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Not long, Marghe thought, not long.
They gathered outside in the early afternoon. It was almost warm, but Thenike
had warned her to wrap up well. Standing motionless for hours did not produce
much body heat. Two chia birds sang back and forth to each other.
Six of her family were there: Thenike, Gerrel, Hilt, Leifin, Wenn, Huellis. Kenisi
and the two youngsters were with Namri, who had put her back out. Kristen and Ette
made up the eight.
Thenike would keep her safe.
Gerrel, who had made her first deepsearch only last midsummer, started the
singing. She hummed deep, tunelessly. The others took up the hum until it sounded
like a creaky tree song, the rubbing together of branches. It wove back and forth like
the wind high in the forest, apparently aimless. The singers took breaths according to
their own rhythms and exhaled in the wavering hum that climbed and sank and
wandered without apparent form. Marghe closed her eyes. Two, then three women
began to breathe and hum at the same time, then a fourth, and a fifth. Marghe
imagined she could hear their hearts mumping together. Her own breath ran with
theirs.
Between one heartbeat and another, they all breathed and sang together, great
powerful gusts of sound beating at Marghe like rain, rain that grew in intensity,
spattering her face, running then pouring over her, pooling at her feet, until she felt
she was standing under a waterfall of sound. The sound pulsed endlessly, like the
world. Deep inside her cells, something responded.
Thenike will keep me safe.
She followed the plunging water down, where it wanted to go.
Marghe came up from her not-dream. She felt stiff from standing still so long, and
her pattern singers were gone, except for Thenike. Marghe smiled at her, but said
nothing; she did not want to talk yet.
In silence, Thenike helped her walk through the evening shadow of the trees until
her joints unstiffened. Undergrowth rustled beneath their feet.
Marghe felt she had been gone a long time, much longer than the two or three
hours it had taken for the world to turn away from the sun and toward the arms of
evening. She had been inside herself in a way she had never thought possible;
listening to her body as a whole, a magnificent, healthy whole. And she had done
more: reliving memories of her childhood she had forgotten, experiencing again days
she had never been wholly aware of. Now she knew how it felt to be a baby just ten
days old, and that baby had been as alien to her as any species she had encountered
since. There had been more: what felt like days of communication between herself
now and herself of many thens. She had sent a question down all the avenues that
opened before her: what is my name? And echoing back had come: Marghe. And
again: Marghe. And then, whispered in a voice she knew: Marghe, and more.
She was on a thin and misty beach; her mother walked from the shadows and
held out her hand. On her palm was the ammonite.
Primitive cultures thought they were coiled snakes, petrified, and called them
snake-stones, Acquila said. But the word ammonite comes, of course, from the
medieval Latin, cornu Ammonis, horn of Ammon, due to its resemblance to the
involuted horn of Ammon, or Amun, the ram-headed god of Thebes.
She put the cold thing in Marghe s whole right hand. His name, Amun, means
complete one. He acquired the power of fertility formerly invested in Min, the
ancient Egyptian god of reproduction. She looked amused. Min was very popular.
But his time passed.
Her mother had faded, leaving the ammonite. Marghe had not been surprised
when it sank into her hand. And now she was herself, and more. The complete one.
Marghe smiled. I have been so many places&
Yes, Thenike said. Mind this root here.
I see it.
Two more chia birds called back and forth. The same ones? Marghe stopped and
tilted her head to listen. Do many women keep their child names? she asked.
Some. Not many.
What was yours?
Gilraen.
Gilraen& She considered the woman next to her, with her rich hair, pinned up,
her soft brown eyes and strong fingers. A nice name, but not yours.
No.
They started walking again. After a moment, Marghe said softly, My name is
Marghe Amun.
The complete one.
No one suggested that Marghe move out of the guest room, but she wondered if
she should. There was something she needed to do, she was sure of it. But what?
Marghe felt the need to do this unspecified something as a subtle pressure against
her skin, as when the weather was about to change. She did not mention it to
anyone. She gardened, and ate, and talked to Thenike and Gerrel and, now and
again, Wenn or Huellis. Leifin disappeared on a hunt.
Marghe became restless. When she dug in the garden, she dug with hard, vicious
jabs, and took pleasure in her aching muscles when she sank into the hot tub in the
evening. She lay in the almost-scalding water hoping, longing for the heat to soothe
her. It did not. It was as though she had a muscle, somewhere, that had not been
exercised.
She dried herself off thoughtfully. A muscle that needed exercising. Perhaps that
was it. She had to find out what she could do now, now that she had part of Jeep
living inside every cell of her body; she had to find out how she had changed.
In the guest room she could not think of it as hers she lit a small fire, did some
gentle stretching and breathing to ease her sore muscles, and then settled down
cross-legged on the warm flags near the hearth.
Three breaths triggered a trance easily. Too easily. She jerked herself out,
frightened. Such a deep meditative state should normally take twenty minutes or
more.
She smoothed her heart rhythm, thought about that. Was it anything to be scared
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