The Wordsmith

by Forde, Patricia; Simpson, Steve;

Letta stood helpless, watching him go, until he was lost in a blur of people and houses. She looked down at the old satchel around her neck. Why had he not recognised it?

  Her journey out of Tintown was tense and stressful. People eyed her slyly as she passed, nudging one another and pointing. A man shouted something after her but she couldn’t catch what he said. She hurried on, keeping her head down.

  And then she saw the soft glow of fire away to her right, off the beaten path. She hesitated. John Noa had banned all open fires in a bid to save what was left of the ozone layer. The light from the fire flickered in the encroaching darkness, throwing sinister shadows about at will. Letta walked on, resolute. Who would dare light a fire here? And then she saw it.

  A tight knot of people, standing around a brazier. As she approached them they turned to stare at her. They were the Wordless; people who had no language at all. She could hear them grunting at one another and pointing at her. Her mouth felt suddenly dry and her legs slowed despite herself. No-one knew exactly how they had become wordless. After the Melting, many children had been separated from their parents and had wandered for months or even years with no-one to teach them the rudiments of language. Some people believed the Wordless came from there. Others believed they were evil spirits wandering the planet looking for mischief. An old woman had told Letta that when they lost their words they also lost some of their humanity. Now, they were as unpredictable as wild animals and just as dangerous. Letta watched them dancing around the fire, arms and legs fluid, as if being blown by the wind. The gavvers had tried to put them to work in the fields but they caused so much unrest amongst the workers that the plan had to be abandoned. No-one wanted to be near them, watching them struggle to speak, making animal noises that could not be understood. Now they lived in the wild, like animals, encroaching on Ark from time to time, but mostly staying in Tintown or at the edge of the forest.

  As Letta watched, mesmerised, a man broke from the group and smiled at her, a big toothless grin. He was tall, over six foot and very thin. The skin on his face was pocked and raw. His hair, long and matted, clung to his face. Rough red stubble covered his chin. For a moment Letta couldn’t move at all. She could feel the heat of the fire on her cheek. The man stretched his hand out towards her. Letta didn’t know if the hand was there in friendship or as a threat. She didn’t wait to find out. She turned and ran as fast as she was able, not looking back. Her heart thumped in her chest, her lungs gasped for air, but she didn’t stop till she reached the gate.

  She looked down at the ground and hurried through. The workers were coming home from the fields, filling the town with their voices, and giving everywhere an air of business. Letta tried to calm her beating heart, the images of the Wordless still haunting her. She remonstrated with herself as she walked. There was nothing to be afraid of. They were just people who had never learned to talk. Why, then, did they fill her with such horror?

  She walked down the hill towards the water station. As she turned the corner into the square she stood stock-still.

  There on the wall of the old mill was an enormous painting of a forest, dense lines of green trees under an orange sky. Letta stood staring up at it, unable to comprehend what she was seeing. All around her the workers were stopping too, all chatter ceased, all eyes directed at the mill.

  The scene had been painted on a giant canvas, the cloth stretched across the old mill wall so that it took out every other vista. Letta’s eyes devoured it. At first she thought it was all green but now she could see it was layers of colour, sea green, grass green, intercut with bands of daffodil yellow and deepest gold. And if she screwed up her eyes, she could see faint shadows of lilac with their hint of summer. It was beautiful. All thoughts of the Wordless and Tintown vanished and she lost herself in its loveliness.

  Around about her, people had no choice but to stop and stare. In the midst of it all, an old man walked out from behind the mill. He had long grey hair flowing free and a thin wispy beard that fluttered in the breeze. On his head was a woollen hat, and he wore no coat. In his hand he held a paintbrush.

  ‘Look!’ he said. ‘This is art! Look at it! This is what John Noa is afraid of! You have a right to express yourselves. You are human not animal! Feast your eyes. Don’t be afraid!’

  Letta never saw where the gavvers came from. One minute the old man was still talking, waving his hands about, the next he was lying on the ground, blood flowing from his head into the drain beside the path.

  Letta’s instinct was to run to him, to help him, but in a single heartbeat, gavvers surrounded his prone form. All around her people were gasping and exclaiming. It seemed they were as shocked as she was. A voice rose, a man to the right of Letta, shouting at the gavvers.

  ‘Hey! Easy there! Back off.’

  There were more mutterings of agreement, and then suddenly the gavvers were reaching for their truncheons and running at the crowd. At the same time whistles were being blown to summon help. A woman screamed. As if in slow motion, the people started to move, glancing back all the time even as they ran further and further away, as though afraid there was more action to come. Letta found herself carried along by them, moving inexorably away.

  Inside the shop, she stopped to get her breath. The old man had been a Desecrator. She was sure of it. Had Marlo been there? Was the world gone mad? It hadn’t been a week since Benjamin had left but she had totally lost her bearings. She looked at her desk and even that looked unfamiliar to her. She could feel Benjamin’s presence. He was in the very air here. She wanted to reach out and touch him. Where are you? Are you dead? Talk to me! Anger bubbled up, making her head ache. She wouldn’t rest until she knew what had really happened. That scavenger, Fearfall, had not found Benjamin. She gritted her teeth. Why had he lied to John Noa? Was he still lying?

  She sat at her desk and rested her chin on her hand. She wanted to go to this river, to see where Smith Fearfall said he’d found Benjamin. But how could she do that? She knew nothing about the forest. And then an image slipped into her mind, unbidden.

  Marlo. The Desecrators knew the forest. Would they help her? She clenched her fists in desperation. They would have to. She would have to convince them. Somehow.

  CHAPTER 9

  Non-List

  Hope

  Expect to get something

  intensely wished for

  AS LETTA left Central Kitchen the following morning, Carver the gavver suddenly appeared beside her. Despite herself, her heart quickened.

  What did he want? Had he found out something?

  ‘Yes?’ she said, doing her best to pretend that it was normal for a gavver to approach her, though a pulse was pounding in her neck.

  ‘Words,’ he said, pushing past her and walking towards the open door.

  ‘Words?’ Letta echoed.

  ‘Words for gavvers. Apprentices.’

  She almost laughed out loud.

  ‘How many boxes?’ she asked.

  ‘Ten,’ Carver replied, throwing the word over his shoulder but not bothering to look at her.

  Letta nodded.

  ‘You collect?’

  ‘You bring.’

  Without another word, he was gone. She’d never done words for the gavvers before. That had always been Benjamin’s job. It wouldn’t do if these particular words fell into the wrong hands. Like every trade, they had their codes and mysterious modes of communication.

  She walked through the living area and into Benjamin’s study. There, she unlocked the door into his private library. She breathed in the smell of books and age and suddenly grief overcame her like an unexpected shower in summer. She hadn’t been in here since she’d got the news. She sank to her knees, overcome with emotion. Where was he? A tear burned its way down her cheek and she wiped it away impatiently. There was no time to waste on crying, she told herself. She headed over to the shelves. Her eyes scanned the rows of boxes.

  G. Gavver

  There it was. She took the box and hurried out of the ro
om, carefully locking the door behind her. Back in the living room, she put on a large pot filled with seawater to boil. The beetroots would arrive later and she would have to start the long process of making ink. She had gone out earlier and carried the two tin buckets full of brine back from the beach. Soon a man would come from the fields with the beetroot, and she could begin. It was always the same on the first day of the harvest moon. For as long as she could remember, on that day, the house was filled with the earthy smell of beetroot. Benjamin had used different plants at different times of the year to make ink but autumn ink was always beetroot.

  Letta had taken some pleasure the previous evening when Mrs Pepper had arrived with the little stove that Letta would be permitted to use in order to make the ink. It was well known in Ark that Mrs Pepper had no use for words or wordsmiths. She and Benjamin had always had a testy relationship, and her sour countenance had been very much in evidence when she handed Letta the little stove. Letta smiled at the memory.

  Up at her desk, she took out the cards carefully. There were about thirty in all, each one in Benjamin’s clear script.

  Artist: Creator of art, enemy of New World, Desecrator

  Letta knew that the word had had another meaning in the time before the Melting. Benjamin had told her how artists had been revered when he was a boy, but that they had become arrogant and led people astray. They were not tolerated in Ark, and even their work was banned. They had become a secret organisation, known as the Desecrators. She picked up another card:

  Report: Make known to the authorities

  Letta dipped her pen in the ink, drew out a fresh card and started to write. She was so engrossed in what she was doing that she didn’t hear the door open and someone walk in.

  ‘Letta!’

  Letta jumped, sending ink splashing across the words she had just written. She looked up. Werber. Now what did he want?

  ‘Yes?’ she said, not managing to keep the impatience out of her voice.

  ‘How you?’ Werber smiled at her, revealing his large white teeth.

  ‘Good,’ she said. ‘Work.’

  He nodded.

  ‘Work later,’ he said.

  She walked to the counter and stood waiting to see what he wanted.

  ‘See Desecrator?’ he said suddenly.

  Letta drew in a fast breath. What did he mean?

  ‘Desecrator?’

  ‘Yesterday, at mill?’

  Letta calmed down. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Saw him.’

  ‘Saw him today,’ Werber said smugly.

  ‘Today?’

  ‘Down at gavver base. Underground.’

  Now she understood. She had seen the grating on the outside wall of the gavver base. They kept the prisoners underground, and sometimes you could see a hand begging for food through the grating. She realised Werber was still talking.

  ‘Kicked sand in his eyes!’

  ‘You did?’

  He was obviously very proud of himself, Letta thought. His chest swelled and the smile grew even bigger.

  ‘Desecrator,’ he said again and spat on the floor.

  Letta couldn’t take any more. ‘Want something?’ she said. ‘Work.’ She nodded towards her desk.

  ‘No,’ Werber said, shifting from one foot to the other. ‘You come walk with me?’

  Letta’s heart sank. That was the last thing she wanted to do. She shook her head. ‘Work,’ she said again, indicating her desk.

  He scowled. ‘Later?’

  She shrugged her shoulders and went back to her desk, hoping he would get the message and leave. He stood for another minute.

  ‘I ask Helen,’ he said and, like a sulky child, he turned and left. Letta almost laughed. Werber really was foolish. He had been the same in school, always taking umbrage when the children teased him, running to Mrs Truckle over every small slight.

  He had always made it known that he would like to mate with Letta. She had found that out when she was ten years old. Benjamin had advised her to be friendly with him, but not to make any commitment until she was eighteen. At eighteen, girls were expected to settle down with a man and produce children. No more than two children. It was a fine balance. Noa needed to repopulate the planet, but resources were limited, thus the two-child rule. Occasionally, people had a third child. Those children were taken and given to families who had no children or only a single child. A fourth child would have seen the parents banished.

  There were few accidental pregnancies in Ark, and when they did happen, there were herbs from the healer to make sure the child didn’t grow to term. Werber was a third child. He had been born to the Diamond family, whose mother was a tailor and whose father worked in the fields. The herbs hadn’t worked, in that case, obviously. It happened. He had been taken from his mother and given to the Downes family. Third children were a rarity, and Benjamin always said that they became difficult, never really feeling part of the adopted family and living too near their family of birth. It was true in Werber’s case.

  Letta went back to her desk, but she couldn’t concentrate. How would she contact Marlo? No-one had any idea where their hiding place was and even though she knew it was in the forest, she also knew she would never find it.

  She sat lost in her own thoughts and, just as she was about to give up she heard Werber’s voice in her head: ‘Saw him today.’

  Of course! Werber had seen a Desecrator. She could see the same man and talk to him. He could tell her how to contact Marlo. She tried not to think too much about the detail of her plan. There was no guarantee the prisoner would still be there or that he would talk to her. If he did talk to her, why would he trust her?

  She would finish the word boxes, ten of them, and that would give her an excuse to go to the gavvers’ base. At least she could try. If it meant she found out the truth about Benjamin nothing else would matter.

  She went into the living room and tried to eat her lunch. A hunk of dry bread, a bowl of tomato soup made from the recent glut and an apple all stared up at her, but she had no appetite. She picked up the apple and took a bite. The smell reminded her of every autumn in Ark, the wagons loaded with apples fresh from the orchard, the sweet smell of fruit permeating every breath of air. For weeks Central Kitchen would produce jugs of apple juice and mounds of stewed apples with every meal. It didn’t bother Letta. She liked apples. She took another bite. As her teeth sank into the firm flesh the door opened again and a young man came in with a large box. He placed the box on the counter.

  ‘Beetroot,’ he said, and before Letta could thank him he was gone. Letta took the box and brought it back to the living room. Then, taking the small sharp knife she had seen Benjamin use so many times before, she started to cut the beetroots into small chunks. The juice immediately covered her fingers, turning her skin bright red.

  She looked at her hands and thought about all the wordsmiths who had gone before her. Not all of them had been required to make their own ink but maybe some of them had. She continued to chop the tough beetroots, throwing them into the pot to be covered by the boiling water. Finally, when all the roots were in the water, she reduced the temperature and left them to cook.

  Then she went to finish the gavvers’ word boxes.

  By mid-afternoon, her hand ached but the ten boxes were finished and the shop was filled with the heavy smell of the beetroot. She walked over to the stove and turned off the heat. Then, carefully, she strained the crimson juices into a large bowl. She picked up one of the bigger chunks and pushed it through the old wire strainer to thicken the liquid. She stirred it, watching the blood-red soup swirl and wave. She knew there was no more to do but to let it cool.

  Outside, the bell chimed four o’clock. It was time to go. Letta went and got her coat. Butterflies danced in her stomach and her hands had begun to sweat. She would play it by ear, she thought. One step at a time.

  The gavvers’ base was below John Noa’s house to the south of the town. It was nestled at the bottom of the hill and Letta always thought
it looked as though John Noa was looking down on it, keeping an eye on the criminals that were held there. She took the long way around, passing the mill, eager to see if there was any sign of yesterday’s painting but there was nothing. The mill stood unadorned as though nothing unusual had ever happened there. Letta couldn’t help feeling a little disappointed. She had never seen anything like it and she knew she would never forget it. The old man’s words lingered in her memory too.

  You have a right to express yourselves. You are human!

  He was wrong, of course. Before the Melting, people had expressed themselves as they wished, and look at where that got them.

  She turned the corner on to Mill Street itself. On the opposite side of the road, two Green Warriors were standing, talking. Letta bowed her head in their direction but they didn’t seen to see her or take any notice of her greeting. She pressed on, the face of the cliff visible in front of her, beyond that the silhouette of Noa’s house perched near its summit. In front of her, she could see the Round House, the gavvers’ base, its round stone walls broken only by narrow slits for windows, its high metal gates guarding the perimeter, and its massive front door painted black.

  She shifted the satchel from her shoulder where it had started to eat into her flesh and held it awkwardly in the crook of her elbow. She took a deep breath and marched on through the gates up to the front door. She pushed on the door and it opened. Inside was a small entrance hall with a short desk, behind which sat a gavver. He looked up when Letta came in. He was young with bright eyes, full of curiosity. He stretched his neck forward when he saw her.

  ‘Yes?’ he said.

  Letta put her bag on the desk and started to take out her boxes.

  ‘Words,’ she said. ‘Carver.’

  He nodded, taking up a box and examining it.

  ‘Good,’ he answered, and smiled at her, showing two rows of white teeth.

  Letta nodded towards the boxes.

  ‘Apprentices,’ she said, by way of explanation, but really just to keep him talking.