“I go with you, or I bring the Council,” he says. “Take it or leave it.”
I’m more than mad now. I’m afraid. Would he turn me in, watch my back being laid open like Hedda’s? I don’t know the answer, and that means I’m cornered. He’s intent, watching me think. His eyelashes are startlingly long. I drop my gaze and nod once.
“When?” he asks.
“Three days.”
“The sun will be setting by then.”
I look him again in the eye. “Take it or leave it.”
“I’ll take it, then.” And here comes the smirk. “I’ll meet you here. First bell of the resting.”
“Fourth bell.”
“Oh, no. You’ll come at the first. Like you always do. Three days, Nadia the Dyer’s daughter.” He moves backward into the shadows, still grinning at me. And right before he disappears down the stairs, he says, “Don’t forget.”
I stay exactly where I am until his footsteps have faded, then dart to the edge of the roof to see how he manages the streets before the leaving bell. I don’t see him. He’s gone another way. I move out of the sun and sink down into the dark corner where Gray must have been, watching me lie on top of the wall, jump into Jin’s garden, get rid of the ladder. Braid my hair. And now that I’m alone and out of the heat, I’m shaking inside. I’m not going to be flogged. Not today. But I have been caught. Don’t forget, he said.
I measure my breaths, take my book out of my pack and run a hand over its thick cover, feel the long, connected tether that keeps it tied to my belt. I’ve been taught to write truth in my book since I was old enough to hold a pen. Our books are our sole identity after the Forgetting, the string that connects us to who we were before. The one thing we should never, ever be separated from. Don’t forget. I hear the words again in my head, this time in the voice of a child. Gray doesn’t know it, but he’s said that to me before.
And then the shaking in my middle shoots outward—legs, arms, fingers, scalp—the panic I managed to fend off on the wall slamming hard into my chest, squeezing out the air. I hear my mother’s screams, her fists banging on the barred door of her resting room, my older sister with her, pleading with my father. The baby cries in her cradle seat, and I flatten myself against the wall beneath the window, where pots of seedlings make a line across the sill above my head. I was Nadia the Planter’s daughter then, in my sixth year, and my father had let me plant those seeds, touch the tiny shoots of green and orange springing up to meet the light. I’d been so sure that he loved me.
My father takes my hand, leads me away from the window, and sits me in my chair, feet dangling, the light of sunrising painting our walls with blotches of pink and gold. Then he picks up our knife and cuts the tether of my book. I see the book leave my body, watch it cross the room without me in my father’s hands.
“Don’t cry, Nadia,” he says while he cries, “it’s almost time to forget.”
He is a stranger. My father has become a stranger who did what he said I should never do, who cut off a piece of me and took it away. And so I run. As fast as I can, out the door, losing the sound of his voice as he calls, and it’s as if the pain and confusion inside me have somehow bled into the streets. Everything is noise and stinging smoke, breaking glass and laughter—laughter that is more frightening than my mother’s screams. I don’t know where I am. Ribbons hang from the trees. Nothing looks the same. My book doesn’t bump against my leg. The stone walk is slippery and I fall and someone tries to grab me and then I run and I run more and that is when I see the brown-headed boy in the place where they make the glass.
The furnace is glowing, and the boy is squirming and kicking. A man has him by the arm, and the man has taken the boy’s book. The glassblower shouts at the man, shakes his head no, and I am angry, so angry that someone else’s book has been cut, and then I see the man throw the boy’s book, watch it land near the bright orange opening of the furnace.
I run into the workshop and I hit the man. I hit and hit him and then someone hits me and I land hard on the ground, heavy tools clattering down onto my legs. The man and the glassblower are fighting, the heat of the furnace pushing on my face. The cover of the boy’s book has caught fire, flames eating his pages, and the boy reaches through the heat and grabs it. He drops his book to the floor, smothering the fire with his hands and chest, yelling because he is burned. The men hit each other, and when the fire is gone the boy holds his smoking book with red hands, and he looks at me and says, “Don’t forget.”
I find my feet and run, down the white stone streets, between the white houses. Light is peeking over the edge of the mountains, from beyond the walls, and the sun comes in a sliver of gold. Then the sky bursts. A broken-glass sky like in the boy’s shop—sharp, bright light that pierces the gold with dazzling shards. The trees bloom, just like Father said they would, all the white flowers opening one by one while the ribbons flutter, as far as I can see on either side of the street. The air is sweet. Stone, light, flowers—it’s too bright. I crouch and cover my eyes.
When I can open them again I see a man leaning against a locked door. His hand falls down to the book at his side, and I watch his face empty, like when Mother pours water from a pitcher. When there is nothing left in the man’s face he wanders away, past a baby lying in its blanket in the middle of the street. I can’t see whether the baby has a book or not, and then I hear a woman cry. And even though I can’t make sense of my world I do understand that this noise is different. The woman isn’t crying because she’s afraid she might die; she cries because she has lost her life. She has forgotten. Everyone has forgotten, and the sound of it hurts my ears.
I push myself up and go home, slipping on the stones. I don’t know where else to go. I’m bruised and tired and I hurt. I want my mother. My father isn’t there when I open the door, and even this room looks unfamiliar in the cracked white light. The baby has cried herself to sleep in the cradle seat. There are no seedlings in the window, but on the table is a book, open to the first page. It says Nadia the Dyer’s daughter. But that is not my book. I push until I lift the bar across the door to my mother’s resting room.
“Mother?” I call.
And there she is, just as she’s always been, my sister huddling in the corner. Mother blinks once, twice, and when her eyes find me she jumps back. Scrambles away.
“Who are you?” my mother yells. “Get away from me! Get away!”