by Ely, Jo;
“Witch.” He says again.
And then, taking two steps forward, knocking over a lamp and picking up Zettie’s small doll. Looking into its face with a bemused expression and then tossing it to one side. “Look around you, Men. Look. Dirty paint-signs, voodoo dolls, smell of boiled plants. These Sinta are filthy animals, I tell you.” And then, “Search this room first.”
A moment later Mamma Ezray is laying cracked and broken on her tiled floor. Her mind is washing in and out. These are the tiles, she thinks, still looking at the Egg Man’s huge boots on her newly mopped floor, these are the tiles my father painted and laid with love. Mixing and scraping cement carefully into the gaps between them. He finished his work so carefully, you’d think that it could last forever.
“Filthy Sinta witch.” The second Egg Man says.
Mamma Ezray notices that The Egg Boy Antek eyes her, small checking gestures. Unreadable expression. She can’t see what he sees.
There is no point resisting, she thinks. Mamma Ezray is still looking at the tiles.
“Dirty witches.” Antek’s father turns toward the second egg man and, in a conversational tone, the second Egg Man replies, “They ain’t strictly speaking human, the Sinta.” He says. “It’s all been scientifically proven by the general.”
The Egg Men are pulling patched clothes and knitting, jars of preserved cactus chipotle, woven scraps and hen eggs from the drawers and under the floorboards. Paint pots. Seeds. Smashing all that they find without looking at it. “Witches. All of ‘em. We’ll burn this lot after.” Points to the heap on the floor. “And we’ll keep this pile, in case it comes in useful. Even the scrolls.”
“Burn it.” Says Antek’s father quickly. “Burn it all.”
“It’s poetry,” says the Egg Boy, looking down. “You do not do …” He reads.
“Let that Witch stuff alone, Boy.”
The Egg Boy takes a step back from the pile, though signs and symbols tend to draw his eye, he looks away from the scrolls. But the boy seems to stumble around now. He gets in the way. When Mamma Ezray gets up slowly, feeling her teeth with her tongue, the second Egg Man moves swiftly toward her but Antek, seemingly clumsy, trips and staggers across his path for the second time. Causing the second Egg Man to shove him, hard. “Wake up, Dunce. You’re getting under my feet.”
“Yes, Sir. Sorry, Sir.” The Egg Boy stands up slowly, he is rubbing his arm.
“Keep out of my way, Egg Boy.” The second Egg Man says.
“He’s a clumsy kid, that’s all.” Says Antek’s father. “Batch 47 are badly made, as you know. It ain’t the boy’s fault.” And then, “Well you heard him, Boy. Make yourself useful some way. This ain’t training no longer.” Rubbing the back of his huge skull. “This here is it, Boy.”
It comes to Mamma Ezray some way, watching her hard-won possessions piling up around her. Her forehead against the floor and trying to feel her teeth in her mouth, Ezray remembers that she is loved. It’s a curious sensation, like being washed with warm air. For a singular moment she feels sure that she is. Loved. A little light filters in at the edge of the patched curtain. The sunlit moment passes over, and is gone. Now her head throbs. There’s a little blood running down the side of her temple. Vision blurring on the left side. Ezray goes on looking at the floor tiles for a long time. Up close to it, the way she hasn’t been since her childhood, when she’d lain on the kitchen floor on her stomach every morning. Watching Father work. Painting the swirls and the arcs. Paint the curving feathers and the gem colours with his homemade paintbrush. Dragons with scales and fish bones, dogs, crows and rats, castle moats. And now the disjointed pictures on the blue tiles curling into a kind of slow sense. Blink, blink. It’s as though Ezray sees the picture as a whole for the first time. Looks away from it quickly. No one saw what she saw.
Mamma Ezray had only seen her father cry one time in his life, although he’d lost so many loved ones in the reckoning era. He’d dug up something in the vegetable patch. Something he’d buried for safekeeping, under the slow growing root vegetables in the back yard. Whatever it was, he’d wept over it and then simply put it back. Covered it over with dark soil.
When her father had come back to the house there had been no sign in his face of what had just passed. Whatever it was he didn’t ever seem to want to talk about it. Some relic, from the time before the purge, Ezray had always assumed. There were many Sinta who’d lost people in The Before and there were so many of Ezray’s uncles, aunts and older siblings who’d tried to flee to the mountains. Were caught by the Egg Men in the mouths of their own half-dug tunnels. No. Whatever it was her father had buried, dug up and re-buried in his back yard, he did not plan to share it with her and Ezray had accepted that, like a good Sinta daughter. He’d started painting the floor tiles around that time. A distraction from his grief, she and her mother had assumed. But he’d painted with such intensity, such concentration. He’d painted this last thing as though their lives depended on it now or would do soon. The mapmaker’s very last map.
And then smiling to herself, recalling how Jengi spends his visits looking down.
Jengi saw it first, she thinks. Bless that Digger boy. He’ll have it all in his head by now, the map to the general’s version of Bavarnica. Its soft interconnecting parts, all the fish bones in Bavarnica’s throat. Ezray rolls painfully on to her back and she looks up at the cracked ceiling above her. When it comes, the laughter starts up in her belly. And then seems to run up toward her throat, stopping there.
That sound.
A rattling at the back of the house. Ezray freezes, and then the understanding running through her body, unravelling her in slow parts. Zettie is still in the house.
The Egg Men heard the sound too.
“I’ll see to that,” Antek says firmly. And then eye to eye with his father. “I need the … Killing practice.”
“Good. Make sure you do, Antek,” says his father, surprised. “Whatever it is …” He says sternly. “Whatever it is … Deal with it decisively. It’s just like the calf, Antek. Nice clean kill.”
The Egg Boy makes no reply, turns to go. His face is unreadable. Antek takes three noisy steps toward the door to the kitchen then a brief pause at the door, as though he hesitates to leave the room. Catches Mamma Ezray’s eye and something seems to pass between them. Antek blinks. He stares down at the door handle. Takes a breath. And then he opens the door to the kitchen. Closes it behind him softly.
Now Antek pulls off his helmet, so as not to alarm the child. Ruffles his hair and it stands up like feathers or a jumped in hay-pile. He puts his finger to his lips, smiles weakly. “Don’t cry.” And then, “Shhh!”
Antek pads around the room, examining the exits. And then eyeing the closed adjoining door behind him. Now he moves toward the back door quickly, intending to open it, but Zettie scatters away from him toward the far side of the room.
In the next room, Mamma Zeina is dragged up by her collar. She is pinned to the wall. Eyes swivel right toward the door to the kitchen. And then looks away quickly. Puts her right hand on the cool wall behind her. Something comes to her, as she hears what she thinks are Zettie’s tiny fingers battle with that grim latch on the back door of her house, as she fights with the lock to get out and Mamma Ezray can sense without seeing it that the lock becomes slithery, sweating, invincibly shut. She believes Zettie needs more time. She needed more time than I gave her. Mamma Ezray’s eyes become wide.
Something comes to her. She can’t say what it is.
Antek’s not sure what the child did to the lock, but he can’t open it just now. He checks behind him. Zettie is leaning against the rough, hard wood of the cupboard under the kitchen sink, and now, seeing the Egg Boy stare, she puts one small arm up. She’s nervously fingering the wood-knots, the curling traces of woodworm, the sharp rusting edges of the keyhole.
“The door latch is broken,” she says quietly. As though understanding without being told that he’s trying to help. And then, “Mamma said t
hat I have to go.”
“Yes. Yes, you have to go.” Antek gazes at the window. “You have to go to the copse and then go to where she told you to wait.” Puts his hands over his ears. “Don’t tell me where that is. Don’t. Okay?” He takes his hands away from his ears again. Smiles at the child, tries to smile. Zettie points to the latch at the top of the window. “I lost the key.” Antek reaches up and rattles the lock gently, to test it. “No,” he says quietly. Curses. And then he tries one more time, breathing heavily. In a bit he gives up. Turns back to face the room. He’s trying to think.
Now Zettie watches Antek take the three steps back toward the kitchen door, pull the latch silently across it. Then ease the kitchen table over, quietly, skilfully, wedges it under the handle. That’ll give her three seconds, he thinks. I might hold them three more. And then eyeing the window, the door, with increasing desperation. Breaking the window will be noisy, it’ll bring them running. Six seconds isn’t enough time for a child her size to cross the yard and dive into the copse.
The child seems to sense something. She slips underneath the table, curls herself into a ball. Closes her eyes. Hands over her ears, the way Mamma Ezray taught her to do when there are Egg Men searching for food in the cottage. Blink, blink. Opens her eyes again.
Antek pulls the child out gently, by her right arm. Scoops and plops her into the kitchen sink by the window. Casts about for something to use to break the window, settles on his elbow. Something causes him to pause. He looks down at the child.
A scrap of a chance is better than no chance but something makes him stop here, by the window. And then it comes to him. He looks up at the sky. The changeover of the generators is coming. It will be dark soon. Antek briefly recalls that his father was always very insistent about the timing of this raid. Antek puts away the thought quickly. Now the child hears him softly counting down in twos, just under his breath.
The wind is blasting into the valley now, and the tree just beyond the back door is heaving at its roots and throwing its vast arms in the air. It seems, to the small girl in the kitchen sink, that it rolls its swelling belly knowingly, leans in menacingly toward the window. Zettie is squinting through her fingers at it. Waits.
Mamma Ezray spits. On the floor. Right on the Egg Man’s boot. Just like that.
Time, she thinks, and now Mamma Ezray is holding the Egg Man’s gaze with a clear cold eye.
And she could never quite work that lock, Zettie, always locking it when she means to unlock it, dammit, Ezray thinks, durnit, that thick sharp piece of metal, damn the thing for always and forever. Curse it now with all the night that you can draw toward it, burst it, rust it, ruin it, Draw Fire. Draw Fire. Draw Fire from that child. She sends an ancient Sinta curse toward the lock, although she hasn’t believed in the Sinta curse since childhood. She believes in it now, at the end. Ezray rises to it.
The second Egg Man steps back a little. He’s briefly confused. “What the hell is your boy doing in there? Why is he taking so damned long? I’ll go look.”
And now Ezray is looking at the second Egg Man’s long back, moving toward the kitchen door, screams a Sinta curse at his back to unnerve him, “You do not do, you do not. ANYMORE.” She yells, spitting. Drawing his attention back toward her, and then away from the door to the child.
The second Egg Man seems to take the bait. He turns slowly toward her, half smile. “Any more black shoe, in which I have lived like a foot,” she says, and then, “Sylvia Plath,” she says, picking up whatever she can and lobbing it at his huge skull. Lamps and shoes and small brass candlesticks bounce off the side of the Egg Man. He walks slowly towards her. Catches a vase, and examines it briefly. Drops it. Smiles. “You singing your death poem? How fitting, Sinta.”
Draw fire, draw fire, draw fire from the child. It is all that Ezray is thinking now.
The huge Egg Man is standing over her. Strange empty mirthless, joyless laughing and Ezray thinks it once again, ‘I’m not myself.’ And that voice, she thinks. That strange voice. You think it can’t be coming from you, but it is.
“You do not do …” She falters. “Anymore black shoe in which I have lived, like a foot.” And once more that unreal feeling saves her. It’s as though she is a clear foot over her own head, watching her own performance with amazement. Glancing at her feet and noticing it’s a blue tile that she stands on. It feels like a sign to her. “Like a foot,” she says. And then looking at the Egg Man. “And one gray toe. It’s as big as a frisco seal.” She says. The Egg Man tilts his head left, as though he’s listening to the word-music. “And a … Head in the freakish Atlantic. Where it pours bean green over blue.” She tries to gather herself. She looks down again.
Now she sees Zettie’s little dust lizards, drawn in the spaces left by every missing tile and spilling out of the cracks in the wall. Where did the child even find the paint for that last one? It must be made from that missing plant root. Why does the understanding only come at the end? Time, she thinks once again. This child only needed more time. Give her mine. She thinks, rising.
“There,” the Egg Man says. He shoves Ezray’s shoulder.
And then pulling her face into a snarl. Ezray flies at his face but one huge knee in her stomach and she is doubled over. And then pulling herself up quickly, painfully from the floor using the wall for support now. She crawls toward the door and the second Egg Man, laughing now, lets her place herself in front of the door, failing to understand this was the tactical advantage she had aimed for.
“You can’t stop me.”
“No.”
“Then why resist? Tell me. Why you Sinta make such a fuss about dying? Egg men are cancelled in batches every day. You don’t see us complaining.” He sniffs.
“Then maybe you haven’t never been alive in the first place, Egg Man. Ever think about that?”
The second Egg Man shoves Ezray hard and she stumbles backwards. Gets up from the floor again.
“Now, look. Why do you have to keep getting up? You’re just making it worse for yourself, Sinta.”
“Where it pours green bean over blue.” She says slowly. Reaches out and picks up a knife from the sideboard. Left hand. Switches it to her right hand, raises it.
“Oh my.” The second Egg Man lifts his empty hands up, slowly now, in mock surrender. She meets his eye, looks away again quickly.
“This is taking too long, Man. Let’s do it. We’ve got three more of these tonight.” Antek’s father objects.
Antek hears Mamma Ezray’s back sliding against the other side of the kitchen door, sound of a Sinta kitchen knife unsheathing, clink, tap, against the hardwood door. Inside the kitchen, the boy is calculating. He looks down at the child in the sink. “Nine seconds.” He tells her. “Mamma can give you three seconds more. You will have nine seconds, Zettie. To get to the copse. When I break the window.” Zettie, being only four droughts old this season and not understanding what a second is or why another one more or less might matter, gazes up at Antek with a look of amazement. Pops her thumb in her mouth. The two Egg Men on the other side of the door to the kitchen, nod at each other grimly, fan out. There is one on either side of Ezray.
Draw fire, draw fire, draw fire from the child, Mamma Ezray thinks. She is fire now. Rising slowly, painfully. The knife glitters in her right hand.
“Make it quick and clean.”
“Aye.”
Ezray’s eyes become wide. She looks up. Last light, she thinks. And then Slow.
Shadow sweeps over the kitchen floor.
The Government Sun is switched off, curfew. The world is plunged into a blackness so deep that the air around Mamma Ezray’s head feels thick with it. Time, she thinks. And then, Now. She moves just as she hears Antek break the kitchen window. Ezray plunges forward into a darkness that’s thicker than life.
Last light, thinks Antek at the window, and then the Egg Boy, without missing a beat, throws his right elbow hard once again into the kitchen window, tinkle and smash and he pushes Zettie outside at th
e same time, neatly avoiding the clinging glass shards and Zettie, on an instinct, reaches out her small feet toward the edge of the rain barrel. Balances expertly, the way she has every morning for this last week, when climbing to check Mamma’s asleep. Zettie holds there like a tightrope walker. Perfectly balanced.
“Jump!” He says.
Zettie jumps.
“GO!” Antek yells.
Zettie, like a cork out of a bottle, goes flying into the yard. She’s running before her feet hit the floor. Running into the mouth of the darkest night that she’s ever seen. Just like her legs decide what to do without her. Zettie’s fast and she just makes it into the copse in nine seconds, not one to spare, slams herself down and then swivels. Covers herself up with leaves. The cottage lights blink back on. Light filters into the yard, but the copse remains in darkness.
Now the search lights blink on. Zettie shuffles down deeper into her leafy bed. She covers her ears, but the sound from inside Mamma’s cottage goes on and on.
She uncovers her ears slowly. What is that sound?
It’s the sound of the second Egg Man’s frantic, high pitched screaming. It’s the sound of him crashing about the rooms and bumping into walls, falling over the sideboard. Zettie hears something clatter to the floor and roll. That’s the jug, Zettie thinks. Standing up. The Egg Man’s scream rises up over the village.
The child brushes the leaves off. Now that she’s here in the copse, she remembers her training. She is looking out toward the small lights of the village, and then away. In the direction of the fence. The fence, Mamma said. Iffen the bad day comes.
Well this is a bad day.
This here. And if Mamma Ezray can handle two full growned Egg Men then she, Zettie, can certainly handle a damned fence after dark. So let’s go, she tells herself. Testing herself against the darkness. She’s going to make Mamma proud.
Zettie sniffs the air. Smell of crow eggs, she thinks. Dank moss.
Mamma is at the fence to the killing forest right now, Zettie believes. The Egg Man’s screaming seems to her to confirm it.