Stone Seeds

by Ely, Jo;

  “Insects mean no pizen.” Antek repeats, looking down. He can’t understand why the shopkeeper’s assistant is here. He turns back to face the tree.

  Jengi smiles. “You’re a fresh pair of eyes here, for sure.”

  “Ears,” Antek says looking up.

  “What?”

  “I spotted it with my ears.”

  “Ah.” Jengi taps his forehead. “Yes.”

  There’s a gap in the trees at the edge. The fence is just visible through it. “That’s where they’ve come in, the past three days.”

  “Who?”

  Jengi turns slowly toward Zorry. “Egg Men, who else?”

  “You three watch the fence. I’ll try to get the long view.” She turns toward Jengi, “He says it’s not a pizen tree?”

  “That’s what the man said.”

  “Let’s find out.” Zorry climbs it.

  The killing forest is noiseless. Listening. Snap of a twig overhead.

  Tomax can’t tell where the sound of his own breathing stops, Antek’s begins. He watches the slow sap drip from a leaf in front of him, falling onto Antek’s right forearm and appears to burn the skin there. He doesn’t notice pain much, Tomax thinks. What’s wrong with him? Gazes at Antek’s left ear, examines the side of his head.

  Antek doesn’t like being watched.

  He gets up. Moves around.

  Jengi’s leaning on the stump of a fallen tree, he’s chewing a grass stalk. Watching the Egg Boy and the edge farm boy seem to circle each other. Antek is moving through the brushy scrub in a sun scorched clearing, just beyond Jengi’s feet, trying not to step on dry bracken and failing. Tomax is scowling. The nipping saplings have moved closer to him. It takes a moment for him to notice, then he startles. “I don’t like this.” He says loudly. There’s an answering bird call, at a distance. Warning hoot. Tomax feels something moving near his left foot. And then a gnawing sound in the scrub beside him. Shifts around on his haunches and then stands up, looking down. He can’t see what it is.

  “Rats?”

  Jengi shrugs. “Scurvet more likely.” He points to Tomax’s arm, “You got bit already. You need to concentrate on where you’re at instead of where you’re going, Edge Farm.”

  Tomax looks down at his arm.

  Everything about the killing forest disgusts and unnerves Tomax, he’s felt itchy in his skin ever since he arrived. Felt the urge to run. “I shouldn’t be here.” He says.

  Jengi notices there’s a large gap in the fence running down the left side of the killing forest. Signs of force, bitten edges. That’s new. “We may have been watching the wrong entry point.”

  Zorry catches his eye, looks where he looks. “Let’s get further in.”

  “Not yet.”

  Jengi peers into the dark killing forest behind him, things move. “Somebody might be in the trees already.” Any single one of the dark shapes behind them could be Egg Men, watching them now. Circling in.

  Sound seems to rise in the forest. It takes a moment for Antek to tune in. To make sense of it.

  Squawks, growls and bird sounds. He registers something large moving through the forest. Getting nearer instead of farther. Squints into the darkness. It comes to him.

  “Egg man.” He says.

  All four drop.

  The Egg Man’s neck seems to bend a little, under the strain of his heavy skull, giving his shoulders a slumped crow-like appearance. The sleeves of his non-regulation coat are too short and his thick arms bulge out from under. The knobby bones of his back strain against the fabric and the stitches running down its spine tear away from their seams. The wind gets up behind him, blowing his coat tails a little. Edge farm soil dusts the leaves of the killing forest.

  They see nothing at first. They see nothing for a long time, only the dark ferns, curling and uncurling, tree limbs bulging with moss, a few loping scurvet sniff the nipping saplings and move off. And then it’s Zorry who notices. A rough outline, dark shape of a man. It’s gone before it fully registers from eye to brain.

  Antek hears a long, low insect droning. It’s moving in a large semi-circle left to right. Sounds for all the world like drilling. Robotic sound, it’s six, maybe seven feet away now, getting closer. Zorry lifts her nose, sniffs the air and then turning in one seamless motion, grabbing Antek’s hair, the broken seam of Tomax’s shirt by his throat, dragging them both stumbling to their feet and a piercing Sinta shriek that seems to lift to the tree canopy above them and be lost in the bird sound above, “RUNNNN!”

  They reach the edge to the dark mouth of the killing forest. They pause, panting. There is the sound of the snake moving slowly around them again. Now they steer left and away from the sound. It takes Zorry a moment to realise that, once again, the forest has manoeuvred them deeper into itself and farther away from their exit.

  The mouth of the killing forest gapes open in front of them. Leaves shift and rustle, separate. Zorry feels cold pooling in her stomach.

  “Keep. Going.” She says.

  “No.” Jengi holds her arm fast. “It’s stopped, Zorry. Listen. Nothing’s behind us.”

  She is panting. A moment later she shakes Jengi’s hand off her arm fiercely. The two are eye to eye.

  “It has steered us to here right from the beginning, Jengi.”

  “Yes.”

  There’s a long pause. And then, “Zorry.” Jengi says. “The danger’s gone. Let’s rest here for a while. Let’s think.”

  He builds a fire with slow expertise, a plume of smoke twists up from between his hard palms. Soft crackle as the flames rise under his fingers.

  “Remember.” Jengi says. Eyeing the poisoned plant teeth which mark the edge of the forest’s mouth. “The killing forest is designed to learn you. It saw us run. Now it knows where we’re weak. It knows who’s not watching all our backs and who is not watching his own. Her own.” He gazes gently at Zorry. “Who wants to push on forward and who isn’t feeling exactly at home in here.” And then turning to face Tomax. “The forest is a mind. A predatory mind, iffen you ask me. It will find us out,” he says. “Who we are.”

  The flames rise softly.

  Zorry is examining the tree line at the edge of the forest mouth. Thinks she saw something move. “Look.” She says. Pointing.

  Once again she feels Jengi’s hand on her hand. Soft electricity running down her arm. She pulls her hand away quickly.

  “Shhhhh.” Antek moves away from the fire, finger to his lips.

  “Egg Man coming. Get down.”

  Zorry’s voice appears to be coming from the tree canopy above them.

  Tomax notices Jengi hasn’t moved. He’s stayed by the fire, prodding it softly. He seems strangely calm. Waiting. “Who is it? Who’s out there?” Jengi says quietly. And then, just a little louder, “It’s safe here. Join us by the fire?” There’s a long unnerving pause and then the crunch, slide of Antek’s father lolloping clumsily forward. The heavy stamp and slip of his good foot then the drag of the injured one, a misstep in his walking rhythm. Apparently the Egg Man didn’t escape the bombing of the barracks, Jengi thinks. Antek considers this too. What it means. But he doesn’t move from his hidden position.

  Antek’s father pauses in the dark shadow at the edge, where the firelight doesn’t reach. They see his slumped shoulders and the slope of his head, just above the shrubs. He seems to examine the scene ahead of him and then change his mind. Turns on his heels.

  Now the sound of him is getting farther away and in a while it’s hard for Antek to locate his father’s position at all. He’s moving fast, injured or not, tripping over tree roots, Antek hears the crunching and snapping of twigs and bracken, the Egg Man’s felling small trees as he goes.

  Most of the trees in the forest are derived from the ancient cypress and sound carries in a cypress forest. Rises. Amplifies until it seems as though the whole of the forest echoes to the sound of the Egg Man’s feet. And then Antek hears it. Just on his left. Snap. And then one careful footstep, slow crunch. Hi
s father has silently doubled back. Antek looks up, to see if the others have noticed. No-one turns toward the sound. The Egg Man is moving in on them, slower than before. This time Jengi hears it. Slide of his knife from its sheath, metal against metal. The Egg Man stops. Appears to change his mind once more. Now they hear heavy feet, moving away.

  Jengi sighs. He looks down at his knife sadly.

  Tomax is lying face down on the forest floor. “Egg Man in the forest, that’s bad,” he hisses. He inhales forest smells. Sap from the nipping plant to the left of his head drips, some falling on to the small hooked bridge of his nose, seeps down his cheek and stings lightly. Tomax closes his eyes. “Damn. Why did I come here?” He says quietly.

  “Snake.” Zorry whispers. Zorry feels something slithering in the branches around her head and ears. She slips down the tree. “More than one.” There are receding circles in the moist foliage around her shins now. She freezes. The snake slips around her, and then moving off. They watch the grass moving, smell the death smell of large reptile. It passes by slowly. And afterward, a waft of soft rot and tin. Zorry climbs up her tree again, more cautiously this time.

  “Why does it have a light on its head?”

  The snake pauses at the edge of the clearing, just by the fence to the OneFolks’ village. The fence billows. Seems to undulate towards the creature. The snake recoils slightly. And then, looping back on itself, makes its way slowly up a fruit bearing tree, smelling its way forward blindly. Tomax eyes the tree for a while. “I’ve lost sight of the snake.” He says. This seems to him to be worse. Tomax smells earth, fern, mould spores. A six legged insect crawls over the thumb on his left hand, bright shiny shell like a jewel, and he flicks it. It lands on Antek’s father, hidden from them by the roots of the tree that Zorry has climbed.

  Sticky swivel of the Egg Man’s eyeballs rolling in their sockets, eyeing Zorry and then Tomax. He fixes on Jengi. He sighs. He slowly gets up, moves toward the fence to the edge farms. When he reaches the fence he looks out over the tin roofs and the scrubby desiccated crops, the baobab trees bumpy silhouette against the desert. The general’s lights are out, post curfew, and the remains of the old sun’s natural light is casting shadows. A few scraggle-necked chickens peck in the dusty farmyards, a small child raises her head softly to look back at the Egg Man. He squints into the low light, turns back toward the killing forest thoughtfully.

  Tomax tries not to breath loudly. Something’s crawling slowly down his shirt neck. He hears Jengi move carefully through the brush until he’s standing over Tomax. “Keep. Perfectly. Still.” Jengi says.

  Antek’s father tuns his head slowly upward, takes a note of Zorry in the trees. She’s shifted position slightly. He sinks just below the tips of a patch of saplings near the tangle of tree roots beneath her. Watches her from the weeds. Loops silently around and around the tree. There is no clear shot. Had he wanted one. “Good girl.” He says, under his breath.

  Tomax sits up. Examines the insect in the vice of Jengi’s forefinger, thumb. Scratches his newly shaven head, and then examines it carefully with his fingertips.

  “Thanks. What is it?”

  “It’s a killer.”

  “Look. Let’s go back.” Tomax says. Dropping the insect.

  “Back where?”

  There doesn’t seem to be an answer to Jengi’s question. And then, looking down. “I’ve been bit.”

  Thin black roots fan out from the red nip, like a small half moon or a fingernail mark. The skin is bumpy near the nip, and inflamed. Tomax is scratching it already.

  “It won’t be too bad,” Jengi pronounces, after a brief checking glance at Tomax’s fingers, wrist and palm. “You have to expect to get bit a few times in the forest. Tie it. Here.” Pulls a rag out of his pocket, rips it roughly in half. Wraps it round Tomax’s hand and secures it.

  The lights of the OneFolks’ village seem to Antek to be shrinking every time he looks back.

  Jengi’s fire is going out slowly. The branches are damp and smoke rises softly from it. Jengi claps his hands over the smoke, making shapes.

  “What’s he doing?”

  “Smoke signal.” Tomax looks at Antek grimly. “He’s telling the edge farms to arise.”

  “How do you know?”

  “It’s what the last Digger tells the edge farms every night.” Tomax says wryly. Tomax and Jengi are eye to eye for a long time. There’s a flare and Jengi’s face glows briefly, then the firelight dies away. Zorry slips down from her tree.

  Jengi’s face is in darkness when he speaks. Pausing over his words as though he weighs each one carefully. “Your father’s batch of Egg Men were made for climbing, Antek.” He says. “They were designed for pulling the fleeing Sinta out of their mountain hideouts and from behind tricky rocks. The general didn’t want nobody making it over the reach to tell their story to the outside world, iffen there’s even an outside world left now at all. Which some Bavarnicans have their reasons for kindly doubting.” Jengi strokes his left thumb with his right forefinger, he turns over his hand. Examines it. “But the thing I been thinking about is …” He looks up. “What did they have planned for you, Antek? You seem to me to be perfectly adapted to the killing forest.” He lifts his hands, palms up in a mock surrender. “No offence. So what did the general want you to do here? I mean … They going to throw your kill switch on us or something?”

  Antek looks down. He strokes the slightly raised scar on his chin.

  Now Zorry defends Antek. “He saved Zettie and he helped me, he ain’t got a kill switch.”

  “I don’t know.” Antek says, meeting her gaze. “I don’t know what I am. Who I might be. There are parts of me that are run from Central Control.” He turns over his hands. He looks down at his palms.

  “I should go back.” His eyes are cavernous, strange, two candles burned down to the wick, Zorry thinks. She feels a wave of sorrow for him. He gazes up at Zorry. “I should get away from you all.”

  Antek’s father slips closer to hear. Hides behind a killing tree. Small snake slips over his left hand and he eyes it briefly, flicks it off.

  The Egg Man rubs his hands together. The temperature is roasting in the forest already, but the Egg Man can’t seem to get warm. He looks down at himself. He is hairless from burns, his skin straggled with bruised veins. There is an oily sheen of forest matter covering him from skull to boot.

  An insect ticks and whirs in the darkness on his left side. He turns toward it.

  A biting tree branch near Zorry’s right hand sniffs the air and moves toward her snake-like, slow. She steps away from it easily. Looks up. Soft light of moon through the branches.

  “What’s that noise?” Tomax asks.

  “Howl of the one-eyed hyaena, last of its kind.” Jengi scratches his chin. “A bit like me.” Grins in the dark.

  The branch of the tree stump Jengi leans on has rotted off and the stump is shiny with jewel coloured beetles. Jengi picks one up and lobs it. It clings to his fingertips and then flies from his hand. “Don’t worry, Zorry knows how to handle those howling hyaenas.”

  The four listen to the muted, dying sound. You could think that you’d dreamed it.

  Jengi scratches his nose, pokes the fire and adds fuel to it. The stick catches alight and now he throws it, burning, into the middle. Flames are coming up fast now.

  “I have something to tell you. Antek.” Jengi looks up. Eyes the dark trees around them. It’s a brief, shrewd gaze.

  “There’s no general.” He says.

  “What?”

  “He died thirteen years ago. Pizened. By Zeina’s last assistant. Gaddys covered it up. And even if he hadn’t been … Pizened. For thirteen straight years there has been nothing to stop the Egg Men freeing the Sinta. Taking the flowers fund vans and stacking them with drought resistant seeds, driving them through the gates of Bavarnica. Ending this hell now, all in one night.”

  “So why don’t they? Who knows about this?”

  “A handful of people kno
w.”

  “So why …?”

  “They’re afraid of repercussions. Their past coming back to haunt them. They’re afraid of letting the Sinta and the edge farmers get up off the floor.”

  “But if the edge farmers know the egg men helped, well then … We would be the rescuers. Wouldn’t we?”

  “Aye. Your farms, your families would be safe from strong neighbours. Iffen you were on the right side when …”

  Zorry thinks of something Zeina once said, “And it will rain so hard that night that morning will come.”

  Jengi eyes the smoke, rising. Scowls softly. “Your people will be safe from all that’s coming down the tracks. Safe from the future.”

  “So … If what you say is true, that nothing’s stopping them …? Stopping us?”

  “Just a gate.” Jengi eyes him through the smoke plumes.

  “You’re saying an insurrection? A military takeover of Bavarnica, by the Egg Men?”

  “I’m saying just the opposite, Son. I’m saying the Egg Men should lay down their arms. Dig their fields. Go back to their families. Back to living. All the Egg Men have to do to stop this evil from continuing is …” He gazes gently at Antek. “Do nothing. Just stop.”

  “Not fight? Jengi. Asking an Egg Man to lay down his arms is like asking a Digger to. It ain’t …” Antek thinks about his father. “It’s not written into Batch 46 DNA. They need something to fight. Someone.”

  Antek is staring into the middle distance, he’s stroking the groove in his chin. Something is slowly filtering into his mind. “Something has gone.” He says. He looks up. “I can’t rightly say what it is. But …” His hand falls away from his scar. “I have to try to find out,” he says. He stands up. “I have to try to go back. Go back to the barracks and tell them. Tell them the general is dead.”

  Antek’s father blinks softly. Surprised. He dips behind a killing tree, closes his eyes and leans there. No. He says gently. One word. He watches the general’s sun dip behind the treeline. It goes out with a soft fiss. That means curfew. He looks down at his burns.