Ammonite

Marghe hesitated, then twisted open the vial and laid one of the softgels on the outstretched palm. Aoife watched Marghe intently.

“I’m not from here, the north,” Marghe said carefully. “I take these so that I don’t catch a virus, a sickness, from you.”

“Why did you come up here?” Scatha asked. “Where were you going?”

“I was going to Ollfoss. In Moanwood.”

Borri rolled the softgel around on her palm and nodded. “A bezoar. Prevention. Just as we used to dose ourselves with ellum root when we went south to trade, to stop bowel rot.” She picked up the softgel, sniffed it.“What sickness is it you protect yourself from?”

“I don’t know what you call it. It takes forty to sixty days to develop and can start with a cough and itching eyes.”

“Followed by aches in the joints, sore gums, high fever?”

“Yes,” she said, surprised. “Sometimes.” She looked at Marac and Scatha, who were smiling. “Do you know what it is?”

Scatha laughed. “Baby fever!”

Marghe looked to Borri for confirmation, and the healer nodded. “It’s not common, but sometimes a baby is born early and two moons later comes down with fever. Rarely, they bleed from the nose or the eyes and then their hearts run away, beat themselves to exhaustion. If that happens, they die. Otherwise they cough a few days, and scream enough to try their mothers’ patience, but recover fast enough.” She looked at the softgel thoughtfully. “I’ve never heard of a grown woman getting it. Not Echraidhe or Briogannon, not at Singing Pastures or Ollfoss.” Her eyes were very bright when they met Marghe’s. “Not even in far-away places across the Oboshi Desert or the Western Ocean.”

Scatha leaned forward. “Where are you from?”

Aoife stirred. “Marghe is Echraidhe now.” She held Scatha’s gaze, then Marac’s. There were no more questions.

After the meal, Aoife and the two younger women left for Aelle’s tent. Borri stayed where she was, rolling the softgel absently between her fingers while Marghe banked the fire and collected the bowls to take outside and scrape clean in the snow.

“Put the bowls down,” the healer said mildly, “and come sit with me.”

Marghe settled cross-legged opposite her. The healer held the softgel up to the light.

“This is like nothing I know of. Here, take it back.” Marghe dropped it into the vial, stowed it away in her pocket. The healer watched her. “Marghe, where do you come from that you’re so afraid of baby fever, and Aoife is afraid to let you speak?”

Marghe said nothing.

“Don’t fear Aoife on account of me. What you say here is between us two.”

Marghe wondered if that was true. “What do you know of the world?” she asked eventually.

“Much,” Borri said dryly. “What is it you think I don’t but should?”

Marghe felt her cheeks go red. “I meant, what do you know of the physical shape of your world?”

“‘Your’ world?” Borri said thoughtfully. She leaned back a little, but Marghe saw the muscles around the healer’s eyes tighten.

She decided to trust Borri. “There are many; the moons in your sky are worlds, but nobody lives there. The world I come from is something like this one, but the people are different, and the diseases.”

“Have you told anyone else this?”

“Only Aoife. Will you tell me what’s wrong?”

“Listen to me.” She laid a hand on Marghe’s knee. “Aoife was right to protect you. You must never, never speak to anyone of what you’ve just told me. No one.”

The hand on Marghe’s knee was brown; a vein blue-snaked across it from below the base of the thumb. Marghe lifted her eyes from the hand to Borri’s face and could not keep the bitterness out of her voice. “ Aoifeprotect me? Who from?”

A draft blew a spark from the fire. Borri sighed. “ Aoife’s, soestre. Uaithne.”

Aoife and Uaithne? “ But I thought…”She thought Aoife had no family; she thought that, like her, Aoife was alone. But soestre usually lived together as family; as tent sisters, if not lovers.

“What happened?” she asked.

“Ask Aoife,” Borri said. “It’s not my story to tell.”

Aoife would never tell her, they both knew that. She tried another approach. “Why would it be dangerous for me if Uaithne found out I’m from another world?”

“Not just dangerous for you. For all of us.” She glanced at the entrance flap, and Marghe hoped Aoife and the two younger women would be a long time at Aelle’s.

“Something happened to Uaithne a long time ago,” Borri said eventually. “It disturbed her mind. She believes she’s the Death Spirit returned. We have a story, an old story, about the goddess of death and how we came into this world.”

It was quiet and dark outside, with wind slow and steady from the northeast. Marghe wondered what the stars would look like this far north: Jeep’s sun was one of a huge constellation. Beyond the clouds, the sky probably blazed. She wished she could see it.