This is like shaking a tree, trying to get one particular nut to fall. “Think backward,” I say. “You realize your hands and arms are burned. Was one before the other, or both at the same time?”
“What happened right before that is I opened my eyes. Pain is something you tend to notice right away, Nadia.”
He’s upset again, and I’m worried. What if he’s not trying? This is too important for him not to try. “What about—”
“Wait,” he interrupts. “What do you mean, ‘hands’?”
I stare at him, puzzled. He jumps up from his position against the rock and before I can blink he’s squatting in front of me. Trying to make me look at him. I don’t want to. He holds out his arms, wrists to the sky, sleeves pushed up.
I feel my breath come fast, the slight tingle in my fingers and legs. How could I have made such a mistake? Such a stupid mistake? His right wrist and forearm are marred with rippling patches. But the skin of his left arm is a smooth, muscled strip of pale surrounded by tan. His hands haven’t scarred at all. Somewhere deep in my mind, I hear him yell as he reaches into the fire.
“How did you know I had burns on both my arms? And my hands?”
I don’t know what to say, so I don’t. I’d just assumed both sides had scarred. Stupid.
“You asked if I burned them at the same time. How did you know they were both burned?” he demands.
I can’t look up at him. “I must have seen you after the Forgetting. With your arms bandaged. I’m sure I did.”
“Liar,” he says to me, and just like before, I feel the slap of the word. This time I think I’m meant to, and it makes me mad, too, which is good. The anger distracts me from the panic I could feel lurking just below the surface. “You did not see that,” he says.
“Why?”
“Because you didn’t.”
“I say I did.”
His voice is deadly serious. And close. “If you know something about me I need you to say it. Now, Nadia. While we’re out here, alone. Tell me when you saw me with those burns.”
No, I need for him to say it. I need for him to remember. I want so much for those berries to make him remember it’s like an ache inside.
“If you know it, say it!” he yells. The suncrickets raise a chorus of chirping, and then immediately go quiet. “Please.”
I can’t say anything. He’s on his feet now, and I can hear him moving, pacing, trying to keep his frustration in check. I hug my knees, my own anger turning inward. This is my fault, for being so careless, reckless. Overconfident. I have to find a way out, a way to explain without explaining, and these are not tools I often find ready and waiting in my box.
When Gray speaks again, it sounds like barely controlled rage. “Then just tell me how you know, Nadia. How were you there?”
My gaze leaps upward, pulse jumping in my veins. He has both hands in his hair, and his expression is not what I thought it would be at all. He’s not angry; he’s afraid. But he said How were you there? like he knew what it meant, like a memory. “Do you remember me being there?” I ask.
“No.” His voice is a whisper. “How could you have been?”
“Tell me what you remember about being there.”
He drops his hands and sits against the rock, head back, eyes closed. “Just that I was confused. I didn’t understand where I was, or why I’d been taken. Everyone was a stranger, all penned up together. And”—he grimaces once, maybe at the memory of pain—“no one remembered what to do about burns, except for Rose. She got oil for my arms, made tea to dull the pain and make me sleep. She took care of everyone, on the men’s and women’s sides. I think maybe she was a doctor once. She—”
“You don’t mean Rose in the bathhouse?” His eyes dart up, and I see that he does. I don’t understand what he’s talking about. I don’t understand anything. “But … Rose is Lost.”
He goes completely still. “Isn’t that what we’re talking about?”
“But … ” I sift through his words and the realization comes to me slow, like a leaf falling from a high limb. “Were you … Lost?”
And again I see it in his face. He was.
I don’t know what to do with my body. I stand, turn away, try to escape from his stare so that I have time to think. How could he have been Lost? He pulled his book from the fire. He put the fire out with his own hands. He had his book; the cover was burned, but almost all of the pages were there. I saw it. “You can’t have been Lost,” I say to the fern trees.
“But, Nadia, how could you have known—”
“You live with the glassblower!” I shout. Now I’m out of control, just like I was back then. What happened in the glassblower’s workshop was the only thing I did right that sunrising. Hitting the man so Gray could rescue his book from the fire. I will not believe it went wrong. How could it have gone wrong? “You weren’t Lost,” I say again.
I hear him cursing beneath his breath. He must be up and about because I think he’s kicking bushes. Then my little vine-covered space goes quiet again, nothing but the music of the crickets and the stream. When Gray speaks again he’s perfectly calm. On the outside. “What do you know about me?”
I close my eyes.
“Is there something in your book?” When I don’t respond he just says, “Please tell me.”
I don’t know what to do. This is cruel. For both of us.
“Then would you … would you at least turn around and sit?”
I turn and I sit down hard on my little rock. I’m not sure how much longer I could have stood anyway. I’m shaking inside. Gray sits on the ground in front of me, his book in his lap on its strap.
“I’m going to tell you something,” he says. “But only if you say to me you will never write it down. You cannot write it down.” I drag my eyes up to his. They are a deep, deep brown. “Do you swear it?”
I nod, pressing my fingers into my legs to push away the shaking.
“When I woke up after the Forgetting, I was burned and in the streets without a book. I was afraid. I hid, and after a day or so, two members of the Council found me in a roof garden. They were searching for people like me, and they locked me in with the Lost. I was there almost until sunsetting, my hands and my arm nearly healed, and then the glassblower came. He’d lost a son in the Forgetting, and he mostly remembered how to do his work, but he needed help, and he didn’t want an apprentice. He wanted a son back, and … You understand that nothing was organized. We were barely fed. I don’t even know how he got in, but he picked me out from the other boys, took me home, and gave me a book. He’d seen my scars, so we sat together, with my mother, too, and we watched him turn back the pages of his book and write, ‘Gray was burned at the furnace today.’ And he’s been a father to me ever since, just as if it was true … ”
My head drops to my hands. He’d lost his book after all. He’d been Lost. And then his own father came and got him. Chose him out of a crowd. Was the memory lodged so deep inside the glassblower’s head that he gravitated to his own son without knowing it? Did he feel the tug of his own blood? And if so, why had no one in my family ever felt even an inkling of the same? What was wrong with me? What is wrong with me? I look up again and realize that Gray is trying to gauge my response.
“You know what will happen to me and my father and mother if they find out,” he says. “I’m trusting you. But … if you know something about me, then please … ”
He puts a hand on my arm and I flinch, as if I were the one who’d been burned, and he pulls it back. I hug my knees. He probably thinks I reacted that way because he was Lost. I don’t know how to explain. I don’t know what to do. I think of running. I think of screaming. I think of telling the glassblower’s son everything. What I can’t do is breathe properly.
“This game hasn’t gone the way I’d planned,” Gray comments.
I actually almost laugh. Except that it’s not funny. He’s not laughing, either. He tents his fingers over his face, eyes closed.
“I
don’t understand. I know you weren’t with the Lost, and I know I didn’t see you on the streets after the Forgetting. I would have remembered you. I know I would … But how could you know I was burned on my other arm?”
I shake my head.
“Nadia, what do you know about me? Please.”
I shake my head again, but I don’t know who I’m telling no. This is so different from my mother. What I know about her would hurt deeply when she’s too fragile for hurt of any kind. What I know about Gray would only make something right. Something I thought in my own childish way I had helped make right before.
Gray, listen to me. You are the glassblower’s son. When he chose you from the Lost, he chose his own child. You burned your hands in your own furnace, saving your book. I thought I’d helped you. I thought you had your book. I thought I’d saved you. But I didn’t.
“Please,” he whispers. “Do you know who I am?”
I think I’m going to cry. I never cry. I hear the boy with the soot-streaked face in the glow of the furnace, telling me not to forget.
“You are the glassblower’s son,” I say. “And you’re going to have to trust me again, because I can’t tell you why I know.”
Again there is only the rush of water in the dim, vine-covered grove. I try to breathe, and when I dare to look up again Gray is exactly as he was, each muscle unchanged, his voice so quiet it sounds like the breeze. “You know this? You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
He closes his eyes. For a long time. I know he’s going to question me. I think through my answers. But when he opens his eyes again he only looks at me. Really looks at me. A look that has nothing to do with the boy with the burned hands, and nothing to do with the Gray of the learning room. This is a razor-sharp gaze that cuts straight through my planned lies.
“You didn’t know I was with the Lost,” he says, “and you didn’t see me after the Forgetting. I know you didn’t. I hid, and I would have remembered. But you know where I was burned. And you say you know who I am … ”
I’m afraid. Afraid to my core. I can see Gray’s quick mind working, turning the problem inside and out.
“I was burned before the Forgetting,” he says. “But you know.” And then he goes completely still again, a tree without wind, and says two simple words: “You remember.”
No. Of course I don’t. That’s impossible. But when I open my mouth to say these things, I can say nothing. Nothing at all.
“You remember, don’t you?”
I cling to my one last crumb of hope. “Do you remember me?” I ask. I am shaking, trembling inside.
“No,” he says. “No, I don’t remember you at all.”
And that is when my tears fall, and when, very faint, the first bell of the waking echoes across the mountainside.
Hedda was flogged today, and today, for the first time, I’m glad the Forgetting will come.
NADIA THE DYER’S DAUGHTER
BOOK 14, PAGE 12, 3 SEASONS UNTIL THE FORGETTING
We run through the fern fronds, down and around the slope of the mountain. Streaks of deep, rich pink stretch across the violet sky. By the time we hit the grasses at the base of the slope Gray is ahead of me again. He waits for me at the wall beneath the rope ladder, sweat darkening the front of his shirt. He takes a step forward, as if to lift me to the ladder, but he hesitates. I don’t. I jump.
I grab it on the first try this time, walk my feet up the wall, pull myself up far enough to get a sandal on the lowest rung. I climb up the ladder, straddle the wall, lie flat, and check the other side. The wall is cooler than the day before, the city quiet, the alley empty, as is Jin’s garden. There’s no space in my mind to worry about staring eyes. If we can get to Jin’s before the second bell, the leaving bell, we can blend in with the people on the streets. I’ll be late, Mother upset, and I have no idea what Gray will face. But we’ll remain unflogged. For today. I feel the ladder move as Gray climbs.
As soon as he’s up, he lies flat while I flip the ladder back to the city side of the wall. I climb down, jump into the roof garden, and turn to watch Gray. He makes the jump, falling much heavier than I did. He’ll be bruised. Again. We get the pole, push the ladder back over the wall, hide the pole again. Gray collapses in the dry grass, arms outstretched, face to the striped sky.
“Do you think we were seen?” He’s panting.
I sit exactly where I’d been standing a moment before. I don’t know. I never know. I can’t believe we’ve gotten here before the bell.
He turns his head. “You know we have to talk about this.”
I’ve done more talking today than since the last Forgetting. The bell rings, and I am on my feet, to the edge of the garden, looking down. As soon as there are people out and about, I’ll run home. Maybe Genivee will tell Mother the same thing she did yesterday, that I left early for the baths. Surely she would think to do that for me? I’ll bake bread until the dark days if she does.
I wait for the familiar bustle, the sound of doors opening, feet on the street stones. I only hear a child cry, a muffled noise from behind walls and curtained windows. The breeze twists through the dry and dying stalks. The quiet of the resting. I spin around.
“They’re counting us!”
“Is your quadrant today?” Gray is getting to his feet before I can answer. We’re in my quadrant now. Only we’re both in the wrong house, and Gray is in the wrong quadrant altogether. “Where are they starting?”
I shake my head. We’re both moving toward the stairs. “Just take the quickest way out and I’ll try to get inside before they get there.”
“No. I’m with you. Quickest way out is past your house, and I’m betting you know the shortcut. If they see us, we run in two different directions.”
There’s no argument. Jin’s curtains are closed, and Gray is already following me down the back alley, behind the Archives, then over the dividing walls, around latrines, beneath windows, a quick hop across the small water channel diverted from the main. We approach my house from the side, and then I see the black robes coming out of Hedda’s across the street, three backs grouped around her door, still talking to someone inside. Jonathan, Tessa of the Granary, also on the Council, and … my father.
I freeze, in full view of Hedda’s door. Anson is on the Council. Is he really coming inside our house? His house? Hedda’s door begins to shut, the backs start to move, and Gray jerks my arm, pulling me to the small bit of safety around the corner.
“What’s wrong with you?” he whispers. I lean over, hands on knees. He’s learned not to wait long for an answer. “Where are they going?”
“Clothesmaker’s.”
“How many live there?”
I hold up five fingers.
“Are they in?”
I peek once around the corner. The door to the Clothesmaker’s is closing, so I skirt around my house wall, moving along the street. Gray is just behind me. I look back over my shoulder, questioning.
“I’m seeing you to your door!” he hisses. The glassblower’s son is developing an uncanny ability to answer what I did not ask, with, of course, a large dollop of sarcasm.
We round the corner into the alley between the houses, the Clothesmaker’s in plain sight of my front door. I push the latch and my stomach drops. I push it again, and my stomach climbs right back up my throat and chokes me. It’s locked. Who locked our door? Never mind. I know exactly who. The door to the Clothesmaker’s opens, voices spilling into the street.
“Up,” Gray says. We slip around the back corner to the garden stairs and run crouching onto my roof. My plant cutting is invisible among the dying leaves, but there’s nowhere for us to stay so well hidden. We stand there, trying to breathe silently in the harvested space. Gray looks at me and shrugs. Today is my day, I think. And his, too. Why didn’t he run the other way? My insides tighten.
I hear the knock on our front door, Liliya’s voice inviting the Council members inside. Then I run to one side of the garden, lean out, glance on
ce over the low wall. I sit on it, throw a leg over the edge, and look at Gray.
“Grab my arms,” I whisper. He does, and there’s no time to flinch or even think about it. In my mind I am thanking Genivee over and over again for leaving our window open. I look at Gray for confirmation, he nods, and I go over the side, stretching out until my feet find the window ledge.
Gray lets my arms slide through his hands one at a time, until he only has me by one wrist. But now I have two feet on the ledge, one hand on the open window frame. He lets me go. I get a knee down and slither backward into the window, hanging by my hands from the interior ledge until I drop onto the matted floor.
I spin around. There are voices in the hallway, and Genivee is on her mattress, Kenny the beetle in his jar on her lap, her eyes large and on me.
“Did you have a good resting?” she asks. And then I watch her eyes grow wider.
My gaze follows hers to the two male feet lowering themselves through our window. I can hear the door to Liliya’s resting room opening right next to us, Liliya giving her name in a way that’s overbright and false. Gray’s legs follow his feet. He’s got his hands on the upper ledge, coming in on his back. Liliya’s door shuts. I want to yell for him to stop, to shove his feet right back through and up to the garden. His book gets stuck on the windowsill, he twists until it clears, drops to the matting, grins once at Genivee, and then the door latch turns. Gray takes one giant step backward and slides into the corner behind the opening door while I sit straight down on the edge of my mattress.
Jonathan of the Council stands in the doorway, a large book in hand, his own book hanging around his waist in a bag covered with fancy stitching. There’s a key on a string around his neck. Liliya is with him, and I can see by her wide-open mouth that she did not think I was in this room. Until very recently, she was correct. The open door has completely covered Gray, though from my angle two feet are clearly visible beneath the bottom edge. I jerk my eyes back up to Jonathan, who is giving us a beatific smile. It’s a nice smile, really, on a pleasant face, but there is no light in his hazel eyes. No light at all. I feel a sudden sense of satisfaction at the thought of all the contraband hidden in the floor just below me. I’m not sure what I think about what’s hidden behind the door.
The Forgetting Page 6