My insides start singing. “Yes.”
John lifts his lids slightly. The gems peek through, as if to transfix me. “Okay, but first I need you to know one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“I need you to know, even if just for tonight, even if you forget it all tomorrow, that you have been lied to.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“By Fell. By your parents. By Verity.”
“JP, what are you talking about?”
“What you felt with the stream, the words, your aversion to being reprogrammed in immersion. You’re not a slack, Noelle. Everything you feel inside that bioslice is for a good reason.”
“Okay, but why?”
“Because of the thing they tried to take from us. What they thought they could erase still exists.”
“The words?” My heart flutters. I feel something stirring.
“More than the words,” John says. “The pages they fill. The spines that hold them.”
“Books.” The word tumbles from me. I’ve never seen a book before, never so much as touched ink or paper. That they still exist sends a mote of understanding through my core. I knew it. I knew it since I first heard myself say the word. I’ve known it ever since.
John nods. “Fell wants us to believe the books are gone. That they’ve managed to destroy everything that was ever written. But it’s not true.”
He takes my hand as the light begins to fade. The lights of nearby homes extinguish, one by one. “So can you guess what the second half of your present is?”
“I think so,” I say, because now on the other side of the bioslice, something like this seems like it just might be possible. “You have a book?”
“Correction,” he says, holding a finger aloft. “My grandmother has one. And I want you to see it.”
NOELLE
FIVE
John leads the way through the alley. We’re halfway down it when I stop under the pale motion-detecting light blinking on automatically overhead. John turns back, sensing I’m lingering. “Noelle? What is it, what’s wrong?”
“I don’t know if I can do this.”
John comes to me. “It’s going to be fine. I promise.” He opens his eyes wider than usual. The deep blue captures me. Suddenly I’m at peace, even though I have no reason to be. “Have I ever let you down?”
“No, of course not.” A pang of loss hits me. I know I’ll never get sanction. Not after tonight, anyway. “It’s just that, I thought we’d have more time.”
“Oh,” John says. “That.” Having done everything to get me here, my future is the one thing he cannot change. Immersion is hours from me. I don’t tell John about the other part. The part where my parents forbid me to see him again. The part where I’ll have to say good-bye to him for a very long time. Or maybe for forever. I just want one more night with him, before immersion, before everything changes.
“That’s why tonight is so important.” John leans in and clutches my hand. I hold my breath in his nearness. What’s happening to us? For a moment, I think he feels it, too, that he knows this might be it. But his eyes smile, reassuring me, mesmerizing me with their impossible hue. This isn’t it. It isn’t over, they seem to tell me. Why do I believe them?
John squeezes my hand, brushing his fingers across my wrist. “You good?”
“I’m good,” I say, eating my sorrow. How do you say good-bye to someone you never imagined you’d have to leave? How do you begin to hang on to your final moments when you know time will soon be sweeping them away? Time. We need to hurry.
We turn left at the far end of the alley and cross the street to the Potts’s residence. His house, two stories, sits upright on the corner, the only one of its kind. A downstairs light is on, casting an orangey glow across the front steps. We head into the backyard, where Page is sitting, waiting for us. She barks and runs toward a long silver vehicle wedged into the dirt, surrounded by sprigs of green plants growing where the wheels should be.
“It’s an RV. A recreational vehicle,” says John, though it looks like it has never so much as seen movement. Obscuring the entrance is a structure that looks like milk poured over an iron frame. A greenhouse. Page trots to it and darts inside. I stop John in the middle of the yard. “Wait. I feel weird meeting your grandmother now. Like this.” I glance down at my torn chemical uniform hidden only partially by John’s cargo jacket.
“You look great.”
“Helpful, coming from a blind guy.”
“I do what I can.” John laughs and keeps walking. I pull him back.
“I’m serious. You could have told me you have a grandmother.”
“No, I couldn’t. It would have been too dangerous. And like it or not, NH, you’re still a Valer. Besides, you’ll like her, and she’ll like you. She’s sort of famous around here.”
“She is?”
“Yeah. She has the greenest thumb in the Sovereign. There isn’t anything she can’t grow. They call her the Herb Lady.”
“Perfect,” I say, buttoning the jacket to hide my dirty uniform.
Inside the greenhouse, the air is muggy and cool. I’ve never seen so much green. Everywhere I look, something is growing. Stalks branch up toward the ceiling from gigantic earthen pots. Their large fronds hang overhead like arches. Vines circle wooden trellises, ending in sprouts of majestic color. Tables hold dozens of herbs growing in lavishly painted ceramics. I’m standing still, mesmerized by the abundance, when a waft of even more fragrant air hits me. I inhale a bouquet of lemon thyme, mint, and lavender, and many other scents I don’t recognize. Every plant’s base seems to hold the same green fluorescent hue. I touch the damp soil at the edge of a basil plant. The substance wiggles, then separates like liquid sand.
“Bio-gen soil,” a frail voice says. “My own recipe.”
I turn and see a figure standing in the open doorway of the silver RV. She navigates toward us, negotiating each step with her cane, her feet in purple slippers. “Holds the water longer. Keeps my beauties alive.”
“They are beautiful,” I say, admiring the greenery.
“This is the girl I told you about, Gram. The girl from the Vale.”
“Mmmm, yes I remember. My name is Miriam, dear.” She extends her hand.
“It’s so nice to meet you,” I say.
“Likewise. John is always talking about his friend from the Vale. Quite a life you have there, isn’t it?” Miriam smiles warmly.
“If you can call it that.”
“Gram, we don’t have a lot of time,” John adds.
“No time for your dear old Grams? So what else is new?” she teases.
John plants a kiss on her cheek and takes her hand. “It’s really important, Gram. It’s Noelle’s birthday tomorrow. She’s scheduled for immersion in the morning.” He leans in to whisper. “Remember? She’s the one with the words.”
Miriam looks at me, her eyes kind but still. “Is this true, my dear?”
“I’m afraid so,” I manage.
“I see.” Miriam turns toward her RV. “We’d better not talk out here.”
*
We sit at a small dining table while Miriam boils water for tea. My eyes scan the interior. A small sofa extends along the back wall to my left. On the right is a door, which I figure is the bathroom. The trailer reaches far back into what must be her bedroom. Page curls up at John’s feet and rests her head on his shoe.
“So you’ve come because my grandson has promised you something?”
“She means the book,” he whispers.
“Yes,” I say.
“And why, may I ask, are you interested in what I may or may not have here, my dear?”
John sighs. “She knows, Gram.”
“No, it’s okay.” I turn to Miriam. “I have to know if the words I’ve been seeing mean something. Before tomorrow. Before immersion.”
“Ah, yes. You are afraid they will take them from you, yes?”
“Yes,” I say, the realization of my true feel
ings dawning on me. “They’ve been doing it to us for decades now.” Miriam dunks a bundle of herbs into a teapot and slams the lid over it. She yanks back her hand. “Bah! Water’s too hot.”
“I just want to understand,” I say. “What they are, what they mean. And why I have them in my head.”
Miriam sets down the tea. She lowers herself into a chair. “And you think a book could help with that?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
She smiles at John and cups his face. “I like your friend, Johnny. She’s an old soul. But first”—she turns to me—“you’ll have to forgive me for asking you this, dear, but there are so few of us left now I have to be sure. You are still from the UVF, after all.”
“So few of us?”
“Readers, dear.”
Miriam reaches into the front of her sweater. Something rattles against her plastic buttons as she brings it out. A locket. She opens it and takes out a miniature square of white paper. Her hands quiver as she unfolds it on the tabletop. “I’ve worn this for many years. It’s from one of my favorite books.”
The square slides toward me, the thing on it upside down. “Do you know what it says?”
I turn the paper. The letters dance at first, then still. A single word fills me. I decide that it’s okay to say it. Miriam wants me to. “Patience?”
Miriam looks at John with the strangest expression, which I cannot place. She studies me a moment. Her hands stow the word back into her locket. When she looks up, her eyes are alight. “Well,” she says. “This is going to be interesting.”
*
I’m asked to close my eyes. No one, not even John, can know where it’s hidden, Miriam tells us. I hear floorboards and hinges and suspect John has already worked out where she’s been hiding her book. Something firm lands on the table. We open our eyes. She slides the item toward me. The swish of fabric meets my hands.
I look at Miriam. “I do believe this is the other part of your birthday present,” she says. “Let’s see what you make of it.”
I pull back the swathe of fabric. Beneath it, soft red leather covers the face. The pages, large and delicate, fill the center. Solid black letters declare its name on the cover: Volume I. I run my hand along the smooth surface and feel my heart race, my breathing quicken. So this is a book. It’s so much more than I’d imagined.
I take John’s hand and direct him to the cover. Whatever is inside here must be dangerous, deadly even, for Fell to have made them forbidden. And yet I’m compelled to look inside. “Open it with me,” I tell him.
“Okay. But the rest is all you.”
Together we lift the edge. I hold my breath. The spine crackles as the cover yawns open. My hands roam the pages, turning. They are blank until I see a large name. “Shakespeare?” I say. “What is that?”
Miriam laughs strangely and sighs. “You mean who, dear. Who is Shakespeare.” She shakes her head. “But never mind about that for now. All you need to know is the words are his and now they belong to us.” She flips through the pages until she finds one she likes. “Now,” she says. “Plant your eyes here.”
I glance at the page filled with words. Miriam’s hand reaches for mine across the table. “Before you begin, you should know that my grandson must think very highly of you—”
“Gram. Don’t—”
“To have given you a birthday gift such as this.”
“Oh no,” John mutters and sinks back in his chair.
“Because, this is not just a gift of discovering a book, my dear, oh no. This is a chance to see inside yourself, to find out whether all those seedlings that have been tickling your brain might just begin to grow.” She points her finger to a passage. “Read it. Out loud if you can.”
The world swirls out of view. My eyes make a home on the page. Words start running through me, beginning at my eyes and moving to some unknowable part of me. They land on my tongue, then meet the air like kisses.
And my ending is despair
Unless I be relieved by prayer,
Which pierces so that it assaults
Mercy itself and frees all faults.
As you from crimes would pardoned be,
Let your indulgence set me free.
As it’s happening, I understand: I am made for this. I pull myself from the page, the sounds and rhythms lingering. It’s difficult to stop once I get started. Miriam’s eyes are closed. A single tear falls from her lashes. I think I’ve done something either very wrong or very right.
John is grinning like crazy. “I knew you could do it. I just knew this was in you.” He takes my hand, unhooks the leather cuff, and nestles it against the crease where the pages meet. “These were for readers,” he says. “So you’d never lose your place. Called . . . a bookmark.”
I’m flying on the inside. I give him a quick squeeze, then a kiss on the cheek. “This is the best present I’ve ever had. You’re the best, JP.”
His mouth upturns into a half smile. “It was nothing.”
Miriam blinks rapidly as though waking from a bad dream. “I have not heard words like that for a very long time.”
“I thought you said you were a reader?” I ask her.
“I am. I will always be,” she says. “But I cannot do it anymore. Reading is a muscle. It must be exercised. Would you understand me if I told you that after half a lifetime in hiding, mine has atrophied beyond repair?” I nod.
“They used to call it alexia,” Miriam says. “Though the word is not quite severe enough for what they’ve done to me.”
“They?” I ask.
“Fell, dear, of course. Who else? First they changed us, then they changed our world. But they didn’t have to work very hard, you see. Because some of the change had already begun.”
“What do you mean?”
“Long before Fell, we were changing on our own. I was just a child, but I remember the way people talked about our long slide away from the books, from the deep thought and concentration that reading required. There was too much noise, too much information. Life had taken on a fast and relentless pace, which never ceased, never quieted. There was choice. Too much choice. And voices you could turn on with a single tap or click. Imagine if Verity had millions of sisters, all talking at the same time.”
“It sounds terrible,” I say. “Like torture.”
“Yes, but you could choose. That was our freedom. One we were used to. One we expected. But there were consequences. Many of us began to feel we were riding a wave, slow motion, into something irreversible, and in the process, we ourselves were shifting on the inside, along with the delivery of our information. Of course, defenders said there had always been a fear with every generation that the next was somehow out of touch, confused, bombarded with too much of the new. Ours was no different, they said.”
“But it was different?”
Miriam nods. “It happened in just a generation or two. Very few people were left that had grown up with page and print instead of screens. They called them ‘cultural influencers,’ for a time. Then they called them other things.”
Miriam eyes me and sips her tea. “This may be too much for you. You’re very young.”
“It’s okay. I want to know.”
“Well, the crux of it, dear, is that literacy had been reshaped. The more some of us held on to our books and paper, the further we slipped from the new wave. The more dangerous we became to them.”
I feel the same desperate ache creeping in. There’s so little time before my world collapses, before I will become just another Valer, without words. There’s so much I want to understand. Whatever Fell did to us, I know now that I don’t want it done to me.
“Miriam, why did they take this from us? Why did they stop us reading the books?”
She leans in close and sends a whisper to my ear. “Because readers and books hold a dangerous power.” Her eyes light up as she says it. “The power to imagine. But of course, Fell couldn’t have that sort of thing floating around, now could they? Not if they
wanted any sort of control. We were no good for their progress.”
“So they destroyed them? The books and the readers?”
Miriam tilts her head and looks at me curiously. “Oh, but you are precious,” she says taking my face in her hand. “You’re just a little lamb, indeed. Of course you wouldn’t know of the early fires of Fell. That is how they erased the books, with endless fires.” She pulls her sweater around her and shivers. “You see, we tried to band together, to keep the books as they were. In the libraries, on the shelves. But in the end, not even the boolos could stop the fires.”
“Boolos?”
“That’s what they used to call us. It means ‘book lovers,’ dear. We did what we could, but you must understand, we were persecuted. We lost many writers, artists, and great thinkers.”
“They were afraid of you,” I say, suddenly realizing.
Miriam nods. “And afraid of what our stories could inspire.” Her eyes twinkle with the memory. “To think of the books now, just a memory, fading like the stars in our sky. We never really did stand a chance against the fires.” She releases a strange laugh of regret and sorrow. “And now just look at me . . . an old boolo hoping to keep the pages alive.”
Miriam studies me a moment. “What did you say your last name was?”
“It’s Hartley. Noelle Hartley.”
“Hartley?” She jolts back. Her face contorts.
“Something wrong, Gram?”
Miriam shakes her head. “Are you by chance related to a . . . William Hartley?”
“He’s my grandfather. Do you know him?”
“I did once.” She avoids my eyes. “Does he know you have come here?”
“No one does. I didn’t tell anyone.”
Miriam sits back a moment. “Noelle Hartley. The girl who can read. Well, this is fitting.”
“Miriam, what do you mean? How do you know my grandfather?”
“Oh, it’s nothing. It’s just—well, I don’t suppose your grandfather ever talks about his youth?”
I stop to think. I’ve rarely heard him mention his earlier life. “He doesn’t.”
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