Stone Seeds (15 page)

This seems to be all the encouragement which Aunt needs.

“Our Tomax has been climbing for crow eggs in his hunger,” Aunt says. Sniffs. “My sister is so worried about him.” Now she won't look at Tomax, not for one long moment. “And he's wasted his uniform.” Her voice sounds shrill now and more sober than she intended. Ruining your government uniform is a serious crime in Bavarnica. She seems to realise this, lolls against the counter. Tries to slur her words. “I am alone,” she reminds herself. Eyes glitter. And then, in a different voice entirely, just as though it's another person speaking … “I do
worry
about him.” Gesticulates toward her
nephew. Gaddys turns toward Tomax.

“Of course you do, Dear.” Gaddys looks reproachfully at Tomax. Unfathomable smile.

“It's my weakness.” Aunt tears up again.

“Yes, Dear.”

Gaddys goes on patting Aunt's shoulder, her claws extending and retracting as she purrs saccharine words of encouragement, for which Aunt, almost girlish now, thanks her. Tomax has never seen Gaddys so friendly before, catches a glint of his aunt's huge jagged tooth. In the bottom row, left side of her jaw and sharpened, steel tipped. In the fashion of Aunt's youth.

That tooth used to give Tomax nightmares as a child. There is a cold, sliding feeling in the pit of his stomach now. The same feeling Tomax gets when he's looking for crow eggs, and suddenly gets the distinct sense he's being eyed from above. Sometimes he'll have these kind of intuitions in the moment before a drone comes, a smell perhaps, or a small sign that he hasn't consciously observed. The bombing still feels like yesterday and he was different after it. He'd looked up in the seconds before the explosion and there were crows circling. Now that memory is etched deep in his mind. A few lives have been saved on the edge farms in the last weeks, on account of Tomax letting folks know that the crows have learned to spot the drones and follow them. It's an early warning system of sorts and Tomax has become a keen bird watcher lately.

Generally Tomax scrabbles down the tree long before the mother crow returns to her eggs. But there is nowhere in the world to run from a danger that comes at you softly, like this one. A danger that seems to climb into your skin. His mother
tells Tomax that he is suspicious and evil minded about his poor aunt. Perhaps he is.

“Well.” And now Aunt lolls some more. Becomes expansive. “Twas on a branch he nearly hung himself on. Of course,” and now she leans forward a little toward Gaddys, speaking sotto voce and making quite sure that she slurs, “The fabric tearing let Tomax drop to earth before he was strangled, was how my sister described the thing to me. Of course I was not there myself.”

“Of course.” Gaddys sniffs. “It's all quite illegal my dear.”

Aunt strokes her own arm serenely. Now Aunt mimes the scene for Gaddys. With a flourish of her hands describes the fabric gathered up and twisted around Tomax's neck, like a noose. She gets a little excited. Gaddys lets out a snort. “Goodness dear.” Gaddys says. Eyes Tomax. There is a long strange moment in which Aunt cannot meet anyone's eye, not Gaddys' and not the boy's either.

“Ah,” she says. “Ah, he's such a good boy.” Shudders.

Tomax hears soft clanking sounds from the food store out back. The sound of a fridge door being opened and then closed. Smoke signals from the furnace which holds the roast meats. Slide of metal against metal. Now Tomax smells toasted bird.

Jengi comes back into the shop. Pushes a covered metal tray underneath the shop counter, just by Gaddys' right hand. He looks up and meets Tomax's eye. Expressionless.

Now Gaddys slides the hot metal tray onto the counter. It doesn't burn her and she doesn't look at Jengi. Tomax notes his aunt's eyes swivel left slightly toward it. Now she seems transfixed by the tray. She gets louder and more urgent. Teeth
flash and her steel capped incisors clank together.

Aunt has a wide mouth and sharp pronged molars, missing teeth at the front from a drunken fall when she was a girl. Gaddys lifts the cover slightly, examines the meat with surprise, “Jengi?”

“It was the only bird cooked today, Ma'am. Must've fallen in by mistake.”

Tomax glimpses the blackened crow's feet poking out from under the cheesecloth. His aunt doesn't appear to have noticed that her chicken ration is a little … Unusual today.

“Tell me Dear, did our Tomax here have any … success? For myself I can't imagine eating a crow's egg.” Gaddys shudders.

“Yuck, me either. Them birds smell of rot. But he gotten three crow eggs from the venture … didn't you, Tomax?”

Tomax's mouth is dry. He tries to form a word which is both yes and no at the same time, myennoo and then nothing seems to come out of his mouth but a low groan. He closes his lips tightly. He wonders if this interrogation will be over soon.

Tomax's aunt turns away from him, “Yep, he ate one egg raw before he slipped down the tree. He shared the two he'd got stacked into his hood.” Now Gaddys pushes the tray toward Aunt. Leans back and eyes Aunt shrewdly. “He shared it you say? Now that's worse even than stealing extra rations in the first place.”

Tomax blinks. Tries not to shuffle his feet. There seems to be no way he can extricate himself, or none that he can see.

Aunt makes sideways eyes at him, then lolls and slurs. “Yes.” She says. “He shared food. Not with me, mind.” She
adds bitterly, grimaces. “Shared them with a young mother on the edge farm. She'd gotten herself into a state on account of her orange grain sack, which you no doubt had your very good reasons to allocate her, Gaddys Dear, but what with her milk for the new baby drying up slowly … Well. Tomax is a sentimental boy.” She turns toward him, “Didn't you Tomax? Didn't you share with that young girl?”

Tomax squints at his aunt. He imagines for a moment that he sees a little redness in her cheeks. She's not quite without shame, he thinks. Almost. Not quite. He goes on gazing directly into her eyes. It's his only hope.

“I'm sure I've said too much.” She blinks, swallows. “I think that I may have … Overdone it.” Lolls and droops against the counter, then makes a clumsy grab for the tray. Gaddys puts one manicured finger out and pins it. Wide smile. And then “Never mind, Dear.” Gaddys pats Aunt's hand. She takes the cloth off the food, with a light flourish, like a magician performing a trick.

The roasted crow has been plucked roughly, feathers sprout in the pits of its wings and under its chin. Its wings have been arranged angelically across its chest, huge black clawed feet thrust out at strange angles, arranged heel to heel. The bird still has its head, eyes, beak and all. The creature looks dignified and somehow reproachful.

Aunt doesn't appear to have noticed, or else she is too hungry to object. The smell of roast bird hits Tomax. The meat smells a little rotten to him. Just a hint of sourness, and the bird is very thin which most likely means old or sick or perhaps both. Again Aunt doesn't appear to notice anything much wrong with her ‘chicken', plucks the tray from the
counter, glancing at Tomax briefly, almost smugly. Slides the bird into her basket, which, although large, can only hold the bird's stomach, its feet and beak thrust out at each end of the checked cloth, its wings, stubbled with patches of feathers, trail down. “
Some
people are kind.” Aunt says to Tomax. “Thank you Gaddys.” She sniffs. Bows.

Gaddys raises an eyebrow.

“Sorry about that chicken, Dear. You'll have a finer one next time. What about an egg for your troubles? A bonus.” Smiles. She places a round egg-like object on the counter. She examines it. Appears to need to take a moment, summon her patience. “Jengi?” Jengi shrugs.

“It was the last egg we had, Ma'am.” His face is opaque. If Jengi has any feelings about the egg, one way or the other, then even Tomax can't tell what it is.

Gaddys rolls her eyes. “You're a dunce, Jengi. Order more stock, why don't you?”

“Yes, ma'am.” Jengi says sincerely. Humbly, even.

“It looks a bit round,” Aunt says sharply. “Sure it ain't a snake egg?”

“It's just fine. It's a hen's egg.” Gaddys pats Aunt's hand. Her fashionable claws retract, and then extend at the tip, just a little. It's a small warning, meaning ‘Don't complain'.

Aunt looks down at the hand. She appears to remember herself. Tips sideways slightly. Lets her basket swing. “Only …” She looks at her nephew and then back toward Gaddys. She stops talking. “Ah,” she says. “Ah, well,” and then turning to glance behind her. Tomax has gone. “Something or someone has spooked Tomax,” she says. “He's done one of his vanishing acts.” Shrugs.

“He's on a list already,” Gaddys confirms. “A walking ghost. He wouldn't even be
here
, amongst the living, if the general's wife hadn't woken up enough to sign his papers personally. I don't know who got to her, but when I find them … Anyway, with what you've told me.” She smiles sweetly at Tomax's aunt. “When I find them then I'm going to be … Cross.” She enunciates the last word crisply. “Aren't I Jengi?” She says lightly. Eyes him. Jengi turns briefly toward her. “Yes.” He says. He turns back to his work, stacking the Sinta's empty jars and the orange grain sacks.

Aunt looks up at Jengi on his stool, “Goodbye Dear!” Then she meets Gaddys' eye. Clutching on to her over-full basket, makes a rush for the door. When she gets to it, slows down to pass an Egg Boy in the doorway. Stops just long enough to squint at him. “The new batch look almost human,” she says, “Don't they?” Turning to Gaddys. She peers closely at Antek. Something she sees in his face causes her to take a sudden step back. Rattle and squeak of the shop door as she tries to jam it into its hinges behind her and fails.

BLACK FLOWERS

JENGI EXAMINES ANTEK BRIEFLY, looks away. Lifts a jar and climbs the stool to stack it. Top shelf. But just a moment later he's teetering for a jar just out of reach. Leans far right enough that he'd take a nasty fall if he lost his footing even for a moment, especially over the meat slicer like that. It seems extraordinarily clumsy to Gaddys. But then what else can you expect from a Digger? She thinks. He's been making mistakes lately, too many and it's a pain that the general's wife goes on re-certifying him as ‘tame', three times a year and year in, year out, no matter how pollinated she gets. The damned woman never seems to forget to do that one thing.

Jengi will be easy enough to replace in the shop, Gaddys calculates. With her right foot pushes the meat slicer a little closer to Jengi, moving her foot backward so casually that it appears like an absent minded gesture. She goes back to counting her ration cards. And now she's making small indecipherable marks on her clipboard in red ink, next to Sinta names on today's work rota.

“Right a bit, Jengi Dear.” Smirks. Jengi, balancing on one foot only now, teeters on the edge of his small platform.

What happens next happens fast.

Antek lunges. Shoots out his right foot, secures Jengi's stool with it. Now he holds his right arm out steadily, for just long enough for Jengi to get down safely.

The two men eye each other, wide scared eyes, the significance of Antek's action is immediately apparent to them both. Now Antek feels rather than sees Gaddys' curious gaze on the back of his head. He understands his mistake. He is already on Gaddys' list. There's no room for him to make another error like the one with the rain barrel. He's only just gotten out of prison, and even that by the skin of his teeth.

Egg Men aren't supposed to help out a member of any tribe but their own, and the OneFolks of course, and even then only when following orders. But apparently the Egg Boy's right foot and right hand have decided something else without him. It's too late now, Antek thinks. Best to brazen the thing out. “Didn't want to see the jar smash.” Antek says in a stilted voice. “Egg Boys must protect the rations. Them jars are fine quality foodstuffs.” He says stiffly. Pauses, looking down. The smashed jar was empty. “You want to watch them foodstuffs better, Digger.”

Gaddys shrugs, eyes the row of empty jars. She looks bored. There is no reason for her to doubt Antek, after all the Egg Men were bred to be incapable of deception. The Egg Boys don't lie.

“Yes. Of course.” Jengi's tone is giving nothing away. “Now I'll get out of your way, Egg Man.”

“Good.” Antek sniffs. “You do that, Digger.”

Gaddys turns away. Fixes her coils. Checks her nails and yawns again. Showing all her small white teeth. “Over there,” she says. Pointing Antek toward the Egg Boys rations. But she watches Antek closely as he crosses the room. A cold, shrewd gaze.

Antek, with his ration box under his left arm and a half
rotten fish slithering out unwrapped from under his right, strides quickly toward the shop door. But when he gets to the door, something causes him to pause there. Risks a quick glance back at the room.

And then Antek is caught, eye to eye with those marbled pupil-less eyes that Gaddys wears on Tuesdays, reminding The Egg Boy of the fishes stacked in rows and piles at the front of her shop, just at the point where they're tipping softly into rot, covered with a veil of white mucous.

Gaddys examines the Egg Boy's face. And then staring down at his right foot. Nodding softly. It's a clear warning.

Jengi glances briefly at Antek then looks away. He goes back to his shelves.

Antek steps over the door jamb. Softly turns to go. The Sinta girl Zorry is entering the shop as Antek leaves it, this seems like no coincidence to Antek and he gives no indication of having seen her before. He pushes past Zorry abruptly, and then he's gone. Zorry hears the whole door frame clatter and stick fast in the frame, so that the ancient bell on the top of the door goes on tinkling and ringing after Antek. Jengi takes the broom handle. Deals with the bell roughly.

“Those clumsy Egg Boys.” Gaddys says. “But the general's wife has a liking for
that
one, for some reason. Certified him all the way out of a cell. No idea why the general puts up with such sentimental nonsense. It's not as though they're human, no need to get attached to the servants. Is there Jengi?”

“No, ma'am.”

“No, that's right, isn't it, Jengi?” And then, in a further unpleasant aside, “The Egg Boy will be better after he gets his staining.”

“Yes, ma'am.” Jengi replies, more tonelessly than Zorry has ever heard Jengi speak. He turns and stacks the shelves faster.

Gaddys turns to face Zorry now.

“Yes, Dear. What can we do for you? Don't be shy now.”

Zorry is nervous, coming here. It can be tricky for a Sinta to collect their rations. They don't always leave here the way they came in and Zorry knows it. She has heard the stories. Eyes flick toward the exit. The smoke from the furnace outside, just visible through the mottled upper window of the back door.

Zorry silently places her ration cards on the counter. She moves so quickly that she scratches the palm of her hand on the edge of one of the brass angel wings which decorate Gaddys' counter-pulpit. She curls her hand closed behind her back, pressing her fingers down on the hurt.

Gaddys has her back turned toward Zorry just now, giving Zorry a chance to examine unseen the small pale lumpen head with its sheen of soft white down, like feathers, which is Gaddys' current look for Tuesdays, when she is washing her coils.

“Fetch me that jar, Girl.” Gaddys says. Without turning.

“Which one?”

“Top shelf.” Gaddys manages to pour as much contempt into those two words as she can.

Zorry walks around the room with an air of outraged silence. Pokes a cabbage, on the way to collect the jar. Runs a single finger over the rows of skin coloured chalks and the coiled hair pieces, the potatoes with the white roots, the softly mouldering bread. Gaddys' back is still turned.

Zorry hurts her neck looking up at the huge shelves, row upon row, tilting up as far as the eye can see. The ceiling of the
shop is like an aircraft hangar. Impossibly high.

Most of what sits on the shelves are items in jars and tins, rations for the domestic workers and slaves who work in the OneFolks' village, the Sinta and the edge farm miners. The rest of the shelves are stocked with differently coloured grain sacks, meant for the edge farmers, those who still have their pass cards to the OneFolks' village. The furnace outside is for meat, which is only for the OneFolks' and those whom Gaddys considers to be useful to her.

And then there's the black shiny store shed.

Nobody knows what's in there. No-one but Gaddys and Jengi, of course.

Zorry takes in as much as she can. Tries to note any changes. Jengi watches Zorry. Cold hard knot at the base of his throat. The girl is collecting information under Gaddys' nose. Jengi's not sure if she's being naive or simply reckless. Possibly both. Mamma Zeina didn't have enough time, in the end, to train Zorry. The girl is doing fine work under the circumstances, it's just that … It takes all of a hundred years of Sinta knowledge, passed down mouth to ear, to know how to deal with the village shopkeeper. And there's no room for mistakes, not even one small one. He squeezes his eyes shut. Blinks and opens them again. Hard stare at the patch of white wall at the back of the shelf. Places an empty jar there. Takes two careful steps down from his ladder. Notices Gaddys watching the girl with her powder compact.

Taking a few extra seconds between the order and the following of the order, Well. Jengi thinks, watching Zorry's slow movements. That's about the only time of day a Sinta gets to call her own. The time between the order and the
following of the order, Jengi thinks, the only form of protest left. To fall down at the work, let things rust and seize up slow in the bomb factories, sew the edge farm children's uniforms full of breathing holes and with a little slack at the throat. Be the spoke in the wheel of Bavarnica's many interconnecting systems. Weaponised slowness.

Jengi remembers that ‘God Speed', is the soft, ironic Sinta goodbye. When two neighbours meet in the street. But Gaddys is not some factory guard, or an untrained Egg Boy. There is a reason the general trusts her to decipher who's ‘tame' and who's not. Jengi scratches his head. What Zorry needs right now is a distraction.

Gaddys strokes her balding head. With the sproutings of white feathers in her wrinkled skin cap she looks like a too-soon-hatched chick, Zorry thinks. Gaddys pulls a silver wig out of her pocket, pulls it on slowly. Stares at the girl. Silence.

This can't end well.

Zorry puts Gaddys' jar down on the counter. Soft clink.

“What is your purpose here, Girl? What are you for?”

“I've come … I'm here to collect funeral flowers, for Mamma Zeina's grave,” Zorry says. And then lifting her chin slightly. Meeting Gaddys' eye. It is a long and dangerous moment.

“I have the ration cards.” Zorry says. She speaks quietly, but there's a steeliness in the girl, Gaddys thinks. She's not afraid. Gaddys taps her tooth. Jengi takes another small step down his ladder. Plucks an empty jar. Now he finds himself gazing at the second empty jar behind it. He's listening. Holding his breath.

“That's quite a collection of ration cards.” Gaddys
examines the Sinta family names on the cards. Writes them down.

“A funeral has been approved.” Zorry says, objecting as much as she dares to. Her voice is just a little more shrill than she intended.

“Has it now? And who exactly was it who approved a Sinta funeral? I can guess, Child, but I would like to hear you say it.”

“The general's wife.”

Jengi freezes. Collects himself and then, dipping his head, takes a jar from the shelf beneath his elbow. He takes the opportunity to glance at Gaddys' face. To see how she takes this.

Gaddys snatches up the ration cards again. Examines them with a sullen expression. She's trying to find something wrong.

Feels like only seconds later, Zorry is leaning against the cool sweating wall in the alleyway beside the shop. Listening to the sound of Gaddys shrieking, making phone calls, hitting Jengi with the brush end of his own broom.

There's a sting in the sun today. Zorry has no flowers. No ration cards. And she's put a clutch of Sinta names, via their ration cards, into Gaddys' hands. This whole thing was a mistake from beginning to end. What's worse, Gaddys has noticed Zorry now. Zorry listens for a little while longer to the sound of Jengi taking a beating on her behalf. Guilt seems to take Zorry by the throat and press down. It's paralysing. She can't go home or go back.

A side window opens behind her. And then Jengi's arm, his thick bony wrist. He's clutching a black flower in his fist. “This is for you.” He says, grimly. “For Zeina.” Jengi hands her the flower. Zorry notices the bruising on Jengi's face, that his
mouth and right ear are bloodied. He rocks one loose tooth softly side to side with his tongue. Grins wryly.

“We're alright, Zorry. It's not your fault. She's been wanting to do that for a while, damned savage. Now, go have Zeina's funeral.” And turning toward a sound behind him, hisses, “Scurvets. Now, Scram!”

Zorry doesn't need to be told twice.

Levers herself over the glass topped wall at the end of the alley. One seamless, flowing motion, Zorry hurdles the fence. Not a single petal falls.

This time she knows how to avoid the glass shards.

Zorry just keeps going. Sound of her heart in her ears.