Stone Seeds (23 page)

GONE

ZORRY HOPS OVER THE cottage wall, straddling the thing with difficulty. The body of the front door is seeping away from its hinges. Eases herself in through the busted hole in the wood, fingering the splintered edges of the door, as though looking for clues. Zorry passes into the dark room.

It's empty. Scorch marks on the floor, smoking rags. The lamp is broken, the fire's out. Zorry steps over a broken egg. Notes the chips in the wall. Other small signs of a struggle.

The dark shapes of furniture are crooked, wrong side up.

The floor appears to her to tilt, she sways and the ground seems to rise up to meet her. Catches hold of the wall and slides down it. Zorry is on her knees now, getting up slowly. When she's on her feet again, leans her forehead against the cool brick. Not the in-breath, Zorry thinks, but the out-breath. That's the struggle. She concentrates really hard on breathing now. Holding her gaze to the wall. The small indent from Father's pot-throwing is still there. She looks at it for a long time. Something comes to her. Now she is moving slowly through the room, looking for clues. For some kind of trail. She is still swaying a little, but she stays on her feet.

Fingernail marks in the kitchen door, running down it. A fine red mist on the wall beside that. Small but adult-sized bloody fingertip-prints in the hinges, and another red print, of a palm, to the left. Zorry knows without looking closer they are
from Mamma's hands, not Zettie's.

She looks down.

And then black tile, white tile. The curls of turquoise paint, swathes in the blue tiles, the tiny gold inscriptions. Zorry picks up the lamp. She examines the floor more closely. There are muddy footprints, crossing the kitchen in a haphazard pattern, running up to the back door. Blood is embedded in the patterns left by both sets of huge Egg Man boots.

Now she sees it. A large finger on the floor, from the knuckle up. It's still wriggling obscenely. Curling and trying to point. Zorry forces herself to step closer to the writhing object. Confirming what she already knew. It is not Mamma Ezray's but the thick boney knuckle, vein-strewn finger and curving yellow fingernail of an Egg Man. Mamma put up a fight.

It's the first sign of hope.

Whatever it was that happened here, Mamma Ezray did not go quietly. But why not? She must have had a reason for resisting. It occurs to Zorry for the first time that Zettie might be alive.

She looks up, toward the open back door in the room beyond her. Eyes the broken kitchen window.

Zorry dips her head under the low doorway to the kitchen. Smell of tin and something else, she can't say what it is.

She looks down again.

And now she's walking beside the dark trail which runs across the kitchen. Blood all the way to the back step. And then, standing over the stone back steps looking out, Zorry finds she can't move. Can't take another step forward or back. She's looking across the yard and beyond it, into the copse.

For one long moment, she has a feeling of rising up softly and away from her body. Where would Zettie have gone if she ran? Now Zorry's mind seems to tune out, thoughts rattling, colours in the yard butt against each other, things blur. She holds on to the door frame with both hands. Nausea rising.

And now, from the looted, ruined rooms behind her, something comes. At first she doesn't know what it is. But she smells Mamma Ezray's plant smell, mixed with soap, candlewax. It's like being washed by warm rain. Zorry doesn't turn. Only letting the soft presence run over the back of her head and neck. Then it's gone.

Gone as though it never were. Shakes herself.

Now the thought comes to her fully formed. Zettie would have gone to the fence.

And now Zorry knows it, knows it suddenly. With all the clarity of an intuition. Steps into the yard, sniffs the air. She needs to get to the fence. Fast. Something makes her pause, just a little longer. She can't say what it is. Her left hand is shaking.

She looks back at the broken back door to the cottage. It has strange energy to it, the darkness in the yard and the copse just beyond, the dark open door of the cottage behind her, a quality of horror to the cottage back door, the step. This can never be home again, she thinks. There is no going back. Only on.

The back door is hanging off its hinges. One sharp gust of wind and the door hits the step, tumbles into the dusty yard. No one has put the chickens into the henhouse and they scatter from the falling door, soft clucking. Gentle squawks.
The gale is picking up now. The tree out front seems to groan and complain, heaving up its leafy arms and rattling, twisting left and right, like a warning.

Zorry sees the Egg Boy, Antek, standing just beyond the back door, by the shed. It's a shock and she takes a step backward, wavers. He puts his right hand up to the side of his head. There's blood in the handkerchief, wadded up in his hand and he's pale. Paler than she has ever seen him. Blood loss, she thinks. Ripping off the long cuff of her shirt, stepping carefully toward him, as though approaching a deer, or a child.

“You gotta bind it, Egg Boy.” It doesn't occur to her to be surprised that the Egg Boy is bleeding. She realises only now that she has always understood that he was … human.

Antek pulls a slightly torn document out of his left, front pocket. Zorry believes that the Egg Boy is bringing her an official death notice, but who for? The document is colour coded pink, meaning that it's for a child. She stumbles, feels rather than sees the Egg Boy moving forward fast to catch her. It is her elbow not her head which breaks her fall on the step.

When Zorry looks up she sees Zettie, standing over her. Waiting.

The child looks unreal. Shattered. Blank amazed expression. Soft button eyes.

Zorry rises, “Wake. Wake up Zettie.” Zorry waves her hand in front of Zettie's eyes. Pulls the child into her arms. Zettie blinks. There's a small sign of life, a flash of recognition, and then it's gone. A kind of stiffness passes over her. The child gently resists being held.

“You're cold.” Zorry takes off her scarf to warm her. The
child looks away. Zorry rubs Zettie's cool arms. “Zettie?” She says the child's name. Soft as she can. Says it twice.

Zettie had gotten all the way to the edge of the killing forest then circled back again to run from the fence and then from Jengi. To find her mamma. Jengi had caught Zettie in the copse with only moments to spare, hid them both in the leaves at the edge, pinned his elbow in Zettie's back, hand over her mouth, stopped her going to her mother just in time. Hardened as he was, even Jengi had to close his eyes when they dragged Mamma Ezray out, bloodied, by her feet, just seconds later, that sickening bump,
bump
and the soft thud of her skull hitting stone. Jengi couldn't pin Zettie and cover both her eyes and her mouth at the same time, not without three hands, three arms.

Only the child saw her mother dragged down the two hard back steps.

Mamma Ezray was hauled, feet first, toward the van with the crown for a headboard, which the red-headed Egg Boy had parked in the stoney country lane just beyond the cottage. Only the child saw them drag her mother's body over every stone, cracked rock, earth ruck and puddle in the Sinta's long front yard. Only the child saw what she imagined were small signs of life in Mamma Ezray's left hand, reaching out and sliding fingers through the yolk of a crushed hen egg, or Mamma Ezray's head turned, as though looking blindly out toward the quickening in the copse.

Only the child saw the end.

Zorry finds that she can't look at Zettie now and she can't not look.

“Zettie.”

Zorry wraps her arms tighter around Zettie. The child is stiff for a little while longer, but then becomes limp, unresisting. This seems to be worse.

Zorry has forgotten about Antek. When she looks up, startles softly. Antek is now standing to one side of the Sinta cottage. He steps back, avoids her gaze, sliding into the green shadow that runs beside the house. She listens to the sound of Antek's footsteps, slipping quietly around to the front of the house and away.

Zettie gazes up at Zorry with a blank, amazed expression.

“Was the Egg Boy bad to you, Zettie?”

The child looks at Zorry in surprise.

“He ain't a Egg Boy, he is a Antek. He breaked the window.” She says in her small voice. “Jengi gived him a paper. For me.”

“A paper? What paper?”

Zorry looks down. There is a certificate of tameness poking out from Zettie's apron front. A little of Antek's blood is on one corner of it and it's been signed by the general's wife with her very own hand.

Zorry stares at the certificate for a long time. “You are safe. You are safe now, Zettie.” And then, looking up, “It seems you have … You have a lot of friends, Zettie. Important friends. Do you know what that means?”

Zorry looks up toward the path which Antek just took.

“No.” Zettie says.

“No more do I.”

Dust rising, leaves, as the wind gets up. And now Zettie is clinging to her older sister. Zorry doesn't take her into the cottage, she doesn't move from the spot.

No-one comes home, not yet. Not Zorry's father, not
Zorry's aunt in the next village. Though you'd expect them to have heard by now, the Sinta message systems are hidden and effective and the Sinta are expert at reading the signs and quiet codes in the slightest rearrangement of their surroundings, so that a child in trouble can be identified, located and swooped up quickly. There are rules in place for such times which have taken a hundred years to configure and cowardice amongst the Sinta is unusual, especially when it comes to children in danger. And yet … no-one comes for them.

Zorry guesses it was the Egg Man's scream that did it.
We are untouchables now
.

Zorry tries to think, but again her thoughts rattle, blur, and move too fast for her to catch them. The sense of things coming undone. She looks down at the child in her arms. The night-freeze is coming, and they've no shelter but … Goose bumps are appearing on the child's arms and legs. They must go back into the house. Where else?

Now Zorry drags Zettie into the kitchen, the child resists this at first and then seems to give up. Zorry holds her tighter now, to try to stop her shaking. The child still feels cold in her arms. The lights in the house are out. The fire is not yet lit. Zorry gets up to light it, transferring the child to her hip and going at the fire now, clumsily one-armed, with the poker. She gets a small fire going. It's mostly smoke.

Through the kitchen doorway Zorry can still see the curves and angles of things tilted in the wrong way, menacing upside-down shapes of old, familiar items. Everything's changed. There's a burning feeling in her throat, Zettie coughs and now they watch the flames lick upward. A crack and snap like gunshot, causes Zettie to startle. The hewn branches in the
log-fire curl and turn quickly to ash. Zettie watches the fire waver and hiss. Wide eyes.

Zorry hears her name called twice. And then Father's nervous voice carries from the front door of the cottage. At first he doesn't come into the house. Now there is the sound of her aunt, rattling through the house, kicking at piles of rags and opening cupboard doors. “Children?” And now Father seems to find the courage to follow Aunt in.

Zorry listens to his footsteps getting louder, hesitating. And then coming closer again. Zorry can't raise her heart high enough to answer, but Aunt quickly finds the two girls by the kitchen fire. She breathes out heavily. She puts her arms around them. And then Father's voice again.

It briefly occurs to Zorry that Father might report her presence here, which could be a problem as she is no longer certified tame, as of tonight. Zorry is ashamed at once of mistrusting Father. She tries to put the thought away. Steels herself. And then looking down at Zettie.

“That's your father,” Zorry says, trying to break through the child's emptiness. Zettie nods robotically. It's hard to tell if she hears the words or not. It is like someone came and sucked life out of her, Zorry thinks. Zettie presses her face into Zorry's neck.

“She's shaking,” Aunt says. And then bending to peer closer. Lifting up Zettie's matted lock of russet coloured hair, examining her small face underneath. “She's in shock!” Aunt says loudly. “The child's in shock.” These words seem to wake something in the children's aunt. She checks Zettie over, wraps her with every shawl she herself is wearing. And then, gently scooping her out of Zorry's arms, holds onto her tightly.
“We have to get her warm.”

In a bit, Father tries to pull her clumsily out of Aunt's arms, but the child clings resolutely to her aunt. In a bit Father stops trying. “We need to get her some sugar. Fruit.” Aunt says. And Father shambles outside toward the pear tree in the front yard. To see what the Egg Men have left them, knowing in advance that it will be nothing. Nothing.

“Zettie,” Aunt says. And then she seems to remember something. Rustles in her basket. “Keep her warm,” she says brusquely, plonking the child back into Zorry's lap. “There now, there.” She pulls Zorry's shawl off her roughly and then re-wrapping it around both Zorry and the child.

“Take off your coat, Man,” she barks at her brother when he reappears at the front door. Now he ignores her, stumbling a little over the door jamb. Zettie holds Aunt's oat biscuit in her mouth as though she's forgotten how to chew or swallow. And then in a bit she seems to remember. A little of her colour returns.

Father seems decisive suddenly. Yanks the child out of her coverings by one arm. Sits down and pulls her on to his lap. “Your father is here now.” He says. Squaring his jaw. “Here to take a hold of this … madhouse.” Brief, cold glance at Zorry, as if she did this. All this. And now the infant is shuddering uncontrollably. Aunt rushes forwards to wrap the child again, but Father raises his right arm against her, warningly. Now he turns his back toward both women, as though to defend himself.