The List

by Patricia Forde

  She caught a glimpse of her reflection in the tin cladding of the shop. She looked thin and bedraggled, she thought. Her red hair was long and knotted, her face white and pinched. She ran her fingers through her hair. She was the only redhead in Ark.

  She scurried around to the back door and let herself in. The warmth hit her like a wave, the warmth and the smell of paper and beetroot. She breathed it in, glad to be home.

  Over the next hour, Letta organized her house. She checked the drop box and laid out the orders, ready to start on them later in the day. Everywhere, images of Benjamin haunted her. She found it hard to concentrate. She heard three bells ring just as the knock came on the outside door. She took a deep breath and went to open it.

  Carver, the gavver, stood there, leaning nonchalantly against the wall. “You back,” he said, pushing past her and walking across the floor to the counter.

  “Yes,” she said.

  List sounded strange to her now. She had grown used to speaking the old tongue. She would have to be careful.

  “Where you go?” the gavver asked, flicking through a box of cards that sat on the counter.

  “Word search,” she said. “Near Tintown.”

  “You no tell Round House.”

  “I must tell?” She tried to make herself look innocent. She needed him to think she didn’t know any better.

  He frowned. “Yes,” he said. “Must tell.”

  They both jumped as the door opened again.

  It was Rose, the healer’s wife.

  Letta was startled by the change in her. Gone was the small, tidy woman with her hair pulled back into a neat bun. This woman’s hair flowed down her shoulders. Her clothes were dirty and unkempt, and she was barefoot. Letta was about to go to her when the woman advanced, her eyes wild, her hands clenched in two tight fists.

  “Where he?” she said, glaring at Letta.

  Letta glanced at the gavver, but he was standing watching the scene playing out in front of him.

  “Please,” Letta began, but the other woman gave her no chance to speak.

  “You said you find him. You said friends help. What friends? Who? Where my boy?”

  She was screaming now, flecks of white foam gathering at the corner of her mouth. “Answer!” the woman screamed.

  Letta said nothing. Her mind was racing. What if Rose told the whole story with Carver standing there?

  The woman came closer, her face pushed up against Letta’s face so she could feel the other woman’s breath on her cheek, smell her sweat. Her fingers dug into Letta’s shoulders.

  “Who friends? Desecrators? Desecrators take my son? My Daniel?”

  Letta reached out a hand to try to calm her, but the woman slapped it away.

  “I call gavvers. I tell. Desecrators take Daniel. You help. You Desecrator. Desecrator!”

  Rose lunged at Letta, but Letta was younger and faster. She grabbed the flailing arms and held them tight, but she couldn’t stop the torrent of words.

  “Desecrator! Where Daniel? Tell! Tell me!”

  “Gavvers took Daniel, Rose. You know that. You saw them. You saw him on the cart.”

  “No!” the woman hissed at her. “You! You Desecrator!”

  Letta felt rather than saw the arrival of the healer. In seconds, he had taken his wife away from Letta and held her firmly in his arms.

  “She no well,” he said to Letta, his eyes darting to the gavver standing by the counter.

  Rose was still struggling, but she had stopped screaming and instead made little high-pitched noises like a bird caught in a trap.

  “Please take her home,” Letta said.

  The man nodded and half-pulled his wife across the street. The woman kept looking back at Letta, but all resistance had gone from her.

  Letta watched until they disappeared inside their own front door. She turned to the gavver. He hadn’t moved but gave a small smile.

  “Woman mad,” he said.

  “Yes,” Letta said, trying to hold his gaze.

  “Sometimes mad people speak truth. Ha?”

  Letta didn’t answer, but she felt her face flush red and hot. The gavver walked out without a backward glance.

  Back at her desk, Letta sat with her head in her hands. What would become of poor Rose? Was she already insane? She couldn’t imagine Ark supporting her if she couldn’t contribute. Why had Letta ever said she would help her? Did Carver already suspect something, or was he just trying to unsettle her? She tried to read the expression on his face. He had seemed amused if anything. If she was going to win Noa’s trust, there mustn’t be even a whisper that would bring disrepute on her head.

  She got up and walked to the window. The street outside was quiet—the workers were still in the fields, the children in school. Over at the healer’s, the blinds had been closed and the door shut. She was just about to turn away when she saw Carver bend his head as he came through the healer’s front door. He glanced across and saw her. For a moment, they locked eyes, then he turned and walked up the hill. The healer stood framed in the door behind him. He turned away when he saw Letta at the window. Then all was quiet again.

  Letta sat at her desk, trying to compose herself. No one would heed poor Rose. Like the gavver, they would think she had gone mad with grief. But Carver wasn’t stupid. What had he learned when he followed Rose home? She bit her lip. No point worrying about it now. Time would tell.

  In her head, she played and replayed her last conversation with Benjamin. Noa intended to make them wordless. But how? He couldn’t cut out all their tongues. Could he? Would he offer her immunity? Probably not. She wasn’t valuable enough. Maybe she would find out more when they spoke to the scavenger. She went back to her work, slowly transcribing her words onto their cards, comforted by the ritual and the earthy smell of beetroot.

  It was two days before she heard from Marlo.

  She had just gone to the tailor to be measured for a dress. The rules were clear. A dress would be issued when the edge of the cloth came half a stride over the knee. Tala Green had measured her, the nail of her thumb scratching her bare skin. Yes, she’d said, and handed her someone else’s old dress, then waited while Letta removed the one she was wearing.

  She left the tailor’s as the last glimmer of the day faded. It was evening time, a dark, wet November evening. She looked up and there he was. He had a hood pulled over his head and his coat was heavy with rain.

  “Marlo!” she said.

  He pushed back the hood. His eyes danced in his head.

  “Were you expecting me?” He smiled.

  “Yes,” she said, her heart turning over. “No. I don’t know. I hoped you would come, but I wasn’t sure.”

  This was it. They must have Fearfall. That was why Marlo had come. She turned to face him. “You have him?”

  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 gray, 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 toward 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 smelled 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 hand on her elbow, and she turned to follow him. As they moved forward, the blackness gave way.

  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 going, 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. Catlike, 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 color 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 color: cornflower blue, violet, coral. It was like nothing she had ever seen before—like nothing she could have imagined. She moved toward it, mesmerized. 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 at her surroundings. She had never seen or imagined a place like this. The high walls were painted in blocks of vivid colors stretching far above her: wild raspberry, ochre, and emerald green. The colors flowed into one another, so she couldn’t be sure where one ended and another began. Punctuating the banks of color 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 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 that had been lovingly placed on a tiny wooden platform.

  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 gray man leaning on a stick, a seabird captured midflight, 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 color.

  “Jam,” he said. “Made from wild berries. We’ll need that. And cheese. 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 ope
ned it. It took her a second to realize 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 recognized 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?”