Nicola Griffith - Ammonite

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 coated 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.