A Single Stone

by Meg McKinlay

  Jena’s thoughts reeled. Berta thought they were here for Thom – to get extra for his family.

  “Give me the mica.” Berta indicated Jena’s satchel then glanced at the cabinet. “And whatever else you have taken for them. No one need know but us.”

  Luka stepped between Jena and Berta. “She hasn’t got anything. She wasn’t … it was just me. She was in the front room. She’s been trying to stop me.”

  Berta narrowed her eyes; her gaze rested on Jena, thoughtful.

  It could work, Jena thought. She could say she had been checking something on the map before she came to the meeting. Berta would believe her. They would leave the room together, lock the door behind them. She would walk by Berta’s side down the long street to where the rest of the Mothers waited, speak with them of the line and the harvest and the mountain.

  Something in her knew she could not bear to make that walk. She put a hand on Luka’s arm. “It’s all right.” She withdrew the bottle from the satchel and set it on the table before Berta. “What does ripening mean?”

  Something flashed across Berta’s face; it was just the slightest glimpse before she composed her features, but it was enough. It was like a mask slipping; no matter how quickly it was snapped back on, what lay beneath could not be unseen.

  “My mama.” Jena leaned forwards, keeping the bottle within reach. Her hands pressed hard onto the rough wood of the table’s surface. “The ledger said six moons.”

  “Because that is when she birthed.” Berta’s small frame seemed to fill the room. “We keep a record. You know this, child.”

  “No.” Jena had not meant to lower her voice but it came out as a whisper, cracked and broken. “You made the baby come early. You …”

  Berta was so close now; her eyes were right there and they were kind. They had always been so. Yet there was something hard in them too. Flinty and cold, like dull grey stone in the light of a headlamp.

  Jena seized the bottle and stumbled around the table. Now the table was between them and she had some time – to take a breath, to clear her head. To think on what came next.

  The door was at her back, wide open. She lunged for the remaining ledgers and scooped them up clumsily, one hand still curled around the bottle. Then she spun around and out into the hall. Footsteps pounded, heavy and loud. Her own.

  In the front room the ropes hung idle on their hooks. The sudden image of that thin line, trailing limply down the mountain’s side.

  And then outside – across the Square and down the street. Homewards. By the time Berta reached her she would have had time to show them – Mama and Papa Dietz, Kari. She would have had time to explain. Not a lot, but a little. Enough.

  Wasn’t it Berta who had taught her this – that all you needed was the smallest crack? As long as there was an opening, you could find a way in.

  There was a chill in the air and the wind had picked up. The ledgers shifted awkwardly in Jena’s arms. As she rounded the corner into her street, rain began to fall. It was light at first but gathered force swiftly, the first sluggish drops yielding to a downpour that seemed to hurl itself upon her.

  One of the ledgers fell, hitting the ground with a dull thud. The spine split, splaying the pages flat. She gathered it up as best she could but scraps of paper flaked off and were snatched away by the wind. She clutched the books to her more tightly. They were damp, the covers and edges of the pages wet with rain.

  She stopped, thinking to tuck them beneath her shirt. But they were too large and too many. And she was almost there now, just a few houses standing between her and home. But even as she began to run again, she found herself slowing. For there was Kari’s house and here was home, and for the first time in years she turned her head and looked squarely at the old lot.

  A skeleton house. She did not shy from the words but let them sit in her mind. Papa hadn’t known the things she did but he had challenged the Mothers all the same. He too had set out on a moonlit journey through these streets.

  It had been quiet that night but was not so now. There were voices behind her, calling, yelling.

  Child! Come back.

  Doors opened around her. People emerged, blinking.

  What’s going on? Are you all right?

  The ledgers were heavy in her arms, sodden. The ink ran together in dark rivulets, blurring and dissolving. Voices whipped around her. The wind roared, pressing close – almost painful – in her ears.

  Ahead, her own door opened. Papa Dietz stood framed against the faint inner glow of the lamp, his silhouette filling the doorway.

  “Jena?”

  But there was another voice now, one she could not possibly be hearing and yet was as loud and clear as if it were right there.

  Wake up, Jena. It’s time to go.

  And now she was turning, stumbling across the old lot, away from their house to the village outskirts and on towards the forest.

  That bird. The way it had found that space in the trees.

  She slipped one arm free and reached into her pocket, her hand clenching around the stone. This is not from the old times. Luka’s voice was in her ears, clear as a bell.

  She ran, lifting her face – to the mountain, to the sky. A bird’s tail, disappearing, up and up. That space between the trees.

  It had been there all along.

  The path through the forest, her feet crunching with every step. A fork before her – the wide, looping way that wound back to the village; the narrowing track that led on to the mountain.

  This moment, to choose.

  She stepped onto the track and then looked back. Berta’s slight figure stood in the distance, poised at the edge of the forest. Her cloak fluttered about her, battered by the wind. And there must have been a lull then, the wind easing just long enough for Jena to hear her calling. “Child, stop! You cannot go inside.”

  In spite of herself, Jena nodded. The Mother was right. One girl was not a line. One girl was not anything. Could she really go in alone?

  Her reply came almost as a surprise. As if she had not realised what she was thinking until she heard herself say it. And no sooner were the words on her lips than they were snatched away with the last of the waterlogged pages, swallowed into the throat of the wind.

  “I’m not going inside. I’m going out.”

  Jena is five but it doesn’t matter. Papa says numbers are not important any more, not where they are going.

  In the forest, leaves flutter groundwards, wet with night. There is one so cold she thinks perhaps it is a snowflake. But it is too early for that and when she puts a hand to her cheek it is already gone.

  The village is behind and the mountain ahead. It curves high above into the quiet dark. The space before them is a patchwork of stone, one piled upon the next like the blocks she played with when she was little. When she was four. Building tower after tower just to tumble them down.

  She has been here with the village, to see this place they call the Pass, to remember.

  She doesn’t really remember. No one does. But it is a different kind of remembering, Papa says. You tell yourself the story, make a picture in your mind. And then it is almost like you are seeing it, almost like you were truly there.

  They are at the rocks and this is where they must stop. Because this is the edge of things and there can be no more going.

  But Papa turns to her and there is something in his face, something tired and old, but alive too, a dying flicker becoming a flame.

  He holds the tiny bundle out, saying, Here.

  Jena has been good and quiet and so she takes her sister, gathering in the fragile limbs Papa has let dangle loose.

  Silly Papa. She folds the girl into herself, wrapping her snug and cozy against her chest.

  Look after your sister, Papa says, and she knows how to do it.

  Something pulses beneath her finger, rhythmic and regular. The heart beating in the head, Papa had said, guiding her fingers over the fragile skin. You mustn’t press. Just let it be.
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br />   Thinking on it makes her feel strange and so she moves her hand, sliding it further around the baby’s head. And turns her thoughts instead to the rock that is before and above and around them.

  They are going on a journey, Papa said, but there is nowhere to go.

  And now they are here and she is holding the baby with her tiny soft bones and Papa is striding forwards – climbing, squeezing through, moving rocks.

  Papa, no!

  Does she say it, or is it simply that the thought is so loud, drumming inside her mind?

  It is all wrong, this. The baby should be at the Centre, wrapped tight. Jena should be at home, tucked in bed. And Papa down the hall by the fire, waiting for the last ember to die.

  They should not be here, doing this.

  But Papa works faster now, his fingers scrabbling at the stones. There is a frenzy to his movements as he lifts one after the other, then hurls them clear.

  Look after your sister.

  Jena steps to the side, flattening herself against a lee in the rock. She turns the baby inwards so she is cradled between her body and the mountain.

  Jena. Papa’s voice is hushed. When he turns, there is an odd light in his eyes. Through here, he says. Follow me.

  Then there are sounds. From behind them comes the thrum of running feet. Twigs snap, their sharp cracks piercing the stillness.

  There is light in the forest, muted pinpricks growing larger. Flaming torches bob towards them. Faces blur into focus. Voices call urgently across the night.

  Darius! Come away!

  Those dark cloaks, their soft folds flapping like wings. Alongside them, a man runs swiftly in the shadows. A single voice rises above the others. Stop, Darius! Don’t be foolish.

  It is Uncle Dietz. Papa turns. His eyes slide past Jena to the forest, to the lights advancing through the trees.

  They will go back now, she thinks. Uncle Dietz will talk quietly to Papa and he will come away. They will go home to the village and sleep, night falling gently over them like a blanket.

  But Papa’s gaze locks on hers and there is fear in it, and something else too. He looks like he wants to go in every direction at once. Every direction and none.

  Run! he says.

  And then he does.

  TWENTY-ONE

  The walls towered above Jena, the chaotic jumble of rock wedged inside.

  The Pass, impassable. It was here that the path had brought her.

  No. She caught the thought, reeled it back in. This was the path she had chosen. Where else could it have led, once her feet began to walk it?

  Papa.

  Had it been raining that night too? She could not remember. All she could see was his back, disappearing. His hand, beckoning.

  In her arms, the baby was still and quiet. In her mind’s eye, there was a broken girl, a limp-necked bird.

  She shook her head. One was then, the other now.

  But suddenly they were both now, both then, the distance between collapsing as cleanly as if it had never been.

  Papa is going but she is standing still. He is going through the rock. He is a head and then a hand and then the rock has swallowed him.

  He cannot be there, where he is. It is wrong for a papa to be inside the rock and Jena cannot move her feet.

  There are voices behind them. Behind her.

  Child! Come back. Uncle Dietz is calling and the Mothers too. Dots of light flare into halos that frame their faces.

  Papa is gone but he is just around that corner. There – that narrow shelf the rock has made of itself. That he has made, by moving the rock.

  It is wrong to do this. It is …

  Papa! Come back.

  A few steps and she can see him. Up ahead is all rock and he is pulling and tearing and tumbling. He is squeezing and climbing.

  You can’t go inside, Papa. You are not in the line.

  The line. She is five and that is one year closer. She is five and that is two years left.

  Just two, Papa. Wait.

  Light flashes on the rock. She turns around. Mother Berta is there and Mother Anya too.

  They are in front and Papa is behind. And there is a sound – a low, rumbling, like a storm rolling in from the distance. Growing louder, growing nearer.

  Jena! Papa calls and so she turns again. And now he is in front and the Mothers are behind and there seems no way of getting that straight in her head.

  And she cannot try because something else is happening. If this is a storm, it is like none she has ever known. It is beneath her feet somehow and all around. The sound rolls through her like it is carving a passage for itself. The walls sway and buckle. The rock reaches out, curving over and across her.

  Papa’s hands still. He sees.

  Jena!

  Rocks tumble about her. The baby is in her arms and then she is gone.

  Papa is there, reaching. Take my hand. Take my hand.

  Showers of small stones, the roar of something larger.

  They are going but there is nowhere to go.

  There is a light and a voice. Stones rain from above. Papa is hunchbacked, buckling, but still he calls her on. A white-hot pain slices her shoulder, making her gasp and stumble.

  Hands are reaching, in front and behind. She turns, grasps one, lets it lead her away.

  The Pass.

  There were rocks beneath Jena’s hands, her own fingers scrabbling now. It was the simplest thing to move a stone aside. The simplest and the most difficult.

  She would not hurl them as Papa did. Would not let them tumble, uncared for, to the ground. She would lift one between her palms and move it from here to there.

  And then the next. The one that followed.

  Until finally, a finger-width crevice, the narrowest of openings. Her arm found a sliver of space, eased itself in.

  She looked behind her, the briefest of glances. The Mothers were back there somewhere, faint specks of light in the distance.

  And ahead? Not Papa. She knew this, but still. She turned to the mountain.

  She was fourteen and she was going.

  She was gone.

  Lia moves quickly through the rock. Outside, dawn is breaking. By the time she reaches the crack she will have all the light she needs.

  Why did she not think of this earlier? If she peers through, there may be something she can see – some landmark she recognises that will tell her where her birthday stone fell.

  To think of the stone falling is to think of the girl doing the same and so she tries not to. Who is to say what happened, where she went? There has been no commotion in the village, no word of a pale-faced girl who has tumbled off the mountain.

  The girl is fine, Lia tells herself. And when she finds her stone, it will be as if nothing ever happened. She will have unstitched that day as cleanly as Mother unpicks a tangle of thread and begins again.

  It is the smallest sound that draws her left instead of right. This is not the way to where the stone fell but it is only for a minute – to follow that scrabbling sound, to see whatever scuttler is creeping its way through the rock. Then she will double back, continue.

  It will only take a minute.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Stone tore at Jena’s skin. Her fingers scraped along the rock, clawing for ground. A slickness to them now; they must be bleeding though there was no way to see. She had no headlamp, no light. This was utter, deepest black.

  Everything about this place felt wrong, against nature. There was no passage here, no sense, however slight, of the mountain opening up to let her through. This was a kind of trespass, each movement a small theft.

  A wrong thing. A right thing. That bird, climbing the air.

  How long had it been – four hours, five? She was desperately thirsty. She licked her lips, felt only dust upon them. Her throat rasped.

  She could not have said when things began to change. At first it was the slightest whiff of movement in the air. And then something different about the rock. The surface around her was smoot
her, more like a wall than a haphazard pile of stone. It began to recede slightly, and then more so, until at last her arm, extending, found nothing. There was an opening here, a space to crawl into.

  She pulled herself inside it, grateful. If she could not drink, she could at least rest, sit for a time before pushing on through the dark. There was no going back.

  Lia presses a hand to the wall of the tunnel. There are boulders here, wedged one upon the other. It is from there that the noise has come – from inside them or behind or … below?

  She leans in, angling the lamp she carries into the tight spaces between. And as she sets her weight against the stone, it moves – just barely, one edge of rock teetering upon another.

  She shines the light into the crack and puts her eye to it, expecting solid stone. If she is lucky, she might glimpse that scuttler, living its secret, rock-bound life.

  Instead, she sees space. A pocket of air extending. She draws back, considers.

  She has never been a girl to see a box without opening it. To leave a lid pressed firmly in place.

  She will only move one stone, and that just a little. The finest margin, to widen the gap.

  She feels the sound before she hears it – a low rumble, as if the mountain were stirring beneath her.

  She jerks her hands back as stones shower about her. The boulder she was moving is gone, fallen into space. Others rain around it, rolling and tumbling off a ledge beyond the gap, which is widening and widening even as the tunnel around her collapses upon itself.

  She dives for the gap, hurling herself through. There is no telling what lies in the dark beyond the circle of lamplight. How deep the hole, how far the fall? There is only this moment, suspended, waiting for impact.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Rockfall.

  Jena barely had time to register the thought when there was a sickening thud nearby. Another. Something grazed her shoulder, a glancing blow that sent her reeling.