He turned and saw her, a big smile spreading across his face.
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 towards 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 any more.’
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 looking down at her. For a second, Letta couldn’t quite take it in. She recognised John Noa, 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 any more. 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 recognise 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 nigh. 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 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 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 she 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. T
hree 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 sea-water. Water was the key to life and John Noa and the Wariors 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 windscreen. 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, Prime Minister of England, Ireland and Wales.
‘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 recognised the bag? How had he known where Benjamin was? Or maybe she didn’t want to believe that Benjamin was gone for ever? 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 towards 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
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 settle to anything. 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 towards 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.
Come and see me any time.
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 to attention on the path outside. As she passed the Round House, a group of gavvers was standing as though waiting for something. Their eyes followed her as she headed up Noa’s hill, but they said nothing.
The climb seemed longer this time, her mind racing with ideas, rehearsing the conversation she would have with Noa when she met him. Hope. Just one word. Then, over time, they could add others. Excitement coursed through her. This is what she was meant to do. All through history, wordsmiths had helped form the world. They were called other things – writers, journalists – but they had all worked with words and knew the power of words.
At the gate, she stopped to catch her breath. Overhead a gull screeched as she walked up to the door. She knocked twice and waited. Amelia Deer opened it.
‘Come in,’ she said, as though Letta’s appearance was the most normal thing in the world. Letta stood and looked up at the tall woman.
‘I want to see John Noa, please,’ she said.
Amelia nodded. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘John is at a meeting, but if you would like to wait?’
Letta nodded. ‘Thank you,’ she said.
Amelia turned and started down the long corridor. Letta followed her. As soon as Amelia started to walk, Letta could hear the wheeze from her lungs, sucking the air in and delivering it back under pressure. Amelia stopped at a door halfway along the passage. She opened it and Letta stepped into a small room. There was a window at one end and a bench against the wall. Opposite the bench was a chair. The place felt cold and inhospitable. Letta shivered.
‘Sit,’ Amelia said, pointing to the bench.
Letta sat.
Amelia stood for a second, the husky wheeze getting stronger, and then she started to cough, a terrible hacking noise. Letta looked up, alarmed.
Letta didn’t know what to do. Should she help her? Gradually the coughing subsided, but Letta noticed the muscles in the other woman’s neck working hard to draw in air.
‘Are you all right?’ Letta said.
‘Yes,’ Amelia said, gasping out the word between great sucking breaths. And then she swayed.
At first Letta thought she was imagining it. Then Amelia did it again, and this time Letta noticed how grey and pinched her face was.
Amelia put her hand on the wall to steady herself. Her breathing was becoming more laboured, a wet, tortured sound coming from her lungs. Letta thought she could see fear in her eyes. She jumped up and took her by the arm.
‘Sit down,’ she said, pushing her into the chair. Amelia sat, great gasps coming from her mouth as she searched for oxygen, her hand like a claw at her breast. There was a tint of blue about her mouth. Letta’s own heart was beating so fast she could feel its pulse in her throat.
‘I’ll go and get help,’ Letta said, looking into Amelia’s eyes and trying to sound composed, though her thoughts were in chaos. ‘Try to relax,’ she said. ‘I’ll find someone.’
Amelia managed to nod, and Letta could see that speech was beyond her. She turned and ran from the room. Down the corridor to where it turned right at the first corner. Letta looked down it hopefully. There was nothing there.
&
nbsp; ‘Hello?’ she called, her voice echoing in her ears. She opened the first door she saw. A meeting room. Long table. Chairs.
‘Hello?’ she called again, and this time she thought she heard something. There was a door at the far side. She tore across the room and opened it. She found the source of the noise straight away. A sparrow was battering himself against the closed window. Its little wings were flapping helplessly. As Letta watched, it hit the glass one more time and then collapsed on to the sill. Letta turned to leave, just as someone spoke in the adjoining room.
‘I don’t want to hear excuses.’ The voice was low and menacing. ‘I want results!’
John Noa. Relief flooded through her. She opened her mouth to call him, but just then Noa spoke again.
‘What about the wordsmith? Have you dealt with him?’
Letta froze. She closed her mouth. ‘We dispose of him tomorrow night.’
‘You think that is the solution to everything. I needed him here! Helping me! The people trust him and are used to taking instruction from him. Don’t you think they might wonder where he has got to? Was he in league with the Desecrators? Did you at least find that out?’
The other man sighed. ‘We tried, sir. We took out all of his fingernails. We starved him, beat him.’
No! a voice screamed inside Letta’s head.
‘He insisted that he had nothing to do with them, but that he could not, would not, go along with your plan.’
‘Stop!’ Noa said. ‘Enough. I don’t want to hear about your barbarity. Where is he now?’
‘In the holding cell. If he hasn’t died yet.’
Letta heard Noa sigh.
‘Take him to the forest then and dispose of him.’
‘Maybe it would be safer to kill him, master?’
‘No!’ Noa said. ‘We do not kill. Nature will take care of those we need to eliminate. How long can an injured old man survive in the forest? We need not interfere.’
‘We will do it tomorrow night, master.’
The Wordsmith Page 11
