Ammonite

Chapter Seven

EACH DAWN BRIGHTENED later and later. Aoife started taking Marghe far out onto the plains, past the grazing grounds, beyond the sight of smoke from the fires.

They used their palos to clear away patches of the hard-packed snow and the tribeswoman showed Marghe a world she had never dreamed existed. A world of frozen ice moss, of fist-sized scuttlers called ruks, of the snow worm. She learned how to catch the worm, how to bite off the tail and drink down the viscous, sugary fluid until all that was left was an empty, flaccid skin, like a lace. That could be toasted and eaten, or used like a leather thong. They ate ruks, too, but these Aoife had to catch. Marghe, though she was learning to use a sling, was hopelessly slow compared to the hard-shelled snow crabs. Perhaps because they did always defeat her, she disliked the taste: the flesh was greasy, acrid enough to bring tears to her eyes. Aoife made her eat it because it was good for her bones. Marghe, remembering the vow she made herself to stay as fit as she could, complied.

Sometimes they just rode, eyepits stained dark against the snow glare, while Aoife told stories of Tehuantepec before the coming of the tribe. Tehuantepec, she said, had long ago been a plain waving with grass, peopled by dark spirits. Marghe wondered about climatic change. On cold nights, Aoife continued, when these spirits still roamed, they might trick an unwary rider from her horse, then eat her, or the horse.

Marghe asked about the stones.

“They have always been,” Aoife said, shrugging. “They were there before we came, will be there long after the plain has returned to a sea of grass.” Every year, she said, they went there to feel the magic, to thank the spirits that sang every spring and made the grass grow and the taars quicken. The spirits in the stones sang all year. Listening, Marghe remembered their electromagnetic hum.

Sometimes Aoife told stories of tribal honor, of raids on the Briogannon, another tribe who dwelt on the plain; of raids on the herds of Singing Pastures and, in times past, on the forest gardens of Ollfoss.

“But why not just make trata with other communities?” Marghe kept wanting to know. “You’d both benefit.” She had seen how small their population was. They needed trade, cultural diversity. Genetic diversity, too, though she did not know how that worked. Without the taking of strangers like herself, they might die out. They might die out anyway.

“Echraidhe do not stoop to trata.”

“Why not?”

“We take what we need, not bargain like farmers,” Aoife would say. “The old ways work well enough.”

“Old ways are not always the best ways.”

And Aoife would shrug and fall silent. Moments later, she would begin an instructional tale about the Echraidhe code of tribe before self. In such a hostile environment such a code was necessary for survival, Marghe knew; she had encountered it on the harsh world of Gallipoli, in old Scottish clan ties of Earth. She wondered what needs Aoife subjugated for the good of the tribe. She found the complexities of such an honor code hard to sympathize with. Aoife was always patient. “Selfishness is for younglings,” she would say.

Sometimes, when even Aoife admitted the weather was bad, they would sit in the yurti. Marghe held the wool for Aoife while she wove, or helped her mix with water the acrid powder that was stored in the foretent: Aoife told her it was made from the dried leaves of corax, a black, leathery succulent found in the northern forests in summer. It made a powerful bleaching agent.

Marghe listened carefully to anything Aoife told her, not knowing what might prove useful later. Despite the fact that Aoife was partly responsible for her capture, for her remaining a virtual prisoner, Marghe watched the tribeswoman enjoy having her there to teach, and felt unhappy; she knew she would be prepared to do this woman injury, if necessary, to escape. At these moments, she would take a deep breath, put aside the confusing thoughts, and help Aoife smear the bleach paste onto raw wool with a bone spatula.

Borri, and Marac and Scatha, also spent more and more time in the yurti, for as the Echraidhe reckoned it, this was the Moon of Shelters. Soon it would be the Moon of Knives, when only the unwary or the desperate would ride far from the hearth.

The Moon of Knives, Aoife said, was the time of great blizzards, of the howling cold that swept over the Ice Sea from the north. Strange beasts traveled on the breath of the ice wind. From the wastelands they would come, across the frozen waters. While the land lay quiet under the days of dark, nine days of night barely lightening to gray before deepening again to full dark, the beasts would roam northern Tehuantepec. The creatures of the Great Forest—the tree-dwelling yanomao, the glimmer flies, the rare and beautiful jewelfeet—would be driven deep into its snow-shrouded fastness by the cyarnac and the goth. Cyarnac, it was rumored, were four-legged, smaller than a horse and swifter than the wind. Those who had seen one and survived said they were as alien and cold as the great mountain glacier, and that they drew heat from a woman’s body and soul as swiftly as meltwater. Thick-furred and white as bleached bone, they kept their hairless young in pouches and ate anything that moved.

Marghe listened, appreciating the storytellers’ art, analyzing the content.

The goth were different. Tall they were, half as high again as a big woman astride a big horse. Gray and gaunt, they were creatures of the cold mist and the dark places under trees. They stood on two feet, and a woman who had seen one, Aoife said, told of strange, flat eyes which she swore on her mother’s blood were intelligent.

Intelligent or not, the goth were said to live on lichen and bark scraped from the sides of trees and under the snow. Their faces were round, like platters, their mouths horny-lipped. Their fur was shaggy and streaked and it was said that a woman could stand next to one in a forest and not know it was there until it moved.

Marghe wondered if these half-mythical goth could be the builders of the stone circle, driven from their usual habitat by warm-blooded aliens. But none of the Echraidhe would admit to having seen one themselves. It was all tales from the past.

Perhaps they were long dead.

Near the end of the Moon of Shelters, when foul weather had penned the Echraidhe in their yurtu for more than two days, the tribe gathered in the enormous yurti of the Levarch, the story tent. Most were drinking. The circular tent was low and the air heavy with the smell of unwashed women, their fur and leather clothes, grease, and the animal stench of taar chips. It was very hot.

Marghe took a long swallow of ale; her face was already flushed but she filled her bowl with more of the dark, slightly bitter stuff. Cuirm, the Echraidhe called it; a great improvement on the ever-foul locha. She looked around the tent. The former Levarch, Nehu, whose old voice was like the whispering of dry leaves, was telling a tale of a young Echraidhe adopted by the beasts of the forest. Even to Marghe it sounded well-worn, the phrases ritual and well-practiced. And the Echraidhe were restless.

She sipped at her ale again, licked foam from her lips. Even the Levarch was flushed and wild. Aoife sat a little apart, knotting bright colors, occasionally looking up from the thick strands under her hands. A half-full cup stood on the floor by her knee. Borri lay with her head on Aelle’s lap. On the opposite side of the hearth, Uaithne stared fixedly at a point two handsbreadths above Aoife’s head. She did not drink from her cup. To Marghe, unused to so much ale, it seemed that Uaithne’s hair flamed with violent thoughts. The air was bright and thick with sexual tension.

Nehu’s tale wound to its ending and, as was then her right, the old Levarch requested a story about a raid from Mairu. Mairu stood and held her palms outward for silence; the Echraidhe quieted. She struck an over-solemn pose and told the tribe she would tell of a time, last spring, when she and her soestre had, by trickery, parted the women of Singing Pastures from the possession of four sacks of grain, a sack of dap, and a saddle. She pranced and postured and pulled faces, exaggerating her cunning and her victims’ stupidity. Roars of laughter, and shouted interruptions from Fion, her soestre, accompanied the story as Mairu ruthlessly reduced the women of Singing Pastures to creatures with no more wit and wisdom than snow worms. Though the end of the tale was greeted with stamps and shouts of approval, Marghe heard the heat and wildness surging and building in the tent. At the back of the tent, two women were kissing in endless, slow intensity; their furs were undone.

Marghe watched a weather-dark hand stroke soft breasts and became aware of her own muscles coiled sleek and plump under her too-tight skin, of hot air rubbing at her throat and widening her nostrils.

She could have taken her sexual energy and smoothed it down, but she wanted to let it burn through her, she wanted to enjoy being alive. She turned away and gulped from her bowl. The ale made her reckless.

She scrambled up and held out her palms for silence. The tent quieted abruptly.

“Women of the Echraidhe… Though the snow lies but a fingerwidth from these walls, though the air is cold enough to freeze the milk in a taar’s tit, let my words take you to a faraway place where women sweat in the heat and bathe naked in mountain springs to cool their skins.”

Oh, she had their attention now. They were leaning forward, bowls halfway to mouths; even Borri was sitting up. She winked at Aoife, took a huge swig of cuirm, and realized she was drunk already. Haii! What did she care?

“Tonight, I will speak to you of strange lands and beating hearts, of stone that burns under the ground like dry dung, and of passion, power, and intrigue.”

And so Marghe spoke of her recruitment and passage to this world. She dressed it up as a legend-quest: a powerful tribe of one country discovers the richness of a neighboring country and determines to take what it needs. But those who enter this strange new country with their arrogance and superior weaponry suffer through ignorance. They set off great burns in the unstable south and western grasslands and many die; they ignore the wise women of the country and fight the burns in such a way that they get worse. As if this was not enough, many of the newcomers begin to fall sick and die of a mysterious disease.

Marghe was enjoying herself. She transformed Company into a group of bickering tribal elders arguing over the selection of a suitable daughter for a trading mission. This chosen one was then prepared for her task. The initial survival training she had undergone years ago on the deserts of the Kalahari and the cold crags of the Rockies needed no significant changes, nor the laborious learning of another language. She did not have to force her eyes to sparkle with tears when she told of the death of the woman’s mother, or the final leavetaking from the beloved green hillsides and gray stone of her country.

The Echraidhe traveled with her through memories of the alien smells and tastes, sounds and sights, of the ugly slashed land around that outpost in the strange country, Port Central. They listened while she spoke of grasslands that still smoldered, of the determination of the herders there to claim reparation, of the wonders of Holme Valley and her own passage through Singing Pastures. She made them feel, as she had felt, the exhilaration and fear, the freezing cold and stifling heat of her journey alone over the years to reach here, this place. Tehuantepec.

It was a great success. Marghe leaned against the wall of sound, the roar and stamp of approval, swaying. It felt good to be seen as human. She looked over at Aoife and saw the scar twist in a slight smile. Before she knew what she was doing, she held out her palms again. She looked at the Levarch.

“I’ve told a tale. Now it’s my right to ask one to be told?”

“It is.”

“Then I ask that Aoife speaks of how she came by her scars.”

Silence congealed around her. She looked about in confusion. Several women looked away. “Aoife?” she said, swaying.

“I will not.” Aoife’s eyes were flat and hard, like stones.

Marghe did not understand. She had expected Aoife to tell some tale of daring, of wounds heroically gained, of being named Agelast. Instead… this.

The Levarch cleared her throat. “Marghe asks only her right. But this story rightly belongs to Uaithne.” Heads turned, waiting.

“I obey the Levarch in all things.” Uaithne’s voice was light, unperturbed. Marghe felt sick. How could she have been stupid enough to get drunk? Uaithne held out her palms in the ritual gesture and began. The tale she told was plain, without exaggeration or mime, and in third person:

“At the end of the grazing season nineteen summers ago Uaithne and her soestre Aoife made a pact that when the time came for them to choose their real names, they would join together in the deepsearch and go back further along their memories than any of their tribe had searched before. A common youthful declaration.

“The time came. They withdrew to their yurti, linked together in the deepbond of soestre, and tranced together for the deepsearch into the memories of their mothers and their mothers’ mothers. As everyone gathered here knows, deepsearch is exhausting. No matter what one swears in youthful exuberance, one usually does not go farther back than three or four generations. But Uaithne and her soestre were fine and brave, strong young women who believed that together they could do anything.

And so they tried. They tranced deeper and deeper, further and further back, to the foremothers of their foremothers’ foremothers. And further. Back to when Echraidhe and Briogannon roamed Tehuantepec as one tribe, back to before the tribe left the forest for the plain, back to the Beginning when all peoples lived together in one place, Ollfoss, deep in Moanwood.

“For Aoife, this was enough, more than enough. She had seen all the women who had given life to each other, generation after generation, in a long line leading to the present, and herself. She knew her place in the world. She had chosen her name.

“It was not enough for Uaithne. She wanted to go further back than any woman had gone before; she wanted to see what was on the other side of the Beginning. She dived deep, then deeper. Aoife struggled, tried to stop her soestre, scared for both of them: if they went too deep, they might be unable to come back up to their true place in the world, to themselves. And neither had the strength for much more. But the two women were soestre, deepbonded so that when one hurt, the other suffered; it was a bond that was knitted into their lives and experience, as necessary as breathing.

“Uaithne dragged Aoife further down.

“Aoife knew that if she did not stop this, they were lost. She did the only thing she could: she broke the deepbond.

“Somehow, Aoife dragged herself back to the present. Uaithne lay still and white and silent beside her. Aoife tried to wake her, to call her back, but she was young and did not have the skill.

Uaithne, deep in trance and not expecting the dissolution of the bond that had kept them close enough to share dreams all their lives, had been unprotected. Now her mind wandered alone amongst the strange herd of memories, unable to find the path home.

“Aoife ran to find old Macha, Borri’s teacher. It took many days for Macha to find Uaithne and bring her back to herself. When she did return, she screamed herself raw. She was ill for a long time. And afterward, she could not bear the sight of her former soestre and she was taken to live in the Levarch’s yurti.

“Time passed. To those who were concerned it seemed that the estranged soestre did begin to heal, in their own separate fashions. While Aoife spent much time not talking to anyone, Uaithne seemed to recover from the broken deepbond and took to riding out to visit the Briogannon.

“At the time of the new Moon of Sweet Grass, Uaithne and a woman of the Briogannon, Fellyr, went before the elders of that tribe and swore themselves to each other. Afterwards, as is usual for those of different tribes, they decided to start a child each as evidence of good faith. Now, although they were lovers and soon to be tent sisters, they had neither skill nor knowledge of one another to trance together deeply enough to mutually quicken each other and conceive soestre. They would link together just deep enough to quicken together, Fellyr decided. But Uaithne had not tranced since she had chosen her name, and was afraid. When Fellyr tranced and quickened, Uaithne did not, but said nothing. Thus deceived, the Briogannon woman was happy to say a temporary farewell to Uaithne, who was to journey back to the Echraidhe for the blessings of her family and Levarch, and to collect her share of horse and herd, before traveling back to the Briogannon greengrounds.

“At that time, the greengrounds of the Briogannon were three days’ ride from the Echraidhe yurtu. On the second night of her journey back, Uaithne was lying in her nightbag, composing herself for sleep, when a patch of cloud uncurled itself from around the spring moon, and light poured down from the sky and through the open flap of her tent. “Try once again,” the moon seemed to say, “and I will watch over you.” And so Uaithne did. She deepened her breathing and slowed her heart, and fell into trance.

“At first, all was well. She heard the voices of her foremothers calling but did not listen; she was here to pay heed to her body, to listen to the rhythms of blood and egg, to quicken life. But one voice, stronger than the others, called and for just a moment Uaithne listened. The moment stretched to hours, the hours to days as the voice drew Uaithne deeper into the past and through the barrier that is the Beginning.

To this day, no one knows how long Uaithne stayed in deep trance, rigid and hardly breathing. When she came to, the snows lay heavy on the roof of her tent and her skin hung loose on her bones.

“When she came at last to the yurtu of the Echraidhe, all marked how thin and strange she looked. To those few who asked, she said nothing. When the Levarch, worried, spoke to her sternly, Uaithne said only that she had spoken with the goddess of death, that she was her chosen representative in this place, the Death Spirit, and that she awaited the sign to begin the accounting long spoken of. She would not be gainsaid. She resumed her life with the tribe. She made no mention of Fellyr of the Briogannon nor of her oath; thus, no word was sent, no message knot delivered to her lover, still waiting at the Briogannon greengrounds.

“Time passed, and Fellyr grew worried at her lover’s absence. Without pausing to consult the elders, she saddled her horse and rode hard. After two days without rest or sleep, crazy with worry and hunger, she came to the summer camp of the Echraidhe. She saw Uaithne working alone by the taar pens and slid from her horse, into her lover’s arms, sobbing with relief. But Uaithne thrust her aside and told her that she no longer wished to partner a Briogannon, that she had other tasks, that she withdrew her oath.

“Now, when Fellyr the Briogannon realized she had been cast aside with as much thought as one would discard a worn boot, her worry turned to rage and grief and she slid her knife free. Uaithne, as no one would dispute, is a fine fighting woman: she knocked Fellyr aside and took the knife in her own hand.

“Fellyr lay sobbing and broken on the sweet new grass and, instead of pity, Uaithne offered violence.

“Aoife, who had caught the Briogannon’s panicked mount out by the Levarch’s tent and was searching for its rider, came upon the two a heartbeat before murder.

Uaithne had her knee on Fellyr’s chest, oblivious to anything but the keen-edged knife lying across the soft throat beneath her. There was no time to call out. Instead, Aoife leapt and knocked Uaithne aside.

Uaithne fought like a demon, as though she did not know she struggled against the woman who had been her soestre. The blade caught Aoife across cheek and nose, the haft smashed into bone. Half blinded by her own blood, Aoife fumbled in the grass for a stone and swung at the side of Uaithne’s head. She had to hit her twice more before Uaithne dropped the knife and collapsed onto the white-faced Fellyr.

Someone added a chip to the fire. It spat into the silence. Marghe felt the ale ungluing her world, slipping it free from its moorings. If she moved her head, the world would spin. Uaithne raised her bowl and tilted it toward Marghe in mocking salute. “Did you enjoy your tale?”

“It is not finished,” the Levarch said heavily. She turned to Marghe. “The Briogannon woman returned to her tribe. There she renamed herself Ojo, which in their speech means evil eye. A year later, when her daughter was born, she named her Ojo also. The elder Ojo and her tent sisters have sworn blood feud against Uaithne. They have raided us many times. I fear there will soon be tribe feud between us. Now, instead of Echraidhe and Briogannon exchanging news and lovers, we guard our herds day and night.”

Marghe woke up long before dawn with the splitting head and stretched-tight feeling of a hangover. The tent was cold and filled with the soft breath of four sleeping women. She was thirsty, but the water jug was empty; her bladder was full.

Shivering, clutching the jug, she staggered outside to relieve herself. Snow crunched under her boots, loud in the predawn quiet. Her urine smelled hot, toxic; it pattered and steamed as it burned into the snow. She stood up, kicked more snow over it, and laced up her furs. If only she could dispose of last night’s mistakes as easily.

The herd trough was thick with ice, and she had to bash it through with the bone propped against the fence. She dipped the jug in; icy water made her hands ache to the bone. She drank, thought she might throw up, then drank again and refilled the jug. She tucked her hands under her armpits, glad of the ache. She deserved it.

One of the Echraidhe guarding the herd, a fur-wrapped bundle on a horse, nudged her mount over.

“It’s a while until dawn,” she said, curious.

How they hated to ask direct questions, Marghe thought, and just nodded, hoping the woman would leave her in peace. She idly considered knocking her from her horse and riding out of here. But the guard always stayed just out of reach, hand on knife. Elementary precautions. Even if she could escape, it would be pointless. Aoife would track her down within hours.

“You’re the second one up so early,” the woman volunteered. “Uaithne rode off north and east before the moons set.”

The tribeswoman had been guarding the herd all night, Marghe realized, and had probably not heard about the stranger woman humiliating Aoife in public. She could not know that Uaithne’s was the last name Marghe wanted to hear. Marghe borrowed one of Aoife’s tactics and simply ignored the guard until she clucked her mount back into the middle of the sleeping taars.

Marghe contemplated the snow on her boots. Uaithne often disappeared for days at a time; no one knew where she went. Why should this be any different? But she sensed that it was.

She had other things to think about. After another drink of water so cold it burned all the way down to her stomach, she set the jug back down in the snow and pulled her wristcom from a pocket.

“As the Echraidhe use it, the term soestre means those who are born after their mothers somehow synchronize their bio-rhythms and, through a process which I assume bears similarities to the control by a trained person of her otherwise autonomic nervous system, stimulate each other’s ova to divide.” It sounded bizarre, but the Echraidhe reproduced somehow, and unless the entire tribe was crazy or lying, then some of the daughters of these women, the ones they called soestre, were not genetically identical to their mothers. Which was impossible. Except it happened.

How? “Tentative theory: that this ovular stimulation by another somehow encourages genetic information that is recessive to become dominant.” That might account for some of the differences like eye and hair coloring. But what about height, or bone structure? She did not know enough to be certain whether or not these could be explained by the differences the fetuses encountered in the womb.

She drank some more water.

“The deep trancing necessary for reproduction has acquired mystical aspects for the Echraidhe. The rite of passage is attended by a ritual trance, called deepsearch, which, the Echraidhe claim, allows the adolescent to somehow access the memories of her ancestors. The trancing is so deep that psychosis may occur, or may go on so long that it becomes physically detrimental to the subject.”

The Echraidhe accepted access to memories of past lives as casually as others believed in their gods, in reincarnation, in hellfire and damnation. She would not make a judgment on the matter.

She clicked RECORD again, then changed her mind and hit OFF. There were only a few hours of chip space left. She could speculate any time. When the chip was full, she would have to lift her face from the here and now, from her perspective as a woman researching a primitive tribe, and face her future. But the chip was not full yet.

Inside the tent she laced the flap closed behind her. There was just enough light to make it back to her nightbag without treading on anyone. Aoife stirred.

“Aoife?” There was no reply, but she could feel Aoife watching her in the dark.

“I’m sorry. I…” There was no way she could explain how she felt. “I’m sorry,” she repeated.

The next day, and the day after that, Aoife got her up before dawn and kept her out on the plains until after dark. Marghe wondered if the tribeswoman was keeping her out of harm’s way.

This time, there was no storytelling. Aoife was grim, speaking only to explain how to tell the difference between the vein and artery in a taar’s neck, and which was the right one to cut if she needed a quick kill, or to explain how to hold the skinning knife to take a skin whole from a just-butchered taar. There were endless lessons, and it seemed to Marghe that Aoife was trying to teach her in one winter everything there was to being an Echraidhe. She wondered at that. Before the night in the Levarch’s tent, Marghe would have thought Aoife’s actions arbitrary, but now she wondered what the tribeswoman saw ahead to prompt this hard, uncompromising work.

Marghe still resented Aoife, because she was her guard, the one who watched her constantly, the one who stood between her and freedom. But as they labored on the plain, Aoife patiently repeating what must have seemed to her a basic lesson, Marghe trying over and again to master something any Echraidhe child could do with ease, she came to see that they were not that different. Aoife only did what she thought was right—and Aoife, too, was alone.

At night, they both lifted their heads at the sound of hoof-beats, lowered them again when the hoofbeats passed and it was not Uaithne.

Five nights after the incident in the Levarch’s tent, Marghe woke up in the dark, listening. Hoofbeats. Uaithne. Pulling on her boots was difficult; they were as stiff as her arms.

The sky was almost clear of cloud. It was the dark of the moons, but stars were strewn in a thick twist, like old jewels, across the sky. The air was crisp and bright.

She could hear the horse clearly. Others did, too; tent flaps were unlaced, and feet stamped in the snow to warm hastily donned boots.

Aoife appeared at her shoulder, stood close.

“It’s Uaithne,” Marghe said, and felt the tribeswoman nod. Suddenly she wanted to put her arms around the small, fierce-faced woman and hold her close, protect her from more hurt. A rush of loneliness made her throat ache.

The drum of hoofbeats got louder; they heard the harsh breathing of an animal pushed too hard. Then it was there. Someone held the horses while Uaithne slid from the saddle and held up both arms.

“It has begun,” she shouted. In the starlight, the blood on her hands looked black.