Ammonite

by Nicola Griffith

  “No. Her family lives in the house with the two chimneys: her and Namri, Ellyr, Rathell, young Hamner, and baby Gin.”

  Marghe shook her head; still uncertain about who belonged in what house.

  “Careful. You’ll get water all over the place.”

  “So who do you call your family?”

  “There’s Wenn, she’s the oldest, and Kenisi, of course.”

  “The healer.”

  “She’s really a cook. She’s the one that makes most of what you eat. Bakes bread for other families, too. And during harvest, it’s always our family’s cookpot that everyone lines up at. You should see her festival cake!” She scooped Marghe’s soapy hair up in one hand, pulled the bowl of water closer. “Lean forward so I can rinse this off.”

  Marghe did.

  “Leifin and Huellis have baby soestre, Otter and Moss. Then there’s Thenike, who’s here right now but not often, because she’s always off viajering in that boat of hers, and her blood sister Hilt. This is the first time they’ve both been home together for ages. And then there’s me.”

  “So why do you live here?”

  “Thenike’s my choose‑mother. Wenn said I should come and live here with Thenike’s family because she said I’d end up clashing with Kristen. Something like that, anyway. I’ve been here since I was an infant.”

  Adoption, or fostering. “And who’s Thenike related to? Apart from Hilt.”

  “I don’t know. But she’s been part of the family since before I have.”

  Gerrel was a mine of information. Huellis, she said, was Leifin’s partner, but everyone knew that it hadn’t started because of love: Leifin had wooed her because of the bad trata agreement between their family and Huellis’s, years ago. Now that they were part of the same family, the trata agreement had to be renegotiated, and their family was richer than it had been. Huellis and Leifin seemed to like each other well enough now; at least, Huellis had stayed.

  Gerrel was not afraid to ask her own questions. Marghe did not always answer them, but the girl seemed to accept that there were some things Marghe was not prepared to talk about.

  Gerrel asked one question Marghe knew she would have to find an answer for, eventually: “Leifin rescued you and brought you here. The family’s caring for you. How will you repay us?”

  Two days later, on a morning when sunlight slid now and again through the window slits set up near the roof and made her want to be outside, Marghe was sitting up in bed and pondering that question. Across her knees lay several objects: the vial of FN‑17, her fur mittens, her knife, her palo. All gifts from women she had barely known. All she had in the world.

  She touched them one by one.

  The vial was almost empty, and there was one less softgel than there had been. She hoped that somehow, during her delirium, her subconscious body clock had told her when to take it. She was unsure how long she had been here, but it felt as though it was almost time to take another.

  The mittens that had been tawny brown when Cassil first gave them to her were dark, crusty with blood and slime. They stank. Unless they could be cleaned along with the rest of her furs, wherever they were, she did not even have any clothes.

  The knife, too, was stained; the hide wrappings around the haft looked splotched and diseased. The stone blade had a new chip she did not remember. That should be possible to grind out. She touched it gently with her fingertip. Cold. Rough. Like Shill and Holle, who had given it to her.

  She picked up the palo last, hefting it in her right hand. In the light, a long way from the harsh Tehuantepec snow, the carving seemed cruder than it had amongst the tents of the Echraidhe. Aoife had made this, for her.

  She put it down next to the knife.

  All the gifts had been made for her; not bought in a bright hive of commerce in one quick afternoon, but crafted on cold winter nights by the light of tallow, or cut from the steaming bodies of animals while the sky rushed overhead. The wood had been seasoned, whittled, carved, polished, stained. The knife had been old when she received it: a comfortable, familiar friend to someone, given with love. Even the FN‑17 was the product of personal sweat and effort by Sara Hiam.

  These things were all she had. These things had kept her alive. She would never be able to repay the givers in full.

  When Gerrel came in with soup and a dish of the rough gray‑brown Ollfoss bread, Marghe was still staring at the things on her lap. Gerrel put the tray on the floor and cleared them away. “They smell,” she said, and tugged the coverlet, smoothing it. She laid the tray on Marghe’s lap. “Neat’s‑foot and onion soup.”

  It smelled like asparagus, and was almost clear, with a hint of brown that could have been the wooden bowl, or caramelized onion. Cheese, just beginning to melt, floated on top, It looked too hot to eat right away. Marghe picked up one of the small loaves.

  “It’s best if you soak the bread, then scoop some cheese on,” Gerrel said.

  Marghe tore off a piece of bread. “What’s neat’s‑foot?”

  “I knew you’d ask that.” Gerrel pulled two leaves from her pocket. They were the size of bay leaves, milky with pale green veins. “When you first pick them, they’re clear, like olla, and these bits”–she pointed to the veins–“are dark green. But if you don’t use them right away they go cloudy. Like this.”

  Marghe was having a hard time with the stringy cheese.

  “No, like this.” Gerrel broke off her own piece of bread, dipped it in the soup, twirled it expertly until it was wrapped in cheese, and popped it in her mouth.

  “Ah. Like spaghetti.”

  “What?”

  Marghe explained about spaghetti. Gerrel listened carefully. “Gerrel, do you believe anything I tell you?” she asked suddenly.

  Gerrel looked confused. “Why? Isn’t it true?”

  Marghe suddenly wanted to cry. “Yes, it’s true. It’s all true.”

  Later that afternoon, Marghe had a visitor.

  She came in quietly, smiled, gestured to the end of Marghe’s bed with a raised eyebrow, and sat when Marghe nodded.

  “I’m Thenike.” Her voice was textured, rich with harmonies.

  Marghe dredged her memory. “Blood sister to Hilt.” Like Hilt, she was taller than average, though not by much. Her skin was darker than the sailor’s, and differently textured: close‑pored. Her features were planed to bones and hollows and looked strong, like the exposed roots of a mature tree. Unlike Hilt’s, her hair was long, coiled up on her head, dark and glossy, like the wood of massive trees that were too dense to float: mahogany, teak, silkwood.

  “Gerrel tells me you’re a viajera.”

  Thenike smiled. “I bet that’s not all she’s told you.”

  “True. Though she couldn’t tell me how I can repay your family for my care.”

  Thenike said nothing for a while. “As you say, I’m a viajera. Your story would be worth a great deal to me. If you feel up to it, telling me how you came here would pay part of the debt to the family.”

  “My story in exchange for all this?” Marghe gestured around her.

  Thenike studied her. “Mine isn’t the only say. If it was, then, yes, it would be your story in exchange for all of this. It’s not always easy to give a story to a viajera. But I do have some say, and if you give me what I need, then part of your debt will be discharged.”

  “Who decides the rest?”

  “The family. All of us. In this instance, because Leifin was the one who brought you, she will have a great deal to say. But back to your story. It won’t be easy, but if it’s done right, both of us will benefit, I think. Are you willing?”

  This was a good opportunity to see firsthand the way a viajera worked. “Yes.”

  “Then we’ll begin today.” She looked up at the shutters of the unglazed slits that passed as windows. “It’s stuffy in here. Outside, it’s cold, but sunny. Perhaps you would like to breathe some fresh air, see the sky?”

  “Yes.” She would have to do better than just yes. She m
ade an effort. “I’d like that.”

  “I’ll find you some clothes.”

  Thenike lifted the lamp off the trunk and rummaged for a while. “Here.” It was an enormous tent of a cloak. She pulled back Marghe’s covers. “Swing your legs out. There. Yes. And I’ll help you with these.” Marghe recognized the fur leggings: her own, cleaned. “Now, put this on. Over your head. Put your arm over my shoulder, no, lean on me, and up.” And Marghe swayed onto her feet, draped in the felt cloak.

  “How’s that? Can you try a step?”

  Marghe nodded, and did. Her feet hurt ferociously. It must have shown on her face.

  “It’ll hurt, but a few steps won’t do any harm. Time you were up and about.”

  Marghe took another step, winced. “Lean on me,” Thenike said.

  After being inside for so long, the sharp, clear air made Marghe cough, which hurt her feet even more. The sun shone–a thinner yellow and from a lighter blue sky, but it was sunshine and the world was still here. She stood and wheezed and not all the tears that she wiped from her cheeks were from her coughing.

  “I’ve prepared a place for you, as you see.”

  Thenike helped her sit on the pallet that waited on a sunlit patch of moss by the wall. Marghe leaned back, eyes closed, and soaked up the illusion of warmth. She knew Thenike was watching.

  “Do you get a lot of sun here in Ollfoss during the winter?”

  “This will be the first winter I’ve spent here for four years,” Thenike said, “and the last time it was nothing but cloud until the Moon of Aches.” Marghe opened her eyes to find Thenike smiling. “But, yes, all the other winters I’ve been here, the clouds unwind now and again, and the plants in our gardens and nurseries unfurl their bright new leaves, and we eat well. How is the winter where you come from?”

  “I come from many different places.” So many.

  “Whichever you choose. It’s in my mind that I’ll have seen none of them. Tell me what you wish.”

  And Marghe told her of winters in Macau when the sky was the gray of an upturned fish pot and the air smelled to her six‑year‑old self of rice wine and sea, and carried with it the excitement of the casinos and the sharp fear‑sweat of men gambling more than they could afford to lose. She told of the whiter hills of Portugal as she remembered them from the last time she had visited her father: the cold blue skies, the wind that slid through her clothes when she walked a goat path in the morning. She did not know what winter would be like at Port Central.

  The sun disappeared behind a bank of cloud that looked as though it had been carved from slippery gray soapstone. Marghe watched, tired after so much talking.

  “A suke sky,” Thenike said.

  “Suke?”

  “Like the belt sukes some of us wear.” Thenike reached under her cloak and pulled out a round disk, drilled through at the top and threaded with a thong. She untied it, handed it to Marghe. “My suke.”

  It was half the size of Marghe’s palm and unpainted, smooth on the back, slightly rounded, carved on the front with a fish. The carving was clean‑lined, stylized, well‑executed. An emblem of some kind.

  “You did this?”

  “It was my mother’s.”

  “She’s dead?”

  Thenike smiled. “No. Her lover carved her another one, this time with two nerka instead of one.”

  “Nerka?”

  “This fish. Blue‑backed fish that live at sea but come back to High Beaches every spring to spawn.” As if sensing Marghe’s fatigue, Thenike seemed happy to take over the talking duty. “Hilt and I were born in North Haven; that’s where she makes her home, when she’s not at sea. My home is everywhere.” She gestured around her. ”Ollfoss, North Haven, High Beaches, Pebble Fleet. Up the Ho and down the Sayesh, along the Huipil and on the banks of the Glass.“

  “Sounds like you still like to stay on the water.”

  “Yes. I have a skiff, the Nid‑Nod. You know the nid‑nod? It’s a silly bird that lives in the marshes out by the river Glass, and in the Trern Swamplands. She has long legs and a longer beak too heavy for her head, which she’s always lifting up and down to see what’s happening. The nid‑nod, the story goes, is convinced that something good is happening somewhere close by and she’s missing it.”

  Marghe smiled, remembering a number of people who acted that way.

  The sun came out again and they enjoyed it quietly.

  “Time to get you back in, I think.”

  Marghe did not demur; she was tired. It hurt more to get back to her bed than it had leaving it. Thenike helped her onto the bed, but let her take off her own cloak and fold it. “I’ll come back tomorrow. Early if the sun’s shining.”

  When Thenike was gone, Marghe realized she had not once mentioned Wales, or her mother. Or her mother’s death.

  The next day the sun was shining; Thenike came while Marghe and Gerrel were sharing a breakfast of goura chunks and pulpy nitta seeds. “Ugly plant, the nitta,” Gerrel had told Marghe, “all waxy pods and roots, and the seeds are hard to get. I don’t know why we bother with them, taste like wirrel droppings,” But Marghe liked them, and accepted Gerrel’s share.

  “You should eat those,” Thenike observed in her rich voice, “they’re good for you.”

  “You eat them if they’re so nice,” Gerrel said, unconcerned,

  “Unfortunately, I don’t like them any more than you do.” She smiled. “But I value my health. If you don’t eat nitta, make sure you put extra gaver pepper in your soup, like I do,” Gerrel pulled a face. “Maybe it’s time for me to tell the story of Torren and the healer again.”

  Gerrel sighed, and spooned some seeds from Marghe’s dish to her own. Thenike pretended not to notice. “No need to rush your food on my account,” she said to Marghe, “the sun will wait. It’s warmer than yesterday.”

  When they were outside, Marghe looked at Thenike. “The story of Torren and the healer?”

  Thenike smiled. “Torren was a young girl who thought she knew best and did not always eat her nitta seeds, or wear her cap in the middle of winter. One day she got sick and went to the healer. The healer turned her away, saying, why should she help Torren when Torren always refused to help herself?”

  “So what happened?”

  “It depends. Sometimes Torren repents, sometimes the healer relents, sometimes Torren dies.”

  Marghe pondered that. “So viajeras teach. What else do they do?”

  “Depends on the viajera. We witness agreements between kiths and communities; we judge disputes; sometimes we allot land to herders.”

  “Land that you hold?”

  “No. There’s a great deal of common land. When a family moves, or hits a burn, or simply splits into two, they need to use other land. Viajeras remember which land is in use, and which of that available land would be suitable for the family that’s asking for it. We remember. We remember which family might quarrel with which, and make sure they’re given the use of lands that don’t adjoin. We travel and tell news, we sing songs and spin stories; we lead pattern singings and deepsearch, we heal broken bones and old resentments, but mostly we remember.”

  Marghe got the feeling that she was missing something, but had no idea what.

  Thenike grinned. “But being a viajera is not all of who I am. I’m also a bad cook and a good sailor, and dangerous to meet over a game of knucklebones.” Marghe did not look satisfied, “Did you expect more? I’m not a sage or a holy woman. I have skills that I use as a viajera. Just as you have skills that you use as an anthropologist.” She said the word carefully, only having heard it once, the day before.“Everything I do can become part of that work, if I choose. Just as it can and does for you, if you choose.” She stared up at the sky, which was swirling like scum on top of a boiling pot, letting the sun through for brief moments. “If I wasn’t a viajera, didn’t have the skills of a viajera, I’d be someone different. A sailor, perhaps, like Hilt, leaving North Haven in the spring and only coming back in the autumn afte
r crossing Silverfish Deeps as far as Eye of Ocean and back again.” She sounded wistful. “And you. What would you have chosen to do if you had not come here, to be an anthropologist?”

  Marghe thought about that. “I don’t know.”

  “What do you like to do? In the winter when you walked the hills in Portugal, or lay on your stomach on the roof watching the fisherfolk of Macau”–again the careful words, strange in her mouth–“what was it that you wished you had the time to do?”

  “Explore,” Marghe said, surprised. “Go places I’d never seen before. Exciting places, where dragons might just be real.” She laughed, delighted at her discovery. “I always liked to follow paths, see where they went, who they led to. A map, a new world, a strange country–they’re all like puzzles where I have to put the pieces together to feel comfortable, to understand how things are. Once I understand, I feel too comfortable. Then it’s time to move on, find a new place, new people. New discoveries.”

  “Always?”

  “So far,” she said slowly, suddenly unwilling to go any further with this.

  Thenike nodded. “And these places you go, the people you find, do you come to care for them? Or do you only study them, like strange shells you might find on the beach?”

  Marghe forced a smile and waved the question aside. Like strange shells that you find on the beach… She did not want to think about it. “What kind of sky would you call this?”

  “A chessel sky,” the viajera said. “If I was in my skiff, I’d be looking for a place to put in. We’ll see a bit of wind.”

  “Chessel?”

  “If you feel up to a little walk, I’ll show you.”

  Marghe had to breathe deeply, steadily, and lean on Thenike as they walked the snow‑dusted path to a building half‑hidden under the trees. The sloping roof was covered in old snow, gone icy and gray, and the slit windows were shuttered from the inside. Unlike most of the other buildings of Ollfoss, much of it was underground.

  The steps leading down to the sturdy‑looking door were not steep, but Marghe took them one at a time, like a child.

  Inside, it was cool and dim, full of barrels, slablike tables, sacks and stacks and huge clay jugs. She ran her hands over one: stoppered with a rough clay seal. Food storage. Thenike used a wooden pole, curved into a hook at the end, to lever open a couple of window shutters. There was a milky, sickly smell Marghe could not identify, and overlaying that, something thin and sharp.