Seed (13 page)

I stroke her hair. “It’s OK, Sophie. It will stop soon.”

“No,” she says and she starts to cry. Ruby sits up, but Bobby stays lying still, his eyes open wide.

“How about you just try to sleep?” Ellis says gently. But Sophie just starts crying more.

Bobby screams. He’s pointing to the top of the dip.

“What is it?” Kate asks, sitting up.

“There’s someone there,” Bobby says and he tries to burrow his head into me. I look up. There is nothing but darkness.

“Right,” says Ellis. “I’m taking Sophie back to the house. Anyone else coming?”

Ruby and Bobby don’t answer. They just stand up, holding each other’s hands.

Ellis turns and his shape bends down toward me. He whispers in my ear. “That honey thing is rubbish.”

Then they are all scrambling up the steep slope. At the top, Ellis looks back.

“Night,” Kate calls up.

“Are you really staying?” Ellis asks.

“Of course,” Kate answers.

“Then I’ll see you in the morning. If you haven’t been eaten by wolves,” Ellis says. Sophie starts crying again, so he takes her hand and they disappear.

There is an emptiness now that he has gone.

“What did he say to you?” Kate asks.

“Nothing,” I say.

I lie to her because something has happened that I don’t understand. There are no bees in Ellis’s mouth, no sign of them in his stomach. Yet he ate the honey without the drops and there should be eggs inside him. Shouldn’t there?

The silence again. Just Kate, Jack, me, and the stars.

Kate finally breaks the quiet. “Do you think he was serious about the man flying to the moon?”

“I think someone’s lying. Either him, or those who told him,” Jack says.

“He goes to a place where you learn things,” Kate speaks quickly, as though she wants to know.

“They taught him rubbish, Kate,” I say.

“Sometimes I can’t work him out,” Jack says.

“I know exactly how he works,” Kate says.

“How?” I ask. I need her to help me make sense of everything, make everything straightforward again.

“I’m going to sleep now,” Kate says. I want to keep talking. There is so much I want to say. But Kate is quiet and I think that she has closed her eyes. I keep mine open, hoping the sky will wipe clear my thoughts.

Slowly, Kate’s breathing changes. Jack turns on his side and I think he’s asleep too. The night sky stays almost touching me.

There is a sound. I look up the sides of the dip. Something, someone, is walking across the field. Cold grass is crunched underfoot. Closer still and then it stops. I know someone is here.

“Ellis?” I whisper. No one replies.

Someone is watching. Can I hear their breath? I pull the blanket tight to my neck. I want to cover my face, but I’m frightened that if I do, they will come down.

“Is that you, Ellis?” I whisper again. “Jack? Kate?”

They’re sleeping, while someone is looking at us.
It is just the
night,
I tell myself. Maybe Nature herself has crept here to keep us safe.

Something moves. The footsteps are going away. They are gone. I want to run up the sides of the dip to see, but fear stops me.

Gradually, I let the stars back in. Now that is all I see, all I hear. My eyes ache, but I won’t sleep yet. Not yet.

He brings the bowl in. And the glass with the juice. Always the glass with the juice. Sometimes he will hold it to my lips, so that I have to drink. Other times I want to drink, because afterward it makes me sleep and then I am free.

In the dark, I can fly out of the window, float down to the meadow and run and run and run and not stop. The air is in me, the fresh, clear air. It swoops around my mind and wipes away the pain. That throbbing pain of loss and loneliness and sickness and bleakness. I will run to the trees, to the lake I remember there. To the rocks.

In the darkness I am free.

He can’t hurt me.

No one can touch me.

And so I eat and so I drink and so I live. In this room, this tiny room, this suffocating prison. Watch my child through the glass. Hear my heart beating out my days in the silence.

Maybe one day I will not drink. Maybe one day I will not eat. And the next, and the next? Maybe one day I will make myself truly free.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

“D
on’t you ever think it’s odd that you’re all so fussed about Mother Nature, but then you’re working on cars that pump pollution into the sky?” Ellis asks Jack.

I’m with them in the barn, sitting on seats we’ve made out of straw. The children are here, jumping from the bales, ducking in and out of the tunnel they’ve created. Outside it’s getting dark, but Kate is still with Kindred John, helping him in his room.

“We make good engines, though,” Jack replies.

“Good engines?”

“Yeah, to kind of balance out those on the Outside.” Jack pulls his shirt on over his head.

“How does that work then?” Ellis asks. He has a piece of straw in his hands and he’s slowly splitting it in two.

“The oil that we rub into the engine, it’s that.”

“What?”

“That cleans the air. Kindred John discovered it a few years ago. So the cars we make for the people Outside actually help stop the pollution.”

“They told you this?” Ellis asks. He throws down the piece of straw and looks at Jack.

“Yeah. It’s amazing, isn’t it?”

“It gets rid of pollution from other cars,” I say.

“So, the engines we work on at Seed are filled with some magic oil?”

“I suppose you could put it like that,” Jack says proudly.

“And I suppose you believe in the tooth fairy too?” Ellis asks.

“What’s that?” asks Jack. Ellis just shakes his head, but I wish that he would walk away.

Then Kate is here. She comes running in, her wild look in her eyes. There’s no space for her, so she climbs up and sits on Jack’s lap.

“Finished with Kindred John?” he asks.

“Yes,” she says, pulling her cardigan across her body.

“Why did he need you?” Ellis asks.

“Just stuff,” she says. Then she scrambles up and runs for the hay tunnel. She crawls through and grabs a squealing Bobby by the ankles.

“Stay in my prison!” she cackles. “You cannot escape.” So Bobby sits in the tunnel, giggling, as she runs over the bales. “You’ll all be mine!”

Sophie tries to dodge past her, but Kate holds her by the waist and throws her in the air. “To my lair,” she shrieks as she bundles
Sophie into the tunnel. Kate pulls a straw bale to block one of the ends.

Jack jumps up, grabs a spade leaning against the wall, and goes to join her. “I’ll guard them,” he says in a gruff voice, spreading his legs wide, holding the spade high.

I watch Ruby start to scale the big wall, made from heavy bales stacked high next to the tunnel. She’s not allowed up there, it’s too dangerous.

“Ruby,” I call out, but I don’t think she hears me. She rushes up, gleefully trying to find hand and foot holes.

And then the tower falls. It’s as though it happens in slow motion, as I watch the bales piled high up on each other begin to lean too far. Ruby is screaming as she’s falling backward, still clutching onto the straw, and it all just crashes down, piles and piles of bales smashing the tunnel below.

“Sophie!” Ellis yells, and he’s running and pulling at the bales. I’m with him and I can’t see Sophie, or Ruby, or Bobby, or Kate, or Jack.

I run to the door.

“Kindred Smith!” I scream into the darkening air.

I’m back beside Ellis and he’s throwing the bales behind. Together we grab them away. They’re so heavy, as if they’re made from bricks. The dust clogs my throat and we’re both coughing, but we still can’t see the tunnel, still can’t see or hear anyone.

“Hurry,” I hear Ellis wheeze. Jack’s hand appears and we push the straw from him and he’s coughing and retching. He doesn’t seem to notice the blood coming from a deep gash on his chest where the spade has sliced into the skin. His white shirt is soaked red. He stumbles to the side, just as Kindred Smith runs in.

Ellis finds Ruby and pulls her free. She’s shaking and Kindred John is by my side and he takes her from me.

We’re pulling at the straw, the thick air dragging at my throat. I’m screaming in my head, screaming for the children. Screaming for Kate to be safe.

We find the tunnel and there, huddled inside, are Sophie and Bobby. They’re clinging to each other, their faces alive with fear.

“She’s not breathing,” I hear Kindred Smith say, but I don’t understand because Ellis has pulled Sophie out and she is breathing because she’s crying and he’s holding her.

I look up and it is Kate lying motionless. Her hair is tangled with straw, her body bent at an angle, her face white as a star. Everyone is standing, just staring at her.

“Do something,” I hear Ellis shout, but no one moves. I don’t know what to do.

“Kate?” I say, but she’s lying there and everyone just stands, looking down at her.

Suddenly Ellis pushes Sophie into Kindred Smith’s arms
and he’s kneeling next to Kate. He’s feeling her neck, feeling her wrists.

“Come on, Kate,” he says. He bends his face to her lips. No one moves, no one helps him. “She’s got a pulse,” he says, but he looks bewildered. Then Jack is by his side, his hand covering his own skin where the blood is pushing through.

“Can we help her?” he asks. The Kindreds look at him. Still they don’t move.

But I do. I run to Kate, try to lift her in my arms and shake her. “Kate!” I scream into her quiet face.

Ellis starts to push both his hands hard into her chest. “Rub her arms, keep her warm,” he says.

So I take her arm in both my hands and I rub it as though it is a stick, and I am lighting a fire. The Kindreds’ eyes watch us as I work on that spark to bring it to a flame, and Ellis pushes on Kate’s heart, and Jack whispers into her ear, telling her to wake up.

Then Ellis leans in and it looks like he is going to kiss her, on her lips, but she moans and turns her head and she’s opened her eyes, looking straight into mine. I watch her fire burn again as I rub her arms and I’m crying and laughing and hugging her into me. Ellis pushes me gently away and he picks her up into his strong, safe arms.

“We need to get her to a doctor,” he says.

But Kindred John is blocking the way. “She is fine now. Take her into the house,” he says.

“But she needs to see a doctor,” Ellis says.

“No, she stays at Seed.” Kindred John reaches out to take Kate, but Ellis won’t let him.

“Fine,” Ellis says and then he barges past Kindred John, out of the barn. I follow him toward the light of the house.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN