The Forgetting

by Sharon Cameron

  “You realize, though, that this means everything we’ve been taught about the Forgetting is wrong.”

  Yes. And so we should question those teachings. All of them. I think of the passage we recite in school.

  At the first sunrising of the twelfth year, they will forget … Their books will be their memories, their written past selves. They will write in their books … They will write the truth … If a book is lost, then so are they lost. I am made of my memories. Without memories, they are …

  I sit up. “Whoever wrote the First Book of the Forgetting, how did they know it happens every twelve years?”

  He sets the pen in the valley between his pages. “He, or she, whoever, would’ve kept entries, I guess, from before one Forgetting to the next. Like we do.”

  “So the writer of the First Book wrote more than rules and laws. They wrote entries? Twenty-four years’ worth, to figure out that it comes every twelve?”

  “I don’t know … ” Gray’s brows come together. “If you didn’t have a First Book to tell you, and the Forgetting happens, how do you know it’s going to happen again at all? You probably wouldn’t understand the first time, not for a long while. And you would’ve forgotten what happened the time before that. I’d guess more like three Forgettings to work it all out. Thirty-six years, maybe?”

  I’ve seen the First Book of the Forgetting. During the Dark Day Readings. It’s not a large book, not any bigger than ours. I shake my head. “How can one book have thirty-six or even twenty-four years’ worth of entries? Did they not write everything down?”

  “Well, they made a pretty big point about telling everyone else to. Is there another book?”

  I don’t know. I put my chin on my knees. Gray was joking earlier, when he said the First Book could be full of people who’ve never forgotten. Or I’d taken it as a joke. Just like I had when he suggested comparing the books. I am made of my memories. Without memories, they are nothing … My mind is humming. “That whole passage,” I say. “The words are ‘they,’ and ‘them,’ and ‘their.’ Why change to ‘I’? It should be ‘we.’ ”

  Gray puts his hands behind his head, thoughtful.

  “If you were thinking about everyone, you’d say ‘we.’ It’s like there’s a difference between himself, or herself … and the people who have no memories.”

  “So what are you saying?”

  “That maybe that’s why there aren’t so many years’ worth of entries. Because whoever wrote the First Book of the Forgetting … ”

  “Didn’t forget?” Gray finishes for me. He’s forward again, tenting his fingers over his nose, thinking. “It makes sense. If a person didn’t forget, like you didn’t, then they’d know what happened to everyone else the first time, and by the second, they’d know everything. Twelve years.”

  “And,” I say, “if there are entries in the First Book from someone who didn’t forget, I could compare them to what I remember.”

  “You’re the only person in Canaan who could.”

  We look at each other. Rose’s room is quiet, dark.

  “I might be wrong,” I say.

  “You might be right.”

  What if I could find … anything? Cause or cure. Could I do something to stop all this? How can I not try? It’s like I’ve just seen a mountain I have to climb.

  “You know you can’t just walk into the Archives and read that book,” Gray says, though it goes without saying. “They’re not going to let you.”

  Of course they’re not going to let me. They didn’t let me go over the wall, either. Gray’s expression doesn’t change, except for a slight lifting of his mouth.

  “You’re going to read it anyway.”

  It’s true.

  “You’re going to steal it.”

  If I can.

  “You’ll be flogged.”

  What else is new?

  “No,” Gray says.

  I feel my brows rise at that. “Yes.”

  “I mean no, not you. Me. I mean we. You and me. We steal the First Book of the Forgetting. Together.”

  My gaze drops to the dim space between us. This is just like when he said we were going over the wall, only without the threats. I don’t understand what he was doing then, or what he’s doing now. “Why?” I ask.

  “Because someone tried to make me Lost, that’s why. To punish me, or my parents, I don’t know. And look at Rose; do you think she was running around without a book? There’s something wrong here, Nadia.” He throws up a hand. “We’re in a whole house of something wrong.” I watch his brows come together. “Answer a question for me. I’ll answer four of yours if you do. Just say yes or no. Is your father really dead?”

  I feel the cool dirt of Rose’s floor beneath my fingers, smell the herbs from her shelf, feel the breath in my chest. And then I say, “No.”

  He sits back, and again I drop my eyes. I know this is a mistake. I broke my own rules when I let Genivee in, and I’m going to suffer for that. Now I’m about to do the same again, and I think I will pay for it. I think I’m going to do it anyway.

  “Okay,” I say. “We steal it together.”

  Last resting I slept in the garden after Mother checked my bed. Jemma the Clothesmaker’s baby came early and Pratim brought their youngest to sleep in our house. I let him have my mattress, took a blanket to the roof, and made a tent to hide my face from the sun. When I woke Mother was next to me, digging tomatoes. I don’t know how long she’d been there. I didn’t know whether Liliya had hidden the knife. I could see that Mother wasn’t hurt, but I told her I was sorry not to have been in my bed when she checked. Mother told me not to be silly, there were no empty beds.

  Now I understand it’s the emptiness she remembers, not me.

  NADIA THE DYER’S DAUGHTER

  BOOK 5, PAGE 8, 6 YEARS AFTER THE FORGETTING

  Nadia!”

  “Is that your sister?” Gray asks.

  I look around. We’re walking where Meridian splits and curves around the rim of the amphitheater, while I fold two squares of undyed cloth that Rose brought to us, to cover our colored clothing when we left the fences with the Lost. The sunsetting mists came and the supervisor didn’t, so in the end, we didn’t really need the cloth. The gates weren’t locked, the fences not in good enough repair for it to matter if they were. Where can the Lost go anyway? Everyone knows everyone inside the walls. Gray hugged Rose for a long time before we left, which made me think that’s what always happens when people love you. You love them right back. Like Genivee.

  I need to be careful.

  “Nadia!”

  The fog trails the ground thick and white, the walled complex of the granary rising tall and pale on our right, and it takes a three-quarter turn for me to find Genivee appearing from the haze. She’s out of breath, no flowers in her hair. Something about the way she runs, the way she holds her mouth, squeezes me from the inside out. I squat down, look her in the face, and whisper, “Mother?”

  She nods, breathing hard.

  “The knife?” I don’t know how she even hears me, but she nods.

  It’s been a long time since Mother did something like this, and I know exactly why she did it now. She found an empty bed. Twice. I knew, sitting on the floor of Rose’s room, that I would pay for my choice, but the truth is I’d partly made that choice long before, while the Lost women sang. I could have demanded to be led out, made sure of the bells. But I was exactly where I wanted to be, wasn’t I? The first payment has come soon. I’m already moving.

  “Liliya says we can’t get the doctor,” Genivee says. “That’s why I came to find you … ”

  “Nadia.”

  I look back. I’ve forgotten Gray. In lieu of actual information, Gray sat up the whole resting, making absurd plans to steal the First Book that had me laughing until my eyes ran. Since we left the Lost, he’s hardly spoken. Right now, I can’t find the word for his expression. He only hooks a thumb in his book strap and says, “Clock tower, seventh bell.”

&nb
sp; I nod, we hurry away, and I’m making the turn onto Hawking with Genivee before I realize which word fits the look on Gray’s face. I think it’s “regretful.”

  As soon as I get through our front door, I bar it, then close the curtains. There’s blood everywhere, on the floor stones, on the table, a trail down the hallway. Guilt has a bitter taste, stronger than Rose’s tea. I start down the hall, then look back to Genivee.

  “If Mother needs a doctor, I’ll get one. You can come in with me, but you don’t have to.”

  Genivee wipes her face, thinks about it, then turns left. To our room. I hurry to our mother’s room, drop the bundles of cloth I’d forgotten I was carrying, and open the door.

  It’s warmer than I expected. The window is shut, the red light outside smearing the wall and the bed curtains pink, making Liliya and Mother look as if they’re flushing. I don’t think Mother is flushing. I think she’s pale. Her eyes are closed, her left forearm tied with a stained cloth. I want to look beneath that. Liliya is sitting on the floor next to the mattress, holding Mother’s hand, curls bouncing when she turns to me. Mother doesn’t move.

  “She’s resting right now,” she says.

  This is a warning. Mother is not asleep, so don’t say anything she shouldn’t hear. I jerk my chin toward the hall. Liliya hesitates, then lets go of Mother and follows me back through the door, shutting it after us.

  Before I can speak she says, “No one can know about this. Not the neighbors, no one. They can’t know she did it to herself. If someone happens to see it, we’ll tell them it was an accident. No, don’t argue with me … ”

  I hadn’t planned to. This is no different from what we’ve always done. Except that in the past, we got the doctor. “Where’s the knife?” I ask her.

  “What?”

  “The knife, Liliya!”

  “Still in the storeroom … ”

  I hurry down the hall, around the blood, through the sitting room, and into the storeroom, Liliya right behind me. It’s worse in here. The knife is on the counter, the “NWSE” stamped in its blade now etched in red. It’s been almost two years since Mother used the knife on herself; we’ve gotten careless about leaving it out. I clench my fists, breath coming hard. Why couldn’t she just be like any other mother? Mad that I was breaking the rules? Out with a boy when I shouldn’t have been? Why did she have to do this?

  “Nadia, swear to me you’re not going to say anything,” Liliya hisses. “The doctor might suspect.”

  I turn to glare at her. “What do you know about the doctor?”

  “Nothing.” But she knows I won’t accept that answer. Liliya’s dark eyes look beyond me, at the mess on the counter. Now that I’m staring right at her, I see fear beneath my sister’s usual confidence. “There could be a … mistake,” she says. “About Mother. That’s all. Just swear to me you won’t say anything.”

  “What kind of mistake?”

  “Swear it, Nadia!”

  “Does she need the doctor?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  That’s not actually good enough. I go to the counter, wash my hands in the water bowl, find the garlic leaves, pick up the knife with a cloth, and take it all back to Mother’s room.

  “What are you doing?” Liliya is saying, still following me. I kneel beside Mother’s mattress, move the oil lamp closer, work the knot in her bandage.

  “Mother,” I whisper, “it’s Nadia. I’m just going to look … ”

  I wince when I see the wound. Right in the center of her forearm, not too terribly wide, but still bleeding. She put the blade straight in. I pick up the knife, throw a glance of contempt at Liliya’s noise of protest, and study the tapered metal end. For the wound to be that wide, the depth would have to be about the length of my index finger, up to the first knuckle. I examine Mother’s arm. She’s slender. She might have hit the bone.

  “Can she move her fingers?” I ask. I turn back to Mother when Liliya doesn’t know. “Can you wiggle your fingers?” She does it, which means Liliya was right. She’s awake and listening behind her eyes. I lay the clean leaves along the wound, then wrap the bandage around it again, a little tighter this time. As far as I can tell, the doctor wouldn’t have done any different. I stand, careful to take the knife with me back into the hall, Liliya trailing me.

  When she shuts Mother in, I say, “All right. I swear it.”

  Liliya brushes back her hair, clearly relieved, one of her fingers a little bloody. Then she cocks her head, studying me. “I hope you’ve been thinking about our conversation.”

  She means the baths. My disappearance after the Forgetting.

  “This could help you with that decision,” she goes on. “Just imagine, after the Forgetting, if Mother didn’t have to worry about that third bed … ”

  What I can imagine, Liliya, is finding a way to make you remember me and eat your words.

  “You could do what you want, and Mother wouldn’t have to hurt herself anymore. She could go back to—”

  “You know what, Liliya. How about you just shut up?”

  “Oh.” My sister looks taken aback, then amused. “Well, in that case, I have some news for you. Today is your first day at the Archives.”

  Now it’s my turn to be taken aback, but I have to smile at my sister and all her curly-headed efficiency. She’d said she would take care of things if I didn’t. I just hadn’t expected her to do it so quickly, or for her schemes to play so exactly into my hands. The First Book of the Forgetting is in the Archives, too. Exactly where I want to be.

  “Fine,” I say.

  “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re very … reasonable today,” she comments. “And talkative.”

  We stare at each other. She thinks she’s won. That I’m leaving.

  “I heard you left Eshan’s with Gray,” she says, “and that he didn’t come back for the resting, either.”

  Left Eshan’s with Gray is not a fair statement, in my opinion, considering I ran and Gray chased. But thanks to Liliya’s tone, the implications of neither one of us coming home after running off like that have only just now hit me. And here I stand, hair falling, still in the clothes I wore over the wall, two bundles of undyed cloth not unlike blankets lying where I dropped them on the floor outside Mother’s door, doing quite a respectable impression of a person who has just slept outside. With someone else. I feel heat slide up my neck, and then I look at Liliya. Her hair is done, but she’s still in a sleeping dress.

  “How did you hear that? Have you even been outside?”

  “I was in the garden. And Roberta was in hers next door. People do talk, you know.”

  I wonder what she told Roberta. Probably that it’s true. Since it is. Sort of. Except not.

  “You should make him write it down,” Liliya says.

  My mouth opens, and then I close it. There’s just so much irony in that statement I don’t know what to say. So I don’t.

  “And make sure he uses your new name,” she adds, taking the knife from my hand, “whatever you decide that is. And by the way, you should’ve been at the Archives already. Just so you know.”

  I watch my sister sashay down the hall, sure in her ability to put everyone and everything into its rightful place. But I don’t forget the fear I saw on her face. If it’s not Gray she’s dangling at the end of her string, then who?

  By the next bell I’m walking slowly up Copernicus Street to the Archives, having seen a mostly comforted Genivee off late to the Learning Center, leaving Liliya to look after Mother and clean up the mess. The Archives is huge, shapeless, and windowless, made of white plaster instead of stone, two enormous plaques on either side of the doors that say “Write Our Truth” and “Remember Our Truth.” I hate it.

  I can see Jin the Signmaker’s house through the sunsetting light. I wish I wasn’t in this dark blue dress of Liliya’s. I wish I was in my stained leggings and belt, looking for my moment to sneak up to Jin’s roof and climb the wall. I wonder wha
t Gray went home to. Whether he’s heard the talk. If that parting expression meant he was sorry I was going, or that he wished it hadn’t happened at all. Then I remember that whether the glassblower’s son regrets it or not, I’m going to steal that book. Unless they’ve left it out somewhere for me to read. I climb the steps between the plaques and walk through the door of the Archives.

  The waiting area is full of people, more than I would have expected. A penmaker, weaver, grinder, fuelmaker, others I don’t glance at long enough to recognize, all lined up on the benches. What could so many want with their old books this close to a Forgetting? It’s after a Forgetting that people need to come, to match their tied books to their archived ones. To find out who they are. The room hums with quiet talk.

  In the back wall of the waiting area is a door, and standing grim-faced, arms-crossed beside it is Reese, Li on the other side, on watch for the Council, flanking the way in to the books the way they flanked Janis as she announced the counting. It’s not Janis whom Reese and Li answer to, I feel certain about that. They’re Jonathan’s men. And seated at a table in front of them is Imogene, wispy hair tamed into a knot, her expression twisted into the same. I didn’t know she was apprenticing here. She’s finished writing my name on the paper in front of her before I’m halfway to her, and when I do get there, I hesitate. She tilts her head, impatient.

  “I’m here to apprentice,” I say. The words feel like a shout.

  Imogene’s brows rise, and then Gretchen of the Archives breezes out the door between Reese and Li, a book in her hands. She calls a name, and a supervisor of the Lost rises from the benches and goes with her toward a reading room. I think of the top of Gretchen’s head, which is the way I saw her last, being coerced by Jonathan while I lay flat on my back on top of the wall. This supervisor, it seems, was not on Jonathan’s no-reading list. I haven’t had time to dwell on the conversation I overheard that day, but I think about it now. I’m not sure Gretchen can be trusted. Which might not be her fault. I watch the supervisor being searched by Deming of the Council, also on watch in front of the hall that leads to the reading rooms. When Gretchen returns Imogene waves her over.