Ammonite

The chisel was sharp and Leifin worked deftly, skimming the blade again and again down one side of the block. Rich golden brown slices fell at her feet, and gradually Marghe saw a curve developing in the wood. Sawdust clung to the dark hairs of Leifin’s forearm.

After a while, Leifin paused, put down her chisel, lifted the block of wood, and turned it this way and that in the light. Marghe wondered if Leifin studied a dead animal that way, too, before cutting for the hide.

Leifin looked up and misinterpreted the question on Marghe’s face. “I’m tracing the grain, trying to follow it with my tools to bring out the best in both the wood and the sculpture. To give it strength.”

She found what she wanted and went back to work, lifting one tool after another, always replacing them in the right place on her leather roll. She worked methodically, patiently, like a trapper noting the strengths and hunting out the weakness of her prey. The pile of shavings grew.

The baby who was not asleep took her fist out of her mouth and began to cry, waking up the other, who joined her.

“They’re hungry.” Lerfin carefully put the curving piece of wood next to her tools and brushed the worst of the sawdust from her arms. She scooped up the one who was screaming the loudest and jiggled her on her knee while she unlaced her leather-and-fur tunic. “There, little one.” The baby sucked lustily. “Rock Moss, would you?”

Marghe picked up the infant gingerly, remembering to support her head. “How old are they?”

”They were born just after the harvest.”

Four moons ago, or three and a half months. “They’re lucky. To have a family.”

Leifin nodded, waiting.

“You helped me. The family’s caring for me. I like it here.” Marghe hesitated. “I want to stay.”

“Go on.”

“That’s it. I want to stay, here, at Ollfoss.”

“With this family?”

“Yes,” Marghe said, surprised. Who else would she stay with?

“Why?”

“You’re the ones who have helped me. And I’m beginning to know some of you: Thenike, and Gerrel, Kenisi… I’ve hardly met anyone from the other families. Not yet.”

“And you don’ want to wait until you’re well enough to get to know the others first?”

“No.”

Leifin was looking at her with that intent, hunter’s look. “Good. Then I don’t see any reason why you shouldn’t. Soon.” She smiled and held out her hand. It was warm and firm; it should have felt friendly, but it did not. Leifin, Marghe thought, had an agenda of her own.

On the second day of the Moon of Cracking Frost, the family of Leifin and Thenike, Gerrel, Hilt, Kenisi, Kenisi’s partner, Wenn, and Huellis and the infant soestre Otter and Moss met to discuss Marghe’s petition to join them.

The day outside was dull and gray, and the light that struggled through the milky glass of the single unshuttered window did not do much to thin the fire shadows that danced over the women sitting around the hearth on their rugs. A pot of dap simmered by the fireside. Even though fire was burning at both ends of the room, Marghe was cold. She huddled between Gerrel and Thenike, her allies, pulled her furs closer, and listened.

“You taught me,” Gerrel said to Wenn, “and you, Kenisi, and you yourself, Leifin, you all taught me that actions lead to responsibility. Leifin found Marghe, saved her life. Marghe allowed her life to be saved. These two are, now, responsible to each other. How else could it be?”

Marghe slid her hand into her pocket in an automatic search for reassurance, and for the second time that day was shocked to find the pocket empty. The vial of FN-17 was still in the guest room, where she had laid it aside. She breathed deep, in and out, keeping her anxiety down. She was safe, safe. This was Ollfoss; these women were not Echraidhe. No one was going to pull a knife or hit her for no reason.

“Perhaps we can fulfill our responsibility another way,” Huellis ventured.

Kenisi sighed. “Marghe, Leifin brought you here. We acknowledge the responsibility to feed and shelter you until you are well enough to leave. Is this not enough?”

“I ask to join your family.”

“You haven’t been here long. Will it not wait?”

“No.” She had tried to explain, earlier, tried to tell them all how much she needed to belong, belong now, before the virus crept in and started to lever her away from life. Thenike, she knew, understood, and Gerrel would be happy to have a new sister. Leifin was on her side for reasons she neither understood nor trusted, but the others… They understood her danger, but not her fears.

The next question was inevitable.

Attention shifted around the circle, came to rest on Wenn. The old woman was blunt. “Why should we give you a place with us, a place in our hearts, when in two moons from now you could be dead?”