I ease the door open as quietly as possible. There is someone on the sofa – or, at least, the shadow of someone. They are black and grey, like a memorial tattoo, and it’s only when she says my name that I realize it’s my mum. But she’s not the woman I left when I went to Featherstone; she’s not the mother who told me, “Just do what you have to do to stay safe.” She’s a bad sketch, a crumpled picture thrown away. And the starkest difference grips me tightly around the throat: across her face is a fierce slash of black ink – a diagonal cheekbone-to-jaw tear that cuts across her nose. She has been tattooed with a mark I’ve never seen before and I can’t help but read her, for this mark screams violence and disgrace. It is all pain and punishment. This mark has left her lonely, afraid and all but forgotten.
I had wondered what I was going to say. But there’s no space for words. I kneel at her feet and she cups my face in her hands. With the soft pad of her thumb she wipes my tears away and kisses my cheeks. I reach up and touch the mark on her face, and she closes her eyes in hurt and shame. I rise and plant three soft kisses across the ink. She takes my hand, and she leads me upstairs.
I am home.
My bedroom has been left untouched since I left, and Mum insists on tucking me in. But I can’t sleep, and after a while I creep into her bed and fall asleep with her holding on to my hand.
I dream I am cradling a baby. I stand at the riverside listening to the whisper of wind in the reeds, the rush of the water as it laps over rocks. The baby makes no sound when I lay it in the box. I do not nail the box shut – for this baby is no king. I don’t want it to return in three days and be made a god. No, this baby who smiles at me from their basket must not come back. Not until the time is right.
“Don’t be a king or queen,” I whisper. “Don’t be a miracle maker.”
I lift the basket and set it down in the reeds, watching as the water sucks it into the current, and as the basket floats away on the wild waters I call out.
“Be brave, be good. Be free of these dreams and stories and fights. Know peace, and if you find it, bring it back. But not yet. Not yet…”
And the baby in the basket laughs as it floats downstream.
“They said you didn’t want to see me,” I tell Mum in the morning as we sit at our wooden kitchen table and sip black tea. She has no milk in the house, no bread or butter for toast. “Mayor Longsight told me. It was my fault, Mum – I’m so sorry I left you to pick up all the broken pieces I left behind.”
“Oh, Leora, when will you learn not to believe a word that man tells you?” This, from Mum, shocks me – she has always been the good one, the one who knew the rules and obeyed. She’s never spoken about the town’s leader like that.
“When you left, people were wonderful – I was so cared for and supported. My true friends knew there was more to it than the story that was being told.” A small smile crinkles the corners of Mum’s eyes.
“So, what changed?” I ask tentatively. I look around the kitchen. It is bare and shabby. This is not the house of someone who is being cared for.
“Mayor Longsight hated what he saw: his people showing greater loyalty to the ties of friendship than to him.” Mum’s usually clear voice is gravelled and croaky. She sips her tea. “So, he took charge of the situation.” She swallows, shifting in the seat.
“Your mark?” I ask, and she nods.
“Sometimes I think the man is just a fool and then he goes and does something so calculated…” She sighs. “I was made an example of at one of his public markings. He announced it like it was a game. There was a new type of mark, he told the people, a tattoo that was called the mark of loyalty. The people were excited, but he told them he hoped that it would be a rare mark – made only on those who truly deserved it. They dragged me up to the stage.” She tries to keep her voice light, but as she pushes her hair out of her eyes, I see her hand shake. “He announced that thus far, only I had earned the loyalty mark. That it was a mark used to alert others – a warning for the truly loyal. He told them my sins: that I had married a man who fraternized with blanks, that I had raised a blank child, that I had lived an entire life in scorn of the purity of Saintstone. He said that I had tricked them all: deceived them. Led people astray without their knowing. My friends, my clients, my fellow readers, those who sold me food and clothes – all this time, they had been shoulder to shoulder with a criminal. It was not their fault, he said; they weren’t to know.
“He told them I would not be marked as forgotten. He made it sound like such grace. He gave me the chance to escape punishment by publicly disowning you.” She shakes her head as though the idea is nonsense. “They marked me there and then.” Mum looks right into my eyes. “Leora, it was agony. It was fire like I’ve never felt in my life. And now wherever I go, this mark goes too. I haven’t been served at the market since.”
I reach out and hold her hand.
“But your friends? Surely…”
“There is too much to lose. If any of them are seen with me, they will be marked in this way too – he said so. I wouldn’t wish this on any of them; I don’t blame them for not coming.”
Her voice is strong, but her face is so sad. I hate Longsight all the more today. I hate him for letting me believe that my mum would stop loving me and I hate him most of all for doing this to her. He has made her invisible.
A light knock on the back door sets my heart racing, but Mum waves a hand at me and goes to open it. At the door, holding a paper bag in his arms, is the last person I imagined seeing: Seb – Verity’s older brother, a young man with a learning disability who has been in my life since before I can remember. His familiar face is almost too much for me after the past few weeks. I rush over and hurl my arms around him, crushing the bag between us.
“Seb! What are you doing here?”
He grins at me and walks past, placing the bag on the table. He turns back and opens his arms to me so we can hug again, properly.
“What am I doing here? What about you?” he says. He bends to look at me right in the face and ruffles my hair. “You’re trouble, Leora Flint,” he tells me, his face mock-grave, and then he laughs and hugs me all over again.
“I am trouble, you’re right,” I tell him when we finally let each other go. “And it’s really risky for you to be here.”
“Seb’s a grown-up,” Mum says. “He doesn’t need you mithering him. Besides, he and I have had the same conversation a million times. He’s a stubborn bugger, and he’s the reason I’m still alive.”
She tells me it began with Seb bringing the loaves leftover at the end of the day at the bakery where he works.
“They were going to throw them in the bin, so I took them,” he says.
“Then, it turns out that Seb is such a charmer that people give him things wherever he goes.” Mum laughs.
He’s unpacking the bag and I see fruit, a small bag of sweets, a glass bottle of milk and some wine. Seb lifts the bottle to show me. “Employee of the month, again.” As though he is tired of being brilliant.
I can’t stop laughing.
“Seb, you are a hero,” I tell him, shaking my head in wonder.
“I know.” He grins.
Chapter Thirty
While Seb cuts biscuit dough, he tells us what happened after the sacking of the hall of remembrance.
“It happened last night. It was awful. When we got to the hall it was destroyed. The blanks were gone before the guard knew what had happened.” He shakes his head. “The readers all got out safely. Then there was another meeting in the square first thing this morning. All the people were shouting. The mayor said that he would take care of us – and there’s going to be another marking soon.”
I frown. Something is missing here, I think.
“So, what are they going to do to retaliate?” I ask. “What’s Mayor Longsight going to do to punish the blanks?”
Rolling out the offcuts of dough and scattering flour on the surface with a practised flourish, Seb shrugs. “That’s
what the people in the crowd were shouting. They shouted so loud, I didn’t like it.” Mum rubs his shoulder. “They calmed down a bit when Jack Minnow spoke instead. The people clapped him.”
I wait while Seb carefully puts the tray of biscuits in the oven.
“Seb, what else did Minnow say?” I ask.
“He made an announcement. A big one. Some more books got stolen and so he says everyone has to bring their skin books to the museum, so they can be guarded and kept safe.”
Seb is so matter-of-fact that it takes a while for his words to sink in.
“You mean, all the books that people have in their houses – all the skin books – are going to be kept in the museum?”
Seb nods. “Yep, so they’ll be safe.” He brushes his hands clean and takes off the apron he is wearing. “Those biscuits will be ready when the timer goes, but leave them to cool before you try and move them.” Seb gives us both giant hugs and leaves through the back door.
Mum is smiling fondly, but my heart is racing. Without the skin books in their homes people will have no access to their family – no means by which to carry the daily ritual so many perform: lighting of a candle, greeting by name. It may be protection for the books, but from the outside, locked doors will always seem like a prison.
“They’re taking people’s books.” My words tremble under my effort to remain calm. “Not the blanks – the government.”
“It sounds awful, I know,” Mum says, “but what else can they do? At least by keeping them at the museum they are all in one place. They can guard them.”
“The people are losing everything,” I try and explain. “The hall of remembrance is gone. The readers cannot work and so the dead cannot be mourned. And now the family skin books get taken away. How are people supposed to honour their loved ones now?”
“At least they have their loved ones to honour.” Her chin flies up and her eyes are bright with anger. “At least … at least people will eventually get their family’s books back once this has passed. Your father is gone for ever. I will never hold him again.”
“Oh, Mum.” I pull her into my arms and rub her back. I can’t stop worrying about what Seb said.
Mayor Longsight’s reticence to respond to the latest attack really troubles me. Not that I want more conflict – retaliation can only mean innocent people being hurt. What bothers me is how out of character it seems. Since he was sworn in as mayor he has been claiming to be a “back to the old ways” kind of leader; it all made so much sense: all our problems were because we were neglecting our roots, our religion and ritual. We had become lax and let our standards as the marked slip. Longsight promised us that purity would lead to stability, wealth and happiness.
A crackdown on soft attitudes towards the blanks was part of that. I thought war was on the horizon. His weak words today feel like when a teacher would tell me to ignore a bully – as though that might stop them trying to trip me up whenever I walked past. It’s one thing ignoring things that don’t exist, but to act as though the shocking attack on the hall of judgement was nothing … well, it’s dangerously unaware. The only thing that has changed is Longsight and this new teaching he’s supposed to have received. It’s as though all he cares about is proving his greatness, and yet… I can’t imagine his glib response has increased his popularity.
I pull back from Mum and look at her weary face.
“When’s the last time you left the house?”
She looks at me stonily. “The last time I went out, I saw the mayor killed. I had my purple shawl and I hoped no one would see me.”
“I saw you,” I say. I remember the purple scarf, but not her mark – she must have hidden it well. “You can’t give in – you deserve to live. You’re not in the jail so why are you imprisoning yourself?”
“I’m not brave like you, love,” she says quietly. “Why would I go out there, when I know everyone hates me?”
“Seb likes you.”
Mum manages a small smile.
“Only Seb. Not even Julia has come since I was marked. It’s like I don’t exist – like I’ve already been forgotten.”
Julia is Verity’s mum and Mum’s oldest friend. I can’t believe she would abandon her like this, that only her son has the bravery to remain loyal. “Don’t say that,” I tell her firmly and she seems to shrink. I sigh and go to hug her again. “I’m not brave,” I murmur into her ear. “I am scared all the time. You know that Longsight and Minnow would love it if I just … disappeared. But that’s not what we’re here for – what would Dad say?”
Mum holds me away from her and looks into my face, shaking her head.
“Oh, Leora, he would say so many things.” She takes a breath. “He would say he’s proud of you.” I roll my eyes. “And he would tell us we’re crows now.” She laughs. “He always wanted me to join – maybe it’s time.”
“I think you’d have to leave the house for that.” I smile. “Who are they, anyway? Why haven’t they been helping you?”
“That’s my own fault,” Mum admits. “I burned bridges with them long ago – I was so angry with your father for joining them. It was so risky. I contacted Connor when I thought they might help us with your dad’s book but look where that’s got us. Anyway, after that I told them I never wanted anything to do with any of them.” Her face looks like it did when she’d tell me off when I was small – tightly pinched.
The sound of the timer breaks our connection and Mum opens the oven. A waft of warm sweetness fills the room.
“Well,” I say. “I’m going into town.” I hold up a hand at Mum’s horror-struck face. “You’re welcome to join me, or I’ll see you later.”
Just as I close the front door I see her pick up a biscuit, but it cracks and drops on to the floor before she gets a morsel into her mouth. Should have listened to Seb.
Chapter Thirty-one
My confidence stalls once I’m walking. The last time I took this familiar route to the town square I hadn’t yet visited Featherstone. It seems a lifetime ago. This is the way I used to go when I was working at the studio with Obel, heading to the museum with Dad, or going with Mum to the hall of remembrance. Nothing’s like it used to be.
I turn on to the cobbled street hemmed in by terraced houses either side and, in spite of the warmth of the day, I wrap my shawl more tightly about me, shielding my face. Longsight had said I wasn’t a prisoner, but he had me under control then – what would happen if he saw me walking freely? I need to see Mel, though.
Wilting flowers outside the florist offer a pungent punch as I enter the town square. Everyone is queuing to have their family’s skin books taken into the care of the government. Arms are weighed down by boxes and bags, which are filled with the souls of their loved ones; hearts are heavy and shoulders droop. Every one of them will be feeling sicker and sadder the closer they get to incarcerating their family.
Tear-filled eyes don’t see a girl with her scarf wrapped high at her neck as she scales the steps to the museum. My confident gait doesn’t attract attention – all staff are focused on the books arriving and I walk past the reception desk without being noticed or stopped. It’s as easy as looking purposeful.
I knock on Mel’s door, waiting for her call to enter, but there is no answer and I let myself in, thinking that she must be assisting with the book amnesty and intending to wait a while. But when I step into the study, I know something is wrong.
Her chair has been tipped on its side and there is an upturned teacup on her desk, dregs of tea spilled across a book.
“Mel?” I call gently, shutting the door behind me. I check her bathroom, but it’s empty. I cross the room and enter her bedroom; her covers are neat, her bag from our travels on the floor at the foot of her bed. And on her bed is the notebook with the marbled cover. My stomach plunges. I grab the notebook. Mel’s gold pen is tucked between the pages, and I pause. I sit on her bed and open the notebook where the pen marks the page. A list – neat bullet points that speak of someone with plans
and trouble sleeping.
•Book a meeting with Mayor Longsight re: support from Moreton
•Found someone’s ring, must remember to pass on to lost property
•Was I meant to be doing a school visit soon?? Check with Mrs Oldham
•Seen a couple of books on wrong shelves recently – talk to librarian
•Look for suitable candidates for the mayor’s new marking protocol
•Down to my last working pen – must get more
It’s just a list, but my eyes run down it again – the first word of each line is underlined, ever so faintly. Again, I scour the page … until it clicks.
Book found. Was seen. Look down.
I get off the bed and on to my knees and reaching my hand under the bed my fingertips brush something – something smooth and chunky. I get lower, slide my arm in until it won’t go any further. With painful slowness, I claw the item closer until I can slip it from its hiding place.
Dusty and scuffed, it takes a moment for me to process what I hold in my hands. It’s Dad’s skin book. Mel must have gone for it before she went back to her room last night. I hold it reverently and brush away the dirt with my sleeve. I turn each page and it’s really him – every mark is like hearing his voice again after a hundred years. Mel did this. She saved him for me.
But at what cost?
Chapter Thirty-two
I walk out of the museum, attempting the same brisk, purposeful stride I used when I went in. The square is still full, and most people have their hands free now – skin books deposited into their temporary home at the museum. They have their attention elsewhere, and I look towards the stage, where everyone else seems to be focused. Another public meeting, I think.
But there is just one worker hanging a banner. They work from the left, lacing the edges against the front of the stage with ropes. I stand and look as they slowly unfurl the rolled fabric, wondering what new pronouncement Longsight is making this time. The worker is methodical, making sure not to crease the material or hang the banner askew. Slowly the words come into view.
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