Ammonite (51 page)

Evening. The grave was visible from a good distance: a brown mound rising from black. Their footsteps were loud as they crunched over the plain of cinder.

In the eight days since the grave had been dug, there had been winds from the southwest, and the base of the mound was lightly dusted with pinkish yellow pollen.

Marghe knelt, pulled down her scarf, laid a hand on the mound; under the powdery burned smell lurked the scent of sun-dried dirt, a light, end-of-summer scent.

The end of many things.

There was something sharp under her palm. She poked at the dirt with an index finger, then picked up several tiny white shards. Broken shells.

Thenike knelt and wrapped her arms around Marghe from behind. “This used to be a lake, an inland sea. Long, long ago.”

They listened to the warm soughing of their breath, reeling muscles warm and alive over strong bones. After a while, Marghe put the shells back; the grave did not seem complete without them.

When the sun set, the night turned cold, and they built a fire. Marghe set two bowls of dap to warm by the fire, then settled down to toast a piece of soca on her knife.

After a while, Thenike dipped a thumb into the nearest bowl. “Dap’s hot.” They sipped, staring into the flames.

“They’re like the sea,” Marghe said, “always changing. I never get tired of watching.”

Thenike put her bowl down by the fire to keep warm and took her drums from their case.

“A song?”

“For you, Marghe Amun.”

She sang softly of a woman who walked the shore of a long-forgotten sea, collecting seashells, shells she would string to make a necklace for her love. The woman took the shells home and washed them carefully, and dried them. Some glimmered blue and pearl, like her lover’s eyes; others glowed pink and caramel, like her skin; one shimmered blue-black, as mysterious as the sea at midnight…

Marghe thought of the suke hanging around her neck, the ammonite Thenike had carefully remembered and reproduced for Leifin to carve, and smiled.

Thenike sang on, and while the drum beat softly and the flames danced, Marghe set her face north, toward Ollfoss. Toward home.

—«»—«»—«»—

About the Author

Nicola Griffith is a native of Leeds, England, where she was once an insurance clerk for forty-five days and a waitress for forty-five minutes. At eighteen she moved to Hull, where she was lead singer and songwriter for Janes Plane, a women’s band, and taught women’s self-defense—for groups as varied as the Equal Opportunities Training Unit and the Union of Catholic Mothers. She currently lives in Atlanta with her partner, sf writer Kelley Eskridge.

[scanned anonymously]

[27 may 2003—proofed by MollyKate]

[released in #bookz by the EDG]