Marlo nodded. ‘As good as. He’ll be at the pump house tonight. Finn sent me to get you.’
‘We should go then,’ she said, not looking at him.
He took her arm. ‘What’s the matter?’ he said.
‘Nothing,’ Letta answered. ‘Nothing.’
‘You seem – angry. Are you?’
She shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s just …’
‘Yes?’ he said, and she could see the gentleness in his eyes.
‘I’m not sure it is right to kidnap someone like this. I’ve heard about it before, Desecrators taking people, but –’
‘But you never thought you would need our services?’
‘I suppose,’ Letta muttered.
Marlo walked away from her. ‘This is hard for you,’ he said. ‘Your whole world has disappeared. I understand that. Don’t worry about the scavenger. No-one will hurt him.’
Letta said nothing but she noticed the coolness in his voice.
‘Maybe you would rather stay here?’ he said. ‘I can come back and –’
‘No,’ Letta said. ‘This is my doing. I should at least be there.’
‘Let’s go then,’ he said.
They hurried through the town, down to the West Gate.
‘We have paid the gavver,’ Marlo said to her. ‘But it is better if he doesn’t see you. I will distract him. You go through and wait for me in the trees on the far side.’
Marlo went to talk to the gavver, and as soon as they were deep in conversation Letta slipped through the gate and made for the trees beyond the scrubland. She didn’t have long to wait. Marlo joined her and, with a slight nod, set off through the trees. Letta followed him, trying to imagine where he lived. He had said it was an old pump house but she couldn’t imagine it here in the depth of the forest. She hurried to stay with him as they went deeper and deeper into the gloom. She could see nothing but trees. Row after row of trees swallowed by shadows.
As they walked, a branch lashed her face and she cried out. She put her hand to the welt and felt the warm dampness of her own blood.
‘Let me look,’ Marlo said, his voice soft and husky. He took her chin in his hand and with his finger smoothed the blood away. Letta tried not to wince. Marlo stroked her cheek softly, his thumb gliding along her skin, brushing her mouth. His hands were warm and callused. Letta’s heart accelerated; a shiver went through her body. Reluctantly, she pulled away, the cut already forgotten.
Marlo took her hand in his, and they walked on. She had just begun to doubt the existence of the pump house when it loomed up out of the darkness.
The building was of grey, lichen-spattered stone, the roof above it had partially caved in but its tall chimney still stood, blackened with time, no longer belching out filthy black smoke into the heavens. Marlo took her arm and brought her towards the door. The deserted building, windows boarded up like a blind man, stared sightlessly down at her.
Marlo turned the key in the lock and the door fell open. With one last glance over her shoulder, she stepped inside. Behind her, she heard the door close.
The air smelt of damp and rot.
All around her was inky black. She moved one foot forward shakily. She felt giddy, terrified she was going to walk into an enormous pit. She put her hands out to balance herself. She felt Marlo’s warm hand on her elbow and she turned to follow him.
They were in a cavernous hall, a high, gloom-filled room, its shadows pierced by shafts of light from a row of small windows far above them. Letta stumbled after Marlo as he led her across the bare concrete floor.
Frigid air assailed her face. Only the reassuring warmth of Marlo’s hand on her arm made her keep on, even though her ankle throbbed and she could only see shadows in the bleak light. Then they stopped. Marlo knelt down. Letta frowned, trying to see what he was doing. His finger seemed to gauge the dark beams of the floor and then with a sharp tug he flipped up a metal ring. Marlo caught it and tugged, grunting with effort. Under his pale hand a trapdoor swung open. Cat-like, he swung deftly onto a ladder and disappeared into the hole.
‘Ready?’
Letta grasped the top of the ladder and started to climb down. In seconds, she was standing on the floor beside Marlo.
He turned abruptly and opened a door in the wall behind them and Letta was plunged into a different world. Before her it was all warmth and colour and people. A vast room, its ceiling high and lofty and flanked with small lamps and candles. Under her feet, a floor of dark, weathered timber, honeyed with age and glowing gently in the half-light. The candles cast a mellow glow around the room, throwing shadows softly onto the walls.
A team of men and women were painting an enormous cloth which had been hung from the ceiling. The cloth was pulled tight and across it Letta could see an effusion of colour: cornflower blue, violet, coral. It was like nothing she had ever seen before; like nothing she could have imagined. She moved towards it, mesmerised. As she approached, the artists looked up from their work.
‘This is Letta, the wordsmith,’ Marlo said.
They nodded at her, and one woman smiled. ‘No harm,’ she said.
‘No harm,’ Letta whispered back.
‘Finn?’ Marlo looked at one of the men.
‘They’re not back yet,’ the man said. ‘Might take a while.’
Marlo nodded and turned to Letta.
‘I’m on dinner duty tonight,’ he said. ‘Do you want to help?’
‘Of course,’ she said.
‘I’ll get started,’ he said. ‘But first you should have a look around.’
He was gone before she could protest.
She looked around. She had never seen or imagined a place like this. The high walls were painted in blocks of vivid colours stretching far above her: wild raspberry, ochre and emerald green. The colours flowed into one another, so that she couldn’t be sure where one ended and another began. Punctuating the banks of colour were beautiful, intricate tapestries, heavy brocades interlaced with shimmering threads, but it was not the walls alone that held Letta’s attention. A narrow shelf ran along the whole length of the room and on it people had placed their treasures, little things that they had obviously carried with them to this place. Letta had seen such souvenirs before but there was power in the fact that these were not the treasures of one person or of one family but of many. There was a quaint china cup decorated with lime green leaves and powder pink roses, a bottle fashioned like a heron with a long narrow neck. There was a carved sandalwood box, a scattering of shells with opaque pink underbellies and an old copper coin which had been lovingly placed on a tiny wooden plinth.
She examined the floor beneath her feet. What should have been a cold and dusty stretch of concrete had been covered in old lengths of wood, then divided into squares with some kind of black dye. Each square had a picture in it and each picture told a story. Letta crouched down to get a better view. The area all around her feet was dedicated to wild flowers: bluebells, cherry and cowslip, dandelion, gorse and yarrow. She walked through them to the next set of images. Letta could tell at once that a different hand had drawn them. One square showed people being swallowed by a giant wave. Letta bent lower to see the detail: a mother clutching her baby to her breast, a pair of young lovers holding hands, an old grey man leaning on a stick, a sea-bird captured mid-flight, and towering above them, the crushing mountain of black-blue water. The next square showed a cityscape with a fissure running through it. On either side of it, buildings were tumbling into the abyss. The picture was so vivid, the horror so real, that Letta could feel fear emanating from it.
Intrigued, she crossed the great room to where she could see Marlo in an alcove, working away.
‘The pantry,’ he said with a grin, when he saw her. The alcove consisted of a big table and row after row of shelves packed with produce. Letta gasped. She had never seen so much food outside of Central Kitchen.
‘Where … how …?’
Marlo smiled.
‘We forage in the
wild for most of our food,’ he explained. ‘Then, it gets preserved.’
He picked up a jar full of something dark purple in colour.
‘Jam,’ he said. ‘Made from wild berries. We’ll need that. And cheese.’
‘Cheese?’ Letta said.
‘Nettle cheese. It’s good. You should try some. Leyla makes it.’ He picked up a large pot and lifted the lid.
‘And soup. Always soup.’
Letta looked around perplexed.
‘What do you do for bread?’
Marlo shrugged, walking past her with the pot of soup.
‘We do without,’ he said.
‘And water?’
Marlo shrugged again.
‘We do whatever is necessary. We cannot live without it.’
Letta remembered how she had seen Finn tap into the main water pipe in the forest. She noticed another cupboard, its door slightly ajar. Curious, she opened it. It took her a second to realise what she was looking at. Row upon row of small, sharp utensils. Rough knives hewn from stone or wood or metal. Small enough to be concealed in a closed fist. Below them great wooden clubs. They were weapons. They were homemade but no less deadly. Marlo followed her gaze.
‘We have to be able to protect ourselves, Letta,’ he said, quietly closing the door. Weapons. As Letta processed that thought music flooded the building. She looked up, entranced. The notes swirled around, deep and booming. She recognised Leyla, the saxophone player. In front of her were dancers swaying slowly at first, puppets pulled on invisible strings. Then the music took hold of them, rising and falling to some ancient beat that only they could feel. Letta’s head was filled with images of leaves. Crisp autumn leaves swirling in the wind.
The music was unbearably beautiful, the dancers at one with it, the air vibrating with it. And then it changed. The dancers were still and the saxophone started to speak, in sad, quiet notes; notes that ripped Letta’s heart from her chest; notes full of tears and regret. She felt the hot sting of tears in her eyes and a deep pain somewhere inside her.
Then Leyla began to sing:
Down in the valley
The stream flows on
In the heather morning
Quiet as a swan.
The soft smell of lavender enveloped Letta. Her mother’s face swam in front of her. She wanted to run from the music. Run from the images it dragged from her so casually, filling her heart with a new and unfamiliar pain and a terrible yearning.
And then the music ended.
CHAPTER 18
#401
Speak
Say words
FOR a second, Letta didn’t move, ignoring Marlo, who had stopped working and was looking at her with one eyebrow raised. She went straight to Leyla. The older woman looked up as Letta approached.
‘Why did you play that sad tune? Why? How can you bear it?’
Letta could hear the anger in her own voice but she couldn’t hold the words back.
Leyla looked at her and smiled. ‘Music comes in all colours, Letta, just as we do. Before I knew the word for Creators, I called us colour-catchers, the musicians, the painters, the dancers. That’s what we try to do, catch the colours in our own hearts and share that with other people. Colour-catchers. I think I still prefer that word,’ she said. ‘One of my colours is sadness, my friend.’
Letta looked back at her, uncomprehending. Leyla sighed.
‘That last piece I played is full of regret for loved ones I have lost, things I have seen.’
‘But,’ Letta managed to say, ‘you should try to forget those things. They are not things you want to remember.’
Leyla shook her head. ‘I need to remember them, child. I need to remember how much I have lost. We all do, despite what Noa says.’
Leyla reached out and touched Letta’s hand.
‘Have you seen him recently?’
‘Noa?’
Leyla’s voice was so low, Letta could barely hear her.
‘Yes, I have,’ she said.
‘And Amelia?’
Letta nodded. ‘She lives with Noa. Why do you ask?’
The woman hesitated for a moment.
‘You are Freya’s girl, aren’t you?’
Letta felt something shift inside her.
‘You knew my mother?’
Leyla nodded. ‘A long time ago. The song I sang earlier was her favourite.’
Without another word, Leyla stood up and went to talk to the dancers. Letta wrapped her arms around herself, suddenly cold. She had seen something in the older woman’s eyes. Something so deep it frightened her.
Her thoughts were interrupted by Marlo’s voice. ‘You seem upset?’
‘No. I mean yes. No, I’m not exactly upset, not really. It was just Leyla’s music. That’s all. It was sad.’
Marlo nodded. ‘You are not used to music, Letta, and it affects you deeply. Before the Melting, people heard music all the time and they became used to it. It had no effect. It lost its power. That’s what Finn says.’
‘I’m not sure it’s a good thing,’ Letta said, the words out before she could censor them.
‘You don’t think music is a good thing?’ Marlo narrowed his eyes and she could see he was trying to understand her. ‘Why?’
‘Well,’ Letta said, ‘it is unsettling. It makes you think of things, feel things. Its fine when it’s happy, but when it reminds you …’
She couldn’t continue. Her throat felt tight and she was afraid she would cry.
Marlo took her hand. ‘John Noa banned the arts because he didn’t want us to be unsettled. He didn’t want us to think for ourselves. He didn’t want us to be any different from the sheep in the fields. But we are different, Letta.’
Letta looked into his eyes.
He continued: ‘Music calls to that bit of us that is different. There are lots of words for it. Soul. Spirit. Heart. Music makes us feel that we are not alone. That is its power.’
She nodded but didn’t offer any of her own ideas.
‘Come,’ Marlo said, taking her arm. She followed him across the floor, her mind in chaos. She wanted to ask Leyla about her mother, to find out more, but Marlo was walking purposefully and she knew she couldn’t go back. On the far side of the vast room, there was a door and, as they approached it, it opened and a woman came through.
‘They are ready,’ she said to Marlo.
Letta’s stomach tightened. She had almost forgotten why she was there.
‘We should go in,’ Marlo said.
Letta took a deep breath and followed him.
She was in a corridor. Beyond her, somewhere in the distance, she could hear raised voices.
‘Wait here.’
Marlo went ahead to a door towards the end of the corridor. Letta waited. She tried to imagine what was happening behind that door. Had he told them anything? Were they torturing him? She reminded herself that this was all for the greater good, but the uneasy feeling wouldn’t go away.
She jumped when Marlo suddenly reappeared beside her.
‘Put this on,’ he said, handing her a black hood. As she watched, he pulled one over his own head. A black hood with two holes cut into it for his eyes. He was like something from a nightmare, a stranger. Even the blue–grey eyes looked cold and vengeful.
‘Put it on,’ he said again. ‘You don’t want him to recognise you.’
She pulled the hood over her face. All at once, she was plunged into darkness, the smell of the cloth suffocating. She pulled it round till she could see through the eyeholes. The world was telescoped into a narrow band.
Marlo led her into the room, the hood warm and cloying, a pulse beating in her throat. Smith Fearfall was sitting on a chair. Around him stood Finn and two other big men, all hooded. The room was small and entirely empty except for that chair. Fearfall’s head snapped around when Marlo and Letta entered, eyes wide like a startled hare.
‘What you want from me? Where my boy?’ His voice was high and taut, fear bubbling from his lips and mak
ing his pupils dilate.
‘No harm will come to the boy.’
Letta recognised Finn’s voice, though it had a hard edge to it that she hadn’t heard before.
‘I’ve told you we don’t speak List here. So speak as you wish.’ Another voice, one of Finn’s colleagues.
‘What do you want?’ Fearfall spat the words at them. Letta recoiled, despite herself.
‘Information,’ Finn said. ‘Answer our questions and you can go home. You and your boy.’
The boy? Was the boy here? Letta tried to catch Marlo’s eye but he was staring at the scavenger.
‘I know nothing,’ Fearfall said. ‘You have the wrong man.’ But his eyes darted around the room as though following invisible shadows.
‘I don’t think so,’ Finn said. ‘You found the body of the wordsmith. Isn’t that so?’
‘Yes,’ Fearfall said, focusing on Finn.
‘Where?’
‘In the forest, near the river.’
‘And he was dead?’
‘Yes.’
There was silence for a moment.
Then Finn sighed. ‘Now, Smith, I need the truth.’
‘That is the –’
‘No!’ Finn banged the wall with his fist. Fearfall jumped in the chair.
‘No,’ Finn said again, more calmly this time. ‘That is not the truth. We know it is a lie, and so do you. So we will start again. You didn’t find the wordsmith, did you?’
‘I did. I did find him. By the river.’
Letta felt her own anger stir. Lies. All lies.
Finn dropped his voice a tone. ‘Do I have to remind you that we have your son?’
The scavenger’s face drained of colour. Letta felt cold all over. They were holding the child.
‘You wouldn’t –’ he began, but seemed unable to finish the thought.
Finn walked over to him and bent down till their eyes were level. ‘We will do whatever we have to do. Tell me the truth and no harm will come to your son.’
‘Desecrator!’ The word was barely there and yet it pulsed with anger and hatred.
Finn ignored him. ‘Why did you lie?’
The Wordsmith Page 17
