A Single Stone (10 page)

Her heart began to race almost before the thought had formed. The Mothers and their lists. The ledgers full of names and columns and numbers. Of who got what and how much and when.

Several dusty books leaned against each other on the shelf but it was the one on top that drew her eye. None appeared to be labelled but this one was cleaner, as if it had been used more recently. If nothing else, it was a place to start.

She retrieved the ledger and carried it to the table where there was more light, leafing through the pages even before she had set it down. When she reached “Dietz” she stopped and ran her finger down the columns. It was all here. There were individual entries for each of them. Papa and Mama Dietz’s began when they got married and Jena supposed they had earlier entries from their own families elsewhere. Kari’s entry began at birth and there was a new one just below it. The Mothers had not added a name yet though – only the numbers. Perhaps they too were waiting, cautious.

Her gaze fell upon her own entry. It was not alongside Kari’s as she had expected, but several rows down. A large space had been left between their names and it was there Ailin had been added. Keeping the real family together, Jena supposed – her own addition to the household acknowledged but kept separate all the same.

But it was not her record she sought. She peered at the writing next to Mama Dietz’s name.

Beside each entry, one column noted the ailment or condition and the next the remedy that had been dispensed, along with a series of numbers. Strength, perhaps, and dosage? There was a third space filled with tightly packed scrawl – almost illegible in places – that appeared to be notes on the progression of the illness or whether the medicine had proved effective. In this way, a picture of each person in the village had been put together. Jena’s finger trembled as it traced its way along the lines.

Greta Dietz.
A fever here. Something for stomach cramps there. A three-day headache eased by feverfew. A pregnancy – Kari. Willow-wort and comfrey during the birthing; some other scrawled names Jena didn’t recognise. Pennyroyal? Calendula? She filed the unfamiliar words away in the back of her mind and read on.

Ailin’s birth. A six-moon baby. This was the one that mattered.

Some of the remedies were the same as those for Kari’s birth, differing only in the numbers alongside them and the accompanying notes. Fourteen hours.
Small tear. Birthed clean. Healed well. No break. No infection.

But others were different. And there was a note beside one that made Jena catch her breath. Her finger pressed hard onto the page, smudging the ink.

Ripen at six. Rubus.

She had almost missed it. Because it wasn’t from the birthing, but earlier, immediately following the notation,
With child
.

From there, an arrow had been drawn to a series of notes in the margin.
Yarrow 1/2. Raspberry leaf 6ds. Willowbark 2ds.

She set her hand on the page to hold the place and continued leafing through the ledger. The entries seemed to be roughly alphabetical. If she was right, the one she sought would be near the back. Her fingers felt wooden; it took her several tries to separate the last few pages, to find the one she needed.

Werner.

The name returned to her from a distant place. It was not that she had forgotten, but somewhere over the years she had left it behind, locking it away in a dusty corner far from the light.

Clara Werner. Ripen at seven.

And there again, that list of ingredients.
Yarrow 3/4
.
Raspberry leaf 10ds. Willowbark 4ds.

The numbers were different but the names were the same.

She studied the rows that told the story of Mama’s pregnancy. Something for strength, something for nausea. The birthing, and afterwards. Willow-wort. This last appearing several times – the strongest painkiller they had, the dosage increasing with each new entry. Until there were no more entries – not then, not ever.

Except for an underlined note in the final column:
Rubus too strong. Reduce dosage?

Jena gripped the edge of the table, her legs suddenly weak. Was this what had taken Mama? Not the mountain but a too-strong medicine? A medicine given to her by the Mothers to make her …
ripen
, like a piece of fruit they might hasten to the plucking.

Rubus.

She turned to the nearby shelf, again scanning the rows of packets and bottles.
Rubus.
She found herself repeating the word over and over, as if to hold onto it.

Searching was no simple matter. There was an order to things, she realised. Some remedies were sorted according to usage – fever remedies on one shelf, painkillers another – and within that there was a kind of alphabetical order. But when she finally found what she sought, it was not ordered by either type or spelling. It appeared to have been shelved with just one design in mind – that of concealment.

It was a single bottle on the very bottom shelf, tucked in the far back corner behind a clutch of dried roots. It was empty and had been thoroughly cleaned. There was no trace of sticky residue, no smell of any kind. But there was a label, this one unlike the others in that it was not stuck to the bottle with tree sap but tied loosely around the neck with twine.

When Jena picked it up, she noticed a wadded piece of paper wedged in the corner behind it. Some old label, perhaps – discarded and forgotten. But something made her reach for it and as she drew it out she saw that it wasn’t crumpled but folded, neatly and carefully. As if someone had set it there on purpose, and might return to it later.

She unfolded it. It was another list of names and scrawled notations, but the light was dim by the floor and she could only make out part of it.
Werner
, again, and
Brandt
. And
Armen
? She stood, angling the paper beneath the light coming from the window. But as she did, shadows flickered around her. There was movement outside.

She ducked, crumpling the paper quickly into her pocket. A figure passed the window. A slight frame, its steps short but purposeful.

Jena shoved the bottle back into place and half-stumbled, half-crawled across the room. If it was Dyan, she would come straight here. If it was Berta, she would go to the room opposite. Either way, Jena had to get out, at least as far as the front room. The Mothers would not question her being there on a harvest morning, but it would be a different matter if they found her here.

Quiet footsteps padded around the corner of the building. Jena raced for the door, grabbing the ledger as she ran and setting it back on the shelf.

It was not until she had jiggled the lock closed again that she realised the piece of paper was still in her pocket. Down the hall, the shape passed the window in the front room. Whoever it was would soon be at the door, sliding their own key into the lock.

A few short steps and Jena was there, reaching for her satchel almost before her last stride landed. She willed her breathing to slow, her hands to stop shaking.

There was silence outside. No key in the lock, no one trying the handle. The door remained shut.

Then a sound, soft. Someone whispering.

Jena edged towards the door.

Pouch on the left, rope on the right. Knife, headlamp, water.

Make the harvest. Find the light.

Relief washed over her. She reached for the doorknob and twisted.

“Oh!” The figure jumped back.

It was Min. Her hair was tightly braided, her eyes wide. One hand was over her mouth, the other clutched to her chest.

“You’re here. I thought I’d be first.” She flushed. “I just … I couldn’t sleep.”

Despite everything, Jena felt a smile ghost her own lips. She might have known. A restless night, a foolishly early arrival. Hadn’t she been the same when she was new?

She pushed the paper firmly into the bottom of her pocket. The other girls would be along soon. She must put aside the thoughts that careered through her head and settle into the day’s familiar rhythms: a coil of rope looped over the shoulder, a belt cinched around the waist, a single chip of mica snapped into each headlamp.

Make the harvest. Find the light.

There was something unsettling about how easily her mind turned back to that well-worn path.

“Come inside.” She gestured towards the door. “We’ll go over your gear.”

“I’m done.”

Loren looped the drawstring around the neck of her pouch and drew the ends together in a secure knot. The area they were harvesting was illuminated by all seven headlamps, each making its own halo of light. They were bright at the centre but faded into a pale blue at the edges, which blurred into the surrounding dark. Each lamp would glow until its chip was spent; once struck, mica had to burn itself out. It was not like a fire you could damp down nor blow out to be re-lit later.

Jena looked around her, taking stock. Their progress had been painstakingly slow but eventually the long stretch of tight tunnel had opened out into this cavernous space. Wide and accommodating at its base, it extended upwards almost as far as the eye could see in a rapidly narrowing shaft. A thin stream of water trickled down it from somewhere far beyond sight, ending in a shallow pool at their feet. Asha and Kari sat nearby, sipping from their flasks.

Next to Jena, Renae lifted the last few flakes of mica from the patch in front of her. She tucked them into her pouch and then crawled over to join the others on the far side of the cavern, drawing a piece of dried fruit from her belt.

It was just Calla harvesting now, and Min. They were working alongside each other a few feet away. There had been no finger-touches today, no whispers into the darkness. When Jena directed Min to the centre of the line behind Loren, she put her head down and followed without a sound. And when the rock opened out to reveal the mica’s blue glow, she went immediately to her tools and set to work.

There was something hypnotic in the calm efficiency of her movements, and something familiar too: a sureness in the way she handled the knife.

Min turned her head. “I’m almost finished.”

There were just a few last scrapes to be made, a final gentle levering of the mica that bloomed on the surface of the stone. There were veins through the rock wall here – deep blue lines like those in an old Mother’s legs – but they would not touch those. That harvest belonged to another line, another age.

“It’s all right,” Jena reassured her. “Don’t hurry.” She knelt beside her. “Did you see Berta yesterday?” In the confusion of this morning, she had forgotten to ask.

Min nodded. “Our bag … she added five scoops.”

“Five?” Calla gave a low whistle. “That’s more than we get.”

“And how many in your house?” Jena asked softly.

It was not a question that called for a response, and Calla did not offer one. She tied her pouch at the neck, then moved over to join the others. Snippets of conversation floated across the cavern. Kari was telling stories about the baby while the others listened eagerly. “You should come and see her,” she said. “All of you.”

“Would they let us?” Asha asked.

The Mothers were understandably cautious with newborns. Family was one thing but they could ill afford to endanger a daughter with the dirt from a hundred curious hands.

“Not likely,” Renae said. “When Twila was born, they didn’t let anyone visit for ages.”

Asha looked thoughtful. “I would like to see her though. Forty and forty.”

“I know,” Renae said. “Twila was forty-eight. I can’t imagine a baby smaller than that.”

“Thanks be.” This last was a chorus of several voices, including Min’s. She sheathed her knife and took her place on the edge of the group.

With the harvest secured, Jena allowed herself to relax. She sank to the floor of the chamber, feeling the cool of the stone seep through her thin garments. She drew her knees in to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, hugging herself close.

Min leaned across to Kari. “What did you say her name was?”

“Ailin.”

“It’s so pretty.”

“Isn’t it?” There were murmurs of agreement, but furtive glances at the rock too. None of them said what they were surely thinking. That it was early. Risky. No girl wanted to be the one to say such things out loud.

Instead, Min spoke again. “My name means precious. Thom says it’s boring but I like it.”

“It’s nice,” Renae said. “Simple, but nice.”

“Ralf is friends with your brother,” Calla said. “Not that one though – Ernst, I think.”

“He’s the eldest,” Min said. “I’ve got five brothers. Thom’s last, and then me.”

“Five boys,” Loren breathed. “I guess that’s why you’re precious. What were your numbers?”

“My numbers? I …”

“I’m sure they were better than mine,” Calla said. “Fifty and forty-nine.” She cast an appraising glance over her slender frame.

“Fifty’s all right,” Loren said.

Calla shook her head. “Not any more.”

Jena let their voices wash over her. Everyone liked talking numbers but it could be a distraction in here. She knew she should keep the conversation in check, remind the girls to rest and drink, to breathe deeply and recover their strength.

But as she opened her mouth to do so, something occurred to her. Calla
Brandt
. Loren
Armen
.

Their family names had been on that paper along with Jena’s. If she hadn’t been interrupted, might she have found Asha’s and Renae’s there as well? And Kari’s too?

No one was looking her way. She drew the paper from her pocket, and rested it between her knees and chest, out of sight, angling her headlamp over the writing.

Dietz.
Her heart raced as she made out the spidery writing near the bottom of the page. But just then Kari rose onto her haunches and called out across the cavern. “What are you doing, Jena?”

“Nothing.” Jena lifted her head quickly, sending shafts of light bouncing off the stone.

“Is that a map? I thought you had it all in your head,” Kari teased.