Shag: A Modern Tale of
Mammoth Proportions

By Mark Hordyszynski

Frozen in a block of ice and awakened eleven thousand years later, a woolly mammoth is nursed back to life by a herd of distantly related coos. His existence is discovered by Ian and Ina Stevenson and their friend, Baird, who live a simple life in the hills and dells of the northern Scottish Highlands. When Ina combs the wool from the herd of coos to create exotic yarns, she realizes one animal is much different from the rest. His ragged, fringed coat reminds her of shag carpet, and so the woolly mammoth is named Shag.

Shag grows quickly, and he grows so large he fears for the herd's safety and shelters with the Stevensons, who welcome him as a family member into their hearts and home. When megalomaniacal fashion designer Monsieur d'LeFolb and his nine Mo-Dels arrive to stage the ultimate outdoor fashion show in a nearby hamlet, the Stevensons' secret is discovered.

Monsieur d'LeFolb desires Shag for himself, and the planned photo shoot turns into a mammoth hunt. Ina, Ian, and Baird vow to protect Shag from this commercial fascist, who not only desires the exquisite wool but plans to clone the animal for use in agedefying cosmetics.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Nov 13, 2008
• ISBN: 9780595886128

Mark Hordyszynski

Mark Hordyszynski is a native New Yorker. He has worked in many fields, including culinary arts, men?s sportswear design, textile surface design, animation, and intellectual properties licensing. Shag is his debut novel.

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Prologue

The Land of Eternal Winter

The herd of great, furry beasts lumbered through the frozen arctic tundra. They were migrating south to the warmer climate and regions where the conifer forests were abundant. With the spring thaw, the herd passed this way on their journey to summer pastures in the north. Now, months later, they retraced their steps in hopes of finding something to forage under the pristine pellicle of snow. Food was good here last time.

The late afternoon storm passed quickly and hadn’t flurried heavily enough to cover their deeply trodden tracks, but it was sufficient to blanket everything in a fresh coating of white. The newly fallen snow incited the rambunctious youngsters into playing tag. Running and sliding beneath the fringed undersides and tree trunk legs of the adults, the calves’ acrobatic stunts stirred up clouds of confetti-like frost. One of the elder females chuffed at the impertinent nuisance of a snout full of powder.

She reared her head as she recovered from the sneeze and blurted a loud trumpeting from her three-meter long trunk. The calves scrambled out and away from her gracefully curving tusks with their gentle upward twist.

The woolly mammoth, a thirty-five-year-old female and the matriarch of the herd, stood eleven feet tall at the shoulder. She was draped in a thick coat of fur; the ropy, cashmere-like locks of hair flowed over each and every one of her kind from head to toe.

In a panorama of nothingness, each massive creature resembled a hairy oasis. Even in the murky dusk their distinctive shape and oafish size made them oddities against the background of eternal ice age winter.

Concealed behind an outcropping of rocks, a clan of Neanderthal mammoth hunters waited for the right moment to strike. The certainty of a kill was needed to guarantee the clan’s survival. So every man, woman, youth, and child was enlisted to perform a part in the hunt.

It was almost completely dark. An arctic blast was coming out of the northwest, and the herd was downwind of the advancing clan. The smell was faint but traveled quickly in spurts as gusts tugged at the flames of the torches in the hands of the women and older children. But the flames would not be discouraged. The torches had been saturated with the fat of a sick mammoth the clan had felled and rendered many months before.

Being nearsighted, the large mammals wouldn’t have noticed the approach of the humans until they were practically upon them. Smoke drifted silently ahead of the humans’ silent throng, heralding their fatal attack almost a quarter of a mile away. Sensitive membranes lining the mammoth’s nose detected the wafting fumes and sounded off in each one an ancient alarm primal even for creatures now extinct by eons.

Restlessness leapfrogged from one animal to the other. They transmitted their nervous vibrations into the ground, which were felt on the downy soles of their extremely sensitive feet. One by one the herd began to stomp. Stomping became hopping from hind foot, to fore foot, to the next foot, as if the ice beneath their feet had suddenly become too hot to stand on. One of the younger males abandoned the step dance and broke away, striding in the direction opposite the smell of smoke and the advance of the clan.

The herd stampeded. Suddenly there was pandemonium as a collective ninety-two tons of hairy flesh broke inertia and started moving. Screaming like banshees, the women and children led the foray with brightly burning torches. The men followed behind with sticks honed and spears hardened into sharp points in the fire, or stone-bladed hatchets and axes hefted in provocation. In seconds, the clan was upon the lummoxes, erupting into sight of the slowly moving mammoths. In the ensuing panic, with fire and noise, the clan disoriented the most confused animal and severed it from the fleeing herd.

Run it down, and bring the exhausted beast to its knees.

The hunters had to keep a sharp eye and stay clear of its flailing limbs—four legs, two tusks, and proboscis included—that could knock a man down, crack his ribs, rupture a spleen, break his back, or reduce him to a red smear in the otherwise colorless glacial landscape.

Communicating like a pack of wild animals, the clan made it immediately apparent which one of the mammoths they were going to single out. That one—there, with the small calf! The beast hesitated to get her young male safely underfoot, then stammered to recover herself.

But it was already too late. The hunters managed to isolate and corner the mother and calf and were backing them onto a cliff with no escape. The women and children stopped screeching, and a final shrill ripped haphazardly across the rugged terrain.

Among the shadows and last ricochet of noise, the advancing flame-lit human menace drew closer. Sobered by the sounds of her frightened baby, the mother instinctively placed herself between the clan and her threatened offspring. With each retreating step the mammoth and calf approached the edge of a cliff. She must either face the hunters ahead of her, or, looming from behind, take her chances with the drop-off overhanging an icy sea.

The desperate mother stopped and took a stance to fend off the clan. In an effort to increase her size and intimidate her attackers, the mammoth reared up on hind legs. Without warning, a terrible cracking erupted underfoot. She landed back down on all four feet, her massive weight causing the cliff to splinter. With the crumbling ice her calf tumbled over the cliff with a fading cry of distress. In a torrent of flame and spears and cut flesh, the clan was upon her, but she didn’t care.

White blurs streaked past the infant woolly mammoth as he somersaulted backward and plunged pell-mell into the frigid sea. Splashing suddenly surrounded him and was immediately followed by panic. Underwater! Air! Instinctively, his trunk punctured the surface of the water. He gasped, and there was more splashing as chunks of white glacier dove by, then buoyed to the surface.

Wallowing in the sub-zero waters below, the sea creature stirred with the sudden commotion. Attracted to the frenzy frothing near the surface, it rose stealthily toward the activity. Every predator knew such splashing meant distress, panic, trouble—and prey.

Instinctively, his front and hind legs pumped as the little woolly dog-paddled toward a chunk of frozen flotsam. Up, then back, this time a little farther and a long slide down the next, he frantically struggled to gain purchase on the slippery surface.

Recovering from the plunge and descent, the surfacing serpent started to close its jaws around the mammoth’s hind legs, still sputtering in the water, as the woolly wearily hoisted his waterlogged hide onto the floating ice raft.

Like a meteor out of the starry sky, a chunk of falling ice slammed into the creature’s skull and torpedoed it lifelessly back into the fathoms from whence it stirred into motion only a few moments before.

The force of the plummeting aquatic behemoth created a pregnant swell that lifted the exhausted calf up and the rest of the way out of the turbulent sea, undulating him harmlessly onto the safety of the fragment of the frozen cliff face.

At first, the infant mammoth’s breath was heavy panting and came out in great frosty plumes, but it slowly faded to breathless wisps of foggy mist.

Seawater, like tears, ran down in rivulets, matting the fur to the little woolly’s cheeks. A few fell from his face and froze as they hit the ice he was drifting upon.

Between the pauses in the crashing of the waves and the hissing of the seas came the last agonizing ululations of the perishing giant once his mother, and the half-human grunts of the beginnings of modern man.

In one last trumpeting that was cut short and silenced, her life was over.

Exhausted, cold, and soaked through his thick fur to the soft pink skin below, the mammoth calf longed for his mother. He was beginning to get chilled. His breathing was beginning to get shallow. Thought was beginning to get numb.

His mother was calling to him, the last tattered remnants carried off on the whispering tongue of the wind. Or perhaps it was just a delusion induced by the onset of hypothermia. He closed his eyes and snuggled up to her warm bosom. He was no longer cold or afraid. He was safe.

Arctic waves lapped over the lifeless form, each time soaking and ice glazing the slowly freezing mammoth. Slumbering in cryonic sleep, he became suspended as one with the ice.

The small chunk of ice with its frozen occupant eventually met with a much larger, stationary one. The two merged and become part of a glacier that would continue to grow with the steady progression of time.

The little woolly mammoth felt nothing, as the last of him finally froze solid.

Part I

Spring Equinox and Summer

Chapter 1

Something massive parted the surface of the waters. Dwarfed by the towering glacial walls, it ripped through the thick skin of ice with its sharp nose. In its dying wake, broken and crushed fragments of what was once solid ice became the only sign the ships had passed this way. Despite international laws, global sanctions, and pressure from protesters and the media, the great whaling fleet owned by Gender Androgynous Republic Garment Yada-yadayada Limited (GARGYL) and operated by Global Satellite Shopping Network (GSSN) was here to hunt the great singing beasts that lived in these Arctic waters.

A townhouse-sized chunk of ice, carrying the frozen woolly mammoth, bobbled lazily along in the subsiding waves. The motion of the passing ship, and warmer currents going south, carried along with it the ice and its precious cargo. The farther it traveled, the warmer the currents grew; the warmer the currents grew, the quicker they moved. A journey that began in the last ice age melted steadily into nautical miles per hour.

Weeks passed, and, rend by global warming from the iceberg it was part of, drifted in the direction of Iceland, down past the Arctic Circle, and into the Norwegian Sea. There it passed a small grouping of islands belonging to Denmark, and during this uneventful journey its frozen contents started to thaw.

The little woolly mammoth’s body, perfectly protected from time under layers of ice, began to show signs of life. The exposed shaggy surface was warmed by the heat of the sun. The insulating pockets of air trapped in the downy fur slowly brought the woolly’s skin to a blood-warming temperature.

As the floating mammoth-in-ice melted, it shrank in size, and soon was adrift offshore a large body of land. It was not the largest island the defrosting mammal could have drifted to in this part of the world, but it was an ancient one. The woolly mammoth had reached the northern-most coast of Scotland.

The waves caught the floating form and lapped it slowly toward shore. Bobbing and weaving with the frigid tow, it eventually drifted in close enough that locks of the mammoth’s furry coat became momentarily entangled in the roots of a submerged tree. The two interlaced long enough to resist the next retreating of the tide. With the subsequent surge forward, the calf was washed clear upon the pebbled slash of beach.

The stony shoreline the woolly came to rest upon had been warmed for hours in the midmorning Scottish sunshine, and he was nestled like a shellfish in a clambake. So throughout that day and night, and the next twenty-four hours, the mass of waterlogged fur silently expanded like dough rising in a proof box. A wad of plugged up seawater exploded from his trunk, expelling the trapped gasses within, and the little woolly mammoth calf let out his first wheeze in eleven thousand years.

Only one exhalation, until the process occurred again the following day.

And then again, a few days later.

♦ ♦ ♦

The mammoth calf expanded and contracted several times a day. He wasn’t expelling water any more. All that had been sloshing around in his lungs was purged days ago. Now, spaced several hours apart, there was a more rhythmic appearance to the motion of up and down—or, more properly, in and out—and the bellows gained regularity akin to breathing.

Then deep within, where unconsciousness and whatever lies beyond consciousness collide, the part that was his soul began to stir with the restlessness of wanting to be, and to know.

♦ ♦ ♦

The herd both grazed and browsed in the harsh Scottish Highlands, existing in perhaps one of the few remotely unblemished places left on planet Earth, clearing massive amounts of brush with speed and efficiency. The large animals, usually reddish in color, could be blonde, mousy brunette, salt and pepper, or black. Cold weather and snow had little or no effect on these animals. Highland cattle enjoyed conditions in which many others would have undoubtedly perished because the highland cow (referred to in these parts as coo) is insulated by a long, shaggy coat of hair. They eat like goats, gaining weight on what others of their kind would pass by. A mature male can reach as much as twelve hundred pounds.

Long, upwardly curving horns on their heads give them a majestic air, in contrast to the scraggly bangs covering their eyes and an unusually disheveled appearance. These are mild-mannered and even-tempered beasts. Even the older bulls tend to be calm and easygoing.

It was a few months past calving season, and the recent additions to the herd were frolicking among the stout legs of the older cows and bulls. Highland bulls are aggressive as herd sires, and this year all fertile females produced calves. The herd bred where no other cattle could—on the vast areas of poor mountainside with persistent rainfall and bitter winds. They calved outside, and they seldom needed shelter. Yet when they did, they sheltered in an ancient castle ruin, where the shire met the pasture.

A young male, whipped up into a raucous frenzy by the other calves, slid and collided with the eldest female, Ma T’hair, the matriarch of the herd. She was in excess of eighteen years and continued to breed, having borne fifteen calves. The entire herd, cows especially, had remarkable longevity. She had recently given birth, despite the fact that her last two calves were stillborn. Each time, the tireless hours of nudging and gentle prodding to coax some small sign of responsiveness from the cooling corpse proved useless.

The calf sprawling at her feet, Dossan, was born a full year ago. This was her sister’s child. He had been named for the tuft of hair in the middle of his head. A son of hers would be his age if it had not born without life.

She looked down at Dossan with a coo’s gentle expression and turned to wander toward the hillock that sloped down to the water’s edge to lap at the salt that the evaporated seawater left crusted on the rocks, or crystallized into highly salinated pools. It was a part of their diets, as were the scrub upon which they grazed and the water in the lochs from which they drank.

The cows were all Ma something and the bulls were respectfully Pa something. She was Ma of the Hair, for she was a brilliantly white albino cow, and her tresses radiated light in odd and fantastical ways. Whatever made Ma T’hair what she was—ancient wisdom, mystical associations—she seemed to be surrounded with a radiant aura by day and a faint lunar glow at night. Was it because she was wizened, a sage beyond her years, or was it something otherworldly, from the beyond …?

The stones crunched beneath Ma T’hair’s hairy bulk as she stepped over the grassy verge and onto the beach. Her hooves occasionally slid on larger rocks that were slippery and wet with algae. She lifted her nose into the breeze coming off the ocean. The fringe of her coat billowed lazily, and tousled the locks on her head. The air was cool and misty, scented with the sea … and scented with something else. Something not coming from the north and the direction of the wind, nor from the sea in front of her. It was much closer than that.

Ma T’hair tried to catch the familiar yet alien scent from a different angle. She sniffed it—strong this time—and looked to her left. Yes, it was different—though no sense of threat, no cause for alarm—and yet there was something very familiar about this musk. Her head swam with the vertigo images that smell has the voodoo to conjure up. It was calves. Dead calves. Her calves. The odor just before death or shortly after dying was the same.

There was a wheezing from the thing on the ground just ahead of her. It quivered with the sound of life. Ma T’hair stepped forward and approached the form for a closer inspection.

Cool. Wet. Fur.

Warm. Young. Beast.

Infant. Male. Breathing?

Washed up on shore in a heap much like a clump of tangled seaweed, the woolly mammoth had no discernable front or back in its mass of matted hair. Ma T’hair moved toward the front, where she thought the sound had emanated. Taking the last step, she gave the calf’s head a nudge with her snout to prod him awake.

Platinum fur caught in a sudden updraft began to spark with quicksilver and jumped into life of its own. As she made contact, crackling and sizzling erupted all around Ma T’hair, like sparks in a bonfire. The magic was a glowing, cool liquid light, powdery wet, and her fur was radiant like the auroras that scintillated in the northern skies. The illumination jelled as it enveloped the youngling, and was warm like the womb itself. Escalating to a deafening cacophony of exploding ether, it shattered into shimmering particles that formed a miniature galaxy. Moments later, it became pixie dust that was taken and extinguished on the silent tongue of the wind.

There was a recognizable sighing, this time determined, and the infant began movement of his own.

Ma T’hair pulled back from the calf on the ground, and now, for the first time, she saw the calf lying at her hooves, a contorted fetal shape beneath her questioning gaze.

A mother’s desperate heart leaped into action. Ma T’hair licked to instigate the calf’s response to breathing. Lifting his head, the woolly sneezed several times. Ma T’hair took a step back, putting some space between herself and the calf, who was slowly becoming conscious of her presence.

The calf blinked ice age seawater out of his light-sensitive eyes, yet his vision remained blurred. There wasn’t any sense of threat or any cause for alarm, and taking comfort in the security of being warm and safe, the calf dozed off again, lulled to sleep by the gentle rhythms of the rolling waves as the crickets sang a Scottish lullaby.

Ma T’hair kept vigil over his sleeping form. The coo knew this one would pull through somehow and not end up like the last three. There was something different about this calf.

This male was special.

♦ ♦ ♦

The mammoth awoke without memory that he was being watched over.

It was night. His head swam with fireflies, and the woolly found himself sitting before he realized he had done so. To his left was the vast ocean that carried him in and deposited him on shore. To his right he could see nothing. In front of him there was nothing. In a heartbeat he was on his feet wandering about, his head still groggy with memories of sleep. Left toward the sea, then right, there was nothing. Front and back, up or down, there was nothing.

A seizure of panic hit, and for a split second thoughts of being alone again, abandoned. Ma T’hair monitored him silently from a few meters away. Her figure glowed palely in the moonlight. The mammoth opened his mouth and mewled, emitting a noise not unlike the bleating of a lamb and the trumpet of an elephant. It was an ancient tongue born in a prehistoric age, but any living thing instinctually knew this was the sound of a child crying for its mother. Despite his cries she made no move—no muscle quivered—nor did she blink an eye. Panting from anxiety, the panicked calf was relieved when he finally caught sight of the elder female.

He wanted to rush forward, but his feeble best attempts were very shaky baby steps, and the mammoth toddled over to Ma T’hair. He cried out again, frustrated because he knew he could walk faster. The wobbling woolly gained momentum with his excitement and barreled head first into her. The coo stood her ground, even though the mammoth calf was almost as large as she. Her advantage was where she was solid, he only appeared solid with all that fur, and in fact, was quite lanky.