Stone Seeds (24 page)

“At least let her under your coat, Man. Can't you see she's frozen? The child's in shock.” And now the whole of Zettie's upper body is hidden by the flap at the side of her father's
jacket, the fabric of which is torn open at the back now and moves like a small, boneless wing, covering the child only just, but covering her. “She's alright,” Aunt breathes out. And then turning to examine Zorry briefly.

“She's alive. Zettie is alive. That's the main thing.”

“She's alive,” Zorry repeats her aunt's words. And then looking at Zettie's small blue-tinged, bare feet. As though she sees them for the first time in her life.

“It's a miracle.” Aunt sniffs. “And no thanks to your mother. Damned radical. I told her. Bringing trouble to a house with children in it.” Aunt purses her lips. And then turning back to Zorry.

“Are you alright, Zorry?”

A wave of exhaustion washes over Zorry. She can't say what she feels just now. Can't even feel it. And again that feeling of being untuned, of drifting six feet over her head.

The morning after's cold and bleak and the sky is thick and grey and heavy, rain clouds gathering. Zorry, waking just a little, watching the low light filtering in, lets herself understand it for the first time.

She's gone.

Mamma Ezray is gone and now no place is safe. Or ever will be again.

REPORT 4: PLANNING

“IS THAT YOU, JENGI?”

“Yes.” Long pause. “What do you want?”

“What do I want?” Clears throat. “Well, since you mention it, Jengi … I need the name of the last Seed.”

“And why is that exactly, Sir?”

“Jengi. No games. Give me the name. Half of Bavarnica has a Z in their name. I know it wasn't Mamma Zeina. Or Mamma Ezray. I know that now.”

Silence.

“Jengi?”

“I don't report to you anymore.”

“Jengi!” Sharply. There's another silence. And then, in a different voice, just as though another person entirely were speaking, “Jengi, how do you expect me, us, to help your revolution, if you won't file reports.”

“Well, I'll be straight with you, Sir.” He stops, takes a breath. “I haven't seen enough evidence that you are the helping kind.”

“Jengi!” The voice is loud now, too loud. Jengi holds his hand over the receiver and then gazing down at the roots of the baobab.

“What is it you want? What exactly are you cooking here, Sir?”

“Forget that. Are you going to stick to our plan, Jengi?”

“I may stick to a plan.” Jengi says. Gently switching the receiver to Off. Replacing the excavated patch in the tree with the jigsaw piece of tree bark. He looks up. He's thinking.

“Jengi!” Muffled voice from inside the baobab.

Soft clicking sounds as the line dies slowly. Buzzing. Now Jengi hears two voices. Jengi can only just make out their words.

“What's Jengi doing?”

Sigh. “Jengi is negotiating.”

THE FORGETTING MEDICINE

NEXT MORNING THE EGG Boys come with clipboards instead of guns. The red headed Egg Boy takes off his helmet. Runs his right hand through his hair.

“Extra doses of the memory erasures today.” He stops talking, gazes around him. Takes in the room. And then a small, weak smile, “For those Sinta feeling
delicate
this morning.” He taps his clipboard, “Shop's orders. Special offer.”

The red-headed Egg Boy points at Zettie with his pen. “Even her.” He says. “We can give her the medicine a little younger than is strictly good for her brain.”

“No.” Says Zorry quickly.

“Yes,” says Zorry's father. “We'll take it.” Turns slowly toward Zorry, “After all, I am her sole remaining parent.”

“It's true.” The red-headed Egg Boy checks his clipboard. “Yes, it's your choice, Sir.” He makes a faux-bow to the child's father, which Zorry finds humiliating on her father's behalf.

“No,” she says again. “You have to …”

“I have to what?” The red-headed Egg Boy gazes ironically at Zorry.

“We'll take it.” Father glares at Zorry. Looks away.

Now Zettie looks from her father to her sister, and then
back at her aunt. Quick checking gestures. Aunt pauses. She nods.

Zorry's father takes his medicine mechanically. Zorry watches him swallow, a small shudder and then it's gone. She notes he looks calm, changed. He'll have forgotten Mamma Ezray by nightfall.

Zorry turns toward Zettie. She examines the child.

Zettie has developed a tremor in her right hand, since last night. An eye tic. There are large dark circles under her wide eyes, from lack of sleep.

“Will the medicine let her forget?” It's Zorry's aunt who asks the question, looking from her brother to her eldest niece.

Father impatiently pushes his own medicine box towards Zettie. “Wait!” The Egg Boy says, just a little too quickly. Checks behind him. “
This
one's for her.”

Now he taps his clipboard again. Hands the forgetting medicine to the child's aunt. “Well?” He says. And now Aunt realises that he's waiting for the child to take it in front of him.

Father looks up, he seems to note his sister's hesitation. He yanks the child's arm abruptly, dragging her away from her aunt.

“Well after all, he is the child's father.” The red-headed Egg Boy says, and bowing a little again toward Father.

Zettie is stiff in her father's arms, she tries to push away, and now Zorry's holding out her arms to take her. “This is my child,” Father repeats, as though it's himself he's trying to convince.

Now Father takes the medicine capsule with Zettie's name on it, expertly flicks it open and, pinching the child's mouth open at the cheeks, squeezes the medicine down her throat. Double dose.

Zettie can't help but swallow the medicine. She looks panicked and her eyes become large. Her pupils expanding softly until they consume the coloured iris. Just a moment later and Zettie is quiet, relaxed. Her limbs seem to lose their stiffness slowly, the soft shuddering goes and her eyelid tremor with it. She gets up and starts to move around the room. “It's like she's waking up from a bad dream.” Aunt says, amazed. The child stretches and yawns. The Egg Boy ticks Zettie's name off his long list of names.

Zorry refuses to take the government meds in front of the Egg Boy, claiming she will take it later, and the Egg Boy dutifully notes this down. Places her sack of capsules on the table. And then the warning, which the Egg Boy appears to be reading off his clipboard.

“If you refuse five erasures Zorry, then you will be greened and after that the general himself will wash his hands of you.”

He looks up from his clipboard, points at the blood stained boot-print at the kitchen back door. “Well. You know what happens next Zorry.” He looks at her. Shrugs. And then more softly, “Ain't your sister been through enough?”

It's as though something takes a hold of her throat, “So you are Batch Forty Seven.” Zorry says, quite recklessly, as far as her aunt's concerned. “And … This is your mission. Is it, Egg Boy? You're going to kill us with what you write on your clipboard. Kill us with red ink?”

There is a long, strange silence in the room.

Zorry is eye to eye with the Egg Boy. “Yes.” The Egg Boy says. “This is
my
mission, Zorry. What's yours?”

Something seems to pass between them.

Zorry listens to the gentle ticking sounds of the Egg Boy's
feet walking away. She gets up from her squatting position and walks over to the window. Gazes out through the gaps in the blind. The red-headed Egg Boy pauses at the gate. And turning back, looking in the direction of the kitchen window. As though he senses her there. He pulls his head protection back on. Zorry quickly ducks beneath the kitchen sink.

In a bit, Zettie gets down from her aunt's knee. Pads over the room toward her sister. Zorry tries to read the child and, for the first time, finds that she can't.

“I have to go, Zettie. Soon. It's important. Will you remember … Know it's me? I mean, when I come back?”

Zettie takes out her thumb.

“Here. Have this, Zettie.” Zorry pulls off both her twine rings roughly. Places them, one by one, onto Zettie's thumb, where they will not be so loose. Aunt, looking down at the child's small hand, sighs, “Zorry. Don't do something stupid now. It's all I ask.”

Zettie's eyes glitter.

THE REBOOT

“SHE'S TRYING TO BURN the chair.” Zorry's father says.

“Who is? What chair?”

“The chair with the patchwork cushions. Zettie put the whole thing in the fireplace.”

Zorry scratches her head. Gazes into the flames. And then turning toward Zettie.

“Yes, it was the … The spare chair.” Father says. Bangs his ear. Bangs it twice. And then a soft, amazed expression. He seems to tune out.

Zettie seems mesmerised by the fire. The heat rises and the fire spits out glowing ashes, landing one by one around her outstretched feet. She draws her legs up. Hugs her small knees and rests her chin there. Soft, wide eyes.

Flames slowly lick along the wooden limbs of Mamma Ezray's chair. There are sparks along the edges of Mamma Ezray's slow-patched cushions. Small fires in the seams.

“I wouldn't mind,” complains Father. “But Zettie should have asked me first. I could have taken the axe to the spare chair. Busted it up into small pieces, burned it over a week.”

“No!” Zettie says. Interjecting suddenly. And then, “You gotta put it in like that. Whole. Like I did. Or it ain't proper.”

“It ain't proper what, Zettie?”

Zettie glances up at her sister, doesn't answer. And then
keeping her fierce, watchful gaze on the chair. On the chair and the flames.

Is the child thinking about a Sinta funeral? Zorry wonders. Burning the dead's favourite chair is an essential part of any secret mother cupboard death rite. The chair is burned whole in the absence of a corpse (a mother cupboard's dead body is stamped ‘property of the general', rarely returned). But the Sinta rememberers will burn the dead's favourite armchair, cushions, patches and all. Keep watch until it's all gone, to make sure that only the fire, the smoke, the air, soil, wind can take the chair. Along with the scarves with curling patterns of turquoise and lapis lazuli blue, from the old times, the chipotle jars, the mother cupboard's mortar and pestle, the dried cactus paddles, pod-like seeds, the beads and the knitting. Detritus of plant experiments, paint pots. All the possessions of the dead, built up over a thrifty lifetime, invested with the spirit of the one who touched, made, patched up and held onto them, and will never touch or hold them again.

All but the dead's hidden books will be burned (because a book can never truly have an owner).

But so that the general and his Egg Men, Gaddys, may never confiscate, steal, or repurpose these things. Not now, and not forever.

Downbutnotout and Amen.

Zettie has only ever attended one illegal Sinta funeral, to Zorry's certain knowledge, and that was Mamma Zeina's funeral, six weeks ago, more. It's inconceivable to her that the child would remember that far back now. Zorry makes the decision to approach the matter cautiously with Zettie. If she
has some memory-debris then it may be a fragile thing and she mustn't be pushed.

“Well.” Zorry says. “Well it seems funny, don't it? It looks strange. The chair. Funny. With the flames licking around it that way.” Now Zorry looks at Zettie sideways, she examines the child. It seems impossible that the child could remember their mother. She was given an adult-sized medicine dose and she's only four droughts old, small for her age. Zorry pauses, thinking, and then, “I wonder, Zettie. Whose chair is that now?”

“It's the spare chair.” Their father says gruffly, from his corner. Bangs the side of his head. And then putting on his coat, as though he puts a coat on for the first time in his life. He staggers into the front room.

Zorry listens to the sound of Father, rattling open his medicine cupboard, the hinges stick and the handle's too heavy, falls off. Zorry turns toward her small sister again. “Is it the spare chair, Zettie? Is it nobody's chair?”

Now Zorry crouches beside Zettie. She holds the child's gaze.

Zettie looks up at her sister for a long time and then, as though the whole of Bavarnica weighs down hard on her tiny shoulders, a heavy sigh. “You don't know whose chair it is. Do you, Zorry?” And now Zettie, sounding almost comically like their mother, “Durn it, Child. Zorry you've forgot your own mother. You'd forget your own head too, your neck, elbows and arms iffen I let you. Wouldn't cha?”

Zorry blinks and sits back on her heels.

“Yes. Zettie. That there is Mamma Ezray's chair.” And then, “But … you took the meds. You took the meds and …” Checks
Zettie's arms, and then, lifting the child's matted hair, her ears and the back of her neck. “You're not greened.”

“Quit poking me about.”

“You've no green on you. How did you … do that?” Zorry stares hard at the child. “I'll fetch Jengi.” She says.

Soft sucking sound of the newly mended front door as Zorry almost pulls it out of its hinges. Clanking sound as she forces it back into its too-small frame. Zettie turns away from the fire and she looks at the door Zorry closed behind her. The child watches the door for a long time, listening to the pat, crunch, lollop, sliding rhythms of her sister's running feet on the rockoned path out front of the cottage. Zettie goes on listening until she can't hear Zorry's feet anymore.

She turns back toward the fire.

Mamma's chair is slumped against the inner sides of the fireplace. Smoke rises from the patchwork cushions. The logs Zettie used were damp and the fire is going out.

“I knewn it.” She says. And her small hands curling and uncurling. “You caint have a funeral iffen you ain't dead. It won't take.”

Jengi pops his head around the door. “I heard you were holding a real Sinta funeral, Zettie.”

Zettie looks down. Scowls.

It occurs to Jengi for the first time that if the child remembers her mother then she might also remember his own good self, pinning her down by the elbow, not letting her cry out or go to her mother, the guards. The child might very well blame him for what she saw in her yard.

“Is she a hidden rememberer? A rememberer hiding out in plain sight? Ungreened?” Zorry asks Jengi. Jengi meets
Zettie's eye. “Aye. That's what it looks like. There have been a handful lately, on the Sinta farmsteads. Most of the hidden rememberers are … children.”

Jengi seems to read Zorry then. “Now, don't start hoping, Zorry. You Sintas and your bloody hope, it's most likely just … They're having remnant memories, Zorry. It might all be gone by morning.” Jengi says, his eye caught by the child's small hands closed into two fists, her small brow furrowing. He decides to softly provoke Zettie, hoping Zettie will reveal what she knows, “The child's memory is a flash in the pan. Nope.” He says. “I don't reckon this child remembers her mother, not really.” Jengi eyes Zettie curiously. To see how she takes this.

Zettie scowls again, and then … Something seems to happen. She starts singing. Babyish made-up words, but it's not the rhythm or the intonation of a Sinta funeral dirge. It's one of Mamma Ezray's nursery rhymes.

“You're singing, Zettie?” Aunt appears around the kitchen door, roiling at a tin cup with a dark red cloth. A smile spreading across her tired face.

“It's the first time the little one has said a word in weeks.” And then, when Zettie's sing-song rhyme is finished, “Zettie, you will never guess where I found this hen's egg?” Aunt pulls the egg out of her apron pocket to show Zettie. “Reckon the hens were trying to save it for you. Go on. Try to guess where it was.”

Zettie seems to withdraw into herself.

Aunt peers at her. “Now then. Now. Why is she upset?” She looks up, seems to look at Jengi properly for the first time. “What did you do? What did you say to her?” And then, her voice softer now, looking down at the chair, at the fire, at the
child's glittering eyes and her strange expression. She thinks about the nursery rhyme. “Oh …” It seems to come to her. “She remembers?” And at first it's a relief. Soft laughter. And then, “Oh …” She says again. “She remembers …” Aunt looks down at the child. Locks her in a slow gaze.

Now tears are glistening on both Zettie's cheeks. By the firelight, Zettie's tears seems to Jengi like liquid gold. Surely, he thinks, this proves that the general's labs have been infiltrated? That Mamma Zeina's gathering is coming closer. Jengi blinks. The light shifts. Zettie is covered in snot and tears, the child is howling like an animal in pain.

Zorry tries to scoop Zettie into her arms, but their father strides out of the kitchen, stops her, roughly. “Don't you touch her. You've done enough. You and him.” Father grimaces at Jengi.

“Get out of my house.” He says. “Never come here again.” Her father delivers these words calmly. This is so Zorry will understand he's for real.

Zorry stands up slowly to go. Her eyes travel over Zettie and her aunt. She nods curtly at her father.

“Come on Zorry,” Jengi says. Holding his arm out. “We are doing no good here.”

At the newly-mended front door, Zorry turns around once. Gazes at the cooling fireplace.

The last dipping flames curl around the rusted nails, the hinges of the leaning, singed chair. Everything seems to glow.

“Watch them sparks, Zettie,” Zorry's parting words to Zettie. And now Aunt nods, pulls Zettie back and buries her face in the back of her neck. “You're too close to the fire, Zettie.” She says.

That night, Zettie dreams. Her mother's chair is burning and the fire builds high and frightening until, just when the fireplace can barely contain it, then the chair gets smaller. Slumps and shrinks into itself. And then it's all gone. Zettie thinks. The chair. The fire. The rising. Blink. And now the fire is licking out of the fireplace, curling into the room.

The child wakes up howling.

Aunt is with the hens in the yard, out of ear-shot. In a bit, Zettie wipes her face with her sleeve. She thinks of something. When the ashes cool, Zettie says to herself. When the ashes cool down … I'm going to find them chair nails. She plans ahead to sift the ashes for them later, when Father goes out for his next work rota, and whilst Aunt is in the allotment tending the roots.

Nails and screws from a chair can be right useful, Zettie thinks. Useful. In one way or another. She eases her feet down the bedside, splaying her small toes ready to meet the cold tiles. She pads over toward her bedroom window. She looks out.

Mamma said she would come to the fence.

Zettie looks out of her window for a long time, and then, “Mamma aint a liar.” She says to herself. “That funeral didn't take. And Mamma said she will come.”