River Stone Read online

  RIVER STONE

  First published 2019 by MidnightSun Publishing Pty Ltd

  PO Box 3647, Rundle Mall, SA 5000, Australia.

  www.midnightsunpublishing.com

  Copyright © Rachel Hennessy 2019

  The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, including internet search engines or retailers (including, but not restricted to, Google and Amazon), in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying (except under the statutory exceptions provisions of the Australian Copyright Act 1968), recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of MidnightSun Publishing.

  Cover design by Kim Lock

  Internal design by Zena Shapter

  Typeset in Copperplate, Gill Sans and Bookman Old Style.

  Printed and bound in Australia by Griffin Press. The papers used by MidnightSun in the manufacture of this book are natural, recyclable products made from wood grown in sustainable plantation forests.

  For my sister, Ruth

  ‘But if there were so few humans left, why did they not stay together?’

  ‘Because they chose not to.’

  ‘And why did they choose not to?’

  ‘Because they were human.’

  PART ONE

  1

  ‘Hold still,’ Theodore whispers and I close my eyes.

  I try not to tense, to anticipate the pain. My father has talked to me about staying relaxed throughout, to make it hurt less. I can feel Theodore behind me, the heat of the carved river stone in his gloved hand.

  I bite my lip as the stone sears into my shoulder blade. By the rivers, it hurts … but I don’t cry out. I squeeze my hands tightly together, forcing myself to stop the tears threatening to fall.

  The circle and the three waves are being branded into my skin. I smell the scorched flesh but still I don’t move, don’t flinch away from the rock becoming one with me. In my mind I see the cool water, the beautiful clear stream I love. I imagine myself diving into that pool. I swim to the bottom, to the sandy bed where the river stones shimmer like silver.

  ‘You are done.’

  I open my eyes, flexing my clenched fingers and pushing down a wave of nausea. I turn to face Theodore. His long grey hair hangs down on either side of his face and he stares at me with his great, all-seeing orbs. He places his hands on my shoulders.

  ‘Pandora.’ I feel the significance of him using my whole name. I am a legend, I have been told, a reminder of a woman who, long ago, opened a jar holding all the wickedness of the world, bringing horror and destruction. We have had our own horror and destruction; we call it The Burning. My parents have never explained why they chose such a name for me. It doesn’t exactly bode well.

  ‘Pandora, of the River People.’

  Theodore looks at me for a little longer. He nods and I slowly turn from him. Ahead of me, standing at the other side of the Great Hall, my mother and father wait. The pain of the branding was intense but I have not cried or cowered or embarrassed them. They should be looking proud. Perhaps it is the smoke and the intense throbbing of my head, because they look worried. Perhaps, despite the physical rite I have just been through, they know this next is the part of the Blossoming I have trembled over the most.

  Along the path tree-stump seats are arranged, holding all the adults of our village. Only two are missing: the teacher, Rama, who will be watering the fields with the young ones, and today’s sentry, Davern, who will be roaming the boundaries, keeping an eye out for dangers.

  I walk towards my parents. I’m naked except for my goateep-skin pants but I don’t feel shy, everyone has seen me before. In summer we don’t bother covering ourselves. My mother tells me I will start to feel more self-conscious as I grow but, for now, my breasts are still small, I am almost a boy.

  My mother is in her ceremonial dress, faded to white. It matches her skin, a strong contrast to my father’s blackness. She holds a piece of the healing plant. I can see how she is desperate to run to me and offer a salve to my burn. My father has his hand on her arm, gently gripping her, holding her back. Draped over his other arm is the long dress I will now wear.

  When I am in front of them, my mother walks behind me and rubs the end of the broken plant into the lines of the brand. It stings, then cools. The pain is still there, only now it feels deeper, less raw.

  She returns to stand next to my father. I lean down and pull off my pants, trying to ignore the smarting every time I move my right arm. My father hands me the dress. I pull it over my head, the loose goateep-skin has been tanned and thinned over the last year, and it only has one shoulder, leaving the brand untouched. I can’t help running my hands over the black fur. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever worn.

  ‘Pan … Pandora,’ my mother begins. She isn’t used to using my full name, like she wants to forget its heritage.

  ‘Pandora,’ she begins again, this time more confidently. ‘You have reached your Blossoming and are now fully of the River People. Your father and I have considered long and hard on your future. Your father and I …’

  She takes my left hand and my father takes my right. They both hold hands. We become a circle, the same circle I’ve just had inscribed on my back. I want this circle never to be broken, for the three of us to be a family, just like this, as it has always been, for the last seventeen notches engraved into the Growing Tree. But, in the next moment, this is all over.

  ‘We have chosen Matthew for you.’

  I lie on my reed mat with my face turned toward the fire in our hut. My parents walked me here, giving me instructions to be still and drink water, before they returned to the hall to watch the Blossoming of my best friend, Fatima, and Matthew, Emmaline and Titus. This is all of us. Five of us reaching our Blossoming. Next year, there will be Fatima’s sister, Cassie, and Matthew’s brother, Christophe. Slowly, our village grows.

  I wonder briefly if Emmaline’s and Titus’s ceremonies will be any different from mine; if our leader, Theodore, will do something exceptional for his beloved daughter and nephew, before I return to the depressing thoughts lodged inside my head since Matthew was named my Chosen.

  I did not, as I worried I might, cry out or protest. I accepted the kiss both my parents gave me, one on each cheek. The three of us walked out of the hall, though no longer holding hands, to the sound of polite clapping. My attachment to Matthew does not come as a surprise to the rest of the village, we have been seen together enough, so they think it is natural.

  It’s only me who thinks it is not.

  ‘We are very excited about this new phase of your life, Pan,’ my mother said, as we walked.

  ‘We are really proud of the way you handled the Blossoming,’ my father chimed in. ‘You’ve accepted what is best.’

  They were like a double-act of cheerfulness and I tried to smile, to fool them into thinking I was happy too.

  It’s my own fault. I have never been able to tell anyone how I feel about Matthew. Or, more accurately, how I don’t feel about Matthew. What can I say that won’t sound self-centred and petty? What does love have to do with the need to re-populate the land? What have my feelings got to do with saving us from extinction? When I was fourteen notches, my father told me he would never ‘pair me off’ with someone I didn’t love but as my Blossoming approached he seemed to forget he had ever said such a thing.

  ‘It’s for the best,’ he repeated, like a mantra. Maybe he is right.

  I look up at the hairline crack in the mud-brick of our hut, running from halfway up the wall to the chimney, the same crack I have been waking up to for as long as I can remember. Outside, everyt
hing is strangely quiet. At this point in the day, I would normally be heavily into work: in the wheat fields; at the mill stone, helping to grind; at the pens, milking the goateeps; or out gathering, finding roots and berries. Always with Matthew and Fatima, helping to keep the boredom away, always a mix of tasks to ensure we would keep up the enthusiasm.

  Our lessons with Rama give us another kind of work: learning how to read (I’m not so good at this) and about life long before The Burning. Learning about a time when people hardly spoke to one another, just used words on something called a ‘screen’ to tell each other what they thought; a time when there were machines to carry you from one side of the Earth to another; a time when food could be bought with ‘money’ from a wondrous place called a ‘supermarket’. There’s always been contention about these lessons. My mother, for one, has protested them, arguing against dwelling on the past, on failing to live in the present. So far, she continues to be overruled.

  ‘If we don’t know our history,’ Rama says, ‘we are doomed to repeat it.’

  But I am glad not to have to listen to these lessons today or to have to work. I am grateful not to have to see Matthew yet, to understand how happy he is I’ve been named his Chosen and to have to hide how unhappy I am.

  ‘Pan?’

  Fatima is at the opening of our hut. Fatima? Breaking the rules and coming to see me on Blossoming day? Things are changing.

  ‘What are you doing here, Fat?’

  She stands for a moment with the light behind her. She is about as far away from fat as there is to be. She is tall and thin boned. Her brown hair is pulled back from her face in a braid, showing off her hazel eyes. Her long, tan-coloured dress seems to be glued to her.

  ‘You look so good.’

  Fatima laughs and comes in to sit beside me, nimbly wrapping the skirt of her dress around her legs. She winces as she puts her hands into her lap, her brand obviously still hurting too, though her face shines with excitement. I suddenly realise she’s also been told who her Chosen is. In my self-obsession, I had completely forgotten.

  ‘Well?’ She knows what I’m referring to.

  ‘Titus.’ She is still grinning. The branding must have done something to her brain.

  ‘Titus?’

  Fatima’s face drops. ‘I am … happy about it.’

  ‘Oh, okay.’ I don’t know what else to say.

  ‘Pan, we have talked about the choices. Well, what there are of them … Christophe? Or Thomas or Theseus?’

  Yes, we have talked about Fatima’s choices, skilfully avoiding talking about my options because she’d assumed, like everyone, I would be happy with Matthew as my Chosen. We thought Fatima would be paired with Christophe, Matthew’s younger brother. He is of the same ilk as Matthew: dependable, solid, likely to be a good provider. Fatima had spoken of Christophe’s good qualities, though, I have to admit, without much enthusiasm.

  Thomas and Theseus, the twin sons of Hildur, were born before The Burning. Their father had ghosted not long after their arrival in the village and they were generally tolerated, even as they hardly worked and drank far too much root-juice. No one truly expected them to be chosen for anyone. I’d always assumed Titus would be paired with Emmaline, even if they are first cousins. Or, I hate to admit, Titus might have been chosen for me. He was, after all, another option apart from Matthew and maybe there was something appealing about his total arrogance and indifference to our existence. But, then again …

  ‘Do you actually like him?’

  Fatima looks down at her hands. I suspect she’s about to cry. It wouldn’t be the first time my questions have pushed her to tears and, though I hate myself for knowing it, probably won’t be the last. We are best friends, but we also drive each other mad.

  ‘He is really good looking,’ she says in a small voice. Fatima is not like me. She doesn’t have the imagination to picture what it might be like to spend every night of your life with a boy you have no emotional connection to, but who happens to be really good looking. I’ve never been able to talk about why I didn’t want to be paired with Matthew. But too many times recently I’ve tried to picture my days with him in the future, to copy the way my mother’s shoulders lift when she sees my father, the unconscious way she runs her fingers through her hair when they talk, the gentle way she places her hand on the back of his neck when he is tired. These images won’t come. All I can see is myself flinching if Matthew tried to reach for me in any kind of romantic way.

  ‘I think I can make it work,’ Fatima’s voice is stronger now. ‘Titus and I just need to …’

  ‘… Have an actual conversation?’

  ‘You are not helping, Pan!’

  ‘I’m sorry! I just don’t understand why your parents have made this decision for you.’

  ‘Well, they have. And, for the good of the village, we have to do what is expected of us.’

  I look at her. She glares back. Whatever tears she might have shed have been pushed aside by a determination I haven’t seen before.

  She stands.

  ‘Today is all about becoming an adult, Pan. Maybe it is time you grew up.’

  I watch her stalk out, trying to maintain her defiant posture even as she trips on the hem of her dress and pulls the skin hard against her branded shoulder. She cries out in pain.

  ‘Fat, please …’

  She continues through the opening, holding her hand against the wound.

  I can’t lie here any longer. I hate fighting with Fatima. I hate this day. Although I know it’s forbidden – part of our Blossoming is to spend time alone in our huts meditating on our future – I head out along River Road. I pass three huts, the same river-mud-brick domes as ours, each with a round hole in its centre to channel out our fire’s fumes, and automatically name the inhabitants as I go: LeeYin and Barone, mother and father of Freya and Fee; and Eva and Stratum, parents of Hope. Across the way, the home of Atticus and Corrine, Titus’s parents. I could go on and name all sixty of us. Everyone I have known since the day I, or they, were born.

  Soon enough, I’m free of the huts, following the thin path through the forest. The trees are full of rustling sounds, the sunlight plays with their shadows and I start to feel as if I can breathe again, though the dress is more annoying than I’d imagined. It gets caught on low-hanging branches and, like Fatima, I find myself tripping on its hem.

  When I emerge onto the stream’s edge, it is alive with sparkles. The small fall that edges the pool keeps the water flowing but I still try to catch at my reflection, to see if the Blossoming has made any difference: no, my dark brown eyes, deep brown skin and short black hair all look the same. I want to look into the water and see a different kind of face. I’m not what they call pretty, nor beautiful. I have heard these words applied to Fatima and to Emmaline. The most I’ve been given is ‘striking’, my high cheek bones and thick nose enough to make me distinctive, just not in the way I want.

  A large, brown bird flies high above, its wings spread out like two arrows. Such a sight is rare and I feel my heart pump. I know it is an eagle, one of the few birds left now. Perhaps this is a sign? A premonition of what’s to come for me? Freedom, instead of entrapment? I’m not supposed to be superstitious, my father lectures me about staying firmly in the ‘physical reality of my life’, but I can’t help it. Surely I can look for something to guide me, other than my parents? Surely my world could be more than what they decided in the Blossoming?

  Finally, I get to do what I have been longing for all day, throwing off the dress and striding naked into the cool water. When I’m up to my waist, I dive in. The burn on my shoulder has lost most of its heat now, and the river soothes it more. As I stroke underwater I still feel pain, but it’s becoming just another part of me.

  I come up for air in the middle of the pool and float on my back. The sky above is pale blue, with wispy clouds running across it. Soon, the rains and storms will be coming and we will go for cycles of the moon without fresh bread. I don’t want to think
of the hunger ahead. I dive back down.

  I run my hands over the river stones, thick with slime, at the bottom of the bed. I pick up a small one, so deep green as to be almost black, smooth with a hairline crack down its centre, just like the line in our hut. I seem to like things which look as if they’re about to break apart. Maybe because I long for the shift this would bring to my life. I swim back to the surface.

  As soon as I emerge, I can feel something is different.

  On the opposite shore from where I came from, a boy stands. A boy? A man? He is only wearing pants, made from a skin I don’t recognise, his chest and feet bare, though he is armed. Slung over his shoulder is a bow and a wooden quiver of arrows sits on his back. Around his waist is a knife in a sheath. I know of these weapons because I’ve seen them before, years ago when the Mountain People visited us. He’s one of them.

  He turns to look at me. There are black streaks of ochre under his brown eyes, a sign he is hunting. I paddle on the surface of the river, suddenly aware of how the crystal clear water doesn’t hide me.

  The man – I realise he’s at least six notches on the Growing Tree older than me so I can’t really call him a boy – doesn’t hide his appraisal of my nakedness. I do not take my eyes off him either, determined not to be ashamed. There’s a tiny smile on his lips, small enough to be missed if I wasn’t watching so closely. My heart starts pumping and a hot tingling passes through me.

  I open my mouth to say something, to break the spell that seems to have fallen upon me. He puts his finger to his lips, telling me to be silent. He tilts his head to the left, indicating a spot further up the river.

  I look. There is nothing. Why has he told me to be quiet? Who does he think he is?

  The hunter is kneeling now, hiding himself behind a large boulder. We wait, my arms and legs getting tired from staying afloat, paddling silently under the water. Finally, I understand the need for quiet.