A Single Stone Read Online Free Page A

the flattest ground they could between the rugged outcrops of stone.
    Jena had begun to lower her eyes to the slope and choose a place to sit when something caught her eye. Through the air above the village a thin column of smoke was rising. It was faint enough that you might easily miss it in the shifting light. And yet clear enough that once you had seen it there was no question it was there.
    She stared uneasily across the valley. There might be smoke in the Square, she told herself. The bakery, stoking its ovens. The smokehouse, where people would be preparing bird and rabbit for the winter stores. Or perhaps one of the kilns, where rollers and water stones were melted and shaped into metal and glass. Like everything else, wood was carefully rationed, but daytime fires might burn for such purposes, for the good of all.
    But this was not that kind of smoke. There was a puff of colour, a greenish tinge Jena had seen from only one kind of fire. And it was not coming from the Square. It was fainter over the centre of the village, as if it had drifted there on the breeze, thinning out on its way from somewhere else. She tracked its passage backwards, to where it was thicker. And as she did, the skin on her arms pimpled into gooseflesh.
    East. The edge of the village.
    But it was too early for that. Much too early.
    Her arm stiffened on Kari’s shoulder. She turned and saw the flash of realisation, alarm flooding Kari’s face.
    A sick feeling roiled deep in Jena’s stomach, and with it a surge of recognition – that instant when you were made to look squarely at something that changed everything.
    The smoke. Its colour. Its origin.
    East, where the houses in the very back of the village nestled by the curving wall of the mountain.
    Kari’s house. Their house.
    “No,” Kari rasped.
    Her arm wrenched abruptly from Jena’s shoulders. “I have to go. I …”
    And then she was gone, tiny stones scattering behind her as she careered headlong down the slope.

THREE
    The forest blurred around Jena. Thin branches whipped across her skin. A footfall ahead, Kari was sprinting, arms pumping by her side, hands clawing at the air as if to pull herself forwards. When Kari took off, Jena had recoiled at the way she flailed, legs tangling, arms windmilling as she tried to find speed.
    Then she had followed, stumbling behind Kari down the slope.
    Wouldn’t she run too, if it were her own mama?
    Hadn’t she, when it was?
    Kari’s cheeks were flushed and her mouth was open, panting. Her straw-blonde hair, kinked into ridges from the braid, streamed behind her. Every now and then a strand caught roughly on a twig before being yanked clear; Jena was glad to have left her own hair tightly bound.
    Their feet pounded the forest floor, their cadence coming together for a time, then separating again. The pattern repeating, over and over. They were safer now, at least. The ground beneath was well worn – smooth and familiar: no loose stones to snag a careless foot, no holes to turn an unsuspecting ankle.
    Branch, rock, mossy log. There was no time for the eye to rest on anything. There was only foot over foot, leaping and turning. Jena’s chest pounded, protesting this sudden exertion after the hours of slow, deliberate movement.
    “You … okay?” Kari’s breath came in short, rasping snatches.
    Their eyes met briefly and Jena read the fear etched in Kari’s. “Nearly there.” The steadiness in her own voice came as a surprise.
    In reply, Kari surged forwards, drawing ahead along the widening track. Her shirt had come loose and fluttered at her side like the wing of a wounded bird. The morning’s tunnelling had loosened her wrappings and where the skin was exposed, Jena saw flashes of red – patches of flesh that had been scraped and torn. Each trip laid new wounds over those that had barely healed from the last, each girl’s body becoming its own kind of map.
    In the middle of this, scoring Kari’s lower back near her right hip,