Seed

by Lisa Heathfield

  Linda takes the knife and holds her daughter’s little wrist. “It won’t hurt,” Linda tells her softly, but Sophie screams as the blade is pushed into her palm. Then Linda is licking her blood. “See, it is done. All over.” And Sophie becomes silent.

  When it’s Ruby’s turn, Kindred John helps her. She winces, but doesn’t cry. The knife is passed to Ellis, but he passes it on.

  “I shall help you,” Kindred Smith says, coming toward him.

  “No. I won’t be doing it,” Ellis says, staring hard at Kindred Smith. No one else moves. Then Kate, too, passes the knife to Jack. What is she doing? We’ve done this many times. It’s something we love. Isn’t it? It binds our family, holds us to each other. I cannot look at Papa S. But I can hear the angered breathing of Kindred John beside me.

  Jack hesitates. Surely Kate will change her mind? But she doesn’t. So he cuts himself. He holds his palm up to Kate, but she looks at him and gently shakes her head. Jack blushes as he looks down at the blood waiting in his palm, but then he passes the knife to me.

  My left hand is on my lap, palm facing toward the sun. Slowly I press the blade into my skin. It won’t cut through, so I push down harder. There is a pain, but I force it away. I feel my skin pop as the knife cuts it and my blood breaks free. Just a bubble at first, so I slice a tiny bit more until there is a little pool of red.

  Jack is next to me. I raise my palm to his lips. His eyes don’t leave mine as he takes my blood in his mouth. We are one and nothing will ever break us.

  I turn to Kindred John sitting next to me. He cuts his hand and holds my head as I bend my lips to his palm. The taste of his blood shocks me, but I won’t show it. The rusty metal hidden in its liquid red. It feels wrong. For the first time ever, it feels wrong.

  We usually now hold hands, this circle of us. Our family. But instead, Papa S. makes a low, growl-like noise and stands up suddenly.

  “So this is what going back to the Outside has done to you!” His words storm toward Ellis. “The doctors, they have dripped poison into your blood.”

  Ellis does not look away from him. Papa S. drops his head back violently. “Punish them,” he screams to the sky. His face is contorted by anger, his eyes wide and cold. He’s not the Papa S. I know. “Punish them!” he shouts again, his words like steel in my stomach.

  Please, no, I say in my mind. Please, Nature, I beg you, no.

  Bobby takes my hand as we walk back toward the house. When he looks at me, I see a strangeness in his eyes.

  “The woman has gone,” he whispers to me.

  “What woman?” I ask.

  “The woman behind the window,” he tells me.

  “Who?”

  “She lived in the room. Now she has gone.”

  “Which room?” I ask. Bobby watches the backs of everyone as they scatter toward Seed. With no one looking, he points toward the tiny window sunk into the roof of the house. Then he looks at me as if I should understand.

  “There’s no one there,” I tell him.

  “There was. She lived there,” Bobby says quickly.

  I smile at him. “You must have seen the sun planting shadows.”

  “No,” he says angrily. “She was there. Now she’s gone.”

  “Well, if she’s no longer there, then you don’t need to worry.” I smile at him again, but I look up at the window.

  “But where has she gone?” Bobby asks.

  “Come on,” I say. “They’re already starting work in the fields.” I point to Kate as she comes out of the back door, a basket in each hand.

  I start to walk and Bobby follows me. He’s by my side, staring intently at the window in the roof. I glance up again, but there’s no one there. There is no trick of the light, no shadow.

  But I look down quickly. Somewhere, I feel that Papa S. is watching and I don’t want him to see.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  I stay with Elizabeth through the night. The pain ebbed away enough for her to eat, just a bit. But her whole body seems on fire. Even through the sheet, the skin on her belly burns. But still she says that the baby is not coming yet. Linda dripped hemlock juice into Elizabeth’s mouth and Heather wrapped her feet in damp dock leaves, but nothing helps the swelling. Nothing is working.

  The music sweeps up through the cracks in the floor. The notes crash against each other. Elizabeth wakes and she smiles. I haven’t seen her eyes alive for days, but the sound of the piano brings magic. Surely it is Ellis. It is only with one hand, but he can still play.

  “Go to him,” Elizabeth says. She reaches out and touches my face. I don’t want to leave her, but she’s calm and Ellis is playing music again.

  “I’ll send Heather to you,” I say as I kiss her on her cheek.

  I follow the notes. They come to greet me on the stairs and hold my hand as I go down. The music takes me across the hall and pushes open the day room’s door.

  Ellis is sitting at the piano. His back is to me. Quietly, I walk through the furious sound. He doesn’t stop. His hair has fallen into his eyes, his lips are slightly parted, as if he is about to speak. The music isn’t as full, but it still peaks and swells and fills the room as it stamps to every corner and throws its strength into the air. I sit down next to him and put my arm across his waist.

  He has come home to us.

  “It’s amazing to hear you play.”

  Suddenly he smashes his fist onto the notes. His body is shaking. He reaches for the piano lid and slams it down. I try to keep my arm round him, but he is frightening me. I have seen anger, but this is coming from somewhere else.

  “He won’t get away with it,” he says, turning to me with furious eyes.

  “Who?” I ask. “Did they do something to you at the hospital?”

  Ellis moves away. He’s shaking his head at me. “Can you really not see it, Pearl? Or do you just not want to look?” he says quietly.

  “See what? Ellis, you’re scaring me. What have they done to you?”

  He grips my arm and is staring into my eyes. He’s so close that I can feel his breath on my cheeks. I don’t scream. I want him to let go. But I want him to kiss me.

  He raises his bandaged arm. “This wasn’t an accident, Pearl,” he says. He doesn’t look away from me.

  “What do you mean?” I ask. But somewhere, deep inside me, I hear a flicker of truth that I must already know.

  “Your precious Kindred John,” Ellis says.

  “He wouldn’t have,” I say.

  “Wouldn’t he?”

  “But why?”

  “To warn me. Because I know the truth,” he says quietly. “I know what he’s like. I know that everything here is based on lies. And power. And fear.” Ellis reaches out for me and I let him take my hand. The feeling of his skin on mine spreads through me. “Kindred John threatened me, Pearl. He said that if I told the doctors that we lived here and about what he’d done, then he’d hurt my mom. And Sophie.” I try to pull my hand away, but he won’t let me. “And now I know what he’s really capable of.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “It’s Papa S. who’s the liar. He hasn’t been chosen by Nature. He’s just a normal man, in stupid clothes, who gets his kicks out of controlling you all.”

  I try to put my hands over my ears, but Ellis moves his arm and pushes them back. His bandage rubs against my skin.

  “Listen to me, Pearl. The world outside isn’t such a bad place. Papa S. is making it up to force you to stay here.”

  “No one is forcing me,” I say, moving my head roughly from his hand.

  Ellis stares at me. There is fury in his eyes, but something else too. Then he stands up from me. He kicks the wall hard and storms out of the room.

  Your precious Kindred John. Those were Ellis’s words.

  It wasn’t an accident.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  “Let’s go and watch the sunset at the dip,” Kate says. We’ve finished the washing and Jack is helping us put away the plates.

  “
Can I come too?” Sophie asks. She’s sitting on Ellis’s lap at the table. They’re making a toy for Elizabeth’s baby, weaving thread in and out of sticks.

  “Not this time,” Ellis says. “It’s late. You should be thinking about sleep.”

  “I need to give this to Elizabeth first,” she says. She’s up and out of the door before Ellis can argue.

  “The dip,” Ellis says. “I haven’t been there since I came back.” He stands up, stretches his arms above his head. The sight of his bandage makes my thoughts spin. Ellis’s words about Kindred John, about Papa S., are in me now and I can’t get rid of them.

  “Let’s go now then, before anyone can stop us,” Kate says. I finish wiping the side and put down the cloth. Jack looks hesitant.

  “Come on then,” I say and I reach for his hand. I need things to be normal again. I want to forget.

  So together we all go quietly out of the kitchen door. We don’t look back as we walk across the fields.

  Jack is taller again. I notice it when we are side by side. His hand feels strong in mine and he seems to steady me. So much is different now, but just looking at him pulls me back to a place where I am happy.

  I breathe in the dampening air. Watch a buzzard as it lazily circles above us.

  “This way,” Kate says. We follow her down the side of the field to the raspberry bushes. They’re spotted with ready fruit and Kate reaches out to pick one. She closes her eyes as she puts it in her mouth.

  “Kate,” I whisper. “It’s not picking time now.”

  “They won’t know.” She smiles. She takes another and passes it to me. I look behind us. We are hidden from the house. The raspberry is soft in my fingers.

  Everything here is based on lies. On power.

  Ellis and Jack watch as I put the raspberry between my teeth. It’s like velvet on my tongue.

  Kate takes the scarf from her head and we start to fill it with the pink berries. When it’s full, she gathers its corners and we walk together toward the dip.

  We go around the edge of the forest, to the field at the back. You can never see it from here, but as you get closer, the colors seem to change. Kate runs ahead and I know when she reaches it, because she suddenly disappears over the edge.

  We get to the rim of the dip, peer in, and Kate is already at the bottom, lying on her back and looking up at us. We run, almost falling, to join her. The sky is striking. The brightest blue melting into flames of orange and red.

  “It’s amazing,” Ellis says. Nature is covering us with colors of fire.

  I push away the burning hair, the melting flesh. Papa S.’s anger when I asked him.

  “It’s cold,” Kate says. She sits up and opens the corners of her scarf. The pile of raspberries seems so small here. Kate picks one up, and without a word she reaches over and puts it into Jack’s mouth.

  Ellis interrupts the silence. “How are the engines?”

  It’s getting darker, but I can still see the red in Jack’s teeth. “Same as always.” He laughs.

  “Still making the magic ones?” Ellis asks.

  Jack nods. “Trying to,” he says. I look for doubt in him, but I don’t see any.

  Ellis shakes his head and looks at me. Is that all lies too? The hours that Jack has spent rubbing the oil into the engines, the oil that Kindred John says cures pollution? My head aches with the thought of it. I feel unsteady, as if the earth beneath me is rocking and swaying. And I want it all to stop.

  I want the doubt to go away. I want only to know the beauty of Seed. I want to believe in magic engines. And to hear Ellis playing piano with both of his hands.

  I will close my eyes and when I open them I’ll be in the kitchen, looking out the window, and it will be daylight outside and Linda, Ellis, and Sophie will be in their car, coming up the driveway for the very first time.

  But I am still in the dip.

  The sun falls lower still. It’s dragging the blue with it, sucking it down.

  “Don’t you ever want to leave, Jack?” Ellis asks. Jack doesn’t answer.

  “I’ve thought about it,” Kate says. Somewhere a fox cries.

  “Don’t, Kate,” I say. “Don’t think like that.”

  “But nothing’s right anymore,” she says quietly.

  “That’s not true.”

  “Tell me then, Pearl,” Ellis says sharply. He sits up and even in the gloom I can see anger trickling over him. “What’s right about this place?” He tries to take my hand, but I pull it roughly away. “You see, you can’t think of anything.”

  “That’s not true.”

  Suddenly Ellis stands up. I think he’s going to say something else, but he just starts to climb up the side of the dip and within seconds he is gone. I want to reach up, pull him back to me. What is it that stops me?

  “Thanks, Pearl,” Kate says. As she picks up her scarf, the raspberries spill out of it. It’s easy for her to run up the grass and disappear.

  Jack and I are silent. We watch as the black sky overtakes everything. As the moon silently spreads her wings.

  “Do you ever want to leave, Jack?” My words are so quiet that I hardly know them myself.

  He won’t look at me. “Sometimes,” he replies.

  “Why?” I ask.

  “I don’t know. Just sometimes …”

  I don’t want to speak anymore, but I do. “Ellis says that it wasn’t an accident. His hand.”

  I feel Jack nod beside me. “I know,” he says. “But it’s not true. The shock is making him remember it wrong.”

  “Do you really believe that?”

  “I don’t know,” Jack says quietly. Then he’s standing up. “Come on.”

  We get up and he keeps hold of my hand as we clamber up the edges of the dip. At the top, the field is almost silver.

  “We can never escape its beauty,” I say.

  “I don’t want to,” Jack answers as we carefully walk back to the house.

  It feels like I have a ball of wool inside my head, wound tightly with all my thoughts mixed in. I want to find the end, pull it to unravel them all. But I search and it’s not there. And Papa S. and Kindred John and all of Ellis’s words stay locked together.

  Jack steadies me as we walk. Keeps hold of my hand as we push open the kitchen door. He doesn’t let go when we see Linda crying by the sink.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  “What’s wrong?” I ask. Linda turns to look at me. She doesn’t even try to stop the tears.

  I run before she can answer.

  Elizabeth is in her bed. The skin on her face is stretched and swollen and her eyes are white with fear. I hardly recognize her as my own. Heather is holding dried petals to her forehead.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask.

  “She’s fine,” says Heather, but she won’t look at me.

  “No,” Elizabeth says through her blackening breath. “No.”

  I step forward to her and Heather moves away. A petal falls from her fingers and becomes caught in Elizabeth’s sweat-drenched hair.

  “Is it worse?” I ask.

  Elizabeth grabs my hand. “Yes,” she says.

  “I’ll get some fresh water,” Heather says. She gathers the flannels into the bowl and she leaves Elizabeth and me alone.

  “You must help us,” Elizabeth says. As she breathes, her belly heaves under the sheet.

  “Heather is bringing cold water. It will make you feel better,” I say.

  “No,” Elizabeth says. She grips my hand. “Listen to me, Pearl. It wasn’t like this before.” She twists her head away from me, her teeth tight, her neck red.

  “Shh,” I say. “The baby will come soon.” But there is fear in the room, tapping at me, waiting to be let in.

  “Pearl. I will die. My baby will die.”

  No. She can’t mean it. She is having a baby. Soon, she will hold our baby in her arms. But she is crying. Elizabeth is crying.

  “You must get me help, Pearl. Please. I don’t want this to be my time.”

&
nbsp; “How? Where is help?”

  Elizabeth’s chest seems to crackle with her breath. “Please, help me.” She closes her eyes tight with pain.

  I know that I have to get her a doctor. The doctors helped Ellis. They were not bad, they saved his life. Papa S. is wrong, Nature cannot do everything.

  The doctors dripped poison into his blood.

  No. No, Ellis is good.

  “Please,” Elizabeth whispers.

  I lean to kiss her on her forehead, just as Heather comes back into the room, carrying a bowl of clear water.

  I walk from the room and hurry down the stairs. I go out of the front door and slip into the night.

  No one follows me. No one calls after me, so I run. I don’t know what I have to do, but I won’t let Elizabeth die. I won’t let her baby die. I run across the gravel toward the trees at the edge of the driveway, expecting to feel a hand on my shoulder. Waiting for Papa S. to step out from the darkness. But he doesn’t come.

  I reach the trees. I won’t stop. I run in the blackness, toward the gate at the start of the driveway and the beginning of the Outside.

  And I’m on the road. It’s dark. Which way will I go? They are both the same. They are both empty, black holes. I choose, because I have to and I cannot stop, I must not stop.

  The road is hard and loud under my feet. There is no breathing behind me, no hand around my waist.

  The lights of a car. They are getting brighter, coming closer and I shield my eyes. It drives past me. But it stops. It is coming backward, toward me. I want to keep running, but the car is quicker than me and it catches up.

  There is a man and a woman inside. The window moves down.

  “Are you all right?” the woman asks. The man peers around her, looks up at me.

  “Elizabeth is dying,” I say, trying to calm my breath.

  She looks over at the man. “Where is she?” he asks.

  “In our home,” I say. “She needs help. She’s dying.” The truth of the words whip around me.

  The man takes one of those small telephones from his pocket. “I’ll phone an ambulance,” he says.

  The woman reaches out to me, but I step back. I want to be swallowed by the darkness behind me. “It’ll be OK,” she tells me.