Liliya moves forward, inviting Jonathan to step into the room with her, and then Anson the Planter comes to the doorway. His eyes sweep impersonally over the interior of the room, over Genivee, over me, and I am stiff, frozen, like I was in the street. Jonathan hands the large book to him, and my father opens it, pen in hand, flipping slowly to the right page in a way I have seen many times before. I can feel the lack of air burning inside my chest.
“Names?” Anson says.
Genivee jumps up from her mattress like a seedling springing free of its pod. She stands right in front of the two men, smiles, holds up her beetle for inspection. She doesn’t look thirty-five, nor does she look anything near twelve, and she has the attention of the room. And everyone’s back turned toward Gray’s corner.
“Name?” Anson asks.
“I’m Genivee,” she replies, “the Dyer’s daughter. Would you like me to spell it for you? G-E-N-I—”
“Genivee,” Liliya warns.
“V and double E,” she finishes. I see Gray’s feet move slightly behind the door. Genivee looks at Jonathan and asks, “How many names has he written in your book?”
Jonathan looks up from straightening his long, hanging sleeve. I don’t think children talk to Jonathan very often. “I don’t know. I—”
“Is it twenty? Is it more than fifty?”
“I’m sure I don’t—”
“Genivee!” Liliya says. “Our Council members want to be on their way.” I snap my gaze to her. She’s already ushering them back out the door. “I’m sure they have other places—”
“I think you’re forgetting someone,” Anson says, nodding his head toward me.
The words hit me like a fist, and I see the cracks form in Liliya’s smile. She’d hoped they would leave without writing me down. Some kind of small, petty triumph. The thought unfreezes me, gives me a surge of welcome rage. Though not at her. When you get down to the root of it, this whole, horrible situation is really only one person’s fault: Anson the Planter.
I look straight at my father when I say, “I’m Nadia, Dyer’s daughter. Would you like me to spell it?”
Anson’s pen slows, then stops scratching. He stares at me, brows down just slightly.
Jonathan raises his chin. “Is that everyone? Yes?”
My father breaks his gaze, finishes scribbling in the book.
“Well, thank you”—Jonathan looks over at the book in Anson’s hands, runs a finger down the page, makes a show of checking the names—“Liliya. Thank you very much, Liliya.” He repulses me with his smile. “Good waking.”
Feet shuffle, bodies move, the door shuts, and there is Gray in his corner. He runs a hand over his face and slides down the wall to sit on the floor in the corner, wearing his glassblower’s grin. Genivee watches this, expression serious, waiting until the voices are out of the corridor to whisper, “Did you have a good resting?”
“Very,” Gray replies. “You?”
“Waking was better.” Genivee turns her eyes on me and giggles. “Liliya is going to be so mad at you.”
I close my eyes. It’s not today. Today is not the day I’m caught. The loss of anger and adrenaline is leaving me with nothing.
“Why did you come through the window?” I hear Genivee ask. She must not have been asking me, because Gray answers immediately, matching her seriousness.
“I have my reasons.”
“Can you tell me what they are?”
“I heard them sending Tessa of the Granary up to look in the garden.”
“That seems like a good reason.”
I curl up on my side on the mattress and discover that it feels incredibly good.
“You’ll be staying, won’t you?” Genivee says. “Until they finish counting?”
“I think I should. Would you mind, though, if I talked to your sister for a little while?”
“Which one?” Genivee asks.
“Nadia.”
“Oh. Does Nadia talk to you?”
“Sometimes.”
I open my eyes in time to see Genivee slap Gray’s palm once with her own on the way out the door. Then she sticks her head back in and says, “Be really quiet. I’ll keep the others busy.” Gray cocks his head once at the closing door.
“I like her,” he says. And then he looks at me. Really looks at me. Again. The grin is gone, and the Gray from the waterfall is sitting on my floor. I wrap my blankets over my shoulders; it’s a poor kind of protection.
“So,” he says. “You remember.”
And you don’t, I think. I shut my eyes. The berries didn’t work. I didn’t even leave with more of them, to try again if I could. I’ve told the one secret I never imagined I would. I’ve failed. At everything.
“Come on, Nadia,” Gray says quietly. “Your sister will say I’m a liar.”
I know why he wants me to talk. He wants me to tell him what happened before the Forgetting. He wants his life. I understand. I don’t blame him. It just feels so good to be still.
He says, “When was the last time you slept?”
Two restings ago. But I think I forgot to say it aloud.
“Then just tell me this, yes or no. What you told me about my father. That’s true?”
Even in my clouded state I know he needs a real answer to this. “Yes,” I tell him.
“And my mother, too?”
“Yes.” The room is full of stillness. It matches the darkness behind my eyelids. I manage to say, “They’ll be worried … about where you are.”
I hear him let out a long, slow breath. “They will, won’t they?” And he sounds happy about it. Not that his parents are worried, but that the people doing the worrying are his parents. What a fortunate son. I suppose he can’t help it.
“You asked two more questions,” I murmur. “That means I get … four more answers.” I slide a little deeper into my warm fog before I realize that he’s chuckling.
“Go to sleep, Dyer’s daughter.”
I must have done it, because when I wake I can hear the noise of a moving city outside my open window. For a minute I’m disoriented, head filled with vague thoughts and half dreams that have left me unquiet. Upset. I don’t know what bell it is, and I think I’ve been having nightmares. Then I remember Anson the Planter’s face when he asked me my name; Gray’s sandals coming through my window; hugging my knees and spilling secrets on the rock above the waterfall. My eyes pop open. The light has gone dim with a glaze of red, the breeze from the window cooler. But my room is empty. No one sitting in the corner. It feels lonelier than I expect it to.
I push myself upright, and something crinkles beneath my hand. A small piece of torn paper with tiny, cramped writing. Blacknut grove, ninth bell. Did Gray tear this out of his book? Did he sit in that corner, writing while I slept? I run a hand over my messy hair, shiver slightly. It’s unnerving to think of the glassblower’s son watching me sleep. It’s unnerving to think of seeing him again at all, after what was exchanged at the waterfall. But he’s not going to let this rest. How could he? I look down. My sandals are still on, my pack tied and on my back. I feel terrible.
I wander out into the dimming hall. There are voices coming from my mother’s resting room, and through the crack of the half-open door I can see Liliya brushing her hair, Genivee on the side of the mattress, doodling in the margins of her book. I watch, like a stranger through the window. Mother looks like the mother I knew before the Forgetting. Eyes closed, smiling. Happy. Liliya says something I don’t catch, and Genivee laughs.
I could join them, I think. I could walk in and offer to brush Genivee’s hair, could laugh with them when they find a leaf in mine. I could ask Liliya to show me how she twists hers up. Or I could leave them as they are. With everything they could want and need within reach. Nothing to bother or disturb them. Maybe Liliya was right. Maybe Nadia should be lost to the Forgetting. For everyone’s sake.
I move softly past my mother’s door, down the hall, through the sitting room, and into the storeroom. They’
ve already had the last day meal, I see. The bread is still on the counter. I start to cut a large piece, then move the knife and cut it smaller, thinking of what Eshan said, about too many people and the size of the fields. I eat the bread standing up, staring back out at the empty room, our empty windowsill, at the long, shining table where we all sat together before I took Gray over the wall. Gray, who was Lost, and somehow managed not to be. Who hides on rooftops and in my room, blackmails me into spending a resting with him, leaves notes for meetings in the blacknut grove. And all of it, as far as I can tell, without my sister’s knowledge. Something will have to be done about that. And even though my experiment at the waterfall failed, none of it takes away the fact that Liliya had a memory. Something will have to be done about that, too.
When I’ve poured water from the pitcher and drunk, I wipe out my cup and put it back with my plate and bowl, stacked between Liliya’s and Genivee’s. I’ll meet Gray and tell him what he needs to know. And then I’ll tell him a few other things he needs to know. About my sister, and if he won’t write her name down I’ll put a stop to it. At least I can do that much. I’ll take care of Liliya, whether she deserves it or not, and then there will be sixty-nine days. Maybe what’s hidden in our heads can still be found.
The sound of Genivee’s laughter comes distant and sweet from the other room. Or maybe, after sixty-nine days, it will just be best if there isn’t a Nadia here at all.
The city changed to sunsetting while I slept. The air has lost its heat, freshened, glazed the sky with red. Longer sleeves have replaced the sunlight shirts and tunics. The signs of the Forgetting are everywhere, too. The ripening tree buds, Karl of the Books working late to keep up with the last-minute demand, the sandalmaker hanging a new sign. Not for those who need sandals, but for his own family, so they can find their house. I see Frances the Doctor walking with a man who is not her husband, and I wonder if she’s considering making a change after the Forgetting. It’s so easy, I think some people consider a new partner just because they can.
I pass the water clock and the baths, and there the crowds begin to thin. One group jogs past, heading for the paths around the walls, getting in their requisite exercise now that the air has cooled. I wonder if Jonathan will start flogging us for missing a run, too. Then the road between the fields loses its flagstones, becoming a dirt lane that is nearly deserted. Open ground stretches long and barren on either side, a huge expanse ready for the days of dark and rain before sunrising. I can smell the turned soil. In the distance to my left is the Council House, where Janis and Jonathan live, standing large, white, and alone beside the wall. In the distance on my right are the fenced houses of the Lost, also large, also white, and also alone. The two places could not be more unalike.
The blacknuts grow in a wide, curving swath between the fields and the wall, and I’m early for the ninth bell when I stop and lean against one. Rough-barked branches arch over my head, tangling together in bare, twisted knots that make shadows against the reddening sky. I try to re-pin my hair, but strands are still flying loose all around my face. I give it up, and then I hear, “You came.”
I peer though the dim and straighten. It’s not Gray. It’s Eshan, weaving his way through the trunks, a large sack thrown over one shoulder.
“Didn’t expect to see you,” he says, stopping beside me. “But, I mean … I’m glad you came.” He smiles, a little awkward. Being a seasoned expert on awkwardness, I understand this. He’s tan from the sun, making his eyes particularly blue, especially in this light. My skin remains pale no matter how much sunlight you apply to it. “We’re setting up over here,” Eshan says.
I have no idea what he’s talking about, but I follow rather than ask, and by the time we reach the center of the grove Imogene has come strolling up, Veronika at her side, and Michael, Chi, Ilsa, Elijah … fifteen, maybe twenty of the people I’ve interacted with as little as was humanly possible for the past twelve years. Some of the girls are in dresses, almost as fancy as for the Dark Days Festival, bits of colored cloth twisted through their hair, books worn on a belt tight to their hips. Gray seems to have invited me to some sort of … party? Celebration? Meeting? Whatever it is, he’s not here, and I’m getting glances that run the gamut from indifference to hate. I’m hyperaware of my loosening braids, the smudges on the knees of my leggings. They might even match a few on my face.
“Sit here,” Eshan says. He’s crouching now in front of a small stack of biofuel from his sack, blowing and waving to get his spark of a fire going.
I sit, trying not to notice the others around me. Is this the sort of thing people do while I’m climbing the wall, or sewing new books, or concocting stains to mark my own family? Other than Eshan, I’m in a sphere to myself, a sphere I don’t know how to leave without becoming more of a spectacle than I already am. Plus I need to see Gray about Liliya. Or maybe Gray is coming here with Liliya? She was doing her hair, and there are probably quite a few girls here who wish they were in Liliya’s place. My sister would like that. I hear Veronika’s voice rise above the hum, her little group close behind my back.
“But how did she get to be Head of Council? Who wrote it down? Doesn’t anybody think that’s a question that should be asked before we all forget?”
An extension of the meetings on Eshan’s roof, then, with a fair amount of socializing thrown in. I see a couple slip away, hand in hand, deeper into the grove. I hug my knees. Eshan has pulled a corked bottle from his bag, and many of those around me seemed to know to bring cups. If that’s moonshine, which I think from the smell that it is, he’s sneakier than I thought. And braver. Moonshine is made for the Dark Days Festival, when the moons rise, and it gets stronger every day it exists. That bottle is bound to be weeks old. But surely no one here would turn Eshan in? I wish that offer of extra rations didn’t make the idea possible.
Veronika is still behind me, going on and on about the Council, when the question she should really be asking is who would do the work if we decided not to punish the Lost for being Lost. Eshan puts his hands out before the fire, still with me in my sphere, and then my bubble is broken by a body right beside me, shoulder brushing mine. It’s the glassblower’s son, looking clean and rested and with his hair tied back.
“Hey, Eshan,” he says, cheerful.
“Hey,” Eshan replies, not cheerful at all. His brows are drawn down. Other greetings are called to Gray from the groups of threes and fours, but they trail away into murmurs when they see who he’s sitting with. And how. This nearness, I suddenly understand, is some kind of statement. A deliberate statement. Or that’s how everyone is interpreting it, anyway, and I don’t like what that means for my sister. At all. I sit forward, scoot just a little, to escape the proximity, and Gray leans back on his hands, spreading out his arms. Now it almost looks like he has an arm around me. He glances at the surrounding grove.
“Nice party,” he says. “Is—”
“Where’s Liliya?” I interrupt.
Eshan looks a little shocked, by the words or who’s spoken the words or the anger behind them, I’m not sure. Gray only gazes at me, a brow up, that tiny little grin on his mouth. “Who?” he asks.
I’d been ready to make the sacrifice of speech, like I had at the waterfall, to tell him what he needed to know about what happened before the Forgetting. But this is not the Gray of the waterfall. This is the Gray I knew at school, the one who gets exactly what he wants and somehow makes everyone love him for it. This is a public slap to my sister. One that I’m sure Imogene and Veronika and every other girl in Canaan will be discussing in the baths. Liliya may be stupid and scheming, she may spit on the ground I walk on, but she’s still my sister, and I’m not helping anyone who dallies with her. I look Gray in the face.
“You,” I say loudly, “are a zopa.”
And then I’m on my feet, walking away from the fire, moving fast out of the crowd, not caring that they’re looking at me while I go. Gray calls my name, and when he calls it again I break into a jo
g, through the blacknut grove, past the startled couple, out onto the path that runs along the edge of the wall. There I run. I want to keep going all the way around to Jin’s garden. I want to climb the wall and head straight up the mountainside, where I never feel alone. I’m not even sure I know exactly why I’m so mad. Except that I am. Nobody deserves to be treated like that. Even Liliya. Even if she’s allowing it.
I hear footsteps on the path behind me, heavier than mine. I put on some speed, follow the wall’s gentle curve until the way is blocked by a high, rickety fence, a jumble of a new building beyond it. The houses of the Lost. I move to sprint around it, but my feet slow, and then stop without me telling them to. There’s a woman standing just outside the fence, holding a section of it askew. Like she’s just opened her front door.
“Nadia the Dyer’s daughter. I’ve been thinking of you.” It’s Rose, with her smock of undyed cloth and her round, wrinkled cheeks.
The heavier tread comes pounding down the path, catches up, and falters. I know who it is. Why can’t he just leave me alone? Rose’s glance moves to just beyond my shoulder, and her wrinkles change direction.
“Oh,” she says. “So it’s you, is it? I should’ve known.” She pulls the sagging section of fence a little wider. “You’d better come in, too, so I can take a switch to your back.”
I wonder if she needs any help.
There was a day when I was very young that I went to the fields with Father. When he was busy, I snuck away and looked through the fence at the houses of the Lost. I saw dirt, and I saw a plaque above the door that I didn’t know how to read. And I saw a man, a supervisor, and he was hitting a girl. I cried, and Father came and hugged me and said I was never to go inside the fences, even if a nice person asked me to, because bad things can happen inside the Lost houses. That’s why we have the fence.
The Forgetting Page 7
