been carried off by the tides of the Thunder Sea.”
“Raven Hunter’s Dream?” Ashes asked.
“Alive,” he said simply, and pointed to the south. “The Raven Bundle is there. I can feel it, like a darkness on the land.” He glanced at Ashes. “Your mother lives.”
“What now, Dreamer?” Lookingbill asked. “What do we do?”
Silvertip filled his lungs, smelling the odors of wet wood, earth, and water. “We go south. There we will meet up with the remains of the Sunpath People who are fleeing to the Tills. It will not be easy. The forest peoples down there won’t be pleased to see us encroach upon them. We will need Silt’s warriors.”
“More war?” Dipper asked.
“Raven Hunter has rebalanced the Spiral,” Silvertip whispered. “Where there is order, there will be conflict.”
He bent down, grasping a handful of soil. Then, slowly, he opened his fingers, letting it trickle away through his fingers.
In the distance, the mammoth calf trumpeted in fear as it crumbled its fragile island beneath its feet.