The Forgetting

by Sharon Cameron

  “This is Nadia,” says Imogene. “Dyer’s daughter. She says she’s come to apprentice.”

  Gretchen inspects me. Her skin is as pale as mine, her hair mist gray, book worn strapped smartly to her stomach. She gives Imogene a curt nod.

  “Take your pen and ink from your book, please,” Imogene says, formal in front of Gretchen. I set my pack on the desk, take out my book, and crack it open, turning it so she can’t see while I remove the pen and small, flat ink vial from the inner cover. Imogene puts them in a box below her table.

  “I have to see inside your cover,” she says.

  I open the book a bit more, so that she can see the empty niches for my writing tools. I always keep a blank page in the front anyway. As soon as I shut my book Reese looks through my pack, even taking out the pieces of dried apple I brought, then without warning runs his hands up and down my body, looking for hidden ink or pens, I suppose. I manage to hold in my protests, and when he’s done, Gretchen says, “Come with me.”

  I put on my pack and follow her through the door without giving Imogene another look. We’re in a sort of anteroom, a room that exists, apparently, solely to hold doors. There are three, including the one I just came through. Gretchen leads me to the door on our right. Inside is what can only be her workspace: a table, two chairs, papers precisely stacked, a small pot of blue paint, and a set of brushes. There’s a mattress, too. Someone has been sleeping here. Gretchen sits, and so do I. She folds her hands.

  “Why do you want to apprentice?” she asks.

  Because I want to read what I’m not supposed to and steal the most important book you have. But after a slow minute, I say, “Because … I’d like to be an archivist.” I only just keep the question out of my statement.

  “You’ll remember nothing, of course.”

  I don’t respond until it’s obvious that she expects me to. “I can write it down.”

  She sighs. “Well, we do need the help. I’ve had one not show up at all today, and you were late.” She eyes me, but I don’t have anything to say about that. “Everyone wants to see their books right now, or turn in the ones they’ve finished, for safekeeping, and every day it’s only going to get worse. Afterward, it will be impossible. So the more hands returning the better, no matter how little they know. Do you know why, Nadia the Dyer’s daughter, so many people want to see their books at this time?”

  I don’t.

  “Because they want to change them.”

  I blink.

  “They’re hoping to put a pen in their sandal and a bottle of ink down their shirt and get into a reading room to alter the truth.” She sighs again, as if her book is heavy. Or maybe it’s the weight of the Archives. “No one changes a book on my watch. Is that understood?”

  I nod, and she sits a little straighter. “You will be searched when you arrive and searched before you leave. You are never to enter or leave the building without being cleared. Imogene will sign you in and out. Pen and ink are strictly forbidden in the stacks, as is, of course, any sort of flame … ”

  My eyes dart upward. Glowworms in glass, hanging from the ceiling. A hundred times the number Rose had.

  “We do not open books in the stacks,” Gretchen continues, “even our own. If you want to read your own book, you can request and go to a reading room like everyone else. Opening a book is an automatic referral to the Council. No more than two archivists at a time in the stacks. Books may only be removed or returned to the shelves by the head archivist, which is me. No one else touches the books. Questions, so far?”

  I shake my head. I wonder if Liliya was aware of all these rules when she decided I could just waltz in here and change my books. I know I wasn’t when I decided to steal one.

  “Inventory is done twice a week, more while training, and is what you’ll be doing today. If,” she adds, “I allow you to do so at all. I’ll be frank and say that I have difficulty believing that you have a sudden wish to be an archivist just a few weeks before a Forgetting, Nadia. Do you know why someone might want to apprentice in the Archives right before a Forgetting?”

  I shake my head again.

  “For the same reason the waiting room is full. Because they want access to their books. Because they have the mistaken impression that they can change their books while I am in charge. Again I am telling you that this will not happen. Do you understand that this won’t happen?”

  I nod, and Gretchen considers my silent face.

  “Well. From the standpoint of noise, at least, I think this could work out rather well.”

  I notice she didn’t mention leaving with a book that isn’t yours.

  Gretchen takes me back into the anteroom and through the only door I haven’t entered. Then I discover why the Archives are so good at blocking the view from Jin’s rooftop. I’ve never seen a room so large, not even in the baths. Rows and rows of freestanding shelves, as far as I can see, lit with the blue-white glare of glowworms. There must be thousands of them up there, giving the whole enormous room a strange brilliance.

  “A Lost girl comes once a week to feed and clean out the lights,” Gretchen says when she sees me looking. “Not the task of an archivist, happy to say.”

  She leads me to one side of the room, our footsteps hushed, to the farthest row of shelves, where a massive book is lying open on a table with wheels on its legs. I’ve already noticed that each shelved book we’ve passed has a code of letters and numbers painted on its spine, with the blue paint I saw on Gretchen’s table. The books in front of me start with A. I look at the immensity of the room, at the far, far side where the other shelves must end, and feel the tedium coming on. If the First Book is in this room, how to find it, and how to get it out?

  Gretchen says, “Each person’s set of books has a letter-and-number code; multiple books for the same person are numbered below that. There is a page here”—she points to the book on the rolling table—“for each code and its multiple books. You will make sure that the page here”—she taps the massive book—“matches what is actually on the shelves. You do not correct an anomaly. Any anomaly found, you come straight to me.” She pauses. “It goes without saying that you will not find an anomaly. I’ll come and let you know when it’s time for a break. No need to ask.”

  I wait, and she waits, and then I realize she means for me to get started. She watches me for a few minutes, then goes about her business. It is at A51-3 that I think I’m going to scream. I do not scream. Li comes into the Archives and walks its edges, strolling down the row where I work. A little later, and Reese does the same thing. He stops for a few seconds, silently watching, and I have a bad feeling they’ve been told to keep an eye on me. I have another bad feeling that by the time I reach Z and this inventory is done, it will be just about time to cross the room and start back with A again.

  I reach the B section, which feels like an accomplishment, and I have to go and find Gretchen to tell her there’s a book missing. She lets me know it’s being read, and a minute or so later comes and replaces the book on the shelf. She smiles at me, very satisfied, which makes me think the book wasn’t being read at all, and that I have just passed some sort of test.

  A long time later—minutes, hours, days for all I know—I’m rubbing my aching eyes at the end of the row, ready to turn into the next, when I see there’s a door in the back wall of the Archives. A door Gretchen failed to mention, just visible from where I stand. I glance around, at the empty rows of quiet shelves. I’ve already learned that the door to the anteroom squeaks, alerting me every few minutes to Gretchen, or the Council watchers’ comings and goings. Right now, it’s silent in the stacks.

  I steal quickly along the back wall of the Archives, almost glad for the risk if only for a break in the monotony, and push down on the door latch. Locked. I run my hands over the door. Heavy and old, metallic, like the ones in our house, not light and new and made of fern stalks, like the rest of Archives. Then I see that this back wall is not plaster but stone, painted to match. The A
rchives has been built around this older room. The door to the anteroom squeaks.

  I run with silent footfalls. The front of the room is only visible in faraway sections as I move, brief glimpses of empty space between the shelves. I make the turn and pop up from behind the rolling table just as Gretchen rounds the corner into the B row from the other end, a book in hand. I squat back down, as if I’m reading the numbers on the bottom shelf, use the moment to get control of my breath.

  I stand, check the next book, and when Gretchen starts to pass me by I say, “Where does that go?” I nod toward the door in the back wall.

  “Council members only,” Gretchen says.

  My brain latches on to this fact. “Is that where the Council members keep their books?”

  “That room doesn’t concern you. You will not be working there.”

  “But you work there?”

  She examines me, like she did in her workspace. “Inquisitiveness is not a quality we prize in the Archives,” she warns. “But the answer is no. It’s for Council members only.”

  She moves on, and so do I, in opposite directions. My mind is on that door. If the Council members are the only ones to read the First Book, then surely it would be in a room that only the Council can enter? Does Gretchen have a key? Maybe she doesn’t. If I had a key, I would be curious, and they wouldn’t want that, though I can’t imagine Gretchen being curious. Curiosity was probably drummed out of her by the boredom. But if the room is kept locked even from her, then I would say there’s something in there worth reading. It’s certainly the first place we’ll have to look.

  I pause before the shelves. “We” is not a word I use all that often. It gives me a pleasant, agreeable sort of feeling. I’m looking forward to telling Gray about this, I realize. I’ve been looking forward to it ever since I walked through the doors. Storing up the details for when I meet him at the clock. Which is exactly the sort of thing I warned myself about before we left the houses of the Lost. If we don’t succeed, if we can’t find a way, any clue to cure the Forgetting, then Gray is going to open his eyes and he will not know me. I know how that feels; I have the internal scarring to prove it. The more I’m not alone now, the more alone I’ll be afterward. Something I should remember.

  Because it’s boring, I put my mind on the work, where there’s no room for the glassblower’s son. I flip through a few pages of the massive book, holding my place with a finger, glancing over the names that go along with the painted numbers on the spines. There’s no order to them. Gretchen must have another book, organized by name instead of code, or she’d never find anything in here at all. My gaze falls on Eshan, Inkmaker’s son. He has fourteen books in the Archives, two of them from before the last Forgetting by their submittal dates, lined up in a row on the shelf to my right. I remember what Gray said about how Eshan was looking at me, to be careful. Eshan is not the boy I think I need to be careful with at all.

  And then, all at once in the silent stacks, I feel the true temptation of the Archives. Gray’s books are in here, and so are my mother’s. Liliya’s. My father’s. The curiosity is an itch, burning, begging to be scratched. Gray said that we could know so many things just by comparing the books. How many of these books have entries about the Forgetting? It’s hard to write during the chaos, especially if you have a family … But there must be some. People who tried to record it all the way to the moment they drop their pen.

  My hand lifts to the nearest book, the spine rough beneath my fingers. And then I think of Gray touching my book, of Liliya just looking at my book when she opened my pack, the panic of someone else seeing my words. My soul. I drop my hand, step back from the books, and roll the table farther down the row. Oh, yes. I can see why inquisitiveness isn’t appreciated at the Archives.

  The door squeaks and Gretchen comes to tell me I can have a break. I leave the table where it is, go out into the anteroom and through to let Imogene sign me out, Reese search me, then do it all again after I come back from the latrines. Later in the day this happens once more, and when Gretchen comes the next time I say, “There’s a book missing.”

  She frowns, slows her walk. I’m in section F now. Gretchen stands next to me, looking at the number beside my finger, then running her eyes over the shelf. She does it again, checks the numbers surrounding, and does it again.

  “Yes,” she says finally, “thank you, Nadia. I’ll take care of it. You’re done here for the day. Please arrive tomorrow as soon as you can after the leaving bell.”

  I pick up my pack and she stays where she is, hand casually covering the name on the page of the book. But it’s too late for that. I’ve already seen the name that goes with the missing book. It’s hers. And I don’t think she knew about that one.

  Liliya started going out to sit with a bookmaker’s son, and she would come home and tell Mother all about it, and Mother would listen to everything she said. Mother even helped her twist up her hair, darken the edges around her eyes, and remembered when Liliya was supposed to come home. I couldn’t understand why this would be the thing to make Mother pay attention, but it was, and it made me wonder if talking to other people might be worth the risk after all. Then Liliya came home and she was crying. She cried for two days. This I could understand.

  I think pain is a thing that, when it fills your cup, you shouldn’t keep pouring from the pitcher.

  NADIA THE DYER’S DAUGHTER

  BOOK 11, PAGE 31, 10 YEARS AFTER THE FORGETTING

  I come flying out from my first day in the Archives like I used to come flying out of the Learning Center on the last day of school.

  “You know he was sitting with Veronika not three weeks ago.”

  I turn. Imogene is at the bottom of the steps, leaning against the Archives wall, smiling the smile of someone who wants to be friendly, but to someone they don’t particularly like. I stop and wait, like I don’t know what she’s talking about. I know what she’s talking about. But I didn’t know about Veronika.

  “Gray has run around with a lot of the girls.”

  This I did know.

  “But he dropped Veronika cold. He’s been acting weird, disappearing a lot. And he slept on our roof the other resting for no reason I could tell. He’ll charm the book right out of your hand, but he hides more than you think. And he likes a challenge. You should be careful. It’s almost the Forgetting.”

  Your words are wasted, Imogene, because that’s exactly what I’ve been telling myself. And funny, it’s also the same thing Gray said about your brother. But I don’t really want to say any of that to Imogene. Imogene can’t make sense of me, prefers not to be around me. I’ve never blamed her for that, and I’ve also never seen her try to hurt someone else. I take a deep breath.

  “This is … ” I try again. “It’s not what you think. People just like to talk.”

  Imogene looks a little like Eshan, especially right now, when I’ve startled her with my voice. She laughs once. “Don’t they ever. Nobody has anything to do in this city but talk.” Then she says, “You should probably know a lot goes around about your mother, too. People worry about … what she might do.”

  So do I.

  “And get Deming to do your search, when you can. He can be bribed. If you need it.”

  I take another deep breath. “Thanks, Imogene.”

  She nods, still looking a little surprised, and I watch her as she goes on her way, blending into the other bright clothes in the dimming street. It worries me, what she said about my mother. Neither Liliya nor Genivee had thought to close the sitting room curtains before I got home. As soon as she’s out of sight, I trot down Copernicus and get between the buildings where I can see the dials of the clock. It’s nearly the sixth bell. Over an hour before I meet Gray. I decide I have just enough time to go see Rose.

  It’s crowded when I get to the baths, but most of the women on the warm side are in the big pool, eager to chat at the end of the day. The girl with the olive skin leads me to the last private room, where I take out my brai
ds and dunk my head almost immediately under the stream of hot water. I’m rinsing my hair when Rose comes in. She has a drying cloth in her hand. I already have a drying cloth, but I doubt that’s why she’s here. Being clean is not the only reason I’m here, either.

  I submerge myself in the heat, coming up close to the side of the basin where she stands, wiping the water from my eyes. Rose has her fingers under the water flowing from the sluice, as if she’s feeling the temperature. This is a favorite trick, evidently.

  “Did you have a good resting, Nadia the Dyer’s daughter?” she asks.

  Probably better than yours, I think. “I’m sorry we stayed so long in your room. We were … talking.”

  She waves her dry hand, as if giving up her resting room to the unlost happens every day. Then I feel my stomach squeeze. Does Gray have a girl in there every week?

  “There has been talk in the baths today.”

  My stomach squeezes again, for a different reason.

  “Plenty to be had about you, of course.” She smiles as she squats down, picking up the bottles of soaps and oils to study them one by one. “But that isn’t the talk I mean. This is something I happened to hear Lydia the Weaver say to Essie the Wheelmaker.”

  Lydia. My father’s wife. I lean forward, elbows on the basin. Rose’s soft voice is once again masked by the running water.

  “She said that Jonathan of the Council has formed an understanding, a secret one, because Janis would not approve. Lydia’s husband is on the Council now, and has seen … ”

  I droop just a bit. Whatever I had expected Rose to come in here to say, it wasn’t this. This really is gossip, through and through. What do I care who Jonathan of the Council is sitting with? Other than to feel sorry for her.

  “The understanding,” Rose says, “is with Liliya.”

  It feels like I stare at Rose for half a bell. Then I’m out of the water rubbing my legs and back fiercely with the drying cloth. I need to go so I won’t be late, but I also need to do something because I’m mad.