Stone Seeds (27 page)

Antek looks down. He strokes the slightly raised scar on his chin.

Now Zorry defends Antek. “He saved Zettie and he helped me, he ain't got a kill switch.”

“I don't know.” Antek says, meeting her gaze. “I don't know what I am. Who I might be. There are parts of me that are run from Central Control.” He turns over his hands. He looks down at his palms.

“I should go back.” His eyes are cavernous, strange, two candles burned down to the wick, Zorry thinks. She feels a wave of sorrow for him. He gazes up at Zorry. “I should get away from you all.”

Antek's father slips closer to hear. Hides behind a killing tree. Small snake slips over his left hand and he eyes it briefly, flicks it off.

The Egg Man rubs his hands together. The temperature is roasting in the forest already, but the Egg Man can't seem to get warm. He looks down at himself. He is hairless from burns, his skin straggled with bruised veins. There is an oily sheen of forest matter covering him from skull to boot.

An insect ticks and whirs in the darkness on his left side.
He turns toward it.

A biting tree branch near Zorry's right hand sniffs the air and moves toward her snake-like, slow. She steps away from it easily. Looks up. Soft light of moon through the branches.

“What's that noise?” Tomax asks.

“Howl of the one-eyed hyaena, last of its kind.” Jengi scratches his chin. “A bit like me.” Grins in the dark.

The branch of the tree stump Jengi leans on has rotted off and the stump is shiny with jewel coloured beetles. Jengi picks one up and lobs it. It clings to his fingertips and then flies from his hand. “Don't worry, Zorry knows how to handle those howling hyaenas.”

The four listen to the muted, dying sound. You could think that you'd dreamed it.

Jengi scratches his nose, pokes the fire and adds fuel to it. The stick catches alight and now he throws it, burning, into the middle. Flames are coming up fast now.

“I have something to tell you. Antek.” Jengi looks up. Eyes the dark trees around them. It's a brief, shrewd gaze.

“There's no general.” He says.

“What?”

“He died thirteen years ago. Pizened. By Zeina's last assistant. Gaddys covered it up. And even if he hadn't been … Pizened. For thirteen straight years there has been nothing to stop the Egg Men freeing the Sinta. Taking the flowers fund vans and stacking them with drought resistant seeds, driving them through the gates of Bavarnica. Ending this hell now, all in one night.”

“So why don't they? Who knows about this?”

“A handful of people know.”

“So why …?”

“They're afraid of repercussions. Their past coming back to haunt them. They're afraid of letting the Sinta and the edge farmers get up off the floor.”

“But if the edge farmers know the egg men helped, well then … We would be the rescuers. Wouldn't we?”

“Aye. Your farms, your families would be safe from strong neighbours. Iffen you were on the right side when …”

Zorry thinks of something Zeina once said, “And it will rain so hard that night that morning will come.”

Jengi eyes the smoke, rising. Scowls softly. “Your people will be safe from all that's coming down the tracks. Safe from the future.”

“So … If what you say is true, that nothing's stopping them …? Stopping us?”

“Just a gate.” Jengi eyes him through the smoke plumes.

“You're saying an insurrection? A military takeover of Bavarnica, by the Egg Men?”

“I'm saying just the opposite, Son. I'm saying the Egg Men should lay down their arms. Dig their fields. Go back to their families. Back to living. All the Egg Men have to do to stop this evil from continuing is …” He gazes gently at Antek. “Do nothing. Just stop.”

“Not fight? Jengi. Asking an Egg Man to lay down his arms is like asking a Digger to. It ain't …” Antek thinks about his father. “It's not written into Batch 46 DNA. They need something to fight. Someone.”

Antek is staring into the middle distance, he's stroking the groove in his chin. Something is slowly filtering into his mind. “Something has gone.” He says. He looks up. “I can't rightly
say what it is. But …” His hand falls away from his scar. “I have to try to find out,” he says. He stands up. “I have to try to go back. Go back to the barracks and tell them. Tell them the general is dead.”

Antek's father blinks softly. Surprised. He dips behind a killing tree, closes his eyes and leans there.
No
. He says gently. One word. He watches the general's sun dip behind the treeline. It goes out with a soft fiss. That means curfew. He looks down at his burns.

Insect sounds. Starting up on his left. It rises. The Egg Man lets the soft droning roll around him. Sinks back against the tree. He hears bird sound, squawks and hoots in the treetops above him. Ferns uncurl round his face. He looks down. Bends and flicks a slug off his shoe. He rubs the back of his neck. From here he can see the fire's last glitter. Small lights all down the branch beside Jengi's outstretched right arm, sparks dying one by one. The Egg Man's left leg is twisted and he moves away pained, at a lean.

Jengi looks up. Sniffs the air. “I can't smell Egg Man no more.”

Tomax reaches out his hand, touches Antek's hand. “You keep looking at me,” Tomax persists. “You remember me, Antek. Don't you? You remember something?”

Antek pulls his hand away once more. “I remember … Some.” Gazes softly at Tomax. Now there's a crackling in the trees behind him. He has a sudden intuition, “Father?” Antek asks the darkness. He whips his head around to see the exit to the OneFolks' village, small seam of red light. Blinks quickly. “I have to go back … For them.” Now he's scrambling blindly toward the red light and the exit to the village. Taking
risks. Tripping on tree roots, getting caught in tree fingers outstretched toward him. Getting scratched up by the killing forest, hears Tomax and Zorry calling his name, again and again, he staggers onward. He's moving fast.

Zorry turns on Jengi fiercely. “They'll kill him. For what? For who, Jengi?”

“Aye. They'll kill him. Eventually.” Jengi turns over his hands. Looks at the streaks of green on his palms, moss and mud. Zorry is angry. Angry suddenly. “His death will do nothing,
nothing
. Even together, we can't defeat the Egg Men. Not even a divided barracks. You don't have any answers. Mamma Zeina was right about you, you will kill hope with your next war.” She gazes blankly out into the darkness. “You are … Death. Jengi.”

Jengi meets her eye softly. “Offer me an alternative, Zorry. Something better.”

“Something …” She looks out into the dark forest. “We need something
else
. Something we ain't found yet.”

She gets up.

“Now where you going?”

“I'm going to find it. In there.” She points toward the forest's dark mouth. Dark green mottled leaves move away from the entrance, as though to invite her in.

She turns back to look at Jengi.

“I didn't think you would use us.” She blinks. “I didn't think you would …” Now she has to force the words out, “I didn't think that you would sacrifice
him
, and Tomax … sacrifice
me
?”

Jengi looks bleak. “Is that a statement or a question?” He goes on holding her eye. “This cause is all I am now, Zorry.”

“Batch 46 are sharpening their knives, right now, Jengi. Getting ready to put their last son to death. Antek trusted us.
Ever think of that?”

Jengi can't answer. He notices, as if for the first time, how her eyes are mismatched. The thing he'd tried to forget. Lapis lazuli and silver, green and gold. They seem to him to change colour again and again. There is a long pause and then, “I see.” She says. “We are all three
supposed to
die. Antek, Tomax, Zorry. A martyr for every tribe. Three Seeds, like the ancient book said. Well. No.” She says softly, looking up. “I said
no
.”

She draws back from the fire. There is a small patch of sky just visible through the tree limbs overhead, twig fingers part. There's a rustling of leaves, as though the forest were listening. “We are your stone seeds, and stone seeds
die
.” Zorry laughs. A sharp bark of bitter laughter. Silence again. And then getting up abruptly. “I've gotta get out of here. Get away from you.”

“Zorry. Where are you going?”

She turns to him, savagely. “I'm going to find every damned rain plant in this forest. I'm going to garden it and turn it, right here in the killing forest, then I'm going to plant ‘em out there.” She thumbs in the direction of the edge farms. The baobab.

“Sounds like a bold plan.”

“Shut up. I'm thinking.”

She squints, tries to make out a trail. There is something moving out there. A human shape, hoving in and out of view. And then it's gone. Gone as though she dreamed it.

“I'm going to find out what's in there.” She peers into the killing forest's dark mouth. “What or who.” She can see nothing ahead, not even her own hand in front of her face. “I'm going in.”

Jengi watches Zorry walking into the dark mouth of the killing forest, neatly steering through the nipping saplings, ducking under heaving branches, right hand across the back of her neck. Palm down, to protect it from leaches.

She's moving fast. Moving fast away from him. Getting out of sight, sharpened stick in her right hand. Raised a little, readied. In case of snakes or scurvets, and at first it seems as though she's veering right toward the fence to the edge farm and then she swerves left instead. Heads down the smooth dark throat in the centre of the forest's mouth.

Zorry can smell hot soil, burnt tinder, tin and the slick trace left by a reptile. And then the unmistakeable musky aroma of the scurvet in the grasses around her. Now she's eye height with the stinging grasses. They slowly reach out tendrils for Zorry's small chin, sniff the air around the gentle incline of her nose. Everything in the killing forest is snake-like, she thinks, not for the first time. Even the plants. She blows softly on the plant nearest her left eye, to discourage it, and then watches it dip and waver, and then grow back closer still. Blinks. Zorry bites down hard on her bottom lip. She steels herself. Pushes on.

She hears human sounds, only not like human sounds. Human shapes hoving into view and then vanishing again. The forest seems to her to hold its breath.

“Hello.” She says gently. And then, “Who are you? Are you for us?”

Us
the word seems to her to echo. Something moves in the trees to her left.

Snake slides across her right foot. It seems to leave her alone, there's a rustling in the soft, curling ferns to her right,
“Who are you?” She repeats.

Silence.

“What did you want?”

Zorry thinks she hears the sound of falling water, somewhere to her right. And then bird sound, a little farther off. Soft hiss of someone putting out a smoking campfire. The branches seem to move around her.

Jengi watches as the dark mouth of the killing forest closes behind Zorry. He watches the point where she vanished for a long time after she's gone.

Antek's father slides out from behind a tree. He sinks down until he's sitting on its tangled, upturned roots. The snake slides slowly around his left leg. The Egg Man ignores it. He inserts one long, boney finger deep into his left ear. Pulls something out. It makes a slippery sound unplugging. “Tree slug.” He says. Noticing the slug's poisoned sacs are empty, must have been unloosed in his left ear canal. This doesn't seem to bother the Egg Man over much. He flicks it. Scratches his ear. Steam goes on rising from the forest floor vent beside him. And now he's listening to the forest. Fussing sound, sighing of tree limbs, shaking of leaves as they rise and move away from his face.

He eyes the nip on his hand.

“Ouch.” He sucks the hand. “Pleased with yourself?” He asks the tree, sarcastically. “Damn predator.” He notices a praying mantis on his shoulder. Plucks it off. He examines its amazed face, softly turning it side to side, bites off its head. Chews it thoughtfully.

Crunch,
crunch
. The sound of splitting.

The forest is hot as sin but the Egg Man is still shivering.
His eyes are luminous, strange. Peering out through the nipping saplings. They dip and waver, sigh and move away from his face.

He waits ‘till he's sure Jengi's asleep before he calls it in.

THE LAST REPORT

“WHO IS IT?”

“You know who it is.” He pulls his ear lobe. Drags his sleeve across his face.

There's a silence at the other end of the line. And then, “What do you want, Egg Man?”

“I want what I always want.”

“Remind me.”

“I want …” The Egg Man heaves off his right boot, a blue-shelled beetle tips out, scuttles into a fern. And then turning the boot over, examines its burnt sole. Sighs.

“I want a new plan.”

Jo spent her early years in Botswana, where the family garden was a fenced off piece of the African Bush. Having successfully dodged the snakes in the tomato plants, Jo came back to England and slowly read her way to Oxford Uni to study English. Her first job was editing multicultural education and anti-racism books for schools. Since then Jo's published short stories, non-fiction and children's books and written reviews for the world's first online Empathy Library.

Described as “an intelligent, creative, imaginative, original writer” by Guardian Book of the Year author Trevor Byrne, Jo has been Shortlisted for the Fish International Short Story Prize and has had a short story selected for an anthology edited by New York Times Notable Book of the Year author Sandra Tyler (US edition 2016).

‘Stone Seeds' is Jo's first novel.