Ink

by Alice Broadway

  I could have had a mark done on my sixteenth birthday if I’d wanted, but I’ve held back. I want to show people who I really am – show them that I’m not just this quiet girl who gets good grades and tries to be nice to her mum. But now I wonder if I’ll ever make up my mind. I want it to be perfect. I keep waiting for the ideal design to come to my mind: something beautiful, timeless and exactly “me”.

  As I sit at my desk I end up drawing Verity and me. Verity is laughing and her hair is looking wild; somehow I’ve messed up my eyebrows so I just look angry, but I quite like it anyway. After a while I stop drawing. A moth flits around my desk lamp. It’s not big enough to bother me but it makes the light seem eerie as it projects clumsy shadows, and the scuffling sound reminds me of tearing paper and flapping feathers. But I don’t turn the light off. I don’t like the dark any more. Over the last month, thanks to Dad’s last words to me (Watch out for the blanks, Leora), some of my childhood fears have returned. The sounds that used to lull me to sleep now make my heart race, and my mind creates new monsters from the old fears.

  Long before I was born, before the Blank Resettlement Bill, blanks used to live alongside us. I can’t even imagine what that must have been like – a whole set of people who chose not to be marked. It began as one or two who decided not to add to their birth mark or official ink and then it became a rebellion; they refused to get their children inked and chose fines and jail rather than submit to the laws of the land. People used to have to walk past blank, unreadable people every day – my mum told me her mother remembered it. No one could understand why they chose to reject salvation; why they would live a life that left them damned.

  But then people discovered the truth. That they had secrets so terrible they wouldn’t dare to wear them. It started off with little things; the seams of your clothes adjusted by the blank seamstress would burst open, revealing their shoddy workmanship and your marked flesh. Your post would arrive with the telltale marks of tampering and you knew not to trust the blank post-mistress any longer. The blank baker sold you stale bread, the blank teacher at school taught your children to lie, the blank doctor gave medicine that seemed to make your child sicker. They claimed not to need marks or skin books for their souls to be cleansed. They called themselves righteous. But their actions revealed the real state of their souls. For, in a carefully orchestrated uprising, they showed their true selves: houses burned, bodies maimed, skin ripped from the dead, life ripped from the living. And so, after terrible violence, the marked were forced to fight back. The blanks were no match for the marked, and when the battles ceased they were expelled, sent far away, beyond the wall, to live in communities where they could no longer hurt us. For a while everything was all right.

  So long had passed that we forgot to be afraid. There were rumours, of course. Every child at school had a story about their dad or cousin or somebody who had seen a blank roaming around the town at night.

  “He was just like a ghost,” they would say. “His skin almost glowed and he was creeping around the Ewings’ house, trying to find a window to crawl through.”

  At playtime at school it all seemed like a great joke, but at night I would look at my curtains and wonder if the sound I could hear from the window was just the wind.

  “You know how sometimes a kid doesn’t come back to school after the weekend and you don’t hear nothing about it? That’s when you know. That’s when a blank has got ’em.”

  We would squeal with delighted horror, pretending it was all just fun but at night, when I hid under my blanket and fought sleep, it all seemed different. I wouldn’t dream of letting my hands out from under the bedclothes. I would curl my legs up to my chest so no blank could grab my feet. And that kid’s words would haunt me.

  “The blanks come at night and they steal souls. All that is left in the morning is a feather, and then your family knows they’ve got you.”

  And then, when I was ten, my dog, Amity, went missing. It wasn’t like her. We searched everywhere – we went out looking every day for weeks and weeks. I made posters and we asked anyone we saw if they had seen our golden friend. A month later I was in the woods near school and I slipped down a muddy bank. In amongst the leaves I saw it – Amity’s collar. There was no other sign of her, but her red leather collar was surrounded by glossy feathers. Dad told me not to be silly, she must have got into a fight, but I just know they took her. I still miss her.

  Now, with the wind blowing branches against my window and the darkness outside, it’s all too easy to think about those stories. I tell myself to stop being foolish; I should have grown out of these fears. But I can’t forget Mayor Longsight’s warnings; the threat is real. I catch the moth in my hands, feeling it flutter against my palms for a second before it is still. Easing the window open with my elbow, I open my hands and let the moth out. Instead of flying away it falls like a stone; its temporary captivity killed it before it could be freed. I rub my hands on my trousers. It’s late so I change into my nightclothes, climb into bed, and close my eyes.

  I think of Dad, his soul suspended in limbo while he waits for it to be weighed and judged.

  I think of Connor, the man who was marked, and the way his eyes looked before the needle struck.

  I think of the White Witch and Mayor Longsight’s solemn words of warning.

  I think of the fire of judgement, burning all night and all day, for ever and ever.

  My lamp stays lit. Eventually I fall asleep.

  I dream that I am in a hospital bed. I have a needle in my arm with a tube attached. I look at the bag slowly filling with dark liquid and wonder why they’re taking my blood. As I watch my arm, I see my tattoos slowly unravelling. Each mark, word and image is being unwritten before my eyes.

  It’s not my blood they’re taking, but my ink. I look down at my bare skin. I am naked. I am lost. I rip the needle from my arm.

  I wake up breathless with fear. Clambering out of bed, I take off my nightclothes and stand in front of the mirror to make sure my marks are all there. I turn and try to make out each name on the tree that grows up my back. I am struck by the emptiness. I have lived sixteen years but what does my skin have to show for it? If I died tonight my book would look the same as any other person my age. Except for the names being different, and a few other small changes, the story’s the same.

  My skin tells the tale the government has chosen for me. I have a sudden yearning to fill every inch so that nothing is lost: the beauty I’ve seen, my friends’ names – well, Verity’s at least, my first love. First love. The thought almost makes me laugh out loud. I won’t have any romance to ink on my skin. Who would want me?

  Of course none of the boys at school were worth me worrying about – there’s been the odd one that has made me blush or somehow got me thinking about how my hair looks or whether I’m too clever or too quiet. But no one has ever turned my head, not really. And I know for a fact I’ve never turned anyone else’s. I’ve got to be the only sixteen-year-old on earth who has never kissed anyone.

  I look at the stretch marks across my hips and the paleness of my skin. I get tired of the people who tell me how refined it is to be pale, how lucky I am. I’m not the right kind of pale – there’s no alabaster beauty about me. I’m more of a dull grey. I’m not the right kind of anything. My breasts are too small for me to be curvy; and I’m sure my bum is too big for me to be slim. My face is too quirky to be pretty and too plain to be striking. My hair is too straight to be curly and too wavy to be straight, and no matter how many times I say I’ll grow it long I always get bored and chop it short again. I know for a fact that no one has ever chosen to dye their hair the colour mine is: no one asks for mousey brown. I do quite like my blue eyes, but whatever it takes to be beautiful I certainly don’t have it. I see the purple lines clawing their way down my breast and feel ashamed. I notice a new stretch mark and try to rub it away. Surely it’s not fair to have stretch marks on my practically non-existent boobs? Where is the justice in that?
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br />   My body lets me down, betrays the real me to everyone watching – the me who is not the right kind of anything. It doesn’t matter though. I’ll cover this skin with new shades of black and grey; I’ll become someone new. Through blood and pain and ink I can be remade.

  I have more to tell than this.

  With a sigh I see that it’s light already; Verity will be here soon to help me revise. I dress in brown trousers that are cuffed short to show my favourite soft, leather boots. My top is a turquoise shift that Verity passed on to me; it’s plain apart from the buttons at the neck and it’s long enough to cover my bum. One of the perks of having a friend taller than me. I wrap my wide orange belt around my waist twice, tying it tightly in front. I like to cover up; I like the feeling of being unreadable. Maybe if people can’t see how bare my skin is they’ll make up a better story than the truth.

  I head downstairs and pause in the doorway when I hear voices: Verity and Mum, talking. I must have slept later than I realized. From where I’m standing, I can see she and Mum are sitting at the kitchen table. I can see the scrubbed wooden worktops that have been marked by years of Dad and me chopping things without bothering to use a board (Mum would tell us both off, like Dad was a kid she had to look after). I peer through the gleaming pots that hang from a rafter and smile at Mum who pours an extra cup of tea when she sees me come down. I greet my ancestors by name and light a candle on the table beneath their bookshelf. I wish we had Dad’s, but he grew up in Riverton and didn’t have any skin books to bring with him when he moved here. He never really spoke about his family.

  When I get closer I see that Mum is examining Verity’s right arm. Mum can’t resist reading people – she loves it. Her idea of a perfect afternoon is sitting outside watching people as they walk past and sneaking a peek into their secrets. Not that Verity would ever have anything seedy in her marks – she’s about as perfect as they get.

  “How’s the revision going?” Mum releases Verity’s arm and takes a sip of tea.

  “All right, I think,” Verity says, easing her sleeve down a little, “but I keep having crazy dreams that the exams are on everything I’ve forgotten to study!” I laugh at Verity – she’s going to be fine. Mum moves the teapot to pour another cup and I see the picture I drew last night is still on the table. Mum’s flattened the screwed-up paper and must have been looking at it. I wonder if she showed it to Verity.

  “Come on, Vetty. I need you to help me – my brain’s stopped working!”

  Verity puts her bag over her shoulder, and we pick up our cups of tea and head to my room.

  These exams matter. They cover all the main subjects we’ve done in school plus extra tests based on our chosen specialism: mine is tattooing. And the exams make all the difference in the world; they decide our futures. If I don’t do well, I’ll get assigned to some boring job and will be pretty much stuck in it for ever. They let us choose our specialisms in our final year, but there’s no guarantee that we’ll qualify to work in our chosen profession; you’ve got to be good enough. If I end up sitting at a desk in an office I think my soul will shrivel up and die. I’ve longed to be an inker ever since I was small, when Dad first taught me to draw, and the last year has only made me more certain. I love the feel of the pen beneath my hand. I love making marks. I love the history behind each one and the way that each can be interpreted in more than one way.

  I’ve never actually tattooed anyone – you aren’t allowed to when you’re just on the school elective course. I’ve learned to clean and sterilize, I’ve practised marks on paper and pigskin. I’ve discovered that I have an obsession for detail, and I’ve learned that inking is all I really want to do.

  Verity’s hoping to go into government work – admin and policies and stuff like that. The sitting-at-a-desk thing doesn’t hold the same fear of soul-shrivelling for Verity; her work experience has mainly been spent at the government building. Verity has to be able to remember laws and statutes. Her grades need to be amazing. She really wants to be part of the Funerary and Soul-Weighing team: the department that is entrusted with the books of the recently deceased. She wants to be part of the process of preparing the dead for judgement by studying their books and recommending the worthy for remembrance. It’s one of the most important departments there is, and the most shrouded in secrecy. I watch my friend setting out her books and chattering away, and try to imagine her sitting behind a big desk, making decisions about people’s fates.

  Things are changing, and fast.

  Verity and I spend what’s left of the morning working – Verity at my rickety desk, going through her notes and books, and me sprawled on the floor adding drawings to my portfolio and picking bits of dried paint from the carpet. I’ve got a lot to do before my work is complete. It feels strange to be struggling. I’ve never needed to study especially hard before; it always came so easily. But then Dad got ill. Thinking about the future would always mean having to think about Dad – about him getting sicker, about him not being here, about having to live without him. The future without Dad had too many awful gaps, too much missing.

  But now the future’s here and life has sort of expanded to fill the gap. I don’t want to have to carry on without my dad, but I have to. I can’t just stop.

  “Are you OK, Lor? Dad was worried about you yesterday.” She rocks back on the chair and catches herself before she tips too far. “Actually, so was I. That marking really upset you, didn’t it?”

  The image of the man – Connor – being marked flashes into my mind, along with the sound of the machine injecting him with the ink. His eyes.

  “I’ve been trying not to think about it to be honest,” I say, swallowing. “How can he go on, knowing that he’s forgotten?”

  “I don’t know, Lor – but remember, he did a terrible thing.”

  I nod.

  “Seb said he saw the end of it on his break,” Verity goes on. “Mel the storyteller was there and she did a telling of the Saint’s fable – it was meant to remind everyone of the value of our marks and how flaying should be treated with honour.”

  I shrug, wearily. Perhaps if I’d been there, that would have been some comfort, but compared to the starkness of the deed, a story seems less than adequate.

  “Do you think your dad knew him, if he was a flayer?” Verity asks. I swallow and shake my head.

  “I don’t think so. I really don’t like imagining that someone like him could have worked with Dad,” I murmur. “Dad took the job so seriously; he’d be furious if he knew someone could be so unscrupulous. So evil.” I sigh shakily.

  “Oh, Leora. You miss him terribly, don’t you?”

  I nod, and the predictable tears flood my eyes. “I hate having to wait for the weighing of the soul, and I hate his book being kept at the museum – I wish it was all done and he was home with us.”

  “It must be awful not having him with you, Lor. But remember the books of your ancestors. They can be a comfort. They’re taking care of you.”

  Verity’s right – my ancestors watch over me all the time; they make things go the way they should, they guide and help us. I ought to be able to trust them. Some days I don’t feel their care and it’s easy to forget them. But I guess that’s faith, isn’t it?

  I realize that Verity is looking at me, so I smile and say, “Speaking of our ancestors, it’s our turn to do the speaking of the names tonight.”

  Verity groans. She hates the speaking of the names ritual – it’s all a bit too “smells and bells” for her taste. I’m pretty sure she only signed up to keep me company. “My favourite,” she mutters bitterly.

  “Meet you outside the hall and we can go in together?”

  I try hard after that. I push all the dark thoughts to the back of my mind and I focus on the work in front of me. We spend the rest of the day working and quizzing each other. There are so many times when I nearly tell her about Dad and his mark, but it just never seems to be the right moment. I’ll wait until the time is right. But when I hug
Verity before she leaves for home, guilt twists inside me; we shouldn’t keep secrets.

  Chapter Eight

  No one is truly gone and forgotten until their name is no longer spoken. That’s why we greet our ancestors each morning and that’s why we have the speaking of the names ritual. It happens every day: people in the community volunteer their time and are assigned a session. Mine comes round about once a month. It’s our responsibility to ensure that not one of the town’s worthy ancestors is forgotten. Some people don’t have any family still living, and without us, it may be that no one would say their name. They must be remembered – it’s our duty to their life and memory.

  It’s Mum’s turn tonight too; she always comes with Verity and me. After supper we get changed. We’re encouraged to wear oranges, yellows and reds when we attend a speaking; they evoke the fire of judgement. I wear an old saffron-coloured dress of Mum’s that is just the right colour but a little too big (“Room to grow, Leora”) and skims the floor; Mum wraps a heavy gold cloak over her daytime clothes. We look like two flames. Mum prepares a flask of hot lemon and honey to take with us – it’s good to have something to drink during an official speaking ritual in case your voice gets tired.