The List

Letta wonders what Noa is planning that Benjamin wouldn’t agree to. Benjamin had told her that Noa really didn’t kill. Rather, he insisted that it was nature’s duty to dispose of the uncooperative. This is the first Letta has ever known of torture. Now she wants the people to see that Ark is built on lies and Noa is dangerous. When she sees Marlo, unexpectedly, he says he dreamed of her, which means she summoned him.

After he hugs her, Letta tells him the story. Marlo says she must act normal or the gavvers will know something is wrong. To that end, Letta opens the shop and works through the day. Later, she talks in Benjamin’s study with Marlo and Finn. Tonight is the night the gavvers will leave Benjamin in the forest. Before they can try to rescue him, they have to find out which of the city’s four gates they will take Benjamin through on the way to the forest. Letta believes that Noa will have to sign the banishment order. She can see it—and the specific gate—if she can get into Noa’s office.

Letta talks with Noa in his study, after asking to see him on wordsmith business. She says her purpose yesterday had been to ask him about adding words to the List, but they had both been distracted by Amelia’s distress. Letta wants to add one word: Hope. When she refers to the word as harmless, Noa disagrees. He says, “Here in Ark, we don’t hope. We do” (180).

After leaving his office, Letta explores. She goes into a laboratory filled with vats of water that contain paper. She realizes that Noa is destroying words, recycling the cards, and making new, blank paper from the pulp. He asked her and Benjamin to find every word, but he is destroying them instead, and they have unwittingly been helping him.

Letta hears Noa pass in the hall and goes to his office, where she sifts through a stack of papers on his desk. She hides under the desk just before Noa and a man named Len enter the office. Noa sits at the desk, almost touching Letta, and he tells Len that he has done a good job. They vaguely talk about something quick and painless that the scientists are optimistic about.

Noa says he never thought Benjamin could betray him. Len leaves the orders and leaves. As Letta’s legs cramp, she mentally recites the names of plants to calm herself. Noa finally leaves and she crawls out. On the desk, she sees the order for Benjamin’s banishment, including their approach through the South Gate. Then she makes it out of the house without being detected.

Noa thinks about the mockery that he and Benjamin received before the Melting. Benjamin had crusaded against the oil companies. Noa believes that nature will crush them all, as it should, and reward the next species: “Without words, he would never again be dominant. Nothing wasted, nothing lost” (190). He remembers meeting Amelia on a beach and believes that she is the only one he can turn to. She will always be there.

Marlo tells Letta that he dreamed of blood stretching across the forest floor, which reminds Letta of the ink. She thinks they can use it to track the cart that will transport Benjamin. They fill a large container with ink and discuss a plan. Marlo will lie in the road to stop the cart, and Finn will tell the gavvers his son is sick. Then Letta will go under the cart, attach the container with a string, and puncture it with a hammer and a spike.

The plan goes smoothly that night until Letta is under the cart at the South Gate. She hears Benjamin moan and instinctively jumps on the cart to touch him before it throws her off as it moves on. As Finn and Marlo scold her, she sees that one of the gavvers hit Finn. She admires him and Marlo.

Back at the shop the next day, she leaves a note saying she will be gone for two days. She packs and then finds Mrs. Truckle on her doorstep. She says Letta should take Werber on her wordfinding mission to the forest. Letta hears her out, and then goes to the bridge alone.

At the bridge, she passes the two gavvers without incident. She regroups with Marlo and Finn, and they find the track left by the ink in the forest. Letta realizes that, even if they find Benjamin, she can’t take him home. Near evening, they smell smoke. They see a small woman in black near a ring of fire, with a bundle of rags in its center. When they tell her they’re looking for Benjamin, she douses part of the ring and tells them to enter. Her name is Edgeware. The bundle of rags is Benjamin.

Edgeware lit the fire to keep animals away. Marlo recognizes her as “The Black Woman of the Woods” (210) and knows that she rescues people. As Letta looks at Benjamin’s emaciated body, she thinks:

She’d always thought of him as a stopgap, someone who would take care of her till the people she loved came back. Now she realized he was the person she loved, and he was the person who loved her, and she didn’t want to lose him (211).

They reach a small village, where she places Benjamin in a bed inside a small cabin. Edgeware washes the nailbeds where his fingernails had been, and then Letta takes over for her. Letta has never heard of the herbs Edgeware uses for the salve she makes. Benjamin finally opens his eyes and says her name.