The Wordsmith

CHAPTER 4

MARLO had been asleep for hours. Letta felt his forehead and knew his temperature still raged. Through the window, she could see a sliver of yellow moon, lying on its back in a cloudless sky. On her knee, she held her box, where she had carefully re-instated all that she could find of her mother’s hair. Carefully, she placed the broken lid on top. They had been gone for such a long time. She could still smell her mother’s scent when she closed her eyes. Still feel her own small hand in her father’s strong one.

‘Be brave, little one,’ he had said. ‘We’ll come for you soon.’

Her parents had been so sure that there was more to the planet than Ark. John Noa had given up all explorations by then, but her parents were stubborn. They had disobeyed Noa and gone on one last trip.

She stroked the warm wood of the box and looked at the boy asleep in the bed. He was a Desecrator. She had checked the red ledger. There was no tally stick registered to a Marlo. Nothing.

Was Marlo even his name? Names were closely controlled in Ark. Babies were presented one week after birth and the wordsmith proffered the approved list of names to parents. She couldn’t remember seeing Marlo on that list. People born before the foundation of Ark retained their given names, but Marlo was young. A Desecrator.

Even the word terrified her. Would his people come looking for him? People said that the Desecrators lived in the forest or outside the walls, in Tintown. She had often stood at the gates of Ark and wondered what it would be like to live out there. No proper houses, no electricity. The people of Tintown were those who hadn’t made it into Ark, Benjamin said. They had set up home as near as they could get to John Noa’s safe harbour and lived off the scraps of Ark. They were scavengers in the main, though some of them got work in Ark during harvest time, or doing the jobs no-one else wanted to do. In return they got a limited supply of clean water. Tintown was also where the Wordless lived, strange troubled souls who wandered aimlessly, silent and half-mad. She looked at Marlo again. Maybe they had forced him to join them. Maybe he’d had no choice. Her mind flew back to that first evening in the shop.

She was so stupid. He had already been shot when he came in, she now realised. He hadn’t been looking for words: he’d been looking for somewhere to hide. She gritted her teeth. She would go to the gavvers in the morning. Turn him in. Explain that she didn’t know.

Didn’t know what? She had known the gavvers wanted him. She had known they shot him. She nodded grimly in the darkening room. She would have to turn him in, and she would have to tell the truth.

He stirred. She had managed to get some ginger root and onion and had made it into a tea. She took a spoon, and with it, poured some of the liquid between his lips. His breath was warm on her fingers.

‘Letta?’ he said, his voice hoarse and high-pitched.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’m here. Rest now.’

The night seemed to go on for ever. She picked up a card and wrote carefully, but her mind refused to focus. She had to have Mrs Truckle’s work finished. School started on Thursday. The day after tomorrow. They had never been this late before. If the words weren’t ready it would draw even more attention to her. She gripped the pen firmly:

Word 473 Water: Clear, colourless, odourl–

The nib snapped. Red ink splattered the card. Letta threw the offending pen at the far wall. She got up and ran downstairs to the shop and went straight to the old fireplace. She reached up and took a pen from the shelf above, then felt around in the dust for a nib. She was just shoving it onto the pen handle when she heard a ruckus outside.

She went to the door and opened it as quietly as she could. Through the narrow slit, she saw the cause of the commotion. Gavvers. Four of them dragging a struggling boy between them. With a sickening feeling, she realised that she knew him. It was Daniel, the healer’s son. Across the street she could see the healer himself trying to restrain the boy’s mother. He had wrapped his arms about her in a bear-like embrace but Letta could see her struggling and hear her screams. At first, she couldn’t make out the words, but gradually her ear attuned, and she understood what the distraught woman was saying.

‘My boy! Give me back my boy!’

Daniel was also struggling, kicking, shouting at the gavvers, as they loaded him onto the horse-drawn cart. One of the gavvers was carrying a stout wooden bat and, as Letta watched, he hit the boy with it, striking his lower back and causing the lad to double up in pain. This time, the mother managed to escape from her husband. She ran towards the boy; he turned and saw her and screamed in a voice Letta would never forget.

‘Maaama!’

And then the horse moved. The cart jolted. The healer caught his wife and pulled her back, the horse’s feet tapped out a staccato rhythm on the old stones, punctuated by the sobs of the mother, and then the street was quiet again, as though nothing had happened. Letta waited a moment then slipped outside.

‘Help?’ she said to the couple. ‘Help you?’

The mother was still weeping, her voice high and shrill, her face pressed to her mate’s chest. The healer was a tall man but to Letta he seemed to have grown smaller in the last minutes. He looked at her with pink-veined watery eyes.

‘Boy steal potatoes,’ he said. ‘Gavvers search. Find.’

‘What they do with him?’ Letta asked, her voice shaking.

‘Banish,’ the man said. ‘Banish.’

Letta shook her head. She knew that banishment meant death. ‘No!’ she said. ‘Only boy.’

The healer turned away from her and, half-carrying his wife, went back towards his house.

Letta felt anger building in her. They couldn’t do that. He was only a boy. She walked faster and faster in the direction the cart had gone till she was no longer walking but running. Down through the town, past the sleeping houses and on to the West Gate. The gavvers on duty looked up lazily as she passed among them. She stopped and stood like a young colt, unsure what to do next. This was the place known as Limbo. An in-between place. Nothing but scrub and dusty pine trees, dark skeletons, stripped of their leaves, black and ominous, in the washed-out light of the morning. Nothing grew here and it was always quiet, as though even the birds didn’t want to be around this kind of gloom.

To John Noa and the Green Warriors, the trees were sacred things, responsible for the air they breathed, habitat to animals and birds, and as a result they were guarded and protected in Ark, but Letta had always found them menacing and mysterious. She took a few steps forward, kicking loose clinker and flinty shale as she went. The wind gusted, blowing her hair into her eyes. She pushed it away and squinted at the forest. There was no sign of the cart. No sign of the boy. Her heart sank. She couldn’t dispel the image of his mother’s face. She kicked a lump of clinker angrily. This wasn’t what Ark was supposed to be about. This wasn’t what she had been taught. She turned quickly and went back through the gates. The gavvers stopped talking as she approached, staring at her silently. She ignored them and walked on.

She didn’t go straight home. She took the road north, where there were fewer houses. She needed to walk. She needed to think. If she told the gavvers about Marlo they would expel him or execute him. She was sure of that. He was a Desecrator. A rebel. If they expelled Daniel over a few stolen potatoes, what would they do to Marlo? Ahead of her the road climbed steeply. She pushed on, welcoming the pain in her legs, the tightness in her chest. At the top of the hill, the Goddess loomed.

She stopped in front of her. The Goddess was cut from a single block of white marble, her complexion the pure white of hoar frost, her face radiant with fine features. Her almond shaped eyes were open, staring at the sky. Her dress fell in generous ripples about her shapely body. Her hands held a bunch of drooping bluebells. On her feet were brocade sandals etched with exotic birds. Letta reached out and touched the white hands.

The Goddess had been here for ever. Since before the Melting. They said she was the last prophetess, a messenger from God, who came to warn the people that the end was nigh. Some people said that she was the first human clone before it all went wrong, when people thought cloning was something to celebrate. They grew her in a laboratory, and her first words were that she had come from God. Benjamin said they made the first one divine so that people would accept the whole idea of cloning. Mrs Truckle said all religion was evil and that the new world should believe in John Noa. The clones were long gone, along with the rest of the new technology. But the Goddess remained.

Poor Goddess! She had come to warn them but they hadn’t listened, of course.

And then came the Melting. The ice that turned to water and flooded the planet, the sea devouring everything in its path. Towns and villages swallowed whole. The old technology destroyed. Animals extinct. And all of the written word gone. Letta stood back and looked at the Goddess.

‘Why do we call you that?’ she said aloud. ‘You were a prophet not a god.’

The Goddess said nothing.

Walking back down the hill, Letta made her decision. She would have to tell Marlo this morning, but first she had to get food for both of them.

Mary Pepper looked at her and narrowed her eyes. ‘Benjamin not home,’ she said.

Letta blushed. She’d forgotten all about their conversation the previous day.

‘No,’ she stammered. ‘Not come home.’

The older woman nodded grimly. ‘Breakfast only,’ she said, handing Letta an egg. ‘Still have yesterday lunch. Take bread.’

Letta took the piece of bread she was entitled to and hurried out. They would have to live on one egg between them until the evening meal. She daren’t use Benjamin’s tokens to feed Marlo. Her stomach was already protesting. Marlo drank the tea she gave him but refused to eat. Letta felt guilty but she ate the food gratefully.

‘Have you been shot before?’

He nodded.

Letta dipped her bread in the hot tea and lifted it to her mouth.

‘We can’t go on like this,’ she said finally. ‘Can we contact your uncle?’

Marlo hesitated. Letta watched him closely.

‘Maybe,’ he said.

‘Maybe?’ Letta repeated. ‘Where does he live? What does he do?’

She could feel herself getting angry. He wouldn’t tell her the truth. He was trying to concoct some story to keep her happy. She raised one eyebrow. He nodded.

‘There is something I should tell you,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ said Letta, finishing her tea. She was enjoying this, she realised. Let him make up a lie. It would be interesting to see him try to hoodwink her.

‘My uncle is a Creator. I am his apprentice.’

Letta almost stopped breathing.

‘Desecrator, you mean,’ she said.

‘That is Noa’s word, not ours. We call ourselves Creators. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.’

‘I knew already,’ she said.

Marlo’s eyes widened. ‘You knew?’

‘The gavver told me.’

‘And you didn’t betray me?’ Marlo said softly.

‘I was going to, I know I should, but now … now … I think we should contact your uncle and let him take you away.’ The words poured out before she had time to think about it. ‘I cannot keep a Desecrator here. My master and I are loyal to John Noa.’

‘I know you have been told terrible things about us.’

‘Yes,’ said Letta, blood rushing to her face. ‘I know you are thieves and murderers. I know you want to destroy the new world.’

‘Do you?’ said Marlo, lying back on the pillow. ‘Or do you just believe whatever Noa says?’

Letta stood up, her knees shaking. ‘You should be ashamed.’

He closed his eyes. ‘I am sorry,’ he said. ‘I will think of a way of contacting my uncle.’

Letta turned and walked away. Outside the room door she stopped to get her breath. His words rang in her ears.

Do you just believe whatever Noa says?

She remembered the scene on the street earlier and Daniel’s face as they threw him on the cart. That wasn’t right. She was sure of it. But she did know what the Desecrators did. She knew how they stole food and water. She had seen their posters, inciting people to rise up against John Noa. She knew they staged shows from time to time, using banned arts to distract the workers. She shook her head. They might not be as vicious as the bandits that roamed the forest but they were equally destructive. She hadn’t time to think about it now. She had to be at the schoolhouse at twelve bells with words for Mrs Truckle. Words that weren’t written yet. She hurried to her desk and started to work.

She arrived at the school as the bell struck the hour. Letta opened the door and walked in. The small classroom was exactly as she remembered it. Here she had sat, day after day, and learnt the List words; memorised the definitions; learned to form letters. Children in Ark were taught the bare minimum when it came to reading. Enough to allow John Noa to communicate with them using the written word, but no more. Letta had learnt to read and write properly from Benjamin.

‘Letta,’ Mrs Truckle said, walking across the floor to her. Letta smiled at her. The old woman seemed more stooped than usual.

‘Words ready,’ Letta said, proffering the boxes, but Mrs Truckle didn’t smile. She didn’t even look at the neat array of boxes now sitting on her table.

Letta frowned. ‘You good?’ she said stiltedly, wishing she could free her tongue and speak properly.

Mrs Truckle shook her head, and Letta could see the tears welling in her eyes. Letta went to her.

‘Sit,’ she said, pulling out a stool for the older woman.

Mrs Truckle sat down, her shoulders heaving as she struggled to control her sobs.

‘What’s the matter?’ Letta said softly, abandoning List in her worry about the schoolteacher.

‘Daniel.’ Mrs Truckle coughed out the word.

‘I know,’ Letta said, taking her hand.

‘Good boy,’ Mrs Truckle said, turning her eyes to Letta. ‘Good boy.’

‘I know,’ Letta said.

‘Not first time,’ the woman went on. ‘Always in trouble. Always, but good heart.’

Neither of them noticed the door open. The click of it closing made Letta look up in time to see Werber Downes standing there, his round face wreathed in smiles. In his hand he held a bottle of water for the teacher.

‘Mrs Truckle!’ he said and then stopped, noticing Letta.

‘No harm to all here,’ he said. ‘Mrs Truckle sick?’

The old woman stood up quickly, wiping her tears away.

‘No,’ she said. ‘No sick.’

‘Healer boy taken,’ Werber said, drumming his fingers on the table. ‘Daniel. Criminal.’

Letta felt her face flush.

‘No criminal,’ she spat at him. ‘Daniel no criminal.’

Werber smiled.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Criminal. Steal food. Bad boy.’

He smiled again, wiggling his eyebrows, mocking the boy who had been banished, and Letta had an overwhelming desire to punch his stupid face. She raised her hand, blood rushing to her face, but Mrs Truckle caught the hand and held it firmly.

‘Help carry words, Werber,’ Mrs Truckle said swiftly, never taking her eyes off Letta. ‘Help carry words to back room.’

Werber’s face fell, but he knew better than to disobey his old teacher. He put down the water and started to pick up the word boxes. Mrs Truckle’s eyes met Letta’s and they nodded to one another. Letta felt the weight of unspoken words, frozen in the air between them.

As soon as she got home, she sank down on to the floor behind the counter. What would Mrs Truckle think if she knew a Desecrator was upstairs in Letta’s bedroom? He had to go. Somehow, she had to get him out of the house. But how?

Much later, worn out from going over the problem from every angle and finding no answer, Letta climbed the stairs slowly and went to see Marlo. He was awake.

‘How do you feel?’

‘Thirsty,’ he replied and smiled sheepishly. She took the cup that sat on the table beside the bed and held it for him as he drank. His hands under hers shook badly.

‘I had another dream,’ he said.

Letta said nothing.

‘I dreamt I was a fox. I was living in the forest and being hunted by dogs.’

‘Stop,’ Letta said, unable to listen to any more.

Marlo looked up at her, one eyebrow raised.

‘I don’t want to hear about the forest,’ she said curtly. ‘The gavvers banished a boy there today.’

‘Someone you knew?’

Letta nodded.

‘Do you know where they entered the forest?’

Letta shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I followed them towards the West Gate but then I lost them.’

Marlo nodded.

‘My friends might be able to help, if …’

‘If?’

Letta felt her heart fill with hope.

‘If they knew where to look. If the wild animals don’t find him first. I don’t want to raise your hopes.’

‘How can we let them know?’

‘There might be a way,’ he said.

‘Go on,’ Letta said urgently. ‘Tell me.’

‘Maybe you could contact Finn, but –’

‘But?’

‘But – I have to be able to trust you,’ he went on, not meeting her eye.

‘You don’t trust me?’ Letta snapped at him. ‘I’m risking everything for you and you don’t trust me?’

‘That’s not what I meant,’ Marlo said. ‘It’s just … it’s not my secret to tell.’

Letta waited, her mouth set in a hard line.

‘There’s going to be a show on Friday.’

‘A show?’

‘Finn and some friends are going to perform and then talk to the workers. You can find him there.’

Talk to the workers. Letta knew the Desecrators didn’t just talk to people. They incited them. Tried to lead them to revolt against John Noa. She felt sick.

‘Where?’ she managed to ask. ‘When?’

‘The main wheat field, at midday. There’s a shed there, with a flat roof.’

‘They’ll be on the roof?’

‘Yes,’ Marlo said.

‘Maybe by then you would be well enough to go and meet them?’ Letta said. ‘And tell him about Daniel?’

He nodded again, but didn’t say anything.

‘And if you are not well enough …’

His beautiful blue-grey eyes looked up at her and she could see the fragility in them.

‘I will go,’ he said. ‘I will be ready.’

The words hung there in the air between them, sparking with electricity. Finally, Letta nodded.

‘So be it,’ she said.