VLADIMIR HEARD ANTHONY whistle from the top of the Burlak.
“They are coming!”
He turned and looked, but could see nothing from where he was. He ran across the short distance to the vehicle and scrambled in.
Dr. Aslanov was still behind the wheel, his head in his hands. His conversation with Vladimir had been a brief outburst. Now he had returned to his despondency.
Vladimir shoved the keys into his hands.
“I found two sets. I don’t think I can recover the third. Try these. Let’s hope they work.”
He climbed out of the cab, and ran around to the back of the Burlak. His heart was pounding as he scaled the roof access ladder. But he felt calm, perfectly calm.
It was not the calmness that came with thinking everything was going to be all right. No—it was something else. Some kind of resignation. Everything was not going to be all right—and that was also acceptable. Things needed to change.
Anthony stood with the rifle raised, looking through its scope. The clouds had thickened, blotting out the mountains, drowning the last of the day. It was almost completely dark, now. What last light lay on the land drew no detail—just shape and the bled-out colors of late twilight.
Vladimir followed the tip of the rifle’s barrel and saw them, coming over a rise in the plain.
They came as if emerging from the earth itself. Their bodies were the color of earth, and mounded like the earth. It was as if the soil had bulged and torn until it birthed them.
Their tusks stood out white against the dark background, so white in a world drained of color that they appeared illuminated from within. They seemed detached from the rest of their bodies, swaying above the ground, moving under their own phantom power.
He remembered his own words from a few days before—from a different world—a world in which he had not yet seen them.
There are mammoths out there in the darkness. Mammoths wandering around out there. And God knows what else. We live in a world where anything is possible.
He saw Anthony’s finger tense on the trigger.
“Anthony, don’t do this.”
“I won’t let them hurt you, Dima.”
“Ant, I need you to listen to me.”
“There it is. There is the angle.”
“Ant, if you pull that trigger, I will stop loving you. Do you understand that? I will stop. I can’t be with someone who…”
But the trigger’s click had already come. The click, and then … nothing.
Anthony lowered the rifle, stared at it. He opened the bolt, and closed it again, and raised the rifle once more.
“Ant! Stop!”
Click.
Nothing happened. Anthony lowered the weapon, and stared at it.
“They wouldn’t let me have my own gun. They must have done something to this one. There must be something … there’s something wrong, some kind of safety mechanism…”
Below them, they felt the Burlak come to life, its engine rumbling on, the thrum of its idle through their bones.
The mammoths were close enough now that Vladimir could hear their feet in the grass.
“I don’t understand it,” Anthony said. “I can’t…” He collapsed onto his knees. “I can’t protect us. I can’t protect you.”
“This was never about protecting me.”
The mammoths moved slowly. They were a hundred meters away, and then fifty, and then thirty. They came to a stop.
Then Vladimir saw a human shape. It must be Damira. She came out from among them, and walked forward.
No—this wasn’t a woman. This was a boy. Just a boy, not more than fifteen or sixteen. He had a rifle slung over his shoulder. He stopped and stood just in front and to the side of one of the mammoths, one that had been slightly in the lead as they walked.
“Dr. Aslanov?” he said. “Turn this vehicle off.”
The Burlak shut down with a shudder.
The boy unslung his rifle and placed it on the ground.
“Come out of there, Dr. Aslanov.” And then in English: “And you two—come down from there.”
ONCE ALL THREE of them were standing together on the muddied grass in front of him, the boy continued.
“We have a message for you,” he said. “No more killing. No more hunting. No more. You have to find another way. No more taking from these animals. They aren’t yours to take from. Do you understand?”
A long silence. Then Dr. Aslanov said, “Others will come.”
“No,” the boy said. “No, they won’t. Because you are going to take these idiot trophy hunters back with you, and you are going to find a better way to protect this place. You are going to go back to Moscow and do what you must to find a better way.”
“And if I can’t?”
The boy held the black earpiece of the Alexander out to Dr. Aslanov. Dr. Aslanov hesitated, and then took it, and put it in his ear.
The boy reached up, holding the other earpiece toward the temple of the mammoth next to him. He had to reach high. The mammoth bent down, helping him. He pressed the object against the mammoth’s temple.
Now Vladimir recognized it—the Alexander that Konstantin had been wearing.
And now he understood.
In this new shape.
This was her. The mammoth. This was Damira.
For what must have been several minutes, Dr. Aslanov stood with his head down, his palm pressed against the side of his head, listening.
Then Damira shook her head, and the boy took the Alexander away from her temple. The boy turned, and walked back among the mammoths. They turned as well, moving off slowly. Among them were a few calves, who hesitated in their curiosity, raising their trunks, inhaling the novel smells of people before trotting after their mothers.
Damira stepped forward. She brought her foot down on the rifle the boy had placed in the grass.
Vladimir heard its stock snap.
She turned to leave.
“Damira!” Dr. Aslanov called.
She paused. Vladimir watched Dr. Aslanov walk forward, his hand outstretched to her.
She turned back around. She was so close, now, that Vladimir could see the dull light of twilight catching in the gloss of her eyes. He could see that one of her tusks was broken off near the tip. The break was fresh. The white stood out against the darkness like a moon.
“I will try,” Dr. Aslanov said.
In answer, Damira picked the broken rifle up with her trunk, and threw it at his feet. Then she turned away, following the others.
There was a long silence, and then Anthony said, “I tried to shoot that one. But the rifle wouldn’t fire.”
“No,” Dr. Aslanov said. “The rifle was built to know her shape. A fail-safe. It won’t fire on her. Or on any female. That was Konstantin’s idea. He was always wiser than me. And less trusting of people.”
“Same thing,” Vladimir said.
He looked at the side of Anthony’s face. It didn’t matter that Anthony had not been able to kill any of the mammoths—it was enough that he had wanted to. Had wanted to, right up to the end.
The trigger had been pulled. That click, even though it was followed by silence and not destruction, had ended everything between them. Anthony’s face no longer meant anything to him. It was as if, with that empty click, Vladimir woke up, and all of their years together were gone. All the feeling he’d had for this man—erased. Anthony’s face was as meaningless to him, now, as the face of a stranger passing on the street.
The trip back would not end with them entering their house together. No. Vladimir would have to go farther than that, and keep going.
“What did she say?” Vladimir asked Dr. Aslanov.
“There was so much static, and some of the words … sometimes the human words would drift off, would change into other sounds, or patterns I couldn’t understand. There weren’t any complete sentences. There were … vibrations, calls … but at the end, the static faded a bit, and finally I could make out a sentence. She said, ‘Our day will come.’”