A Single Stone (18 page)

Thinking on it makes her feel strange and so she moves her hand, sliding it further around the baby’s head. And turns her thoughts instead to the rock that is before and above and around them.

They are going on a journey, Papa said, but there is nowhere to go.

And now they are here and she is holding the baby with her tiny soft bones and Papa is striding forwards – climbing, squeezing through, moving rocks.

Papa, no!

Does she say it, or is it simply that the thought is so loud, drumming inside her mind?

It is all wrong, this. The baby should be at the Centre, wrapped tight. Jena should be at home, tucked in bed. And Papa down the hall by the fire, waiting for the last ember to die.

They should not be here, doing this.

But Papa works faster now, his fingers scrabbling at the stones. There is a frenzy to his movements as he lifts one after the other, then hurls them clear.

Look after your sister.

Jena steps to the side, flattening herself against a lee in the rock. She turns the baby inwards so she is cradled between her body and the mountain.

Jena.
Papa’s voice is hushed. When he turns, there is an odd light in his eyes.
Through here,
he says.
Follow me.

Then there are sounds. From behind them comes the thrum of running feet. Twigs snap, their sharp cracks piercing the stillness.

There is light in the forest, muted pinpricks growing larger. Flaming torches bob towards them. Faces blur into focus. Voices call urgently across the night.

Darius! Come away!

Those dark cloaks, their soft folds flapping like wings. Alongside them, a man runs swiftly in the shadows. A single voice rises above the others.
Stop, Darius! Don’t be foolish.

It is Uncle Dietz. Papa turns. His eyes slide past Jena to the forest, to the lights advancing through the trees.

They will go back now, she thinks. Uncle Dietz will talk quietly to Papa and he will come away. They will go home to the village and sleep, night falling gently over them like a blanket.

But Papa’s gaze locks on hers and there is fear in it, and something else too. He looks like he wants to go in every direction at once. Every direction and none.

Run!
he says.

And then he does.

The walls towered above Jena, the chaotic jumble of rock wedged inside.

The Pass, impassable. It was here that the path had brought her.

No. She caught the thought, reeled it back in. This was the path she had chosen. Where else could it have led, once her feet began to walk it?

Papa.

Had it been raining that night too? She could not remember. All she could see was his back, disappearing. His hand, beckoning.

In her arms, the baby was still and quiet. In her mind’s eye, there was a broken girl, a limp-necked bird.

She shook her head. One was then, the other now.

But suddenly they were both now, both then, the distance between collapsing as cleanly as if it had never been.

Papa is going but she is standing still. He is going through the rock. He is a head and then a hand and then the rock has swallowed him.

He cannot be there, where he is. It is wrong for a papa to be inside the rock and Jena cannot move her feet.

There are voices behind them. Behind her.

Child! Come back.
Uncle Dietz is calling and the Mothers too. Dots of light flare into halos that frame their faces.

Papa is gone but he is just around that corner. There – that narrow shelf the rock has made of itself. That he has made, by moving the rock.

It is wrong to do this. It is …

Papa! Come back.

A few steps and she can see him. Up ahead is all rock and he is pulling and tearing and tumbling. He is squeezing and climbing.

You can’t go inside, Papa. You are not in the line.

The line. She is five and that is one year closer. She is five and that is two years left.

Just two, Papa. Wait.

Light flashes on the rock. She turns around. Mother Berta is there and Mother Anya too.

They are in front and Papa is behind. And there is a sound – a low, rumbling, like a storm rolling in from the distance. Growing louder, growing nearer.

Jena!
Papa calls and so she turns again. And now he is in front and the Mothers are behind and there seems no way of getting that straight in her head.

And she cannot try because something else is happening. If this is a storm, it is like none she has ever known. It is beneath her feet somehow and all around. The sound rolls through her like it is carving a passage for itself. The walls sway and buckle. The rock reaches out, curving over and across her.

Papa’s hands still. He sees.

Jena!

Rocks tumble about her. The baby is in her arms and then she is gone.

Papa is there, reaching.
Take my hand. Take my hand.

Showers of small stones, the roar of something larger.

They are going but there is nowhere to go.

There is a light and a voice. Stones rain from above. Papa is hunchbacked, buckling, but still he calls her on. A white-hot pain slices her shoulder, making her gasp and stumble.

Hands are reaching, in front and behind. She turns, grasps one, lets it lead her away.

The Pass.

There were rocks beneath Jena’s hands, her own fingers scrabbling now. It was the simplest thing to move a stone aside. The simplest and the most difficult.

She would not hurl them as Papa did. Would not let them tumble, uncared for, to the ground. She would lift one between her palms and move it from here to there.

And then the next. The one that followed.

Until finally, a finger-width crevice, the narrowest of openings. Her arm found a sliver of space, eased itself in.

She looked behind her, the briefest of glances. The Mothers were back there somewhere, faint specks of light in the distance.

And ahead? Not Papa. She knew this, but still. She turned to the mountain.

She was fourteen and she was going.

She was gone.

Lia moves quickly through the rock. Outside, dawn is breaking. By the time she reaches the crack she will have all the light she needs.

Why did she not think of this earlier? If she peers through, there may be something she can see – some landmark she recognises that will tell her where her birthday stone fell.

To think of the stone falling is to think of the girl doing the same and so she tries not to. Who is to say what happened, where she went? There has been no commotion in the village, no word of a pale-faced girl who has tumbled off the mountain.

The girl is fine, Lia tells herself. And when she finds her stone, it will be as if nothing ever happened. She will have unstitched that day as cleanly as Mother unpicks a tangle of thread and begins again.

It is the smallest sound that draws her left instead of right. This is not the way to where the stone fell but it is only for a minute – to follow that scrabbling sound, to see whatever scuttler is creeping its way through the rock. Then she will double back, continue.

It will only take a minute.

Stone tore at Jena’s skin. Her fingers scraped along the rock, clawing for ground. A slickness to them now; they must be bleeding though there was no way to see. She had no headlamp, no light. This was utter, deepest black.

Everything about this place felt wrong, against nature. There was no passage here, no sense, however slight, of the mountain opening up to let her through. This was a kind of trespass, each movement a small theft.

A wrong thing. A right thing.
That bird, climbing the air.

How long had it been – four hours, five? She was desperately thirsty. She licked her lips, felt only dust upon them. Her throat rasped.

She could not have said when things began to change. At first it was the slightest whiff of movement in the air. And then something different about the rock. The surface around her was smoother, more like a wall than a haphazard pile of stone. It began to recede slightly, and then more so, until at last her arm, extending, found nothing. There was an opening here, a space to crawl into.

She pulled herself inside it, grateful. If she could not drink, she could at least rest, sit for a time before pushing on through the dark. There was no going back.

Lia presses a hand to the wall of the tunnel. There are boulders here, wedged one upon the other. It is from there that the noise has come – from inside them or behind or … below?

She leans in, angling the lamp she carries into the tight spaces between. And as she sets her weight against the stone, it moves – just barely, one edge of rock teetering upon another.

She shines the light into the crack and puts her eye to it, expecting solid stone. If she is lucky, she might glimpse that scuttler, living its secret, rock-bound life.

Instead, she sees space. A pocket of air extending. She draws back, considers.

She has never been a girl to see a box without opening it. To leave a lid pressed firmly in place.

She will only move one stone, and that just a little. The finest margin, to widen the gap.

She feels the sound before she hears it – a low rumble, as if the mountain were stirring beneath her.

She jerks her hands back as stones shower about her. The boulder she was moving is gone, fallen into space. Others rain around it, rolling and tumbling off a ledge beyond the gap, which is widening and widening even as the tunnel around her collapses upon itself.

She dives for the gap, hurling herself through. There is no telling what lies in the dark beyond the circle of lamplight. How deep the hole, how far the fall? There is only this moment, suspended, waiting for impact.

Rockfall.

Jena barely had time to register the thought when there was a sickening thud nearby. Another. Something grazed her shoulder, a glancing blow that sent her reeling.