Ammonite

by Nicola Griffith

  Six of her family were there: Thenike, Gerrel, Hilt, Leifin, Wenn, Huellis. Kenisi and the two youngsters were with Namri, who had put her back out. Kristen and Ette made up the eight.

  Thenike would keep her safe.

  Gerrel, who had made her first deepsearch only last midsummer, started the singing. She hummed deep, tunelessly. The others took up the hum until it sounded like a creaky tree song, the rubbing together of branches. It wove back and forth like the wind high in the forest, apparently aimless. The singers took breaths according to their own rhythms and exhaled in the wavering hum that climbed and sank and wandered without apparent form. Marghe closed her eyes. Two, then three women began to breathe and hum at the same time, then a fourth, and a fifth. Marghe imagined she could hear their hearts mumping together. Her own breath ran with theirs.

  Between one heartbeat and another, they all breathed and sang together, great powerful gusts of sound beating at Marghe like rain, rain that grew in intensity, spattering her face, running then pouring over her, pooling at her feet, until she felt she was standing under a waterfall of sound. The sound pulsed endlessly, like the world. Deep inside her cells, something responded.

  Thenike will keep me safe.

  She followed the plunging water down, where it wanted to go.

  Marghe came up from her not‑dream. She felt stiff from standing still so long, and her pattern singers were gone, except for Thenike. Marghe smiled at her, but said nothing; she did not want to talk yet.

  In silence, Thenike helped her walk through the evening shadow of the trees until her joints unstiffened. Undergrowth rustled beneath their feet.

  Marghe felt she had been gone a long time, much longer than the two or three hours it had taken for the world to turn away from the sun and toward the arms of evening. She had been inside herself in a way she had never thought possible; listening to her body as a whole, a magnificent, healthy whole. And she had done more: reliving memories of her childhood she had forgotten, experiencing again days she had never been wholly aware of. Now she knew how it felt to be a baby just ten days old, and that baby had been as alien to her as any species she had encountered since. There had been more: what felt like days of communication between herself now and herself of many thens. She had sent a question down all the avenues that opened before her: what is my name? And echoing back had come: Marghe. And again: Marghe. And then, whispered in a voice she knew: Marghe, and more.

  She was on a thin and misty beach; her mother walked from the shadows and held out her hand. On her palm was the ammonite.

  “Primitive cultures thought they were coiled snakes, petrified, and called them snake‑stones,” Acquila said. “But the word ‘ammonite’ comes, of course, from the medieval Latin, cornu Ammonis, horn of Ammon, due to its resemblance to the involuted horn of Ammon, or Amun, the ram‑headed god of Thebes.”

  She put the cold thing in Marghe’s whole right hand. “His name, Amun, means ‘complete one.’ He acquired the power of fertility formerly invested in Min, the ancient Egyptian god of reproduction.” She looked amused. “Min was very popular. But his time passed.”

  Her mother had faded, leaving the ammonite. Marghe had not been surprised when it sank into her hand. And now she was herself, and more. The complete one.

  Marghe smiled. “I have been so many places…”

  “Yes,” Thenike said. “Mind this root here.”

  “I see it.”

  Two more chia birds called back and forth. The same ones? Marghe stopped and tilted her head to listen. “Do many women keep their child names?” she asked.

  “Some. Not many.”

  “What was yours?”

  “Gilraen.”

  “Gilraen…”She considered the woman next to her, with her rich hair, pinned up, her soft brown eyes and strong fingers. “A nice name, but not yours.”

  “No.”

  They started walking again. After a moment, Marghe said softly, “My name is Marghe Amun.”

  The complete one.

  No one suggested that Marghe move out of the guest room, but she wondered if she should. There was something she needed to do, she was sure of it. But what?

  Marghe felt the need to do this unspecified something as a subtle pressure against her skin, as when the weather was about to change. She did not mention it to anyone. She gardened, and ate, and talked to Thenike and Gerrel and, now and again, Wenn or Huellis. Leifin disappeared on a hunt.

  Marghe became restless. When she dug in the garden, she dug with hard, vicious jabs, and took pleasure in her aching muscles when she sank into the hot tub in the evening. She lay in the almost‑scalding water hoping, longing for the heat to soothe her. It did not. It was as though she had a muscle, somewhere, that had not been exercised.

  She dried herself off thoughtfully. A muscle that needed exercising. Perhaps that was it. She had to find out what she could do now, now that she had part of Jeep living inside every cell of her body; she had to find out how she had changed.

  In the guest room–she could not think of it as hers–she lit a small fire, did some gentle stretching and breathing to ease her sore muscles, and then settled down cross‑legged on the warm flags near the hearth.

  Three breaths triggered a trance easily. Too easily. She jerked herself out, frightened. Such a deep meditative state should normally take twenty minutes or more.

  She smoothed her heart rhythm, thought about that. Was it anything to be scared of? She was not sure. Was it something that she could control? Probably. Then she would try again.

  As easily as before, she sank into a trance, her breathing slow and deep and regular. Her electrical rhythms, her brain activity, began to cycle hugely and slowly, like an enormous skipping rope. Behind her eyelids, she imagined her blood as a thick red river full of amoeba‑like creatures: T cells, lymphocytes, phagocytes, doughnut‑shaped hemoglobin, tumbling over and over, rushing past. The overwhelming impression was one of vigor, a good, cleaned‑out feeling. No sluggish streams or narrow places, no dead‑seeming backwaters where toxins gathered.

  She had never been so healthy, or seen it so clearly.

  She moved her mind’s eye on, roaming glandular production, the lymph system, her gut. She paused by an E. coli, moved on, settled on a cheek cell. She remembered a long‑ago biology lesson: scraping cheek cells onto a slide, examining them under a microscope. It had been nothing like this.

  The cell was like an enormous helium balloon in which she floated, swimming through cytoplasm and around mitochondria, bumping gently against the nucleic mass where DNA writhed like a nest of snakes. She moved inward. There, running through the center of the DNA like a bright electoral thread, was the virus. It thrummed like a tuning fork. She glided around it, examining it. So small. She reached out to touch it, pulled back at the last moment. Another time.

  When she withdrew back up to conscious level, she found that the fire was long dead and she was shaking with cold.

  She discovered that it was too tiring to trance more than once every three or four days, and too frightening. She persevered. Now that she had started, she needed to know more, much more. This was herself she was exploring, uncovering. Discovering. If she was ever to be truly Marghe Amun, the complete one, then she needed to know what she could do, who she was.

  The more she discovered, the more she realized there were places she wanted to go, things she needed to do and see, that might be dangerous for her to attempt now, alone.

  One day, eating lunch with Gerrel, she remembered Thenike using the drums to take her to an impossible memory vision of the goth, and the way she had used her own body rhythms to keep Marghe alive.

  Early the next morning, shivering slightly because it was cold under the trees, she went to find the viajera. The grass was still wet with dew; she followed Thenike’s bootprints and found her some way into the forest, gathering nuts for the family’s breakfast. Marghe watched her for a while. Thenike seemed separate from everything around her, distinct, as though coate
d in crystal; she moved here and there in the forest, stooping, tossing nuts into her basket, pausing now and again to look up at some wirrel’s chitter or chia’s call. Her hair was loose on her shoulders, like a wood‑colored waterfall.

  Marghe stepped out from the shadow.

  “Marghe! It’s a beautiful morning. Come and help me with these nuts.”

  “I need your help,” Marghe blurted.

  Thenike put down her basket of nuts, sat down by a smooth‑barked tree. “Tell me.”

  Marghe stepped further into the clearing. “There’s so much I need to know, and I can’t do it on my own. Link with me in search.”

  Thenike selected a nut, cracked the shell, and chewed. “Why me?”

  “Because you’re a viajera. You’re skilled in these matters.” She was standing right next to Thenike now. “And because I trust you.”

  Thenike nodded slowly, then gestured for Marghe to sit next to her. She took Marghe’s hand and seemed to study her a long time. “Very well.”

  Linking was hard, Thenike said, and required preparation. They fasted one day, ate lightly of the same things at the same times the next, repeated the cycle, over and over. Fast, eat, fast, eat. As much as possible, they did everything together: walked, ate, cooked, bathed. They slept next to each other in the same bed; sometimes Marghe lay awake listening to their matched breath, and sometimes she fell asleep immediately, knowing that Thenike listened. Day after day, night after night they spent together, and Marghe began to feel a fierce energy building between them, heating and shrinking, pulling them in, like a star about to go nova.

  A morning came that filled their room with streaks of shadow and lemon sun, and birds sang, and women laughed outside their window, but the thing between them had pulled them close and all either heard was the sound of the other’s breath as it moved in the same rhythm as her own.

  They lay facing each other, naked, skin to skin. They stroked each other’s face, hands, arms. Rested fingertips on the pulse at the other’s wrist. Marghe’s forehead was damp with perspiration, and they were both breathing fast. Thenike’s eyes were black as olla, her sharp cheeks underpainted with red.

  “Is this it?” Marghe asked. She was scared.

  “No. This is something different. Do you feel it?” She touched Marghe’s forehead with a fingertip. Marghe’s bones seemed full of hot, liquid gold. She could feel the heat of Thenike’s belly and groin close to her own.

  Thenike traced Marghe’s lips with her fingertip, then her chin, her throat. Marghe tilted her head back, mouth opening, arching. Thenike slid a hand under her hip, ran the other over Marghe’s back, fingers spreading over ribs, thumb brushing her breast. Marghe made a noise deep in her throat, trembled. Thenike slid on top of her, muscle against muscle, slick skin on skin, her hair trailing over Marghe’s face.

  Marghe reached up and sank both hands into that hair, hair that was dark with all the shades of brown Marghe could name, and many she could not: brown like mahogany and teak, like dry oak leaves, like fresh‑turned loam and the shining chestnut of a sweating horse; locks and tresses and strand upon strand. Marghe wanted to lose herself in that hair, lose herself in Thenike.

  They searched blindly for each other’s mouth, clinging like fish, swimming slowly closer and closer, breast on breast, belly on belly, arms wrapped around the other’s ribs like great hoops of oak, breath coming in powerful tearing gasps. Marghe was not sure whose mouth was whose, where her thigh ended and Thenike’s belly began, all she knew was heat, a heat like the core of the world, like the energy of all living things as they broke down food and burned oxygen and fueled more life, more heat.

  They moved, breath coming in sobs, muscles taut and plump beneath wet skin, until need burned like a sun between their bellies, flaming hotter and hotter, orange to yellow to white, then roared out over them, searing, magnesium‑hot under their skin, unbearable.

  The room was full of sunshine and smelled of the minerals Thenike had washed her sheets in, and sweat, and the soft musky scent of their skin. They lay side by side, Marghe still on her back, Thenike on her stomach. Marghe was rolling a coil of Thenike’s hair between her fingers, enjoying its strong, coarse feel as they talked.

  “I think everyone, everywhere, should choose their own name, when they’re ready,” Marghe said.

  “Who chose your child name?”

  “My father, I think. At least, he had an aunt called Marguerite. And I can’t see my mother picking a name like Angelica. Although…” Marghe smiled. You never knew.

  “But now you have a new name.”

  “Yes.”

  “Amun.”

  It was strange to hear it from another’s mouth. “Do you like it?”

  “Explain it to me.”

  “It started with a dream.” She told Thenike about the dream of shells, and the ammonite, the way it sank into her hand, became part of her. Was her, really.

  Thenike frowned. “I can’t imagine what it looks like. The ammonite.”

  Marghe hopped off the bed, brushed a pile of ashes together on the hearth, and smoothed them. She drew with her finger. Thenike leaned over to watch. “They’re smaller than this, but they curve around and around, in on themselves. Many‑chambered. And they’re slate blue.” She rested her hands on her thighs, careless of the ash. “I found one on the beach once, in England. Carried it around for days. It felt so good in my hand.”

  “Like a stone that fits just right.”

  “Yes. Exactly.” She jumped back on the bed. “So what does your name mean?”

  “In the Trern Swamplands they make boats from hollow tree trunks and they have many words to describe the kind of sound a log makes when hit. That’s how they test the strength of the wood, by the sound it makes when they tap it. Thenike means something like ‘ring true’ or ‘deep and clear.’ ” She smiled at Marghe. “It’s how I like to think of myself.”

  Marghe smiled back. From what she knew of Thenike, the name suited her exactly… and she knew a great deal now, more than she had known about anyone in her life. And Thenike knew more about her, Marghe, than anyone else ever had.

  Marghe felt the first faint stirrings of panic. Thenike knew too much about her. Too much. She moved restlessly.

  “Marghe, Amun, what’s the matter?”

  “I’m fine.” Her throat felt tight. “I’m fine,” she said again, too loudly. “It’s just too hot in here. And I’m hungry.”

  “Then we’ll get breakfast.” Thenike sat up.

  “No.” Too fierce. “No,” she said again, more quietly. “I want to be on my own for a while.” She could not meet Thenike’s gaze. She got up, found her clothes, pulled on her tunic. “I need to… walk, breathe some fresh air. Think about all this.” She gestured helplessly at the crumpled bed and fled, trying not to see the hurt in Thenike’s eyes.

  All that day, and the next, Marghe avoided Thenike, eating and gardening alone. She spent the nights in the guest room, trying not to remember Thenike rolling on top of her, the feel of muscle warm and hard under her belly, the way their mouths met. No one bothered her. Most of the family was busy; Leifin had returned from a hunt and they were helping her tan the skins and cure the meat.

  The third night, Marghe tossed and turned for hours, too tense to sleep. She got up and pulled a cloak around her shoulders; she needed fresh air. Outside, only one moon was visible, blurred behind clouds. She walked hard, fast, stamping through the trees, glad when she startled a pair of wirrels into shrieking and running.

  She missed Thenike. But she was scared. If she went back, it meant deliberately putting aside her barriers, letting Thenike right inside, right in where she could see those parts of herself that Marghe had never shown anyone. Those parts she barely knew herself.

  Parts she never would know, if she stopped now.

  She paused, then strode on, angry. She could not stop now. Not after surviving Tehuantepec, not after fighting off the virus, choosing her name, discovering so much about herself…
/>
  She had to choose: Thenike, and the knowledge of who she, really was or might be, or old habits that stemmed from fear that no longer had any foundation.

  She turned around, marched back toward the house. She wanted Thenike–wanted to earn the name she had chosen for herself, to find out what it meant to be Marghe Amun, to be complete, whole. She’d be damned if she would give up now.

  She knocked on Thenike’s door, then knocked again when there was no reply.

  Thenike opened it, a coverlet draped over her shoulders and her face creased with sleep. They looked at one another.

  “Come in,” Thenike said, and stepped to one side. The room was dim. Thenike lit a candle from the banked fire.

  They faced one another. Thenike looked soft and smelled of sleep. Marghe wanted to gather her up in her arms.“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry. I’m just so scared.” And burst into tears.

  The candle was guttering, and Marghe’s face was tight with dried tears. They lay in each other’s arms, breathing easily, softly. Flame and shadow flickered over Thenike’s skin, turning it reddish bronze and tinting her hair with copper. Marghe knew that she could match her lover’s heartbeat whenever she wanted, match her breath, her pulse; that their rhythms were still connected.

  “I want to do it now,” she said suddenly. “Before I get too scared.”

  “Put your hand on mine. Feel the pulse in each fingertip, mine and yours. Yours and mine.” Thenike slid on top of her, muscle on muscle, her mouth an inch from Marghe’s. “Breathe with me. Breathe my breath.”

  It was hot; their skin was hot, and their breath. In and out, in and out. And Marghe gave up everything, gave her breath to Thenike, took Thenike’s into her lungs. Then their arms were wrapped around each other, eyes open, staring deep, and Marghe let herself slide down that long deep slope, that slippery slope, sinking in, right in, right down until she wasThenike, was Thenike’s pulse, Thenike’s breath, until she could skip back and forth: her breath, Thenike’s breath, back and forth. Back and forth.