A Single Stone Read Online Free PDF Page A

mattered. The years that had made her.
    She had pulled ahead without meaning to and now she shortened her stride, letting Kari draw alongside. They were so close now. Soon it would be over. A new life would be held aloft or it wouldn’t. In the days to come, the Mothers might call them to a burial, perhaps two. It was the way of things; that was all. No reason, then, for this mad headlong dash, this urgent scramble homewards.
    Unless it was to say goodbye. If there was nothing to be done, that at least was something.
    The last corner now. The final turn.
    They took it together and then stopped.

FOUR
    The street teemed with people. At the far end, the house was almost completely obscured behind the crowd. The village had gathered the way it might for a handful of occasions. A feast. A birth. A funeral.
    Kari gripped Jena’s arm, fingernails etching half-moons into her skin.
    There was an acrid smell in the air, unmistakable. But the smoke itself was hard to make out. It had been clearer from the fields. And clearest of all from the slope, at the greatest of distances. It was possible, after all, to be too close to a thing. By standing in the centre of it, to make it invisible.
    Kari’s hand tightened. The crowd parted, peeling back to let them pass. Familiar faces swam in and out of focus – Asha’s older sister, Erin, who worked in the fields, her face red and prickled with sweat; Calla’s brother, Ralf, his woodcutting arms thick with knobbled muscle. Behind him, a familiar dark head bobbed up and down. It was Luka, his slight frame almost comical alongside the older boy’s. He joggled on his toes, craning to see. His eyes locked briefly on Jena’s and an instant was all she needed to read everything written there. Hope. Fear.
    She kept moving. Around them, voices murmured.
A daughter is coming. It will be a day. If the rock allows it.
    A small figure stepped before them, halting their passage. Mother Vera’s eyes contracted to fine points. “Child, do you have a harvest?”
    “Yes,” Jena said quickly. “We–”
    “Where is it?”
    Jena’s hand went instinctively to her front. Usually, she gathered the pouches from the others and hung them across her chest from the rope, the way a hunter might wear the pelts of his quarry. There was a sharp stab of panic before she remembered.
    “I didn’t think.” She gestured at the house. “We saw the smoke. I …”
    Vera pursed her lips briefly. “All right.” Her eyes dropped to Jena’s belt, appraising. “Seven times what you carry?”
    “More or less.”
    “A good harvest, then. Thanks be.” She turned towards the house. “And a new daughter. It will be a day.”
    “If the rock allows it.” Jena’s response came easily, without thought.
    “Just so.” Vera stepped aside to let them pass.
    The crowd funnelled them forwards. Ahead, the house squatted low, waiting. Behind it, the mountain curved, tall and dark. All of it was cast into sharp relief, like something seen for the first time. It was as if the world had narrowed to this alone.
    The yard now, the stubby timbers of the verandah. The rough sod and thatching on the roof; the ragged hide stretched across the shuttered windows. Jena let Kari draw her along, her own hands leaden with the numbness of a dream. But when they reached the doorway, she stopped.
    “Jena?”
    Her eyes met Kari’s. She gave a small shake of her head. For so long, this had been the only home she knew. But it was not hers today, not for this.
    After a long beat, Kari nodded. She stepped through the doorway and was gone, swallowed by the shadows inside.
    The door swung closed behind her but Jena didn’t need to see to know what was in there. The darkened hall, the low-roofed room at the end, the Mothers gathered, waiting, urging.
    It had been ten years since her own long walk down the corridor.
    But not this one
, she reminded herself. Her gaze flicked to the space where her house had been. It was a relief now it was gone,