Stone Seeds

by Ely, Jo;

  The surviving prisoners, the walking wounded, are made to clear up and rebuild. That’s Bavarnica’s policy. Make them hate the bombs and the bombers and the foreign powers who sent them. “See what they do to you?” The message comes out loudly over the tannoy, clear across the barracks. “These foreign folks aren’t anybody’s friend. They are only bombs and death. Long death from which only the general can protect us.”

  Several of the officers hadn’t been in reinforced towers at all, but had been called to a single building for a meeting just moments before the blast. That building was simply scorched ground now. In addition, a handful of the batch 46 Egg Men had found, at the last moment, that their keys to the bomb shelters were missing. Antek’s father was the only survivor of these. In any case, he’d headed towards the batch 47 barracks when he heard the siren, he was looking for his son when the drone hit.

  Antek was called in late last night for an extra duty. He was to provide an hour of overtime to the general’s wife, scrubbing the mould off the windows to her orangery and that’s where he was when the first blast sounded. Antek hasn’t seen his father for several hours. He sweeps up the bomb-dust, hoses down fires. Clears up the bodies before the rats and crows finish clearing up the bodies. Sweeps up fingers and toes, other body parts and, with the help of the prisoners, hauls out the dead from underneath the rubble. Drags them toward the gas-lit smoking pyres in the corner, where the old batch 47 barracks used to be.

  From time to time Antek turns around and eyes his barracks. It’s just a hole in the ground now, a pile of rock and dust beside that. The drones clean took batch 47 all out. If Antek hadn’t been sent on his strange work rota before sun up, he knows he’d have been in the barracks too. Dead.

  When the clean up was almost done and before the rebuilding had started, Gaddys came to examine the scene. She ticked boxes on a chart, mostly. Made red marks against a long list of names. Poked at pieces of rubble and eyed the broken buildings, sniffed.

  You can’t clear it all away, Antek thinks, sweeping, clearing, mopping, stacking and re-stacking. Pouring cement over scorched ground. There are always things remaining. A small brass button in the corner of a prisoner’s half wrecked cell, non-uniform. The faded photograph of a long-ago child, laughing. Raising up her arms to some unknown new thing.

  There are melted candles in the rubble of batch 47 barracks. An ancient postcard with rat-chewed edges, cafe scene with a musician, parasol and a woman. Hatless. Veil-less. These things had broken Antek up more than the blood and gore had, the burnt limbs. The dead remain not in grotesque butchered pieces but in their mementoes. The things they hoard and keep for years and will die to do so, thrown up to the surface by the bomb now. Like small dreams, sprouting out of the rubble.

  Now Antek is standing at the very edge of the bomb crater which marked where the prisoners’ cells had been. His eye is strung to the one green patch in the grey scene. It’s on the other side of the crumbling wall to the batch 47 barracks.

  Smoke still twists up from the remains of the building. There are grey mounds of rubble, and then, farther away, unfathomably green swathes of the killing forest appearing over the damaged fence just behind it. Antek eyes the fence carefully. Notes it’s being rebuilt quite fast using what looks like swathes of cotton but on closer examination appear more like layers of cobweb. The fence seems to swell until the green forest vanishes once more behind the white veil of fence.

  Night seems to fall quickly. The sky is now starless. One purple cloud of bomb-dust seems to him to open and swallow the old moon in a seamless gulp. And then give it all back, unfurling its lips and rolling out its long smokey tongue. Held the moon for a moment, held it there on the tip. Strange sky. Like a wordless warning.

  A long, skinny cat skims past Antek’s foot, too large for a Sinta domestic and too small to be from the OneFolks’ village. Antek blinks, recognises the black markings, huge tufted ears of the caracal. Blinks again and it’s gone.

  “Did you hear?”

  “Hear what?” Antek turns. He is gazing into the face of the only other surviving batch 47. Remembers the red-headed Egg Boy had a tendency to sneak out before dark. Nobody knew why but the batch 47 soldiers tended not to inform on each other, and apparently he wasn’t home in time to be caught.

  “The general’s wife has been arrested.” The red-headed Egg Boy says. Rubbing his luminous red hair between his fingers. The Egg Boy stalks away as quickly as he appeared. Disappears behind the rubble near the only remaining busted part of the fence to the killing forest. Antek waits a moment but the red-headed Egg Boy does not reappear. Antek quietly wonders how long he can last in the killing forest, batch 47 weren’t trained for it. It doesn’t bear thinking about too much. Then again, no need for an Egg Boy to worry about the snakes.

  And in a moment, “You, Antek.” A batch 46 Egg man taps his clip board. “We’re rounding up batch 47. Any survivors?” Peers at Antek. “I mean anyone but you?”

  Antek looks squarely at the man with the clip board. Brief glance toward the fence. “Just me.” He says.

  “Right.” The Egg Man checks his clipboard, makes a mark on the page. Taps it with the end of his pen. “Right, Boy. You are on duty at the fence.”

  The Egg Man watches Antek go.

  When Antek rounds the corner, he finds the next block is quite different, worse. Bomb rockoned buildings, smoke, rats scattering over the road, slipping in and out between the rubble. There is a small group of Sinta crouching in the ruins of their cottage, mostly old folks and children. There are several Sinta houses built on the periphery of the soldiers’ barracks.

  No-one turns toward Antek as he passes. They are counting their dead.

  An ancient wooden rocking horse, peeling paint and one eye missing, is upturned in a pile of bricks. Its one remaining eye is wild and elated.

  Antek looks away and down.

  He notices that his boots are coated in brick dust. Something cold and slick’s sliding in his gut.

  Antek makes his way steadily toward his father’s house. He wants to check in on his mother. This is what Antek tells himself. He gets as far as the gate outside the house. Pauses. The farmhouse wasn’t hit, but it seems changed somehow. Firstly, there’s a thick fence all around it, which is usually only used in the case of house arrests. His father’s house behind the fence seems faded somehow. Smaller.

  Now Antek turns and looks at the Sinta house next door. Zorry’s house. There is a fence around that too. Glinting in the early light. Perhaps she will be there, he thinks.

  The second fence looks sharp and new, set against the peeling paint of the cottage. Antek notes its recently broken gutters, boarded up windows. The fence like a cage that grows as the Sinta cottage sinks behind it, and the fence oddly tilting upward with the rising land. Making the fence seem larger than it really is. Incompetently made (Antek makes a quick and unforgiving appraisal: Misfit hinges. Lolloping gate. A steel trap of a latch that’s sharp and rusting quickly). And the gate is properly stuck. It takes Antek a moment to realise that he really can’t open the gate.

  He goes back to his father’s house.

  Now he’s gripping down on the latch, grabs the gate between his hands, strains against it. Hauls and twists and pulls at it again. Stuck. And then it’s like he’s holding one end of a rope and pulling it through space, not expecting anyone to be holding the other end of it. Antek sits back on his heels. He puts his hand to his chin, feels the soft groove of the scar there. This seems to release something in Antek. He remembers.

  He must have been hiking with his father, as a small boy. Headed out for The Reach together. He looks up toward the mountain’s sheer rock face. Remembered how his father used to hide from him in the rocks overhead, dip behind tufts of scrubby grass. Unravel and let go the boy’s safety rope. What was the lesson? There was always a lesson. “Trust no-one.” Father would say. “No-one, Boy.”

  Antek had fallen several feet down that day, and he can still recall his left chee
k sliding down the rock. The boy had slipped down hard and fast, saved himself just two feet from the mountain base. Tumbled the last part and broke his left arm.

  “Better than your head, Boy.” His father got down safely moments later, stood over him.

  And when he closed his eyes at night, in the weeks and months afterward, Antek’s recurring dream: of the frayed end of the safety rope that was meant to hold him. The side of the mountain slipping away from him fast.

  Antek holds on to the gate to his father’s house. He stops pulling. He leans against the gate. I can’t go home, he thinks. I can’t go forward or back.

  Antek slides his rusted flask up from the ground. He wraps the leather strap of it around his palm, slips away. The morning light dips and shudders. The dawn comes right before the dip, and then the general’s sun rises. A search beam or a giant pumpkin. First light, Antek thinks.

  On an impulse, Antek digs under the fence to the Sinta cottage, slides through the gap. He takes two or three steps toward the Sinta house. Raps on the front door which has been newly mended by somebody. In theory Antek knows he’s entitled, as an Egg Boy, to do this. To be here. But it feels wrong to him.

  Antek waits. Seeing from this close how Zorry’s house decays. The curving wooden arches round the outer doorway and one hundred tiny loops the woodworm made. In patterns seeming orderly, strange. He realises the door is mended with rough hewn wood from a killing forest tree. There’s a painted lizard on it. Orange paint. Like a warning.

  Zettie pokes her small head out the window, points to the side of the house. “Father made Zorry live in the shed.” She says. Intuiting what Antek wanted to know.

  Antek raps abruptly on the shed door. One, two, holds his breath, three. Then he puts his palm against the door. He raps too hard then. Raps violently. Now he is concerned that he’s scared her, caused Zorry to flee under or around the back of the shed. There’s a long silence, but it’s filled with life, that quiet. He knows that Zorry is inside, listening. Trying to figure the knock. Who it is. What it means. She sees the shadow of an Egg Boy in the glass pane of the shed door. Freezes. Egg boy, Antek thinks, looking at his own reflection in the mottled glass. He turns abruptly to leave.

  And now mechanical sounds, at a distance. Metal loose in metal, low thrumming, insect sounds. They’re rebuilding the barracks with machines now. The clean up must be over. Soon it will appear as though nothing happened there.

  Zorry opens the door softly behind Antek. She steps out of the shed. Antek looks down at his arm and sees Zorry’s hand there. Small shock of her touch on his skin. She says his name. And then,

  “Are you the last of your tribe?”

  Antek holds up two fingers. “Two.” He says. “There are two of us.” Zorry nods. “I thought I saw red hair at the edge of the killing forest,” she says. And then, “What will you do?”

  She looks at the side of Antek’s head. Points. Your head wound is healing. Eyes the clotting wound knowingly. And then,

  “What’s that?” Zorry’s eyes widen. She points to a place both above and behind him.

  Antek turns. He looks in the direction that she’s looking.

  THE GREENING

  ZORRY SQUINTS, COVERING HER face. And then curling on the ground, face tucked under her hands.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s the greening,” she says. And then, looking up, “Flood!” It’s the last word Zorry gets out.

  It crashes softly, hits mostly her curved spine first time. The back of her head. One rolling wave-like motion, breaks apart and spreads out like water running out from her on all sides. Hits the trees and then expands, billows and streams back, green spores smoking from it.

  Fire and water, the villagers like to call that greening effect. It’s rare and saved for the worst Sinta witches. There’s not been a greening like this in the OneFolks’ village in years. The rout will come after. Whatever poor soul was hit, they’ll be dragged to the shop, stoned by every OneFolk farmer in the village, right there in Gaddys’ yard.

  Depending on where they stood, every villager had a different perspective. It was as though all the green spores in Bavarnica gathered up in a fury, came down on Zorry.

  A Sinta in the field next door takes his hat off. He takes a sideways look at the baobab on the long horizon. He’s not sure why. Church of the baobab has been banned for a hundred years, but it occurs to the Sinta farmhand: if the baobab were ever to walk again, and they say it has happened before and will happen again, then maybe that great event would be preceded by an occurrence like this one.

  But the baobab does nothing. Dead black swollen limbs silhouetted against the dying sunlight. The air fills up with green spores. The farmhand sighs. He turns back to his work.

  The second wave of greening seems to gather up leaves and debris, its tendrils smoking with spores, which slip away from the centre and spreading out more roots on each side. A stripe of green light slips over the farmhand’s boot, a little sticks to the toe but it keeps on going, loops around and slipping back relentlessly toward Zorry. The Sinta farmhand hears the hoots and howls of relief coming from all sides as the green slip-stream moves over and away from his Sinta helpmates. He scowls, goes on digging. It takes a while to understand that the greening is looping, rounding, heading relentlessly toward Zorry’s front yard.

  Zorry squints and looks out from between her fingers. The greening rolls over eggs and chickens, keeps on coming.

  “Keep still.” Zorry hears her aunt’s voice from the front door of the cottage behind her. “Keep. Still.” She says, loudly. Her clear, authoritative voice reassuring Zorry. “It will just roll over you too.”

  She bustles into the yard toward Zorry. The greening ignores Zorry’s aunt, runs right over Antek’s boots and around his ankles. Antek hears it whipping near his ears, just above and behind him. Nothing seems to stick to him. Zorry’s aunt seems to notice something, change her mind, yelling “Run!” Only it’s too late for that now. It was always too late, Antek thinks. He sees Zettie’s small face, she looks small and lost at the kitchen window. And now the sound of Zorry’s aunt screaming. Choking, getting fainter, the wind is beating at his ears.

  Antek looks down. Zorry is completely engulfed.

  When the greening slips away from Zorry, she is panting, struggling, streaming eyes.

  Now Antek and Zorry’s aunt are staggering back towards the cottage, hauling Zorry, with some difficulty, between them.

  Zorry jolts into life on the kitchen table. Heaves for breath and then seeing her aunt and Antek, she calms down enough to allow her aunt to check her over, look for signs of damage, patches of green. “Where’d it go?” Aunt says impatiently. “That damn greening. Better not gotten your insides …” She blinks. “Zorry, if you breathed that damned thing in, then I’ll kill you myself.”

  And now Aunt is dragging on Zorry’s eyelids gently, checking the whites and the iris, the pupils.

  “Nothing.” Aunt concedes with relief, and no little amazement. “It didn’t stick to you, Child.” Hugging Zorry then, only Zorry’s not speaking. She’s moving her tongue against the back of her teeth, exploring the strange sensation.

  “What is it? Speak, Child!” Zorry’s aunt shakes her then steps back.

  Zorry slowly unfurls her tongue.

  The tongue is shrunken inward, long and pointed like a lizard’s. It’s a brighter green than before and it’s grown to twice the size, so that it has to coil to fit into her mouth. The end has a small fork in it.

  “It hurts.” Zorry says. Feels the end with the tips of her fingers.

  “Oh, the holy baobab wept Zorry.” Aunt curses. “What in the hell did they do to you, Child?”

  “My tongue hurts,” Zorry says again.

  “I’ve heard of this. They say the pain doesn’t last,” says her aunt. Holding back tears.

  There is a long, respectful silence.

  When Father rushes in, cap in hand and breathless, looking from the wounded Egg Boy to his c
hild, Zorry pushes out her tongue to show him. Father’s eyes seem to roll into his skull. He passes out on the newly cleaned kitchen floor.

  “It’s not good.” Zorry’s aunt leans over. “Even your father is afraid of you now. Folks are the cruellest to the things they are most afraid of. I think we should hide you from the village.”

  Zorry blinks back tears. And then, “I know where to go.” Wipes her arm across her eyes. Leaves a stripe of green on her face.

  She slides down from the table.

  Antek joins her at the front door.

  They step carefully over Zorry’s father, lying prostrate on the clean tiles. “Where are you going? Where are you going with that boy, Zorry? He is not our tribe!” Father’s voice is getting louder and shriller, more choked. “Zorry!”

  Zorry’s father props himself up on one elbow. “Answer me! Where you going with that Egg Boy?”

  Zorry turns toward her father briefly. “I’m going out.” She says.

  THE KILLING FOREST

  ANTEK KEEPS LOOKING BACK, toward the fence. He stumbles behind Zorry, catches his foot on a tree root, half falls over Tomax and then, palms first, into a nest of nipping saplings. His skin is itching where he landed. He sits up. Examines Tomax’s face.

  Nothing. Tomax thinks. He doesn’t recognise me.

  There’s a rhythm to the sound inside the tree behind Antek, he listens to soft insect droning. Rolls clumsily out of the nipping saplings. Traces the soft pattern of moss with one finger. Notices the trails left by the insects. One thousand crazy patterns in the bark.

  “This one isn’t a pizen tree.”

  “What?” Zorry scratches her head.

  “It’s not got a pizen. There are critters living in it.”

  “He’s found a way to tell the killing trees from the regular ones.” Jengi says, sloping out from behind a high bush. “He’s been here … What?” Turns toward Zorry, quick checking gesture. “All of half a minute? How did we miss that?”