Nicola Griffith - Ammonite

It was harsh punishment: Juomo would not be able to work from North Haven, no one would give her shelter, and even if all her other credits turned out to be genuine, she would not have enough to buy herself a boat to leave. It seemed there were no second chances when people could afford to lose so little. Marghe wondered if she would have been so quick to judge if she had known.

Afternoon turned to dusk and brought with it a warm wind from the southeast.

Marghe and Thenike ate their evening meal outside in the fountain courtyard, enjoying the warm smells of grass and blossom and forest along with several others.

More who were not eating, or who had already eaten, began to drift into the courtyard, sitting on the fountain rim, the stone flags, benches, the roots of trees.

Waiting.

Waiting, Marghe realized, for her and Thenike to tell them the news. And more than that: Roth’s story would have traveled by now. They wanted to see the viajera from another world.

Her mouth went dry and she had to control her breathing to get her heartrate down to normal.

“It was a good winter in Ollfoss,” Thenike began conversationally, “and a better spring. The crops will be early, and big. Marghe here knows about the gardens, about the soil and the seeds.” She gestured to Marghe.

Pretend you’re talking to one person , Thenike had said, a person who listens hard and exclaims in all the right places, and imagine what that person would like to hear, how you might make the news more interesting for them. If the person is a fisher, and it’s a tale of the plains, tell her what she might need to know to understand the story . So Marghe looked up at the women gathered in the courtyard at the inn of North Haven and pretended she was telling her story to Holle, of Singing Pastures.

“I can tell you about the gardens on the edge of Moanwood, but my story starts a long way before that. It starts further away than Ollfoss, though that’s part of it; it starts further away than the camp of the Echraidhe, though I spent some time there.

Indeed,” she said, “it was on Tehuantepec that I nearly lost my life and my will. But my story starts beyond even Singing Pastures and Holme Valley; it goes back to that place called Port Central.” She waited just a fraction longer than necessary. “You will have heard of it.”

Nods. Some grins, some scowls. Marghe looked for Roth’s face, found it.

Addressed it directly. “That’s where I’m from. Port Central. I and all the other women from Port Central come from another world. Some of you already know this from the stories of other viajeras. You will have heard that we are stupid, with less brains than a taar or one of your own children. Taars, you might say, have more sense than to trigger burns. Children can deepsearch.”

“And you stay huddled up inside that Port like children stranded in the woods,” a woman with leathery brown skin remarked.

“True. But children learn. And we are learning. Look at me. I know better than to tread on burnstone. I deepsearched and chose a name. I carry a child in my belly, soestre to the one growing inside Thenike.” She looked around the courtyard of faces: some were skeptical, some interested, one or two cynical, but none were hostile. “Some of you will know that what I say is true: your mothers’

many-times-great-grandmothers all came from a world other than this. Probably from the same one as I did.” She paused. “How many of you have had strange dreams of falling from the sky, or have walked with your ancestors as they saw this place for the first time?”

There were a few uneasy glances. She heard one clear “Aye” from the back of the crowd.

“Your ancestors learned. As I’ve learned.” General nods.

“You seem to be the only one, though,” Roth said. “According to the viajera Kuorra the rest of you are huddling in that Port and not coming out. For anything.”

“I don’t think I am the only one. But I’m one of the first. And when I tell you my story, you’ll understand why.”

“Tell the story, then,” Tillis called, in high good humor. She drank from an olla goblet. “I want to know what’s been going on since we left land.”

“And when was that?”

“Last Harvest Moon.”

“Well, last Harvest Moon, I was just landing here on this world for the first time…”

And Marghe told her story. She had learned a great deal from Thenike: in those places where the pain was still too raw she told her story in a ritual cadence that forbade interruption, but most of the time she just talked, and now and again a woman would ask her a question, or add something.

It was not just Marghe’s story, of course. Much of the tale was news that these people needed to know: that there was tribe feud between Echraidhe and Briogannon, and it was probably dangerous to cross Tehuantepec for a while; a reiteration of the fact that Marghe, a woman from the other world, had been able to deepsearch and make soestre in her belly and Thenike’s, which held all kinds of interesting implications for the future; that these foreigners from another place had struck trata with Cassil of Holme Valley—there was much thoughtful rubbing of chins at that news; that the harvest of Ollfoss would be very good this year, which meant good opportunities for traders.

The moons were up when Marghe paused in the middle of a sentence to sip at her water, only to find the cup empty. She looked into the empty cup, letting the pause lengthen. The evening was chill with night breezes.

“I’m tired,” she said at last, regretful, “and near the end of my story tonight.” She did not want the evening to end. “There will be more tomorrow.”

After Marghe and Thenike left the courtyard, they walked for, a while quietly, both wrapped under the same cloak. Marghe watched the stars, listening to the far-off hiss and drag of waves on the shore and slapping up against the wharf.

She was a viajera. For the rest of her life she would travel and tell stories and judge disputes. It would rarely be as easy as it had been today, she knew, but she found she did not mind. She had found what it was she had been looking for; she had a place in the world, a place she had made. She touched the suke resting against her breast. She was Marghe Amun. The complete one. She felt at peace.

She stopped and kissed Thenike softly, slowly, running her fingers up through her heavy hair. “Come to bed.”

THE DAYS GREW warmer, and the nights soft. Marghe took turns with Thenike to tell the news to the new faces and old that gathered in the courtyard of the inn. Roth and her sailors said good-bye on the fourth day and left to sail east, to the Necklace Islands. Marghe did not know what happened to Juomo.

One hot day, their ninth in North Haven, Marghe and Thenike were in the kitchen getting cool water before Marghe resumed her drumming practice. Zabett found them.

“There’s a kinswoman come to see you. She’s in the courtyard.”

When they stepped back out into the heat of the courtyard, Leifin was sitting with one hand in the fountain, her two large hip packs by her feet, looking about. She was wearing a thin-strapped tunic and Marghe was shocked to see how much weight she had lost in so few days; the tendons in her neck stood out like cables. Leifin watched them as they approached, examining them first from one eye then the other.

Like a bird of prey.

“Leifin, what’s happened?”

“I was hunting,” Leifin said dismissively.

“What brings you here?”

“I’ve brought some trade goods, and a message.” She wiped her hand dry on her trews and opened the pouch at her belt, took out a message cord.“For you. I don’t think it’s good news.”