Ammonite

The warm, dry finger against her cheek pulled memories up from the well: her mother laughing and throwing away a batch of burned bread, saying, Never mind, we’ll buy some;ripping the computer plug from the wall, furious with some review; making her a fan from yellow tissue paper when she had a fever, then folding it up into a paper hat when she realized it wouldn’t work. Her mother singing a nonsense song, telling her stories of Macau, and of Taishan where she had been conceived; trying to smile before she died. It hit her all over again: she could never come back from Jeep and tell her mother how useful her organizational techniques had been in analyzing her notes for publication; she and her mother could never share tea and a funny story of misunderstandings with an alien people. Her mother was dead.

Marghe found herself hunched over, arms wrapped around her stomach; they were wet. She was crying. Fatigue, she told herself; her blood sugar was down. She breathed, hardly hearing Cassil moving around, tucking the baby into a blanket on the sleeping shelf, poking the fire into a blaze, swinging the dap kettle over the flames. Busy alien sounds. Water rumbled in the stone pot.

She felt the warmth of Cassil standing over her and turned her head, then took the worn square of cloth and wiped her eyes in silence. She thought about Danner saying I don’t know how else to prove my faith, of Kahn saying I know how rough it is, coming down alone. She had thrust their offers of friendship back at them.

Then she thought of Hiam, and of the Kurst, and of Danner’s unspoken certainty that the Mirrors would not be leaving Jeep. Here, now, with Cassil, she had a chance to help them, in her own particular way, at the same time as she helped herself. Trata was the key.

Cassil put two steaming bowls of dap between them. “So,” she said quietly, folding her hands, “you’re an orphan.”

Marghe did not want to distract them both by trying to explain the concept of father. She nodded. Her face felt hot and swollen. “But not entirely alone. I have been… adopted, into a rich and powerful kith, but I’m new to their ways, and yours.” Cassil smiled as if to say that was not news. Marghe chose her words carefully. “Someday, they—we—may be your neighbors. We could be useful to you.”

“There’s no burnstone in this valley, but perhaps your friends will find some other way to hurt a land they don’t understand. How will that be useful to us?”

“We’ve learned a lesson, and how to listen.”

Cassil appraised her. “Perhaps that’s so.”

Marghe opened a pocket and slid out a thin strip of copper. She put it next to Cassil’s bowl. Cassil picked it up, rubbed it, weighed it in her hand, but Marghe could not tell what she was thinking. She opened another pocket and took out a similar strip of iron. Cassil compared the two, then put them back on the table. She looked down at them a long time, then nodded abruptly. “Talking is thirsty work.” She drained her bowl, refilled it.

They ate breakfast, and they talked, and ate lunch. It was late afternoon by the time they agreed: three months’ travel food, a pair of fur leggings, and a small sack of dap in exchange for one kilo of copper, two of iron, and guaranteed special consideration—if not quite friendship—from all Company personnel presently at Port Central. Trata. She would need to bargain for furs and a horse from the women of Singing Pastures, if they were amenable to trade.

“The trata must be witnessed by a viajera.” A journeywoman teller of news, Marghe translated, though obviously with some ritual function. “We expect T’orre Na soon.” Cassil’s face rounded with pleasure, and perhaps a little worry, “She comes to lead the pattern singing for Rhedan’s deepsearch. I’m Rhedan’s choose-mother.”

Marghe mentally compared this with Eagan’s notes: the ritual name-choosing by pubescent girls, and the concept of different mother roles within a kith. But what was pattern singing, and why did it give Cassil cause for concern? “Congratulations,” she said cautiously. Perhaps she could observe the ceremony. But her time was limited, and there would be equally interesting ceremonies on Tehuantepec. “How soon do you expect the journeywoman?”

Cassil shrugged. “Not before the women of Singing Pastures drive their herds down. She’s a few days down the windpath, with Jink and Oriyest’s flock, and that one of your kith, Day.”

Marghe did not know what she meant. “Who?”

“Your kith who is called Day, the one adopted by Jink and Oriyest. The one Jink saved when the burn went.” She looked at Marghe curiously. “You don’t know the story? It’s a good one. T’orre Na could sing it for you.”