Ammonite

“As the Echraidhe use it, the term soestre means those who are born after their mothers somehow synchronize their bio-rhythms and, through a process which I assume bears similarities to the control by a trained person of her otherwise autonomic nervous system, stimulate each other’s ova to divide.” It sounded bizarre, but the Echraidhe reproduced somehow, and unless the entire tribe was crazy or lying, then some of the daughters of these women, the ones they called soestre, were not genetically identical to their mothers. Which was impossible. Except it happened. How? “Tentative theory: that this ovular stimulation by another somehow encourages genetic information that is recessive to become dominant.” That might account for some of the differences like eye and hair coloring. But what about height, or bone structure? She did not know enough to be certain whether or not these could be explained by the differences the fetuses encountered in the womb.

She drank some more water.

“The deep trancing necessary for reproduction has acquired mystical aspects for the Echraidhe. The rite of passage is attended by a ritual trance, called deepsearch, which, the Echraidhe claim, allows the adolescent to somehow access the memories of her ancestors. The trancing is so deep that psychosis may occur, or may go on so long that it becomes physically detrimental to the subject.”

The Echraidhe accepted access to memories of past lives as casually as others believed in their gods, in reincarnation, in hellfire and damnation. She would not make a judgment on the matter.

She clicked RECORD again, then changed her mind and hit OFF. There were only a few hours of chip space left. She could speculate any time. When the chip was full, she would have to lift her face from the here and now, from her perspective as a woman researching a primitive tribe, and face her future. But the chip was not full yet.

Inside the tent she laced the flap closed behind her. There was just enough light to make it back to her nightbag without treading on anyone. Aoife stirred.

“Aoife?” There was no reply, but she could feel Aoife watching her in the dark. “I’m sorry. I…” There was no way she could explain how she felt. “I’m sorry,” she repeated.

The next day, and the day after that, Aoife got her up before dawn and kept her out on the plains until after dark. Marghe wondered if the tribeswoman was keeping her out of harm’s way.

This time, there was no storytelling. Aoife was grim, speaking only to explain how to tell the difference between the vein and artery in a taar’s neck, and which was the right one to cut if she needed a quick kill, or to explain how to hold the skinning knife to take a skin whole from a just-butchered taar. There were endless lessons, and it seemed to Marghe that Aoife was trying to teach her in one winter everything there was to being an Echraidhe. She wondered at that. Before the night in the Levarch’s tent, Marghe would have thought Aoife’s actions arbitrary, but now she wondered what the tribeswoman saw ahead to prompt this hard, uncompromising work.

Marghe still resented Aoife, because she was her guard, the one who watched her constantly, the one who stood between her and freedom. But as they labored on the plain, Aoife patiently repeating what must have seemed to her a basic lesson, Marghe trying over and again to master something any Echraidhe child could do with ease, she came to see that they were not that different. Aoife only did what she thought was right—and Aoife, too, was alone.

At night, they both lifted their heads at the sound of hoof-beats, lowered them again when the hoofbeats passed and it was not Uaithne.

Five nights after the incident in the Levarch’s tent, Marghe woke up in the dark, listening. Hoofbeats. Uaithne. Pulling on her boots was difficult; they were as stiff as her arms.

The sky was almost clear of cloud. It was the dark of the moons, but stars were strewn in a thick twist, like old jewels, across the sky. The air was crisp and bright. She could hear the horse clearly. Others did, too; tent flaps were unlaced, and feet stamped in the snow to warm hastily donned boots.

Aoife appeared at her shoulder, stood close.

“It’s Uaithne,” Marghe said, and felt the tribeswoman nod. Suddenly she wanted to put her arms around the small, fierce-faced woman and hold her close, protect her from more hurt. A rush of loneliness made her throat ache.

The drum of hoofbeats got louder; they heard the harsh breathing of an animal pushed too hard. Then it was there. Someone held the horses while Uaithne slid from the saddle and held up both arms.

“It has begun,” she shouted. In the starlight, the blood on her hands looked black.

Chapter Eight

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