A Single Stone

by Meg McKinlay

  Papa sits there too long, the Mothers say. She has heard them talking while she lies in the Centre. It will be Wintering soon; he should be climbing across roofs with his hammer and nails, plugging holes, crisscrossing planks of wood one upon the other.

  I’m five, she says to Papa one morning. It is important that he knows. She may not get a doll or a rabbit, but nothing can stop the numbers. She is glad to be five. It is one year closer to seven and seven is what everybody wants. Seven is when you start training in the maze, then the shallow tunnels. Seven is one year away from taking your place in the line, if they choose you.

  They will choose her. Jena knows it as surely as spring follows even the longest of winters. As surely as the numbers that move upwards year upon year.

  She has been good about her wrapping. She has lain still at the Centre without squirming or complaining. And when she is out, she has been keeping her muscles strong, doing all the exercises the Mothers say she must.

  But when she tells Papa, his face is blank. He looks through her, his eyes somewhere else.

  Later, he comes to the Centre. She hears his voice and turns her head but there are beds in the way, and cribs after that. She can’t see anything but she knows it is him. She strains her ears towards the sound but a baby is crying and it is hard to hear. There is something strange in his voice, something Jena has never heard before. It sounds like he is trying to whisper but he is shouting.

  A door flings wide and there are footsteps heavy in the room, stamping up and down the aisles between the beds.

  Arms reach out but they are not for Jena. A baby cries and then another. He is picking something up, a small bundle.

  No. He mustn’t. A new daughter needs to lie still, to learn to be only with herself.

  Then the Mothers are there. Different arms reaching now. Reaching and taking. Soothing and settling.

  She can’t hear his voice any more. But there are glimpses. An arm on his – wiry and thin against his own thick flesh. They are leading him away. But he is all right now – not shouting, not arguing. He is soothed and settled and Jena is glad. Because she knows this feeling. Sometimes something flares inside her – the wrappings feel impossibly tight; an arm wants to throw itself this way, a leg to kick out.

  But the Mothers are always there. They sit by your bedside, stroke your wayward limbs until the restlessness subsides. I know, they croon. I know. And you know they do, because they walked this path before you. So you become settled again. Calm.

  Papa is all right now. The Mothers will take care of him.

  When they unwrap her later, Jena goes to the baby’s crib. She is sleeping again, so quiet, so still.

  Seren.

  The name comes to her like a secret.

  But when she tells Papa at dinner, he shakes his head. Later, he says. After.

  After what?

  Papa does not reply. He turns slowly and looks out towards the mountain. He ladles soup from the pot and says, Eat, Jena. You will need your strength.

  NINE

  “Min?”

  Jena had risen early, unable to sleep. She found herself eager to deliver the good news, to see the look on the younger girl’s face when she heard she was joining the line.

  But as early as Jena had been, Min was earlier. Jena smiled when Min’s mama said she would find her here.

  She peered into the slit in the mountain’s side. It was ages since she had visited this place they called the Source. The passage before her was dark, but she had tunnelled it hundreds of times before and knew every twist and turn. Though it had once extended deep into the mountain, a rockfall had blocked the path and it now formed a closed loop. Whether you went left or right, you would end up back at this point. It was safe but challenging to navigate and was often used in training.

  There was a faint scrabbling sound to the left. Jena peered down the tunnel. A finger appeared around the bend, a hand following. A shoulder edged sideways, rotating itself through and out. A slight frame, a tousled head.

  “Min?” Jena called. “It’s Jena. I …”

  The head ducked back around the bend in the rock. And now there was a noise to Jena’s right. She turned and saw Min emerging from the other end of the tunnel.

  “Oh,” Jena said. “I thought …” She gestured to her left. “Who else is here?” There must be another girl training, perhaps one who wasn’t quite old enough for the Source. “It’s all right,” she called. “You’re not in trouble.”

  But the head stayed lowered and the figure did not move. Jena turned back to Min. “Who is it?” she repeated. “Tell her she can come out. I won’t …”

  Min’s face was white. She scrambled to where Jena sat, her eyes wide. “I didn’t know,” she said. “He must have followed me.” She leaned past Jena, her strained voice echoing across the stone. “Come out of there!”

  Jena felt suddenly as if all the warmth had drained from her body. He?

  The shape came slowly towards them, fearful eyes flicking up and down. It was one of Min’s brothers, a friend of Luka’s. Jena had seen them skylarking about in the Square. He was an odd-looking boy – slim and pale in a way that made him seem almost ghostly.

  But it didn’t matter which boy it was. Only that it was a boy – inside the mountain, where no boy, no man, must ever go.

  “You can’t be here, Thom!” Min’s voice was shaking. “I’m so sorry, Jena. I–”

  “It’s not her fault!” the boy said quickly. “She didn’t know.”

  Panic flooded Jena. “Get out!” It took everything in her not to crawl down and haul him roughly from the tunnel.

  When he was out, perched before her on the ledge below the opening, she turned on him. “You can’t go in there! What were you thinking?” A knot snarled in her chest, fear and anger coursing through her in equal measure.

  “I didn’t go far,” he protested. “I just went in for a second. I was coming straight out again.”

  Jena fought to keep her voice level. “It doesn’t matter. You know that.”

  “I’m sorry. I just …” Thom hesitated. “Min was talking about it last night. I wanted to see what it felt like.”

  “I wasn’t bragging,” Min said. “It was because of Mama. She never got to tunnel. I just … I wanted her to know.”

  “Please,” Thom urged. “Don’t tell anyone. I won’t do it again.”

  A moment hung in the air between them, deciding which way it would turn. After a long minute, Jena took a deep breath. “Go. And don’t come back here.”

  Thom was over the ledge almost before she finished speaking. He scrambled down, a shower of grit and small stones accompanying his rapid descent. She winced as he half-climbed, half-fell to the ground below but he did not seem hurt. A boy did not break the way a girl might. There was something surer about their bodies, less brittle about their bones.

  Jena waited until his retreating shape had disappeared into the trees before turning to Min. Don’t tell anyone, Thom had said. And they both knew who he meant.

  She considered. The fault was Thom’s alone but Jena knew only too well how the transgressions of one might fall upon another.

  “The Mothers don’t have to know,” she said finally. “But it can’t happen again.”

  “It won’t,” Min said quickly. “Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me. If judgement comes, it will be from the mountain.” She leaned back against the rock, her heart pounding: a boy inside the rock, and here of all places. It went against everything they had been taught, everything they knew.

  It was men who had dug into the mountain, angering the earth. Men who had brought about Rockfall and the wall of water that had followed to destroy their village, their world. Only a handful had survived – those who had been in the shelter of the valley, away from the water and clear of the mountain.

  All those men saw was that the mountain had come down. Where their friends had been working was a chaos of twisted stone – no sign of life, no hope of it. But there w
as more to come, for when they tried to leave the valley, they found themselves trapped.

  In the days that followed, they hauled themselves through fissures in the tumbled rock, only to find the way sealed at every turn. They climbed the mountain, casting ropes across its dark face like ragged stitches. But the slopes were treacherous, the fingers of stone curving into impossible overhangs that thwarted every attempt. And all the while, the mountain trembled and shook, as though it were trying to throw them off. The earth growled beneath them with the guttural sounds of a beast defending its territory, or its life.

  About a week had passed when two men standing at the base of this very spot, ropes slack at their sides in despair, heard a different kind of sound. It was a sort of scrabbling, like a scuttler might make, only purposeful somehow as if there was a will behind it. As if something was in there, trying to get out.

  At first, their hearts leaped. Perhaps those who had been working in the mountain that day were not lost after all?

  There was someone alive – that much was true. But it was not men whose eyes locked on theirs from an impossible seam in the rock. Not men who pulled themselves clear – dirt-smeared, bleeding.

  “I always think about them when I’m here,” Min said softly. “The Seven, I mean.”

  It was as though she were reading Jena’s thoughts.

  It was from here that the first tunnellers had emerged – though they were not tunnelling back then but simply surviving.

  Seven women had crawled clear, nose to toe. One man’s wife. Another’s sister, neighbour.

  There was reunion, tears. And then there was grief.

  For everything was gone, the women said. Everything and everyone. The earth had opened up and swallowed the village, splintering and tumbling their homes into its gaping maw. And then a wall of water had risen like a fist from the flat surface of the ocean and poured across the land, drowning everything that remained.

  These women had been spared only because they were on the higher ground of the Pass. They were about to make their way through into the valley when the water came, surging up and over the lip of the mountain. The sea roared in their ears as the stone walls began to crack and sway around them, as wall became roof and crashed upon them, sealing them inside.

  They hauled themselves through the jagged dark as the mountain rumbled, sending tremors through the rock that blocked each passage behind them. Until finally they were here, seven women emerging from the stone as if it had opened up to let them through.

  The mountain could hardly have sent them a clearer message. Men had dug into the mountain and women had crawled clear. Those first Seven had become the Mothers of them all.

  Min turned to Jena. “It’s all right, isn’t it … that I told Mama about being inside? She always wanted to tunnel.” She hesitated. “She tried for eight years.”

  Jena stared at Min in disbelief. It wasn’t odd that her mama had kept trying. Jena had seen girls like this. Determined girls. Desperate girls. Girls who wrapped themselves tighter and tighter, who said no to a second helping – or a first – then returned to run the maze for a third year, a fourth. But eight?

  “I just wanted to tell her about it,” Min went on. “I never thought Thom would–”

  “It’s all right.” Jena met Min’s eyes. “You did well yesterday.”

  “Thank you.”

  Jena was glad to hear no false modesty in the girl’s voice. No Really? Do you think so? No reaching for more praise.

  “I was a bit scared at first.” Min hesitated. “No, not scared. It’s just … it’s so different. Outside feels so close here, but where we were yesterday … it’s like you could almost forget the world, like the rock is all there is.”

  Jena felt a rush of affection for the girl. What she said was so … right. Or at least it was exactly how Jena had felt after her first harvest. And felt to this day, more strongly than ever.

  “Did you need me for something?” Min asked. “Did I miss something yesterday? Loren showed me how to check the gear. I thought I did everything, but …”

  “I’m sure it’s fine. You can show me tomorrow.”

  Jena watched as understanding bloomed across Min’s face. “Tomorrow?”

  “You’d better grow your hair a bit. It makes it easier to braid.”

  “Oh.” Min’s shoulders sagged with relief. “Mama will be so happy. It’s been hard.”

  How could it be otherwise? Although a daughter earned you extra food and mica, it could hardly be enough to keep five growing boys. But a daughter in the line? That might come close, if you were careful.

  If the rock allowed it.

  “Will your mama not try for another daughter?”

  Something passed across Min’s face. “It’s too dangerous. She’s broken.”

  Broken. There was something brittle about the word and Jena could not make her lips form a reply. All she could see was a body worn thin by the years, splintering, shattered.

  She turned and put a hand on Min’s arm. As she brushed the rock, there was a crunching sound, the sudden feeling of something sharp against her side.

  She thrust a hand into her pocket. It was the bottle Mama Dietz had given her; she had forgotten to return it when she took the milk. When she withdrew her hand it held jagged shards of glass. And there was that smell again – faint but distinct. The cloying sweetness that had hung in the hallway yesterday, and on her mama’s breath all those years ago.

  Something twisted inside her. She was glad of the rock at her back, calm and still.

  Min wrinkled her nose. “What is that?”

  Jena forced a note of lightness into her voice. “Just a tonic Mama Dietz had.”

  “For the birthing? I think my mama had that.”

  A birthing tonic? Jena supposed it must be. Still, there was something odd about what Min had said. One daughter. A mama who had broken.

  It came to her suddenly. “How do you know?”

  “What do you mean?” Min looked puzzled.

  “You said your mama had it for a birthing … but I thought you were the youngest?”

  “Oh. No, it wasn’t me. It was when Mama …” Min’s voice faltered. “It was a few years ago. She and Papa thought to try for another daughter, like you said. But something went wrong. The baby stopped moving inside her. At first Mama said it was probably sleeping but then it kept on until Papa said no baby slept that long – not inside nor outside of a mama – and she must go and see the Mothers. They put their hands on her and then that funny thing they listen with. And they said it had died.” Tears welled in the corner of her eyes. “They gave Mama something to make the pains start so she could birth it. I saw them bring it out later, wrapped in a blanket.”

  “A daughter?”

  “They wouldn’t say. They said it wasn’t anything yet, that we shouldn’t think on it. But sometimes when I close my eyes I can see its face – so perfect and small.” Min lowered her voice to a whisper. “It wasn’t nothing. But anyway, it was dead. And all I could think about was how tiny it was, and how good it would have been to have a sister like that. And then Mama was so sick, after. The Mothers said she was badly broken and must never try again.”

  “I’m so sorry.” Their losses were not the same but Jena knew what it was like – to have that precious bundle in a blanket, to see it slip beyond your reach.

  She blinked hard. She would not let her thoughts trip back there again.

  “I …” she began, then stopped. Should go and see Berta, she meant to say. Even without the bottle to return, there was gear to be checked and maps to be charted. But here was that liquid, sticky on her fingers. And Min’s words ringing in her ears.

  Something to make the pains start.

  The morning seemed to slow and still. The birdsong from the forest was suddenly distant, the drumming of her heart impossibly loud. This bottle, that smell, the one which ten years ago had coloured Mama’s final breaths.

  A tonic. Strength for the birthing. The Mothers
’ excitement, hours before the pains had started. A six-moon baby. So early, too early. Unless it lived, and then …

  Thanks be.

  The rock has allowed it.

  The thought twisted in her mind. No. It couldn’t be.

  A birthing tonic because they knew a birthing was coming.

  Because they were making it come?

  TEN

  Under the thick canopy of forest, the clearing was deep in shadow. Although trees had been felled here, those which ringed the space had grown out across it, seeming to reach for each other.

  Jena entered softly, her feet nimble across the leaf-strewn ground. She had not meant to come to this place, had scarcely known she was doing so until she found herself skirting its edges.

  There had been a point at which she veered from the path, telling Min to go on ahead of her to the Stores. Now Min was in the line, she must go and see Berta and claim her allocation. Under normal circumstances, Jena would have been eager to accompany her. Most in the village would never be permitted to visit the mica room and it was a memorable occasion when a new tunneller did so. Unless she went on to lead the line, it would happen only once; for Jena, there was something special about standing beside a girl, watching her take it all in. But right now she could not imagine being in the same room with Berta. She could not look at her and think the things she was thinking.

  She cast her eyes to the ground. To the rough stones dotted at regular intervals, marking out each small mound, one from the other. There was no stone for Mama though – not any more. Would she even be able to find her after all these years?

  People had been so angry back then. Angry enough to steal a stone from a grave. Angry enough to come to the Centre, demanding that the Mothers unwrap Jena, send her to the fields where she could do no harm.

  She’s her papa’s daughter. Such a girl cannot possibly be fit for the line!

  The words rang in Jena’s mind, as shrill and clear as they had been all those years ago. It felt like she was unravelling. Things she had thought long forgotten were all of a sudden right there, bright fibres of memory unspooling. And she had seen how this worked, how it began with one frayed corner, a single loose thread. It seemed harmless at first, because it was just this one small strand, so you tugged it a little and before long you were pulling and pulling, unstitching the very fabric of things.