Ammonite

They took their mounts to the corral by wrapping fingers deep into the manes and tugging the animals in the right direction. Marghe’s arms were still shaking.

The corral was now almost full of horses standing patiently while children looked at their feet, felt their legs, and curried muddy snow from their coats. One group of girls sat on the fence and watched, calling out to one of the grooms now and again, and three or four very young children dashed about, getting in everyone’s way. One ran by Aoife and Marghe, shrieking, her nose plugged with thick green snot. The air was wreathed with the mist of talk and hard work.

A young woman, about fourteen, saw them coming in and clambered down from the fence to meet them. Aoife relinquished her horse without a word, but Marghe found it hard to let go of Pella.

“Look after her,” Marghe said to the thin-faced girl. The girl frowned at her accent. “She feels the cold more than your horses.”

“She’ll be warm enough with all the others,” the girl said. She looked Pella up and down, mouth pursed. “Her coat’ll thicken up soon enough, and she looks a good size for foals. Bit old, though.” She wrapped the thin fingers of her right hand around a tuft of Pella’s mane, took a handful of the other horse’s mane in her left, and led them into the corral. There she released Pella with a slap on the rump and tended to Aoife’s mount first. Pella trotted into the herd as if she had never belonged anywhere else. The only way Marghe could pick her out at this distance was that the mare was a little longer in the leg, less shaggy in the coat. She wondered if she would be assimilated as easily into the Echraidhe.

Marghe expected the inside of the tent to be dark and oppressive. She was surprised. The light allowed in through the rolled-up entrance flap, already filtered through cloud and reflected back from snow, was further thinned and clarified by the white wool. The result was light like skimmed milk seeping into dark spaces and wetting to a glisten the deep colors of the tapestries that hung on the interior walls. It was a large tent, perhaps sixteen feet long inside, and every wall was covered in weaving of bold, geometric designs. The effect was warm and rich, with twilight purples and hot reds layered like sunsets over thick golds and greens. To Marghe, it was like cutting open the gray exterior of a geode to discover the jeweled crystal inside. She wondered if Aoife’s seamless exterior concealed any such surprises.

Aoife started unfastening her overfurs. Marghe shivered and stepped further in. The floor was a mix of rough and smooth: coarse felt, worn cool and smooth in places, covered here and there with old furs. She stood on one of the furs, glad to get her feet warm, and looked about.

Where she stood, near a wooden tent pole, the roof was high enough that she did not have to stoop. Directly ahead, two pallets heaped with more furs lay to either side and slightly to the front of a hearth which looked as if it was heaped with dead ash. Two pallets, both used—Aoife did share with someone, then. Such a large space for two people, given the subsistence living of the Echraidhe. Behind the hearth stood a second tent pole. The space beyond that was taken up with several bowls and pots, some in use, some empty.

She shivered. It was cold enough to see her breath.

From the roof hung a bewildering assortment of mosses, a string of shells, semi-tanned leather, herbs, skeins of dyed and undyed wool, strips of drying meat, and bottles made of clay and leather. The smells were smoky, human, rich. Standing free by the right-hand wall was a loom with a wooden shuttle tucked into the half-finished weaving. She did not need to look closely to see the same geometric patterns that were repeated on the hangings.

Where the hangings did not cover the walls, the felt had been reinforced by thick strands of what looked like rope that arced down from the tent poles to the floor. Marghe touched one. Horsehair. Sewn onto it were pouches, each a patchwork of leather, brightly dyed cloth, and felt. They bulged with odd shapes. Marghe could see that at regular intervals, where the walls met the floor, the tent had been pegged down from the outside.

Although she knew that the tent was designed to be dismantled and packed onto horseback in a matter of hours, the whole thing felt secure, lived in, permanent. But cold. She shivered again.

Aoife slung her overfurs across the foot of her pallet and stretched out with her eyes closed. “Fire needs building. Plenty of taar chips outside.”