Seed (18 page)

There. I walk through. The grass is shorter here, the field in harvest.

Don’t think that you are alone. The night is a blanket to protect you. The hidden animals are your friends. Don’t look back at the shadow of the house.

Is someone watching me?
Keep walking. Don’t wake up.

The air changes; I’m near the trees. I can sense their height. I am here, walking among them, feeling the jagged bark of their trunks. They show me the way until I know I’m in the clearing.

I walk slowly forward.

“Kate?” I whisper. But I know she won’t be able to hear me, as she is locked in the earth.

I can feel Papa S.’s Worship Chair. As I touch it, I wake up more and suddenly I’m alone, in the dark of the woods. I want to run, but I can’t.

“Forgive me,” I say as I pull the chair, hear it scraping through the earth.
Quickly, Pearl.
I kneel and push the wet leaves away until I feel the loop of metal. Pull it up, pull it up.

The trapdoor opens.

“Kate?” I whisper. But she doesn’t reply. “Kate?” I say again. I don’t want to go down. I can’t go down. But what if she’s hurt? What if she doesn’t answer because she can’t?

I put my foot on the top step. And the next. And the next. I am going down into that circle of earth.

“Kate?” I’m at the bottom and I kneel on the ground, feel
everywhere with my hands.

She’s not here. Kate is not here. I feel up the walls, in every crack of the earth and I have to get out because I can’t breathe and Kate isn’t with me and I’m alone in the dark. I feel up the steps, so quickly until I’m out in the air. I lower the trapdoor and push the leaves over. Have I covered it all?

I pull the chair, the Worship Chair that must not be touched. Will he know? Will he be able to feel that my hands have been here?

I run back through the trees, my hands feeling the way. Through the rough ground of the harvest field. I can’t find the hole in the hedge. Something grabs at my hand, cuts my skin, and then I’m free, in the meadow.

I run toward the dark house, where every light is off. But someone is watching me. I know someone is watching me.

I push open the kitchen door and lock it quietly behind me. I’m standing by the sink, trying to calm my breath, when there is a noise and the light turns on. It’s Kindred John and Kate. They look shocked to see me. Flecks of red flame on Kindred John’s cheeks.

“Pearl, what are you doing here?” he asks.

I look at Kate. She’s been crying. “I’m getting a glass of water,” I lie. “Where have you been?” I ask her, before I can stop myself.

“Kate, too, is getting a glass of water,” Kindred John says. He walks to the cupboard as she stands in the doorway. There are marks on her arms. I look at them, but I don’t ask how she got them. Kindred John reaches for a glass, then goes to the sink. The tap wheezes as he turns it on.

He goes to Kate, lifts the glass to her lips. She tries to take it from him but he holds her hand away.

“I will help you,” he says, his voice kind. He has saved her. Wherever she has been, he has saved her. Hasn’t he?

When she has finished the water, he kisses her on the forehead.

“Go with Pearl. You need to sleep,” he says. His voice soothes away the last fragments of my fear.

I take Kate’s hand, but she won’t look at me as I lead her up to our room, up to the safety of our beds.

Ring-a-ring of roses, a pocket full of posies. A-tishoo! A-tishoo! We all fall down.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

“W
here had she been, though?”

Ellis and I are balanced in an apple tree, hidden from the house.

“She was fine.”

“But where was she?”

When I had asked Kate the same question, she had snapped at me. Told me not to ask again. She dressed quickly this morning, hid her arms from me, and now I don’t know whether I imagined the bruises. But I did not imagine that she disappeared for a whole day, and that Kindred John must have known where she had been.

“Mom had to go into a room,” Ellis says. “She won’t tell me more.” I pretend I don’t notice him rip the leaf from its branch and screw it up in his palm. “She said it was the right thing and she didn’t mind. But I don’t believe her.”

“Papa S. has forgiven her,” I assure him. But did she really need forgiveness? Ellis throws the leaf down to the ground below us.

The apple that I choose to pick is half-red, half-green. I pass it to Ellis. “Elizabeth says your music takes her pain away,” I tell him.

He holds my gaze as he bites into the apple. “Is she any better?”

“Not yet,” I say. “Soon though.” Because she will be fine. Nature won’t take her away from us.

The hills in the distance are silent. I breathe in Seed’s air and try to let it calm me.

“How can anyone want to live on the Outside, when you can have this?” I say.

“There’s beauty on the Outside too, Pearl,” Ellis says, tracing the musty bark with his finger.

“There’s murder and dishonesty and laziness and liars.” I look right at him, because I know he can’t deny it. He’s been there. I know he’s seen it all.

“It’s not all like that. Only bits of it.”

“You know they poison the water, don’t you?” I ask. I don’t want to scare him, but if he doesn’t know then I must warn him. “Papa S. has been to meetings with people in the government. They put viruses into the water, to make people sick.”

“Why would they do that?” Ellis laughs, but he’s not happy.

“They’re bad people, Ellis, the ones who run the country. They think they can take Nature into their own hands.”

“Right,” Ellis says. “And I suppose you believe in the bogeyman?”

“Who’s he?” Why is he being like this? I’m only trying to help him.

“It doesn’t matter,” he says. “But what does matter is that you shouldn’t believe everything you’re told.”

“What about the floods?” I say.

“What floods?” Ellis asks.

“The floods that are taking over miles of land. They’re Nature’s revenge.”

“For what?”

“For everything. Nature will destroy everything, apart from Seed,” I say.

Ellis is smiling at me. Is he happy that he will be safe, or is he mocking me? “And Papa S. told you all of this?”

“He knows it all.”

“Bit of luck I’m here, then,” Ellis says.

“Yes,” I say and I smile at him. He isn’t laughing at me now. He understands.

“Will you kiss me, Pearl?” he asks.

The question stops my breath.

“No,” I say. But I know it’s not really what I want to say. I look over to the house, behind the trees in the orchard.

“Ever?” Ellis asks. He’s looking at me so intently that I feel I might fall.

“No,” I say. But inside, my stomach shoots through with a
feeling so strong that I don’t move, in case I never have it again.

“You will,” he says. Then he grabs a branch and swings himself down, landing on the grass below.

As he walks away, he looks back at me, just once.

And me? I sit in the apple tree, his words and my thoughts taking me to a red place I know I shouldn’t go. But I do go there. Step by step, with my eyes closed and with burning feet, I go there.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

I’
m in the greenhouse, hidden in the corner. I’m sure Jack won’t find me here. I smell the cooped-up air, with its memory of tomato leaves. It’s mostly cucumbers in here now, and I crouch among the plants. I can no longer hear Jack counting in the distance. We’ve scattered far and it will take him ages to find us.

My legs begin to ache, so I sit down and stretch them out. The ground is dirty but it’s dry enough to brush from my skirt.

I peer through the glass, but I can see no one. I could sleep in here. Close my eyes and sleep until evening meal. The warm, stale air mingles with my thoughts, but it doesn’t help make sense of them. About how I feel when Ellis is close. But how I hate his Outside mind and the questions he has brought. The spittles of anger growing in Papa S. Kate in the kitchen with Kindred John.

A fly is buzzing around my head. It’s caught in here, beating its wings to try to get to the outside. Slowly, I stand up and I quietly open the door, but the fly doesn’t seem to see the way out. Gently, I rest my hand next to it on the glass. The fly calms, hesitates, and then walks onto my palm. Inch by inch, I move to the
glass door, lift my hand and set it free.

“Got you,” Jack says behind me. He has his arms around my waist and swings me in a circle.

“That’s not fair,” I laugh.

“It’s very fair,” he says, releasing me. “Now you have to help me look.”

He takes my hand and we run to the blackberry hedge that circles the field. We duck down low and I have to pull my skirt up to my knees so that we can creep along unseen. When I begin to laugh, Jack holds a finger to my lips and silences me.

“If we do half the woods each, we’ll find people in there,” he whispers.

And so we separate as we reach the edge of the trees, walking slowly and quietly away from each other, hunting the others down.

I find no one. Not by the lake, not near the worship circle. But there is a noise by an ash tree. Silently I creep up to it, bend down low, and reach my arm around the trunk. I feel something and as I move around to see, there’s a pain on my hand. Now something on my face, on my arm. They are bees, huddled around a wild hive. I blink and they swarm at me.

Suddenly they’re in my hair, down my back, on my lips. They’re in my clothes, stinging and stinging my skin. Stinging my eyelids and my bare legs.

I’m running and screaming as I try to brush them off me, but they stick to me. It feels like hundreds of them. Somewhere there is Jack and he’s pushing them away, but there are too many of them under my clothes, stinging me. So I pull at my shirt, rip it over my head.

Rachel runs from the house and pulls me into the kitchen. There are bees tangled in my hair. Jack pulls them off, shakes them from his thumb.

“Run her a bath,” Rachel orders him.

We’re at the sink and she is holding my arms under cold water. The bees have hurt me. She runs a wet cloth on my face, over my eyes.

Kate and Ellis run in.

“Get me some nettles,” Rachel tells them. “Bring them to the bathroom. Quickly.”