Seed

by Lisa Heathfield

  Jack looks at me. Memories flicker somewhere in him. He closes his eyes briefly and nods his head.

  “It was just Papa S., Jack. He was pushing those walls.”

  “But they were moving in on me. They were going to crush me.”

  “It was him. He was just pushing them forward with his hands.”

  A feeling of strength is growing in me, and it’s bigger than my fear of the now, my fear of the future. I can change what happens to me. I know we can break free.

  Jack shakes his head. “When I was there, a woman was screaming.”

  “It was a tape recorder. That was all. Papa S. pressed Start and Stop.”

  Jack looks down at the ground. He rests his elbows on his knees. “But who was she? She wasn’t pretending, Pearl. Someone was hurting her.”

  A breathless pain squeezes my chest. “I think she was my mother,” I whisper. I want to cry, but the tears are shut inside me. The hand of Papa S. is pushing them down.

  “What are you talking about?” Jack says sharply.

  I forget how much he doesn’t know, how much he doesn’t want to hear. How he still loves Seed, as I once did. I must be careful. I can’t lose Jack.

  “She was Nana Willow’s daughter.”

  “And Nana Willow told you this?”

  “She told me she had a daughter called Sylvie, and that they took her away.”

  “But she doesn’t think straight, Pearl. You know that.”

  “Elizabeth told me as well,” I tell him. Jack can’t question that. His love and trust in Elizabeth is unbreakable. “And she said that Sylvie was my mother and she thought she died giving birth. But she didn’t die. They locked her away.”

  Jack looks at me and I know that he wants me to stop. I know he wants it all to go away. But to save us, he has to believe me. I won’t run without him.

  “I think the screams were her. Papa S. was hurting her.” Tears burn my throat. I will keep strong for Sylvie. For my mother.

  But I won’t tell Jack my darkest thoughts. That I think I have seen my mother in the fire, her hair scorched black. Her hand being burned to dust.

  The thoughts stick in my blood.

  “I don’t want to stay,” I say.

  Jack bends his head forward and rests it in his palms. For a while, he doesn’t move.

  “Jack?” I whisper. I put my hand on his back.

  He turns, buries his tears in my shoulder, and I hold him as the evening grows darker.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  “Ready?” I whisper.

  The dark has sunk half of Kate’s face into shadow, but I can still tell that she’s scared. “I don’t think we should do it,” she says.

  “We have to. We have to get someone to help us.”

  “Simon is helping us. He’s going to get people.”

  “But what if he can’t? What if he doesn’t and we’re waiting here and no one comes?” I say.

  I’ve never seen Kate look so agitated. She pulls at her hair, which has fallen over the shoulder of her nightdress. She glances down at her feet, bare on the floor. “What if Papa S. catches us, Pearl? What will he do to us?”

  They hid her away. Nana Willow’s words creep into me. She is gone.

  “I won’t let him hurt you, Kate.” Her hand is ice-cold as I reach for it. “And he won’t catch us. No one will. It’s the middle of the night and everyone is asleep.”

  I pull her with me from the bedroom, walking so quietly that we are almost not here.

  How many hours have we spent running along this corridor, laughing? Jack chasing us with a pillow, Bobby bounding like a fox. The memories almost stop me.

  But how many secrets do these walls know? If I scraped away their top layer, how many lies would I find? If I stopped and pressed my ear against it, would I hear my mother’s voice?

  Keep going, she would say to me.

  Be free, she says.

  The tiles on the hall floor are freezing under my feet. We run across them quickly, hand in hand.

  The Eagle Room door is large in front of us. I’ve never noticed if it makes a noise, if its hinges groan, but now we must open it.

  The handle squeaks slightly as I turn it, but the door itself is silent. Kate closes it, shuts us in. The curtains are open and the light in here is gray enough to see.

  “You get the skirts,” I whisper, and Kate goes to the trunk and lifts the lid. I walk toward the desk. The drawer scrapes as I open it, and lift out a pen. The noise slices around us as I rip the paper into small pieces. But no one can hear this from upstairs.

  I pick up the pen, hold it steady in my fingers.

  Help us, I write. We are at Seed.

  Help us, I write on another. We are at Seed.

  Again and again.

  “Quickly,” Kate whispers.

  So I go to her and she unpicks a tiny part of a hem. I fold a piece of the paper with my writing and I push it in. I watch as Kate sews it up, the needle rushing through the material.

  I fold another piece. Watch my words disappear.

  Someone is outside the room. It is more than the nighttime noises of the house. It’s the sound of boots on the floorboards.

  Kate and I stare at each other. Why can’t I move? Kate grabs me and we crawl behind the sofa, pulling the skirts with us.

  The handle creaks. The door opens. Someone is here. Someone is standing in the Eagle Room. And by the trunk, in a little pile of white, I can see the shreds of paper filled with my words, on the floor where I left them. I can’t reach out for them. They sit there, looking at me, waiting to be found.

  Help us. Help me.

  My breath is tiny and silent. I must not move. Someone is in this room, looking around. Surely he can hear the blood beating in my body?

  Help us. We are at Seed.

  If he steps in farther, he will find my words. He will find us.

  The door closes with a gentle thud.

  Has he gone? Still I don’t move. Because what if he’s tricking us? What if he’s still here, waiting as we crawl from behind the sofa? Waiting to punish us.

  I listen for the sound of boots in the corridor. I can’t hear them. Somewhere in the house, another door shuts. Was it him?

  Slowly, I turn to Kate. Silently, she sews closed the hem of a skirt, my message inside.

  I move along the length of the sofa, twist myself until I can see. It’s just a door. Nothing else. He has gone.

  “No more,” Kate whispers, her face the color of ash. She folds the skirts, lifts the lid of the trunk, and silently slips them back inside.

  I reach for the pieces of paper on the floor, scrunch them into my palm. Feel my words sticking into my skin as slowly we tiptoe out of the room.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  Ruby gasps when Papa S. comes in for morning meal. And for a tiny second I don’t know who he is, because his beard has gone. It’s hacked short to rough, gray stubble clinging to his chin. He looks strange and naked and my heart clenches in sorrow.

  But when I look at his eyes, they are wild with anger. And behind them, I see my mother burning. And Elizabeth’s baby locked in the earth.

  Heather stands by Papa S. as his Companion, but she does not hold a flower to her lips. Her head is bent, her hair falling over her face.

  “Bad thoughts did this to me,” Papa S. suddenly yells. It is so loud, so terrifying, that Sophie ducks her head into Linda’s arms.

  Papa S. grabs at his hair, starts slapping at his chin. I hear Ellis laugh slightly beside me.

  “The poison has entered Seed. It came into my chamber and ripped at my beard.” Papa S. is shaking, his cheeks boiling red. “I fought it, but it was too strong.”

  He slumps onto the table, his bowl crashing to the ground.

  I have never heard it before, never even imagined it, but Papa S. is crying. Great, heaving sobs have taken over his body. His fingers curl in and out, grasping at the empty air.

  The shock among us is so strong that you can almost touch it. Even
Ellis is silent now.

  “Poisoned!” Papa S. raises his head and screams.

  Kindred Smith gets up and goes to him. He puts his arms on him, tries to lift him. But Papa S. roars and smashes out with his fists.

  Suddenly he is still. He glares at Kindred Smith with a look that should melt his skin. “This is all your fault,” he hisses. “You persuaded me to let them in. That woman, that boy, brought poison with them.”

  Ruby curls into me. I tuck her head so she can’t see. Her little body is shaking. Linda’s face is white. She loves Papa S. She loves Seed.

  “Nature will punish us. Punish us all,” Papa S. screams. He pushes Kindred Smith out of the way as he stumbles out of the room.

  Bobby’s eyes are wide. I turn to Jack, but he is staring at the empty doorway. When he looks, slowly, toward me, I know the words he doesn’t say.

  I believe you, his eyes tell me. I believe you.

  “He will be all right,” Kindred Smith says.

  He has come up to me as I stare through the sitting room window, at Jack pulling potatoes from the cold ground. He doesn’t mention Papa S. Has he spoken to him since this morning?

  I move away from him, just slightly, but enough to make him look at me and frown. Guilt weaves into me. Because I have loved Kindred Smith all my life and now I want to run from him.

  “It’s hard without Elizabeth,” I say.

  “I know.” He turns to me and touches my arm. “She would be so proud of you.”

  Did you hurt Sylvie? I want to ask. Did you hurt my mother?

  We watch as a car appears on the driveway. It comes closer. I can hear it through the glass of the window, as it slows down and stops.

  A man and a woman get out. They are in smart, dark clothes. The woman wears a white shirt under her black jacket. Her hair is short, cropped even to her ears.

  “Who are they?” I ask. But Kindred Smith doesn’t answer. He walks to the door.

  Seconds later I see him on the driveway, walking to them, shaking their hands. Their voices are too quiet to hear, but I can tell that Kindred Smith doesn’t know them.

  Ruby runs toward them from across the grass, but something makes her stop as she gets close. The woman waves and smiles to her, but Ruby must sense the danger floating around them. When they see me watching, I cannot look away. I stare at them. They smile, but I don’t smile back.

  They start to walk toward the house. Kindred Smith is bringing them into our home. I hear the noise of the front door open, their feet in our hallway, their voices in our air.

  As quiet as I can, I push up the window and climb out onto the gravel. I close it silently behind me and run across the driveway toward Jack in the fields.

  “Did you see them?” I ask.

  He straightens up and looks at the car before he looks at me. “Who are they?” he asks.

  “I don’t know. They’re in our house.”

  He’s crumbling the mud off a potato. “What are they saying?”

  “I don’t know.” I take the potato from him and put it into the almost full bag. I want to feel excitement. Are they Ellis’s friends? Have they come to save us?

  “Let’s find out then.” Jack reaches out for my hand as we walk.

  I trust him to lead me through the empty kitchen and into the hall. They are not here. But I can hear them, in the sitting room, the room I just slipped away from.

  “Come on,” Jack says and he squeezes my hand.

  “Are we just going to walk in?” I ask.

  “Yes,” he says. And so we do. We push open the wooden door and watch as Kindred Smith and the strangers look up at us. The woman’s nose is like the beak of a hawk. I don’t like her empty smile.

  “Hello,” she says, standing up from our sofa. “My name is Jean. I was sorry to hear about your friend Elizabeth. It must have been a shock to you all.”

  Jack and I don’t say anything.

  “We didn’t know that children were living here.”

  Still we don’t say anything. Kindred Smith is watching us.

  “I’m Stuart,” the man says. He doesn’t stand up. He reminds me of a few of the people I see at the market, with rolling skin on his chin and fat hands. “Do you want to come in for a quick chat?”

  “No.” I’m startled by Jack’s rudeness.

  “We have work to do,” I say.

  Is this really who has come to save us? I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t this. I thought I would want to go with them, that I would trust them, but I don’t.

  “It won’t take long,” the woman says, moving toward us. “How long have you lived here?”

  “All our lives,” I say, glancing briefly at Kindred Smith.

  “Are you happy here?” she asks.

  My cheeks redden. I feel Jack’s fingers in mine.

  Behind them, outside the window, Papa S. has crept up and he is looking in. The stubble on his chin presses against the glass.

  “What work are you doing?” Stuart asks, from where he still sits.

  “We’re digging the potatoes,” I say.

  “Not school work, then?” he asks. School. Where Ellis has been.

  “We alternate,” Kindred Smith interrupts. “All the children here have a balance of education. As well as their school work, they learn to work the land.” But we don’t do school work, only the reading and writing in winter. Kindred Smith is lying. “And Jack is a budding mechanic.” He smiles encouragingly at us. “Aren’t you, Jack?”

  “Yes,” Jack answers.

  “Would you like to see?” Kindred Smith asks.

  “We’d prefer to see their school books,” Jean answers. She turns to me. “What are you learning?”

  “Everything,” I answer. Stuart snorts, his jelly cheeks shaking. I glare at him and he tries to smile. Doubt begins to find me. Can we really give up Seed for people like this?

  “Would you like to show us your books?” the woman asks.

  I feel Papa S.’s eyes on me.

  “Not now,” Kindred Smith says and he claps his hands together. “Plenty of time for that. But that sun won’t wait for us, and they need to bring more potatoes in before it gets dark.” He walks toward us, puts his hand on Jack’s shoulder. “We’ll come and get you if we need to talk to you more.”

  So we turn our backs on the strangers, walk through the door, and away from them.

  Jack and I pretend not to look as we bend over the spades, but I can see the black shape walking toward us. It’s the crow-like woman, coming closer. She reaches me first.

  “That looks like hard work,” she says.

  “I enjoy it,” I reply. I stop digging and look at her.

  Tell her now, Pearl, tell her.

  But I know that Papa S. is watching me.

  “Do you see a lot of Steve?” she asks.

  “Who is Steve?”

  “Steve Elmack. The man who runs it here.”

  I don’t understand.

  “Your leader,” she says.

  “Papa S. is our leader,” I say. Steve?

  “How often do you see him?” she asks. Jack is still.

  “All the time,” I say.

  “What’s he like?”

  I don’t answer.

  “Does he make you do anything you don’t want to?” she asks.

  Still I don’t reply. I want to talk to her, to tell her everything. But I’m scared that Papa S. is hiding, watching.

  “There’s help away from here, if you need it,” the woman says.

  I look at Jack, but his face shows nothing.

  “We’ve told Steve that we’re coming back in two days, so that we can see your school work. You might want to tell me more then?”

  Two days. In two days I’ll find a place to hide, where Papa S. cannot see and I will tell this woman everything.

  It’s strange when she touches my arm, as though she wants to say something more. I glance toward the house. Then she turns from me and walks back toward the driveway. As I dig my spade
into the earth, their car starts. I listen as it takes them away.

  Jack is staring into the distance.

  “I don’t think we have long,” he says. As I brush my hair away, mud smudges near my eyes. “For this,” he says, sweeping his arm from our home to our forest. I wrap my cardigan closer to me.

  “We’ll stay together, Jack,” I whisper. “I promise I won’t go without you.”

  Jack tightens his hand around the spade. His knuckles go white. I touch them, try to soothe blood back into them.

  “I don’t want to live here without Elizabeth,” I say. But there is more, so much more. One day, Jack, I will tell it all to you.

  Suddenly Jack picks up his spade. He swings it high and slams it into the ground. He tips his head and he yells toward the sky. I want to touch him, but I’m scared. I have never, ever seen Jack like this, and when he doesn’t stop, I run from him. I lift my skirt so I can run over the muddy field, back into Seed.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  The sun is barely up when we turn the corner to the field. Immediately, I know that they are dead. Two of our cows lie side by side, their bodies slumped into the grass, their eyes wide open, their mouths gaping.

  Kate drops her bucket and it clangs on the ground as she runs to them. She kneels next to the body of the first, thumps hard onto its skin.

  “It’s dead, Kate,” I say.

  She looks up at me, her hair wild. “What’s going on?” she shouts.

  Someone is running up behind us. I turn to see Kindred John getting closer. “I saw from the window,” he calls to us. “We’ll have to get the tractor with the wagon up here.”

  “What’s happened to them?” Kate asks. She stands up, her feet wide, her hands on her hips.

  “They were old,” Kindred John says. He puts his hand gently on Kate’s arm, but she shakes it off roughly.

  “Oh, Kate,” he says as he smiles. For an instant, I think she might hit him.

  I grab her arm and pull her away, hurry her from the field, my empty basket knocking against my leg.

  I lead her without speaking, all the way to the forest. We stop only when we’re covered by trees. She stares at me.

  “Cows don’t just die like that,” I say. “Two of them at the same time.”