Stone Seeds Read Online Free Page B

makes a sound in the back of his throat. He knows right away that it’s not loud enough.
    Jengi lies stomach down on the ground. “Silence,” he instructs the edge farmers milling around the rubble. And then Jengi puts his ear to the earth again, strains to hear. Tomax’s mother swivels slowly around to watch the Digger do what he was trained to.
    â€œQuiet.” Jengi repeats, sterner this time. Puts his ear back to the ground. He waits.
    And then “Tomax!” He raises his head, yells again. “Make a sound if you can, Boy.”
    Tomax tries again. Sound in the back of his throat. Tries and tries until his throat is raw.
    Jengi goes on listening. Then he twitches his head. He looks up.
    â€œNothing.” Jengi says decisively. Getting up and dusting down his trousers. “I reckon he’s dead.”
    Tomax sees his mother feeling her way around the rubble. “He’s not dead,” she says. More to herself. “He’s not, he’s not … dead . Tomax, Tomax,” she whispers into the crevices in the piled up bricks. And then calling down into her ruined house.
    Tomax sees the fire, small but spreading quickly. Starts in one corner of the rubble and then taking hold of a dry beam. The fire grows high quickly, just to the right of his mother.
    The edge farm houses are mostly made out of wood and wattle, mud daubed. When the drones hit the edge farmhouses they light up like match-heads. But Tomax’s father was a house builder in the before and made his house with Bavarnican brick and cement, nobody is quite sure how he managed to get hold of the materials but deals were sometimes struck with the last exiles. Not to mention friendships which crossed lines.
    The general put a stop to all that, of course. Tomax’s father was forced to make do with tin for its long roof but in that way this house looks like every other edge farm house, at least from above. What you can’t see from a drone’s-eye-view is that he used thick beams from the killing forest to make the rafters of his house, burying the roots of them many feet into the ground. “Those rafters will either kill us or save us some day,” Tomax’s father said at least once every single day, including his last one.
    Tomax’s mother sees the fire right away. She seems to snap out of her trance, filled with a strange life, “Tomax, Tomax.” She thinks she hears something at the rock, springs away and moving quickly to the next heap, calling into every crevice she can find. Calling, waiting, calling waiting. At one point she imagines that she hears him.
    Now she’s moving pieces of rubble, gently, expertly. In the wrong place. “Jengi.” She says, “Jengi, help me.” Jengi watches her. He shakes his head. Her voice still doesn’t sound like her voice, Tomax thinks. Only broken, rasping sounds. And that strange mania to her digging. She’s not herself, Tomax thinks. She’s too close to the fire. As though she can’t feel it right now. A small corner of her scarf catches fire, burns along the seam, sparks peter out at her hair. She keeps digging.
    Tomax makes another sound in the back of his throat. His throat is raw and the effort’s agonising.
    At first Tomax thinks that no one heard him over the fire’s crackle, sound of moving rubble, swish of feet. And then Jengi’s close, saying “Tomax?” Softly at first. And then it’s very near, Jengi’s voice, and now Tomax knows Jengi can hear him. Tomax shifts his elbow accidentally in his excitement,sand moves in, pushing his head farther back. Now Tomax’s forehead is jammed hard against the boulder. His eye is close to the crack.
    Suddenly Jengi’s boots are right there. Just to the left of Tomax’s head and just a boulder between them. Tomax makes every last sound that he can in the back of his mouth. There is a tearing, ripping feeling. Pain in his throat and