Stone Seeds (8 page)

The OneFolks at the table seem to glitter, Zorry looks
closer. Refocuses. Must be a Bavarnican mine's worth of gems just in the dining hall alone.

“That boy last night. Tomax.” She thinks aloud. “Doesn't he work the gem mines by day?”

“Aye Zorry. Yes, yes. But don't make connections that do not exist. You've to look for the thread that binds it all together. The whole picture. Those gem mines? It's all for this Zorry. For this competition at the feast table.”

“What do you mean?”

“The only chance the OneFolks' get to show off the jewellery,” Mamma Zeina says, “is at the feasts of the flower fund of Bavarnica. And so must buy up the best pieces in the weeks beforehand. It's a signifier of power. The competition in this room is important to the future alliances and bloodlines of the OneFolks, Zorry. The gemstones are money and Gaddys is in charge of its distribution. It's as simple and as complicated as that.” Mamma Zeina strokes her small chin.

Zorry tears her eyes away from the pendant.

“It's another crack in the system, Zorry. Don't you see? The gem mines nearly done. And when it is … these folks' whole world will be built on sand, Zorry. They won't know what they are. What or who.”

“Yes.” Zorry lies. “Yes, I see what you mean.” She has no idea what this means but she doesn't want to disappoint Zeina so early on in her work rota.

Mamma Zeina sighs, “Then you see more'n most Child. But what you don't see is I'm in pain now. Enough talk. Help me, Girl. Help me to serve these damned platters.” She thrusts a large silver plate at Zorry's chest. Zorry strains to catch and hold it. Looks down, shudders. “Holy baobab,” she
mutters quietly to the food. “I am so sorry.” She takes a deep breath and gets on with her work.

Zorry deposits her platter as skilfully as she can and whips her hand away as an elderly OneFolk farmer snaps at her gummily, semi-humorously tries to bite her arm. Then grinning with his one tooth, chuckling at his own sour joke.

Zorry smiles and bows, discretely wipes the old man's slobber off her skin, she walks away. There is a red indent from his one lower tooth left in her arm. She feels the throb of it only later.

Zorry returns to Mamma Zeina's side. She thinks of something. “I heard some childur got pizened.” She says. “Last time they took flowers like these out to the edge farms.”

“Aye. They were so hungry that they nibbled the leaves of the flowers.”

“And the year before that the truck delivery man hit an old woman with his truck?”

“He drove too fast to get away from the hungry edge farms. Now hush, Zorry.” Mamma Zeina says, giving Zorry another plate to serve. “Your tune was off just now. You've been made.” Glares, wide frightened eyes. “No room for mistakes Zorry. Not here.”

Zorry looks up, follows Mamma Zeina's eye and Gaddys' Most Beloved flower girl on the end of the table is watching Zorry. She looks away quickly. The flower girl makes no sign to Gaddys. Who knows why she chooses to spare Zorry. Mamma zeina looks at her, shrugs. “She might want something later or maybe she's even one of us. It's hard to tell. Only Jengi knows how many we are, how far we reach out. How many Thought Seeds that he's planted into the divided tribes. Mostly we
don't know about each other. It's for our own safety, Zorry. And for theirs too. At least for now.”

“For now?”

“Aye. Zorry … Even out the notes in your voice. You need to work on your voice.”

Zorry clears her throat, “Sorry.”

Mamma Zeina looks shrewdly at Zorry. “And it will rain so hard that night that morning will come.” Mamma Zeina stops talking. Clutches her platter and makes her way slowly back toward the feast table.

Zorry saves the question which has been nagging her most until Mamma Zeina comes back, “Why are there Egg Men guarding entrances and exits every which way you look Mamma Zeina?”

“You mean him? That's Antek's father.”

Zorry looks in the direction Mamma Zeina just looked. The old Egg Man's head appears to be too large for his body, and his skull is rounded strangely at the back, giving the appearance of a skull-helmet.

“No one knows if batch 46 of the Egg Boys, Antek's father's squadron, if those big heads contained bigger brains, or just heavy skulls in case of falling. I suspect the latter. They were made for the mountain.”

Zorry examines the Egg Man discreetly. His neck seems to strain at the weight of his skull.

“Batch 46 were poorly made, if you ask me.” Mamma Zeina shrugs. “Clumsy looking.” Sniffs.

“Who is this Antek?” Zorry rolls her eyes in the boy's direction. “The son? The young one?”

“He is … Antek is a person of interest to the resistance,
Zorry. Let us leave it at that.” Mamma Zeina sniffs again and rolls another napkin.

“But the younger one, this Antek you seem to like so much,” Zorry scowls … “He has a different shaped head. He looks … He looks pretty human to be honest, Mamma Zeina.”

Mamma Zeina eyes her. The old woman becomes cautious. “He is one of batch 47.”

“The new batch?”

“Yes, Child. The new batch.”

Mamma Zeina stops talking for a long time. And then, “The Egg Boys are posted here today on account of the rumour that the general himself might attend this feast of the flowers.”

Zorry's eyes widen.

“Relax child, that's always the rumour and the general never does show up. I've been working this kitchen ten years, and I've never clapped an eye on him.” Rolls a napkin, tips an escapee back on to its plate and then looking at it. Waving claws and curiously intelligent expression. “The general hasn't shown his face in public for the last twenty-three years. Aren't too many folks, even in this room, who would recognise him iffen he did. Probably only Jengi who ever looked the general properly in the eye. They say even the general's wife only met her husband the once.” Shudders.

“But Jengi saw him you say?”

“Close enough to count the pink pores on his face. Leastways that's his story.”

Zorry sniffs. “And you believe him? You believe in this Jengi, don't you?”

Mamma Zeina folds a napkin. Eyes Zorry. “He's not perfect. He'll do. You don't like him do you, Zorry? Jengi, I mean.”

It's not a question as far as Zorry can make out, so she doesn't feel the need to answer it.

Mamma Zeina turns a little toward Zorry. Blinks. Quick knowing smile. “We work with Jengi, Child. He is less dangerous when we do it with love.” Sighs. “Look. He's a friend. We believe he means well, although he hasn't … We didn't … In spite of …”

Her shoulders droop softly. She doesn't finish any of her broken sentences. Zorry listens best to what folks don't say. “Got it. Work with him. Watch him.” Mamma Zeina eyes the girl's long sloping back. Presses her forefinger against the side of her head. She has learned just now that she needs to be more careful, educating Zorry. It seems the girl misses nothing at all.

The general's wife rises slowly to her feet once more, coughs and taps the side of her glass. She looks unsteady for a moment, Gaddys appears to take the reins. Support her from behind. And then the general's wife giving obsequious slightly sickening thanks then to Gaddys, the village shopkeeper, for her stirling work in getting the best table together for the OneFolks' village, like always. “Although …” She says, peering hazily out into the middle distance, “although … I myself cannot eat a scrap.” Eyes the plate with compassion then rather than distaste.

There's a collective intake of breath. She waves one starved limb, boney fingers passing in front of her eyes.

The general's wife sits down.

It's sudden.

One of Gaddys' beloved flower girls had pushed the old woman's chair hard into the backs of her knees, ending her
performance abruptly. “You'll be more comfortable, Dear.” Pats the older woman's emaciated arm, petals around the flower girl's face tauten then its leaves curl around her neck, as though the plant she wears senses something. The beloved flower girl is softly turning blue, looks over at Gaddys with wide reproachless eyes. Pleading, suffocating. Gaddys gazing at her grimly. Something happens. Zorry watches the leaves slowly slide away from the girl's neck. Now Zorry and the beloved flower girl meet each other's eye, it's an infinitesimally brief, knowing glance. Both turn away at the same time.

Mamma Zeina winces.

“What's wrong Mamma Zeina, you still have a pain?”

“I have a thousand pains, Child. Take this whilst I …”

Mamma Zeina holds on to the wall for balance. Now her face twists in agony. Zorry sees something's wrong.

“Do you have a pizen, Mamma?”

“Zorry, Child … I believe that I do.”

THE MOTHER CUPBOARD

“LOOK AWAY FROM ME, don't make a fuss Zorry.” Mamma Zeina gazes back toward the feast. “It's nothing I can't handle.” Gaddys looks at Mamma Zeina. Gives a surprisingly wide, doggish yawn. Showing all her strange, child-like teeth.

Mamma Zeina smiles back through gritted teeth.

“I said turn away, Zorry. Move away from me, Child.”

Zorry stares out at the feast. Anyone looking over toward the young Sinta woman would only see impassive smiles. The Sinta left in Bavarnica learned to hide their facial tells in the long ago and even Zorry can call on this facial stillness if she concentrates. In an emergency, like this one, it's essential to be calm.

Mamma Zeina doesn't like her girls taking risks, especially Zorry, whom she loves most of all her kitchen helpers. Taking unnecessary risks Mamma Zeina believes to be a species of sin. Of course, coming from a woman who risks her own life everyday three times before sun up …

“Damn them.” Zorry says, through gritted teeth.

“Hush Zorry. Not here. You is bein' reckless, Child. Now turn toward the room. ‘Taint about the battle. Child, it's about the war. Now. Bow, scrape and smile the way that I taught you, Sinta girl. Now. Again.” She watches her student. “That's right,
Zorry. Smile like a Sinta. Meaning with clenched teeth, use the injustice in each bow and scrape just to power you onwards, Zorry. That's the way. Turn it, twist it. Use your rage, Zorry. Like I taught you. Head toward the back door. Be discreet Zorry. I'll follow you as soon as I can.”

Zorry faces the dining room with a beatific look, bows low. Turning then with a dancer's grace, she sweeps toward the door. Several pairs of eyes at the groaning table follow the girl, it's a dangerous simmering atmosphere. Mamma Zeina considers this. There is something troubling about the wake that her favourite leaves behind her. She's going to need to address that if she's to be useful undercover. Once again Mamma Zeina has a worried thought about, Zorry – it don't do for a Sinta girl to stand out the way Zorry does. She'll not be certified tame by Gaddys at this rate. She'll be sent to work in the sewers and she'll be no use to the resistance down there. Zorry will need to work on herself if she's going to be a useful undercover in the general's house.

Zorry is shoved into the door hinge by the Egg Man who guards it. A punishment for not seeming submissive enough just now in the feast room. Young Sinta are generally meted out this kind of treatment, small but relentless punishments on a daily basis, to ensure they enter full adulthood compliant. A little broken down.

Mamma Zeina winces on Zorry's behalf.

And now The Egg Man at the door eyes Mamma Zeina.

She turns away and tries to stack the dishes. Her left hand is trembling again.

In the corridor by the back door, a show village woman slips away from the feast and hands Zorry a napkin with a
spewed snail in it. Zorry takes it and curtsies, thanks her. The vomited up, half-digested creature, cracked shell pieces and all, drizzles nauseatingly down the side of Zorry's hand and into her shirt sleeve. The shirt that Zorry's mother, Mamma Ezray, lovingly starched and ironed for her eldest daughter this morning. As if her shirt could protect her from this.

Zorry watches the OneFolk woman's bony back sway, she swaggers past Zorry, back toward the feast. The OneFolk' women are thin on account they vomit up their food in a deliberate manner, or consume prescription medicines which enable them to digest it faster.

The woman clomps away from Zorry unsteadily on painful looking stilt-like heels which look somewhat like weapons with the points, sharp edges and studded arrangements, but in truth mostly seem to hurt their wearer. The woman's arms are strapped down to her sides in the latest Bavarnican fashion, and on her back a painting of the leafy outline of a tree from the killing forest, nipping saplings entwined around it. The general's sun drifts up behind, like a giant pumpkin, huge and round and absurd looking, the body paint bleeding out at the edges where the woman leant on her chair. She's left orange half moons on the velvet surface of the seat-back.

Zorry finds that once again, and as if by instinct, she's backed herself into a window. She turns now and looks out. The general's sun blinks out and the last light from the old sun is rising. The understanding comes to Zorry, standing here with a woman's sour smelling vomit and the soft guts of a Bavarnican snail dripping down from her wrist to her elbow. This will be my life until I die, she thinks. This.

A line of baobab trees mark the boundary where the edge
farms cede into the desert beyond them. The baobab seem for a moment to Zorry as though they lift their great arms and wave. Blink, blink. And then roll their huge stomachs. For a moment it's as though she can hear the rustle of the desert wind in their branches.

Zorry closes her eyes. Mamma Zeina takes so long to arrive that Zorry naps briefly, forehead against the cool wall. When she wakes she knocks her head accidentally, blinks and whips round. Nobody saw, apparently. Zorry wipes away a seam of sleep-dribble. Checks behind her. Zorry's eye is drawn back toward the window. There's something out there. Moving in and out of view.

It's a small light.

The tiny patch of yellow dances on the farthest baobab. When Zorry squints and looks closer it disappears. Now she imagines that she dreamed it.

Something makes Zorry look down. She examines her hands.

The yellow saliva trail has stained the skin of Zorry's left palm. The oozing napkin is still clutched in her right hand.

Zorry drops the napkin.

Her damp right hand slowly curls closed.

“Zorry.”

Zorry turns abruptly, sees Mamma Zeina walking awkwardly toward her. The old woman is slow, unsteady on her feet. When she gets closer Zorry hears Mamma Zeina hissing a stream of barely audible foul words. It takes Zorry a few moments to understand what she's saying. It's a long, slow, obscene string of Sinta curses, forbidden texts from the ancients, “You do not do, you do not,” Mamma Zeina curses,
“Any more, black shoe, in which I have lived like a foot …”

And Zorry gives the answering phrase to the funeral poem, “And one gray toe, big as a frisco seal and a head in the freakish Atlantic.” Mamma Zeina stares at her. “Where it pours bean green over blue.” Zorry finishes with a flourish and then, “Mamma Zeina why are we saying death poems now, this ain't a funeral. Is it?”

Mamma Zeina stops. She leans heavily on the wall.

“What's wrong Mamma Zeina? You're really sick?”

Mamma Zeina can't answer for a moment. And then turning, gripping Zorry's arm just to stay upright.