The Book of Forgetting

Letter 5 of the Book of Forgetting

The morning of Day 30 came in warm and close, the fog pressing at the road ends like a held breath. I was at my bench, cleaning the thread guides on a survey drone, when Noa came in without knocking, her blue sweater bright in the grey light.

“Fernando,” she said. “Three babies this time. Rimon and Eliana and Yael. All born before dawn. All dreaming the same sentence.”

I set down the thread guide. “The fog is just fog.”

“Yes.” She held her river stone in both hands, turning it over. “And three old ones died. Carmel the farmer, Talia the librarian, Reuben the orchard keeper. All asleep. All ninety or older.”

“That’s the way it goes,” I said. But I was counting. Three born. Three died. The numbers balanced, the way they had been balancing for weeks now, and I did not like the shape of it.

“And Malachi the welder got a seed,” Noa said. “A bird dropped it at his feet on the west road. He brought it to the Council. Garrin put it in the drawer with the other one.”

“The drawer,” I said.

“The drawer in the Council hall. The one with the lock.”

I nodded. I had seen the drawer. I had seen Garrin open it once, when he thought I wasn’t looking. It had held nothing then but dust.

—

Ivo came by at noon, his radio clipped to his shoulder, his grey-green jacket heavy even in the warm air. He stood in my door and looked at me a long moment before he spoke.

“Two guards turned people back at the fog line this morning,” he said. “Rimon the younger at the west road. Yael the younger and Dinah at the north road. The Council prefers people to stay at their work.”

“They were measuring,” I said.

“They were walking toward the fog with instruments in their hands. That’s measuring.” He crossed his arms. “Levi fined Zev too. Two coin. For the same thing.”

“Zev measures the fog every week. He’s been doing it for years.”

“Not anymore.” Ivo’s jaw was set. “The Council is tired of it, Fernando. They’re tired of the numbers not matching. They’re tired of the questions.”

“The numbers not matching is exactly why people ask questions,” I said.

Ivo looked at me a long moment, his eyes checking the room the way they always did before they rested on me. “You keep the record. You know what happens to people who push too hard at the edge of this town.”

“What happens?”

“They get tired,” he said. “And then they stop.”

He left without another word, and I sat at my bench with the thread guide in my hands, the drone half-mended, the light warm and close through the window.

—

The mill was quiet when I walked down at sunset. Obed the younger and Micah were sitting on the steps, talking low, their voices carrying on the warm air like the river itself. I nodded to them as I passed. Obed raised a hand. Micah didn’t.

Yarden the younger was sitting by the Lethe, the slow grey river that ran along the town’s edge, doing nothing. Adah sat a little way off, doing the same. They didn’t look at each other. They didn’t look at me. They just sat, watching the water move, and when I passed them on my way back, Yarden caught my eye.

“Fernando,” he said.

“Yarden.”

“I sat here all afternoon,” he said. “Did nothing. Watched the water. And I came back sure of something.”

“What?”

He looked at the river a long moment. “That this place was made on purpose. By someone who is not against us.”

Adah nodded without looking up. “Same,” she said. “Quietly sure.”

I stood there a moment, the river moving past, the fog grey at the road’s end. I did not know what to say to that. I still don’t.

—

That night I wrote the day in the Book of Forgetting. Three born, dreaming the sentence. Three died, asleep. Two turned back at the fog line. One fined. A seed in a locked drawer. Two people sitting by the river, quietly sure.

I closed the book and sat in the dark of my workshop, the rangefinder cold on the bench beside me, and I thought about the shape of the days. They were not random. They were not chaos. They were ordered, balanced, placed.

Someone wants this found.

I did not sleep well.