The Forgetting

by Sharon Cameron

  Eshan stutters, “I … We thought you were … ” But he doesn’t finish the sentence.

  “Tell me how to remember!” Gray screams.

  I put a hand on Gray’s shoulder, reach down, and break the lock of his hands around Jonathan’s neck. Jonathan gasps, coughs, and Gray rolls off him onto the glass-strewn street while Jonathan sits up, rubbing his neck and his bleeding head, laughing. I see Imogene and Veronika coming over the granary wall, Karl of the Books and Roberta from next door craning their necks from behind the harvest carts. Eshan hasn’t moved. I stand between the two sides.

  “Listen to me!” I yell. “The grain is poisoned. We need to set it on fire so it can’t be used after the Forgetting.” The faces around me are blank. “You can believe me right now or not, but this is truth. The grain has to be burned, and then we need to get to the Archives. If we can get inside and seal ourselves in, we can escape the Forgetting. But we have to go. Right now. Before the sky turns white.”

  Imogene comes to stand next to her brother, a bad gash on her cheek. Eshan looks directly at me, not at Gray. “You were going over the wall, weren’t you?”

  I nod. “Everything we should be afraid of is inside the walls, Eshan, not out. But we don’t have to forget. It’s not inevitable.”

  I can see him thinking, see him make a decision. “I’ll set the grain on fire. You take the others where you need to go.”

  Imogene says, “And we won’t forget at all, inside the Archives?”

  “No.” I glance at the sky. “But you have to hurry. And, Eshan … ” He turns to look at me, already on his way back into the granary. “I’m sorry.”

  He looks confused, but only for a moment. He glances once at Gray, almost says something, and then doesn’t. He just nods once before he runs back to the granary. Gray is still sitting where I left him, panting hard. Jonathan and the knife are gone.

  “He’s right,” Gray says. “I should forget.” I realize he’s talking about Jonathan. “If this is all there is … ” He holds out an arm, showing me the fire, the broken things, Karl of the Books weeping over the body of his wife. “If this is all there is to remember, then I don’t want it!”

  He can’t do that. Not again. “Don’t forget,” I say. “Please. Not again. You marked me.” I hold up the necklace. “You wrote my name in your book. You told me to remember for us.”

  He stares at my face, intent, trying to remember. He can’t.

  “I know it’s not good enough,” I say, “but it’s better than nothing. I can be your memories. But you have to come with me.”

  “Why should I trust you?” he asks. I have no answer for him. Because that bottle of Remembering went into Jonathan of the Council instead of him.

  He gets to his feet, moves away from me. I drop my outstretched hand, rub it over my tear-streaked face instead. I look up at the blushing sky, then back at the little group forming around me.

  “We have to run,” I say.

  We take off down the streets. Gray, Chi, Veronika, and the rest of Eshan’s band, Karl of the Books, Roberta, and Pratim, Jemma’s husband. I don’t know what happened to the rest of the fighters around the granary. Or the Council members. Or Janis. I lead them up Meridian and across First Bridge.

  “Don’t touch the trees!” I shout back at them, ducking beneath a limb. The buds look ready to burst. We pass the man I’d seen walking with Frances the Doctor, yelling and banging on his own door. He has his book, but he’s locked out of his house. We take him with us, and on the turn down Einstein I step over a body below a broken window. There’s a party going on inside, music and drunken singing. Veronika bangs on the door, trying to get them to come with us, but they won’t answer.

  We hurry on, past the Learning Center, which has been ransacked, the word “lies” painted in red, scrawling letters over the word “truth” on its sign, and then I find the potter’s wife, huddled behind a row of porch columns. I’m not sure what’s happened to her, but she doesn’t have her book, and her hair has been cut, nearly to the scalp. Roberta helps her run.

  We turn onto Copernicus and suddenly we are in the back of a crowd, a throng of people, in cloth both dyed and undyed, a few scattered black robes present, choking the street from one side to the other. I start to push through the bodies, and then I see why everyone is standing so quiet, so watchful. The Archives doors are shut, and right in front of them, arms spread wide, is Janis, a knife in her outstretched hand. And the knife she holds is pressed against Genivee’s chest.

  For those who forget, I think the loss must feel a little like death.

  NADIA THE DYER’S DAUGHTER

  BOOK 10, PAGE 74, 9 YEARS AFTER THE FORGETTING

  I push through the bodies, burst from the crowd into a moment that is a held breath. A piece of glass, teetering too close to the edge.

  “Nadia.” Janis greets me with a smile, her elegant hair the slightest bit mussed. “I suppose this is all your doing?” The hand not holding the knife gestures to include the gathered crowd, the pockmarked doors of the Archives. It looks like they were trying to break in. Genivee stands perfectly still, eyes closed, her back against the sign that says “Remember Our Truth,” Liliya just a meter away, tears running from her eyes. Mother sits behind her, on the ground, face hidden in her hands.

  “Get away from my Archives,” says Janis. Her voice rings down the street. “All of you! I will be the one to say who goes in and who does not.” She glances at the sky. “But first, you must all forget … ”

  I’ve had enough. Of talk, of twisting words. Of her. I’m on her before she sees me coming, pushing her body away from my sister, grappling with the arm that holds the knife. “Run!” I yell at Genivee, and then suddenly I have help. Liliya is with me, forcing Janis down by the hair until I can step on the arm with the knife. Janis lets the knife drop.

  “Council!” Janis calls. But Li and Reese are not here, and none of the other Council members move, still unsure, maybe, about what they heard in the amphitheater. I see Lydia and the girls, but not Anson. Genivee has disappeared to our mother. I reach down and yank off the key Janis is wearing around her neck while Liliya holds her down, run for the Archives door, and put it to the lock. The key doesn’t fit. I try again. And then I bang on the door.

  “Gretchen!” I scream, bruising my fists. “Gretchen, open the door!”

  I hear Janis start to laugh, a slow, gleeful chuckle, and when I turn my head she’s thrown Liliya off, the knife back in her hand. The crowd in the streets does nothing. Just watches. Waits. Like the people of Canaan have done since the first Forgetting. They could storm this building, overwhelm her if they wanted. But they are firmly tied. Inside their heads. I glance up to the golden sky, to the beams of light that look ready to shoot out from beyond the mountains.

  “You, Nadia the Dyer’s daughter,” she says, “are out of time. Any minute now, no one here is going to remember this.”

  And when that happens she is coming after me, I think. Because I remember. Because she knows I have that code. As soon as the Forgetting happens and I have lost my allies, she will try to take me. And I will suffer before I die, knowing that all but one hundred and fifty of our city are dying. I see Gray sidling up to the edge of the crowd, and Janis smiles, suddenly becoming our own grandmother, the beloved leader of Canaan who cares for us.

  “And why,” Janis is calling, sweeping her arms to everyone, “would you ever want to escape the Forgetting? The Forgetting is your gift. Your birthright. Your chance to leave your cares behind and start again.”

  I see a subtle shift in some of the crowd.

  “You,” Janis says gently, “Glassblower’s son.”

  Gray stiffens just a little when he realizes she means him, and I hear a cry from the middle of the crowd that I think must be Delia, only just now realizing her son is alive.

  “Wouldn’t you like to forget the things you have seen today? The city after the Forgetting is nothing like the city before. All those unpleasant memories could be
erased from your mind. And you … ”

  I see the potter’s wife flinch beneath Janis’s gaze, bookless, hand on her shorn head.

  “Perhaps you would like to become someone else? A brand-new person, with no wrongs that need righting. Or you”—now she’s addressing the husband of Frances the Doctor—“you might like to forget the betrayal of your wife. Blot it from existence. And, Roberta”—if possible, her voice becomes even more kind—“you have a child with the Lost, don’t you? Aren’t you ready to lay aside your pain? And where are you, Karl of the Books? Would you like to forget that your wife lies dead at the granary?”

  I feel sick, so much more than when I was unconscious on a bed. One way or another, Janis has made all these things happen. Or pushed people until they could.

  “There is no need,” Janis says, hands up, imploring, voice ringing down the street, “to live with the past. The Forgetting allows us to create our perfect society without regrets. Now go to your homes, await the Forgetting in peace, and start your lives again.”

  I open my mouth to speak, to shout that she will kill everyone she hasn’t chosen. But another voice speaks instead.

  “And what about me?”

  Jonathan of the Council is on the edge of the crowd, pushing back his black hood, face bruised and bloodied, robes covered in dirt. I don’t know where he came from, but he’s not acting manic now, or crazed. He’s calm, and it’s like all Janis’s composure has been transferred to him. I see her face twist with rage. And hatred.

  “What about you?” she spits. “I gave you all the skills to be the next Head of Council, trained you from a child. But your mind is weak … ”

  “And you are a liar,” Jonathan says. “You didn’t write her down.”

  Liliya steps toward him, a hand out, but Janis brandishes the knife, motioning her back. “Of course her name isn’t there! What made you think Liliya was worthy of our society? What family does she come from, after all? And what makes you think that you should be chosen?” She practically spits the next words. “Weak. One girl, and your mind is weak. Worthless—”

  I never saw it coming, any more than Janis saw me when I attacked her. All I know is that Janis is suddenly against the plaque, across the “T” in “Truth,” arms out, like Hedda and the others, only Janis is facing forward, eyes wide and open in surprise, pinned not with ropes, but by the knife that says “Kevin Atan,” thrust all the way through her middle. She gasps.

  “That,” Jonathan shouts, “is for my little brother.” He puts a hand on her neck, pulls out the knife, making her eyes go wide, and plunges it again while someone screams. “For Liliya,” he yells, and does it again. And again. “And for every single person”—each word gets a stab—“you made forget. And this … is for Canaan, and this”—he thrusts in the knife one more time and leaves it there—“is for me.” He lets Janis’s body slump into the little gully around the Archives, very dead.

  I blink, shocked into nothingness. The plaque is smeared red, and Jonathan is panting as he turns to look at us. He’s spattered, a few places on his face running with blood. He reaches down, picks up the knife Janis has dropped, and uses it to cut the tether to his fancy-stitched bag, the one that holds his book. He tosses away the knife and then his book, its corner landing in the pooling blood. Then he approaches my sister.

  “I’m going to go forget now,” he says to Liliya, smiling, “but when you remember, remember that I kept you safe.”

  Liliya nods. And then my hands clutch the sides of my dirty tunic as I realize he’s coming to me. I’ve never seen Jonathan so relaxed and contented. It’s an odd expression beneath all that blood.

  “And you. You won’t ever make me remember?” he asks.

  I think of that last vial, gone into his body instead of Gray’s. I can’t think of anyone who deserves to forget more. “No, Jonathan. I can’t make you remember. I can’t make anyone remember, even if I wanted to.”

  He cocks his head to the side, still smiling. “Why not?”

  But whatever he was going to say is lost as he’s tackled by Karl of the Books, Rachel the Supervisor getting his hands back, tying them with what is probably someone’s hair string. He doesn’t fight them. He doesn’t care about anything but forgetting now. The far mountain peak glows, edged with a nearly risen sun. Any minute and the sky will turn white and the Forgetting will come. The crowd starts to scatter. I turn and bang on the dented, splintered door.

  “Gretchen!” I call. “It’s Nadia! Let us in. They’re not coming for the books! We can escape the Forgetting! Gretchen!”

  I hear a muffled, frightened voice on the other side of the door. “What’s happening?”

  “We need to get into the Council room, Gretchen. Now! It’s not about the books. You don’t have to forget!”

  “I don’t have a key … ”

  Liliya has her ear to the door. She holds up the glass key beside me. “I have it!” I yell. The first beam of sun falls soft and warm on my back. “Open the door, Gretchen!”

  I hear the bar across the door lift.

  “Gray!” I turn and find him just behind me. “You have to unlock the door. You know how to use the glass key without breaking it. You can’t break it, do you understand?”

  He looks unsure, but he nods. Liliya puts the key in his hand, and I hear the lock inside the Archives turn.

  “Move, Gretchen!” I yell as the door creaks open. I come through with Liliya and Gray, the first of a flood of people gushing through the doors of the Archives. Gretchen jumps to one side as I lead the way through to the anteroom, to the stacks, and to the door in the back wall.

  “Liliya!” I say, and she understands, moving back to organize the crowd, keep them from stampeding until we get the door open. They fill the enormous room. I hear both Gretchen and Liliya telling people not to touch the books.

  Gray is on his knees at the door, carefully inserting the key. He tries it, and the lock doesn’t turn. I see him wince, and I’m afraid the key has broken, but maybe that was only the pain in his back, because on the next try the lock clicks and the door swings open. He looks up at me, smiles, and for one moment, he is my Gray. The Gray of the dark days and Jin’s garden.

  I go still for a heartbeat, then turn and run back the way I came, pushing against the stream of bodies. How could I have forgotten Jin? I run out the front door. Sunlight beams from the mountain peaks. Almost all of the crowd is inside the Archives now. I’m halfway to Jin’s door before I realize Gray is with me.

  “What are you doing?” I shout at him. He doesn’t answer. But I know. I am his memories. I don’t dare let myself think it’s something more. I bang on Jin’s door, then try the latch. Locked.

  “Jin? Jin!”

  He probably can’t hear me. I find a stone and use it to break Jin’s front window. When I push aside the curtain and climb inside, I find him, calm in his sitting room, with his book and a lamp and some tea, waiting to forget. He looks understandably surprised to see me.

  “Come!” I yell, giving him no time to argue. I lift the bar on the door and Gray helps me run with him, though Jin really can’t do more than hobble quickly. The sun rises, a beautiful sliver of gold, and when we reach the Archives, the people are gone. It’s quiet, nothing but the stained sign and the mutilated body that was Janis. Jin stares at it and I push the latch of the Archives door. Locked. And then the sky bursts, a blinding, dazzling white sky moving over us, eating the golden light of the sunrising.

  I bang on the door and it opens immediately, while my hand is still in the air. Gretchen drags us inside. I catch a glimpse of the forgetting tree across the street opening its petals, imagine a hint of the first, faint, sweet scent before Gretchen slams shut the door. She starts to lock it but I take the key from her.

  “Run!” I shout at her. “It’s not sealed here!”

  She helps Gray with Jin and they hurry to the anteroom. I shut each layer of doors behind them as they pass, until we’re through the stacks and opening the door into t
he inner room. Noise is the first thing I notice. And then an incredible press of bodies, some milling around, most sitting in groups. There must be three hundred, I think. I slam the door shut. Gray has the glass key, and he works it carefully in the lock, sealing us in.

  “You cut that rather fine,” says Gretchen, as if I’d almost been late for the inventory.

  I do take inventory then, though of people, not books. Jin has found a place to sit with his back to the wall. He looks confused. Not far away is Mother on the floor, eyes closed, Genivee with her. On the other side of the room I see Lydia and my half sisters and Anson the Planter. I’m not sure where he came from, because he wasn’t in the crowd outside when Janis died. I don’t want to think about how Janis died. Seated near him are Deming and Veronika, who I thought we’d lost on Einstein Street, and then I see the potter’s wife and a whole section of undyed cloth. I don’t see Li, Jemma the Clothesmaker, or any of her family, or Eshan and Imogene. I don’t think they got here from the granary. Rose hands a baby to Roberta, and Roberta sinks to her knees beside Arthur of the Metals and his wife.

  Jonathan is against the bookshelves on the back wall, screaming, “You have to let me forget! You have to let me forget!” guarded by Karl of the Books and Rachel the Supervisor, the enormous words “Without Memories, They Are Nothing” rising tall over his head. Keeping him in here is cruel, I think. Just as cruel as keeping the others out. I clench my fists, stand a little straighter.

  Someone shouts Gray’s name then, and Delia and Nash are running to us, threading their way through the people. Delia crashes into Gray, knocking his back into the wall beside the door, making him hiss with pain. Nash hangs back, again the more observant.

  “Where have you been?” Delia starts. “We were so … ” Then she says, “What’s wrong?”

  Gray is looking at me, asking the question. “This is your mother,” I tell him.