Elaine Chang (10) | STAFF REPORTER
“I’ll send someone to check on the work tomorrow but, just so y’know, for every seed we’ll take six months off your sentence.”
“Doesn’t seem like tough work.” Matthias muttered under his breath. It was a throwaway comment. At the very least, The Dean wasn’t supposed to hear it. Matthias wasn’t even quite sure how he heard it over the sound of steady rainfall, but The Dean chuckled nastily at the remark.
“You have fun then, son.” He replied, dropping a small burlap sack on the ground. It fell heavily, hitting the ground with a rattling noise. The rain quickly wrapped itself around the sack, darkening the tan cloth with moisture.
Matthias turned as The Dean walked off; boots sinking slightly into the coppery clay-like soil. He watched as the man’s head bowed against the fall of the water, until the unceasing gray trickle swallowed his receding figure. Perhaps it was the wind, but he could’ve sworn some faint caveat making its way back to him via a breeze. Something about ‘keeping them dry.’
Shrugging it off, he reached down to the burlap sack and worked at the knot with his fingernails. It was difficult, as the rain slipped its way between his fingers and the fine fibers of the rope. Suddenly, it loosened, spilling out a pile of seeds that looked exactly like small jacks— ones that you might see on a playground.
Matthias picked one up, holding it up to his eye. It was a deep shade of puce at the bulbous core, while the points that stuck out were a little lighter. He frowned a little, giving it a toss in the air. It was heavy for its size, hitting his palm with more force than he’d expected. He placed the seed back onto the pile of them and scooped the whole lot back into the sack, tying it up. He looped the sack onto his belt and knelt down to get to work.
His fingers permeated the soaking ground with ease, clawing up the soft soil into what he felt was an adequate hole. Then, he reached into the bag, fingers searching for a seed, when suddenly he felt something pinch his finger. “Ow!” He said, cursing as he withdrew his finger from the sack. The rain quickly washed away any visual evidence, but as he brought the finger to his mouth he could taste the metallic flavor of blood.
He ripped the whole sack from his belt loop and turned it upside down, shaking it onto the ground. “What the-”
Instead of being little purple seeds they were… crabs. Small little crabs which spilled out from the tan cloth and scuttled in every direction; little legs digging into the wet clay of the ground. Some of them stopped momentarily to explore the surface of puddles formed by The Dean’s receding footprints, but most hurried off to find some semblance of shelter from the rain.
Matthias could do nothing but stare in dismay as an entire colony of the creatures scurried away from him, across the desolate plantation, and away into steady rainfall. His gaze fell to the ground where the sack lay and he picked it up to peer inside.
There remained only one seed left, hiding, clinging to the surface of the burlap sack but as Matthias removed it from the cloth to inspect it, it changed. It seemed to drink the rain with deep thirst, engorging with every drop that splattered on its surface.
He watched, fascinated, as ten of the points elongated into spindly claws and two more swelled into beady, black eyes. Its bulbous center flattened itself into a shell, stretching its fringe into spiky little precipices. The shell was the same deep puce color as the seed, speckled with bits of lavender that made Matthias vaguely wonder if what he was holding was poisonous.
He dropped the thing onto the ground, and stepped back to watch as it joined the rest of its brethren somewhere off in the rainy distance where he could not see it.
It took some six months with it, though.
