Stone Seeds Read Online Free

dragged him from the cell to the stairwell. Scrabbling, sliding feet and snaking long legs. He’d hit his knees in the ruts and cracks in the tiles all the way up to this spot. Convinced he was going to his death. Panicked then, in spite of himself. And then hauled to his feet by his bindings. He was pulled around like a puppet on a string, and when he was let go, teetered. Silence.
    And then clanking sounds again from the cell beneath his feet. If it’s a protest then it’s a tired one, he thinks. Whispering seems to run up and down the wall. ‘Air vent?’ Antek calculates.
    In the early days of the general’s crackdowns the prisoners had used the air vents between the cells to communicate. But it only served to inform the prison guards in the end. This cell will learn that too, soon enough, he thinks, and Antek lets his eyes roll left to check for the vent-slats in the wall. It’s an old habit. Antek has been checking for vents and cracks in things ever since he was hatched. Anything that might double as an exit, or a hiding place. It’s been a useful trick, anywhere but in here.
    Two doors. One dark, leading back into the system, into the tunnels of underground cells, and the second door with golden sun-lit hinges. That one leads out. If this is a test then he’s failed it already. He’ll take the brightly framed door. If the guards even let him get there.
    The wind must have died down because the door leadingoutside has stopped rattling its loose metal hinges. It seems to Antek as though everything waits for him now. For his next decision. Antek slowly lifts up his arm. Touches the scar on his chin. Tries to remember who he made the nick in his chin for. Who it was that he was trying so hard to remember. Nothing comes back to him.

BLOOD
    THERE IS A DRONING sound, a long hum and it stops above Tomax. And then it feels to Tomax like he’s dreaming. The window pane splits, from the bottom left of his mother’s house, cloud spirals like a huge finger pointing, tracing an invisible seam upwards. Its fingers darkly stretching out then splaying. The glass in the windows expands, bricks bubbling or they seem to and then rocks flip up and the earth under the house rises, churning and heaves over. The body of the house pulsing and wrestling with the air a moment.
    Everything falls then.
    And there is sound, Tomax thinks. His ear drums split and bleed.
    And then there is no sound.
    For a moment Tomax thinks he’s running. Only his feet don’t touch ground. And then blown down, like that. And now raining rocks. Face against earth. He tries to raise his hands up toward his head on an instinct to protect his face, his skull, but his arms seem pinned down somehow. Tomax is curled over on the ground, flying glass shards, then dust heaves across him. Like a sand dune of dust.
    His mind is washing in and out of sense.
    Rocks don’t rain, Tomax thinks. Rocks don’t rain.
    It feels to him as though the world moves slow and pained.
    A little sound trickles back, on one side only.
    Clattering of rubble. For a moment Tomax thinks that it’s over.
    There’s a deep crump in the earth when the second drone hits, it’s like rugs pulled out from under giants, and they fall. Elbows hit the earth first. Huge elbows then knees. The cracks are spreading out beneath him. Smaller seams grow out of the cracks and the whole split widens. It’s like falling into a huge opening mouth in the ground.
    Tomax falls in slow jolts and then churning up in one motion, like the earth underneath him is ploughed. Tomax has slipped into the bowels of his own house. The body of the house is lying over his head.
    It occurs to Tomax this trap is his tomb, and he’s fighting the sides of the tomb now, fighting for air and light, fighting for the next breath, but sand pours in and stones at all the points where Tomax pushes against the rubble. It gets worse, until his body lies immobilised in