Ink

by Alice Broadway

  I was much too afraid and ashamed to ask Mum in the morning. Had she found it? Or maybe it had fallen out of my pocket on the walk home. I was certain she could read the guilt on me, or perhaps smell the sugary vanilla-fragranced worry I wafted wherever I went. I never have plucked up the courage to ask what happened to that cookie. But I’ve never stolen anything since.

  Until tonight.

  Maybe this isn’t really stealing. After all, he’s my dad; his story belongs to me. Still, breaking into a government building at night feels very, very wrong. And there’s Verity and Oscar too; they’re risking so much for me. We could all be forgotten if we’re found out. But it’s the only way. If I don’t try to rescue Dad I will always wonder if I could have saved him.

  Verity, lovely, amazing Verity, has mapped out our path through the government building. I’m meeting Oscar there. We have to get in through a window on the south side of the building; it should lead us into a locked storeroom. She’s written that they keep a spare key on a shelf and that the key she has already given me should open the door to the room where Connor Drew’s confiscated work is being kept. I have no idea how she’s doing this, but I just hope she’s been careful to make sure that not too many signs point to her.

  Preparing to sneak out of the house in the dead of night, I feel the same guilt and fear as I did when I was seven, slipping downstairs to find my stolen cookie. It’s so cold, all I really want to do is snuggle back into bed, pretend this isn’t happening. Dressing in my darkest clothes I’m distracted by the marks on my skin; the stretch mark on my breast is darker and more jagged by this half light, and there is a patch on the front of my shoulder where the injury from Karl’s fingernails remains. At this rate I’ll have more marks from stretch marks and scars than ink. I lace up my soft boots, creep past Mum’s door, and ease the front door closed behind me. The key that Verity gave me is heavy in my pocket.

  The square is lit by lanterns at night, so Oscar and I have arranged to meet round the back of the government building where it’s dark and no one walks. I nearly walk right into one of the large bins as I turn the corner, and I hear a muffled laugh.

  “Well, that was slick,” Oscar whispers. I peer into the darkness and can just see the glint of his glasses ahead of me.

  “Shhh!” I ease forward, nervous that I’m going to trip. Reaching out my hand until I feel his rough coat, I step towards him and he pulls me closer. We both shiver and I tiptoe to whisper to him. “Now, where’s this window we’re meant to climb through?”

  Oscar’s smiling at me; I catch the flash of his teeth in the darkness. That makes me think of his dimples. Not helpful, brain. He gestures for me to follow him and leads me down the side of the building. “I think I found it just along here.” He stops at a frosted window, which sheds enough light from inside for us to see the catch Verity told us about.

  “If we slide a knife or something between the two pieces of the sash window we can ease the catch open and get in,” I say.

  Oscar reaches into his bag and takes out a metal ruler. “I’m not getting caught with a weapon,” he grins at me. He wedges the ruler where the two sections of window meet and pushes it up through the gap. Paint falls in crusty flakes as he wriggles the ruler in the tight space. I keep looking round nervously. A couple of times the catch nearly slides open and then snaps back with a clack. Oscar wipes his hands on his trousers while the ruler stays stuck in the sash and tries again. At last, the catch slides and Oscar tugs the ruler free. He eases the window open, which groans and hangs wonkily, while Oscar gives me a hand getting through. I drop down to the floor and stumble on a bucket which clangs loudly. I hope Verity was right about there being no guards at night, because I would have just alerted them. I make some space to clear Oscar’s path and reach up to the top shelf next to the window. The key’s there. I try the door, relieved when the key works smoothly and the door into the corridor opens easily and quietly. But now we’re in, my heart is beating too fast, and when I try to remember Verity’s instructions my mind is blank. I close my eyes, take a deep breath and peer down the corridor. It’s empty and eerie. I remember now.

  “She says on the map to turn right, then left at the end, then it should be the third door on the left.” Oscar nods at me, hitches his bag over his chest and we walk slowly and quietly down the corridor. The smell of the heavy wooden doors and polish gives it the feeling of walking through my old school. There is dim lighting along the corridor which gives everything a greenish tinge.

  I keep looking back expecting to see someone ready to pounce.

  But everything is just as Verity said it would be. It’s almost too easy. The door is closed but unlocked and it creaks heavily as Oscar pushes it open. There are no windows in here – nothing that can change the temperature too much. There are boxes and boxes stacked neatly all around the small room.

  “Looks like they’ve not started the inventory.” We ease out boxes one by one. “Remember where everything was, we need to put it back exactly the same.” Oscar nods and opens the box nearest to him. There are more than I expected.

  “Are these all people your dad has … edited?” I whisper.

  “Mostly,” he replies quietly.

  “Why did he keep it all?” I’ve been wondering this for the last couple of days. “Why didn’t he just get rid of the evidence, burn it or something?”

  Oscar looks at me sideways. “It’s still people’s skin, Leora.” He handles the items in the box he’s looking through so carefully. “You can’t just get rid of it. It’s part of who they are.”

  I think about it and he’s right. As offensive as Dad’s missing mark is, I would feel more heartbroken to think it was lost for ever. Skin matters too much. Oscar moves to the other side of the room and we work in silence, just our breath and the shifting of folders, papers and skin making sound.

  “Here!” Oscar says, gently brushing off a folder as he pulls it from a box. “This is him, right?” He passes me the folder, and I read Dad’s name on the front, Joel Flint, in careful script. I ease the cover open. A small fragment of skin has been carefully pinned to a sheet of thick card. I pick it up as though it were a living thing. I take a shuddering breath, relieved to have found him, but it’s not like last time, when we saw his whole book. The hope and pleasure in seeing him then is replaced by nerves and a sense of horror at seeing that mark again. You can tell where his scalp was shaved, tiny hairs still showing. The scar from the injury that Verity’s mum sewed up is a pale line, but the mark is there, black-winged and unmistakable.

  Oscar steps over the open boxes and puts a hand on my shoulder. “Shall I take him?”

  He puts his hand out and I give him the folder containing Dad’s skin. We had already agreed that he be the one to keep it safe. Oscar said they’ve searched his house so many times he knows the places they’d never look.

  “He deserves this, Leora.” Oscar slides the folder into his bag. “Let’s get these boxes put away, hey?” I nod and help him.

  We work in silence and soon everything looks the way it did when we arrived. I’m confident no one will suspect we’ve been here.

  Unless someone knows about the mark already, a nasty voice whispers. I shut it out.

  “Ready?” I turn to Oscar who is fastening his bag. As he does I see a second folder has been shoved in it. I’m sure he has slipped something else in there. He catches me looking.

  “This wasn’t in the plan.” My voice is loud in the silence.

  “It’s nothing.”

  I reach for his bag and he stops me with a hand on my arm that feels suddenly hard and unyielding. All of his warmth is gone and his eyes are cold. I’m about to argue when I hear it – the noise of a door being shut carefully, the sound of someone who doesn’t want to be heard.

  Without speaking, we slip through the door and, half walking, half running, we hurry through the darkened corridors. We reach the storeroom and I lock the door behind us, relieved to see the window catch is still open. Osc
ar lifts the window and gives me a leg up; my arms are on the window ledge when we hear the storeroom door handle rattle.

  We freeze and I close my eyes – a childhood instinct, trying to make myself invisible. My heart is beating so hard and so fast I think I’m going to faint.

  “Move!” urges Oscar and I hurl myself through the window with a strength I never knew I had. I stumble and bash my knee on the ground. Oscar drops softly next to me, pulls the window closed and neatly latches it again.

  We run down the alley. When we reach the square Oscar stops and catches my arm. “If there is someone in there they’ll see us running across the square.”

  “What do you suggest?” I say, desperately.

  “Take off your hat, try to breathe steadily and walk with me as though we’ve just been for a moonlit stroll.” He removes his own hat, ruffles his hair, opens his jacket a little and walks ahead with a relaxed demeanour. He turns and holds out his hand. I shake my head, amazed at his calmness, and take it.

  When we’re part way across the square I glance back at the government building. In one of the front windows I see a pale figure standing, watching us. I think I recognize his broad silhouette.

  We’re being hunted.

  But some prey escape. Don’t they?

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  In my dream I open Oscar’s satchel and it’s filled with crumbs. I turn and see them both there; Mum and Oscar, eating the page we stole, licking vanilla-scented crumbs from their fingertips. I try to stop them and all I see is Oscar, finger to his lips, smiling at me.

  When I next see Verity she tells me there has been no mention of a break-in. I try to feel optimistic; perhaps we’ve done it. But I can’t stop thinking about the figure at the window.

  Everything carries on as normal, the rest of the world unaware of my Dad’s ceremony looming. I daydream at work and I’m too agitated to draw. I spend every moment of spare time thinking through Dad’s case. If they can’t prove that he was marked as forgotten they can’t use it as evidence against him. His skin – what they have – can speak for him and show what a good and worthy man he was. The judge will find it impossible to cast his book into the flames.

  That’s the theory anyway.

  In just over a week it will be over. And I never have to think about it again.

  Or see Oscar again.

  The problem is, Oscar’s becoming more and more of a distraction. When I’m not thinking about Dad, my mind is going over the times Oscar and I were together – remembering every word, every smile, every touch, and then remembering the cold look in his eyes. What was he putting in his bag? I wonder if I should have been more cautious from the start. I tell myself over and over again that I can trust him. I must. And then my imagination conjures up things that haven’t happened but I wish would. And yet I don’t know that I really want my daydreams to become reality.

  Something seems to have changed between Mum and me; we’re talking properly for the first time in ages, talking about our memories of Dad. Sometimes, like when I do an impression of Dad’s face when he would try to be cross, Mum even laughs. It’s a good feeling. We’ve danced round each other for the last few months – too scared to disturb the healing wounds, too afraid that what makes one of us happy will break the other’s heart. But we’re trusting our own scarred souls a little more, fearing that if we don’t remember him now, we never will. If he’s forgotten in the ceremony next week, we will be forbidden from speaking about him again. His name will be removed from our trees – inked over with dark cuckoos pecking away at the corpse.

  One evening I notice that my grandfather’s book, wiped clean of coffee, has been moved to a higher shelf, where I can’t reach it. I try, that night, to get Mum to open up about why Granddad hated my father so much, but she groans and tells me it’s a long, long story. I ask her about my father’s early life in Riverton – about what she knows of his life before us. She won’t tell me anything though. I am searching for clues; for a reason why a man like my father would have been marked as forgotten.

  I let myself believe it can’t matter. I know how good he was. Nothing can shake that.

  It’s been a while since Mum and I last did our speaking of the names duty, and it has come around again. We set off in darkness to meet Verity, and the ground is icy underfoot. I’m already getting a little tired of the cold, even though I know there’s a couple more months of it to live through. I’ve had enough of the dregs of autumn and the wintery season of death, and I’m ready for the new life to spring up. Winter looks a lot like a graveyard – bleak, cold and lifeless – but the green shoots are getting ready and they give me hope.

  There’s something about leaving the house when you would normally be going to bed – wearing cloaks and shawls instead of nightclothes and slippers. There’s something about walking through the dark and entering the candlelit hall. There’s something about the silence of night-time with just our voices piercing it.

  Tonight as we stand in the hall, lit by flickering candles, I am struck by how different I feel. Nothing has changed here; this beautiful space has rung with voices speaking names all the time I’ve been working at the studio, all the time I’ve been worrying about Dad. I’m not the same person and I can’t go back. This evening, we read a familiar name among the list. I listen to Verity as she reads it out and spend silent minutes trying to remember who it is. Then I realize it’s just the name of one of the books in the museum that I’ve read before. No one special. But of course, she is special, she should be. If nobody really knows the person any more does it matter – does it still count as remembrance? My mind murmurs doubts and heresy even as I’m reading the names. What if it doesn’t work? What if all this is for nothing and there’s no such thing as an eternal soul? What if it doesn’t matter and we’ve wasted our lives on this? What if it’s nonsense but it’s all we’ve ever lived for? I try to quiet the rebellious voice in my mind by reading out each name more loudly, more clearly when my turn comes. But each time I do the voice just asks, “Who? Who? Who?”

  I look over at my mother, calmly reading. And I’m grateful for this moment of just being mother and daughter and of doing the things we’ve always done. If I pretend, I can imagine everything else is unchanged too.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  It’s so much busier at the studio without Karl there, and there are moments when it’s possible to forget everything else and to get lost in the routine. It’s oddly soothing, and the only time I don’t feel like my hands are shaking. The week passes. The nights are bad – hours of tossing and turning, interspersed with vivid dreams – but the days are calm enough. I manage not to think about Monday.

  But on Friday, as I hang up my apron, my anxiety about the ceremony returns. I just can’t believe it will be that easy; that all we needed to do was remove that one sliver of skin. I can’t bear the thought of the whole weekend stretching ahead: a weekend of uncertainty and doubt. My heart races as though I’ve been running. I breathe deeply and, on my way home, take a detour; it’s late, but I want to see if Mel’s still there.

  I’m in luck. She’s at her desk while Isolda sits on the floor reading a book. I can see that they’ve not marked her yet – I wonder when she’ll be told her first story.

  Mel gives me her usual warm smile, her eyes creasing up in pleasure at seeing me. “I’m glad you came tonight. I had a feeling you would.” Mel gets out of her chair and turns to the bookcase. “I thought you might be worrying still – about Monday.”

  “I’m trying not to think about it, but I’m so ready to have him home with us.”

  Mel looks at me thoughtfully, and reaches up to get a book off one of her shelves. It’s bound in blue leather and I recognize it as one of the storybooks my schoolteacher used to read from when I was little.

  “I’ve been looking for this all week; I wanted to lend it to you before the ceremony. I thought some bedtime reading might be a nice distraction. Plus, it includes the story your father requested, in case
you want to look at it again before Monday.”

  She hands me the book.

  “You look like you haven’t slept in weeks… You should rest, Leora.”

  I concede her point with a dip of the head and thank her for the book. As I go to leave she places her hand on my head and whispers a traditional benediction.

  “May your ancestors go before you, may they make your path straight and light your way. May your descendants follow you, praising your name as they walk in your footsteps. May your feet not grow weary, may your heart not fear. May your name be remembered and your soul live eternally.”

  Her touch warms me and despite myself, in spite of all my fears and dread, I am comforted.

  Mel was right – I haven’t been sleeping, and tonight is no exception. My thoughts bounce round my mind, building more and more momentum, until at last I give up and I switch my lamp back on. That’s when I notice the book Mel lent to me, on my bedside table. I pick it up and spot a bookmark. I open the book at the marked page, expecting it to be the story of the lovers that Dad requested, but it’s a different tale. Mel’s writing is on the bookmark.

  I always loved this one when I was little. You’re more like the sleeping princess than you know, Leora. Good luck. Mel.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  The Sleeping Princess

  Sleep is a wonderful gift. A good night’s sleep solves most problems, heals most ailments and sweetens most sour moods. Sleep is a fragile gift though; nights are easily broken by wailing infants, noisy neighbours and worrisome thoughts. No one would ever imagine sleep would be a curse.