Nicola Griffith - Ammonite

She could live here, for a while.

Marghe ate, listened, struck the gong. Listened and felt and struck the gong. It grew dark. The stars came out, and the moons, but the clouds reduced them to shimmery blurs. The blurs sank down into the horizon, faded. The smell of the forest changed, grew wilder, darker; Marghe thought she heard something large prowling along its edge.

Gerrel brought her breakfast before dawn. She did not eat it. The world seemed very wide and thin.

When the sun came up, Marghe waited, struck the gong one more time, then stilled its vibration with her fingertips and laid the padded stick along the top. She stood, swaying a little, then bent and took the half goura from the bowl on the untouched tray. The trees seemed to call her. Listen , they said to her, we ring to the same beat as you, to the same beat as the virus, the same beat of the world . This might be the place to stay and finally learn what it meant to have a family and friends.

She wandered off into the forest; she did not want to see anyone just yet.

When Marghe came out of the trees, she walked through the gardens and up the path that led through Ollfoss to Thenike’s door. She lifted her hand to knock and realized she was still holding the half-eaten fruit. She knocked with her other hand.

No one answered. She knocked again.

Thenike came to the door. Her eyes sharpened when she saw Marghe.

Marghe spoke without preamble. “I want to stay here, at Ollfoss. There are things I have to learn. Help me.”

IF YOU WANT to stay, you need to talk to Leifin,” Thenike had said that morning.

“She found you and brought you here. If she didn’t have a good reason for it at the time, then she does now, though I couldn’t begin to guess what. She always has a reason for everything, a plan, an explanation.” She paused to rake out the ashes and blow the embers to a glow.“She found you; in that sense, she’s responsible for you and will have a large say in what happens next.”

“Do you like her?”

“Huellis said to me once that she thought Leifin spent too much of her time thinking and not enough feeling.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

“No. But it’s an answer you’ll have to wait for until you’ve made up your own mind. Go see her. Talk to her. Tell her you want to stay. See what she has to say.”

Marghe suddenly felt reluctant to talk to Leifin. “There’s no other way?”

“Of course there are other ways.” Thenike sounded irritable. “Nothing will get decided without the whole family’s approval, and yours. But it’ll help you to know Leifin’s reason, or reasons. She’s the right place to start.”

Leifin was sitting on a stool by the south hearth in the great room, carefully shaving layers from a small block of wood on her lap. Stone and olla tools lay in a neat row on a worn strip of leather; shavings curled in a heap at her feet. Marghe could smell the new wood from the doorway. The infant soestre, Otter and Moss, were lying on a beautiful fur rug near the fire; one—Marghe could not tell them apart—was awake, with her fist in her mouth. The great room was long and slope-ceilinged. It took up the whole of the west side of the house and was the only room Marghe had seen so far in Ollfoss that had a vertical window. In proportion to the room, the window was small, but it was glazed—thick, wavy olla glass stained with hints of cream and rose. The floor was polished wood, like the heavy furniture, and there was a hearth at both ends.

The room was full of beauty: wall carvings, tapestries, furs—on the floor and the walls—intricately patterned doorframes, and gorgeous wooden candlestick holders.

But the centerpiece of the whole room was a huge sculpture, low on the floor—the torso and arms of a woman swimming, arching her back as she reached as far as sinew and bone would permit for her next backstroke.

When Marghe stepped into the room and closed the door behind her, Leifin looked up briefly, nodded, then returned her attention to her carving. The expression on her face was the same one Marghe had seen when she had first stepped out of the trees just behind the goth: intent, focused. A hunter’s look.

Marghe went to the fire and sat down next to the sleeping baby, content to wait.

Eventually, Leifin put down the knife she had been using and selected a chisel.

“Is that your work?” Marghe asked, gesturing at the floor sculpture.

“Yes.”

She stroked the fur she sat on. “And this?”

“No, that’s an old one. Some of these others are mine.” She pointed her chisel at a magnificent blue-gray fur hanging over the back of a bench. “I did that one before I chose my name.” She waited to see if Marghe would ask anything else, then went back to her work. If she was curious about Marghe’s reason for staying there, she did not show it.

The chisel was sharp and Leifin worked deftly, skimming the blade again and again down one side of the block. Rich golden brown slices fell at her feet, and gradually Marghe saw a curve developing in the wood. Sawdust clung to the dark hairs of Leifin’s forearm.

After a while, Leifin paused, put down her chisel, lifted the block of wood, and turned it this way and that in the light. Marghe wondered if Leifin studied a dead animal that way, too, before cutting for the hide.

Leifin looked up and misinterpreted the question on Marghe’s face. “I’m tracing the grain, trying to follow it with my tools to bring out the best in both the wood and the sculpture. To give it strength.”

She found what she wanted and went back to work, lifting one tool after another, always replacing them in the right place on her leather roll. She worked methodically, patiently, like a trapper noting the strengths and hunting out the weakness of her prey. The pile of shavings grew.

The baby who was not asleep took her fist out of her mouth and began to cry, waking up the other, who joined her.

“They’re hungry.” Lerfin carefully put the curving piece of wood next to her tools and brushed the worst of the sawdust from her arms. She scooped up the one who was screaming the loudest and jiggled her on her knee while she unlaced her leather-and-fur tunic. “There, little one.” The baby sucked lustily. “Rock Moss, would you?”

Marghe picked up the infant gingerly, remembering to support her head. “How old are they?”

”They were born just after the harvest.”

Four moons ago, or three and a half months. “They’re lucky. To have a family.”

Leifin nodded, waiting.

“You helped me. The family’s caring for me. I like it here.” Marghe hesitated. “I want to stay.”

“Go on.”

“That’s it. I want to stay, here, at Ollfoss.”

“With this family?”

“Yes,” Marghe said, surprised. Who else would she stay with?

“Why?”

“You’re the ones who have helped me. And I’m beginning to know some of you: Thenike, and Gerrel, Kenisi… I’ve hardly met anyone from the other families. Not yet.”

“And you don’ want to wait until you’re well enough to get to know the others first?”

“No.”

Leifin was looking at her with that intent, hunter’s look. “Good. Then I don’t see any reason why you shouldn’t. Soon.” She smiled and held out her hand. It was warm and firm; it should have felt friendly, but it did not. Leifin, Marghe thought, had an agenda of her own.

On the second day of the Moon of Cracking Frost, the family of Leifin and Thenike, Gerrel, Hilt, Kenisi, Kenisi’s partner, Wenn, and Huellis and the infant soestre Otter and Moss met to discuss Marghe’s petition to join them.

The day outside was dull and gray, and the light that struggled through the milky glass of the single unshuttered window did not do much to thin the fire shadows that danced over the women sitting around the hearth on their rugs. A pot of dap simmered by the fireside. Even though fire was burning at both ends of the room, Marghe was cold. She huddled between Gerrel and Thenike, her allies, pulled her furs closer, and listened.