Ammonite

by Nicola Griffith

  “Third consideration…”

  The wristcom blinked amber: no chip space left. She stared at it. It carried on blinking. She turned it off, put it in her pocket, took it out again. Maybe this was a dream, too. She touched RECORD. The tiny amber light blinked, making her fingertips glow orange. It blinked for nearly a minute, then automatically shut itself down.

  Marghe sat in the snow thousands of millions of miles from home, alone. Now there was nothing left. She did not weep: this far north, her tears would turn to ice and cut her cheeks.

  Moon of Knives.

  Marghe and Aoife rode less often. Even with extra clothes on under her overfur, Marghe froze. Now she understood the moon name: the cold slashed at her lungs like a thousand knives. Aoife made her a snow mask, a pad of taar felt to fit over her nose and mouth. It was still hard to breathe, but she went out as often as possible. Whenever the fire glowed in the yurti, she saw her dream of Uaithne, and of blood. Out here she could forget Uaithne for a while, gaze into the endless white and the ever‑changing sky, listening to the soft crunch of their horses’ hooves, the creak of leather.

  Once, when they were out riding, Aoife leaned forward and Marghe saw her attention flow to a single point on the horizon. It was like watching a rough river funnel into a gorge. She followed the tribeswoman’s gaze and saw a black speck that might be a rider. Aoife’s hand hovered by her sling. A rush of adrenaline took Marghe by surprise and she had her own sling out and her reins gathered tight under a thigh to leave both hands free before she figured out what she was frightened of: Uaithne.

  The black speck disappeared over the horizon. Aoife spoke without looking at her. “There is no danger.”

  Marghe tucked her sling back into her belt, took up the reins. They rode on in silence for a while.

  “Aoife, Uaithne killed a… member of my family. Now I think she wants to kill me.” Her voice was muffled behind the snow mask.

  Aoife did not stop scanning the horizon. Her reply was mechanical. “You are Echraidhe. Your only family is Echraidhe. Uaithne is Echraidhe. She will not kill someone in her family.”

  “You wouldn’t, no. But, don’t you see, Uaithne isn’t Echraidhe any more, not in her head. She thinks she’s the Death Spirit, beholden only to the goddess of death herself. Right now, the only thing that’s kept me safe is that she can’t quite make up her mind whether I’m here to test her or whether I’m the great goddess herself.”

  Aoife said nothing.

  Marghe tore off her mask. “Listen to me. The woman is insane. She’s already tried to kill you, her soestre, a member of her family, an Echraidhe, and now she’s plunged the entire tribe into some kind of feud that none of you want. What more proof do you need before you do something to stop her?”

  “There is nothing to be done. Uaithne is Echraidhe, I am Echraidhe. You are Echraidhe.”

  Marghe tried to marshal her thoughts. “Think of it this way: for the good of the horse herds, you geld the young stallions and kill the ones that persist in righting. Uaithne is like a mad stallion; she’s pulling the tribe apart. She must be curbed.”

  Aoife looked troubled. “She is Echraidhe, not a horse.”

  “Yes, which means you will have to think how to deal with her. Find a new way. The old ways sometimes aren’t enough.”

  “They have always been enough.”

  “No. No, they haven’t.” Marghe could feel words bubbling under her tongue like lava. “How many yurtu are there pitched for the winter camp?”

  “Fifty‑four.”

  “How many were there pitched at the winter camp when the old Levarch was Agelast?”

  Aoife was silent. Marghe pressed her advantage.

  “More than fifty‑four, and probably all were crowded, not half‑empty the way they are now. Look at what that means, Aoife, face it: the Echraidhe are dying. They’ve always been dtying. Ever since they split from the Briogannon. Ever since the tribe stopped trading, stopped mixing with others. There’s a…” How could she say minimum population density? “A small tribe needs trata. Look at the health of the children, little Licha and Kaitlin. They need more than taar butter and grain to keep them well in the snows. They need green stuff, fruit, fish. Things that can only be found in trata.” She took a deep breath. “You’re Agelast. Stop Uaithne. Trade with the Briogannon instead. Old ways are not always the best ways.”

  They were still walking the horses forward through the snow. Aoife stared sightlessly at the horizon. “We are at feud,” she said finally, “done is done.”

  “Change it.”

  “It has not been done before.”

  Was Aoife asking her how? “Take Uaithne to the Briogannon, say to them: Here is the Echraidhe who did this thing. What she did was wrong. We’re sorry. We’ll pay reparation and make sure it never happens again. Let’s find a way to stop the feud.” Aoife was still listening. Marghe felt her way carefully. “Situations change. Sometimes people have to do new things, things that have never been done before. Everything your foremothers did was new once. You will be the next Levarch. Take this opportunity to save your people.”

  Aoife was silent a long time. “I am Agelast. It is my part to uphold the Echraidhe way.” And Marghe heard the rush of bitterness in that voice, the burden of always having to do the right thing, always having to uphold the Echraidhe code, even when she was hurting. “We are at feud,” she said, and did not look at Marghe.

  On some days as they rode, Aoife spoke so little that Marghe found herself drifting into thoughts and daydreams about her childhood in Macau. But as the days passed, Marghe’s daydreaming turned to escape. She imagined herself sneaking from the tent at night and somehow stealing two horses from under the noses of the guards, saddling one, using the other as a pack animal. There was always snow in this scenario: warm snow that would hide her tracks, keep her out of sight of Aoife and Uaithne, snow that drifted with her, showing her the way to Ollfoss.

  Sometimes, Aoife rode at her side and they were both escaping.

  One day, a day when it was less cold than of late, Marghe surprised herself by reining her horse in front of Aoife and forcing them both to a halt. She pulled off her snow mask. “The two women, the two you said had been captured in the ring‑stones before me, tell me what happened to them.”

  Aoife considered. “The first was caught in the time of my foremothers. The Levarch then was wild and cruel. They say the stranger was slaughtered and butchered, the pieces of her body hung over the stones until they rotted.”

  Marghe wondered if this was the example, the memory that Uaithne had used to guide her torture of Winnie Kimura. “And the other?”

  “She is dead also.”

  “When was she taken?” Had they given Winnie to Uaithne to play with?

  “I was there. I was very young.”

  Not Winnie, then. “How did she die?” Marghe asked softly.

  “She took her own life.”

  She took her own life. If the Echraidhe did not kill you, despair would. “How long was she held hostage, Aoife?”

  Aoife looked at her a moment without speaking. “When a woman trespasses amongst the stones of the ancestors, she belongs to the Echraidhe. She becomes Echraidhe. Like horse and herd, she belongs to the tribe. Like me, like you. The woman we took lived in our yurtu as one of us for twenty‑six winters.”

  Marge imagined how it would be to live amongst these people for almost twenty years. She stared sightlessly at the snow between the horses’ hooves. Her throat felt tight and strange.

  “Thank you,” she said to Aoife.

  Aoife shrugged helplessly. “Put your snow mask back on.”

  Marghe considered that. ”Before I do, answer me this: Which direction is Ollfoss?”

  “An Echraidhe does not need to know this.”

  ”No.” Marghe hesitated, then lifted her eyes to meet Aoife’s. “If I tried to escape now, would you kill me?”

  Aoife pointed to the sling at her belt and shook her head: she would not nee
d to. Her face had the set look that Marghe had learned meant she was unhappy.

  Her snow mask halfway to her face, Marghe paused. “You care, don’t you, Aoife?”

  A small silence.

  “Then why don’t you simply give me directions and let me go?”

  “I can’t.” Her voice was harsh. “You’re not mine to give away. You belong to the tribe.”

  “I don’t belong to anyone! I’m not a thing, to be kept or ordered or driven to such despair that I open my own veins. Look at me, Aoife. Lookat me! I’m a woman.”

  Aoife raised troubled eyes. “No.” She turned her horse, brushed at her face. “Put your snow mask on before we ride back.”

  Without warning, Marghe thumped her mount into a gallop away from the camp.

  Time seemed to stretch oddly, and she felt a fierce exhilaration. She was going to get away. Aoife wouldn’t stop her! Laughing, she leaned forward over her mount’s neck and urged it to fly, to put the Echraidhe forever behind it. The gelding stretched his stride and Marghe burned with the hot joy she had not felt since the first time she was able to slow her heart rate.

  Then her horse stumbled and the snow came flying up to meet her. She lay for a moment on her back, winded.

  This was not happening. She was on horseback, galloping to freedom, not lying in the snow.

  This was not happening.

  Aoife cantered up and peered down whitely. “Are you hurt?”

  Marghe saw her slip her sling back into her belt. Of course. How had she been so foolish as to think otherwise?

  Aoife had to help her back onto her horse. She had sprained an ankle in the fell. They rode back in silence, Marghe too numb even to weep.

  The hours of daylight grew less and the days darkened, along with Marghe’s hopes. Sometimes she forgot about her injured ankle and tried to walk, then was puzzled when she fell over. Borri would find her and rebandage it, tutting over the swelling, trying to tell her that if she did not take care, the ankle would never mend properly. Marghe did not care.

  Now Marghe’s dreams were not of escape, but of all the kinds of death she had touched upon in her life: the death of her father’s radical dreams and of his warmth to her; the death of her own ideals; the death of her childish self on the way to becoming adult; the death of her mother; the death of all those thousands here on Jeep. Sometimes, in waking dreams, sitting by the fire in Aoife’s yurti, she would weep over a bowl of blood‑rich soup, imagining the silver‑slit eyes of the taar that had died to feed her; only the eyes of the taar in these dreams were always brown, like a cow’s.

  The days of dark wrapped Tehuantepec in a seamless twilight. With no hard daylight to anchor her, no sharp shadow edges to keep the world of the Echraidhe a real world where people ate and breathed and relieved themselves, Marghe slipped and spun inside her dreams. These people had abducted her, submerged her in this timeless otherworld that was no more real than the underwater palaces of those other abductors, the Sidhe, the unearthly faerie who stole human children, twisted their souls from their bodies, and filled them instead with dark glamor. Nothing was real.

  She tried to run away twice more, hardly knowing what she did. Each time, Aoife brought her back and Borri shook her head, wrapped her up, and tried to make her eat. At these times she did not hear Borri when she spoke to her; she ignored Aoife’s gentle hands that rubbed life back into her feet after half a night on the plains without her boots. She did not hear Borri say to Aoife that she should not be allowed to have her knife in this state, or hear Aoife tell the healer that the knife was Marghe’s, and not theirs to take away.

  There was no escape from here, except in her dreams.

  When she was out on the snow with the taars, she did not see the herds. Sometimes she imagined they were sheep, like the ones on the Welsh hillsides where she had walked while her mother was dying–dying and coughing her lungs up and crying, and always, always, saying, “I’m sorry, Marghe, I’m sorry,” and making her feel even worse, making her feel even more strongly that it was all her fault.

  There was no escaping death. When her FN‑17 ran out, she would die here among the Echraidhe, coughing up her lungs like her mother. Alone. She no longer cared.

  The days of dark passed and gradually a few minutes of daylight became an hour, then two hours. It grew still colder, and clouds covered the sky like a caul.

  Marghe patiently coaxed her ancient mount to a trot. This was the last day before the taars were driven into their winter pens and she and the young woman who herded them had not bothered to take them far.

  She could not remember the young Echraidhe’s name. She must have been told it three times but she could not be bothered to make it stick in her mind. What did she care for a name?

  Marghe sighed as a taar wandered in search of more plentiful grazing. She resisted kicking her horse into a faster pace. The mare was an old one, on her last legs. Since her last attempt at escape she was refused young, swift horses. If she or her mount had to be killed, the Echraidhe would prefer to waste a less valuable animal.

  She slid her palo to full length and goaded the taar back to its herd mates. She glanced at the reddish patch of sky where the sun was sinking toward the horizon, hidden by cloud. The taar settled comfortably back amongst its fellows and showed no signs of wandering off a second time. Marghe unstoppered the skin of locha at her saddlebow and took a swig. She looked at the sky again; it was brighter than before. She looked at it a long time, took another swig. That was not right. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, restoppered the skin, and called to the young Echraidhe, pointing.

  “Haii! The sky!”

  The tribeswoman stiffened. “Fire!”

  Marghe wondered at that. Fire? On Tehuantepec’s snow? The Echraidhe woman was standing in her stirrups. “The Briogannon raid at last. The yurtu burn!” Then she was off, thundering toward the glowing sky, loosening her sling as she rode.

  Marghe sat still a moment, considering, then wheeled her mare in the opposite direction and jabbed her heels into its ribs.

  The snow flew in clods around her ears. Marghe refused to allow herself to think; she would just ride the ancient animal to its limit. She kept her mind blank, aware only of the heaving flanks between her thighs, the thick reins running over her fingers. She rode easily, as disconnected from what was happening as a child bobbing on her back in the ocean, lost in the sky and cloud. Then it was dark and the horse had slowed to a stumbling trot. She blinked and reined to a halt. Again, the sky was clear, utterly silent and still. The moons hung two‑thirds full, and she was cold. She twisted in her saddle. Nothing but white quiet. Where was she?

  With her eyes closed, it was easy to picture her map. Then she revisualized the taars, the setting sun, and the direction of the burning yurtu, and calculated. She had fled due north. Ollfoss lay north and east; she would find it, somehow.

  She turned the mare’s head in the right direction and kicked her to a walk. All she had to do was keep going, not think about the fact that she had no food, no shelter, no sling, no spear, and no fuel; that even being a captive of the Echraidhe might be better than dying out here, alone, in the frozen wastes. For now, it was enough to be free. That was important. Freedom meant something, didn’t it? Her furs tickled her chin and she pulled the snow mask tighter.

  When the moons set, she was still riding. She realized she had been searching for a suitable stopping place: a stream, a bush, some shelter–anything that stood out on this endless stretching white. There was nothing. There would be nothing. She reined in and dismounted, and the mare hung her head while she uncinched the saddle. When she pulled off the headstall, the icicles hanging from the mare’s shaggy mane broke off. She started to rub the poor creature down with her gloved hands before she remembered something Aoife had told her: the snow and ice in a horse’s coat could act as insulation the same way a snow tunnel could shelter and insulate a person.

  She squatted, pulled off a glove, and rubbed snow between her fi
ngers. Dry snow. Good building material. She took a careful swig of locha and began.

  First, she took off the headstall to hobble the mare, who could scrape up snow from the moss and find her own grazing. The saddle went on the snow. Marghe knelt next to it and began scraping snow up around her. She managed to curve the walls in slightly, but when she tried to make a roof the way Aoife had shown her, it kept collapsing under its own weight. She tried several times, first with lightly packed snow, then with snow she had packed almost solid, finally by trying to form a cement of ice by running her blade along the snow. Nothing worked. Stubborn, her father had always said, stubborn as a Portuguese donkey. Not today. She curled herself into a tight ball, laid her head on the saddle, and went to sleep.

  She woke about two hours later, rippling and shuddering, her muscles pulled so tight against the cold that her bones ached. No more sleep tonight. She did some breathing and stretching before saddling the mare. Even that made her dizzy. She needed food. She had none–all she had was a half‑full skin of locha. She leaned her forehead against her mount’s shaggy flanks. There was still time to retrace her tracks to the yurtu. Her stomach did a slow roll forward. No. Not again. She had plenty of furs, her palo, a knife, the locha, a horse. A few days, just a few days. She could last that long. She pulled herself into the saddle, set the mare’s head toward Ollfoss, and nudged her into a walk.

  The second night, she simply lay on her back and wriggled until snow covered everything but her face. She woke to a world of seamless white and hunger sharp as a rodent’s tooth. The sky was soft and milky, like the plain; it was as if she stood inside a hollow pearl. It made her dizzy. She finished the locha and hung the empty skin back on her saddle. If she found nothing to fill it with, she could always try to eat it.

  This time she had to kick the mare to get her moving.

  Marghe woke on her third morning alone to find that her hunger had passed from pain to a dull ache; she knew she was hungry, but she no longer minded so much. The snow underfoot was as soft and white as the furred back of the mythical cyarnac. Today, it was beautiful. She smiled to herself as she looked around. Everything seemed dusted with crystal. When she brushed snow from her sleeves, every fiber of her overfur was magically clear. She studied her saddle dreamily: every pore on the leather was distinct. She could have spent hours watching the light in tiny droplets of ice on the mare’s coat. Hunger was no longer important. She heaved the saddle onto the mare and blood flowed warm and strong through her veins. Her limbs felt smooth and light. Today, she felt… fine.