Ammonite

Disks. But big ones, as big as her palm, cheerful with refracted color. They were like nothing she had ever seen before, except in old records. Useless. There was no way she could read these. Unless… Perhaps Letitia Dogias could do something with them, if their notoriously fragile information storage had not been long since destroyed. Disks. What a wealth of information there might be here. “Wrap them, put them back. I can’t read them. Perhaps, in time, someone who can will come and take a look.”

Thenike wrapped them carefully and laid them back in the chest. Marghe tried to set aside her disappointment and wandered back over to the map. South of Ollfoss there was a picture of standing stones. Anxiety hit her like a fist in her stomach. She breathed in and out. She was with family now. She looked at the map again. There were two or three communities near where she imagined Port Central to be. She pointed. “I didn’t know these were here.”

“They’re not. Burnstone moved them on a long, long time ago. They’re here now, at Three Trees and Cruath.” She pointed with a long brown finger. Her nail was glossy pink, and a long-ish scar ran from the thumb joint over the back of her hand.

Thenike seemed to be enjoying her interest, so Marghe examined the map more closely. She thought she could still detect a faint hint of blue in the picture of the waterfall at Ollfoss. Waterfall, foss. Ollfoss. “I haven’t seen the foss,” she said.

“It’s no longer here. Or, rather, we are no longer there. The soil was poor. When you’re well, I’ll show you the old valley and foss.”

And the way Thenike said it, something in the way she tilted her head and accented whento leave no possibility of if, Marghe knew that the viajera meant not only after you have recovered from walking out of Tehuantepecbut after you have been sick with the virus, and have lived. Thenike had said more than once that she, Marghe, must save all her energy, hoard it until the time came to face the virus.

Thenike, she had discovered, was as much of a healer as Kenisi: “All viajeras are healers,” she had told Marghe, “to some extent or other.” She had not explained further.

Marghe hobbled, then limped, along the paths that ran between the gardens of Ollfoss where women from different families worked, sweeping the dirt free of snow, breaking in the ground with hand hoes—preparing the huge communal plots for the snarly nitta and goura shoots, the squat soca bushes that were harvested and traded every summer in North Haven. She waved at those she recognized. Sometimes she helped Gerrel and Kenisi carry their family’s share of bread and soup to the kitchens in Ette’s house where the women would gather for lunch.

The weather improved, as did Marghe. Gerrel, seeing the improvement in both, took it upon herself to show Marghe the small family garden and teach her what needed to be done.

The sky was blue and clear, and an end-of-winter wind gusted from the treeline, filling her hair with the smell of snow and green. Marghe moved her tatty mat of what had once been taar skin a few feet along the furrow and knelt, glad to get the weight off her feet. Her sharp stone hand hoe cut easily into the first few inches, but she had to work to dig deeper. The hoe slipped; she added her three-fingered left hand to her right, bunched her muscles, and pushed.

The pressure made the scar tissue on her left hand ache. She shook her hand. Such little things, fingers; she wondered if she would ever stop missing them, mourning them. At least she had her feet. And her life. She was still here to enjoy the cold, wet roughness of fresh-turned dirt and the sharp wind on her face. She would not dwell on her scars. She would not.

She dug into the loosened dirt with her right hand, plucked out small stones and tossed them aside, pulled up weeds. She was alive. Alive. She paused and felt carefully around the bulbs that were just beginning to root, found another stone. She yanked up a clump of creeping lichen and shook it vigorously, freeing the dirt from the roots. The lichen had to be gotten rid of, but the soil was rich, and had to be kept.

“Are you trying to kill it?” Thenike grinned down at her. The viajera was holding a steaming mug. “This is for you.”