‘There isn’t time,’ Letta said. ‘We know he plans to make us wordless. We need to know how he’s going to do it.’
‘I don’t understand,’ Marlo said.
‘I hope I can be the wordsmith. I think that is important to Noa.’
Marlo’s face fell.
‘You will go back and work for him, even now, after all that has happened?’
Letta smiled. ‘I will go back and work against him, Marlo. That’s different.’
Finn, however, was not as easy to persuade. They sat around Edgeware’s table and talked late into that night. Edgeware said little, but Letta could see that she listened to every word. Finn continued to push for Letta to come and stay with them.
‘You are too young to take Noa on all alone, Letta,’ he said finally, and Letta could see that he was coming to the end of his patience. ‘In time we can overcome him. We already have the makings of an army.’
‘We don’t have time,’ Letta said. ‘I am the wordsmith: I can get Noa to trust me, like he trusted Benjamin. I can find out what he plans to do and then we can stop him.’
‘If he hasn’t killed you by then,’ Finn said.
There was silence for a second as those words hit home.
Then Edgeware spoke. ‘I think Letta be right,’ she said.
Everyone stared at her. The old woman took up her cup and sipped from it. ‘You will nay stop him from the outside. He be too clever and too well protected. If Letta gain his confidence, happen it be easier to defeat him.’
‘And what if he realises what she’s up to?’ Finn’s eyes were hard as he glared at the old woman.
Edgeware didn’t flinch. ‘Then he be killing her, and we all be wordless. If she nay does do it, she live on, but mankind, as we know it, be destroyed.’
She put her cup down. No-one spoke. The stark reality of Edgeware’s words brooked no argument. There was no going back now. Letta only hoped she could do what was required of her.
‘You will have us behind you at all times,’ Finn said, as though reading her mind. ‘Whatever we can do, will be done. We need you to keep in touch, to let us know what is happening.’
Letta nodded. ‘Of course,’ she said.
‘What about you, Edgeware?’ Finn said. ‘Can we persuade you to come and live with us?’
The old woman shook her head.
‘Whatever days be left to me, I will see out here in the forest,’ she said. ‘I am having no need of the company of men.’
‘Have you no family?’ Letta asked quietly.
The old woman shook her head.
‘I be having a son once,’ she said, playing with the handle of her cup.
‘What happened?’ Letta said, realising that she was straying into territory that older people didn’t like. Edgeware looked up at her, her eyes clear and bright.
‘Noa made him wordless,’ she said.
Letta felt as though the breath had been knocked out of her.
‘Wordless?’ she said, thinking of the people she had seen in Tintown.
‘Why do you say Noa made him wordless?’ Finn asked.
‘Because he did,’ she answered him, without looking up from her cup.
‘How?’ Letta asked, trying to make sense of the shifting sands.
Edgeware laughed, a mirthless sound. ‘He cut out his tongue.’
She had spoken so softly that Letta thought at first she had misheard. But one look at Marlo’s face and she knew there was no mistake.
He cut out his tongue.
‘Why?’ Letta had to force the word out.
Edgeware shrugged. ‘Who be knowing that?’ she said. ‘It be a time before List. An experiment, done in secret. He kidnapped the children. It be his first attempt to control words, but it be too complex. Many of the chosen ones bled to death. My Thomas didn’t. He survived. His body did. But his spirit be dead from that day. He hanged his own self one morning. He be seventeen.’
Her words hung in the stale air of the little room for a moment. Letta felt she could almost touch them.
‘How did you find out? About Noa, I mean?’ she said.
Edgeware was silent for a minute, but then she started to speak again. ‘A couple months after they be taken, the children who didn’t die arrived back. They walked out of the forest. None of them could communicate, or they be too afraid to. My Thomas could write. Noa didn’t know that. I took him home and got the story from him. They telling them their families be killed if they tell anyone, but Thomas and I be close in heart always. He telled me everything.’
‘Was that when you went to live in the forest?’ Finn asked the question quietly, but Letta could hear the steel in his voice.
The old woman nodded. ‘I couldn’t stay there. I took Thomas and everything we owned and walked back into the forest. I thought I nay would survive, survived, but somehow I did.’
‘But Thomas didn’t,’ Marlo said.
Edgeware shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘He died here and he be buried here.’
The words were simply spoken, but Letta knew it explained why Edgeware stayed. She didn’t want to abandon him.
Letta was reluctant to leave the old woman and Benjamin. It was strange to her that she took comfort in him lying under the forest floor. It seemed like a better place than back in Ark, a safer place. The old woman hugged her before she left.
‘Go safely,’ she said.
‘Thank you for everything you did for me and for Benjamin,’ Letta replied. ‘I hope some day that I will be able to repay you.’
‘’If you be able to stop Noa you will more than repay me,’ Edgeware said before letting her go.
Almost before she knew it, Letta was once more following Finn through the dense forest, listening to Marlo’s steady steps following her. The snow had stopped falling but had left a deep carpet under foot. The wetness soaked Letta’s feet leaving her feeling cold all the time. She barely noticed, though. Her mind was too preoccupied by the future and what she might do and where it would lead her.
By the time she saw the South Gate of Ark loom out of the mist, she had the bones of a plan.
The water tower was deserted. He stood on the narrow walkway between the tanks. He rehearsed what he would do. The Green Warriors had taught him all they knew about the chemical. He was almost ready. He walked through it in his mind until he was certain he hadn’t forgotten anything. Then he climbed down the stairs, one foot after the other, gripping the rusty banister, his hand slippery with sweat.
How many to keep?
The Green Warriors, Len, the chief gavver, Amelia and a handful of craftsmen. That should be enough.
The wordsmith? Letta was a sweet girl and it made his heart heavy to think of losing her, but no, they would have no need of a wordsmith. He was confident that Benjamin had removed most of the words that were out there. Though perhaps Amelia would want to keep her. That was something he would discuss with her.
He made a mental note to destroy his own library. There would be time enough to destroy what remained in the wordsmith’s shop when it was all over. By then, words would be of no use, and of no interest.
Before the Melting, the Wordless had been aggressive at first but soon became docile and lost the will to live. He would leave that to nature. There was only so much he could control.
CHAPTER 17
#395
Son
Male young
‘WHY do you think Fearfall the scavenger lied to me about finding Benjamin dead?’ Letta asked Finn before they parted company.
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘We can bring him in and question him.’
‘Wouldn’t that be dangerous? Wouldn’t he report you the first chance he got?’
Finn shook his head. ‘He wouldn’t know where he was or who had questioned him.’
Letta frowned, trying to process what Finn had just said.
‘When?’ Letta said. ‘When can you question him?’
‘We need a few days,’ Finn said. ‘We need to
watch him for a while, learn his movements. Then we’ll take him.’
Shadowy images raced across Letta’s mind. People being taken in the dead of night. Bodies washed up on the beach. People talking in hushed whispers.
‘You’ll let me know?’ she asked.
Finn nodded.
She was sorry to see them go.
Marlo had hung back for a moment to talk to her privately. ‘Remember,’ he said, ‘you’re not alone. You can always contact us.’
‘Or call you in my dreams,’ Letta said with a smile.
‘That might not be quite so reliable,’ he said and took her hand, his thumb stroking her palm. She felt the blood run to her face. His skin burning hers. Could he feel her excitement?
‘Do think about coming to live with us, Letta. It’s not a bad life, you know.’
‘I know,’ she said, trying to keep her voice steady. ‘I just need time, Marlo. I need to carry out my promise to Benjamin. Maybe I won’t be able to but I can at least try.’
‘You will,’ Marlo said, his mouth on her ear, his breath warm against her. ‘You can do anything if you want it badly enough.’
Later, walking through the familiar streets, she thought again about what he had said. She’d missed his touch as soon as he’d left her. She wanted so badly to go and live with him. To see him every day, to feel his arms around her. But she had to focus on other things. She was the wordsmith. That was her destiny. She wouldn’t walk away from it. She just hoped he would wait for her.
As she walked up Cedar Street, she saw a crowd gathered outside the cobbler’s shop. Of course, she thought. The last day of November. The Changing of the Shoes, when people got fitted for new footwear. Shoes were swapped from older children to younger ones, the shoes of the dead were passed to the living, men and women found themselves entitled to a new pair or were disappointed when Rua the cobbler said their shoes could be repaired yet again.
Letta had been best friends with Rua’s daughter, Eva, when they were at school. She had died from a fever when she was twelve. Rua was a hearty man with a big laugh and was well liked in Ark, though people felt he was mean with his materials and certainly new shoes were not given easily. He made the shoes mostly from cotton or hemp, but field workers were entitled to leather made from dead animal skins. She shivered, remembering the skins hanging in the sun behind the cobbler’s house. Letta’s own shoes were well patched but she knew there was no question of replacing them yet. She stood for a minute, watching the crowd hanging about outside the shop. It was always a happy day, this Changing of the Shoes, with a festival atmosphere and today was no different. There was lots of laughter as Letta walked on by, and she was struck by how her attitude had changed. Once, she would have seen this as proof of her community pulling together, one big happy family living lightly on the planet. Now she knew differently. This was how Noa exerted his control, pulling their strings, a menacing puppet master, hiding in the shadows. If the people knew what he was really like!
They would know. She would see to it that they did. Approaching her own shop, her stomach rumbled ominously. Edgeware had given them bread and frozen berries to take with them. Finn had tapped into the main water pipe to give them water, but now she was hungry. It was past breakfast time and not yet dinner time. Tuesday. Nettle soup. Baked potatoes and goat’s cheese. Her mouth watered.
She caught a glimpse of her reflection in the tin cladding of the shop. She looked thin and bedraggled, she thought. Her red hair was long and knotted, her face white and pinched. She ran her fingers through her hair. She was the only redhead in Ark.
She scurried round to the back door and let herself in. The warmth hit her like a wave, the warmth and the smell of paper and beetroot. She breathed it in, glad to be home.
Over the next hour, Letta set to putting her house to rights again. She checked the drop box and laid out the orders ready to start on them later in the day. Everywhere, images of Benjamin haunted her. She found it hard to concentrate. She heard three bells ring just as the knock came on the outside door. She took a deep breath and went to open it.
Carver, the gavver, stood there, leaning nonchalantly against the wall. ‘You back,’ he said, pushing past her and walking across the floor to the counter.
‘Yes,’ she said.
List sounded strange to her now. She had grown used to speaking the old tongue. She would have to be careful.
‘Where you go?’ the gavver asked, flicking through a box of cards that sat on the counter.
‘Word search,’ she said. ‘Near Tintown.’
‘You no tell Round House.’
‘I must tell?’ She tried to make herself look innocent. She needed him to think she didn’t know any better.
He frowned. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Must tell.’
They both jumped as the door opened again.
It was Rose, the healer’s wife.
Letta was startled by the change in her. Gone was the small, tidy woman with her hair pulled back into a neat bun. This woman’s hair flowed down her shoulders. Her clothes were dirty and unkempt and she was barefoot. Letta was about to go to her when the woman advanced, her eyes wild, her hands clenched in two tight fists.
‘Where he?’ she said, glaring at Letta.
Letta glanced at the gavver, but he was standing watching the scene playing out in front of him.
‘Please,’ Letta began, but the other woman gave her no chance to speak.
‘You said you find him. You said friends help. What friends? Who? Where my boy?’
She was screaming now, flecks of white foam gathering at the corner of her mouth. ‘Answer!’ the woman screamed.
Letta said nothing. Her mind was racing. If Rose told the whole story with Carver standing there!
The woman came closer, her face pushed up against Letta’s face so that she could feel the other woman’s breath on her cheek, smell her sweat. Her fingers dug into Letta’s shoulders.
‘Who friends? Desecrators? Desecrators take my son? My Daniel?’
Letta reached out a hand to try to calm her but the woman slapped it away.
‘I call gavvers. I tell. Desecrators take Daniel. You help. You Desecrator. Desecrator!’
Rose lunged at Letta, but Letta was younger and faster. She grabbed the flailing arms and held them tight, but she couldn’t stop the torrent of words.
‘Desecrator! Where Daniel? Tell! Tell me!’
‘Gavvers took Daniel, Rose. You know that. You saw them. You saw him on the cart.’
‘No!’ the woman hissed at her. ‘You! You Desecrator!’
Letta felt rather than saw the arrival of the healer. In seconds, he had taken his wife away from Letta and held her firmly in his arms.
‘She no well,’ he said to Letta, his eyes darting to the gavver standing by the counter.
Rose was still struggling, but she had stopped screaming and instead made little high-pitched noises like a bird caught in a trap.
‘Please, take her home,’ Letta said.
The man nodded and half-pulled his wife across the street. The woman kept looking back at Letta but all resistance had gone from her.
Letta watched until they disappeared inside their own front door. She turned to the gavver. He hadn’t moved but a small smile played about his mouth.
‘Woman mad,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ Letta said, trying to hold his gaze.
‘Sometimes mad people speak truth. Ha?’
Letta didn’t answer but she felt her face flush red and hot. The gavver walked out without a backward glance.
Back at her desk, Letta sat with her head in her hands. What would become of poor Rose? Was she already insane? She couldn’t imagine Ark supporting her if she couldn’t contribute. Why had Letta ever said she would help her? Did Carver already suspect something or was he just trying to unsettle her? She tried to read the expression on his face. He had seemed amused if anything. If she was going to win Noa’s trust there mustn’t be even a whisper that would bring dis
repute on her head.
She got up and walked to the window. The street outside was quiet – the workers were still in the fields, the children in school. Over at the healer’s the blinds had been closed and the door shut. She was just about to turn away when she saw Carver bend his head as he came through the healer’s front door. He glanced across and saw her. For a moment they locked eyes, then he turned and walked up the hill. The healer stood framed in the door behind him. He turned away when he saw Letta at the window. Then all was quiet again.
Letta sat at her desk, trying to compose herself. No-one would heed poor Rose. Like the gavver, they would think she had gone mad with grief. But Carver wasn’t stupid. What had he learnt when he followed Rose home? She bit her lip. No point worrying about it now. Time would tell.
In her head, she played and replayed her last conversation with Benjamin. Noa intended to make them wordless. But how? He couldn’t cut out all of their tongues. Could he? Would he offer her immunity? Probably not. She wasn’t valuable enough. Maybe she would find out more when they spoke to the scavenger. She went back to her work, slowly transcribing her words onto their cards, comforted by the ritual and the earthy smell of beetroot.
It was two days before she heard from Marlo.
She had just gone to the tailor to be measured for a dress. The rules were clear. A dress would be issued when the edge of the cloth came half a stride over the knee. Tala Green had measured her, the nail of her thumb scratching her bare skin. Yes, she’d said, and handed her someone else’s old dress, then waited while Letta removed the one she was wearing.
She left the tailor’s as the last glimmer of the day faded. It was evening time, a dark, wet November evening. She looked up and there he was. He had a hood pulled over his head and his coat was heavy with rain.
‘Marlo!’ she said.
He pushed back the hood. His eyes danced in his head.
‘Were you expecting me?’ He smiled.
‘Yes,’ she said, her heart turning over. ‘No. I don’t know. I hoped you would come but I wasn’t sure.’
This was it. They must have Fearfall. That was why Marlo had come. She turned to face him. ‘You have him?’
The Wordsmith Page 16
