The Wordsmith

CHAPTER 1

LETTA, the wordsmith’s apprentice, buried her face in her hands, exhausted. Her forehead ached and her eyes felt dry and dusty. She had transcribed hundreds of words since early morning, each one written in her own distinctive cursive style. This was their busiest time of year, the time of change. It was now that the masters took on apprentices, teachers took on new pupils and people got ready for the long winter.

She reached for another card and began to write.

Search: To explore, to look for. An investigation seeking answers

She stopped for a second, resting her pen on the edge of the table. The evening light threw shadows on the walls and added to her anxiety. She had to do something. She couldn’t sit here waiting for Benjamin to tell her why a gavver had seen fit to visit them. She got up and walked to the living area, stopping outside Benjamin’s study. There she hesitated. The voices from the inner room rose and fell, words slipping and sliding between the two men. Letta turned to the small round table and, with great care, filled the cups that stood waiting on the metal tray. Two cups. The boiling water released the earthy smell of burdock, its pungent depths filling the room, deep and claylike. She picked up the tray and moved to the door. Should she go in? Through the slit in the battened door, she could just see the heavy drapes covering the window, the old green armchair standing on its three legs, the fourth corner supported by a block of timber. Beneath it, the white marble floor, smooth and cold.

She took a deep breath and shifted the tray to her left hand. With the knuckle of her index finger she tapped a dull tattoo on the door. The cups lurched. Inside, she could hear her master’s voice.

‘But sir,’ he said. ‘Five hundred words? It not … not … human.’

The gavver’s answer came swiftly. ‘List seven hundred words now,’ he said. ‘Too many. Why make work for self?’

‘But … but …’

Letta flinched at the despair in her master’s voice.

The gavver laughed. ‘Ark need less words,’ he said. ‘Words no good. Words bring trouble.’

Letta stood frozen, her hand still raised, the hated beat of the gavver’s speech affronting her ears. The door opened, swinging towards her. Letta jumped. The tray wobbled. The gavver stood there, his tonsured head shining as though a yellow light glistened beneath the skin. With one hand he took the tray from her. He placed his other hand on Letta’s shoulder.

‘No harm,’ he said, his sloe-eyed stare transfixing her. ‘What this?’

‘Tea,’ Letta said, her heart pounding. Later, she couldn’t remember why she spoke, only that a feeling like a wave had subsumed her. ‘Burdock tea,’ she said, spitting the words at him.

The face came closer until she could feel his breath on her cheek. ‘Tea,’ he corrected her, his voice little more than a whisper. ‘Tea. No burdock tea. Burdock not List word.’

Without taking his eyes from her face, he dropped the tray, letting it clatter to the floor. The crash echoed through the old house. Letta could feel the boiling liquid splash her bare ankle. She bit her tongue to stop herself from crying out. The gavver stepped over the tray and the cups and the puddle of tea as though nothing had happened.

At the door, he turned. ‘Five hundred, wordsmith. Prepare List.’

And then he was gone. For a moment, Letta and her master stood in silence, both caught in the spell the other man had cast.

Benjamin turned to her. ‘Letta,’ he said, and she could see the hurt in his eyes, ‘no make trouble. Not good. Fail.’

‘Don’t speak List to me,’ she said, suddenly furious. ‘We are wordsmiths. We can speak as we wish.’

‘Perhaps,’ Benjamin said, his eyes darting to the door, making sure they were alone. ‘But we must remember that it is a privilege, child.’

Letta could feel the frustration bubbling up in her. She shook her head.

‘We are the fortunate ones, Letta, the last people left on this planet.’

Letta shrugged, not able to speak.

‘Five hundred words,’ Benjamin said, his voice quiet. ‘I must prepare a new List.’

‘But master …’ Letta could not keep the protest out of her voice.

Five hundred words? Could they survive on that?

‘John Noa knows what he is doing,’ Benjamin said. ‘He always knows. You’ll see.’ He reached out and touched her hand, the skin on his fingers parched and cool.

‘I’ll clean up the mess,’ she said and watched him lumber back towards the open door of his sanctuary.

She found the twig in a shadowy corner of the hall and removed the broken crockery. Through the open window, she could hear the wind moaning, and somewhere not too far away, a wolf howled as if in answer. She walked across the room and pulled the window closed, pausing for a second to look out at the bleached, wet landscape.

Across the way, the houses teetered on the side of the hill, leaning on one another for support. Small identical boxes, lime-washed, with their communal living room, two bedrooms and a toilet, all built before the Melting. In the windows, slices of faint yellow light squinted back at her, flickering giddily, as if afraid that the windmills that fed them could desert them at any minute. Further up the hill, the queue was already forming at Central Kitchen. Reluctantly, she pulled herself away from the scene outside and headed back to her work.

Through the door leading into the shop, she could see her table. The cardboard boxes nestled one inside the other, the mound of four-inch-square cards, cut the previous night, the wooden handle of her pen honed and polished until it felt smooth as glass. Beside it, the pot of ink glinted in the shadowy afternoon light. Her heart was still loud in her ears but the gavver was gone. Now, there was only herself and her words again. She moved quickly across the floor, pulled out her chair and settled down to work. She reached out and picked up a blank card.

She needed to assemble twenty List boxes for Mrs Truckle, the schoolteacher. The old lady’s voice still rang in her ears from her own school days. ‘Sit up straight, girl. Don’t dig the paper.’

The words danced in front of her eyes just as they had when she’d been a small child. She remembered lying in bed with all the words she’d learnt in school flying about her head, fireflies from some magical place, red electric fireflies.

Sometimes, soon, sound.

All List words, of course. She hadn’t known anything else then.

She turned the card over and placed it on her writing mat. The feel of the thin card calmed the turmoil inside her. She picked up her pen and dipped it in the ink, lifting it carefully lest the red dye invade the card before she could control it. She steadied her hand and pressed the nib to the vanilla-coloured paper. Slowly, the rhythm of writing and ordering the cards worked its magic, and she forgot about everything else.

School would resume in ten days and, according to John Noa’s instruction, each child would be supplied with a copy of the List, five hundred words, one word per card, one box per child. Upstairs, her master muttered to himself and stamped his feet on the old weathered boards to keep warm.

He was always cold now, Letta thought. Distracted, she looked up and surveyed the familiar surroundings of the shop.

The building groaned with the weight of its years. It was unusually big in comparison to the normal houses in Ark. The large downstairs room was the shop where Benjamin conducted business and where Letta’s desk stood, tucked away in the upper corner. Behind the shop was their living room and off that again Benjamin’s study. Within the study was another door leading to the library. There were little nooks everywhere, small spaces hiding behind bigger ones, alcoves and cellars, sprawling over a large area. Upstairs there were three more rooms.

The house had been built in another time, when people thought nothing of wasting large pieces of glass in windows and lighting real fires indoors, not for heat but for comfort. Here, in the shop, an old fireplace stood against the outer wall with a thick black beam above it. The fireplace itself was packed with word boxes and the shelf held a bizarre array of ink pots and short sticks ready to be turned into pens, along with bits and pieces Benjamin brought back from his trips.

Outside, the walls were clad with sheets of tin, reflecting the sunlight and the faces of the people who entered. Inside, behind a counter made of solid oak, from trees from another time, Letta could see row upon row of shelves, honeycombed with cubbyholes. The cubbyholes cradled the vanilla-coloured, four-inch square cards, and the cards held the precious words. Round about her were the many relics of another world, such as the big glass eye of the holographic dome, in which Letta could see her own reflection, with her sharp green eyes and shock of red hair, looking back at her.

She sighed and went back to her work, moving on to the words that were to be taken out of circulation. Those words were stored here in the shop. From time to time, Benjamin took boxes of words to Noa’s house, where Letta supposed they were held out of harm’s way. She flicked through the cards in the box nearest to her.

Dream, Hope, Love, Faith

She pulled a card at random and read it. Silently first, then out loud. ‘Dream, Dream.’

She didn’t hear the old man come in again and jumped when he spoke.

‘Dream: A cherished desire,’ he said. ‘Now where did I leave my bag?’

‘It’s here, master,’ Letta said, handing the heavy leather satchel to him, not sure whether he was annoyed with her.

‘I seem to lose things a lot more than I used to,’ her master said, taking the box and peering at a piece of paper he held in his hands.

Letta looked at him and noticed the deep shadows under the red-veined eyes, the yellow shrivelled skin that clung to the sharp bones of his face and the chalk-white hair that he brushed across his brow.

‘The new list will be ready before dark tonight.’

He didn’t look at her. Five hundred words. A major edit on the orders she had already filled.

‘Was there anything in the drop box today?’ the old man asked her.

‘Just one word,’ she said, handing him a card. ‘Ant. I met the boy who dropped it off. He found this piece of paper in an old box, but he didn’t know the word.’

‘Ant,’ Benjamin said softly. ‘How quickly people forget! When I was a boy such words were commonplace but now …’

‘Now they’re all just insects.’ Letta finished the thought for him.

He shook his head. ‘There is something I need to tell you,’ he said.

Letta waited, biting her lip. ‘Yes, master?’ she said.

‘I have to go away sooner than I thought. I’m afraid I must leave at first light.’

Letta nodded. ‘How long will you be away?’

The old man rubbed his hand through his hair. ‘I’ll be back as soon as I can,’ he said. ‘You keep the shop open. Take in the words and sort them. Distribute words to those who need them. Do you think you can do that, child?’

‘Yes, master,’ she said. ‘I can do that.’

‘Mrs Truckle will help you when she can. Just remember to keep your head down. Speak List. Don’t draw attention to yourself.’

Letta sighed. She wasn’t sure she wanted her old teacher helping her. Her master’s words cut across her thoughts.

‘There is a lot of unrest out there,’ he said.

‘Outside Ark?’ Letta pressed him, fascinated and terrified all at once.

The old man shrugged. ‘Maybe even inside Ark,’ he said.

Benjamin turned away from her and very slowly started to climb the stairs. Not for the first time, she gave thanks that she had a home here in Ark. After the Melting so many people found themselves cast adrift, lost in a dangerous wilderness with no-one to help them, but her parents had been followers of Noa. They had come to Ark before the last days, and she had been born here. Benjamin was right when he said she was privileged. There were many who had not been so lucky.

Letta pushed her thoughts to one side and set about packing a bag for her master. She went into the living area and headed straight for the water bottles. They had still a few days’ worth of water there so she took three bottles and put them carefully into the old bag. She held back only one small bottle for herself. She was sure Werber would give her more if she really needed it, but Benjamin might not come on clean water for days. His food he would collect from Central Kitchen. Mary Pepper wouldn’t be happy about it, but it was another privilege of the wordsmith. He had a duty to travel outside Ark in search of words and therefore the right to bring food with him.

She moved swiftly to the old cupboard that stood by the wall and pulled open a drawer. There were all his scraping and cutting tools. She picked them up and was about to deposit them in the bag when she paused. She took the little knife he used with its simple wooden handle and sharp curved blade. She closed her eyes, feeling its weight in her hand. She tried to imagine herself out in the field. Hauling some long-forgotten artefact from the loose soil. A box. Yes. A box that had once held exotic food. She would carefully clean away the mud and silt and there underneath she would find the label. Torn perhaps, but still readable. The words just sitting there, black on white. She would peel the label off with the knife and put it between two sheets of clean paper. And then, she would see what it was that she had discovered. A new word. A word long forgotten. Something from the other time, the time before the disasters. She wouldn’t know what it meant at first, but she would deduce its meaning from the context, or ask an elderly person who would remember it from their youth. She sighed to herself.

She needed a walk, she thought, stretching her aching back. Fresh air, a snatched break before the night’s work began in earnest. Her master didn’t like her going too far from the shop but she had to have air. She pulled on her coat, the raw cotton coarse against her skin. Benjamin had clad the coat with plastic he had found on one of his trips so that it almost kept the rain out.

The street was little more than a mud track, churned up by the passing boots of the field workers as they hurried home. She pressed on, out towards the fields, moving against the flow of traffic. A man hauling pelts passed by, his eyes cast down. Behind him a cart laden with water barrels trundled by on its way to the water tower. A group of children, freed from the harvest fields, ran past her, shouting and whooping, their tally sticks beating against their chests. She sighed. Did they know that they had just lost two hundred words? Words they would never know or soon forget?

She would walk as far as the first potato fields, she told herself, and then turn back. She would still have time to pick up their evening meal from Central Kitchen. A Monday meal. Vegetable soup, parsnip cakes and green beans. She hated parsnips.

Soon, the hustle of the village was behind her and she found herself on the outskirts of the farmland. The path climbed up between the big green fields, growing steeper all the time. Letta could feel the pull at the backs of her legs. Not enough exercise, she thought. Her chest hurt as the path grew steeper and she tried to distract herself by looking over the great hedges to where the rows of potatoes lay. As she finally crested the hill, she stopped to get her breath. She turned and looked back at the great landscape laid bare in front of her, where curving fields scalloped the murky skies. Water lay in the lower ones after the heavy rain of the last few days. Below her, the forest glowered in the evening light, surrounding the town with its secrets and its plots, casting dark shadows on their lives. To her left, the small meadow, triangular in shape, like a wedge cut out of a pie, where a gavver had been found dead last spring. She shivered and pulled her coat closer to her body. To her right, a gap in the hedge revealed the path that led to the shoreline.

Purposefully, Letta turned and set off through the mud and the puddles. Within minutes, she could smell the salty perfume of the sea and hear the water pounding on the shore. She remembered how afraid she had been of it as a child. How she would wake screaming in the middle of the night convinced that it was coming to swallow them up. It was always the same dream, always the same fear. Finally, Benjamin had taken her to the shore.

The path beneath her feet mutated and became more beach than field. She was sure that this was the way she had come that day with her master. Down this incline and straight on to the beach. She had cowered behind Benjamin, afraid to look up. She could smell it, though, and hear it: Bang, swiiish, bang, swiiish.

‘Look!’ Benjamin said. ‘See! The tide is going out. It cannot hurt you.’

She had looked up and, holding his hand, had walked down until she was only yards from the water.

‘Look!’ he’d said again. ‘See that line. See those rocks. Each year the sea gives back a little of what it took.’

She looked at it now. Its muddy green water suckling the earth, sucking its life force with it. Ghosts lingered in this place, the ghosts of all who had been overtaken by the sea, grey wispy ghosts who sighed on dark winter’s evenings and faded a little in the light of summer. Letta could feel their presence brooding in the background as she tried to imagine the awfulness of it. The towering wall of water bearing down, the screams, the vain attempts to flee. The victims of the Melting. How strange it must have seemed to see that usually docile body of water suddenly rear up against them, swallowing houses, villages, towns and cities. Cities once brimming with life; structured, ordered days; possessions; families – all gone. Drowned in the salty beast. Letta shivered. The wind had turned and was blowing from the north. She watched as the grey wisps of ghosts were caught in its breath and pushed across the sky until they blended with the steely clouds.

She missed her parents, missed them with a terrible longing, and in that instant she could feel their presence. She closed her eyes and let the feeling flow through her until it lost its force, leaving her alone and shivering at the edge of the tide.

She looked to the far horizon. Then she raised one finger and saluted them, as she always did, just in case they were out there and could see her and would know that she hadn’t forgotten them. The far horizon where they now lingered, if not in body, then at least in spirit.