by J. A. White
The book was blank—and determined to stay that way.
Despite this, Kara could not get it out of her mind. Her thoughts had been wandering to the book all day, distracting her from Master Blackwood’s lessons and making her forget her duties around the house. And now, despite her exhaustion, she remained awake, unable to stop flipping through the pages.
I need rest. A clear mind.
Sliding the book beneath her pallet, Kara blew out the bedside candle and forced herself to close her eyes. It was no use. Scattered thoughts about the book immediately bombarded her. Perhaps pages once held writing but Thickety soil dissolved ink flesh from bones no Mother would know that so wouldn’t hide it there could be something hidden inside cover cut it open whole book could be a hiding place . . .
Kara flipped over on her side and tried to think of something else. Her thoughts wandered to Lucas. She couldn’t believe how cruel she had been to him today. Lucas had done nothing wrong. He was just curious about the book.
I’ll apologize tomorrow, she thought. I’ll let him look at the useless thing all he wants, and then I’ll get rid of it forever.
Feeling a little better, Kara closed her eyes. At some point in the night, her hand fell off the bed and slipped beneath the pallet, touching the book with a single finger.
Her dreams were dark.
After school the next day, Kara walked to the Fringe.
The infectious flora in this area had been carefully removed from the ground, but not all of it had been burned yet. As Kara walked between the towering piles of unearthed plants, she passed two Clearers using long pitchforks to poke at a mound of bulbous pods, draining any fluid at a distance before they risked transporting the weeds to the Burning Place. Both Clearers were large, bald men who wore heavy gloves and bandannas over their mouths and noses. They did their job without speaking. Kara, who did not have a bandanna, kept her mouth clamped shut. The air here was acrid enough to burn your tongue.
She continued toward the thick plumes of smoke that rose in the distance. Several Clearers were heading in that direction, pushing wheelbarrows overflowing with weeds. A stout woman nodded, and Kara returned the greeting with a small wave. She wasn’t sure if she could call these people her friends, but they certainly afforded her more respect than anyone else on the island. In some ways, she was one of them. Her mother, being an orphan from a foreign land, had begun her life in De’Noran as a Clearer. She would have remained a Clearer had Father not insisted on her hand. As one of the most respected men in the village—some had even predicted he would be the next fen’de—his decision to marry so far below his class was openly questioned. But Father would have none of it. He loved her; it was as simple as that. Later most would claim he was bewitched. But Kara had witnessed her parents’ love on a daily basis, and though she would agree that there was magic involved, it wasn’t the kind they meant.
She was close to the Burning Place now, the greenish smoke hanging in the air like a pestilent fog. Kara tried not to gag on the smell, and though she kept her eyes slitted she would see the world with a greenish haze for hours afterward. Luckily she found Lucas before she had to get any closer. He was in his usual spot, shoveling up the less dangerous Fringe weeds with the rest of the younger Clearers.
“Kara?” he asked. “What are you doing here?”
Kara started to reply, but Lucas shook his head and handed her a bandanna. She covered her mouth.
“Can we talk?” she asked.
“Not now. There was a huge growth spurt last night—the usual weeds and some kind of yellowish plant we haven’t seen before. Not deadly, but one touch is enough to make you really sick.”
“I wanted to explain about yesterday.”
Lucas ran the back of one gloved hand across his forehead, damp with perspiration. He nodded toward a short woman already heading in their direction, an exasperated look on her face.
“Can you come back in a few hours, after my duty ends? Framer’s in charge today. You know how she is about breaks.”
Kara shook her head. “Don’t worry about that.” She opened her satchel, revealing the three pouches of ointment she had made that morning. Although it would not heal the more serious wounds, the medicine would soothe the everyday burns that came from working with the Fringe weeds. It was worth its weight in gold to any Clearer.
Lucas whistled beneath his bandanna.
“That’ll buy me some time, for sure. But I still don’t feel right leaving my friends to do all the work. Maybe I can just—”
“The book belonged to my mother.”
Lucas put down his shovel.
“Come with me,” he said.
He brought her to an empty section of the Fringe that had been completely cleared that morning. Already Kara could see weeds sprouting from the ground, however. Within a day or two, it would need to be cleared again.
“Can I see the book now?” Lucas asked, smiling with mock caution. “Or are you going to yell at me again?”
“Sorry,” Kara said, trying to return his smile but failing. Slowly she withdrew the book from her satchel but did not yet hand it to Lucas. It felt so right in her hands.
“Or I could just stare at it from here,” Lucas said. He gazed at her strangely. “Kara?”
What are you doing? This is Lucas. You can trust him.
“Here,” Kara said. She held the book forward, but she could not bring herself to put it in his hands. “Please take it.”
He did. Kara resisted the urge to snatch it right back.
What’s wrong with me?
“Don’t tell anyone about this,” she said.
“Why would I? It’s just a blank book.”
“People are sensitive when it comes to my mother. They might think it’s a spellbook or something.”
Kara saw Lucas tense.
“It’s not,” she said. “A spellbook.”
“I know,” he replied, too quickly. “If it was a spellbook, there would be spells inside. Because that’s what’s in a spellbook. Which this is not.”
Lucas flipped nervously through the pages. He did not blame witchcraft for every misfortune, as did many of the villagers, but you couldn’t grow up in De’Noran without some fear of magic.
“I was thinking,” Kara said, “that there might be some kind of hidden message inside. Maybe something my mother wanted me to know.”
“Have you tried the trick with the lemon juice?”
“Yes.”
“There’s no writing. Anywhere.”
“I know that.”
“The paper feels like . . . paper.”
“Wow,” said Kara. “I feel like we’re really sorting out this mystery now.”
Without looking up Lucas playfully nudged her shoulder.
“Good paper,” he added. “That might be important.”
“Why?”
Lucas closed the book and ran his fingers over the binding.
“This leather is so weird,” he said. “It feels wet. It should be wet.”
“But it’s not,” Kara said.
“I don’t like touching it,” he said, handing the book back to her. Kara held it tight.
“I wonder what type of animal it comes from,” he said. “Maybe we should ask the tanner.”
“No!” Kara exclaimed. “No one else can know about this.”
“But that part could be important. Depending on the animal, the book could be worth a lot.”
“Why? It’s just a book. It doesn’t do anything.”
“True—if you sold it in the general store, I doubt you’d get more than a couple of whites. But that’s here in De’Noran. I have a friend who’s apprenticed to a Trader. He makes the ferry run every month, across the water to the shore of the World.” He shook his head in disgust. “They don’t even get off the boat, you know—not allowed. How do you make that trip and not even get off the boat?”
“Lucas? Point.”
“Some traders from the World meet them there, and my friend, h
e says those people have strange notions of what’s valuable and what’s not. They may have no interest in a perfectly good fishing rod, but show them a shiny rock they’ve never seen before and they get really excited. It’s not so much what something does but how rare it is.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” said Kara.
“But maybe that was your mother’s plan,” Lucas said, thinking out loud. “Maybe she knew she might not . . . always be here and that things could get hard for you later on. Maybe she left the book for you to sell, so you’d have enough money to start a new life.”
“You mean in the World? Don’t be ridiculous!”
Lucas’s gaze drifted toward the ocean. “Is it so strange,” he asked, “to want to see it, at least?”
In school they had been taught that the World was a cesspool of greed and violence, populated by fools who chose to ignore the dangers of magic. These people had forgotten how the witches nearly destroyed everything almost two thousand years ago, how Timoth Clen saved them all. “The people of the World live only within their own years,” Master Blackwood had told them. “They have never seen magic, and so many of them assume it doesn’t exist.” What they were good at, Kara learned, was war. Realm against realm, town against town, never ceasing. That’s why Children were not allowed to leave the ship; strangers were killed instantly.
Stories of the World were enough to keep anyone from wanting to leave De’Noran.
Except Lucas.
“How can anything be worse than how we’re treated here?” he asked, looking down at his green-tinged fingertips. “Both of us. Maybe your mother wanted you to leave.”
“Maybe,” Kara said. “But she didn’t want me to sell this book. It can’t be that simple.”
“Why not?”
Because she buried it in the Thickety. Because it sends me strange dreams in which coiled snakes spring from my fingertips and fearsome beasts kneel before me.
The book was magic. She knew it. She just didn’t know how.
Kara was trying to decide how much of this to tell Lucas when the trees of the Thickety parted and a creature of pure nightmare ran straight at them.
The gra’dak was short and squat but powerfully built. Its furless skin, the dark gray of overcooked fish, had flaked off in patches. Although the gra’dak’s beady eyes were comically small, nature had more than compensated by giving it five mouths so different from one another that it seemed impossible they were part of the same creature. Chest mouth: the serrated teeth of darkwater fish; rear mouth: acidic tongue; forehead mouth: pincers. From within the gaping hole that passed for a normal mouth extended a pair of huge, boar-like tusks.
To Kara, however, the most disturbing mouth was also the least dangerous: a minuscule aperture concealed beneath the left forepaw that featured a full set of human teeth.
The gra’dak was still a good distance away, but Kara didn’t need to see the telltale foaming of the mouths; only a sick animal would be confused enough to leave the Thickety. Though rare, this wasn’t unheard of, which was why the Clearers always had their strongest fighters stand guard while they worked.
Unfortunately this wasn’t a work area. Kara and Lucas were alone.
“Don’t run,” Lucas said, out of the corner of his mouth. He was trying to act confident, but she heard his voice tremble. “Their eyesight is bad. They react to motion.”
Dust plumed into the air as the gra’dak came at a mad gallop.
“He’s heading straight toward us.”
“That’s just a coincidence. He can’t see that far.”
The gra’dak squealed. Its mouths worked in unison, emitting a sound like a chorus of rabid boars.
“I really think it can see us,” Kara said.
Lucas wrapped one arm around Kara, his grip firm. “I’ve dealt with these before. They’re dangerous but stupid. We just need to move out of its path. Slowly.”
Together they slid to the left. With the gra’dak bearing down on them, Kara found it difficult not to move quickly, but Lucas held her tight and determined their pace. By the time the creature passed where they had been standing, they were a good ten feet away.
“Okay,” Lucas whispered. He was still nervous but pleased that his plan had worked. “Now we have to warn the others before—”
The gra’dak almost flipped over as it came to a sliding, violent stop and charged straight toward them. They turned to run, but there wasn’t enough time. The creature plowed into Kara at terrible speed and knocked her off her feet. She felt the immense weight of it on her back and grimaced with the anticipation of pain, wondering which mouth would bite her first. Instead she heard five discordant howls of pain. She turned over. Lucas had succeeded in kicking the beast off of her, but the gra’dak had already regained its footing and Lucas wasn’t sure what to do next. He searched for a weapon, but the field had been cleared of everything, even rocks. At the worst possible time, the Fringe was the least dangerous place on the island. The gra’dak swung its body in a powerful arc and knocked Lucas to the ground. Before Kara could even get to her feet, the monster had used its pincers to snip off two of Lucas’s fingers, snapping both out of the air with its fish mouth and swallowing them whole. Lucas started to scream, but the gra’dak leaped onto his chest with surprising agility and suffocated the sound. The monster bent its head down, preparing to gorge itself.
Kara screamed.
She wasn’t scared, not for herself. But the thought of this beast erasing her only friend from the world was unacceptable. The genesis of her scream was not fear. It was fury.
Stop this now!
The gra’dak froze in midthrust, its deadly incisors pressed against the flesh of Lucas’s stomach. All it had to do was jerk its head forward, and it would be done. Lucas, his eyes wide with fear, stared up at the creature.
Without another sound the gra’dak stepped off Lucas and made its way back toward the Thickety. It did not turn around. By the time Kara had torn off the hem of her dress and wrapped it tightly around Lucas’s bloody hand, the gra’dak was gone. Kara looked up just in time to see the trees closing together. In a few moments, it was as though the creature had never been there at all.
Kara assumed that she would somehow be blamed for the attack, but the Clearers were remarkably sympathetic. They praised her bravery and quick thinking, especially for binding Lucas’s wounds with gemroots in order to stop the bleeding. She was hugged and patted and forced to drink two cups of their bitter tea. Kara, obviously still in a state of shock, did not even gag.
Lucas had fallen asleep as soon as they reached his house, leaving Kara alone with his “family,” a motley crew of noisy Clearers as different from Kara as they were from one another. Light skin, dark skin, red hair, tawny hair, freckles, wide eyes, slanted eyes . . . the diversity in the room stunned her. In the village it was so easy to mistake one blond-haired farmer for another; only Kara, with her mother’s foreign features, stood out. These Clearers, however, had been plucked from lands all over the World, and although they were not related by blood, they seemed to enjoy a bond and camaraderie most families would envy.
In time it began to get dark, and although Kara longed to check on Lucas, she knew she should start home. The women of the house assured her that he was going to be fine and encouraged Kara to visit again as soon as possible.
She gathered her things and set off, stopping three times on the journey home to make sure the black book was still in her satchel. It was.
Taff sat at the kitchen table, sketching the plans for some sort of invention. This one would be made, as far as Kara could tell, from chicken wire, a broken feed chute, and some sort of pulley system.
“What’s that supposed to be?” Kara asked.
“A potato shooter.”
Kara looked at the sketch closely.
“Why do you need a potato shooter?” she asked.
“To shoot potatoes.”
Taff’s laugh quickly turned into a cough. Kara reached out to touch his
forehead, but he brushed her hand away.
“I’m fine,” Taff said.
“Did you eat anything?”
He shook his head. “I was hungry before, but I can’t find Father. He must be out in the fields somewhere. They got our barn instead of the door this time. I don’t know what it is, but it smells disgusting, and not in a good way. Did Father clean it yet?”
“I’m sure he meant to,” Kara said. Except he’s too busy feeling sorry for himself to actually do any work. The thought came unbidden, and Kara scolded herself for such unkindness. I really do need sleep. The important thing was that their barn was clean again; before entering the house, she had scraped off the chunks, then used a brush and hot water to scrub away the smaller pieces.
Kara boiled some potatoes, then mashed them with salt, butter, and cinnamon. Using her fingertips, she molded the mixture into simple shapes—a star, a boat, a flower—and placed the plate in front of Taff.
“You need to eat,” she said, kissing him on the forehead. It was clammy.
She found Father curled beneath the front porch like an animal seeking shade. At first she thought he had been drinking, but there was no alcohol on his breath. It had simply been one of his bad days. His clothes were torn and filthy, and his tangled beard was crusted with mud. Kara tugged on his arm gently, and Father looked up, recognition coming seconds later. Kara guided him to the bathroom. He sat on the floor and mumbled quietly as she filled the tub with water from the well outside, adding a kettleful of boiled water at the end to warm the lot. She closed the door behind her and was relieved to hear, in a few minutes’ time, the sound of her father easing himself into the water.
She brought his clothes downstairs to soak but removed the notebook from his pants pocket first. The book fell to the floor and spread open on its thin spine, revealing the same two words scrawled across every inch of white space:
FORGIVE ME FORGIVE ME FORGIVE ME
After his bath Father stopped for a few moments in Taff’s room. Kara heard their soft voices through her wall. She couldn’t make out the specifics of their conversation, but at least he was talking. That was a good sign.