Ammonite

by Nicola Griffith

  Marghe blinked. Everything was quiet, too quiet. Was this shock? She climbed slowly to her feet, expecting the world to burst in on her with sound and fury and mayhem. Nothing happened. She looked around. The Mirrors were still bunched tightly, like a straining muscle. Thenike sat before them, as immovable as rock. The line of tribeswomen was stirring, the horses tossing their heads restlessly; some spears were couched, stone heads catching the sun, and some were held loosely. The tension in the air was thicker than the scent of olla. The wind rose. She breathed carefully; her trembling eased.

  Marghe stood alone on the grass between the two hosts for what seemed like an age, while the wind flicked the manes and tails of the two horses and filled her mouth with rushing noise. Then Aoife swung down from her saddle and began to walk toward her, empty‑handed, alone. The Mirrors stirred, and a figure detached itself from the ranks, flipping up her visor as she walked. Danner. Also empty‑handed.

  When Danner passed Thenike, the viajera dismounted and followed, leading her horse.

  They all stopped in the middle and looked at one another. The wind was hot and hard now, like the heat from a blast furnace. Thenike laid a hand briefly on Marghe’s shoulder.

  They were waiting for her, Marghe realized, but her brain felt empty, numbed by the two sudden deaths and the driving wind.

  In the end, it was Thenike who spoke first. “The storm’s coming. We need to take shelter. The grass is too dry.”

  Wind. Singing Pastures. Marghe made the effort. “I know a place,” she said slowly. “All rocks and scree. There’s a cave, and a ravine. No danger of fire there. It’s big enough for all of us.”

  Danner looked warily at Aoife. “If tribes and Mirrors can shelter together.”

  Aoife looked down at the loose tumble of hair and limbs and blood that was Uaithne, then back at the line of Echraidhe and Briogannon, where what was left of Captain White Moon was still tied to the saddle. When she turned back, she fixed flat, hard eyes on Marghe. “My soestre is dead.” Then she turned that empty gaze on Danncr. “And one of your kin. If more are to die, it should not be in a grass fire.”

  Danner licked her lips; it was not a very reassuring answer.

  Marghe felt sorry for both Danner and Aoife. They were leaders, both of them, solid, conscientious members of their respective societies who were suddenly faced with having to adapt to something new and utterly against their beliefs.

  She smiled. Uaithne was dead, and she had been ready. Everything seemed so clear and simple to her now: the tribes could do nothing while their Levarch treated with the enemy over the body of their dead kin; the Mirrors would not dare attack while their commander was in what appeared to be a hostage situation.

  The others were looking at her. “Thenike, how long before the storm?”

  “It’s upon us. Any moment.”

  “Then we’ll have to hurry. Danner, Aoife, you will walk to the Echraidhe line and bring back both Captain White Moon and her mount, and a mount for each for yourselves–you can ride, can’t you?” she asked Danner.

  “Yes.”

  “And bring back one of the Briogannon, one of their leaders. Aoife, you will tell your people to follow us. Danner, you will tell your Mirrors to precede us, due south. While you are bringing White Moon and the mounts, Thenike and I will secure Uaithne to her horse.”

  Danner and Aoife looked sideways at each other.

  “Danner. You have a cling?”

  Danner looked puzzled. “Yes.”

  “Give it to me.” Danner peeled it loose from her belt and handed it over. “Hold out your arm.”

  “What–”

  “Hold out your arm. Your left. Aoife, you hold out your right.” She bound the arms together at the biceps. “Just in case. I’ll take it off when you both get back here in one piece. Now go.”

  Danner took a hesitant step, which Aoife copied, then another. Marghe watched while they pulled each other warily, one step at a time, toward the mounted line.

  When they were about halfway there, Thenike put a hand on Marghe’s shoulder, turned her around gently, and held her face between the palms of her hands. “You told a good story.”

  I was ready. “I did, didn’t I?”

  They smiled at one another, and Marghe wrapped her arms around Thenike and let her breath go in one long, deep rush.

  Getting Uaithne’s body onto her mount was hard; the horse sidled and snorted and laid its ears back at the smell of blood and excretia. But they managed eventually.

  It was Ojo who came back with Danner and Aoife, and who held the leading rein of White Moon’s horse. Marghe was tempted to cling all three of them together, but decided to trust them. She directed Thenike to take the lead rein from Ojo, and to walk in front of the three leaders; she herself walked behind them, leading Uaithne’s horse.

  Ahead, the Mirrors turned and moved south at the march. Behind, the tribes stirred and started at a walk.

  All the time, the wind rose, buffeting them in the saddle, and when Marghe had to give Danner directions to pass on to her Mirrors via comm, she had to shout against a gale that wanted to whip away her words like so much smoke.

  Marghe kept them heading for the cave and the gully. Shelter first. Then they would talk.

  In the end, the talking was done at Holme Valley.

  When the five leaders had emerged from the cave, they found acres of grassland seared black, still smoking, turning dusk into evening. It was stifling.

  Danner touched a stud at her collar. Her suit stopped humming, and she took off her helmet in a spill of cold air. “It’s too hot to leave those bodies unburied. We need to get them bagged and cooled immediately.”

  After several strained hours in the cave, standing between two hundred women who would find it easier to fight than talk, Marghe was irritated by Danner’s attitude, but it was Thenike who spoke.

  “They’re not ‘bodies’!” Marghe had never seen Thenike so angry. “They are what’s left of your captain and Aoife’s soestre. They were real. They had friends, mothers, people here who will pause in the middle of their next meal and miss that unique laugh or the sight of a familiar hand resting on a table. Their deaths helped to buy this.” She gestured at the gathered forces, still standing apart suspiciously, but not fighting. Not fighting. “They should be buried out there, where they died. Together. Their grave should be in the place where so many others came close to killing and being killed, on neutral territory so that women can come and visit it and remember why these two women died, and how. Then maybe this… this idiocy won’t ever happen again.”

  Together with the massed tribes and a company of Mirrors as escort, Marghe and Thenike, and Aoife, Danner, and Ojo, leading Uaithne’s horse and White Moon’s and carrying shovels, went back to the place that had nearly become a battlefield.

  The olla patch had escaped the fire, and Danner suggested that they bury them under the flowers. They looked at Thenike, but the viajera said nothing; she seemed to have withdrawn inside herself.

  “No,” Marghe decided, “we’ll bury them where they died. We’ll put them under the charred grass and the seared soil, and their grave will green when the rest of the plain does.”

  The funeral was short; there was no ritual that would have been acceptable to both sides. Instead, Aoife stepped forward and told a story about Uaithne, about how she had broken her first pony when she was ten years old, and Danner said a few gruff words about how White Moon had been a brilliant captain, with the respect and trust of her officers. Then Thenike shook herself and began to sing a soft song of harvest time. It seemed an odd choice to Marghe at first, but as the viajera started to clap along with her song, as she raised her voice to sing of harvesting, of threshing, of ground that would be plowed over and seeds that would be sown that the fields would bloom again, Marghe understood. She took up the clapping. As others heard the message of renewal, they clapped, too, and when Thenike stopped singing, the clapping went on and on.

  After the burial, Ao
ife sent most of the tribeswomen back north. To gather the scattered herds, she said. Aoife herself and her daughter Marac, representing the Echraidhe, and Ojo for the Briogannon, followed Marghe, Thenike, and Danner to Holme Valley, where the talks were to be held under the great skelter tree that was the home of Cassil’s family.

  Holle spoke for the women of Singing Pastures, and Cassil for Holme Valley. After much thought, Marghe decided she would act for Danner and the others. She owed them that, at least.

  “You’re a tribe now,” she told Danner. “Try to think in those terms. I’ll get what I can for you. Your standing’s high right now.”

  “You mean yours.”

  Marghe ignored that. “I’m going to secure trata agreements from the tribes and from Holle, if I can, as well as strengthening the arrangement with Cassil.”

  “Just as long as we get our seed crop, and some breeding animals.”

  “I’ll do much better for you than that,” Marghe promised.

  The final trata agreements were reached in the presence of the viajeras Thenike and T’orre Na:

  The Echraidhe and Briogannon, temporarily merged under the madness of Uaithne, were enjoined to become one people in order to ensure peace for themselves and other settlements, and in order to survive; the herds of both tribes were decimated, their goods scattered, their children malnourished. They were granted joint use of grazing grounds to the north and west of Singing Pastures. From their herds, beginning the first year the animals reached reasonable numbers, they would grant a tithe of horses to Singing Pastures, in part reparation, and a tithe of breeding taars. These breeding taars would go straight from Holle’s people to Danner’s. Until that time, Danner’s people would receive a small number of breeding taars from Cassil, and help from both communities in capturing wild animals for domestication. Also from Cassil, Danner would get seed crop, first trading rights on the valley’s harvest, two hand looms, and–Marghe had had to fight hard for this–the fostering of six of the valley’s children, along with one or two adults.

  “Think, Danner, they’ll be invaluable!” she told the Mirror. “What better way to learn the way a world works than to learn with their children?”

  Cassil agreed, if volunteers could be found. In return, Danner had to promise the fostering of a third of any Mirror children in the next five years, again on a volunteer basis. Marghe was not worried about lack of volunteers. There were many on both sides who were curious, and some who would think to turn the arrangement to their personal gain. One way or another, both communities would benefit, in the end.

  They went to the Holme Valley cave for the witnessing song. It was evening. Marghe lifted her spitting torch a little higher; mica and quartz glittered redly as the nine pattern singers walked ahead of the women of Holme Valley, their audience. Fine sand sifted, cool and dry, between Marghe’s toes.

  “Letitia told me about this place,” Danner whispered as she walked deeper into the cavern, “but I only half believed her.”

  Before them, glimmering with natural phosphorescence, a lake slid in blues and greens. They were standing on a wide, natural shelf that ran around the walls of the cavern. Thin‑waisted columns plunged into the water from the lower parts of the uneven roof. The lake poured with light, throwing shadows on the wall at Marghe’s back, sheathing the columns in shimmering cloaks of color.

  T’orre Na began the song. Marghe took it up, followed by Thenike and Holle and Cassil; then Aoife, Day, and Ojo. Danner was the last to join her voice to the eight others and close the circle of nine. To Marghe’s surprise, the Mirror had a light, clear soprano.

  They joined hands: Ojo’s rough, dry hand in Marghe’s left, Day’s–warm and soft–in her right. Marghe smiled as she sang the wordless song, enjoying the way harmonies split off and raced over the water, echoing back from the walls. It felt as though the whole population of the valley was singing.

  One by one, the voices dropped out. At the edges of the lake tiny pebbles rocked in a slight current.

  They ate together outside, with children crying from fatigue and Ojo and Aoife sitting as far apart from each other as possible. Marghe chewed her bread deliberately, determined not to worry about it; no agreement was perfect.

  Later, lying next to Thenike, she fell asleep wondering if some deep, quiet place in the cavern still echoed with the song they had made, and dreamed of small pebbles rocking in the water.

  Chapter Eighteen

  HARVEST IN HOLME Valley began two days after the trata agreement was reached. The year was beginning its steady turn toward winter and it was time for the pattern singers to go their separate ways.

  Day left first, with T’orre Na. “I want to go home,” she said to Marghe. “I want to watch Jink and Oriyest sitting by our fire. I want to see how the younglings in the flock are doing, and what grass we’ve got left.” She hitched her pack higher on her shoulders, then suddenly thrust out her hand. “It was good meeting you,” she said awkwardly, “but better than that, you’ve… well, you’ve given me hope. Sort of. T’orre Na says that if you can get pregnant, there’s no reason I can’t.” Then she grinned. “Not that I’m sure I wantto have a child, you know? We’ve enough to deal with, with Jink’s two. But it would be nice to have the choice. It would make me feel as though I belong.”

  Thenike went with Day and T’orre Na, “Only for a few days, Amu. To see their part of the world again. To hear T’orre Na’s stories. I’ll be back when you’ve finished your business with your kin, here.”

  Marghe knew that Thenike was giving her time alone to have that talk with Hiam and say her good‑byes, but when she waved the three of them off, it was hard not to feel as though someone had ripped loose one of her limbs. Thenike would be back, Marghe told herself as she walked through the dry grass. She would be back.

  That night she dreamed of Thenike running her hands through the air over her body, cupping and smoothing vast tides of electromagnetic energy over her skin, until Marghe felt herself changing, lengthening, growing fur. Becoming a goth. And then Letitia Dogias was laughing, saying, Now you understand, then running out into a storm, onto a spire of rock while lightning jagged through her, again and again.

  Marghe woke feeling as though something she should know was dancing tantalizingly out of reach. She shook her head and got up. Hiam might be able to help. But when she went to the hospital, Hiam was not available. Marghe left a message.

  Further down the valley, she found the women of Singing Pastures mounted, their packhorses weighed down with their possessions and what was left of their herds standing, heads hanging, beneath a cloud of dust. Marghe ran a hand over the muzzle of Holle’s horse, remembering Pella, and looked up. “So soon?”

  “There’s maybe thirty days of good grazing left up north. Every mouthful helps. It’ll be a hard winter. You’ll be going back to Ollfoss?”

  “It’s my home now.” Home. Last time she had been here, with Cassil, she had had no home.

  “Don’t be too late setting out. Winter won’t be long coming this year. And come see us in the spring. With your youngster. Maybe we’ll lend you another horse.”

  Holle knew she would not get Pella back. The debt had been written off as part of the trata agreement, but a horse was not an inanimate object. Marghe hoped the mare was still alive up north somewhere, grown shaggy against the cold, running with the remnants of the Echraidhe herd. Perhaps with a leggy colt running beside her.

  Marghe laid a hand on her own belly. This time next year, her daughter would be three months old. A spring child. Born at the same time of year as young taars and foals, when birds began to sing and wirrels ate the last of their hoards. A time when the world smelled fresh and new. She wished Thenike were there to share the thought. But she would be back in three or four days.

  Holle and her people urged their sweating horses here and there, closing up the taar herd for travel, then moved out in a swirl of drovers’ whistles and whipcracks. Marghe watched until there was nothing left but the hang
ing dust.

  The harvest at Holme Valley was not the orderly cutting of fields in a straight‑line pattern that Marghe had observed in cultures all over the world. Instead, the women started harvesting in the outer fields and cut to the accompaniment of children singing, clapping hands, and beating drums; almost as if they were herding some small animals towards the center of the fields.

  “But of course,” Cassil said when Marghe asked her about it, “we keep the soul of the rice going inward, so that it concentrates, instead of leaving the grain.”

  And Marghe, when she stood still listening to the stamp of bare feet and the hissing thresh of olla scythes against stalks, felt… somethingmoving inward with the beaters and reapers. It grew stronger, more focused–like a storm gathering, but warmer, more yellow.

  She walked away from the fields thoughtfully and punched in Hiam’s code. The doctor was still not talking. She went to find Danner.

  Marghe spent the next two days at Danner’s screen, downloading huge chunks of biology and physics data and comparing the information with what she knew of Thenike’s abilities and her own, with Letitia’s and Uaithne’s strange behavior during severe storms, with what she had learned during her biofeedback training. It made for some interesting theories.

  Marghe set off for the hospital, trudging through the muggy heat under an overcast sky. There would not be many clear skies again at Holme Valley until spring. She thought of the bright, hard skies of Ollfoss and wished she and Thenike were starting their journey back the very next day.

  When she got to the hospital, the doctor was not there, but Lu Wai was, holding Letitia’s hand. Letitia was awake. “Letitia!” Marghe tried to smile, but the technician looked thin and fragile, like a dark brittle stick against the white bed.

  “Don’t look like that. I feel better than I look. Pretty good, in fact. I won’t be turning cartwheels for a week or two, but I’m alive, Lu Wai’s alive. And it looks like things are going to get pretty interesting from now on.”