Stone Seeds (13 page)

The small rattling boy slopes off to a corner of the Furdy to sulk. Hold his pinched ear with both hands and gazing menacingly at his younger sister, who, sitting down cross legged now, between the two knitting girls, pokes out the tip of her tongue.

Zettie trails her fingertips along the mesh side of the Furdy, behind the three girls, tap, tap,
tap
on their cage. Very gently. The small girl squints up at her, smiles shyly.

“Bye, Zettie.” Says the girl with the long plait. “See you tomorrow.” The big girl doesn't look up from her knitting. Threads and loops. The colours slowly merge, fan out under her hands.

“You're quicker than me. What you making, Mezan?”

“Dunno, Cinda. S'gonna be good though.” Sniffs. There's a soft knot in the wool. She rubs her round nose. And then examining Zettie's footprints by the gate.

CAT

“BE CAREFUL, CAT.” SOMEONE says. Sliding in through the Furdy gate beside her and then shutting it carefully behind.

“I'm Zettie.”

“Cat.”

Zettie visited the Furdy twice yesterday, just after first light and then again in the last light of evening, when it was cool enough to venture outdoors. When Zettie appears again this morning, first she carefully eyes the beribboned plait nailed to the gate of the Furdy. And then she peers in.

“Cat, cat.” She hears.

At first Zettie can't imagine they can mean her. She checks the grass behind her. But some of the OneFolk childur have, as it turns out, decided that Zettie is due for a name-change. Hence ‘Cat'.

Zettie, who is just four droughts old this season, by no means buys into the Bavarnican idea that cats are vermin, and she likes the flying caracal cat most of all. Mamma Ezray had to chase one away from the chickens only last night and Zettie had examined the creature with pleasure. The long stripes running down the cat's body, its huge pointed ears. And yet … something about being called Cat bothers the child. Zettie thinks about this.

The mood here is different this morning, that's clear. Last night Zettie had most about convinced herself that the thing
didn't happen. She'd spent the night, hands over her ears, and in the morning she told herself she'd forgot. Zettie shook herself and put it all away like that.

But Zettie does remember.

She presses her face against the mesh of the Furdy, peers in. She looks down at the playground. Zettie notices the scorched ground where the flat rocks were lit and heated. Leaving a black trail in the dust after it was all cleared away. The rain makes rivulets now, in the scorched ground and looking across the small covered yard, Zettie finally understands that what happened yesterday evening underneath the Furdy was real. Yesterday seems to get realer the longer she looks. There is a cold feeling spreading out from the base of Zettie's stomach. It seems to seep up toward her throat.

Yesterday a small group of the older OneFolk children inside the Furdy had tried to poke Zettie food through the gaps at supper time, even though sharing food is strictly against Bavarnica's most important regulations. No one could quite remember who had the banned thought first or who it was decided to act on the thing, but like they looked down at their supper together, saw Zettie watching them eat. Three children had the same thought at the same time, ‘Let's share.'

Anyway, the gaps in the mesh were too small to pass anything through, as it happened. Zettie watched the OneFolk childur try with the strange amazed expression she is known for. She had appreciated their intention, though it seemed like a shame, she had thought then, to waste it. Zettie had seen from the start that their efforts were doomed. The size of the food and the holes in the mesh. But she'd gotten caught up
like the childur in the intensity of the game, the way they'd worked together, some playing look out. The boy who had rattled the fence yesterday morning was, by the evening, a turncoat. Threatening to tell on his schoolmates at the mesh, and he was pinned down and sat on by his younger sister and two small friends. Other childur had joined in, taking sides. It had been a small playground insurrection. It was only just before playtime ended that the OneFolk childur trying to share had admitted defeat. The Furdy itself stood between them.

“I can't do it. I can't get the food through. She's going to starve.” Said the girl with the long plait. A tall thin boy with white hair examined the gate, kicked the side of the cage.

That last act was what had brought the school's security manager and the class teacher outside, the teacher was holding her clipboard, taking names. “What are you children doing with your food?” Zettie had crept into the shrubs just outside the Furdy and watched.

“It's just … It's just decoration.” Said the girl with the long plait, suddenly inspired.

The teacher took a pair of scissors out, hacked off her plait at the base of her neck.

“Don't lie, Mezan.”

Apparently the class teacher and the school's security manager had seen the whole thing from an upstairs window. They'd not even missed the boy with the over-tight uniform collar and the anxious face who appeared to have assigned himself the post of look-out. He'd looked at every window, every shadow and leafy corner, looking for a face or a camera. Only he hadn't looked up.

“That's a lesson you won't forget in a hurry, eh Zinko?” The
school security manager said, somewhat ambiguously. And then seemed to point at the brim of his hat. The boy blinked. And then noticed it.

Behind the school security manager was the school security camera, like a blinking red-lit eye on a stilt. Blended with the small red flowers on the vine which crept along the school wall, you wouldn't see it at all, unless you knew where to look.

The security manager's office window is just above the camera. He decides what camera footage to keep and what's safe to delete, according to the general's instructions. Ghost of a wink. The boy had examined the security manager's face with a soft, amazed expression. Blinked.

When the children had all gone in, Zettie had stared at the mushed splats of food on the mesh. She looked to sharpen a twig small enough to poke through the mesh, grab back bits of the wasted food, but nothing worked. She did not expect it to. Eyed the forlorn shiny plait pinned to the gate. The ribbon still in it.

Zettie had stayed hidden in the scrubby plants beside the Furdy when three of the schoolchildren were made an example of about an hour later: Mezan, the girl with the long plait hacked off and black hair falling into her face, looked sullen, tear stained. Clinging to her side was the tiny freckled girl, Ezmay, who'd taken on her own older brother in order to save Zettie from falling off the Furdy and was now, in Zettie's mind and her own, a firm and lifelong friend of Zettie's. Joined by blood, scratched up knees and their matching bruises.

The tall, white-haired boy, Zetan, stood apart from the two OneFolk girls. Zettie remembered his grim determined face when he'd tried to help get the food through, help as though
his own life somehow depended on it. The playground leader looked younger now, beaten in the presence of the teacher.

“What is
she
?”

“A slave. A nothing. A wild critter.” The three OneFolk childur repeated robotically, looking down.

“And?”

“Sharing is dangerous.” That toneless chorus again. The white haired boy had glanced up.

The two older children were punished the worst.

Later, the teacher had reminded all the OneFolk childur of the punishments involved in sharing food. The childur with an instinct to share food with a small hungry girl, and the courage to do something about it, were made an example out of. Were made to walk a line of hot rocks in front of their classmates. Not so hot they'd break the skin but enough to cause pain. The humiliation of tears.

“You've got to breed the sharing out of ‘em early,” the teacher had whispered to the school security manager who'd nodded sternly. “Yes.” He'd said, turning toward her, seeming to take her in with a glance, “You must remind children that mercy is wrong.” And then eyed the teacher cautiously to see how she took this. She didn't appear to have heard what he meant, only what he said. Scratch of her pen across her clipboard. Taking down the names of the three scapegoats.

The school security manager had taken down names also, Zettie had noticed this much. Well, not so much names as faces. He seemed to carefully note the girl with the hacked off hair, the white haired boy, tiny freckled girl. And then shifted his eyes gently left, as though he takes his thoughts and deposits them somewhere inside. Zettie has seen Mamma
Ezray do this trick many times. Sinta cannot write things down, it's not safe. But there are other ways to remember.

Zettie is still staring at the fence, the seared ground from yesterday, food still stuck to the fence, dried out now, she is letting herself remember. Trying to think what it means. She tries to find the words to frame the feeling. Thinks for a while.

When Tomax appears at Zettie's left elbow, without making her startle, it's as though he simply grew from the bush. The first thing Zettie tells him is surreal, as far as he's concerned, “I ain't a cat, I am a little girl.” She says.

Tomax blinks. And then leaning forward intently, as though he is trying to figure it. All of it. He grins. “What sort of cat aren't you?”

Zettie draws herself up to her full height. “I aren't
any
sort.”

Tomax sniffs. And then, with a sudden intuition, “I like caracals best.” He checks Zettie's face for a sign. “Those cats can fly.”

Zettie looks sour. “Mamma Ezray says they only jump.”

“Oh. But still …” Tomax smiles. And then eyes her, nodding as though he believes in everything that Zettie said and even the things she didn't find a way to say yet. Somehow conveys to her that these unsaid things will also be good. This seems to help Zettie to contain what she's feeling. She's quiet for a while. Sucks her thumb.

And in a bit, “Yep, caracals are the best sort of jumping cat, I reckon.” Tomax stares down at the palms of his hands.

Zettie feels her indignation rising, checks his face. He's still examining his hands intently. And then, “Look, Edge Farm.” She says, cheering up. “Loooooook!” Shows him the soft lined
palm of her tiny hand. Zettie wriggles her fingers. “Hum-ing bean,” she says.

Tomax pulls a face. “That's … Disappointing.”

Zettie giggles.

“Nah, you is a … Cat.” Tomax teases her now. “A little girl would have fell offen the Furdy that morning, fell offen and clean died. You must've held on with your claws.”

The infant examines her own hand again, just as though she's checking. And then looking up at the edge farm boy with a wide eyed amazed expression. Scowls suddenly. “I ain't a cat. Edge boy.” She says. Bursts into tears.

Tomax is sorry right away. “I was teasing, I'm … The OneFolks' teacher is half-crazed, Zettie. You can't …”

Zettie's sister Zorry is coming up behind them. When Zettie sees Zorry she stops. Now she smirks at Tomax as if to say, ‘You're in trouble now, Edge Boy.' Tomax puts his hands up, mock surrender. Zettie has stopped crying just as suddenly as she started. She's looking up expectantly at Zorry. Wipes her face. It takes her a moment to realise how much trouble she's in.

“What the hell are you doing here, Zettie? And who in the damned unholy is
he
?” Zorry says, indicating Tomax with an angry flourish. Zettie ignores the question. She has noticed that her sister Zorry's hand is bandaged and that she holds it to her chest defensively, as though she's in pain. There is a little blood at the edge of the home made bandage. The child frowns.

Now Zorry's voice becomes harder. The child's not even listening to me, she thinks. This seems worse. “Tribes ain't to s'posed to mix,” Zorry addresses this to Tomax. “Aren't you on
a list already? Are you trying to get this little child in trouble, Edge Farm?”

“Sorry.” Tomax says. Meaning it. “I didn't think.”

Zorry relents a little. “Tribes don't mix,” she says again, and this time she means it as a warning.

“Got it.” Tomax says wryly. Meets Zorry's eye. Now Zorry tries not to notice Tomax's white toothed grin, his warm irisless eyes or the way that his black eyelashes curl up at the corners. Blinks. Zorry turns away, scooping up Zettie and in one sinuous motion plopping her small sister on to her shoulders. Zettie looks unsurprised, holds on tightly, expertly. Smiling weakly at Tomax, “Goodbye.”

Tomax nods. Doesn't speak.

Zettie is still watching Tomax as they're turning the corner of the schoolhouse. At the last moment, before they pass out of sight, Tomax gives Zettie a wave. She waves back happily.

“Ignore that edge farm boy.” Zorry reproaches. “And stop talking to the OneFolk childur whilst you're at it, Holy Baobab Zettie, kindly stop conversing with folks outside your own tribe.”

Zettie pulls her thumb out long enough to ask the question. “Why?”

“Why? Oh, I give up on you. Because the general said so, and because it can only end in trouble, Zettie. Even for a littl'un like you, and you wouldn't want Mamma to be punished for it, would you? Mamma or me?”

“No.” The child furrows her brow. Checks her nose is still there with the wet end of her thumb.

“No. I wouldn't.”

“Well then.”

Zettie watches the hedgerows bobbing past her. The fences and wires and the bullet riddled farm buildings. It's as though the child sees the scene for the first time in her life. Things blur and change. Now she hears voices behind her. Something that sounds to her like singing.

And now, taking a hold of Zettie firmly, Zorry shifts her. “Sit up straight, Child, you are a weight on my shoulders.”

“Sorry.” Says Zettie absent-mindly. Doesn't move.

It is only minutes before the whistle will go for curfew and Bavarnica's childur are coming out of their schools and workplaces. Zettie turns, watches them trickle out from the buildings around her.

The children are all headed most about the same way, as far as Zettie can see. Toward the egg farms and the Sinta cabbage patch-sized allotments, the copses and cottages at the edge of the fence and the steel trap farms beside them. Some toward the OneFolk houses in the heart of the village.

“Stop turning to look at the childur, Zettie. You're plain hurting me now.”

Zettie feels bad. She's already wondering if Zorry's bandaged hand is her fault. On account of the way she's been making friends all over. Now she tries to only face forwards on Zorry's shoulders, but she's too curious, can't. She keeps shifting to look. Zorry doesn't set her down, she wants to get home fast to deliver Zettie. Zorry has somewhere else to be after the whistle goes. Some place which occupies her mind fully just now.