She went into the living room and tried to eat her lunch. A hunk of dry bread, a bowl of tomato soup made from the recent glut, and an apple all stared up at her, but she had no appetite. She picked up the apple and took a bite. The smell reminded her of every autumn in Ark, the wagons loaded with apples fresh from the orchard, the sweet smell of fruit permeating every breath of air. For weeks, Central Kitchen would produce jugs of apple juice and mounds of stewed apples with every meal. It didn’t bother Letta. She liked apples. She took another bite. As her teeth sank into the firm flesh, the door opened again and a young man came in with a large box. He placed the box on the counter.
“Beetroot,” he said, and before Letta could thank him, he was gone. Letta took the box and brought it back to the living room. Then, taking the small sharp knife she had seen Benjamin use so many times before, she started to cut the beetroots into small chunks. The juice immediately covered her fingers, turning her skin bright red.
She looked at her hands and thought about all the wordsmiths who had gone before her. Not all of them had been required to make their own ink, but maybe some of them had. She continued to chop the tough beetroots, throwing them into the pot to be covered by the boiling water. Finally, when all the roots were in the water, she reduced the temperature and left them to cook.
Then she went to finish the gavvers’ word boxes.
By midafternoon, her hand ached, but the ten boxes were finished and the shop was filled with the heavy smell of the beetroot. She walked over to the stove and turned off the heat. Then, carefully, she strained the crimson juices into a large bowl. She picked up one of the bigger chunks and pushed it through the old wire strainer to thicken the liquid. She stirred it, watching the bloodred soup swirl and wave. She knew there was no more to do but to let it cool.
Outside, the bell chimed four o’clock. It was time to go. Letta went and got her coat. Butterflies danced in her stomach and her hands had begun to sweat. She would play it by ear, she thought. One step at a time.
The gavvers’ base was below John Noa’s house to the south of the town. It was nestled at the bottom of the hill, and Letta always thought it looked as though John Noa was looking down on it, keeping an eye on the criminals that were held there. She took the long way around, passing the mill, eager to see if there was any sign of yesterday’s painting, but there was nothing. The mill stood unadorned as though nothing unusual had ever happened there. Letta couldn’t help feeling a little disappointed. She had never seen anything like it, and she knew she would never forget it. The old man’s words lingered in her memory too.
You have a right to express yourselves. You are human!
He was wrong, of course. Before the Melting, people had expressed themselves as they wished, and look at where that got them.
She turned the corner on to Mill Street itself. On the opposite side of the road, two Green Warriors were standing, talking. Letta bowed her head in their direction, but they didn’t seem to see her or take any notice of her greeting. She pressed on, the face of the cliff visible in front of her. Beyond that, the silhouette of Noa’s house perched near its summit. In front of her, she could see the Round House, the gavvers’ base, its round stone walls broken only by narrow slits for windows, its high metal gates guarding the perimeter, and its massive front door painted black.
She shifted the satchel from her shoulder, where it had started to eat into her flesh, and held it awkwardly in the crook of her elbow. She took a deep breath and marched on through the gates up to the front door. She pushed on the door and it opened. Inside was a small entrance hall with a short desk, behind which sat a gavver. He looked up when Letta came in. He was young with bright eyes, full of curiosity. He stretched his neck forward when he saw her.
“Yes?” he said.
Letta put her bag on the desk and started to take out her boxes.
“Words,” she said. “Carver.”
He nodded, taking up a box and examining it.
“Good,” he answered and smiled at her, showing two rows of white teeth.
Letta nodded toward the boxes.
“Apprentices,” she said by way of explanation but really just to keep him talking.
“Yes,” he said. “You wordsmith?”
Letta nodded. “Wordsmith,” she agreed.
There was an awkward silence. Letta realized there was nothing else of value she could get from the young gavver. She couldn’t very well ask him about his prisoners. Could she?
Letta smiled at him. “Many prisoners?” She angled her head to one side, hoping she looked alluring.
It seemed to work. He smiled again. “Yes,” he said. “Many.”
“Good,” Letta said. “Desecrators?”
He nodded. “Some.”
“Saw one,” Letta said, feigning excitement. “At mill.”
The gavver nodded, barely concealing his pride. “Hugo.”
“Still here?” Letta asked.
The young man glanced nervously behind him. “Yes,” he said. “In prison.”
“Any others?”
“Why you ask?”
The voice made Letta jump, her heart started to pound. She turned around slowly. Carver stood there watching her, his mouth curled in a sneer.
“I…I bring words,” Letta stammered.
“Go now.” Carver spat the words at her.
The young gavver put his head down and seemed afraid to look at her. Letta grabbed her bag and walked out, trying not to let the older man see her fear. She could feel his eyes burning into her as she passed him in the doorway, and then she heard it bang behind her and felt the cool air on her face. She sighed with relief. What should she do now? Hugo the Desecrator was still here. She knew where the grating was. She had to try to talk to him. But what if Carver came back out? What possible reason could she have to talk to a prisoner? She hesitated. She had to try. They could move the prisoner or expel him at any time, and then she would have no way of finding Marlo.
She turned right, walking close to the building, around the corner to the gable. She had seen the grating before. She looked down. No hands stretched out in supplication. She went to the first grate and hunkered down beside it.
“Hello?”
The word sounded foolish hanging there in the open air. It wasn’t even a List word. She waited, glancing nervously behind her. Nothing. She tried again.
“Hello?”
Out on the street, through the railings, she saw a cart go by. She jumped up quickly, but the driver didn’t even glance in her direction. She moved swiftly to the next grating. Again, she hunkered down.
“Hello? Hugo?”
She waited. This is pointless, she thought. There’s no one there. She would try one more time and then go home.
“Hugo?” she said again.
A hand appeared at the grating. Letta almost screamed.
“Yes?” the voice sounded eager.
“Are you Hugo?” Letta said, never taking her eyes off the gnarled old hand at the grate.
“Yes,” the old man said. “I am Hugo. Who are you?”
Letta looked around nervously. He wasn’t speaking List, so she answered him in the same way.
“I am Letta,” she said. “The wordsmith.”
“Letta,” he said with a deep sigh. “What a lovely name!”
He sounded so calm, so confident, as though he were chatting to someone in Central Kitchen. Letta took a deep breath.
“I need to get a message to Marlo,” she blurted out.
Letta squinted through the grating and could just see the shape of the old man. He was shackled to the wall just beneath the grating. The first band of steel was wrapped around his upper arm and the second nearer his wrist. The manacles made sure he couldn’t sit or lie down, couldn’t move away from the open grating.
“Ah,” said the old man. “I see
.”
Suddenly, the air was filled with the screams of another prisoner from inside the jail.
“What’s happening?” Letta said, afraid of the answer.
“Torture,” the old man said grimly. “They are torturing someone.”
Letta shuddered. “Why?” She could barely say the word as the screams grew more intense. She tried not to imagine what was happening back there in the darkness.
The old man’s voice broke into her thoughts. “Why do you want Marlo?”
“I helped him,” she managed to say. “Now I need him to help me,” she said.
“I know who you are now,” the old man said. “I heard about you.”
“Will you help me?” Letta persisted.
“Leave a message under the stone behind the Goddess.” The old man had to raise his voice to be heard now. “Before dawn tomorrow.”
Letta nodded. “Can I…can I do anything to help you?” she said.
The man laughed. “I think I am beyond help,” he said.
Letta rummaged in her bag and found a small bottle of water. She put it into his hand. “Take that,” she said.
The old hand grasped the bottle and coaxed it through the bars of the vent.
“Thank you,” he said.
“Good luck,” Letta managed to say, hauling herself to her feet.
Just as she did, the young gavver appeared at the corner and walked toward her. Letta’s heart sank. What was she to say?
“Gate?” she said, and even as she did, she knew she sounded like an imbecile. He stared at her for a moment, then laughed. He pointed to where the gate was.
“That way,” he said, and she could see the amusement in his eyes.
“Thank you,” she said and scurried past him.
At the corner, she looked back. The gavver wasn’t looking at her. He was urinating into the grate, a steady stream of yellow waste pouring into the cell below.
Letta ran to the gate, rage burning in her gut. This was the man she had joked with, smiled at, only minutes earlier. Why would anyone do that? Her temper flared, sending hot blood into her cheeks. She leaned against the railings, teeth clenched, her hands balled into fists. She wanted to go back there and push him away, to hurt him in any way she could. She took deep breaths. He was a pig. If only she could say that to him. A pig.
And then her pulse slowed and her heart sank, a feeling of helplessness flooded her body. She couldn’t challenge him. She couldn’t attack him. He was a gavver, and she was nothing. Nothing at all. In her mind, she could hear the man in the cell screaming again. She didn’t think she would ever forget that sound and the image of Hugo’s weathered old hand clutching the grate. She walked away, only stopping once to look up at John Noa’s house. Did he know what was going on in the building beneath him? Did he know? Had he ordered it?
She hurried along the street. She couldn’t think about any of that now. She had succeeded in what she set out to do, she reminded herself. She knew how to contact Marlo. In the morning, she would go to the Goddess and leave a message.
As she reached the door of the shop, she realized she was thirsty. She reached for her bag and remembered she had given the last of the water to Hugo. There would be no more till the morning. She couldn’t ask Werber, not after the way she had treated him. She swallowed hard. She couldn’t think about any of that now. She had to compose her message to the Desecrators.
Even as she formed the thought, she shuddered. What had she become? She looked down at her bloodred hands and shivered. It didn’t matter. None of it mattered. She had to find out what had happened to Benjamin, and she would talk to anyone who could help her. With new determination, she opened the door of the shop and stepped inside. She went straight to the drop box. There was only a single card there. A card like the ones they used in the shop. She pulled it out and examined it. The words were written in block capitals. Letta read them. A small cry escaped her lips. She read them again to make sure she had understood.
BENJAMIN NOT DEAD
The card fluttered to the floor. The words flew about the room.
Benjamin. Not. Dead.
Chapter 10
#351
Question
What you ask, needs answer
The hour before the dawn was dark and unpromising, Letta thought, looking out her bedroom window. Her thoughts were racing. Questions had kept her awake through the long night. Who had dropped the card there? And most pressing of all: was it true? Could Benjamin be alive?
She tried to suppress the excitement she felt. Please let it be true. Let him be alive. Another part of her brain shouted even louder, calling her a fool. John Noa had told her that Benjamin was dead. He wouldn’t have said it if it weren’t true. But what if the scavenger had lied to him?
On the street below, there was no sound. The full moon was hidden behind brooding clouds and the morning electricity hadn’t yet kicked in. Letta looked at the note in her hand, the red ink on the white page.
Need help. Letta
Three words. Two List and a name. And yet it had taken her half the night to compose that message. She had spent hours debating whether or not she should sign her name. If the note fell into the wrong hands, there would be no escape. But if she didn’t sign her name, how could they know it was her? She was beyond caring. She would leave the message under the stone just as she had written it. Hugo had said to leave it there before dawn. She blew out the candle beside her bed and got dressed in the gray light.
She walked through the quiet town as though in a dream, trying not to think about the danger, trying not to think about her thirst, which was now a raging beast. The moon had come back out and lit her path, and she was grateful for it. She headed toward the West Gate, turning right before she came to it, and climbed up the steep hill to the Goddess. As she walked, she could hear the whirr of the tumbling windmills at the top of the hill. They were there from the time before the Melting, when John Noa had started to prepare for the disaster he saw coming. Now they provided power to Ark, about the only technology they had. Of course, power was strictly rationed. It would come on just after dawn for three hours and again in the evening for two hours during the winter months. This was when Central Kitchen cooked the food and other essential services were carried out. Only John Noa and the Green Warriors had power all day, as befitted their standing.
Letta trudged on. She could just see the shape of the Goddess silhouetted against the sky. She was almost upon the statue when she realized there was someone there. Letta stopped. She could hear a voice. She crouched there for a moment, totally still. A female voice. But who would be up here at this hour? A gavver? There were some female gavvers. She had to get closer. She crept along the edge of the path, the dry stalks of grass scratching her bare legs. She could make out words now.
“Goddess! Please. Daniel is good boy. Please!”
Letta peered at her as the early morning sun climbed into the sky, momentarily blinding her. It was the healer’s wife, Rose, kneeling in front of the statue and rocking over and back, keening softly. Letta stayed there, transfixed. The wind was starting to build and the noise of the windmills was getting stronger. Letta edged forward.
“Rose!”
She tried to keep her voice low so as not to startle the woman, but she got no reaction. The keening continued interspersed with the odd word.
“Please! Not for me. For Daniel.”
Letta came out of the long grass and stood on the path within three strides of Rose, but it was clear that the other woman was too far gone to even notice. Very gently, Letta walked up to her and touched her shoulder. The face that turned and confronted her was alive with naked fear. Rose opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came.
“It’s all right, Rose,” Letta said. “Me. Letta. No harm.”
Rose’s eyes opened wide, and she stood immobile, looking at Letta. Let
ta stroked the older woman’s arm and whispered reassurance to her until finally, the hunted look left her eyes and large tears rolled down her face.
“You poor thing,” Letta said. “You miss your boy.”
The woman nodded, and Letta could see she was unable to speak.
“There might be someone,” Letta said.
The woman stared at her uncomprehending. Letta took her arm.
“Listen,” she said. “I’m going to ask someone…if they could help you.”
The woman collapsed into Letta’s arms, great sobs racking her body. Letta held her, feeling the warm tears through the thin fabric on her shoulder.
Rose looked up. “How?” she said, searching Letta’s face as though she could find the answer there.
Letta put her finger on the other woman’s lips. “Shh!” she said. “Go home now. Wait.”
The woman nodded, then turned and fell on her knees before the Goddess. “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.”
Then she got up and headed down the hill.
Her stomach in a knot, Letta watched her go. Why had she promised to help Rose? She couldn’t even help herself. And yet she couldn’t bear to see her pain and say nothing. If there was any chance, didn’t she deserve hope? But still, feelings of guilt lay heavily on Letta. What if the Desecrators couldn’t help? Or wouldn’t help? She went behind the statue and found a big flat stone. She lifted it at one corner and shoved the note underneath. Now all she could do was wait.
Before she left, she stood in front of the Goddess and looked into her cold, empty eyes. How wonderful to believe there was a power greater than yourself! Someone who could sort things out for you.
“I’m sorry, Goddess,” she said aloud. “I don’t think I can believe in you.”
She took a deep breath. The air already had a hint of winter in it, sharp and cold. Beneath her, under the weak rays of the new sunrise, the town sprawled, guileless, an infant waking to a new day. The weak electric lights came on, strung like stars across the landscape.
The List Page 10