Behind an outlying tent, two children played a game with polished bones. Their heads were bare, hair matted and tangled, and one had some kind of rash on her face. Vitamin deficiency, Marghe thought. The ragtag collection of furs, leather, and felt they wore hid their shape and made it difficult to judge their age. When they saw the riders, one hooted with glee, scrambled up, and trotted alongside the Levarch’s stirrup; the other paused to pick up the bits of bone with a chapped hand before running off into the center of the camp, calling out their arrival. People began pushing aside tent flaps, blinking up at the riders. Greetings screeched through the cold air like the cries of hungry birds. Marghe found the sharp vowels and harsh consonants difficult.
The riders slowed to a walk. Their horses were soon surrounded by old women with brown eyes, smiling through their wrinkles; women holding babies and touching passing saddle leather and fur‑clad thighs; girls calling up to the riders, grinning.
Many women pointed at her big horse, and children darted out of the crowd to touch her boots. After the silence of the plains, Marghe felt bewildered by the bright eyes and flashing red mouths. I am an anthropologist, she told herself, not a prize of war, and steadfastly returned their curiosity.
Every few feet, a rider reined in by a tent and was surrounded by a knot of family and friends who almost dragged her off her horse and inside. The further they went through the camp, the smaller their group became, until by the time they reached the big tent, the Levarch’s, Marghe, Aoife, Uaithne, and the Levarch herself were the only ones still mounted. Marghe followed Aoife’s lead and reined in Pella to let the Levarch and Uaithne approach the tent alone.
Six women–one very old, two adolescent–pushed through the flap to greet them. One of the young ones tied up the flap and the other took the reins from the Levarch and Uaithne when they dismounted. Marghe noticed that the girl smiled at the Levarch, but seemed afraid of Uaithne. That difference was mirrored in the greetings of the others: the old woman barely nodded at Uaithne, but her face split into splinters and cracks of welcome when she turned to the Levarch. Uaithne was not ignored, but Marghe could see how formally she was greeted. When she ducked inside the tent, none followed her. The Levarch was still outside, her arm around a woman her own age, grinning and clasping the outstretched hands of others. Marghe wondered why these women, especially the Levarch, shared a tent with someone they did not like.
Aoife sat her horse patiently. Marghe wondered how many times the tribeswoman had watched this ritual, and if anyone was waiting for her at her own tent.
Eventually the Levarch disentangled herself from her family.
Her boots crunched in the snow as she walked back to where they sat.
“Aoife, take the stranger woman to your yurti. I’ll argue you an extra taar from the herds to take the strain.”
Aoife bowed her head. “I will teach her, feed her, replace worn clothes.”
Marghe, alert to nuances, heard the ritual acceptance in the tribeswoman’s response. She had just been disposed of in some way, become Aoife’s responsibility.
“Levarch…”she began, but Aoife was already wheeling them both into a canter.
“Never address the Levarch unless she questions you.”
Marghe could not think of a suitable reply.
Aoife’s tent was set a little apart from the others and close by one of the empty pens. The tribeswoman gestured for her to dismount, then followed suit. No one pushed back the tent flap and smiled.
Aoife took off her gloves, began to unfasten the girths. She looked at Marghe. Marghe pulled off her own gloves, stuck them through her belt, and began to untie her pack. It looked like most of her teaching was going to be by mime show. When she lifted the pack free, Aoife nodded at the tent. “In the yurti,” she said.
Like the others, this tent was low, made of black felt supported by two wooden poles along its long axis. Two other poles, smaller, set side by side’about six feet apart, supported an awning with its own entrance‑flap; this was shoulder height, and laced closed.
Her hands were cold and the flap’s leather thongs were stiff with ice, and the fact that Aoife was watching made her feel clumsy and incapable, but Marghe managed to untie them. She pushed her head through uncertainly and found herself in a tented antechamber with one white wool wall of the inner tent before her and black felt on the other three sides. She had to stoop to get inside, and when the flap fell back into place it was dim. She could make out pots and sacks and other things stacked neatly along the walls. She wondered what they held; the air was acrid with some kind of chemical that made her nose run. There was nothing to wipe her nose on, so she sniffed. The felt and wool absorbed the sound and made the walls seem too close to her face for her to breathe. She dumped her pack down by the far wall and pushed back out into the hard cold.
Aoife had the saddle off her own horse and was loosening her pack. Marghe carefully rolled the flap up and tied it back out of the way with the thongs, as she had seen the young woman do at the Levarch’s tent. Aoife nodded curtly and turned her attention back to her horse.
Marghe was surprised and angry at Aoife’s lack of acknowledgment of her initiative. She jerked hard enough at Pella’s girth for the mare to whicker in protest. Why was she so eager for Aoife’s approval? Because she was scared; because she already understood that this was no longer an exercise in anthropology and that she was no longer studying in the field, she wasthe field; because now this woman controlled her life.
They took their mounts to the corral by wrapping fingers deep into the manes and tugging the animals in the right direction. Marghe’s arms were still shaking.
The corral was now almost full of horses standing patiently while children looked at their feet, felt their legs, and curried muddy snow from their coats. One group of girls sat on the fence and watched, calling out to one of the grooms now and again, and three or four very young children dashed about, getting in everyone’s way. One ran by Aoife and Marghe, shrieking, her nose plugged with thick green snot. The air was wreathed with the mist of talk and hard work.
A young woman, about fourteen, saw them coming in and clambered down from the fence to meet them. Aoife relinquished her horse without a word, but Marghe found it hard to let go of Pella.
“Look after her,” Marghe said to the thin‑faced girl. The girl frowned at her accent. “She feels the cold more than your horses.”
“She’ll be warm enough with all the others,” the girl said. She looked Pella up and down, mouth pursed. “Her coat’ll thicken up soon enough, and she looks a good size for foals. Bit old, though.” She wrapped the thin fingers of her right hand around a tuft of Pella’s mane, took a handful of the other horse’s mane in her left, and led them into the corral. There she released Pella with a slap on the rump and tended to Aoife’s mount first. Pella trotted into the herd as if she had never belonged anywhere else. The only way Marghe could pick her out at this distance was that the mare was a little longer in the leg, less shaggy in the coat. She wondered if she would be assimilated as easily into the Echraidhe.
Marghe expected the inside of the tent to be dark and oppressive. She was surprised. The light allowed in through the rolled‑up entrance flap, already filtered through cloud and reflected back from snow, was further thinned and clarified by the white wool. The result was light like skimmed milk seeping into dark spaces and wetting to a glisten the deep colors of the tapestries that hung on the interior walls. It was a large tent, perhaps sixteen feet long inside, and every wall was covered in weaving of bold, geometric designs. The effect was warm and rich, with twilight purples and hot reds layered like sunsets over thick golds and greens. To Marghe, it was like cutting open the gray exterior of a geode to discover the jeweled crystal inside. She wondered if Aoife’s seamless exterior concealed any such surprises.