She hungered for words. She hungered for the curve of the letters and she longed to read. She could stare at a page for hours and just discover. Elfie’s love of books- for the lines to become sound, for the syllables to meld together and become words, and for the words to create new ideas, new people, a new world- that was her weakness.
She’d seen it happen twice since The Banning. The Officials only permitted books to be seen during Punishment. She would never forget the determined look on the young man’s face as he stepped of the platform right above a pile of his books. They burned them after he was declared dead; burned the gallows along with the books. A few weeks later they burned a whole family, covered the children’s heads with bags and burned them, books and all. Citizens were required to watch Punishment. It was the Officials way of making sure their message was clear, their way of keeping the fear. Both times Elfie was with her mother. Today, she was watching her mother.
Well, at least, her head was turned in the general direction of her mother. All she could see through her tears was color: blurs of reds, browns, blues, and grays, all moving about and murmuring with solemn voices. Then it happened. The colors, the voices, the sentencing, the books, the step, the snap, the silence, the fire.
Her life became dull, a void of loss. The crowd cleared and she was left standing there. After a few last sniffles she realized she wasn’t alone. An elderly woman with shocking blue eyes had been watching her. After closer examination Elfie noticed the scars running from the woman’s hands up her arms, stopping at her neck. The woman was a Gatherer.
Elfie had seen people pick through the ashes after past Punishments, but very few were desperate enough to actually reach into a dying, yet bitter fire to snatch up the remains of a book. The woman was staring now, and so was Elfie. After a few moments of silence, they were shuffled along by some Officials and told to “keep walking.”
Months passed and Elfie was surviving, barely. Everyday was a struggle for survival. She was grateful that she only had herself and what was left of her mother’s secret library to take care of. Even so, thoughts of that day and what had happened were always on her mind. On particularly bad days, when actual hunger threatened to eat away at her insides till she was absolutely nothing, she would go into that library and read. The pages still smelled like her mother and of better days, days of freedom. There were no more Punishments that year.
She kept seeing the woman everywhere, kept seeing those eyes everywhere she went. It was calming, reassuring, in a way, to know that she wasn’t alone. There was someone else in the world who knew how to read, someone who understood her hunger. Of course there was always hunger; everywhere she looked she could see starving people. The town was full of starving people. But they didn’t realize that just food would never end up satisfying them.
Elfie resolved to start her mother’s secret business back up again. It was needed. So she packed up the tiny library and set to the road, selling books secretly to starving people and feeding them the food that she was brought up on. It was tiring and she never stayed in one town for more than a couple of days, but it felt good to be back at her old life again. Some towns already had their own secret library systems set up (little book exchanges kept underwraps), but had welcomed her nonetheless. Others were ridden with fear and were nervous to see her; those were always the hardest, the towns filled with gallows and starving orphans who begged in the streets. And in some towns people would be overjoyed to see her and would hungrily snatch up what little books she had with zeal, letting her stay with them and feeding her until she was stuffed, the way she had fed them. Elfie had almost forgotten about that woman from the square until she returned to her old town.
It wasn’t the sight of books that caused Elfie to run once she got to the square, it was those eyes. It was the woman, on the platform. Those scarred wrists were tied together and she was standing there. A crowd had gathered. Elfie’s head was spinning. Things were a different blur this time, a buzzing one that caused her to focus in on nothing but the woman, then at the mountain of books that threatened to topple over at any second. She pushed her way to the front of the crowd. Then came the colors, followed by the voices, the sentencing, the books, the step, the snap, the silence, the fire.
