Stone Seeds

by Ely, Jo;

  “I will not have that word in this house.” Mamma Ezray intones daily. But the word is always waiting for them, outside, the way Zettie sees it. It’s the shadow beside the front door, it crosses the mat and zigzags the front porch. Zettie has also noticed that the OneFolk childur use it freely. The word seems to Zettie to relate to the fact that she is not allowed inside the protection of the Furdy now. Not even when the thunder seems to roll right underneath her, shake the bushes. The word has great power, she knows it keeps the Furdy gate closed.

  Zettie watches the gate. Feels the first rumbles of thunder. And then a cracking sound, like the earth splits behind her. Sound of heavy rainfall, her own heartbeat in her ears.

  The OneFolk childur huddle underneath the sheltered area, in the inner section of the Furdy which butts against the schoolhouse. The childur watch Zettie. They have been told not to open the gate and it does not occur to any of them to break the most important school rule. Not even for a small girl in a lightning strike. After all … She’s a slave. Isn’t she?

  Zettie squats on her heels outside the mesh cage of the Furdy, hugging on to its dripping sides with her small, gently pudgy infant arms when the lightning cracks and cracks again behind her. She shivers so much that her vision blurs a little, rain beats against the small curve of her back.

  The word has not yet filtered under Zettie’s skin, but she feels it close by. And in the way that even a small child can understand the thing, Zettie has understood this. Even when she’s playing alone outside, she senses the word is there playing close by also. Like something dangerous and obscene in the shadow. When the word becomes quite silent, then it’s worse. That’s when Zettie is most afraid that in an absentminded moment she has somehow allowed the word to slip inside her. She imagines that it would enter in the same way that the poisonous plants in the killing forest, the ones that Mamma Ezray talks about over supper, slow plants that seem only to nip your ankles just a little, but their vines thicken and grow in your bloodstream. Trace their way, slow, to your heart.

  Other days Zettie imagines that the word would get into her when she breathes, and so be more like the smoke from Gaddys’ furnace, which Mamma Ezray informs Zettie is pure pizen, so don’t ever breath in, if you happen to be passing it when Jengi’s cooking back there. Zettie holds her breath when she thinks about the furnace, without quite realising that she does so. One thing the child knows for sure, the word must never be allowed in, the way it has gotten into some of the older Sinta children already. Like they’ve weights in their limbs, and small weights running over their bodies, from ear tips down to elbows, spine, knees, feet.

  The child wiggles her fingers and toes each morning, checks the palms of her hands, and even her tiny right thumb before she pops it into her mouth. Checks it’s free of the word. Understands without being told that the word might seem innocent enough in your mouth, but once there it might kill, maim, or worse. Just like any pizen. For herself, she has only ever said the word once. She had asked the question of Mamma Ezray, ‘What’s a slave?’ But Mamma Ezray hadn’t found a way to answer. Simply turned and gazed at her child.

  The OneFolk childur huddle together in the sheltered area inside the Furdy. Watch Zettie shiver outside the lightning box. The childur’s eyes are as wide Zettie’s, watching her outside the Furdy. Clinging on through the storm. “Slave.” Zettie hears, and she turns her head toward the word. “Don’t let It in,” she hears the small OneFolk boy say. Zettie, meeting the small boy’s eye, believes she knows just what he means. She thinks it’s nice that the boy understands too. What it is. That it is dangerous.

  The Furdy looks invisible from the inside, but from the outside, where Zettie sits, seems like a black box. All corners and angles. Small. She can see inside only when she presses her small face against the sides or the roof.

  Zettie feels sorry for the childur playing inside when the wind is up and nature moves around her, bugs fly past. And yet the children in the black box fascinate the infant, draw her to the box every morning when Mamma Ezray thinks she’s playing with the chickens in the yard.

  When the rain has slowed to a stop, Zettie watches a lizard crawling up the inside of the mesh sides of the Furdy, there’s one on the outside of the box too. Both lizards pause a moment, seem to eye each other sideways. And then, blink, the smaller lizard vanishes.

  Now Zettie notices tiny water droplets hanging through the surface of the lightning cage. Zettie is thirsty and she puts her lips against the mesh, tasting the water. Tastes of metal, now, and tin. Something else you can’t describe, the something that all things appear to taste of lately. The lizard on the inside of the mesh watches Zettie curiously as she drinks, and so do the OneFolk childur.

  Zettie doesn’t see the smaller lizard has come back until it scatters from a large drop of water, falling from a palm leaf just to her left. She follows its trail, finds it concealed under a fallen palm leaf. The tiny creature has scootered into the gentle rot near the stem, which now leans against Zettie’s small left foot. She looks at the lizard for a while, doesn’t move. Just once she wiggles her toes, to gauge the lizard’s reaction. Nothing. The little lizard tilting its small head up first left and then, swivelling a little, tips it right. As though it watches her too, fearless. Zettie blinks at it, smiles.

  The last scattering of rain makes a map of lines down the leaves around Zettie’s face, drips out of the ringlets in her hennaed hair. Some trickles down over her forehead. She wipes the clean sleeve of her dress across her eyes. And now Zettie is tilting her small round face up first left and then right, she’s mimicking the lizard. And then pushing back her straggle of rust coloured hair to see the small critter better. Carefully lifts the leaf stem and one corner of the dark waxen leaf, peers underneath it.

  All Sinta have eyes that change colour, but Zettie’s mostly stay the same, she reckons. When Zettie looked into the cracked hallway mirror this morning, before breakfast, her eyes were brown with a small patch of sky-blue. From the small lizard’s eye-view, Zettie’s huge eyes appearing in the gap, seem to grow. Two wide, amazed, tawny-coloured eyes with one blue patch in the left eye. Never blinking, or never seeming to blink.

  The lizard blinks first. Shifts slightly, whips its small tale. It’s a tiny gesture that only a child as observant as Zettie would have noticed. And then its throat looping in and out like a small red flag about the size of a copper coin, or a large coffee bean. She waits until the small throat-flag has stopped flashing.

  “Is you a pizen lickle lickle?” Soft clucking sounds, nonsense words and rhythmic, the child has learned to make certain noises when creeping up on small creatures. Senses how to sooth their minds. Now she gently reaches her small left hand out. Strokes one tiny index finger along the underside of the lizard’s chin. The tiny reptile eyes her. Now she remembers its teeth. Pulls back her hand and holds it close to her shirt.

  “You oughta scurry.” She gently admonishes the lizard now. And then, “Is you a pizen or ain’tcha?” She asks it, soft, small, reasonable voice. The reptile makes no reply. Swivelling its eyes in her direction. Eyes her beadily for a long time.

  Something happens. It’s as though Zettie feels her hunger only then, all of it, at once, hunger screwed to the sticking point when it’s pain and before it’s quite starvation. Her small hand shoots out. Catches the tiny lizard expertly, wriggle, wriggle, squeeze, and then she squeezes harder. Before she’s had time to think about it, she’s stuffed the small lizard into her mouth, bit down hard, spat out its head, one more wriggle, crunch, crunch, the child kills the creature quick and mercifully, the way her sister Zorry taught her. And then she chews it slow. Careful, she thinks. Feeling small claws on her tongue, spitting them.

  It tastes not unlike dried meat. Although not quite so salty, she thinks. Once she breaks through its small tough hide. A bit like chewing down hard on a leather shoe, and with just a small drop of moisture, that’s the guts, which Zettie also spits, and she gags then forces herself to swallow the re
st of the lizard.

  She leaves the tail in her cheek, feels it alongside her teeth, briefly, before she opens her mouth, lets it drop into her hand. She examines her teeth with her tongue. Zettie herself can’t quite comprehend what just happened, as though the thing happened to her instead of because of her, as though she had played no part in it.

  “Zettie ate a whole lizard from head to tail root.” A small freckled boy pulls a face.

  “Aye. I saw that. Good one, Zettie. How was that?” Asks a droll little girl with one long black plait, trying to climb the inside of the lightning box and failing. Squashes her nose against the mesh. The children are pretty impressed.

  Zettie is still feeling her teeth with her tongue, doesn’t speak and in a bit the curious girl flicks her black plait over her shoulder, turns away. Not bad at all, Zettie is thinking. “Not nearly as bad as you might think,” she tells the girl, mimicking the words of her older sister Zorry. The words she’s so fond of saying whenever trying to persuade her small sister Zettie to eat some unspeakable food item which the family have been allocated. One second, two, and Zettie’s hunger is gone.

  “You can’t say if things are pizen right away.” The girl with the long black plait advises her.

  “I know that.” Zettie says. Pushing out her chin slightly. That much Zettie’s Mamma Ezray has already taught her. Zettie waits. “Nothing.” She says to the girl, who smiles shyly. And in a bit Zettie pads around, looking under the leaves for another one.

  “Oh, that’s hunger,” says a voice that seems to come from above and behind the lightning cage, and both at the same time. Big voice, Zettie thinks. There’s a deep rumbling chuckle. Zettie identifies an older edge farm boy whom she thinks she’s seen before. She looks down at his large, boney feet and then up at his protruding collar bone which, apart from his face and hair, are the only parts of the boy which are not covered by his shiny black edge farm uniform. He looks as though he works the mines from the state of his bare feet and neck and the sides of his hands which are all dust encrusted. She notices the patched up wound one side of his head and the homemade sling on his left arm. When he slides, one armed, down from the top of the lightning cage, Zettie looks briefly panicked.

  Looking down through the mesh, Tomax had seen the whole thing. The trail, the hunt, the capture. Seen Zettie eating the forbidden creature.

  “You were pretty nifty, catching that critter.” He says.

  For the first time it occurs to Zettie to feel proud of her action. The OneFolk childur had mostly looked grossed out, apart from the girl with the long black plait, who was kind.

  “Don’t worry,” he says, getting caught briefly on a corner edge of the cage by the batwing sleeve of his edge farm uniform, and then sitting himself down cross-legged beside Zettie. Getting comfortable. Looking at her expectantly then, as though he waits for her to continue the conversation.

  Zettie pulls out the lizard tail to show him. Neither speak at first. And then, “Generally ‘taint advisable to eat a lizard, Sinta, but I guess you know what you’re doing.”

  He adds, “Hope you don’t get a pizen in your stomick. Eating escapees from the killing forest ain’t a great plan, little Sinta. Leastways cook it first next time, eh?”

  Zettie doesn’t respond. She feels strangely offended. The boy seems to understand this and he’s quiet for a while. And in a bit, Zettie says, “My name ain’t Sinta, and I ain’t ‘little’ neither, Edge Farm.” She feels confident enough in him that it feels safe to be cross.

  That low, rumbling chuckle again. “Well my name ain’t Edge Farm, Sinta.” Grins. Puts out his hand to shake hers. “I’m Tomax,” he says, and Zettie notices that he puffs himself up just a little, when he says his own name. And then thumbing toward his chest, as though to underline himself in her mind. She decides right away that she likes him.

  Thunder growls behind Tomax, then a lightning crack and the rain stops. Zettie puts the two things together in her mind, the thunder and Tomax. She notices that he doesn’t seem to be afraid of lightning. “What’s your name, Sinta?”

  Little Zettie grins shyly. Doesn’t speak now. She has so far always clung to the Furdy when the lightning cracks. She decides now that she will never do so again, but just sit calm and cross legged in the shrubs, the way that the boy does.

  Zettie holds out the lizard tail toward him now and lets him take it from her. Tomax examines it, as though with admiration, hands it back. “If you don’t get a pizen then reckon you ought to tell your folks about that critter. Oughta spread the word. I mean … There are plenty of them critters, see ‘em everywhere.”

  And then, “I ain’t never gotten a pizen,” Zettie says proudly. “I can digestify most about anything I reckon.” Zettie thinks she feels something small moving beneath her feet. Something burrowing. She peers down at the shrub. It seems to shake a little.

  “You’ll be alright then,” Tomax says.

  “Yes.” She says. “I will.” Looking up. And then seems to remember something. “I’m Zettie.” She says. Now Zettie pops the lizard tail into her apron pocket. Rubs her tummy. “My stomick feels just fine.” Zettie stretches out the last two words, soft upturn at the end, like a rhyme, like a song, like a question. She has learned to speak musically, like all of Mamma Ezray’s bedtime stories. Giggles.

  “My Mamma Ezray is teaching me to talk like music.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Yep. Tiz.”

  “Ah well, there’s still time to get a pizen, Zettie.” Tomax says, concern in his voice. “Be careful not to get a pizen. For myself, I don’t eat nothing what scuttles.” He looks at her, to check her understanding. “It’s by way of a personal rule.”

  “What do you eat then?” Zettie looks at Tomax with interest.

  “Crows eggs. Other scavenging birds. Vulture’s eggs taste sour and rotten, even when they ain’t. I don’t eat those unless I’m clean ‘bout starving.”

  “Aren’t you afraid of the crows …”

  “Yep. I am kindly afraid of the egg’s mamma, Zettie. But not so afraid of a crow so much as I am afraid of starving to death.” Grins again.

  Zettie thinks for a moment. “You is a good climber then?”

  “Yep. I suppose.”

  Zettie thinks about the taloned feet of the giant crows, the vultures, and the other scurvy, hybrid scavenging birds that come after the general’s drones hit. They have been known to roof on the busted up top of the school house, in the peaceful periods when there are no bombs or drones, no riots and smoking piles of human bodies for them to feast on. In the peaceful times between the rain dances, the crows watch the OneFolk children inside the Furdy.

  Zettie tells Tomax about the day when she only just got away in time and was saved by the school security manager, thrusting out a hand, gripping her collar and pushing her into the shed which held the spare generator. This story seems to surprise Tomax. Especially when Zettie then goes on to tell him that the school security manager had used his club on the birds, which is technically speaking illegal, as the birds are government property. Now that she has his full attention, she tells Tomax how the school security manager had said, “You hold my life in your hands now, Child, so what’s it to be?”

  “And what did you say to that, Zettie?”

  “Mmmm. Can’t remember.” Zettie pops her thumb in her mouth. She is remembering that there was a cobweb in the corner of the cupboard that the school security manager had shoved her into. That she’d been as scared of the spider she couldn’t see as much as she’d been ‘fraid of the cawing and scrapping birds outside.

  Zettie has not told anyone but Tomax about all this. Not even Zorry knows, but there is something about the boy that makes you want to confide. She smiles up at Tomax.

  Now her small face darkens. She is thinking about the birds’ hard curved toes. The sharp tipping end of their beaks. Their squawking, flapping, scrapping. She had thought, that day, that she glimpsed rows of small teeth in their beaks. She decides to ask T
omax about this, seeing as he is a good listener, seems to know some useful things.

  “Birds don’t have teeth. Do they?” She asks Tomax. Shudders. And then, “Reckon the birds might eat me iffen I tried to get eggs like you do.”

  Tomax looks into the child’s wide, amazed eyes. He thinks quickly. “Yes. Second thoughts, Zettie, you stick to lizards. Leave them crow eggs ‘til you’ve growed a bit. Then I’ll teach you to catch ‘em.” Grins again.

  Zettie decides right away that Tomax is good. Or rather, she has decided that she really likes him, which amounts to about the same thing in the small girl’s mind. She breathes out. Maybe she won’t dream about the crows again tonight, or wake up in a sweat the way she has every night since that close shave.

  Zettie thinks she hears a rustling underneath her again, as though something in the shrub still insists on being noticed. She gets up slowly from her crouched position, pads around, looking. The child has learned to move without making the bushes come alive and the ground crackle with the sound of her. “Nothing.” She says. She can’t see what’s making the sound. Tomax shrugs, shows her his palms. He doesn’t know either. He seems to be getting up to go, only Zettie isn’t done conversing with him.

  “Watch this.” Zettie says. Trying to hold his attention for a little longer.

  “Okay.”

  Zettie makes it a point of honour now, in front of Tomax, to climb the side of the Furdy without making the bushes beside it tremble. Her face is pressed so close to the mesh that the changing light makes patterns running down her, making her seem strange, even a little alarming to the children inside. Her shadow appears on the dusty floor of the playground underneath the Furdy.