A Single Stone Read Online Free PDF

now it no longer stood there like a decaying skeleton, its timbers half-stripped like flesh hanging from bones. It made it easier to forget, to let the past be the past. To let her old family fall away behind her, as she knew they must.
    “It’s good you came.”
    Jena turned to see Renae’s mama, her hair flour-flecked and tangled from the bakery. She had never been a tunneller; her body was tall and thickset, her limbs heavy. The arm that gripped Jena’s shoulder was solid and muscled from kneading dough.
    “It will be all right, child.”
    At the woman’s touch, something lurched inside Jena. The crowd was so loud, the crisp autumn air suddenly stuffy and close. The world became a wall of bodies pressing towards the house, towards her. Something had shifted; a kind of pressure was building, a moment stretched hard against its breaking point.
    “I’m sorry. I …”
    She shrugged the arm roughly away, then placed a hand on the doorknob and pushed against it. She would wait just inside, close the door tight behind her.
    But as she stepped into the house, her knees buckled. A thick smell fugged the air in the hall, sickly sweet. She felt suddenly dizzy, as if something deep within her had come loose. The smell was inside her, clogging her nostrils, stoppering her throat. Her vision blurred, making the figures down the hall ripple and sway. A familiar face turned towards her, eyes wide with alarm.
    And now the walls were a tunnel around her, a narrow band of dark, collapsing and dwindling to a single fine point. Carrying her down.

    Jena is four, perhaps five.
    They have told her to run and so she is running.
    She hurtles through the streets, not knowing why but everything in her alive with the thrill of it. Because she is special, unwrapped early. The Mothers did not come for the other girls, not even Kari who lay right beside her.
    There was one pair of hands only, reaching down into the bed, lifting her out. Turning and unwinding until the last of her wrappings had fallen away and she was free.
    Straight home,
the Mother said.
Go, child.
    When she rounds the corner, the street is full of people, their faces shining. When they see her, they step aside.
    You have a sister,
someone says and Jena thinks
, Oh. So that’s what it is.
    She had known there was a sister coming. A baby, at least. Mama said it was a daughter but the Mothers said you can never be sure. It doesn’t do to wish too hard. Only to wait and hope.
    It is the mountain that will decide.
    In this, as in all things.
    The Mothers have taught Jena the words and they roll smoothly from her tongue.
    But it is strange that it is today. Mama’s belly is big – so big it makes Jena laugh – but Papa says it isn’t time yet, that the baby won’t come until the first snow is high on the mountain.
    Still, when Jena reaches the house, there she is, white and tiny, sneaking her birthday in early. A Mother stands on the doorstep, holding her up, smiling.
    Jena wants to hold her too. She reaches for her and says
, Please,
because it is her sister and she has been waiting.
    But the Mother shakes her head. She says
, Go, child,
and points down the hall.
    Mama.
    She looks pale and tired but Jena knows that’s how mamas are when a baby comes. They are weak for a while and have to stay in bed. The papas make soup and you tell them it’s delicious even though it tastes like water. Then each day the mamas are a little better until before you know it they are up again, singing and smiling and taking the pot back, saying
, Here, let me.
    Jena knows this because Loren told her. Her mama has already had two babies after Loren, but they are both brothers. Loren will be jealous of Jena’s tiny new sister.
    Mama.
Jena finds herself whispering because the room is so quiet. There is Papa and two Mothers and a strange kind of heaviness.
    Jena.
Mama’s voice is soft but that is okay because that’s what mamas do sometimes. They come in the night when you wake up sad or