The Forgetting

by Sharon Cameron

  That key hanging around Jonathan of the Council’s neck.

  I saw Lydia the Weaver at the water channel, with the two little girls who are my half sisters. The youngest is named Kari, and she was explaining to her mother how to write truth in a book. You write your mistakes and the bad things about yourself just like you write down the good things you want to remember, too. So you can always know who you really are. This is my father’s teaching. I remember it.

  I decided to go to the Archives to look at what is now my first book, the false one my father made before the Forgetting, to read what he wanted me to remember about who I am. I read about my pretty eyes and chattering ways and playing with my sister. I read about the death of my father. I have never seen so many lies.

  NADIA THE DYER’S DAUGHTER

  BOOK 7, PAGE 14, 8 YEARS AFTER THE FORGETTING

  I work the first two bells at the Archives without taking much notice of what I’m doing. Rhaman the Fuelmaker was flogged right after the leaving bell, seven days after he was taken, for mixing with the Lost. I made sure I wasn’t there, and I made sure Genivee wasn’t, either. Just like I’ve made sure that all of us are nowhere that isn’t our bed at the resting and at the waking bell. Mother hasn’t gotten up to check yet. Liliya has been staying home with Mother during the waking hours, while I take over for the resting, and she’s in her bed exactly when she’s supposed to be, when Mother might check. But in between, I’m not so sure.

  “I know who you’ve been going out to sit with,” I’d said three restings ago, cornering my sister in the storeroom before she could escape to her room.

  Liliya had set down the plate she was drying like it was made of weak glass. “How do you know that?”

  And it was only then I’d realized it was true. Really true. Jonathan of the Council. Part of me hadn’t quite believed it.

  “So what are you going to do about it?” she’d said, without any of her usual bravado.

  “I don’t want to do anything about your … dalliance.” It pleased me at the time, to see my jab hit home. “But if you want me to do that thing we’ve been discussing, in the Archives, and if you want me to forget about any other particular thing I might know, I’ll need … some help.”

  Liliya had narrowed her eyes. “What kind of help?”

  Now, in the silent stacks of the Archives, the image of Jonathan of the Council in our house comes back to my mind, that key around his neck, the exaggerated point he’d made of looking up Liliya’s name. Janis disapproves of our family—evidently everyone does—and I’d be willing to bet a week of rations that Liliya means to have Jonathan write down her name right before the Forgetting, right before Janis will also forget her objections.

  The idea of Jonathan becoming Head of Council one day, with Liliya at his side, is terrifying, but I wonder if Jonathan’s plans actually match my sister’s. I’m afraid they don’t. I’m afraid my sister is in over her head, and if Gray and I steal the First Book of the Forgetting, using a key Liliya has stolen from Jonathan, it’s Liliya who will be blamed. I was angry when I asked her to do it, upset about Mother, Jonathan, our family, about her asking me to change my books at the Archives. I’m not even considering changing my books anymore. When I go home, I’m going to call it off. That key might be to something else anyway. Except I can’t imagine what. I’m sure it is the right key. Mostly.

  “Nadia!”

  I jump at Gretchen’s voice near my ear.

  “Are you asleep standing up?”

  “Sorry. I’ll work quicker to make up the time.”

  She makes a noise like hmph, gets the book she’s come for, and glides away. I find my place on the shelf, find my place in the book on the rolling table, think of how many pages there are left, how many books there are on all of these shelves, and just like the first day, consider screaming. I decide not to scream. I read through the next names and then I stop, freeze, finger just below a set of inked letters.

  R382-1        Nadia, Planter’s daughter

  This is my name. My old name, from before. It can’t be right. Father destroyed my old book. And Mother’s and Liliya’s, baby Genivee’s, and, I assume, his own. He changed everyone’s name but mine. It must be another Nadia, daughter of another planter. Someone who died. Or became Lost. I look at the date. One volume only, submitted almost twelve years ago. Right after the Forgetting.

  I listen. The stacks are silent, but I haven’t been paying attention. I don’t know how long it’s been since Gretchen squeaked the door. I have to open that book. Just long enough to know if it’s mine. Or not. The wheels creak softly as I push the rolling cart to the next shelf, skip down to the corresponding numbers in the book, so it will look like I’ve made progress. If there’s an anomaly, Gretchen can find it. I’m more concerned with the anomaly of a book archived in my real name.

  The door squeaks, I make sure I have the look of doing my job, and this time it’s Reese wandering through. He stands at the end of the shelf, hair slicked back, leaning with his thick arms crossed, just to put some fear in me. I don’t look at him. I keep my eyes on the work I’m not doing. He tires of this after a few minutes, and as soon as the door closes I hurry back to R382-1. I yank the book off the shelf and open it to the first page.

  NADIA, BORN TO RENATA, PLANTER,

  AND RAYNOR, PLANTER

  4TH DARK DAY, 2ND SEASON,

  6 YEARS AFTER THE FORGETTING

  I close the book without noise, put it back on the shelf. My head feels like I’ve gotten too hot in the baths, dizzy. Raynor is my father’s name, from before. I hadn’t known my mother was a planter, but I remember the writing like I remember my own face. That book is mine. The book I watched being cut from my body.

  I walk back to the rolling cart, hang on to it, as if the floor might collapse underneath me. We’ve discussed our plans every day, Gray and I, heads together in the chill of Jin’s dead garden, speaking low and where we can’t be seen. I talk to him like I’ve never talked to Genivee. I’d thought I’d be waiting days, weeks maybe, perfecting a clever plan, a foolproof plan. It turns out there will be no plan, or not much of one. Because I’m going to steal a book today. Right now.

  The door squeaks and Gretchen comes to tell me I can have a break. I leave, submit to my search from Li, visit the latrines, stand outside, breathe the dark air. Think. When I slip back inside Gretchen has just called the name of a teacher. I don’t think she’s noticed me. Imogene starts writing my name as Gretchen takes the teacher to Deming and the reading rooms. I set my pack on the table, let Li start my search, and then there’s a disturbance from the other end of the waiting room. I think Deming has found a pen. I snatch up my pack.

  “Eager to work, are you?” says Imogene.

  I don’t have time to answer. I walk into the anteroom, but the moment the door shuts I alter course to Gretchen’s workspace. The door is standing partially open, which is a shame, because now I can’t close it without risking her notice. I slip inside, leaving the door as I found it. Gretchen’s desk is still neat, the blue paint that marks the spine of every book in the stacks in a small pot, the brushes beside it. My tethered book comes out of my pack. I dip a brush in the blue paint, bend down to the desk, and on the spine of my book write a painstaking R, then 3, and 8.

  The door to the anteroom opens. Instantly I step back, book and brush with me, out of sight of the door. Sandals slap sharp against the floor. Everything depends on Gretchen going straight into the stacks—not into her workspace—and coming straight back out again—not into her workspace—without realizing that I’ve been signed back in. The footsteps pass, fade into the squeak of the door to the stacks.

  I dart back to the desk, paint a slightly messy 2, then a 1 beneath that, blowing on the spine of my book. Then I look at the wet paintbrush. The door to the stacks squeaks and I back out of sight again, rubbing the wet brush on the wrong side of my hem as the footsteps cross the anteroom. They pause before the cracked door, then continue on, a l
ittle faster. “Imogene,” I hear Gretchen call, “where is … ”

  The door shuts, but I can easily fill in the missing word of Gretchen’s sentence. It was “Nadia.” The brush goes back in its place, book in my pack, and I sprint into the anteroom, making for the door to the stacks. I wish now that door didn’t squeak. I slip through just as the door to the waiting room opens and run full out to the R shelves, where the rolling table waits. When Gretchen rounds the corner of my row I am studiously comparing numbers. She stops, stares, and I look up, expectant.

  Gretchen asks, “Were you … here just a minute ago?”

  I look around and over my shoulder, as if evaluating the surroundings will help my fake confusion. “Yes,” I say. “You mean when you came into the stacks?”

  Gretchen’s brows knit.

  “I was probably checking the bottom row,” I say helpfully. My pack is open and undone, behind the cart at my feet. I’m hoping my lack of breath isn’t showing. Gretchen looks at me, head tilted, then gives it up.

  “Carry on,” she says.

  I carry on. When the door squeaks again and Gretchen is gone, I reach down and untie my book from its tether, walk deliberately to R382-1. The long-lost book of Nadia the Planter’s daughter looks down at me from the shelf. I replace it with my current one, with its brand-new blue numbers, squeezing my book into the blank, tight space between the others. My old book was smaller, child-size, and now that is the book that gets tied to my tether, goes into my pack.

  The next bells are the longest I’ve ever lived through. But finally, after a steady pace through shelves I’m fairly positive I never checked, Gretchen comes to compliment me on a job well done and tell me my day is over. I leave the rolling table at W, thinking exclusively about the R section. It’s risky, leaving my book there. It feels wrong. But I’m not in danger of forgetting where it is. Or what’s in it. Probably.

  I make my way through the empty anteroom, approach the door to the waiting room. The beating in my chest becomes a throb, a painful dance I can both feel and hear as I open the door and put my pack on the table beside Imogene for inspection. Reese or Li will see only a book there, tied to my tether, but it will be a book a little too small, and with blue numbers on the spine. Numbers it should not have. I’ve turned it spine downward.

  Li pats me down while Reese opens my pack. He does the worst job of searching I’ve ever seen, barely glancing at the interior, one hand just swishing around the things that live there. Imogene hands me my ink and pen, and then I am out the door, in the dark of a late sunsetting, and the book I thought was burned, shredded, buried, or destroyed is out of the Archives and in my pack.

  I turn toward Jin’s, choose a moment when the streets are empty, and run up the stairs to his roof, settle in the prickling grass with my pack in my lap and my back to a column. The air is cool, but I’m hot, the throbbing in my chest speeding up to the rhythm of a run. I open my pack, take out the book, run my hand over the dark blue cover, over an even darker black splotch along the edge. There’s something I’d forgotten. The ink stain. I open it, lean down to get closer to the pages. There’s just enough light to read by. The first pages are written by my parents, alternating between Mother’s and my father’s hand.

  Nadia is a strong baby. The first child to take after me …

  Nadia found her toes.

  Nadia ate a bug in the garden. She liked it; her mother didn’t.

  Nadia went with her mother to request new clothes today. Lisbeth asked if the dyers could please make Nadia’s hair the right color …

  Lisbeth, I think. Liliya’s old name.

  Nadia took four steps in a row. She’ll soon be running. Her eyes have settled into her grandmother’s shade of blue …

  My grandmother. Who was my grandmother? The pages start to be interspersed with my own childish writing. N A D I A sprawls across one, the following pages mostly my father’s hand when it’s not mine, though still written for my book. He wrote:

  Nadia went with her father to the fields today. On the way through the city she stopped on a bridge and asked about the water. She listened while her father explained the spring that brings water up from the ground to run through the channel from one end of the city to the other so that everyone can have clean water to use. Then Nadia asked her father what would happen if she put a leaf in the channel. It took some time for him to understand that she wasn’t asking about making the water dirty, she was asking where the leaf would go, where it would be after it traveled out of the city. She wanted to know what was beyond the wall. Nadia has a fine, inquisitive mind …

  I can remember this, just around the edges. I was three or something close, and it was the first time I’d realized my father did not have all the world’s answers. After the Forgetting, I’d wondered what would happen if I threw myself in the channel instead, if I could just float out of Canaan to a new place. I turn the page. Reading these entries is wonderful. And exquisitely painful. I had adored my father. The next passage is written in my mother’s hand.

  Nadia does not like the resting-time game. Lisbeth wants to race to see who can win and get to her bed first, but Nadia says having to rest first is not a good thing to win. She lets Anna take her to bed instead, because if Anna says it’s time to sleep that must be right, because Anna knows “lots and lots of things.” Nadia will be just like her.

  I stare at this passage. Who is Anna? The name ripples out to the edges of my mind. Anna. I can almost hear the word; I think in my mother’s voice. It’s eerie. And familiar. I start flipping the pages, one by one, scanning the words. The entries change over to only my own writing, but I don’t see the name Anna again. I keep turning the pages, even when they become blank, but there’s nothing there.

  Except there is something there. Wedged into the crack between the cover and the last page, inside my book so long the paper is permanently molded to its shape. A small piece of metal, delicate links making a kind of short rope attached to both ends. I pry it out, hold it dangling in the dim. The center piece is smooth and thin, polished and reflective, and carved into it are bold block symbols: потому что я смею.

  What is this? Why is it in my book? And why does my book even exist? If Raynor, now known as Anson, had wanted to remove himself from his wife and the responsibility of his children, he would have destroyed this. Why didn’t he? Did the Forgetting come too soon? But if so, how did my book end up registered in the Archives? And the name Anna … It all leaves me with a sense of confusion, a deep, tickling frustration of things just beyond my grasp. I wonder if this is what it feels like to have forgotten. Really forgotten.

  I look at the metal more closely. On the reverse side is a row of numbers, not carved but crude, scratched with something sharp. 39413958467871x2. Random or very specific—I can’t tell which. But on one end of the metal rope there’s a link that’s different, a bump I can feel when I run my finger over it, a bump I discover is the tiniest of levers. When I push, the other side of the link opens. I feel my eyes widen. I’ve never seen metalwork with such fine parts. Maybe it’s not only the big things we’ve forgotten how to make.

  The other end of the metal rope does not have a fancy link. So I loop it around, push down the lever, slide the plain one into the opening, let it close. Now the metal rope makes a circle. I hold it up, let the circle hang around my splayed fingers. It’s a bracelet, I think, like some of the girls make with strips of braided cloth. Though this is much too big for my wrist. I unhook the link, put the piece of metal around my ankle, and hook it back. It feels cool, heavy. A thing that was inside my book. My real book, from before. I run my hand over the cover and it’s like rubbing a sore, a pain that only gets worse when you touch it. Why did he do it? Why did he leave us, and take this away?

  I sit up. There’s a knock at Jin’s door, and I hear Gray’s voice, indistinct from the street. The closing of the door cuts it off again. I get to my feet, put my book into my pack. I tell myself that I need to get home because I need t
o stop Liliya from doing something stupid, even if I was the one who asked her to do it. I need to check on Mother, make sure her wound is healing. I go without noise down the stairs. Jin’s curtains are already closed. I’m sliding past his front door when it opens, and then Gray is looking out at me. He’s messy today, straight from the furnace. He didn’t come straight from the furnace for Jin.

  “Change your mind?” he asks.

  I don’t answer. I can’t even think what I’d say if I could.

  Gray says, “So it’s like that today, is it?”

  It is like that today. I don’t want Gray to know that my father took my book or that Liliya thinks I’m not her sister. I don’t want him to know how easily I can be forgotten.

  I turn and walk away down the street, and when I hear Jin’s front door slam, I wince.

  When I walk into my sitting room, I stop short, the air pulled straight out of me. Genivee sits beside a lamp glowing on the sparkling metal of our tabletop, and standing in the doorway to our storeroom is Reese, much like he guards the door into the Archives. There’s noise from near the resting rooms, Liliya’s voice and at least two others, and then Tessa of the Granary walks down the hall. I find Genivee’s eyes first.

  “We’re being searched,” she says. My mind goes instantly to my pack, to the book Reese failed once to find today, then to my hiding hole, then to the cutting in the garden. Is today unexpectedly my day? Or has Liliya, in her own efficient way, already done something she shouldn’t? I think about what Gray said, to get out of the house, get to Jin’s, go over the wall.

  “Why?” I direct the question to Reese, but he only holds his hands behind his back, ready to chase, I suppose, if someone says chase. Did he stand there, looking at me today in the Archives, knowing he was going to do this?