Seed (28 page)

I want the doubt to go away. I want only to know the beauty of Seed. I want to believe in magic engines. And to hear Ellis playing piano with both of his hands.

I will close my eyes and when I open them I’ll be in the kitchen, looking out the window, and it will be daylight outside and Linda, Ellis, and Sophie will be in their car, coming up the driveway for the very first time.

But I am still in the dip.

The sun falls lower still. It’s dragging the blue with it, sucking it down.

“Don’t you ever want to leave, Jack?” Ellis asks. Jack doesn’t answer.

“I’ve thought about it,” Kate says. Somewhere a fox cries.

“Don’t, Kate,” I say. “Don’t think like that.”

“But nothing’s right anymore,” she says quietly.

“That’s not true.”

“Tell me then, Pearl,” Ellis says sharply. He sits up and even in the gloom I can see anger trickling over him. “What’s right about this place?” He tries to take my hand, but I pull it roughly away. “You see, you can’t think of anything.”

“That’s not true.”

Suddenly Ellis stands up. I think he’s going to say something else, but he just starts to climb up the side of the dip and within seconds he is gone. I want to reach up, pull him back to me. What is it that stops me?

“Thanks, Pearl,” Kate says. As she picks up her scarf, the raspberries spill out of it. It’s easy for her to run up the grass and disappear.

Jack and I are silent. We watch as the black sky overtakes everything. As the moon silently spreads her wings.

“Do you ever want to leave, Jack?” My words are so quiet that I hardly know them myself.

He won’t look at me. “Sometimes,” he replies.

“Why?” I ask.

“I don’t know. Just sometimes . . .”

I don’t want to speak anymore, but I do. “Ellis says that it wasn’t an accident. His hand.”

I feel Jack nod beside me. “I know,” he says. “But it’s not true. The shock is making him remember it wrong.”

“Do you really believe that?”

“I don’t know,” Jack says quietly. Then he’s standing up. “Come on.”

We get up and he keeps hold of my hand as we clamber up the edges of the dip. At the top, the field is almost silver.

“We can never escape its beauty,” I say.

“I don’t want to,” Jack answers as we carefully walk back to the house.

It feels like I have a ball of wool inside my head, wound tightly with all my thoughts mixed in. I want to find the end, pull it to unravel them all. But I search and it’s not there. And Papa S. and Kindred John and all of Ellis’s words stay locked together.

Jack steadies me as we walk. Keeps hold of my hand as we push open the kitchen door. He doesn’t let go when we see Linda crying by the sink.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

“W
hat’s wrong?” I ask. Linda turns to look at me. She doesn’t even try to stop the tears.

I run before she can answer.

Elizabeth is in her bed. The skin on her face is stretched and swollen and her eyes are white with fear. I hardly recognize her as my own. Heather is holding dried petals to her forehead.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

“She’s fine,” says Heather, but she won’t look at me.

“No,” Elizabeth says through her blackening breath. “No.”

I step forward to her and Heather moves away. A petal falls from her fingers and becomes caught in Elizabeth’s sweat-drenched hair.

“Is it worse?” I ask.

Elizabeth grabs my hand. “Yes,” she says.

“I’ll get some fresh water,” Heather says. She gathers the flannels into the bowl and she leaves Elizabeth and me alone.

“You must help us,” Elizabeth says. As she breathes, her belly heaves under the sheet.

“Heather is bringing cold water. It will make you feel better,” I say.

“No,” Elizabeth says. She grips my hand. “Listen to me, Pearl. It wasn’t like this before.” She twists her head away from me, her teeth tight, her neck red.

“Shh,” I say. “The baby will come soon.” But there is fear in the room, tapping at me, waiting to be let in.

“Pearl. I will die. My baby will die.”

No. She can’t mean it. She is having a baby. Soon, she will hold our baby in her arms. But she is crying. Elizabeth is crying.

“You must get me help, Pearl. Please. I don’t want this to be my time.”

“How? Where is help?”

Elizabeth’s chest seems to crackle with her breath. “Please, help me.” She closes her eyes tight with pain.

I know that I have to get her a doctor. The doctors helped Ellis. They were not bad, they saved his life. Papa S. is wrong, Nature cannot do everything.

The doctors dripped poison into his blood.

No. No, Ellis is good.

“Please,” Elizabeth whispers.

I lean to kiss her on her forehead, just as Heather comes back into the room, carrying a bowl of clear water.

I walk from the room and hurry down the stairs. I go out of
the front door and slip into the night.

No one follows me. No one calls after me, so I run. I don’t know what I have to do, but I won’t let Elizabeth die. I won’t let her baby die. I run across the gravel toward the trees at the edge of the driveway, expecting to feel a hand on my shoulder. Waiting for Papa S. to step out from the darkness. But he doesn’t come.

I reach the trees. I won’t stop. I run in the blackness, toward the gate at the start of the driveway and the beginning of the Outside.

And I’m on the road. It’s dark. Which way will I go? They are both the same. They are both empty, black holes. I choose, because I have to and I cannot stop, I must not stop.

The road is hard and loud under my feet. There is no breathing behind me, no hand around my waist.

The lights of a car. They are getting brighter, coming closer and I shield my eyes. It drives past me. But it stops. It is coming backward, toward me. I want to keep running, but the car is quicker than me and it catches up.

There is a man and a woman inside. The window moves down.

“Are you all right?” the woman asks. The man peers around her, looks up at me.

“Elizabeth is dying,” I say, trying to calm my breath.

She looks over at the man. “Where is she?” he asks.

“In our home,” I say. “She needs help. She’s dying.” The truth of the words whip around me.

The man takes one of those small telephones from his pocket. “I’ll phone an ambulance,” he says.

The woman reaches out to me, but I step back. I want to be swallowed by the darkness behind me. “It’ll be OK,” she tells me.

The man is talking into the phone. “What’s wrong with her?” he asks me.

“She’s having a baby,” I say.

The woman smiles, lets out a relieved breath. “She’ll be fine,” she says.

“No. She’s dying,” I say.

The man smiles as he talks into the phone. “What’s your address?” he asks me.

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“Your house, where is it?” he asks.

I point down the road. You can just see our gate in the darkness. “Seed. Our home is Seed.”

The man talks into the phone again and the woman watches him. Then he puts it back into his pocket. “The ambulance won’t be long,” he says. I stare at him. “The doctors will come and help with the baby.”

The doctors will come to Seed. Is that really what Elizabeth wanted?

“She’ll be fine now,” the woman tells me gently. “We can drive you back.”

“How long will it be?” I ask. I can feel the walls of the Forgiveness Room crushing my bones. Already I can’t breathe.

“Five, ten minutes?” the woman says.

I run from them. Back along the road, their car lights framing the way.

I’m sorry,
I silently scream to Papa S.

I should run away. Run away now.

I turn into our driveway. I hear the car hesitate behind me and I know they watch me. But the strangers drive away as I race back toward our home.

Linda and Heather are arguing in the kitchen. “She needs a doctor,” I hear Linda say, before I run up the stairs.

Elizabeth is alone. She’s not moving, but she is breathing. Thin, rattling breaths. I go to her and she looks at me.

“Someone is coming to help,” I tell her. She tries to move, so I reach for her hand. Her breathing is slow.

“Is the baby coming?” I ask.

She looks at me and she is crying. “Pearl,” she whispers. It’s so quiet that I have to move close to her. She smells of summer flowers. “I love you, Pearl.”

“Help is coming,” I say.

“I am not your mother,” Elizabeth says.

My mind stops. My world stops.

“What do you mean?” I ask.

Her breathing is a whisper from her body. “Sylvie was your mother.”

“Sylvie?” I am crying now. I feel her fingers loosen in mine. “Elizabeth, I’m scared. Don’t leave us. It isn’t your time.”

She is closing her eyes. She’s drifting away. “Sylvie was my sister,” she says.

But I’m screaming. Screaming for Heather. Screaming for Linda. Screaming for help to come as Elizabeth’s breaths fade away.

I hear the sound coming up the driveway. The wailing van, with blue lights flashing up through the window.

“They’re here, Elizabeth,” I say to her. But I know her hand can no longer feel mine.

I hear them come up the stairs. A man and a woman from the Outside are in Elizabeth’s bedroom. Their clothes are green. They move me away. They are touching Elizabeth’s neck. Her swollen hands. The man has a bag and he’s opening it.

Linda is here. Her arms are around me. Something is in the man’s hands. He holds it onto Elizabeth’s chest. I watch as her body jolts upward. They will hurt the baby. I try to step forward, but Linda holds me and she tries to cover my face, just as I see him pushing onto Elizabeth’s chest again.

The sound of people running up the stairs. Jack, Kate, Ellis are in the room. They stare at Elizabeth, but I can’t look at her. Instead I see Kate put her hand up to her mouth.

I hear the thud of those things on Elizabeth’s chest. The sound of her body breaking free from the bed again and again. Until nothing.

Nothing.

Now that they’ve stopped hurting her, I will look. Her head is bent back. The pillow has fallen on the floor. Her hair is across her face, but no one brushes it away. They’re talking about the baby. They will take Elizabeth’s body, try to save the baby.

But I know the baby has gone too.

I am screaming so loudly that I can’t hear anymore.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

T
hey are taking Elizabeth. The man and the woman from the Outside are taking Elizabeth and we are letting them. We are all standing and watching and letting them take her away.

She’s gone.
You’re too late,
I want to scream at them.
Leave her with us. Give us back our baby.

Linda holds me as we watch them take her down the stairs. Papa S. is at the bottom, standing by the open front door. His eyes are wide, his mouth is silent.