Stone Seeds (22 page)

The second Egg Man steps back a little. He's briefly confused. “What the hell is your boy doing in there? Why is he
taking so damned long? I'll go look.”

And now Ezray is looking at the second Egg Man's long back, moving toward the kitchen door, screams a Sinta curse at his back to unnerve him, “You do not do, you do not. ANYMORE.” She yells, spitting. Drawing his attention back toward her, and then away from the door to the child.

The second Egg Man seems to take the bait. He turns slowly toward her, half smile. “Any more black shoe, in which I have lived like a foot,” she says, and then, “Sylvia Plath,” she says, picking up whatever she can and lobbing it at his huge skull. Lamps and shoes and small brass candlesticks bounce off the side of the Egg Man. He walks slowly towards her. Catches a vase, and examines it briefly. Drops it. Smiles. “You singing your death poem? How fitting, Sinta.”

Draw fire, draw fire,
draw fire
from the child. It is all that Ezray is thinking now.

The huge Egg Man is standing over her. Strange empty mirthless, joyless laughing and Ezray thinks it once again, ‘I'm not myself.' And that voice, she thinks. That strange voice. You think it can't be coming from you, but it is.

“You do not do …” She falters. “Anymore black shoe in which I have lived, like a foot.” And once more that unreal feeling saves her. It's as though she is a clear foot over her own head, watching her own performance with amazement. Glancing at her feet and noticing it's a blue tile that she stands on. It feels like a sign to her. “Like a foot,” she says. And then looking at the Egg Man. “And one gray toe. It's as big as a frisco seal.” She says. The Egg Man tilts his head left, as though he's listening to the word-music. “And a … Head in the freakish Atlantic. Where it pours bean green over blue.” She
tries to gather herself. She looks down again.

Now she sees Zettie's little dust lizards, drawn in the spaces left by every missing tile and spilling out of the cracks in the wall. Where did the child even find the paint for that last one? It must be made from that missing plant root. Why does the understanding only come at the end? Time, she thinks once again. This child only needed more time. Give her mine. She thinks, rising.

“There,” the Egg Man says. He shoves Ezray's shoulder.

And then pulling her face into a snarl. Ezray flies at his face but one huge knee in her stomach and she is doubled over. And then pulling herself up quickly, painfully from the floor using the wall for support now. She crawls toward the door and the second Egg Man, laughing now, lets her place herself in front of the door, failing to understand this was the tactical advantage she had aimed for.

“You can't stop me.”

“No.”

“Then why resist? Tell me. Why you Sinta make such a fuss about dying? Egg men are cancelled in batches every day. You don't see us complaining.” He sniffs.

“Then maybe you haven't never been alive in the first place, Egg Man. Ever think about that?”

The second Egg Man shoves Ezray hard and she stumbles backwards. Gets up from the floor again.

“Now, look. Why do you have to keep getting up? You're just making it worse for yourself, Sinta.”

“Where it pours green bean over blue.” She says slowly. Reaches out and picks up a knife from the sideboard. Left hand. Switches it to her right hand, raises it.

“Oh my.” The second Egg Man lifts his empty hands up, slowly now, in mock surrender. She meets his eye, looks away again quickly.

“This is taking too long, Man. Let's do it. We've got three more of these tonight.” Antek's father objects.

Antek hears Mamma Ezray's back sliding against the other side of the kitchen door, sound of a Sinta kitchen knife unsheathing, clink,
tap
, against the hardwood door. Inside the kitchen, the boy is calculating. He looks down at the child in the sink. “Nine seconds.” He tells her. “Mamma can give you three seconds more. You will have nine seconds, Zettie. To get to the copse. When I break the window.” Zettie, being only four droughts old this season and not understanding what a second is or why another one more or less might matter, gazes up at Antek with a look of amazement. Pops her thumb in her mouth. The two Egg Men on the other side of the door to the kitchen, nod at each other grimly, fan out. There is one on either side of Ezray.

Draw fire, draw fire, draw fire from the child, Mamma Ezray thinks. She is fire now. Rising slowly, painfully. The knife glitters in her right hand.

“Make it quick and clean.”

“Aye.”

Ezray's eyes become wide. She looks up. Last light, she thinks. And then
Slow
.

Shadow sweeps over the kitchen floor.

The Government Sun is switched off, curfew. The world is plunged into a blackness so deep that the air around Mamma Ezray's head feels thick with it. Time, she thinks. And then, Now. She moves just as she hears Antek break the kitchen
window. Ezray plunges forward into a darkness that's thicker than life.

Last light, thinks Antek at the window, and then the Egg Boy, without missing a beat, throws his right elbow hard once again into the kitchen window, tinkle and smash and he pushes Zettie outside at the same time, neatly avoiding the clinging glass shards and Zettie, on an instinct, reaches out her small feet toward the edge of the rain barrel. Balances expertly, the way she has every morning for this last week, when climbing to check Mamma's asleep. Zettie holds there like a tightrope walker. Perfectly balanced.

“Jump!” He says.

Zettie jumps.

“GO!” Antek yells.

Zettie, like a cork out of a bottle, goes flying into the yard. She's running before her feet hit the floor. Running into the mouth of the darkest night that she's ever seen. Just like her legs decide what to do without her. Zettie's fast and she just makes it into the copse in nine seconds, not one to spare, slams herself down and then swivels. Covers herself up with leaves. The cottage lights blink back on. Light filters into the yard, but the copse remains in darkness.

Now the search lights blink on. Zettie shuffles down deeper into her leafy bed. She covers her ears, but the sound from inside Mamma's cottage goes on and on.

She uncovers her ears slowly. What is that sound?

It's the sound of the second Egg Man's frantic, high pitched screaming. It's the sound of him crashing about the rooms and bumping into walls, falling over the sideboard. Zettie hears something clatter to the floor and roll. That's the
jug, Zettie thinks. Standing up. The Egg Man's scream rises up over the village.

The child brushes the leaves off. Now that she's here in the copse, she remembers her training. She is looking out toward the small lights of the village, and then away. In the direction of the fence. The fence, Mamma said. Iffen the bad day comes.

Well this is a bad day.

This here. And if Mamma Ezray can handle two full growned Egg Men then she, Zettie, can certainly handle a damned fence after dark. So let's go, she tells herself. Testing herself against the darkness. She's going to make Mamma proud.

Zettie sniffs the air. Smell of crow eggs, she thinks. Dank moss.

Mamma is at the fence to the killing forest right now, Zettie believes. The Egg Man's screaming seems to her to confirm it.

She's waiting for me to come, Zettie tells herself.

It goes against every instinct in the child's small body, to head toward the most fearful seeming place in Bavarnica after dark. But Mamma will be there. My mamma will be there. Isn't that what she said?

The child feels tuned out, strange. She sets off running toward her Mamma. Toward the killing forest, the slowly wavering fence.

Several miles away on the family allotment, Zorry turns, blinks, then goes back to her work. Wind's getting up, she thinks. She waits a moment for the lights to come back on. Then realising that she's out after curfew. I'd better head home quietly, she thinks.

And then Zorry hears it. Something that doesn't sound
strictly human. Shrill scream. High pitched but not a woman's scream.

She shrugs. Something from the killing forest got in to the village maybe. It's been known.

A Sinta whom Zorry only knows a little straddles the fence to the allotment with some difficulty, “Zorry …” He says. She examines his face and then she sees it. Written across his features.

She drops her spade.

“Zorry.” He says. “Zorry. The Egg Men. This … It's your house, Zorry.”

ONLY ZETTIE SAW

ZETTIE HEARS DRUMMING IN her ears, her own heartbeat. Inside sounds. The world seems to move slow and strange around her. Sometimes she can't tell if she's running or if the cottages are only moving past her. There are Egg Men fanning out into the yards behind the Sinta houses. She looks back briefly. Someone is searching the copse out back of her cottage with a torch. Kicking the leaves and shaking the bushes. Their small search lights zigzag through the branches. Zettie keeps going.

Now she remembers what she's supposed to do. She remembers it all.

Zettie follows Mamma Ezray's training. All the way to the edge of the killing forest, then she stops. Panting. Rib cage aches. Feels sweat running down the insides of her arms, pools at her inner elbows. She clenches and unclenches her hands. They're sticky, cold. The fence sways and the forest looms above Zettie. Swivels around on her right heel to look behind her. Mamma Ezray is not here but she will be soon, Zettie thinks.

Mamma Ezray never lets Zettie down.

Mamma Ezray does not lie to Zettie.

Mamma said that she would be here, by the fence, and she will.

The main problem is they'd never practised this in the dark.
When the killing forest comes to silent life, groans and pushes against the fence. Zettie puts her arms over her head and her thumb in her mouth, she folds herself into the smallest ball that she can make.

There is a huge heavy, sliding thing just inside the fence, inches to the child's right. Small red lights to either side of its long, slanted nostrils. She shifts on her small haunches. Zettie opens her eyes wide in the dark.

At night the white fence to the killing forest becomes transparent. After a few moments, whilst her eyes adjust, it is possible to see things through it. Dark shapes, moving. And a long, low moan that seems human, also not quite human.

Zettie keeps perfectly still.

Now the killing forest trees move apart in front of her eyes, Zettie tells herself that this can't be happening. But the forest roof creaks open and there are leaves unfurling, it's like a tunnel appearing in the trees. A long dark, leafy throat widening and then closing, and then ripples open again. And at the end of the tunnel, there's the small light of the old moon. Wavering from side to side, as the child dips and wobbles, almost like it's coming closer. Zettie rubs her eyes with her curled fists.

Something plops out of the rain barrel by the fence, flops wetly on to the grass by her left foot. Zettie doesn't hear it jumping onward. A frog is a bad luck sign, the child thinks.

The forest sounds rise. Clattering and squawking in the branches.

Mamma Ezray always told her that she must be brave for this part.

There's the sound of sliding again, bird shriek. Something
moving sinuously up and along the inside of the fence, the whispering of several voices, just inside the fence. And now Zettie hears the heavy clomp of footsteps coming closer. And a loud hiss, someone saying her name, “Zettie? Zettie?”

Zettie is running once more, looping away from the fence, heading back toward home and the long copse at the back of her yard. The clomping heavy feet behind get faster. When Zettie gets to the copse, the figure leaps and fells her. She's pinned by an elbow in her small back.

“Quiet child. Be still.” And now Zettie is fighting, biting down hard on the hand over her mouth.

“It's me, it's Jengi.” The voice says. “It's only me!”

Zettie feels the scream rising up in her throat.

Jengi covers her mouth with his hand.

LAST LIGHT

“ANYTHING OUTSIDE?”

“Nothing.” Antek says.

“I thought she had childur?”

“There's no one else. Leave it.”

“Do not instruct me in my duties, Egg Boy. I know you let the child go.”

The second egg man strikes Antek with the handle of his cow prod. It hits the side of the Egg Boy's head, a sickening crack, thud. Antek is out cold.

“Get up from that, Boy.”

Black tile, white tile Mamma Ezray thinks. Looking across at the boy. The Egg Man rolls her over with his boot. Cheek against the cold floor. Black tile, white tile. And Blue, she thinks. Red. Blood is seeping onto the painted tile around her head, making a new country out of her father's last map. It spreads out. There is no fear, she thinks. At the end. Moonlight filters in through the blinds, and then she sees it, whole, in the seam ripped through the patched up fabric. The old moon.

Like a soft gold thumb hole in the sky now.

Wind is rattling the back door.

Ezray rolls her swollen tongue along her jaw, examines the cracks in her teeth. The Egg Man seems to loll in and out of her eyeline. Now her sense of the room around her changes. She is moving in and out of consciousness, drifting. Zettie will
need time to get … She thinks. Time to get to the copse and toward the … Toward the fence where no one would, where no one would … Time. The child needs time. And Ezray forces herself up again.

“Witch.” The second Egg Man says, sharply. Kicks her. “Stay down, Witch.”

But there is fear in his voice now.

Mamma Ezray curls her tongue around a front tooth, soft tug tug with her tongue and spits it. Small bloody spray where the tooth lands. Ezray grins with her missing tooth. Eyes him.

But her head's still bleeding and the sense of things unravels in spools now, since that kick, since the boot, since the black tiles, white tiles, going on and on. And flecks of blue, she thinks. In between. There is a sound outside.

A gun is cocked. The second egg man tilts the blind to look out.

It's just the wind now. Wind in the trees. Says Antek's father, coming back in from the kitchen. And then, sternly, “I'll check it out,” he says. Brief glance down at his boy on the floor. He meets the second Egg Man's gaze. Squares his jaw.

“I didn't hurt him, batch-brother. He'll wake up with a headache is all.”

They are eye to eye. “You stay here and nurse your finger. I'll be outside.”

“Anything?” The second egg man says to Antek's father, moments later.

“Nothing. I've checked all through the copse, there's nobody there. Just a gale getting up.” He looks down at Ezray, unreadable expression.

“I thought you said you wanted to finish this quickly?”

“Did I?” The second Egg Man holds up his hand and regards the stump of his index finger.

There's no blood, but the Egg Man's pain sensors, looking gnawed at the ends, hiss and fizz.

“Well. Curiously, batch-brother, I appear to have changed my mind.” He squints at Antek's father, holds his gaze. And then soft, reproachful. “Don't you want to take her alive batch-brother? Get some names out of her? That's the protocol here. In a case like this one.” He flicks his thumb toward the prostrate woman. “This one has turned out to be pretty hardboiled. Who can say what a woman like that knows?”

Antek's father seems to be trying to think of a reason to object, something that would lie within the general's regulations. Finds nothing. Sighs.

“No names,” Ezray says from the floor, she's semi-conscious and her words wash up like a voice in a dream. Drifting like a sigh, like a song, into the busted-up room. “No names, no names, no names in here,” she lilts. Gentle Sinta music. And then, like a harsh drum roll at the end, “Never,” Ezray takes a deep breath. And now Ezray seems to be listening to another kind of music, on the inside. Something nobody else in the room can hear just now. She tilts her head from side to side in time with the hidden drum curls and the tumbling rhythms. “I'll go out like a light.” She pronounces.

“Like a light, eh? You don't know Gaddys very well then. Do you?” The second Egg Man speaks whilst looking at his finger. “She'll make you hate yourself before she's done with you.”

“You should know.” Antek's father is looking down at the second Egg Man. Slow gaze. And now the second Egg Man is
looking at his ruined finger again. “I'm going to see that she dies slowly.”

Ezray looks up. It occurs to Ezray now to provoke the younger man into executing rather than arresting her. She doesn't want to die naming names in Gaddys' basement. “How's your finger?” She asks, fully lucid now. Snarls.

“Nice try. But I'm not going to kill you, Sinta. I'm going to take you to visit with Gaddys.”

Ezray turns toward the old language like a blanket. She thinks of her father, teaching her the last words in the firelight after curfew, and only hold on to that thought, she tells herself. And boil that thought until it's curling back to you like oil through water. Cover me now. The ancient, long-banned Sinta words seem to find her tongue.” Water.” She says. Out loud. And now Ezray's surface is receding again. She is dying. “Five fathoms five my father lies.” She says. Sinking. Lifting her head up from the cold tiles to say the last thing, and then looking down dreamily at the old mapmaker's last map.

Antek's father is looking where she looks.

Now he moves in closer. Examines the tiles. Hand on his holster. Moves until he's standing behind Ezray. She doesn't look up, only senses his quiet presence there.

“You do not do, you do not do anymore,” she says. And then, “I can't think straight just now.”

She looks tenderly over toward the Egg Boy lying on the floor. Soft purple bruise at the side of the boy's head, blood clotting slowly at his wound. “Blood.” She says. And at first it's as though Ezray's speaking to no-one. And then, gazing up at Antek's father, and once more a look seems to pass between them, “Your Egg Boy is bleeding. Friend.”

“Stop talking, Mother Cupboard.” He says. She looks up.

“Yes.” She says. Closes her eyes. She doesn't feel the last blow, when it comes.

The Egg Man can't say what he feels. Maybe he can't even feel it. Anymore.

It was over quickly, he tells himself.

The second Egg Man is eyeing Antek's father curiously. “It would have been better to take her to Gaddys alive. Wouldn't it?”

“This witch knew nothing.”

And then Antek's father is gazing down at Ezray's slumped body. Blinks. Turns and strides quickly out into the yard.

The second Egg Man can just see him through the open doorway. Examines the slope of his shoulders, his lowered head. Scowls. He'll be on a list soon, he thinks. Him and his mismade boy.

And now the second Egg Man is imagining how nice that would be. He's looking down at the stripes on his shoulder. Another one would be nice, and the food rations to go with the promotion. The second Egg Man smiles slowly. And then looking down at Antek's prone body, in a heap by the fireplace.

“There was meddling on this night and that's for sure.” He scratches his nose. And then staring at his ruined hand. “And somebody always pays for the meddling … It's not going to be me.”

Voices outside the front door distract him briefly. “We've got the flowers' van. We are ready for collection. Have you got them? There oughta be three?” The red haired Egg Boy looks down at his clipboard. And then up at Antek, laying curled on the floor. Blinks.

“There is only one body. Take it outside.” The second Egg Man indicates Mamma Ezray's corpse. “Take her the long way. Drag her past the copse out back. If there are childur hiding out in the yard, that'll bring them to their mother in less than a heart beat. We can take the whole family to Gaddys, a job lot.”

They drag the mother cupboard outside, slide her over the cool tiles, past the slumped Egg Boy and the piles of her broken things. A slow trail of blood washes out behind Ezray, making a dark swathe right across the room to the door.

The back of her head bumps twice over the stone kitchen back steps.

There is only dark.