Stone Seeds (11 page)

There has been nowhere to put the grief. The rage. Nowhere but the work.

At some point in the years after her losses, Mamma Zeina decided to go on living. To go on with her food experiments, to go on spending her nights scouring the killing forest, getting each night deeper and deeper into its dark mouth and spending her evenings with a mortar and pestle, testing pizens on herself, getting the roots and bulbs to Jengi of the plants she believes can be changed. He'll promise to plant them out by the baobab for the edge farm mother cupboards to garden. Mamma Zeina decided that as long as her body held out then she would hold out too.

Inching forwards, relentless as the desert, slow and sure as it. The mother cupboard pushes it back, death, as it comes. Push for push, step for step. The vines are winding through her and she resists them, every one.

It was in these last few years of nights spent in the mouth of the killing forest that Mamma Zeina discovered something important.

She came to understand that whilst she feels pain, she no longer fears it.

It's the single quality which has made Mamma Zeina the most dangerous mother cupboard Bavarnica has ever known. Dangerous to the general. Her light comes in at her wound.

Holding her eye toward the baobab now and the soft natural light glowing behind it, Mamma Ezray shimmies on her stomach, slow and sure toward that last light. When her legs give out then she uses her elbows. Her left elbow and right hand give up last and then she uses her chin for leverage, to get another few inches forward. These efforts get her just far enough away from the general's house that she gets to die without the sound of Gaddys in her ears, her high pitched mindless chatter, the nervous laughter of the OneFolk guests and the general's wife, who just broke out in over-pollinated great sobs and will not be consoled. The explosions of mirth and the tinkling of crystal glasses vanish.

And then Gaddys' shrill voice washing in and out like a tuneless instrument. Fading.

The desert's sound rises.

Sand dunes are moving. Spreading up and out beyond the killing forest. The desert's silence seems to expand. Cicada, rustle of spider, slow slide of snake.

One thing left to do.

One thing.

Last thing.

Mamma Zeina strains her ears toward the sound of the great nothing before her. There is the slow creak of the baobab, in time with the wind. Small rushes of sand, like a chorus.

There's a small light. At first like it's tangled in the briar, but then rising in slow uncertain movements up one branch of the lowest baobab.

At first it drifts gently up and down, the light, and then seems to pull free, the small beacon dancing down one branch, bounces to another branch below it and then drops softly. Fizzles out on the earth beneath the tree. Her mind is washing in and out of sense.

She feels the tightening spread to her throat. Soon now. She thinks.

“Did it take long to find me?” She asks the nothing.

And then rising as much as she can rise now.

Her right elbow goes from under her, cheek against the soil now. Hard soil.

Green jewel coloured beetle runs across her splayed left hand and scurries onwards, and now her left eye swivelling upward, following its line of flight. She loses sight of it quickly. And then the small light again, just at the periphery of her vision. Gently up and down. A little above the lowest branch of the smallest baobab. A new small light dances. Smoke.

I said, “Did it take long to find me?”

Now the pain gets worse.

Something comes up from Mamma Zeina's stomach, her spine ripples and arches, gargling in the back of her throat…..” Zz …” She says … And then, “
Listen
.”

The last word comes out like a sigh, like a song.

Eyelashes clutch, unclutch the last light.

She closes her eyes.

She seems to give a shudder and then she relaxes.

The small light in the baobab blinks out. There's the sound of tinny buzzing, distant, and then someone scrabbling down the side of the baobab tree, leaping from the lowest branch,
hits the earth and then takes off, running, in the direction of the village shop.

“Damn it, Jengi.” Mamma Zeina's last words.

A small green leaf is growing out of Mamma Zeina's mouth now.

The leaf seems to twitch then look up toward the sound of Zorry stumbling and hitting her shin in the shadow by the window. Nearly catching herself on the upturned row of nails along the wooden frame. She climbs down from the window ledge with skill. Narrowly avoids the edge of the moat and slips across the drawbridge quickly, into the garden. Veers right.

Zorry doesn't see the slump of Mamma Zeina's body in the shadow. She leaves her behind.

Now there's only the sound of Zorry's feet, scramble of small stones. Rhythmic beat of her running. Getting fainter. The vine twists slowly around the slumped shape of Mamma Zeina on the ground.

–––––

SMOKE

ZORRY IS MAKING HER way toward Jengi, now before the feast is over. She figures it's safer to give the plant to Jengi whilst Gaddys is safely ensconced at the feast table. Zorry reckons she may have a chance to be minutes ahead of the village shopkeeper. It's a bold plan, perhaps motivated in large part by Zorry's instinct not to take such a revolutionary plant home to the house she shares with her Mamma Ezray and infant sister Zettie. Doesn't want to take that kind of trouble to her own front door. Aims to get rid of the water plant as quickly as she can.

When Zorry reaches the village shop, Jengi is waiting in the alleyway beside it, as if expectantly. He's panting slightly, as though he'd just been running, she thinks. And then dismissing the thought. He is pretending to inhale on his government smoker. Jengi has clearly been waiting for someone.

Jengi's regulation smoker is a useful alibi as he's found on more than one occasion when caught out after curfew by the Egg Men. He never inhales but can do a good enough impression of passing out with the effects of the fumes. He has carefully cultivated his reputation as an addict, all the better to be sure he's underestimated, passed over. Zorry notes that he holds it well away from his face now. Drops it and wipes his right hand on the side of his trousers, crushes
it under his foot. It goes on giving off a small light. Jengi lights another. Holds it away from him.

Zorry makes her way towards him by its small light, which lights up one side of his face. His right hand.

Jengi leans against the shop wall at an angle. Cap pulled low.

“Where is Mamma Zeina?”

Jengi has a way of asking you a question as though to test what you know. Zorry finds that sly. She sighs. She has no time for Jengi's games.

“Do you want this or not? She holds out the cup with the plant root in it.

Jengi doesn't move to touch it. “I see.” He says.

“Do you, Jengi? What do you see?” And then, “Look … I don't know why she trusts you but …” Zorry thrusts out her hand. “Look, just take this cup from me, would you Jengi?”

Jengi conceals a small smile. Takes the cup. Touches her hand for a fleeting moment, runs his index finger down her palm.

Zorry pulls back.

Now Jengi examines Zorry by the thin light, seems to see her for the first time. Blink. “Oh! You're a bit young for a mother cupboard.” Jengi looks disappointed.

“Guess I just happened to be in the wrong place when she was reseeding.”

“No.” Jengi gazes at Zorry, the look is more brotherly now. “Mamma Zeina must've chosen you for a reason.” He looks up and seems to glance something behind her. “Now, get out of here. Scramble!” He says.

They both hear Gaddys' car pull up at the front of the shop.
Jengi thumbs toward the fence at the back of the shop, hisses, “That way!” But then catches her upper arm as she leaves. “Zorry.” He says. They are eye to eye for a moment. “She's never been wrong Zorry. You are a mother cupboard now. Welcome to the resistance.”

Zorry examines his face. She is thinking. It's a long, strangely unnerving moment for Jengi, the girl seems shrewd beyond her years. He blinks and she moves, sliding into the shadow beside the shop.

“Wait.” He says. “Don't move yet.”

Now Jengi moves toward the front of the shop, greets Gaddys with a deep bow. Takes her jewelled hand in his own as she steps from the car and doffing his hat at the same time, one sinuous motion with more than a hint of swagger to it.

“What were you doing back there?”

“Smoking, Madam. My apologies.”

Gaddys smirks. Jengi kisses the shopkeeper's thick, ringed fingers.

Zorry slips noiselessly toward the fence which blocks the other end of the alleyway. She is distracted by Jengi's strange performance with Gaddys, catches her hand on the top of the fence by mistake. Curses in silence.

Zorry considers that Jengi might have mentioned the broken glass at the top of the fence.

She leaves her blood at the scene.

THE LIGHTNING BOX

ZETTIE QUIETLY SLIPPED OUT of the yard and meandered toward the schoolhouse, the way she does whenever Mamma Ezray's too exhausted from her night work, collecting plants in the killing forest, to notice that the small child playing out in the yard is too quiet, that Zettie's singing has stopped, and Ezray allows herself to drift asleep a little, head face down on the hard kitchen table. She tries to hold her eyes open for as long as she can, but then there is only the soft clucking sound of the chickens, shuffling of the wind in the pear tree in the yard, morning light filtering in through the blinds, and the half open back door, and all of it no reason at all for alarm.

Mamma Ezray's last waking thought is to tell herself that she'll only sleep for a moment. Just for a moment, before her work rota starts. And then her eyes closing softly against the smooth circles and knots in the sanded down wood. Blink, blink, and the vegetable scraps, chopping-knife scars in the wood and the hinges and joints of the table vanish. Eyelashes clutch the light, flutter and close. Her breaths get deeper and less hurried. Eyeballs twitch and move underneath her eyelids.

Zettie had, like always, climbed on to the rain barrel outside the kitchen window, to check Mamma Ezray was fully asleep before she started out on her daily expedition. If Zettie had a plan at all, then it was to be home just before Mamma wakes.

There is an transparent cage around the OneFolks' schoolhouse now, a faraday box made of thin but strong mesh, to protect the children from lightning strike. The OneFolk childur inside the protective box call it Furdy. They have been banned from going outside the Furdy during school hours and especially when it's storming outside. But Zettie is a Sinta. A slave girl. She is not allowed in. Not inside the Furdy, not inside the schoolhouse. Girl. Slave. They are the most important words in Zettie's life, coming only after the word ‘Mamma', in order of importance to the child.

Zettie is only small but she knows what ‘Girl' means, more or less, but not yet what a ‘Slave' is. The word seems to her to carry a great physical weight. It has the power to darken the kitchen, she thinks, to press down on her parents' shoulders, eyebrows and the corners of their mouths. Even the back of her mother's neck, so that Mamma Ezray's head sinks a little, under its weight. Some days the word seems to have more power over Mamma Ezray than other days, so Zettie knows that it can rise or sink and bide its time. It is a word which cannot be said at home, not once the evening fire's lit. A taboo. As if the home fire protects them all from the word, for a while.

“I will not have that word in this house.” Mamma Ezray intones daily. But the word is always waiting for them, outside, the way Zettie sees it. It's the shadow beside the front door, it crosses the mat and zigzags the front porch. Zettie has also noticed that the OneFolk childur use it freely. The word seems to Zettie to relate to the fact that she is not allowed inside the protection of the Furdy now. Not even when the thunder seems to roll right underneath her, shake the bushes.
The word has great power, she knows it keeps the Furdy gate closed.

Zettie watches the gate. Feels the first rumbles of thunder. And then a cracking sound, like the earth splits behind her. Sound of heavy rainfall, her own heartbeat in her ears.

The OneFolk childur huddle underneath the sheltered area, in the inner section of the Furdy which butts against the schoolhouse. The childur watch Zettie. They have been told not to open the gate and it does not occur to any of them to break the most important school rule. Not even for a small girl in a lightning strike. After all … She's a slave. Isn't she?

Zettie squats on her heels outside the mesh cage of the Furdy, hugging on to its dripping sides with her small, gently pudgy infant arms when the lightning cracks and cracks again behind her. She shivers so much that her vision blurs a little, rain beats against the small curve of her back.

The word has not yet filtered under Zettie's skin, but she feels it close by. And in the way that even a small child can understand the thing, Zettie has understood this. Even when she's playing alone outside, she senses the word is there playing close by also. Like something dangerous and obscene in the shadow. When the word becomes quite silent, then it's worse. That's when Zettie is most afraid that in an absentminded moment she has somehow allowed the word to slip inside her. She imagines that it would enter in the same way that the poisonous plants in the killing forest, the ones that Mamma Ezray talks about over supper, slow plants that seem only to nip your ankles just a little, but their vines thicken and grow in your bloodstream. Trace their way, slow, to your heart.

Other days Zettie imagines that the word would get into her when she breathes, and so be more like the smoke from Gaddys' furnace, which Mamma Ezray informs Zettie is pure pizen, so don't ever breath in, if you happen to be passing it when Jengi's cooking back there. Zettie holds her breath when she thinks about the furnace, without quite realising that she does so. One thing the child knows for sure, the word must never be allowed in, the way it has gotten into some of the older Sinta children already. Like they've weights in their limbs, and small weights running over their bodies, from ear tips down to elbows, spine, knees, feet.

The child wiggles her fingers and toes each morning, checks the palms of her hands, and even her tiny right thumb before she pops it into her mouth. Checks it's free of the word. Understands without being told that the word might seem innocent enough in your mouth, but once there it might kill, maim, or worse. Just like any pizen. For herself, she has only ever said the word once. She had asked the question of Mamma Ezray, ‘What's a slave?' But Mamma Ezray hadn't found a way to answer. Simply turned and gazed at her child.

The OneFolk childur huddle together in the sheltered area inside the Furdy. Watch Zettie shiver outside the lightning box. The childur's eyes are as wide Zettie's, watching her outside the Furdy. Clinging on through the storm. “Slave.” Zettie hears, and she turns her head toward the word. “Don't let It in,” she hears the small OneFolk boy say. Zettie, meeting the small boy's eye, believes she knows just what he means. She thinks it's nice that the boy understands too. What
it
is. That
it
is dangerous.

The Furdy looks invisible from the inside, but from the
outside, where Zettie sits, seems like a black box. All corners and angles. Small. She can see inside only when she presses her small face against the sides or the roof.

Zettie feels sorry for the childur playing inside when the wind is up and nature moves around her, bugs fly past. And yet the children in the black box fascinate the infant, draw her to the box every morning when Mamma Ezray thinks she's playing with the chickens in the yard.

When the rain has slowed to a stop, Zettie watches a lizard crawling up the inside of the mesh sides of the Furdy, there's one on the outside of the box too. Both lizards pause a moment, seem to eye each other sideways. And then,
blink
, the smaller lizard vanishes.

Now Zettie notices tiny water droplets hanging through the surface of the lightning cage. Zettie is thirsty and she puts her lips against the mesh, tasting the water. Tastes of metal, now, and tin. Something else you can't describe, the something that all things appear to taste of lately. The lizard on the inside of the mesh watches Zettie curiously as she drinks, and so do the OneFolk childur.

Zettie doesn't see the smaller lizard has come back until it scatters from a large drop of water, falling from a palm leaf just to her left. She follows its trail, finds it concealed under a fallen palm leaf. The tiny creature has scootered into the gentle rot near the stem, which now leans against Zettie's small left foot. She looks at the lizard for a while, doesn't move. Just once she wiggles her toes, to gauge the lizard's reaction. Nothing. The little lizard tilting its small head up first left and then, swivelling a little, tips it right. As though it watches her too, fearless. Zettie blinks at it, smiles.

The last scattering of rain makes a map of lines down the leaves around Zettie's face, drips out of the ringlets in her hennaed hair. Some trickles down over her forehead. She wipes the clean sleeve of her dress across her eyes. And now Zettie is tilting her small round face up first left and then right, she's mimicking the lizard. And then pushing back her straggle of rust coloured hair to see the small critter better. Carefully lifts the leaf stem and one corner of the dark waxen leaf, peers underneath it.

All Sinta have eyes that change colour, but Zettie's mostly stay the same, she reckons. When Zettie looked into the cracked hallway mirror this morning, before breakfast, her eyes were brown with a small patch of sky-blue. From the small lizard's eye-view, Zettie's huge eyes appearing in the gap, seem to grow. Two wide, amazed, tawny-coloured eyes with one blue patch in the left eye. Never blinking, or never seeming to blink.

The lizard blinks first. Shifts slightly, whips its small tale. It's a tiny gesture that only a child as observant as Zettie would have noticed. And then its throat looping in and out like a small red flag about the size of a copper coin, or a large coffee bean. She waits until the small throat-flag has stopped flashing.

“Is you a pizen lickle lickle?” Soft clucking sounds, nonsense words and rhythmic, the child has learned to make certain noises when creeping up on small creatures. Senses how to sooth their minds. Now she gently reaches her small left hand out. Strokes one tiny index finger along the underside of the lizard's chin. The tiny reptile eyes her. Now she remembers its teeth. Pulls back her hand and holds it close to her shirt.

“You oughta scurry.” She gently admonishes the lizard now. And then, “Is you a pizen or ain'tcha?” She asks it, soft, small, reasonable voice. The reptile makes no reply. Swivelling its eyes in her direction. Eyes her beadily for a long time.

Something happens. It's as though Zettie feels her hunger only then, all of it, at once, hunger screwed to the sticking point when it's pain and before it's quite starvation. Her small hand shoots out. Catches the tiny lizard expertly, wriggle, wriggle, squeeze, and then she squeezes harder. Before she's had time to think about it, she's stuffed the small lizard into her mouth, bit down hard, spat out its head, one more wriggle, crunch, crunch, the child kills the creature quick and mercifully, the way her sister Zorry taught her. And then she chews it slow. Careful, she thinks. Feeling small claws on her tongue, spitting them.

It tastes not unlike dried meat. Although not quite so salty, she thinks. Once she breaks through its small tough hide. A bit like chewing down hard on a leather shoe, and with just a small drop of moisture, that's the guts, which Zettie also spits, and she gags then forces herself to swallow the rest of the lizard.

She leaves the tail in her cheek, feels it alongside her teeth, briefly, before she opens her mouth, lets it drop into her hand. She examines her teeth with her tongue. Zettie herself can't quite comprehend what just happened, as though the thing happened to her instead of because of her, as though she had played no part in it.

“Zettie ate a whole lizard from head to tail root.” A small freckled boy pulls a face.

“Aye. I saw that. Good one, Zettie. How was that?” Asks
a droll little girl with one long black plait, trying to climb the inside of the lightning box and failing. Squashes her nose against the mesh. The children are pretty impressed.

Zettie is still feeling her teeth with her tongue, doesn't speak and in a bit the curious girl flicks her black plait over her shoulder, turns away. Not bad at all, Zettie is thinking. “Not nearly as bad as you might think,” she tells the girl, mimicking the words of her older sister Zorry. The words she's so fond of saying whenever trying to persuade her small sister Zettie to eat some unspeakable food item which the family have been allocated. One second, two, and Zettie's hunger is gone.

“You can't say if things are pizen right away.” The girl with the long black plait advises her.

“I know that.” Zettie says. Pushing out her chin slightly. That much Zettie's Mamma Ezray has already taught her. Zettie waits. “Nothing.” She says to the girl, who smiles shyly. And in a bit Zettie pads around, looking under the leaves for another one.

“Oh, that's hunger,” says a voice that seems to come from above and behind the lightning cage, and both at the same time. Big voice, Zettie thinks. There's a deep rumbling chuckle. Zettie identifies an older edge farm boy whom she thinks she's seen before. She looks down at his large, boney feet and then up at his protruding collar bone which, apart from his face and hair, are the only parts of the boy which are not covered by his shiny black edge farm uniform. He looks as though he works the mines from the state of his bare feet and neck and the sides of his hands which are all dust encrusted. She notices the patched up wound one side of his head and the homemade sling on his left arm. When he slides, one armed,
down from the top of the lightning cage, Zettie looks briefly panicked.

Looking down through the mesh, Tomax had seen the whole thing. The trail, the hunt, the capture. Seen Zettie eating the forbidden creature.

“You were pretty nifty, catching that critter.” He says.

For the first time it occurs to Zettie to feel proud of her action. The OneFolk childur had mostly looked grossed out, apart from the girl with the long black plait, who was kind.

“Don't worry,” he says, getting caught briefly on a corner edge of the cage by the batwing sleeve of his edge farm uniform, and then sitting himself down cross-legged beside Zettie. Getting comfortable. Looking at her expectantly then, as though he waits for her to continue the conversation.

Zettie pulls out the lizard tail to show him. Neither speak at first. And then, “Generally ‘taint advisable to eat a lizard, Sinta, but I guess you know what you're doing.”