We walk through fallen leaves towards the square where the hall of judgement is. I link my arm through Mum’s, partly because I’m cold, and partly because I need to know she’s with me. She gives me a little smile, but when she sighs and squeezes my arm I wonder if she’s as composed as she appears. Mum wasn’t exactly warm before Dad died, but she wasn’t quite so tightly wound. Dad would always help her lighten up, loosen up. I want to be able to forget all the mess, just for tonight. This is my first speaking since Dad died and I’m worried my voice will give away my broken heart.
Verity is waiting for us outside the hall of judgement. To start with I don’t see her; she melts into the shadows with her dark skin, black hair and grey shawl. The windows of the hall glint with the light from the fire and make the rest of the building seem sombre and looming. Verity steps into the street light and gives a tiny wave when she sees us coming and we walk together to the small door at the side of the building. The speaking of the names happens in a smaller room off the main hall called the room of remembrance. It’s always so hot though; you can’t forget that you’re near the constantly raging fire.
We enter through a heavy wooden door, and once we’re inside tall, thin slits of windows make it feel like we’re hidden away. Thoughts of the cold outside are overtaken by the misty incense and warm wooden-clad walls. I love the way the sounds sink into the room. When we read the names it’s as though we give it a life of its own. The walls hold the memories that the mind no longer sees.
There are a few listeners sitting on the wooden blocks. They’re usually set up in rows, but people are allowed to move them wherever they like. It always helps to have listeners – they keep me focused on the importance and beauty of what I’m doing and help me to read each name with love. Maybe it’s the name they came to hear. The speaking ritual is open to anyone from the community who wants to attend. The speakers couldn’t possibly get through all the names in the book of the dead in one go – but as the days, weeks, months and years pass, each name gets its chance to be spoken once again – words carried on breath, breath that revives the dead for a moment longer.
I can feel my dry eyes each time I blink. I just hope that I stay awake for the duration of the evening. Yawns are frowned upon in readings; the occasion is a solemn one.
Mum leads the way to the front of the room and Verity and I follow. My dress gets caught under my feet when I go up the steps of the dais and I stumble a little. Mum flashes me a warning look and Verity stifles a giggle. We light new white candles from the ones that have been burning all day – it’s important that the light doesn’t go out.
We say the opening words of the ritual and begin to read the names.
Our ancestors, wise and beloved. We remember you. Those whose thoughts have brought justice and peace, whose words have brought knowledge and mercy, and whose deeds have brought security and wealth. We honour you. We remember you. Breathe again as we speak your names, show us your wisdom and guide our community in the way we should go.
James Peace,
Isaac Adofu,
Henry Chalice,
Hope Mainu,
Rangan Singh,
Jane Hendle…
After each fifty names the speaker says, “We remember you,” and another speaker stands to read the next fifty. We get through a thousand names this way.
But not my father’s. Not yet.
That night I dream.
I dream that someone is standing in the room of remembrance, saying my name, and I wonder why they are reading it when I am alive and well. Then, in my dream, the reader gets a pen and crosses my name out, looks up at me and slams the book of the dead shut.
Chapter Nine
The next two weeks carry on in much the same way – I sleep, study, run errands and revise with Verity. Mum wakes me on the first day of the exams and I’m groggy – unused to waking before nine o’clock.
The week passes in perfect exam silence. I find I’m soothed by it and enjoy knowing where I’m going and what I’m doing each day. The tutor asks hard and searching questions when I present my portfolio of work – quizzing me about my “feminine” style and wondering out loud whether men will want to be marked by a girl. I say something neat about how important it is to have a range of inkers and personalities, but not for the first time I find myself biting down hard on my tongue to stop myself saying something rude. Women inkers are unusual, certainly, but as Dad always said, attitudes won’t change unless we do something about it.
I’m still not sleeping well, so by the end of the week I’m tired and my thoughts seem to sink before they can be used – I find myself staring into space towards the end of my final exam, which is history. I look around the high-ceilinged hall, where I’ve sat through so many assemblies and lectures, and my mind wanders. If Dad were alive he’d be picking me up afterwards and we’d be doing something to mark the occasion; he knew how to make things feel significant and special. But instead after this I’ll go home and wait for Mum. Maybe I’ll cook tonight. Without Dad we both seem to have lost our ability to celebrate.
I force myself back to my paper and the final question. I read it through once, twice, and then stop. I look around to see if anyone else looks puzzled, but they all have their heads down and their pens are moving rapidly across their papers.
Give three examples of how Saintstone would be different if the Blank Resettlement Bill had not come into effect.
This is not a question I have revised for. It’s not a question we’ve ever discussed in class; it feels slightly illicit even imagining what life would be like with blanks living here alongside us. I tap my pen against my mouth and try to figure out how things would be.
1.If we still lived with blanks our way of life would be under threat. The marked would be upholding the aims of truth, justice and candour, while the blanks’ thoughts and actions would be hidden. We would be vulnerable because of this. The blanks were committed to violence against the marked, so it’s logical to assume that this persecution would only have increased; the blanks were killers at heart. Not only would our culture and faith be in jeopardy, but our lives would be at risk too.
That makes sense. I daren’t imagine living alongside people I could never really know.
2.Society would be divided. It would be hard for such diverse groups to live together without conflict. The blanks might take advantage of the marked people’s openness, while hiding their own violent secrets. We need unity in our faith and society in order to maintain our tradition and honour our ancestors. Without transparency, integrity is impossible.
Before the resettlement, Saintstone was all factions, fights and fear. The blanks made the most of our vulnerability.
3.Statistics show us that crime has greatly reduced since the resettlement, therefore it is logical to suggest that if blanks still lived in Saintstone, we would not be experiencing the peace and safety that we currently enjoy. Violence is almost unheard of and other crimes that diminish society, like robbery, bribery and vandalism, are effectively prevented using the policy of marking criminals.
I can’t see how the examiner could find fault with that one.
The invigilator tells us time is up. I close my exam paper and put down my pen. That’s it. My future is ready to be marked.
Just like me then.
Verity waits for me as we leave the exam hall. It takes me a while to find my bag at the back of the room and I get in a tangle with my shawl. She’s breathless with enthusiasm about the test.
“Really, they couldn’t have been better questions!”
“What, even the one about blanks?” I ask, still feeling bewildered by the unexpected question. She frowns, her eyebrows furrowing and shakes her head.
“What? I don’t—” but then she sees the time and her eyes widen. “I’m going to be late. You’re sure you won’t come with us?” Verity’s parents are taking her and Seb out for ice cream; she invited me earlier but I don’t feel like it. I think Mum might be upset if I do somethin
g familyish without her involved.
“I should get home. Mum will want to hear how it went.”
I watch as Verity walks away through the crowd of excited students to meet her parents. She waves at a couple of people and hitches the strap of her bag up where it’s slipped off her shoulder. She always makes life look so easy. I feel a pang of sadness, a sense that everything is ending and changing. I can’t believe I won’t see her every day at school. I close my eyes and whisper a prayer to my ancestors: “Please let our lives stay firmly intertwined. Please.”
The leaves on a tree nearby rustle and two fall to the ground. It’s silly, it’s nothing, but I choose to take them as a sign; they can be a talisman, even if it just means something to me. I pick up the leaves and put them in my pocket before I tuck my dad’s pendant into my top, wrap my shawl tighter around my shoulders and head for home.
Chapter Ten
Walking home, I keep thinking about that last exam question. What would life be like if the blanks still lived among us? I imagine them walking along this very street, empty, terrifyingly unknowable, and I shudder.
When you’re a child, everything is just a story. People dress things up: fables instead of fact, fairy tales instead of history. But then you grow up.
I remember so clearly the day I heard the truth about the blanks. That the stories, which I had believed were just folklore made up to scare naughty children, were true.
None of us will ever forget that green door in the museum.
I’m not sure I even noticed it until I went through for the first time.
We all knew the stories. The tale of the ghostly, cursed White Witch and her beautiful sister, Moriah, and the very different paths they took – one blank, the other marked. The sister who was evil and the sister who was good. We had heard it before so many times. We had played it at break times, and I remember fighting with Verity about which of us would get to be the beautiful, good one this time. I used to dream about living in the forest waiting for a prince to come and find me. We knew about blanks, and how the White Witch was the first their kind, but we spoke of them as one might speak of fairies or goblins. They didn’t seem real.
Then one day, when we were nine or ten, we were told we were going on a class trip to the museum. The mood on the way there was odd – walking through the rain, there was an almost electric feeling in the air. Our teacher was quiet and told us not to tell the younger kids about what we would see there that day.
Verity and I held hands on the whispered walk to the museum.
I remember it so clearly. I remember that we wiped our feet and hung up our coats on little pegs in the cloakroom. I remember that the stone floor got wet anyway and that the chill from outside swept in with us. I remember that Verity and I kept on holding hands even after our coats were off and our feet were dry, even though we were inside and we should have felt safe.
And then we were led to the green door – the door we’d walked past so many times without wondering what lay within. The guard stepped aside and smiled as we walked past her into the dimly lit space.
Truth laid bare.
So bare that I could see every inch of his empty skin. The unknown, unnamed man. Palms open, facing up. An elbow, still rough-looking, pressed against the glass. An unmoving chest, skin blued slightly from the liquid. His private parts made public. I couldn’t help but look. Eyes closed, mouth slightly open, ready to breathe, ready to speak, ready to scream. A person preserved, not as a book, but as an exhibit: a warning, a trophy.
Blank.
We stood and looked, close enough to track the swirls of his fingerprints, near enough to count the hairs on his legs, intimate enough to feel that we had walked in on him having a bath. Only, this was a tank, and he drifted beneath the surface.
I was close enough to see everything, except I saw nothing. No ink, no words, no pictures, no marks. His body was silent. He was kept as a cautionary tale, a blank who had been captured and preserved to warn us. Our teacher told us that only someone with something to hide would keep their story inside them. I imagined his secrets like worms under his skin, eating him from within. In my mind, this body was a jar full of decay, a box full of shame that had to be kept locked.
Panic flooded through me and I looked down at my hand and counted my age marks. I looked at Verity and my other classmates. I read them, relieved. I knew their stories. Nothing was hidden. Truth laid bare.
The rest of the exhibits in that tiny space were brutal, and left me weary. Glass-covered display cases reflected the light and told us the terrible truth. Small white cards with handwritten explanations hung next to pictures: written testimony, even notes written by the blanks themselves that showed their plans to hurt us. Some boys called out, “Come and look at this!” sounding excited. Verity and I followed their voices to a well-lit exhibit at the back of the room, and I read the card.
This knife was used by Tobias Clement. With it he removed the hands of his victims.
The knife looked rusty. “Blood,” whispered the boy next to me delightedly. The handle was worn, as though it had been held fondly by warm hands. It reminded me of the knife in our kitchen that my parents used to cut meat and vegetables.
Clement was not the only blank to dismember innocent members of our community in order to steal their marks and silence their souls, but he was perhaps the most prolific. Like all blanks he worked with conscienceless malice. Men, women and children all died at his merciless hands. He was finally captured and put to death two years before the Resettlement Bill came into effect.
We all knew why they did it. It would be clever if it wasn’t so horrifying. If you don’t have all your deeds marked on your skin and saved in your skin book – if one piece is lost – then they say your deeds will stay on your soul, weighing it down, forfeiting your place in eternity. It’s the worst thing that any of us could imagine.
My eyes scanned across the display, past a heap of black feathers, to a crumpled pile of fabric next to the knife. The other kids had grown bored and moved on, so I stepped along to see what this next item was. Standing closer, I saw that it wasn’t fabric. It looked like old sacking or worn leather, but now that I was right in front of it, I saw it was skin. A tiny, severed hand had been preserved. I counted the age marks. One, two, three … four.
Murmuring my shock to Verity, she furrowed her brow and nodded. So, this is the world we live in, we realized. It was bigger and more frightening than before. I closed my eyes and planned my future marks, longing to be grown up – desperate for armour to clothe myself in, piece by piece.
We got back to school and wrote about our day in our topic books. Our teacher warned us not to tell the younger pupils. We didn’t play games about the White Witch any more. And we didn’t have story time any more either – it was called history instead.
Chapter Eleven
The day of the exam results dawns bright and chilly. I’m too nervous to eat lunch, so I spend extra time getting ready. I choose my favourite wrap-around dress and try on a shawl that has purple, grey and orange threads. I wrap it so that my hands can be free and fasten it with the leafy brooch Mum and Dad gave me for my last birthday. The pendant Dad gave me is tucked away under my dress; I hope it will bring me good fortune. I twist my short hair away from my eyes and clip it back, then I clean my face and apply the tiniest bit of oil to my skin – enough to show my marks at their best, but not so much that I will look like I’ve gone to too much effort. My hands shake a little as I get my bag. My fingers are slippery with sweat and the oil that wouldn’t completely wash away.
Mum gave me a hug and a little pep talk before she left this morning. It felt like seeing the old Mum again, the one whose cool, level-headedness was balanced out by Dad’s warmth and playfulness. She used to smile; she used to love pretending to be annoyed by Dad’s teasing until she would burst out laughing. I feel like part of her went when Dad did, and I’d never admit it out loud, but I wonder if it was the part of her I loved.
“I know how hard you’ve worked, Leora, my little light. Whatever happens today I am so proud of you. Your ancestors will have been working it all out behind the scenes – don’t you worry.” She brushed her hand over our ancestors’ books before heading out the door. “Make sure you don’t go out celebrating before you’ve told me, OK? I’ll be back by five.”
As I thrust my keys into my bag, I find a card. It reads: Your dad would be so proud of you. You shine with his light, my lovely Leora. I gulp back tears.
“Well, off I go,” I say to my ancestors, who are huddled together in their books. “Wish me luck and go before me. I remember you – I hope I’ll honour you with good results.” I blow a kiss, feeling a little silly, and then set my bag across my shoulder and lock the door behind me as I leave. My shawl blows in the wind and I worry that my hair will be unkempt by the time I get there. Not much I can do now though. Not much I can do about anything.
We’re all given mentors when we complete our exams and they’re the ones who give us our results. Verity’s mentor is in the government building. To my astonishment, I have been assigned our town’s storyteller, Mel. I’ve no idea why I’ve been given someone so important – surely she has better things to do than to bother with me? She is famous, as famous as Mayor Longsight. She has no surname; storytellers embody our community’s tales, not their own. I’ve seen her at big events but never up close. As storyteller, she keeps all our community’s fables and tales on her skin and is entrusted with preserving all those precious stories. She works from a room in the lower level of the museum.
When I reach the museum, the gates are open, bolted in place so they don’t clang shut in the wind. I look at the black iron bars and imagine the museum as a benevolent prison for the artefacts it contains. This is their sentence – examined and scrutinized in their glass jails. Each book and object with his or her story to tell. I take a deep breath before I go in. This was our place – mine and Dad’s.
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