Do Not Go Quietly

by Jason Sizemore

  I raised a hand, curled tight around my dandelion spores, in the air, and Joy, Jason, and Eugenia did, too. No one looked at us. They were too caught up with Mary’s words. Maybe they thought we’d been moved by something. Something about bringing more business than anyone had ever seen back to the city.

  “Bind and tie them,” I whispered. “Veritas Imaculare.”

  My companions repeated my words and all those that came after. As Mary’s speech grew more powerful, I whispered on, through the whole spell, until we got to the moment I knew was coming:

  “And I promise you,” she said, her hands held out to her sides like the scales of justice, “your families will be safe and cared for, your children will thrive. We will become heroic and prosperous again. I will make sure of it. And when we do—”

  “Seal it.”

  We opened our fists and the dandelion spores leapt on the wind, heading straight for Mary. They’d take the twisted words right out of her mouth, the hyperbole, the lies, and from the mouths of anyone else nearby who’d been lying, too.

  Thunder rumbled, which wasn’t part of the spell. The dandelion spores drifted on the breeze and then thudded, heavy, to earth, which was part of the spell.

  The air smelled like burnt hair. And Mary, God love her, stood with her mouth forming a neat ‘o,’ unable to say the next part of her speech because whatever exaggerations she’d been heading toward—better pay, cheaper gas, stronger children—were no longer phrases she could speak.

  “What’s wrong?” someone called from the audience.

  My mother spotted me first, but we—all four of us—were already slipping back into the shadows by the time her lips formed the soundless words, “Thalia Vine.”

  The blue caps of state security rushed to my speechless sister’s side as Euphrosyne reached into her bag for the salt.

  She cast some behind us and a squall burst in the air over the crowd, alarming on an otherwise sunny day.

  Never underestimate the power of New England salt.

  As the Governor’s audience and family scattered, the League of Vigilant Lexicographers retreated into the mist.

  Unsealed court documents containing the transcripts of the first Vigilant Lexicographers meeting, dated _____, 20__.

  * * *

  Joy Darnell: The first national meeting of The Society for the Reclamation of Meaning and Sense is called to order.

  * * *

  Thalia Vine: Thank you, Joy.

  * * *

  Euphrosyne Sandipat: Does it need to be so official? Do we need to record everything?

  * * *

  Jason Lee: Euphrosyne, we should start as we mean to go on. When we have more chapters, it will be important to keep things organized.

  * * *

  Joy Darnell: For posterity.

  * * *

  Thalia Vine: Yes, exactly. And for posterity, let me be the first to say that I think our first efforts were successful.

  * * *

  Jason Lee: We did what we set out to do: We stopped Mary from bending words. She can’t even plead laryngitis because she knows that’s a lie. What are her press agent and your mother calling it—allergies?

  * * *

  [Joy Darnell snickers, which turns into a cough.]

  * * *

  Euphrosyne Sandipat: But what will we do with the dandelion seeds? We have so many of them.

  * * *

  Thalia Vine: Hold onto them. Share them with other chapters, when they start up. Keep the words out of circulation.

  * * *

  Jason Lee: You think there will be more of us?

  * * *

  Joy Darnell: I know there will be. I put a brief message out on Librarything and Worldcat’s user boards.

  * * *

  Euphrosyne Sandipat: That’s a good way to get caught.

  * * *

  Joy Darnell: It’s fine. I hid the message as book titles, keyed to old Dewey-decimal codes. Only other librarians will understand. [Transcription note: these messages were never found.]

  * * *

  Euphrosyne Sandipat: We’ll hope for the best then.

  The next day, in the Kroger dairy aisle, I realized a simple storm hadn’t been enough to distract everyone from our group’s speedy exit.

  A reporter, young and carrying her own lightweight camera on a stick, pushed a USB microphone in my face.

  My skin grew warm, even as the open refrigeration fogged my glasses and the reporter’s lens.

  “Your sister’s press agent says you assaulted her during her rally yesterday.”

  I carefully set a quart of two percent milk in my cart. Turned back to consider the yogurt. I hoped my expression embodied Do I want fruit on the bottom? And not If It Weren’t for You Darn Kids.

  “Assault? I rarely ever approach my sister. She was on camera the entire speech, and I wasn’t. I wasn’t even asked to stand with her on the podium. I didn’t go near the podium.” Almost too late, I realized I’d gone on for too long. I cleared my throat. “Your source is wrong. I would like to shop for my dinner now, thank you.”

  “Miss Vine, you must have heard there are calls for your arrest?”

  “I’ve heard no such thing.” I turned to look at the reporter. She’d pinned a campaign button to her black leather jacket. It read: Vine. “You’re with the press pool, right?”

  She paused and turned off her camera. Swallowed, loudly.

  “Tell my sister, and her press agent—what’s the new one’s name?”

  “Mia Jodd. She’s very kind. The kindest. Everyone says so.” The way she said kind sounded like the word was knotted around itself and strangling.

  I narrowed my eyes. If I’d brought more dandelion spores, I could have freed this young thing from the press agent’s illusions. But I’d come to shop, and to collect more newspaper headlines for later, not to cast spells. So I used another tool: raised eyebrows and crossed arms. An even, slightly amused voice.

  “Is it true that my sister is saying these things?”

  The reporter shook her head quickly, once.

  “Is Mia Jodd saying them?”

  Again, another shake of the head. A tremble of the lower lip.

  “You’re doing this to try and make a story? To make a name for yourself?”

  She nodded. “I needed an angle. I took your class last year—you were wonderful—and I knew you were the governor’s sister. When I overheard Ms. Jodd talking to the governor’s mother and your name came up, I realized I could maybe get a story before anyone else.”

  She stared at me and I waited her out. I didn’t need to say anything more. Sometimes, silence is as powerful as words.

  “I’m sorry. It’s cutthroat out there.”

  I kept silent. The fan in the dairy cooler kicked into a higher gear.

  “I just wanted a story,” she finally pleaded. “Don’t curse me.”

  “I don’t curse people. Not most people.” There were ways in which I could try to reclaim words, but this kind of thing was beyond my grandmother’s spells. Plus, I was still tired from the previous day’s spells.

  But the problem was spreading faster than a single spell could stop. I put the yogurt down. “You realize that this is the kind of story that can get away from you? That can really hurt someone? Miss—” I searched my memory for her name and lucked out. “Dawlander; Lesley, right?” The young reporter blushed and nodded. “What exactly did my mother say?”

  “She said you should be locked up, at least until after the election. That you were getting in the way of progress.”

  Wonderful. I added “progress” to my favorite slippery words list.

  “Lesley, you were my student. You remember the discussion about holding up a light to truth? That the power of language is in its accuracy? What do you believe?”

  Her eyes grew wide. “You’re right. I’m so sorry. What can I do? How can I help?”

  I walked back out to the checkout aisle with the young reporter. “You don’t need to apologize,”
I said. I thought for a moment and took a risk. Gave her one of the buttons Effie had made. “We meet tonight at nine.”

  [The following transcript of the Vigilant Lexicographers meeting has been verified using the secondary source provided to the state.]

  * * *

  Joy Darnell: The second meeting of the Word Reclamation Society is called to order.

  * * *

  Lesley Dawlander (whispered): I thought you were called the Vigilant Lexicographers.

  * * *

  Thalia Vine (whispered): It’s both. For now.

  * * *

  Joy Darnell: What we need to discuss is spreading the spell, the techniques. We already have requests.

  * * *

  Jason Lee: We’re going to run out of dandelions.

  * * *

  Thalia Vine: Luckily, those grow fast. Hopefully faster than words can be bent. This is Lesley—she’s a reporter.

  * * *

  Euphrosyne Sandipat: Thalia, you didn’t!

  * * *

  Thalia Vine: I did, and she’s going to help us. Spread the word, so to speak.

  * * *

  Lesley Dawlander: Hi …

  * * *

  Jason Lee: Welcome, then. To the Rite Aid storage room. This is just temporary.

  * * *

  Euphrosyne Sandipat: This is where I can meet while on break, Jason. You have a problem, take it up with management. We’re not all well-connected.

  * * *

  Joy Darnell: Most of us aren’t. Not anymore.

  * * *

  Jason Lee: You said you want to help spread the spell? What spell do you mean?

  * * *

  Lesley Dawlander: The one that Thalia put on the governo—

  * * *

  Thalia Vine: Lesley, shhh. Not so loud. We’re working on a spell to end the misuse of words.Our goal is to reclaim words that have been stripped of their meaning. We use dandelions because they’re good at blowing away and spreading. We’re experimenting with other, less pernicious flowers for the future.

  * * *

  Jason Lee: Show her the packet of dried sunflower petals that I’ve been working on.

  * * *

  Lesley Dawlander: You don’t mind if I take notes?

  * * *

  Jason Lee: We’d rather no recordings. No names.

  * * *

  Lesley Dawlander: Of course not.

  Two days later, an emergency text from Effie read: Rite Aid Raided! And she doesn’t answer when Joy calls her. We expected it, of course. The knock on my door came as expected, too, but I’m not home.

  I got an alert on my phone, from my doorbell camera. That technology works better than a boundary spell, these days. Unlike other tech that only seemed to enhance bad spells, not good ones. I opened the app and saw a group of state troopers gathered at my apartment.

  I was teaching. They could wait.

  “As we’ve discussed, the origin of the words prosperity (noun) and prosperous (adj.) in the thirteenth century stemmed from being fortunate and thriving, as a group. It was often tied to luck. The meaning has shifted to focus almost entirely on individual wealth and success, restricted to those found deserving of those things, by virtue of the fact that they already have those things.”

  My students nodded and wrote down my words.

  “Meantime, progress (noun and adjective) has shifted from meaning forward motion, including by royalty and also planets, to a sense of getting ahead of others—as a nation or state—and basically being better than others. It is often used with a tinge of competition, or an indication that someone else has to suffer in order for progress to be valid.”

  Hands went up. I shook my head. No questions today. “I’ll conclude this lecture by asking you, as you move through your reading and essays, to keep in mind the way words shift; what meanings they are being detached from, and attached to, and why. It will help you, I promise.”

  A young man named Bruce raised his hand in the front row of the lecture hall. “Will this be on the test, Professor Vine?”

  “On some test, yes. Yes, it will.”

  I dismissed them then, and they filed past the three officers waiting in crisp blue uniforms outside my classroom.

  A few students, including Bruce, stayed to watch the police lead me away, reading out charges that grew more ridiculous as they continued.

  You are hereby charged with disturbing the peace, malingering, meddling, practicing witchcraft in New England without a permit, littering, spreading weeds on a public square, and theft of words with no intent to return them.”

  When I didn’t reply, the officers went on, “You are charged with assault on a government official, gathering to conspire, corruption of a freelance journalist, and with resisting—”

  They push me into the squad car, and I balk. “I haven’t been resisting. There’s nothing that will make any of this stick.”

  “Lesley Dawlander turned audio tapes over to the governor this morning.”

  “Oh. Well that might work.” I couldn’t have been more pleased.

  They took me to the courthouse first, where I was arraigned and paraded in front of the press to occasional shouts of “thief!” and “liar!” I did not speak except to ask for a lawyer.

  The courthouse smelled of dandelions.

  When my lawyer—court appointed because making my sister pay for my defense delighted me, plus community college professors don’t make very much money—was unavailable until later that afternoon, the state police escorted me to the next building down on the square: the old jail.

  Effie and Joy were already there, sharing a cell and looking glum.

  Jason had gone to an American Lexicography convention, small silver packets of dandelions in his bags. As we’d planned.

  The police might be waiting when he returned, we all knew.

  [Documentation of the third Vigilant Lexicographers meeting was taken from the journals of Thalia Vine.]

  * * *

  The third meeting of the League of Vigilant Lexicographers happened in the presence of our lawyers.

  We vowed to say nothing.

  We waited for the spell to spread.

  We didn’t have long to wait. After preparing us for our next appearance before the judge that day—say nothing, please. Just follow our lead—our court-appointed advisors turned on the television in the meeting room. On the screen, CNN played a montage of politicians trying to get words out and failing. Their faces contorted as they scrambled for the smallest of lies.

  One reporter, wearing a dark suit and bright red tie, recognizable as a regular on a national channel, had been reduced to a tiny vocabulary of single-syllable nouns, he was so far gone.

  “It’s working,” Effie whispered. She looked delighted, for the first time. “I hadn’t thought it would.”

  But I felt troubled. Even more so when I asked our lawyers to define progress in our case.

  Since not one of them had said “we’re making progress,” and I’d always understood that lawyers, like politicians, loved to use that word.

  The lead lawyer shook her head. “I’m not sure what you mean?” she finally said. She looked confused by the sound of the word.

  Despite our best intentions, I realized that we were failing. Words and meanings weren’t being saved by my spells; they were being removed from circulation. They were disappearing entirely.

  That was not what I’d wanted. Not at all.

  In the jailhouse meeting room, I pushed my chair away from the long table strewn with manila folders and print outs. The chair’s four feet squealed on the jail’s concrete floor, as if protesting progress.

  “I wish to make a plea,” I said.

  Now it was my companions’ and lawyers’ turn to be speechless.

  When we left the courthouse, a small group of bureaucrats lined the steps down to the square. A crowd had gathered below in the park. Politicians glared at me angrily. Silently.

  Among the crowd stood several more reporter
s and broadcasters, quietly recording my exit.

  One raised a sign. “Give us our words back, witch,” it said.

  “They’re not yours,” I told the silent crowd. “They belong to everyone.” No one clapped. I wasn’t my sister.

  “Thief!” One newscaster nearly spat the word.

  Ahead of me and behind me, Effie whispered, “If only we had our dandelions with us.”

  But Joy and I had made a different plan.

  From the corner of my eye, I saw her—freed once I took responsibility for everything—reach in her pocket. Lift her hand in the air. She tossed sunflower petals to the crowd. “Veritas,” we whispered into the quiet. “Veritas Imaculare.”