The List

by Patricia Forde

  Letta hurried down the rough path, noticing dark clouds scurrying across the sky and joining the broody bank that had already settled over Tintown. Below her, the fields were orange in the early morning light, with a gentle breeze riffling through them.

  Her stomach grumbled and she quickened her step, making her way to the line that had already started outside Central Kitchen. Her tongue cleaved to the roof of her mouth with thirst. As soon as she walked in, she could smell apples and was rewarded with a glass of juice alongside her piece of bread and the two eggs Mary Pepper handed her. She drank the juice before moving out of the line. The cold, bitter liquid drenched her tongue. She held it in her mouth for a moment before swallowing.

  Mary Pepper glared at her.

  “Go!” she said, but for once, Letta didn’t care. Her thirst had been abated, and soon, she would be able to go to the water station for her allowance.

  Her thoughts went back to the Goddess and Rose’s behavior in front of the statue. Praying. That’s what Benjamin called it. Was it any worse than her leaving the note? Who was to say Hugo had told her the truth? Even if he had, and Marlo’s friends got the note, why should they trust her?

  By the time she got back to the shop, her head ached and she couldn’t think clearly anymore. When the bells rang for the eleventh hour, the door opened and Mrs. Truckle came in. Letta knew the old woman was keeping an eye on her. She knew her old teacher would not let Benjamin be disgraced. She should be grateful for that.

  “Mrs. Truckle!” Letta said, giving no hint of the way she was thinking. “No harm.”

  Mrs. Truckle smiled. “Where ink?” she said, her bright eyes darting about the room as if Letta might have hidden it there.

  Oh no, Letta thought. She had totally forgotten about it.

  “Nearly ready,” she said, hoping the teacher hadn’t noticed her alarm. “Many bottles?”

  “Twenty,” Mrs. Truckle said, and Letta’s heart sank. She had better tell the truth.

  “Not filled yet,” she said, trying to apologize through the tone of her voice. There was no word for sorry on the List. Mrs. Truckle shrugged.

  “Come,” she said. “I help.”

  Before Letta could say anything, the small woman had gone through to the living room and was standing over the full bowl of ink. She tutted to herself as she removed the wire strainer with its mashed-up beetroot and peered into the bowl.

  “Good color,” she muttered, and Letta rushed to get the small bottles they used for the ink. She handed the bottles to Mrs. Truckle, who filled each one carefully using Benjamin’s old iron funnel.

  “Busy?” she said to Letta, never taking her eyes from the task.

  Letta nodded. “Busy,” she agreed.

  They both turned as the door into the shop opened.

  “One minute,” Letta said, putting down the bottle in her hand.

  She ran out to the shop, only to find Rose standing there.

  “Rose!” Letta said, unable to hide her surprise.

  Rose was holding a bottle of water, a bottle big enough to be an allowance for two people. She pressed it into Letta’s hands.

  “For you,” she said. “For you.”

  “No,” Letta said, trying to give it back to her. “I do nothing.”

  “You help Daniel.”

  And before Letta could say another word, Rose was gone. Letta stood looking at the water. This was crazy. She couldn’t take it. She had done nothing to deserve it. But there was something else bothering her. She hadn’t liked the way Rose had looked at her. It reminded Letta of the look Rose had had on her face as she knelt before the Goddess. She turned to find Mrs. Truckle framed in the doorway behind her, a worried frown creasing her old face.

  “Why she give water?” she said, and Letta was back again in the classroom with a woman who always demanded an answer.

  Letta shook her head. “Nothing,” she said. “Nothing.”

  Mrs. Truckle nodded to the bottle of water in Letta’s hands. “Water not nothing. She say you help Daniel?”

  Letta paused. Now what could she say? “Day they took him,” she managed finally. “Helped her day they took Daniel.”

  Mrs. Truckle looked at her without speaking, and Letta knew she didn’t believe her. After what seemed like a very long time, Mrs. Truckle reached out and took Letta’s hand.

  “Be careful, Letta,” she said with steel in her voice. “Be careful.”

  Afterward, when Mrs. Truckle was gone, Letta sat at her desk, lost in thought.

  The sound of the door opening startled her. She looked up. A man stood there. He was wearing a long black overcoat with a hood. The hood almost covered his face, wreathing it in shadow and making it impossible to see him properly. Letta opened her mouth to speak to him just as he removed the hood. The morning light hit off his curly black hair and Letta gasped. Marlo!

  He turned and saw her, a big smile spreading across his face. He looked so much better than the last time she’d seen him.

  Letta looked up at him. “You came,” she said.

  “You sent for me.” He smiled back at her. “How did you know about the stone?”

  “Hugo,” she said.

  He nodded. “Of course.”

  “Maybe I should close the shop?” She looked nervously toward the door.

  “Might look suspicious,” Marlo said. “The gavvers are on full alert at the moment since Hugo’s show.”

  Hugo’s gnarled old hand flashed through Letta’s brain.

  “What will happen to him?” she said.

  Marlo looked away from her. “They banished him this morning.”

  Letta felt the room sway. She clutched the counter behind her.

  “We’ve been out all night looking for him, but we didn’t find him. He’s an old man. He wouldn’t have survived long out there.”

  Marlo’s voice seemed to be coming from within a long tunnel.

  They had banished him. She couldn’t process it. He had been alive and well yesterday.

  Letta. What a lovely name!

  “It’s all right,” Marlo said, putting his arm around her shoulder. “They can’t hurt him anymore.”

  Marlo pressed a bottle of water into her hands, and she gratefully sipped from it, leaning her head on his shoulder.

  “What’s happened, Letta?” Marlo’s voice was gentle, but there was tension there too. She could hear it and see it in the way he kept glancing at the door. She tried to marshal her thoughts.

  “John Noa told me Benjamin was dead, but I don’t believe him.”

  It sounded bizarre now that she had said it to someone else. Why would Noa lie?

  But Marlo didn’t look like he thought it was bizarre. He frowned and said, “So you think he’s alive?”

  Letta nodded and told him about the note and her conversation with the scavenger.

  “We need to find out what he knows,” Marlo said, and Letta’s heart lifted at the use of the word “we.” She had begun to feel so alone, surrounded by things she couldn’t figure out. It was good to have someone to discuss it with. Though she wasn’t sure about talking to the scavenger.

  “I don’t think he’ll say any more,” she said. “Smith Fearfall is not the easiest man to talk to.”

  Marlo smiled a small secret smile. “We have ways of talking to people like that,” he said.

  “Maybe I had better close the shop,” Letta said. “We can’t risk a gavver wandering in.”

  Marlo nodded. Letta walked to the door and was just about to slide the heavy bolts across when someone pushed it open. Letta stumbled under the pressure. When she looked up, John Noa was standing there, looking down at her. For a second, Letta couldn’t quite take it in. She recognized John Noa and she saw the two gavvers standing outside the door, but she couldn’t put it all together. She opened her mouth to speak, but no
words came.

  “May I come in, wordsmith?”

  Noa’s voice brought her back to reality. What was she to do? She stood back, and he swept in past her. Marlo was still standing where she’d left him at the counter. Letta saw his eyes widen, then he bowed his head, staring at the floor.

  Noa looked at Marlo, eyes narrowed.

  “What your name, boy?”

  For a second, there was silence, and Letta could hear the beating of her own heart.

  “Leo,” Marlo said, still without looking up. “Name Leo.”

  John Noa’s eyes swept over him like a radar.

  “Why you no work?”

  Letta felt the blood drain from her face.

  “Tintown,” Marlo said, still not looking at John Noa.

  Noa frowned. “Tintown. I see.”

  Suddenly, Letta couldn’t take it anymore. She had to say something. She had to finish this. She turned to Marlo and took his arm roughly.

  “Go now!” she said sternly. “No food for you here. Need talk to John Noa.”

  Marlo scurried out past her, the very vision of a shy peasant. Letta prayed the gavvers didn’t recognize him. She held her breath as he walked past the two guarding the door.

  John Noa laughed. Letta turned to him.

  “You like your new power, Letta. I can see that.”

  Letta glanced at the door. Marlo was gone. She started to breathe normally again, but her legs were still shaking, and her head felt light.

  “Are you not going to invite me in?” John Noa said, and Letta could see the amusement in his eyes.

  “Of course,” she stammered. “Please.”

  He followed her into the living area, and she gave him Benjamin’s chair.

  “Can I make you tea?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “I wanted to talk to you, Letta,” he said.

  “Yes?” Letta answered, hoping he couldn’t hear the shake in her voice.

  “About Smith Fearfall.”

  Letta felt the room tip. Fearfall. He knew. He knew she had been to Tintown.

  “I…I…” Letta stammered.

  “You spoke to him about Benjamin,” Noa said softly.

  “Yes,” Letta whispered.

  “You went to Tintown and questioned him.”

  “I…I didn’t mean any harm,” Letta said. “I hoped he could tell me…”

  “Could tell you what?” Noa said in the same gentle voice.

  “Could tell me…could tell me more…about Benjamin.”

  “Yes.” Noa nodded. “You wanted to know what Smith was doing there?”

  Letta was afraid to answer now. The atmosphere in the room had become oppressive. Noa hardly moved and didn’t raise his voice, but there was an air of menace about him.

  “Well, let me tell you why he was there.”

  Letta held her breath.

  “I sent him to look for Benjamin.”

  For a second, Letta forgot to be afraid.

  “You sent him?” she said, blood rushing to her face. “Why would you send him?”

  Noa sat back in his chair, and Letta felt his eyes sweep over her, examining her from head to toe. She shifted uncomfortably. Could he see through her?

  “I was worried about your master. We were old friends, Benjamin and I. I knew him from before the Melting. Benjamin served our cause well.”

  Letta could see that the old man was lost in thought, all the tension gone out of him.

  “Benjamin wrote stirring articles on the web of the world, telling people about the cause, warning them that the end was near. Of course, they didn’t take him seriously. A conspiracy theorist. That’s what they called him. Even as the water was rising on all sides of us, they challenged our every word.”

  He stopped talking, looking down at his hands, twirling his thumbs. She noticed how white the skin on his hands was and saw again the long nails.

  Then he looked up at her. “I was worried about him. The Desecrators have been busy as of late, and they have no respect for the likes of your master, so I sent Fearfall to track him down. You know the rest.”

  Letta nodded. Guilt came in waves. Had she been so wrong about Fearfall? About the Desecrators? About John Noa?

  “In the future, come to me with your questions, child. I don’t like people snooping around behind my back.”

  He stood up. Even in old age, he was a forbidding figure, Letta thought as he towered above her.

  “I’m sorry he died, Letta, but he is dead. You should accept it and move on. Ark needs people like you. You are our wordsmith now. Don’t get stuck in the past. Your place is in the future.”

  When she looked up from the floor, he was gone, but his words hung in the room as real as the table beneath her fingers. She heard the door bang and sank to the floor, feeling the cold of the marble seeping into her bones.

  • • •

  Talking to the girl had awoken old memories. “Don’t get stuck in the past,” he had told her, and yet here he was revisiting it yet again. He remembered the end so distinctly—beat by beat, image by image.

  It had started with rain. Three weeks of unrelenting rain. People had laughingly started to talk about building an ark. He had been way ahead of them. He had built Ark from nothing and with nothing. The Green Warriors had inputted all the available data and had come up with the ideal place to be when the end came. They knew, as others did not, that it had to be a place that could sustain them when all technology had been taken from them. They had built a new city incorporating some of the old buildings, inventing new ones. Most importantly, they had designed and made filters embedded with natural water channels extracted from green plants that could remove salt from seawater. Water was the key to life, and John Noa and the Warriors held that key.

  From the safety of Ark, he had watched the end unfold. The rain. Three weeks of the heaviest rain the world had ever seen. In the cities, the force of the water in the drains propelled the manhole covers from their moorings. He remembered pictures of a car with a manhole cover embedded in the windshield. There was water everywhere, but still, the politicians reassured people with soothing words—fraudulent, empty words.

  And then, as the rain still pounded the earth, the storms came—storms that gathered in the oceans like wild horses, huge storms with waves one hundred feet high, lashing the coast mercilessly. The earth shuddered under the attack. The electricity had to be cut for fear of fires. The world was plunged into a terrifying darkness. And still Nature roared.

  Gales of four hundred miles an hour had no respect for that fine line between sea and coast. The wind chased the water in, over the man-made barriers, through the streets, over the buildings, drowning everything in its wake.

  Millions of people died. Millions of animals, millions of birds. All lost. He remembered one of the last speeches given by John Hardy, the head of The United Nations. “I have nothing left to give you,” he’d said, tears streaming down his face. “Nothing but my words.” Noa wiped away his own tears and stared into the middle distance. Soon, there would be no more words. None at all.

  Chapter 11

  #11

  Admit

  (1) Tell hard truth

  (2) Let in

  After John Noa left, Letta found it hard to concentrate on anything. Benjamin was dead. John Noa’s words trickled down her spine like icy water.

  But none of it made sense to Letta. Why had the scavenger not recognized the bag? How had he known where Benjamin was? Or maybe she didn’t want to believe Benjamin was gone forever? I have to stop this and do my work, she told herself sternly. Benjamin is dead. Noa would not lie to me.

  She sat at her desk and pulled a sheet of paper toward her. The new List needed to be transcribed. Her hand trembled as she picked up her pen. The words on the List looked back at her.

  Above<
br />
  Accept

  She wrote carefully, trying to stop the letters from shaking. This was familiar territory, but she couldn’t concentrate. Her mind kept replaying the conversation with Noa, and she knew she couldn’t stay focused. Noa wouldn’t lie, but maybe the scavenger would? If Benjamin was alive, didn’t she owe it to him to investigate things further? What if Noa wasn’t telling the truth? She shook her head. How could she even think that? She had to be careful. Ever since she had crossed the line and taken Marlo in, she had strayed further from everything she believed in. She had to accept what Noa said. Accept it. But she couldn’t. She knew she couldn’t rest until she talked to Noa again. She would find an excuse to engage him in conversation and then casually ask him.

  She got up and grabbed her coat. She opened the back door. A gust of wind hit her in the face, and she gasped. The temperature had dropped, and there was a distinct feeling of winter in the air. She pulled her coat closer to her and set off toward the hill to Noa’s house.

  As she walked, her mind was racing. So much had happened in a few days. She had hidden a Desecrator. She had spoken to them. She had heard the music, seen the painting. If John Noa found out, she would be banished. And yet, in her heart, she could not believe that the Desecrators were the enemy. Surely, there was a way that they could all live together? But there was such a chasm between the world they saw and the one John Noa had seen before the Melting. Could the two ever come together? There was no word on the list for hope or love. Her heart quickened. Maybe that was where she could start with Noa. She was the wordsmith. She would suggest to him, with respect, that he put some abstracts on the list. Maybe only one at first. Hope. Hope could never be a bad thing, could it? Her own heart flooded with it as she hurried through the streets.

  In the future come to me with your questions…

  That was what he had said. She could smell the evening meal cooking as she passed Central Kitchen. Wednesday. Onion tart.

  The sweet smell of the onions made her stomach rumble. She hurried her step. Past the tailor and on past the tinsmith’s shop, where a battalion of tin buckets stood at attention on the path outside. As she passed the Round House, a group of gavvers was standing as if waiting for something. Their eyes followed her as she headed up Noa’s hill, but they said nothing.