Seed. Lisa Heathfield

      The candle is burning down so slowly. I don’t want to move. The ground is cold through my trousers. I try to imagine that I’m dreaming, but I know I’m not.

      Elizabeth does not come. The melting wax makes slippery shapes on the earth wall. The flame bulges and straightens, dancing in the silence.

      I must have been here an hour, if not more. There’s no one above me. No one is coming. When the candle burns down, I will disappear into the darkness.

      ‘Elizabeth?’ I call out softly. Of course she can’t hear me. No one can hear me. There’s no one there.

      My stomach is starting to hurt with hunger, a rumbling pain. It’s something I’ve barely felt before. At Seed, no one is hungry. There is always food, there is always drink.

      ‘Thank you, Nature,’ I whisper. I kiss my palm, press it flat into the earth. It’s bumpy against my skin. I imagine how deep the earth goes beneath me.

      Kate and Jack will notice I’m gone. They will ask about me.

      I close my eyes. It can’t be long now.

      But I’m finding it difficult to breathe. What if those pipes don’t work? What if they’re blocked and I slowly run out of air? My breath is sticking in my throat. It’s got nowhere to go. Am I going to suffocate? Is this how I am going to die?

      ‘Help me, Nature,’ I say. She must hear me, because there’s a rustling of leaves above my head, a heavy scraping of the Worship Chair. And as the door is lifted, the sunlight floods in so sharply that I have to cover my eyes.

      I am free. So I start to move towards the steps, just as Elizabeth comes down to get me. She is carrying something. When she reaches the bottom, she takes off the cloth covering it. It is a bowl of soup. A spoon and a chunk of bread sink into it.

      ‘I must be quick,’ Elizabeth says, her voice hushed as she puts the bowl on the floor.

      ‘But I’m coming with you,’ I reply.

      ‘I’ll be back in the morning. Just after sunrise.’ She tries to hug me, but I grab at her hands.

      ‘No, Elizabeth, you can’t leave me here.’ I’m crying, sudden and startling in the quiet circle of earth.

      ‘Think of the rewards, Pearl. You will have a healthy womb. And when Papa S says it is the right time, you will have children.’

      ‘No.’ I’m trying to stay calm. ‘No, I can’t stay here.’

      ‘You must.’ She’s trying to peel my hands away.

      ‘I’ll die if you leave me. I can’t breathe in here, Elizabeth.’ I want her to look at me. I want her to understand, but she wants to go back up the stairs. She’s trying to get away.

      ‘Pearl, you must let me go,’ she says quietly. Then she looks at me with those eyes of clover green. ‘Nature will protect you. There’s no harm that can come to you here. You are privileged.’ Elizabeth finally frees her hands and kisses me on the head. ‘You are safe, Pearl, you are loved.’ Then she rushes up the steps. I reach for the material of her skirt, but she’s gone.

      The trapdoor has closed out the sunlight. There’s just the silence and me. Somewhere, there are beetles burrowing, but I can’t hear them. All I can hear is the sound of my short breaths and my heart thudding in the cramped air.

      I kneel down and reach for the bowl of soup. The smell of it should make my mouth water, but as I bring the spoon to my lips, I feel sick. Still, I force it into my mouth, feel its warmth in my chest. It helps the ache in my stomach and so I gently scrape until every last drop has gone.

      The smell of the ancient mud finds me once more. It creeps into my nose and slides down inside me.

      I close my eyes and start to count. One, two, three. On and on. But the panic is rising again. Breathe, Pearl, breathe. Trust in Elizabeth. I focus on her smile, on the baby growing in her. Will I have a brother or a sister? I hope for a brother. If it’s a girl, she will be forced into this hole. And I couldn’t sit by, knowing that she is here.

      I will think of the baby. Each little finger. Each little toe. Think about Papa S and all that he gives us. Now I am a woman, maybe I can be his Companion. I imagine his hand in mine. I’m getting cold, but he will keep me warm.

      I must sleep.

      *

      Somewhere there is music. And someone is singing, quietly. I open my eyes to blackness and silence. I am in the earth and the candle has burnt itself out. I move onto my knees as I sweep around with my hands. There’s nothing but the rough, damp mud. Then my fingers hit the bottom of what must be the steps and I stumble up them. At the top I feel the closed trapdoor. If I’m desperate enough, I’ll be able to open it. I push it with all my strength. I push it until I feel like my wrists will snap in two. But it doesn’t move.

      I bang it, feeble now. And I’m crying again as I curl myself onto the step. It’s so dark that I can’t even see my fingers. Darker than the silence in our sleeping room. Darker by far than the night. Nothing exists now, except the sound of my crying, getting soaked up by the earth. My life force dripping away.

      Slowly I feel my way down the steps. I lie at the bottom. My bones ache from the cold and the hard floor.

      ‘Please come, Elizabeth,’ I whisper. I kiss my palm and hold it above me, into the hollow blackness.

      *

      I’m woken by the sound of the trapdoor opening. There is light, muffled yet sharp enough to hurt my eyes.

      ‘I’m here, Pearl.’

      It’s Elizabeth. She lights a lamp and I can see again. ‘It’s all right,’ she says. ‘It is over.’ And she smiles at me. ‘You can change into this.’

      She hands me a flowing green skirt. It’s beautiful. I reach out to touch its material in the flickering candlelight. It feels so soft.

      ‘It’s silk,’ she says. ‘I made it for you when you were born.’

      I take off my trousers. As I put the skirt on, it feels like water on my bare legs. Elizabeth passes me a new slab of linen.

      ‘Change this for the one in your underwear. We must leave the old one here for seven days.’

      ‘Will I have to come back to get it?’ I ask, the panic rising like bile in my throat.

      ‘You will not have to come back here,’ she says gently.

      Elizabeth takes the old slab from me. It’s heavy with my blood. When she has laid it face down in the earth, she turns to me. ‘You must never speak of this to anyone,’ she says.

      She blows out the candle and starts to go back up the steps. I hurry after her.

      When we’re outside, she lowers the trapdoor, covers it with leaves and pushes the heavy Worship Chair back into its place.

      As we walk away in the early morning air, the birds are singing. The rain has stopped. My emerald-green skirt will tell everyone that now I am a woman.

CHAPTER THREE

      I watch Ruby’s little fingers as she washes the mugs. In time, she too will become a woman. I know that it is years away, but I can’t bear the thought of her being trapped in the earth. I try to push the memory away. Concentrate on the frothy water in the sink.

      When Jack comes in, he notices my skirt immediately and stops. He looks at me. ‘A woman?’ he asks, smiling.

      Pride washes through me. ‘Yes,’ I say.

      Jack hesitates. I wonder if he will bleed and then be able to grow his hair like the Kindreds. He’s sixteen already, so surely it can’t be long. ‘You won’t change, though?’ he asks.

      ‘I might.’