The Seed

A speck of blue light blinked in the boundless dark.

It brightened, went out, then brightened again. With every flash, it grew a little bigger. I stared at it and tried to move closer, but there seemed to be nothing beneath my feet.

Then it stopped blinking.

A sphere hung there, mostly blue, edged with a thin ring of light. Patches of different shades lay across its surface. Several brownish-green shapes crowded together beneath narrow white bands that curled and wound over them, spreading out in places, piling thickly in others.

It was turning.

It took me a while to notice. A small patch of brown that had been in view slowly slipped into shadow. On the other side, new places were emerging from the dark.

I had never seen colors like these.

How could anything this bright exist where we lived?

I reached out.

Suddenly it was close. The white bands opened before my eyes into soft, billowing folds. Beneath them, the blue went on forever, so bright it seemed about to spill over. I craned my neck as far as I could, but the curved edge was already gone.

My hand was still outstretched. Now I was a little afraid.

It was too big.

Something was calling.

At first there was only one sound, short and sharp. Then others came crowding in, some shrill, some hoarse, some low and muddled. They sounded like animals packed into a narrow hole, or countless people whispering against my ears. They came closer and closer, until even the blue light began to tremble.

I turned my head, trying to get away.

A hand caught my shoulder.

The blue lurched.

I hadn't finished looking.

• • •

A mud-smeared face filled my vision. Its mouth kept opening and closing, so frantic it looked ready to bite its own tongue.

I watched the mouth. That was where the sounds were coming from, but I couldn't understand them. The faster he spoke, the more desperate he became. Someone peered over his shoulder and shouted something too.

I didn't know who they were. I didn't know what they wanted to do to me.

One voice suddenly rose. I flinched, hit the back of my head against something, and pain bleached my vision white.

“...Don't move.”

The face came closer at once.

“Don't move. Do you hear me? Your head's still bleeding.”

At last, a few words settled out of the jumble. I understood them.

Something cold and wet was pressed against my cheek. My nose was full of the smell of rotting mud. I tried to turn my face away, but a throbbing started above my ear. Pain burrowed inward through half my head, forcing my eyes shut.

“3?”

I knew that sound.

It meant me.

Three. Written down, it was just “3.” I didn't know who had given it to me. All I knew was that when someone called it, I was supposed to answer. Everyone here had a mark of their own, like those hard-to-read symbols on the walls. Some dragged on for ages. Mine was simple, at least.

I opened my mouth, but no sound came out.

The boy cradled the back of my head and brushed the hair off my face. I could see his eyebrows now. There was a little gap near the end of one.

7.

I knew him.

“...It's you.”

“It's me.” He let out a hard breath. “You finally decided to say something.”

He spoke quickly, as if he'd been holding it in for ages. He reached for my face again, but when his fingers got close, he seemed unable to decide where to put them.

We were the same age. We often went looking for food together. I was the one who'd put that gap in his eyebrow. Once, when his hair kept falling into his eyes, he'd asked me to cut it. My hand slipped with the scrap of iron, and I shaved off a bit of eyebrow too. For days afterward, he wouldn't let me near his head.

Suddenly I remembered all of it.

But only half my memory had come back. What had just happened?

I tried to sit up. The moment I pushed with my arms, the ground tilted sideways. 7 caught me, almost losing his own balance.

“Lean back,” he said through clenched teeth. “Stop moving around.”

He shifted me against the wall. Only then did I see that what had been under my face was his sleeve. The cloth was filthy, but one patch was too dark to be mud.

He followed my eyes, then tucked the sleeve behind his back.

“It's just a little cut,” he said. “It's almost stopped bleeding.”

I didn't ask anything else.

The people who had gathered around us had already drifted off. Nobody asked whether I was alive or dead. Someone stepped over our legs, crouched at another stretch of wall, and thrust an arm into a hole, working his shoulder farther and farther inside.

Only a narrow strip of sky showed overhead, gray-white as an old rag. There wasn't a breath of wind. Damp patches covered both walls. Water seeped through the joints between the bricks and trickled down long black stains.

I knew this place.

Farther ahead was a drainage ditch. Behind the broken wall lay a heap of rocks too heavy to lift. We'd been here many times. Whenever we left, the stink stayed between our fingers no matter how hard we washed.

The sky was always like this too. I had never seen sunlight reach this passage. When it grew lighter, people came out to rummage for things. When it darkened, they crawled back wherever there was room to lie down. You couldn't usually see inside the narrow holes at the foot of the walls. But after dark, you could hear people coughing, turning over, or arguing quietly for a little more space.

I raised a hand to wipe the mud from the corner of my mouth.

Several red marks circled my wrist. A blackish-brown fragment of shell stuck to the base of my thumb.

I picked at it with a fingernail.

The smell rose from my fingers into my nose. My stomach clenched, then gave a loud growl.

“Don't wipe that on your face.” 7 caught my hand and scrubbed it twice against my trouser leg.

Over his shoulder, I saw a big boy standing beside the broken wall.

4.

He stood a head taller than either of us, his trousers rolled to the knees, a wooden club dangling from one hand. Usually, if we saw him, we went another way. If there was no other way, 7 would grab me and tell me not to look at him.

He hadn't left. He was looking at me too. Dried mud clung to his hollow cheeks. One corner of his mouth was split.

I wasn't looking at his face. I couldn't take my eyes off the club. A small chip was missing from the thick end, exposing paler wood beneath.

That pale patch struck my eyes like a needle. My arm flew up on its own to shield my head.

“What's wrong?”

7 was still holding my hand.

The piece of shell caught between us dug into my palm.

Deep inside the pain, a door seemed to burst open. I remembered the stone slab.

The slab with the broken corner. Something moving underneath. The two of us crouched beside it, neither daring to make a sound.

• • •

“A bit higher—just a bit.”

7's fingers were wedged beneath the slab, his knuckles stretched white. I knelt on the other side, braced my shoulder against the wall, and heaved.

The slab shifted. Stinking water pooled beneath it surged out and filled my shoes.

I didn't stop to move my feet.

There was a 0=1 underneath.

Its front half was flat and hard, a mass of short legs tucked beneath a blackish-brown shell. Its back half had no shell at all: rings of soft flesh trailed into a slick, wet tail. When the light touched it, the tail jerked back. The legs at the front scratched against the gaps between the bricks.

I hadn't caught one this fat in a long time. 7 and I looked at each other. Neither of us smiled, but I knew he was thinking the same thing: we wouldn't have to go home hungry today.

“Hold it! Don't let go!”

I freed one hand and reached for it. My fingertips brushed its tail and slipped.

The slab began to fall.

“3, hurry! I can't hold it!”

7's voice had changed. I shoved my knee beneath the slab, pressed my hand into the mud, and finally closed my fingers around the soft part of its body.

It thrashed hard. Its tail coiled around my little finger, tightening and loosening, while slime squeezed between my fingers. I was afraid of tearing it in half down there, so I couldn't yank. I had to ease it out a little at a time.

“There! Block that hole!”

7 couldn't spare a hand. He nudged a broken brick across with his foot and plugged the opening beside it.

I pulled again.

The whole creature slid free, its shell slicing my thumb. I landed on my backside in the water and hurriedly cupped both hands around it.

The slab slammed down.

Neither of us moved. We just sat there panting for a while.

7 laughed first, then bit his lip, afraid someone might hear.

“Nice landing.”

I looked down. There was only one puddle in the whole passage, and I'd found its deepest part.

“The cloth.”

“Keep hold of it.”

He searched inside his clothes, watching my hands. I parted my fingers just enough to let him see, then quickly closed them again.

“One this big will feed us twice,” he whispered.

I nodded. My mouth was already watering.

The creatures tasted awful, really. The meat inside the shell was bitter, and there was often mud in the soft part. The first time I'd eaten one, I'd thrown up. Even when I was hungry afterward, I'd hesitate at the sight of them. These days, once I had one in my hands, all I could think about was how to cook it. I hardly minded it crawling over my fingers anymore.

7 finally found the rag. He had just shaken it open when a foot came down on one corner.

He tugged. It didn't move.

I looked up.

4 stood beside the slab, looking at my hands.

“Hand it over.”

I drew my hands closer to my stomach.

“We caught it first.”

4 snorted, as though I'd said something pointless. His foot stayed on the cloth. His hand moved a little closer.

7 let go of the rag and came over to pull my arm.

“3. Let's go.”

I pushed myself up. The big boy stepped sideways, right into our path. I tried the other side. His club swung across and pressed against my clothes.

“Why hide it? I've already seen it.”

The creature gave a violent twist in my hands, driving the edge of its shell into the cut again. I sucked in a breath and gripped it harder.

7 leaned close to my ear. “Give it to him. We'll find another.”

I wouldn't.

7's fingers had changed color under the weight of that slab. We'd searched for so long just to find this one. Why should we give it to him?

When I didn't move, 4 grabbed my wrist. Up close, I could see the dark scab in the split at the corner of his mouth, and smell the same sour stink that clung to all of us. But his thumb pressed against my wrist bone with terrifying strength.

“Let go.”

I bent over, pressing both hands against my stomach.

He started prying my fingers apart. I tried to pull back and couldn't move. The creature writhed between my crushed hands.

“You can squeeze it to death. You still won't get to eat it,” he said.

7 grabbed his arm.

“Let him go!”

4 drove an elbow into him. 7 stumbled back two steps, caught his heel on the slab, and landed with his palm on broken bricks. He let out a short, sharp gasp.

I panicked and drove my shoulder into the big boy's chest.

His grip on my wrist loosened.

I turned to help 7. At the edge of my vision, something rose.

The club.

That little pale patch in the chipped wood was very close to my face.

Before I could duck, the blow landed above my ear. The sound was dull and heavy, as if someone had struck directly inside my skull. My feet lost the ground. The slab, the filthy water, and the two tall walls all toppled toward me.

The creature slipped between my fingers.

I tried to catch it.

After that, there was nothing left of the world but blue.

• • •

“Loosen up a bit.”

I came back to myself and realized I was clutching 7's cuff, twisting the cloth tight in my fist.

He hadn't pulled away. He was just looking down at me.

“You remember now?”

Slowly, I let go.

The broken wall was empty. 4 and his club were gone. A tangle of footprints marked the mud. Nearby, someone lifted a brick, looked underneath, and dropped it again, just as before.

“Where's the creature?”

“4 took it.”

I looked down at my hand. Its struggling had left marks on my palm. Mud packed the small cut on my thumb. It hurt so much it was almost numb.

One that big would have kept both of us going for two meals.

I pinched the scrap of shell between my fingers and held it there for a long time before throwing it to the ground.

7 tugged at his sleeve. The fabric split. He tore off a strip along the split, folded it, and told me to hold it against my head.

I fumbled it, so he held it for me.

“I kept calling you. You wouldn't move.”

His throat worked after he said it.

“I thought...”

He didn't finish. He stared at the spot above my ear and shifted the cloth a little higher.

I noticed the hand he was using to brace himself on the ground. Skin had scraped off the heel of his palm, and tiny grains of grit clung to it. He hadn't even tried to clean it.

“Your hand's cut too.”

He turned it over, glanced at it, wiped it on his clothes, and put it back on the ground.

“Next time I tell you to go, you go. Don't look back. And don't try to take him on.”

I wanted to say the creature would have fed us both. I wanted to say I hadn't thought he'd actually hit me in the head. I wanted to say I'd be faster next time. But 7 had torn his own sleeve down to half its length, and the bare arm beneath was spattered with little dots of mud.

All I said was, “All right.”

Something scraped behind the wall. Someone cursed about the narrow passage and told the people ahead to move. As I listened, I could make out what each person was saying. Even the muttered complaints in the distance made sense.

Their voices had sounded so strange only moments before.

The instant I shut my eyes, the blue sphere rose out of the dark.

I opened them.

The wet wall was still there.

“I saw something just now,” I said.

7 was checking whether the blood had soaked through the cloth.

“What?”

“Something round. Really big. It was blue, with a ring of light around it.”

He paused and looked up.

“Not here,” I said quickly. “I saw it while I was lying down.”

“That was a dream.”

I thought about it.

“Probably.”

He went on pressing the cloth against my wound, but I was getting restless. Those white patterns had been perfectly clear before. Now one part was starting to blur. I tried desperately to remember, but the harder I tried, the less sure I was whether it had curved upward or down.

“Let go for a second.”

“What now?”

“Just a second.”

I took the cloth and held it myself, then leaned forward to find a fairly smooth patch of wet mud at the foot of the wall.

7 steadied my shoulder.

“Don't fall over again.”

I drew a circle with my finger. The mud was too soft. The groove began closing almost at once. I tried a spot beside it, drier and mixed with fine sand. It held a line, just about.

This time, the circle stayed.

I added some uneven shapes inside it, then used my fingernail to trace the white patterns. One line was supposed to curve around here and break off near the edge. But I pressed too hard and lifted a whole clump of mud.

I smoothed it out and started again.

“What are you drawing?” 7 crouched beside me.

“The thing I saw.”

He watched for a while.

“Isn't that just a circle?”

“There's stuff inside.”

I moved my hand so he could see.

He bent his head, his eyebrows knitting together.

“I can't tell.”

“This should be blue.” I pointed. “All this bit. And here too. These things on top are white.”

He looked at the rubble and dirty water beside us and said nothing.

I looked too.

There was a little of every color nearby: black, gray, rusty dark red, yellowish earth inside broken bricks. I searched around, but nothing I could point to would make him understand.

“It's really bright,” was all I could say. “Brighter than anything I've ever seen.”

7 touched my arm.

“Let's go back first. I'll help you draw it when we get there.”

“I might forget by then.”

Only when I said it did I understand why I was in such a hurry.

I'd had plenty of dreams. Dreams of more food than I could eat, of running terribly fast, even of a crack opening in the sky. When I woke, a little would remain, but before long there would be nothing. Sometimes I'd even forget I'd had a dream at all.

But I didn't want to forget this one.

7 looked at me, then down at the crooked marks in the mud. He stopped trying to persuade me. Instead, he brushed a few small stones aside to give me more room.

I tried drawing the ring of light around the edge. I traced two lines, but neither looked right.

My head was growing heavier. I had to stop and sit with my eyes shut for a while.

When I opened them, 7 was setting a broken brick beside the drawing.

“Don't put it on top,” I said.

“I'm not.”

He moved it a little farther away, then found another and set it on the other side.

The crooked circle lay between the two bricks.

“There,” he said. “Now someone won't just step on it.”

I looked at the marks in the mud and finally drew my hand back.

7 stood first, tested his footing, and offered me his arm. This time I didn't try to be brave. I took it and slowly pulled myself up. We waited against the wall until the ground stopped swaying, then started back.

As we passed the slab, the cloth we'd brought for the creature was still where we'd left it, marked with half a footprint.

7 picked it up for me, shook off the loose mud, and stuffed it into my pocket.

“Wash it when you get back. We can use it next time.”

I felt it through the pocket. The cloth was cold and damp, with a little fine sand caught inside.

The gap ahead was too narrow for us to pass together. He went first and told me to hold the back of his clothes. One hand on the wall, I followed him step by step.

Just before we turned the corner, I looked back.

The mud at the foot of the wall looked no different from the mud anywhere else. Even from this distance, I could no longer make out the circle. Only the two broken bricks were still recognizable.

“Let's come this way tomorrow,” I said.

7 looked back.

“Then don't forget the cloth.”

I touched the wound on my head before I realized he meant the one for catching creatures.

“I'll bring it,” I said.

He turned and kept walking. I held tight to his clothes and went over the position of those two bricks again and again in my mind. I said nothing more about the blue sphere. But like a seed buried deep inside my thoughts, it gave a faint glimmer in the dark, then another.