A Single Stone Read Online Free

tightly. It was practical for tunnelling but there was more to it than that; it simply felt wrong to leave something loose that might be contained. It was for this reason, too, that even though their years of wrapping were long past, they still bound their hips and chests when they tunnelled, as if to say,
We are doing what we can
.
    Jena glanced down the slope at Min. She had hurried to a nearby bush and was crouched behind it.
    Kari’s eyes sparkled with amusement. “They always drink too much the first time.” She turned towards Jena, her expression thoughtful. “She did well, didn’t she? She’ll be good.”
    “Yes, I think so.”
    “Calla said she was a cleanskin.”
    Jena’s gaze took in Min’s slender frame, resting briefly on her hips, then shoulders. Through her thin cotton garments, she could see the outline of jutting bone.
    There was something right and natural about a girl like that. It sometimes seemed to Jena that those who had been adjusted had a stunted quality, as if they had been reduced from a larger version of themselves. Some said such girls did not take to the line as easily as cleanskins but if that were true, Jena had seen no evidence of it.
    In the mountain, in the dark, it didn’t matter what you looked like. It didn’t matter whether you had been born into your smallness or helped along by the knife, by the careful breaking and compression of your bones. It mattered only that you could get the work done.
    A few feet further along, Renae sat with Asha, their eyes fixed in the direction of the village. Thinking of home, Jena supposed. Of a soft bed and a handful of something to ease the ache in their stomachs.
    As much as it was what every girl dreamed of, tunnelling was hard work. It sapped them of their reserves, and they had little enough of those. Jena too could feel hunger hollowing her out.
    But as eager as they might be to head for home and food, it was important they wait. That they take some time to stretch a tentative arm, massage the cramping knots from a leg. That when they stood, they did so slowly, so the sky didn’t rush to their heads, making them dizzy. Making them fall.
    Jena had seen it happen in her first season. Had watched a girl waver where she stood, like a flame about to let go in the face of the wind.
    I should have run
, she thought later. If she had, she might have reached the girl before she crumpled – limbs folding onto themselves, knees buckling beneath her. But Jena had been young then, and new; she hadn’t known what was coming. For months afterwards, the sickening crunch had replayed itself in her mind.
    A fall was bad enough. But fainting was so much worse. A girl unconscious had no chance of remembering what the Mothers drummed into them over years of training:
Do not fall. But if you must fall, make yourself limp. Be like water. Be soft upon the ground.
    The girl had hit so hard.
    That awful sound. Something shattering. The white gleam of bone breaking the surface.
    A break was nothing like an adjustment. There was no planning in it, no control. An adjustment could advance a girl; a break could be the end of her days in the mountain.
    Jena turned to Kari. “We’ll wait awhile.”
    “Of course.”
    Jena felt a flush of gratitude. She knew Kari was eager to get back, to see her mama, to place a hand on her belly and wait for the fluttering movements that had lately begun to ripple her skin. They both were. But their work was not done until the harvest was secured and the line safely home, and this was something Kari would not question. She would wait and keep a watchful eye on the others until Jena said it was time to move on.
    Jena raised herself onto the tips of her toes and peered out towards the village, resting an arm on Kari’s shoulder. It would take them over an hour to get back, perhaps two. Although you were never far from anything else in the valley, the paths through the forest were not direct. They looped around themselves, following