by Ely, Jo;
Tomax is sorry right away. “I was teasing, I’m … The OneFolks’ teacher is half-crazed, Zettie. You can’t …”
Zettie’s sister Zorry is coming up behind them. When Zettie sees Zorry she stops. Now she smirks at Tomax as if to say, ‘You’re in trouble now, Edge Boy.’ Tomax puts his hands up, mock surrender. Zettie has stopped crying just as suddenly as she started. She’s looking up expectantly at Zorry. Wipes her face. It takes her a moment to realise how much trouble she’s in.
“What the hell are you doing here, Zettie? And who in the damned unholy is he?” Zorry says, indicating Tomax with an angry flourish. Zettie ignores the question. She has noticed that her sister Zorry’s hand is bandaged and that she holds it to her chest defensively, as though she’s in pain. There is a little blood at the edge of the home made bandage. The child frowns.
Now Zorry’s voice becomes harder. The child’s not even listening to me, she thinks. This seems worse. “Tribes ain’t to s’posed to mix,” Zorry addresses this to Tomax. “Aren’t you on a list already? Are you trying to get this little child in trouble, Edge Farm?”
“Sorry.” Tomax says. Meaning it. “I didn’t think.”
Zorry relents a little. “Tribes don’t mix,” she says again, and this time she means it as a warning.
“Got it.” Tomax says wryly. Meets Zorry’s eye. Now Zorry tries not to notice Tomax’s white toothed grin, his warm irisless eyes or the way that his black eyelashes curl up at the corners. Blinks. Zorry turns away, scooping up Zettie and in one sinuous motion plopping her small sister on to her shoulders. Zettie looks unsurprised, holds on tightly, expertly. Smiling weakly at Tomax, “Goodbye.”
Tomax nods. Doesn’t speak.
Zettie is still watching Tomax as they’re turning the corner of the schoolhouse. At the last moment, before they pass out of sight, Tomax gives Zettie a wave. She waves back happily.
“Ignore that edge farm boy.” Zorry reproaches. “And stop talking to the OneFolk childur whilst you’re at it, Holy Baobab Zettie, kindly stop conversing with folks outside your own tribe.”
Zettie pulls her thumb out long enough to ask the question. “Why?”
“Why? Oh, I give up on you. Because the general said so, and because it can only end in trouble, Zettie. Even for a littl’un like you, and you wouldn’t want Mamma to be punished for it, would you? Mamma or me?”
“No.” The child furrows her brow. Checks her nose is still there with the wet end of her thumb.
“No. I wouldn’t.”
“Well then.”
Zettie watches the hedgerows bobbing past her. The fences and wires and the bullet riddled farm buildings. It’s as though the child sees the scene for the first time in her life. Things blur and change. Now she hears voices behind her. Something that sounds to her like singing.
And now, taking a hold of Zettie firmly, Zorry shifts her. “Sit up straight, Child, you are a weight on my shoulders.”
“Sorry.” Says Zettie absent-mindly. Doesn’t move.
It is only minutes before the whistle will go for curfew and Bavarnica’s childur are coming out of their schools and workplaces. Zettie turns, watches them trickle out from the buildings around her.
The children are all headed most about the same way, as far as Zettie can see. Toward the egg farms and the Sinta cabbage patch-sized allotments, the copses and cottages at the edge of the fence and the steel trap farms beside them. Some toward the OneFolk houses in the heart of the village.
“Stop turning to look at the childur, Zettie. You’re plain hurting me now.”
Zettie feels bad. She’s already wondering if Zorry’s bandaged hand is her fault. On account of the way she’s been making friends all over. Now she tries to only face forwards on Zorry’s shoulders, but she’s too curious, can’t. She keeps shifting to look. Zorry doesn’t set her down, she wants to get home fast to deliver Zettie. Zorry has somewhere else to be after the whistle goes. Some place which occupies her mind fully just now.
The Egg Boys from their training grounds, Zettie thinks, barefooted Sinta from the OneFolks’ kitchens, the dirt encrusted edge farm childur who work the gem mines, let out now with the OneFolk schoolchildren, all to beat the curfew. Zettie takes a careful note of their different uniforms, she looks down at her own dress. It’s mossy and covered in grass streaks and dust from her playing. Now she thinks she hears her name being called, “Zzz …” Zettie turns toward the sound. Can’t see where it came from.
Zettie is an eye-catching child, and the childur behind her get a closer look at small Zettie whenever she turns. She certainly has an appealing but unusual appearance. Expansive, wild ringlets of hennaed hair, button nose and huge amazed eyes. A skin so luminous she could be any tribe in Bavarnica or none.
Those who’ve worked a rota or two at the general’s house say Zettie looks like the general’s wife. A small Sinta girl comes close enough to note Zettie’s quite mismatched eyes, tawny coloured with a hint of yellow-green when you look closer, on the left side, and so dark that the right eye seems almost irisless. But then there’s the blue patch, the small girl thinks, in the upper right hand corner of it. It’s like the break in Autumn trees, like a patch of sky. Zettie and the small Sinta girl grin sheepishly at each other.
Zettie is near to sleep now, with the lolloping and hypnotic rhythm of Zorry’s striding. She’s hunched over Zorry’s head and legs tipping slightly over the back of Zorry’s shoulders, so that Zorry has to reach out her right hand to catch her when sleep finally takes her. Supports the child from behind now, with both hands. Zettie is washing in and out of sleep, she is close to dreaming.
Even though Zorry says the tribes don’t mix, Zettie can feel the mixing, rhythm and notes of the childur’s movements behind her, ghostly winks and soft evasions, nudges and averted gazes, squabbles and scraps, scratching heads and grinning. Zettie can feel the dance, hear the music. Smiling softly in her near-sleep now. Blink and blink. Now Zorry feels the child’s head droop, loll against the top of her head. Zettie’s sleep-dribble dampens Zorry’s left ear.
Zorry slips Zettie off her shoulders and secures her in the knotted loop of her shawl. Now Zettie’s small dark head dips and slides against her older sister’s shoulder. Zorry supports the child’s head with her bandaged left hand.
“You hungry Zettie?” Zorry asks when Zettie wakes a little. There’s a small indent in the side of Zettie’s face from Zorry’s apron strap. Zorry laughs at her.
“You got stripes.”
“Nah … umm,” Zettie says. Still too sleepy to make real words. And then, “No I haven’t.” Quite indignant. She looks down at the hand gripping her under her right arm now. Zettie can’t take her eyes off her sister’s bandage. Zorry’s hurt hand still troubles the infant. She stares down at the hand.
“Make it all better,” she says.
“Ah, that’s nice. Yes, Mamma Ezray will have a nice potion for my hand, won’t she?”
“Yes,” Zettie says, pleased at the thought. And then, small worried frown, “Do it hurt some?”
Zorry gazes down at Zettie’s small upturned face. “No, not at all.” Zorry lies and Zettie notices Zorry wince when she moves the shawl to readjust Zettie’s position.
Zorry thinks of something.
“How come you ain’t never hungry when I ask you, Zettie?”
Zettie reaches down and pulls a lizard tail out of her apron pocket, thrusts it at Zorry’s face to show her.
“Zettie!” her sister is shocked. Reprimands the child now. “You ate a lizard again? You can’t eat lizards!”
“Yes, I can. I did it.” Zettie answers accurately rather than diplomatically.
The children in the line behind Zettie chuckle at this exchange and Zettie turns back to look behind her again. Now Zettie’s grinning properly.
“Zettie can eat lizards,” an older Sinta girl says, somewhat admiring, encouraging the child to act out a little more, as far as Zorry’s concerned. Zorry sighs, rolls her eyes. Zettie is known
for being a small entertainer amongst the Sinta families who pass her yard on their way to work.
Zettie grins and holds up the lizard’s tail again, to show the childur behind.
And then leaning low over her sister Zorry’s shoulder, dropping the tail in the dust. She counts three of Zorry’s dust footprints away from the lizard tail before somebody leans over to pluck it up. It’s one of the older Sinta girls, raises her hand briefly in thanks, and then examines the lizard tail thoughtfully. Pops it into her own apron pocket, to show mother at home. “I’ve seen them lizards before,” she catches up to Zorry to tell her. “They’s new and they is multiplying. Don’t nobody know how they got through the killing fence but they’re breeding faster than anything else. Can’t think why the lab technicians would’ve bothered making a thing like that for the killing forest, they’re not dangerous at all, my mother says.” And then turning toward Zettie, “Does you have a pizen in your tummy, Zettie? Tummy ache?”
The child shakes her head and rubs her tummy happily, grins.
“She don’t never get a pizen, Zorry confirms wryly. I can’t digest half the things Zettie lives on.”
The Sinta girl examines Zettie’s face with interest. “No pizen. You’re sure?”
When they’re within sight of their small mossy cottage, just behind the copse of trees, they’ve barely reached the stone wall their father built around the yard when Zorry and Zettie’s mother, Mamma Ezray, runs out. She’s holding on to her hat and her skirts are flapping. “Mamma Zeina is dead.” She says. Catches her breath. Holds her throat, leans down hard on the gate. And then staring hard at Zorry. Her eldest daughter does not seem to her to be surprised enough by this information. She squints, “Zorry, you were there last night. Tell me, did you know about this?”
“Yes Mamma. I was going to tell you tonight. But now I’ve got somewhere to be.”
“Have you now, Zorry?” Mamma Ezray eyes her eldest daughter sceptically. “Mamma Zeina’s dead, we’re ten minutes, less, from curfew, and you’ve got somewhere to be? Well.” She sniffs. “Just be quick. And … We’ll talk about this later, Zorry.” She thinks for a moment.
Zettie slides out of her sister’s arms. Looks around right away for a stick to draw with. The child knows from her mother that you are supposed to draw a new food when you find it. Just as soon as you know that you ain’t got a pizen.
Mamma Ezray watches her eldest daughter wrestle with the rusting gate in the cottage wall. Vanish behind the hedge beyond it. Listens until she can no longer hear the sound of Zorry’s running feet.
Mamma Ezray sits down hard in the yard. It’s as though her legs go right from under her. She looks down at Zettie, her youngest. Already making patterns in the dust of the yard. A curling tail of something. Then finding stones for its eyes.
“Well, Zettie, Mamma Zeina is dead, and your sister is headed toward … darned if I know where. And what in the durned baobab are we all going to do now, eh? When the hungry times come, without Mamma Zeina’s back door bread deliveries. Gaddys will have us by the throat.” She sighs. She assumes the child has not understood a thing she’s said. That she’s been talking to herself.
Zettie stops drawing. She pops her thumb in her mouth. Examines her mother.
Now Zettie turns back to her drawing. At speed and she’s equally skilful at drawing with both hands. Mamma Ezray stares hard at the back of the child’s dipping head, face hidden by her straggle of hennaed ringlets. A cold feeling passes over Mamma Ezray. Shakes herself. Puts the feeling away. And then, “That Child never listens,” she tells herself, out loud. “Just plays in the dust all day.” Quietly Mamma Ezray wonders to herself if the child is quite all there. Wonders if she takes in anything at all. She doesn’t even know how to stay in the yard.
Mamma Ezray means to go inside but something makes her stop and look down. And again that cold, nagging feeling. Premonition. Shivers. She picks up the washing basket, rests it on her hip. She notices that Zettie has drawn the curling tail of one of the new breeds of lizard. Now she looks up at her mother with a curious expectant expression. Then again she seems so knowing sometimes, Ezray thinks. Zettie pops her thumb in her mouth. Seems to wait for an answer.
“Ah, Zettie. What will I do with you, eh?” Mamma Ezray is exhausted from a night in the killing forest, and the last leaf she tested on herself made her irritable. There is nothing, now, for supper. Worse, she’s been anxious since she heard the bad news about Zeina. A sense of slow dread. She responds sourly to the child now. “I don’t have time for this. I have serious matters to … I have to think about how to get us some damned food, Zettie.”
Mamma Ezray sighs heavily. Regrets her words before they’ve left her lips, she didn’t mean to take it out on the child. Stares at the gate. Then puts her second basket onto her head and sways inside.
She counts the steps between the gate and the front door to calm herself. She asks herself how long it’d take Zettie to get from the back door to the copse behind the cottage if she had to … Doesn’t bare thinking about but she has to think about it. Never know what you’ll need to know and when. Never know what thing might save you, in Bavarnica. She sighs. It’ll take more than information, it’ll take a miracle to keep these childur alive through what’s coming down the tracks towards them. Worse, Mamma Ezray doesn’t believe in miracles.
Hesitates on the back step now. Pulls the basket off her head, stacks it on top of the first one. Pushes on inside.
Zettie watches the back door close behind her mother.
In a bit Zettie goes back to her drawing. Dust lizards fanning out round the gate. Stones for eyes.
SNAKE EGGS
GADDYS HAS SLIPPED QUIETLY from the shop’s front door, glided noiselessly around the bulging, top-heavy shelves which line the sides of her shop and appeared behind her brass pulpit, behind which she keeps the till. Tomax, stepping into the cool room, thinks it’s empty and then, “Hello Edge Farm,” she says. Popping up. Gaddys loves to be theatrical. Loves managing to surprise an edge farm boy who’s used to climbing around the man-eating birds which are accumulating on the edge farms.
Gaddys examines Tomax. The boy has been afraid of her since childhood, since the day she tried to sell his mother an axe. Her ‘sales techniques’ had alarmed him. Now, it’s as though the old woman has rewired his mind. Even the smell of Gaddys makes Tomax’s adrenaline start pumping. He’s not a coward. Tomax has never been a coward. Perhaps Gaddys sensed that, even back then. She remembers a small boy’s upturned face, chin out slightly, stepping protectively in front of his mother. Daring to look Gaddys right in the eye.
Bavarnica has always liked to prune its young. Cutting them down before they’re full grown is the best way, in the end, Gaddys has found. And cheaper. The ‘gardener’ can take a step back then. Watch the young branches grow out in strange, unnatural shapes. No direct violence will be required, most times, no unnecessary use of expensive government ammunition on an unruly adult. Simply bend them before they’re full grown, and step back. It’s amazing how many creative ways a young person can find to sabotage themselves. Do your work for you, Gaddys thinks.
Gaddys, gazing at the full grown Tomax now, smiles at the memory of the small boy and the axe. She keeps the axe under her counter for boys and girls with ‘That look’ in their eye, Burgo and red ink, she calls it. But Gaddys has more than axe-tricks up her sleeve. The best way, she’s learned, is to have the occasional ‘accident’, a lassoo loop which doesn’t un-knot quickly, some faulty farm equipment, firing sparks during a sales pitch, or a farm gun which just goes off too soon and in the wrong direction. Oops!
Gaddys herself will conduct the necessary investigations after. Of course she’ll have to heave the grieving mother out of the shop, and she finds that a drag. The way they scream, pray, hold onto the hinges of the door. But afterward … When Bavarnica’s news-shop has picked the ‘story’ up and put it down again, when things quiet … All the children in Gaddys’ shop will be … Well. Differ
ent. It’ll be at least a month before she’ll feel the need for another ‘accident’. To remind them.
“You still with us?” She asks him now, very sweetly. Smiles again. This is more terrifying to him than an axe flying past his ear, splitting the shelf behind him. He looks down at her hands, gripping on to the edge of her pulpit-counter. He’s not sure if he’s supposed to reply, and then, “Yes.” He says. His voice jagging in his throat. The cool dry room, smell of antiseptic, a fit of coughing takes him. When the coughing slows down, he feels sputum on his lower lip. He wipes his arm across his mouth, feeling embarrassed and strangely exposed. Gaddys eyes him. “I’m still … With us.” Tomax says. And then he stops talking. Places his work card on the counter for her. “Extra rations.” He says, grimly. This is the dangerous moment. Tomax knows that much.
Gaddys takes his ration card. Examines it.
“It’s been stamped by the general’s wife?” Gaddys squints at the stamp to confirm this. Then leans back heavily. Soft, sugary voice. “Well, now. You surely are in with the in-crowd, Tomax. Aren’t you?”
This seems to Tomax more like a threat than a question and he doesn’t attempt to answer it. Hides his hands behind his back. Bends his head. It doesn’t do to look Gaddys in the eye. His left hand is shaking.
Tomax wishes he weren’t still as terrified of Gaddys as he had been as a child. It isn’t only Gaddys’ obvious power. Gaddys’ power over the food chain, Gaddys’ influence over the general. Gaddys hand selects the officers and the special guards who guard the general, Gaddys stamps the certificates of tameness for the workers, or else Gaddys doesn’t stamp them. Gaddys Beloved Flowers spy on the OneFolks and Gaddys cherry picks facts for Bavarnica’s News, saying who can speak and what they can say. How they may say it. Gaddys decides who will be gagged and silenced in the back of the newsroom for the crime of twitching an eyebrow at the wrong time, or a tone of voice that doesn’t suit, Gaddys decides what information the whole of Bavarnica will get, and how they’ll see it. She has orchestrated several campaigns against the ‘Witches’ in their midst. All that is, of course, terrifying power. But there is some other indefinable frightening thing about Gaddys. Something more ancient and more savage.