The Forgetting

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The Forgetting Page 8

by Sharon Cameron


  I’d thought of this today, when I saw Tessa of the Granary, who is Council, go next door with Reese and take Roberta’s unwritten baby. Now, of course, I know what the plaque says: “Without Their Memories, They Are Lost.”

  I wonder who protects the ones inside the fences.

  NADIA THE DYER’S DAUGHTER

  BOOK 14, PAGE 52, 1 SEASON UNTIL THE FORGETTING

  I sit where Rose shows me, on a frayed woven mat laid over a pressed-dirt floor in a room where it’s almost too dark to see. She points for Gray to sit as well—I don’t know or care whether he got a mat—then she goes to the far wall to pick up the room’s only light, a small jar of glowworms. When she moves the jar I catch a glimpse of shelves, rows and rows of bottles and tied sheaves of leaves and herbs, a thin blanket, neatly folded on the floor. I think we’re in Rose’s resting room.

  Rose sets the jar between us, leaving the blanket and the shelves to the darkness. The houses of the Lost were made without windows or glass, and we came to this room through a maze of rooms, full of women and girls moving half-seen in the semidark, not bothered by our passing. I don’t know how I’ve ended up here, other than being so furious I couldn’t think of an excuse. And not knowing whether I would hurt Rose’s feelings. I don’t know how much trouble I’m in if we’re caught. But surely Rose must think it’s safe, if she invited me? Rose walks up to Gray and smacks him on the top of his head. Then she bends down and kisses the same spot.

  “I’ve been neglected,” she says, ruffling his hair so that it’s no longer neat.

  “I know.”

  He’s rueful, and I’m annoyed. First, because I’ve had to stop myself wondering what it would feel like to mess up his hair like that, which is an idiotic thought when I am so incredibly mad at every tiny piece of him. Eyelashes included. Second, because Gray the Glassblower’s son seems to attract affection like the blacknuts draw the bees. Maybe I just never bloomed. Whatever he’s done, Rose has already forgiven him.

  “I’ll be back,” says Rose. She finds the door and leaves, no trouble negotiating the dark. I don’t think I’d have such an easy time trying to get out of here. I pull my knees up to my chest. The air is stuffy, thick with the scent of people and herbs, heavy with our angry silence.

  Finally Gray says, “Why don’t you tell me what your problem is, Dyer’s daughter?”

  That makes me want to laugh. I don’t want to tell him anything.

  “All right, then,” he says, “let’s review. I sit down, you ask where your sister is, I don’t know what you’re talking about, so you insult me, go crazy, and run off. Do I have that right?”

  No. My problem is the fact that you are an arrogant zopa who sits too close to one sister and dallies with the other. But I only stare at the glowworms.

  “Right,” he says, drawing out the word. “And now that we’re having this stimulating conversation, I’m remembering one or two other choice comments from the dyer’s daughter, comments that at the time all seemed like part of the mysterious charm. But I think I might be seeing a little more clearly now.” I feel his gaze on the side of my face. “Do you really think I would have an understanding with your sister?”

  I narrow my eyes. Gray’s tone had been incredulous, which is exactly what I was afraid of hearing.

  “Oh, I see. Not even that good! A dalliance, is it? While I’m running around with you over the wall and sitting next to you at Eshan’s … whatever?”

  Now I look at him. He’s pulling out the tie from the back of his hair so he can run a hand through the mess Rose made. “Nadia,” he says, “why would you think something so stupid?”

  When I open my mouth no sound comes out. On the second try, I say, “The potter’s wife … ” and nothing else. Gray rolls his eyes.

  “Liliya came to see me a few times at the workshop, but … I told her no, okay? That was all. The end of it. It was a while ago. Tell the potter’s wife to find a new window to stare out.”

  I hug my knees, trying to decide if I believe it. And I think I do. I’m relieved, and also feeling just about as idiotic as Gray thought the whole idea was in the first place. Who, then, has Liliya been going out to sit with?

  “So, new rule,” Gray says. “Next time you need to ask me about something, you get to say ‘free question’ or ‘time-out,’ and as long as you don’t run off, I won’t count it against you in our game. It will save me some aching muscles, I think.”

  I lift my eyes. “Maybe I wouldn’t run if you didn’t sit so close.”

  “Maybe you’d have been glad of it if you’d seen the way Eshan was looking at you.”

  Rose comes in, walking straight through the tension left hanging by that statement. Gray looks up at her.

  “This is all your fault, isn’t it? And you smacked me on the head.”

  I’m not sure, but I think I see Rose wink at me in the blue-white light. She gives each of us a mug, and I’m surprised to feel the warmth.

  “Taste it before you thank her,” Gray says. Rose just ruffles his hair again. The tea is strong, very strong, with a tang that gives me one violent shudder.

  “Leaves of the oil plant,” says Rose. “The liking will come to you.”

  She smiles at me and I try to smile back. I think I succeed. Maybe she can’t even see it. She shuffles out again, and somewhere in this maze of a house, a baby cries.

  Gray says, “I didn’t know they were meeting out there. I thought it was still on Eshan’s roof. Just so you know. And you should be careful of Eshan.”

  Says the boy who threatened me with the Council if I didn’t take him over the wall. “I thought you and Eshan were friends.”

  “We are. That’s why I know.”

  I shake my head, sip the horrible tea. I can’t think of anyone more harmless.

  “I think it’s still your turn.”

  I look over the cracked rim of my mug. Gray has leaned his head back against the wall, eyes two deep shadows.

  “Our game,” he says. “You had fifteen or sixteen questions left, didn’t you? Plus the four while you were falling asleep?”

  This is generous. I know he wants to ask his own. But I nod, and I think this means we’ve forgiven each other. I say, “Do you come to see Rose a lot?”

  “Not as often as I should, but yes.”

  “On the women’s side?”

  He laughs without humor. “Lots of men come to the women’s side. The supervisors don’t bother much about the Lost until it’s time for them to show up for work.” I keep my eyes down, and after a moment he says, “But to avoid any more uncomfortable mix-ups, I just come to visit Rose.”

  I smile while I sip.

  “But it’s only a dalliance, sorry to say.”

  I nearly spit my tea, and then I realize it’s because I’m laughing. Actually laughing. I choke and laugh more, and Gray laughs, too. I can’t remember the last time I laughed. I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand, catching my breath. I don’t know what to say now, which is no great surprise. So I study my tea. And then I hear the last thing I’d expected in the houses of the Lost, besides laughter. A flute.

  Gray sits quiet for once, listening, and then someone sings. The song is picked up by one and then another, scattering from room to room. The tune isn’t sad, but there’s something lovely and wild about not being able to see where it comes from, hearing some notes closer, others down hallways and beyond walls. It takes on a life of its own. I watch the glowworms writhe in their jar, living for no other reason than to emit their weird light. I have sixty-nine days to try to change the life I have, or to decide to leave it behind.

  I start talking, like a bucket overfull, tilting, spilling more and more as the minutes go by. About Liliya’s memory, what I was trying to do at the waterfall, what I think it could mean for the Forgetting. Gray gets up once to shut the door, sits closer to hear, though he’s careful and leaves me my space. I don’t tell him about Anson the Planter, or the things I saw before and after the last Forgetting, or what I might
decide to do before this one, but I do tell him how he burned his hands, about the man and his book, how he told me not to forget. About Mother. Gray is intent, like he was on the mountainside, sometimes asking me questions, mostly just listening, watching me talk. When I’m done the tea is gone, the music is gone, and my voice is hoarse. Gray sits still, thinking.

  “The man who tried to burn my book,” he says, voice low. “Would you recognize him?”

  I shake my head. My memory is all legs.

  Gray says, “He was trying to make me Lost. On purpose.”

  This gives me a feeling I think is like sickness. Maybe there are Lost in this house right now who had their books taken. Who were deliberately put here. Maybe Rose is one of them.

  “So why haven’t you taken it to the Council?” Gray asks. “Just walked up to Janis and told her you remember? She might know what to do.”

  I’ve thought this out many times before. “I can’t prove it. Not without hurting someone else. And neither can you,” I remind him. His father took one of the Lost and falsified a book. My father destroyed and falsified books on a grand scale. Evidently I’ll go a long way to protect people who wouldn’t do the same for me. My entire life is proof. “You know … you understand that you can’t tell your parents?”

  He laughs once, a brief whoosh of air. “Can’t have one without the other, can I?” He means he can’t tell them without giving me away. “And I’m not sure they would believe me even if I could explain … ”

  Truth can look so flimsy and feeble sometimes. It’s one of the things I hold against it.

  “But what I can’t get over isn’t so much Liliya’s memory,” he says, “but the fact that you never forgot at all. Why? Why didn’t you forget?”

  I shrug. “No way to know.”

  “Well, there’s a lot of that going around, isn’t there? Answers we take for granted that there’s ‘no way to know.’ Who wrote the First Book of the Forgetting? No way to know. Who built the city? No way to know. How long have we been forgetting? How old is Rose? There’s no way to know anything. What we need,” he says, “is to read everyone’s books. Compare them all and make a history.” He looks at me from the corner of his eye. “We should read them aloud. On the platform, beneath the water clock. We’d take turns. Everyone would come, don’t you think?”

  The absurdity makes me smile, even though the thought of someone reading my book is horrifying. Who could write truth, the real truth, if someone else was going to read it? Not many. And if your book doesn’t have the truth, then you don’t have yourself after the Forgetting. My father taught me that. Gray sits forward again, restless.

  “Eshan’s little band have their points, you know. The Council reads the rules from the First Book of the Forgetting twice a year, practically ruin the Dark Days Festivals with it, but they’re not reading the whole book, are they? How do we know what’s in there? How do we know what really happened before? For all we know that book is full of people who never forgot, or”—he pauses—“maybe there’s just never been anyone like you at all.”

  It’s the last one that seems more likely. I glance at Gray, but his eyes are already on me, hair a mess, chin shadowed. Time-out, I want to say, this question doesn’t count. If you weren’t in Jin’s garden because of Liliya, then why were you on that rooftop at all, and why did you want to go over the wall with me? But this time he doesn’t answer what I didn’t ask. Suddenly I’m aware of our tiny dark room, the quiet, the circle of blue-white light that has seemed like the entirety of the world for a long while now. I sit up, look around us. Gray smiles.

  “First bell of the resting was a long time ago. You’re here with me until waking. Unless you want to try and get all the way across the city.”

  I sink back against the wall. I didn’t go home. Again. Mother will see an empty bed. Again. I look at Gray. “When is your counting?”

  “Not this waking, but the next. I checked.”

  “Are you in trouble?”

  “Loads. But it’s worth it.”

  I wrinkle my forehead.

  “You’re not nearly as afraid of me now. Look. Watch this.” He lifts his hands, shows me both sides, so I can see that they’re harmless, then he reaches out very slowly, picks up my wrist, and puts my hand in his outstretched one. I can feel the ridge of scars on his wrist beginning just at my fingertips. He shakes my hand.

  “See,” he says. “Not scary.”

  His hand is warm, the palm rough. No, Gray the Glassblower’s son, I think. I’m much more afraid of you now than I ever was before.

  “Come on,” he says, keeping a firm hold of my hand, using it to pull me up with him as he gets to his feet. He doesn’t let go. He picks up our jar of light and walks backward five steps, leading me to the other side of the room. “You can have the bed. Such as it is.”

  I hesitate. “What about Rose?”

  “She’ll have gone in with one of the other girls a long time ago. I’ll be over here. I’m thinking, not sleeping.”

  I must seem unsure because he lifts my hand, still in his. “Not scary, remember?”

  I nod, and he doesn’t let me go until I’ve sat down beside the folded blanket. I settle in on my side, using the blanket like a pillow while Gray puts down the light. He seems stiff after sitting for so long; he’s probably black and blue beneath his shirt, from jumping onto Jin’s roof and swinging into the wall. I watch him unbuckle the strap of his book, letting it go free from his side, and then I feel guilty about it, like I should have looked away.

  “Mind if I write?” he asks.

  I shake my head. He sits facing me in the little corner made by the wall and the shelves, long legs crossed, opens his book, takes the pen and vial of ink out of their niches in the thick inner cover. Soon I can hear the scratch against the paper. I’ve missed writing for two straight restings now, both in my book and the hidden one. But it’s not as critical for me. I will remember. Probably. And I don’t think I could write here, not in front of Gray. The pen moves in his circle of light, then I realize the pen has paused, and Gray is looking at me again.

  “You can take off your pack, you know.”

  I slide my hand up the strap over my shoulder, hold it tighter. I see his brows come down.

  “What? You think I’m going to jump across the room and wrestle that pack from your body just so I can get a look at your book?”

  “I’ve had to correct you about it before.”

  I’d meant to think that, not say it; the words just popped out. He was being such an idiot when I gave him those two slaps in the learning room, and I was so full of very righteous indignation. For the first time, the memory strikes me as funny. When I look up Gray is smiling across his whole face.

  “I think Nadia the Dyer’s daughter has just teased me,” he says. “This is a key life event that I will now write in my book.”

  “You will not.”

  He makes a show of dipping his pen. “Nadia,” he says slowly while he writes, “is a terrible tease … who abuses her peers … during learning … ”

  “Stop!”

  “… and holds … grudges for decades … against those who are otherwise agreeable … intelligent … and awestruck by her glittering … beauty … ”

  Glittering? I’m unwashed, unbrushed, and lying on a dirt floor. I pretend I’m going to sleep, to show I know he really isn’t writing any of that, slightly nervous that maybe he is. His pen scratches for a few more minutes, then stops again. I open my eyes.

  “You were dreaming. When I was in your room.”

  I shut my eyes again. I don’t want to talk about that.

  “Before the Forgetting, what you saw. Was it bad?”

  I wasn’t ready, hadn’t steeled myself against the question, and my mind shifts, jumps as easily as I might step over a rivulet running down the mountainside. There is the trickle of laughter, the smell of smoke. I feel my body curling into the blanket, into myself. I sit up to breathe, to uncurl, to fight the shaking, the answe
r I will not say rolling through my head.

  They all know it’s coming, you see, like knowing you’re about to die. And they know that whatever they do will be forgotten, even by themselves. There are no consequences. No guilt. And so they give in. Take what they want, do what’s never been allowed, get their revenge. I think some of them try on wrong like they would try on a new shirt, just to see if it fits. To see what it feels like on their skin. I saw things I didn’t understand, but that I understand so much better now. And I see it again. And again. And again …

  I know where I am right now. I’m in the houses of the Lost, but I have every muscle tensed, ready to run. Somewhere deep in my memory a woman is screaming, and they laugh because she does. “Yes,” I whisper. “It was bad.” And it’s coming again.

  “I’m sorry.”

  I open my eyes. Those words had force. I think because they’ve never been said. I think because he meant them.

  After a minute Gray says, “I think you’re right about the Forgetting being like a sickness. You wouldn’t understand this, but forgetting feels so … wrong. I don’t think we’re supposed to forget. We’re not made for it.” He pauses, thinking. “So the question is, are you cured, Dyer’s daughter, or were you never sick at all?”

  I don’t know. But sicknesses have a cause, and they can have a cure. If we could find either, the horror of the Forgetting wouldn’t have to happen at all. Ever again. I lean my head back against the wall, eyes closed, the trembling inside me almost gone.

  “Think,” Gray says. “Is there something you do differently than the rest of your family? Or something they do that you don’t?”

  I’ve been down this path before, and it’s gotten me nowhere.

  “How about something you eat? Did you eat anything different right before the Forgetting?”

  I can’t think of a thing.

  “Wait. I know what it is.”

  My eyes snap open.

  “Silence. Silence cures the Forgetting.”

  “You’re ridiculous,” I say, closing my eyes again. Though I know he can see me smiling.

 

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