Scar

by Alice Broadway

  “And this is the word of who – Minnow?” Sana smirks.

  “This is the word of a friend.” Mel looks around at me and Oscar. “Believe me, you do not want to wait until Mayor Longsight sends word.”

  “Mayor Longsight? Don’t be a fool, storyteller. Longsight’s long gone.”

  “He’s alive, Sana,” I call out, and she looks up, narrowing her eyes at me.

  “No – no. He is dead. I made sure…” Her rage and confusion make her incautious. There is a ripple through the crowd of people – Oscar will have told them what Sana did, but I wonder how many truly believe she was his killer.

  “He died.” Mel’s voice is melodious and calm. “But he is alive again. He is an object of worship, Sana – his word holds more sway than ever before, and the people love him and serve him even more faithfully.”

  Sana looks about her, at me, at Oscar and Mel, and finally at her people. She smooths out the astonished shock that lines her face and smiles out at the jumble of townsfolk who look on.

  “These inked fools will believe anything,” Sana scoffs, addressing her followers. “They come here with their delusions, telling us to seek peace. Just look at them, look at how well-fed they are, look at their clothes and their boots which fit and have not been repaired fifteen times over. They think peace is when we blanks shut our hungry mouths. When we stop fighting for our land. That is servitude, not peace, and it is certainly not justice.” Sana spits at Mel’s feet, who takes a step back. “You have wasted your time, storyteller. And the irony is,” her voice rises and there is a strange undercurrent, underneath the scorn – something manic, strange, “the irony is that in the time you have spent here, setting up your little houses, telling your quaint story, my crew have been riding hard, bound for Saintstone. You came here to build your houses and tell your tale while my riders are in your home weighing out justice. For we are the f ire and water; we are the lightning and flood.” She laughs, and it echoes around the hillside. “Run home, little children, and see what is left of the houses you built.”

  I take another look at the crowd and I see that the riders, Sana’s own most faithful lackeys, are not here. Fenn is not here. She’s not making it up, then – they are in Saintstone reaping destruction and we are powerless to stop them.

  Not everyone cheers, but those who do are loud and fearsome. I look around for a friendly face, someone who might be kind. I see Kasia, her expression full of dread, and I see Penny and Blake – Penny’s baby must be due so soon. They cower at the edge, looking terrified and miserable, as though they long to help us but know they must first protect themselves. Penny mouths the word, but it’s Blake I hear – he screams at us: “Run!”

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  We race to where the horses are tethered, with Sana’s mocking laughter echoing in our ears, Oscar refuses to mount, saying we mustn’t let him slow us down. Before we can protest, he slaps the horses and we pelt through the woods.

  We slow only when we’re on the furthest edge.

  “We won’t be in time to stop them,” I pant, and Mel nods, wiping her sweat-slicked forehead. She takes a look behind us, trying to gauge whether or not we are being followed. Eventually she sighs, her face taut with misery, and we ride on, in time with our heavy breaths.

  “Will they be all right?” I ask. I’m thinking of our friends and neighbours. Of Mum. All unprepared for an attack.

  “I don’t know,” says Mel. She looks taut with worry. “Minnow is a good leader. He will protect his people.”

  Interesting, I think, that she mentions Minnow rather than Longsight. I have often wondered about them – they seem so different and yet both have fought for the same thing for so long.

  “How well do you know Jack Minnow?” I ask, and Mel takes a while to answer.

  “I’ve known him since I was a small child – from when I started being mentored for my calling; he had just begun work with the government. A school leaver mentorship, I suppose. He’s maybe ten years older than me. He was the brooding guy I liked when I was thirteen.”

  I can’t help but laugh – it’s hard to imagine her as a teenager with a crush.

  “But we only met properly when I was instated as storyteller after my mentor died. He’s always been quite reserved, you know? Of course, our paths cross all the time now.”

  “You don’t still like him … like that?” I ask, horrified.

  “Your face!” Mel laughs at me. “But no. I don’t get to have romantic relationships or marry. One of the rules.”

  “Is that lonely?” I ask. “I don’t think I would like to be told whether or not I could fall in love.”

  “Ah, there are no rules about falling in love.” Mel’s face has a distracted, faraway look. “And love doesn’t always look the way you expect it.”

  “Did you know that Jack Minnow visits the hall of remembrance every night?” I ask, but Mel doesn’t reply. “I followed him.” This at least gets a reaction – a raised eyebrow and an amused smile.

  “You really ought to respect other people’s mourning,” Mel tells me, ever the good mentor.

  “Anyway, he was saying someone’s name over and over again, and for some reason I know it was someone who wasn’t supposed to be remembered. A forgotten.”

  “Davey Minnow?” asks Mel immediately and I stare at her.

  “Davey Minnow,” I reply. “Family, obviously?” She says nothing. “Why was he forgotten?”

  She smiles at me. “You want me to tell you everything?”

  “That would be nice,” I say. “It would certainly make it easier than me trying to subtly lead the conversation that way.”

  “You are not subtle, Leora. You have many great gifts, but subtlety? No. Even without the ability to read marks, it’s not too hard to read your face.”

  “Well, we can’t all be mysterious, Mel.” I laugh.

  “OK. So, Davey Minnow was one of the crows.”

  My head snaps to look at Mel – she’s not joking.

  “He was an important member of the group, as far as I can gather. One of the original leaders.”

  “This… I wasn’t expecting you to tell me that. Why would a member of Minnow’s family have joined the crows?”

  “I can’t know for sure. The resettlement wasn’t as easy for the people of Saintstone as the school textbooks would have you believe.” I nod, thinking back to the terrible things Ruth and Sana told me. “Davey Minnow, Jack’s father, would have been in the generation that followed the resettlement, a time when memories were still fresh. The rumour is that members of the Minnow family were among those who were sent to Featherstone.”

  “You think members of Minnow’s family might have been blank?”

  “I don’t know – I’m just saying it’s a possibility. Maybe that’s why Davey Minnow joined the crows – to help them. Or he could have just been a man with a heart.”

  “Not much family resemblance, then,” I say sourly.

  “I know you hate him, but Jack Minnow is as human as you. It’s like anything – anyone,” she says. “If you know their story, it’s much harder to hate them.”

  “You say that, but you’re no different – all your life you wouldn’t listen to the blanks. You wouldn’t hear their story.”

  She nods. “Absolutely. I thought I had the whole story. And I was wrong – blind. I thought I was protecting our people. It’s not a great excuse. But people change. I have changed, and I hope that gives you some hope.”

  She is quiet for a moment, thinking, and then she says, “One night, many years ago when we were both young and he had too much to drink, Jack told me that he had once accompanied his father on a mission with the crows, to bring the blanks food and drink. He was very young, just a boy. He talked of conversations around a fire, of companionship between blank and marked. His face was soft, as though the memory was a happy one.”

  It occurs to me, at last, that this is how Jack Minnow and Sana know each other. Sana told me about blanks and crows meeti
ng in the forest; of course their paths would have crossed, a friendship forged.

  I imagine Minnow and Sana as children, sitting on stones around a fire, sharing stories while the adults danced. I can just hear Sana telling Jack the story she told me – her favourite tale, of the lovers, the king who staged his death and believed in his own resurrection. I wonder. Not for the first time, I wonder why Minnow told Sana that there would be a public meeting that day in the square. He must have known she couldn’t resist the theatre of an assassination, in front of all Longsight’s people – an attack just when they were boasting of their strength. Why? I think. Why?

  “I think he loved those days,” Mel says. “He would hate me to say it – but I think he enjoyed being part of the crows and was proud of his father, until…”

  “Yes?” I urge.

  “Jack’s father – Davey Minnow – was killed.” Mel’s brow furrows.

  “What happened?”

  “There are a number of stories. Some crows said he died in the forest of a sudden heart attack. Others think he was hijacked by the leaders of Saintstone – that his death was a warning to the crows that they must stop their support of the blanks. Jack Minnow, however, believes his father was killed by the blanks. That certain rebels within the blank community hated even the crows for being marked and made an example of him. Whatever the truth of it, those joyful gatherings ended when Davey Minnow died.

  “The crows brought his body home – a miserable and treacherous journey. The dead are a heavy weight to carry.”

  Carrying the corpse through the dank air of the woods. I try not to think about it.

  “Jack refused to have anything to do with the crows from then on, and now I suspect no one knows he was ever involved. I am probably the only one. If Mayor Longsight knew, he would reconsider his blind trust of Jack. And, as for why Jack risks it all and goes to the hall of remembrance each night? Well, Davey Minnow never had a weighing of the soul ceremony. He was forgotten.”

  That word, forgotten, still stuns my soul.

  Sometimes when I think about Dad I can only remember what he was like at the end, and the guilt I feel for that weighs me down like a million white stones. He’s not that wrinkled man who could hardly speak, whose breath smelled of decay and whose eyes were frozen lakes. He is more than that – a lifetime more. A lifetime of his laugh, his voice telling me a story or teasing Mum. His fingernails cut neat and short for his work; his broad, capable hands. The hands that held mine when I was learning how to cross roads; that held mine when I wanted him to show me how to draw; the hands that held on so tightly when he knew he was going to die. It always comes back to that – my thoughts and memories always reach the end point, no matter how much I try to send them back to the beginning. It is that whole life that needs to be remembered. I still yearn to find his book and read it again. Maybe Mel will help me, like she said.

  Jack Minnow is not that different from me. His father a crow, by all accounts a good man. And yet…

  If the injustice of his father’s death and status as forgotten has been eating him from within all this time, no wonder Jack Minnow has barely anything left of his own soul.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  The closer we get to Saintstone, the more we pick up our pace. We both dread what we will find on our return.

  It is the middle of the night by the time we arrive, and the echo of our horses’ hoof beats is all I hear; there is no screaming, no weeping, no sound of battle or destruction. We walk with our horses and return them to stables that are empty, the sounds of them drinking and the clinking and creaking of tack being removed, the sweep of brushes – they are all so loud against the backdrop of quiet that it feels conspicuous. On foot, we head to the centre of the town, treading carefully as though we are creeping up on our prey.

  Homes are shut up as usual, sleepy and calm, and I begin to wonder whether Sana has tricked us after all. But then we walk around the corner into the square, and we stop.

  Two golden-robed readers walk away from the hall of remembrance, their heads down and their steps unsteady. Their robes are even more flame-like tonight, with ash and scorches at their hems. The hall itself is quiet and the doors are open, not because the building is in use as it has been day and night since the town’s memory began, but because the huge wooden doors have been torn from their hinges like broken teeth in a beautiful face. The boiled-sweet glass panes that blinked rainbows on to the town square have been smashed, and I realize why the townspeople are not here – there is nothing left for them to fight for. The town is dead because one of the chambers of its heart has been destroyed.

  Mel stands with me at the entrance, but when I step forward she takes my hand.

  Tears stream down her face and she shakes her head. “I can’t,” she whispers, and I nod.

  “I must,” I reply.

  We hold on to each other for a long time, our bodies shaking together in fear and anguished sobs. Before she goes, Mel whispers to me: “Leora, go and see your mother. They lied to you about her.” Away she whips into the darkness and I am alone.

  I look all around to check that I am not being watched or followed, but only silence crouches behind the corners of buildings. I walk in freely.

  Some of the seats have scorch marks over them – burned but not destroyed. Lucky, I think for a second, but then I wonder whether it would have been better if the whole building had been lost to fire because this sight is agony.

  The quiet is the worst thing: the alien silence in a space that has always, always held the whispers of the names of the worthy. The only pause was at the brief beat of a breath taken – a pause readying the next wave of words. But the readers have gone, and their voices have been silenced, and now who will say the names of the long dead who deserve to be remembered for eternity? They did well, Sana’s riders – they have taken the ceremony of remembrance from us, and without memory we are nothing.

  I walk slowly towards the front of the building and almost trip over burned ropes. I shudder when I wonder whether the readers were tied up and made to watch the destruction of this sacred space. Their howls almost echo in the silence of the broken hall. The book of the dead has been destroyed, and if they were made to watch, it must have been like watching a murder. I should know.

  When I reach the dais I stop, feeling as though I should kneel or pray or at the very least, weep, but I am silent. Glass crackles under my feet and my nostrils fill with the scent of burned wood and spilled incense.

  “A risky move, coming here.”

  My blood turns to ice.

  He’s always waiting in the shadows. I don’t turn to look at him. I keep my eyes on the lectern.

  “Minnow,” I sigh. The hairs on my arms prickle to gooseflesh when I hear him walk closer. I can smell his soap – a leather-mint fragrance. He stops next to me, his arm touching mine – the heat from him seeping out towards me. From the edge of my vision I see him raise his face to the beamed ceiling. We stand in silence.

  “This was the blanks. This was an act of evil.” I break the silence with the words I’ve been wanting to say since I walked in.

  Minnow lets out a whisper of a laugh.

  “At last, you admit they can do wrong.”

  I don’t like his mockery. I hate that even now he is closed and stone-like. I want him to break.

  “What will you do now that you can’t say your father’s name in this place?” I say, and I hear his sharp, indrawn breath. I should be afraid. I should be running. But I stay, and my heart does not race, and my breath does not grow heavy. “Not all those who are forgotten are guilty. I know you whisper your father’s name: Davey Minnow. I know he deserves to be in the book of the dead.” I toe a scrap of parchment that lies on the ground. “We’re not so different after all.”

  We wait, standing side by side. I don’t know for how long, but I’m sure I hear birdsong.

  “Will this just go on for ever?” I say, looking at where the book lies in burned tatters. “The bla
nks attack and we retaliate? Haven’t you grown tired of all this – the hatred and division and death? Will we repay death with more death or will we redeem it and bring people to life while we still can?” He is still. Jack Minnow is terribly, masterfully still. “There’s time, Jack. My dad would have wanted me to live and flourish. I don’t know what your dad wanted for you, but I’m sure it wasn’t this.”

  “Compassion killed my father,” he says. “You can’t live long if you have a weak heart – one that is soft to everything.” He lets the pause spool out and when he speaks again his voice is soft. “I intend to live.”

  We stay there, shoulder to shoulder until something behind us scuttles and we both turn, tensing. It’s a crow. Flustered and flapping, stuck in the building after finding its way in somehow. We gaze at it, watch it slam against windows. After a minute the bird moves, and, drawn by slow dawn light peeping through empty window frames, it gets lucky – a broken window: red, blue and green glass lost to the stones. The crow flits through it and, with a shriek, is free.

  Minnow and I walk side by side through the doors. He turns left, I turn right, and the crow soars above us.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  I told Dad that painting a house on the rock where we hid the spare key was a ridiculous idea.

  “Why don’t you just write a sign saying ‘Burglars: help yourselves!’?” I said, rolling my eyes.

  “Where’s your sense of magic, little light?” He had grinned at me. “This is a fairy house.” He lifted up the delicately decorated rock for me to see. “You’ll see; they’ll take care of our key.” I shook my head and told him he’d regret it, but the key always stayed in place and no one ever broke in. But now there are skin book stealers on the prowl, and no amount of fairy magic could protect us from Sana’s plans.

  The rock is heavier than I remember and woodlice scuttle away when I move it. A spider stands guard and seems to step aside when I reach down and pick up the key between thumb and finger. The key is cold and muddy, scales of rust beginning to show at the bow, but it is there: I’m going back home.