Mammoths at the Gates (The Singing Hills Cycle, #4)

by Nghi Vo

“You’re spoiling them,” Cleverness Himself muttered disapprovingly. “The traveling clerics used to spoil us too. When they go out, they’ll spoil the next lot. It’s a big circle.”

There were many places they had been where that would be reckoned a clean death, a quiet one in bed and attended by people who cared. It was something people offered as a comfort, but dead was dead, and the only comfort—one more word, one more touch—was impossible.

People grow up. I get to grow up, and I get to change.

Somehow, the books and blankets and boxes full of strange curiosities knew that something was over, and they grieved in their own inanimate way.

They were changing, and Cleric Thien had always said that change hurt, but it was bearable if you watched it, if you accepted it and knew that it was always coming.

The things we remember last as long as we do and longer.

Last thing she told me was that I needed to get married. I mean, what do I need to get married for? I have two mammoths.

“I would be honored to hear your story, Myriad Virtues,” they said as they had said many, many times before. “Whether it is long or short, broken or whole, sad or joyful or angry or strange, I want to hear, and Almost Brilliant, your grand-niece, wants to remember it. Won’t you please tell it to us?”

To hear of people who can speak and love and reason and to still think that they are beasts, why, only a man could do that.”

We are not beasts, and I know this because no goat grieves as I do. No raven will have her own wings cut so she can no longer fly. No crocodile will bear a wound because it is better than forgetting. I wish I were a beast.

When the world has changed so completely, why should I remain the same? I cannot remain.

I put it out of my mind, but I dreamed of her again, that little bird, shedding who she was so she might survive better. Sometimes, you cannot survive and still be who you were.”