The Forgetting

by Sharon Cameron

  And just like the day I understood Mother, for the first time I fully understand Jonathan of the Council. He’s been manipulated and coerced, maybe more hideously than any of us.

  “Jonathan,” Liliya says, taking another step, “my mother is in there.”

  “I don’t want you to remember,” he says, hand on his brow. The torch has lowered to the ground. “She promised me you could be on the list … ”

  “I know.” I watch as Liliya walks right up to Jonathan in the smoke, reaches around his neck, and lifts off the string with the key.

  “She’ll … she’ll make me do it to you,” he says.

  “No,” Liliya says. “She won’t.”

  She holds out the key. I take it and run to the locked door. Gray is still banging on it with the knife hilt. He steps back; I put the key to the new lock and fling open the door. Lost women pour out in a puff of black smoke, some carrying children, some just running for themselves, all half blind and choking from the fumes. Genivee appears beside me, trying to see around the bodies, calling for our mother. I find Gray’s hand and put the key in it, speaking low so he can hear me over the din.

  “There’s another door around the side, for the men,” I say. He sprints away, and I see the shirt he’s wearing is stained in the back. He’s opened some of his wounds.

  Flames are engulfing the roof thatch, one plaster wall fully on fire, heat scalding one side of my face. The women rush from the door like a breached dam, and then Rose comes stumbling out, coughing, Jemma’s crying little girl in her arms, our mother hanging on to her shoulder. My relief is like gravity, buckling my knees, trying to pull me to the ground. Genivee runs to Mother, and Mother stretches out an arm, but her gaze passes over my face without recognition. She seems dazed. Then Rose is kissing my cheek.

  “I thought you were gone for good,” she says, her cheeks so smoke-stained her wrinkles are white lines.

  “I thought the same thing about you. Is my mother all right?” I discover I have tears on my face, and I don’t know where they came from. I wipe them away.

  “She’s as right as she can be. Gray?” Rose asks. She bounces Sasha, who is coughing more than she’s crying, and almost more than Rose can hold.

  “He’s letting out the men. Sasha’s mother is over there. Can you help her?” Rose sees Jemma getting herself upright on the ground, awake, but bewildered. Rose nods, taking the little girl with her as the men are streaming into the fenced yard. Mother sits on the ground with Genivee, unseeing in the melee of the milling Lost and the smoke and flames.

  “Jonathan,” I call quickly. He turns a bleary eye from Liliya. And I realize that except for the crying of the children and the crackle of the flames, bit by bit the courtyard is falling silent. Eyes turning to him and the torch still burning on the ground at his feet. “Jonathan, tell me when she’s going to gather her list.”

  “As soon as they forget. She’ll hold them in the Archives.”

  That’s so soon. “She won’t get the code first?”

  Jonathan looks at me, and I have never seen a face so hopeless. “She knows she’ll get the code from you. And she will.”

  His certainty gets its claws into me, difficult to dislodge. He waves a hand at Gray, coming up to stand behind me. “See? None of it means anything. All of them”—he runs his eyes over the now silent courtyard—“they’ll only die later. Or sooner. She gets what she wants, in the end.”

  “And what about the rest? The ones not on the list. What does she mean to do with them?”

  Jonathan smiles, nothing like his politic, public smile on the speaking platform. This is a crazed twisting of his mouth. “The granary,” he says. “Haven’t you heard there’s a shortage?”

  I step closer to Jonathan, conscious of the roaring fire, the silent, waiting Lost. “She pulled aside grain for the hundred and fifty?” His expression doesn’t change, and it’s confirmation enough. There, I think, is the source of our food shortage. But there isn’t really going to be one, is there? What there’s going to be is a shortage of people. Somehow. “What about the rest of it?”

  He makes a noise almost like a laugh.

  “Is it poisoned?” I ask him. “Jonathan, is the granary poisoned?”

  But Jonathan is looking at Liliya again. “When she makes you remember, remember that I kept you safe. I got your name on the list, and … I didn’t let things happen to you.”

  “Jonathan,” I say again. “Tell me what Janis has done. Is the grain poisoned?”

  “Will you promise me?” Jonathan says, ignoring everything but Liliya. He waits for her answer, face going slack with relief when she nods. He takes Liliya’s hand, squeezes it once, smiles in a way that is not quite so crazed. Then he turns on his heel and walks straight into the burning houses of the Lost.

  I’m not certain how many minutes we stand there, watching the “Without Their Memories, They Are Lost” plaque burn to ash beneath a sky brightening for the sun. But when the noise has returned to the courtyard, subdued muttering and talk, I see clean streaks in the soot and dirt on my sister’s face. “I was the leverage,” she says. “Always the leverage.”

  “I know,” I say. “Gray was mine.” I’m aware of Gray just behind me, silent. I wish I could lean against him, just for a minute, but the barrier of my forgotten-ness stands between us, even more than the heaviness of my pack. The First Book is in there. And as many times as I looked over the list of one hundred and fifty, I never saw my sister’s name on it.

  I look at this courtyard full of undyed cloth, Rose examining Jemma’s head while she rocks Sasha, the burning house that is the pyre of Jonathan of the Council. The silent, resentful glassblower’s son. Eshan and my schoolmates fighting over poisoned grain. The anger inside me is both cold and hot. A calculated fury. We’ve all been taught in Canaan to write the truth. Now it’s time to say the truth. When I was tied to that post I thought that Janis only has power because of our belief, and the Forgetting is what gives her the power to be believed. The truth, then, is the only real weapon I have. I have to topple their belief. And her.

  “When you take Mother to the Archives,” I tell Liliya, “shut all the doors. Seal it off. And once the Forgetting starts, you cannot open the doors, do you understand? For three full days. There’s access to water but that’s it. Get any supplies you can along the way.” I look at the courtyard of people that Janis decided were unworthy, insufficient. “Take them all, Liliya. And anyone else you can convince to come. Get Rose from the baths to help you. The Lost will follow her.”

  I watch my sister gaze at the dirty faces and confusion around us, and I see her head come up, the curls flip over her shoulder. She’s already organizing. Then her eyes narrow. “Where are you going?”

  “To find Janis.” I think I know where she is. In the clock tower. I run a hand over the back of my neck. It’s where Gray’s hand belongs, pulling my forehead onto his chest. I look back at him.

  “I’m with you,” he says, answering the unasked. As long as that bottle is in my pack, I think, he’s not going anywhere else. I want to tell him to go with my sister. But this is his fight as much as mine, though he doesn’t remember why.

  “Take care of Mother,” I say to Liliya. “And if I don’t come before the sky is white, you have to shut the doors.”

  We see our first body as the field road changes to flagstones. A man, a sandalmaker, I think, struck on the head. It looks like he was running from the city. Maybe from the granary. I check, but he’s not alive. I pick up our pace. I’m fairly sure that anger is the force moving my legs right now. Deep down, I can feel that I probably shouldn’t be out of bed.

  “Is it always like this?” Gray asks.

  I look back at the column of smoke rising like a mountain in the air behind us, at the matching one over the city, dark against the sky’s blushing gold. “No,” I say. “Or at least, we didn’t know it was.”

  “I wanted to kill him, you know.” I think he means Jonathan until he says, “In the u
nderground room. I didn’t want to hurt him. I wanted to kill him.”

  He doesn’t say anything more, but I know what he’s asking. “You’re not like that,” I tell him. I want to say that somewhere, deep down, he is remembering me. I can’t wait to put that needle in his skin.

  The lane down to the granary is choked with carts, pieces of stone, rocks, a dropped scythe or two, and what I think is the shape of another body beside the granary walls. The gates are blackened, smoking. Someone has tried to burn them down. In the distance I can hear shouting, but right here, right now, it’s eerily quiet, the air around me a held breath. I wonder if Eshan and Veronika and Michael and the rest of them are still in there, protecting vats full of poisoned grain. I wonder if Janis is watching them, safe in her perch while the sky lightens and the buds on the forgetting trees crack.

  The amphitheater drops down like a hole before me, the clock tower rising, and the Council, or what’s left of it, is huddled around the speaking platform. They have their families with them—husbands, wives, children. Grandchildren, some of them. Less than two hours to the comet, and the Forgetting. I turn to Gray.

  “I don’t know what’s going to happen,” I begin. I don’t even know if I can do this. “But if it goes wrong, I want you to grab my pack and run to the Archives. Get inside, all the way to the back.” I know he doesn’t know where the Archives is.

  He nods, looking at me hard, mouth twisting into that tiny smile. His gaze slides down to my necklace and back. “Don’t be afraid,” he says.

  I’m not afraid. I’ve lost my fear. Or no, I think. That’s not true. I’m just more afraid of not changing this than trying to change it. I take a deep breath, turn, and take the first step downward.

  “Where is Janis?” I call. The channel rushes down its waterfall on one side, Gray on my other. The amphitheater was made for sound, and my voice had been forceful, echoing as we descend. I see black robes rustling, turning to watch my approach, muttering behind hands. “Where is she?” I demand.

  Anson the Planter is coming up the steps to meet me, his wife staring blank-faced as he does. “Where have you been?” he says, voice held low, and for a moment he sounds like someone who is my father. I don’t have time to talk about it.

  “Where is she?”

  He glances over his shoulder and up. I look out across the vast amphitheater, over the faces turning to me, up the latticed stone to Canaan’s clock, a spike against a sunrising sky that will soon turn white. And I am going to speak, to shout, to tell them all.

  “Janis! Come down!”

  Every pair of eyes below is turned to me. Unlike the Nadia of the sunlight days, I don’t care.

  “Come down!” I demand. And then I see the black robes on the stairs through the stone lattice, coming down with slow, deliberate steps. Janis emerges from the tower onto the speaking platform, tall and elegant.

  “Nadia the Dyer’s daughter,” Janis says. “How good to see you well. And the glassblower’s son … ” Her gaze on Gray is like a brief dose of poison. “We’d feared the worst.”

  I smile at her composure. Until very recently, as in just a few minutes ago, she must have thought me unconscious and locked up. I say, “You told me once that I should feel free to share my concerns with the Council. I have some concerns.”

  Janis smoothes her sleeve. “A strange time and place to request a meeting. The Forgetting is almost here.”

  “The concern I want to share with the Council is about your rule of Canaan.”

  “I do not ‘rule’ Canaan, Nadia. The Council and I work together for the good of the city.”

  “I disagree.”

  The Council stares back at me. Rachel the Supervisor, Arthur of the Metals, Tessa of the Granary, Deming, Li, and the rest of them, Anson just a few steps away. Everyone but Reese. And Jonathan. Janis smiles.

  “What, exactly, do you accuse me of?”

  “That you have never lost your memories to a Forgetting. That you remember, and have never informed the Council. That you understand exactly what causes the Forgetting, and that you know how to bring memories back, and that you choose to do neither. That you deliberately make people Lost by removing their books. That only a few minutes ago you almost succeeded in burning the Lost alive in their houses.” I see her eyes widen just slightly at “almost.” “That you manipulate, coerce, and kill when it suits you, and that you have lied to this city for longer than I’ve been alive.”

  I pause. A little out of breath. I don’t think I’ve ever said that many words in a row at my own dinner table, much less in front of a crowd. Especially a wide-eyed, speechless crowd.

  “That is much for one person to be accused of, Nadia the Dyer’s daughter,” Janis says gravely. She is perfect in her dignity. “But can you be certain those things are true? Truth is often as we see it, each to his own.”

  “Are you saying that if I didn’t actually see the houses of the Lost burning down, that it didn’t happen?”

  “I am saying, Nadia, that there are nuances. When you say it is true that the houses of the Lost are burned down, is that a literal statement, or are they still partially standing, or did someone leave a fire burning and smoke up a room? Your perception of the words, you see, affects what you believe to be true.”

  “No, I think I’m saying that you stacked fuel against the walls and had it set on fire with the doors locked, and that the smoke is still in the sky.” I point beyond the fields, where a mountain of black smoke billows into the air. “Are you denying you did it?”

  “Nadia, I have been in the clock tower. You just saw me come down. How could I do such a thing?”

  The Council stares up at me with varying degrees of frustration and dislike, and with confusion, as if I’ve been speaking in a different way, like Mother. I almost laugh. Janis is good, and she is enjoying this game.

  “If you have something to accuse me of, Nadia, then I think you will have to prove it. Can you?”

  A challenge. I motion for Gray to stay where he is, and I go to meet her, down the stairs one at a time, through the silent Council members, up the steps and onto the speaking platform. A scream echoes from somewhere in the city, and no one looks around. Our eyes are on Janis as she glides to her chair, lowers her body into it. For the first time I can see she’s been sick; there’s a hint of frailty in the movement. But her smile is strong, dark eyes glittering in the new light. She includes the watching Council with a sweep of her hand.

  “Prove your accusations, Nadia the Dyer’s daughter.”

  Truth has to be written, because it is. The hard part is when and how to tell it.

  NADIA THE DYER’S DAUGHTER

  BOOK 6, PAGE 87, 7 YEARS AFTER THE FORGETTING

  I think of all the things Janis is guilty of. Her precious one hundred and fifty. Gray. The countless others she made Lost or had killed because they didn’t pass her tests. The ones who weren’t healthy enough, or smart enough, who would not or could not reproduce, all because of her childish, warped view of Earth’s directive. Of Canaan’s purpose.

  And I stare back into the serious faces of the Council and know I can’t tell them any of that, no matter how true. How can I ask them to believe they’re standing on the wrong planet? To understand what I’ve seen in the mountain? It’s too much to take in, too much to believe on my word alone. Anything I talk about here, anything I say to shake their belief, will have to be about Canaan itself.

  “We are waiting, Nadia. What do you have to accuse me of?”

  This is something out of my nightmares. On the speaking platform, all eyes on me, everything to gain or lose based on my words. I look at Gray, seated now, elbows on knees, tense. Watching. Angry. Afraid. I hear his screams in my head. Janis still smiles. I stand a little straighter, face the Council. Anson gives me a brief nod.

  “I say that Janis has never lost her memories during a Forgetting, and has never shared this information with the Council. That she is using a name she’s had since before the first Forgetting, b
ecause she can remember it.”

  I lower my pack to the ground, open it. “This is the First Book of the Forgetting”—I only just see Janis’s flinch of surprise—“which originally belonged to Erin Atan. In it she talks of her daughter, Janis Atan. And this”—now I pull out the long knife with the engraving—“belongs to Janis, and has the name Kevin Atan engraved in the metal. And it’s not a thing we know how to make now.”

  I see Tessa of the Granary and Arthur of the Metals put their heads together, others frowning, talking among themselves. Janis adjusts her robes in the chair.

  “I do not deny that I am using the name I was born with,” she says. The murmuring stops. “But my mother was always very particular about our books, that our books would never be lost. I don’t understand what Nadia means by the ‘first’ forgetting, or why she thinks there were no Forgettings before this book. Haven’t we always forgotten?” She looks at me kindly. “I’ve always taken ‘first’ to mean ‘most important,’ Nadia, because in this book we learn to live with our forgetting. The knife you have there was made by a metalworker in my father’s time. His name and skill are forgotten.”

  These are all lies, and we both know it. But the rest of them don’t. And then I see the last thing I expected, something that makes some of my hope extinguish like an unneeded light in the white room. Jonathan of the Council steps up onto the platform to stand beside his grandmother, as if what happened at the houses of the Lost just … didn’t. He must have walked right through that burning building and found his way out the other side, to escape that accusing crowd. I remember his certainty when he said Janis would get that code out of me. That she would have her list and kill the rest. That she would make it happen, in the end. He slides into his place behind his grandmother’s chair.

  “What else do you accuse me of?” she asks.

  I close my eyes for just a moment, face the Council again. “I say that Janis knows the cause of the Forgetting, has always known the cause, and has deliberately not protected Canaan from it. Gray the Glassblower’s son has forgotten already. He was made to forget. By Janis.”