The List

Letta, a wordsmith’s apprentice, is restless and tired of waiting for Benjamin, her “master” (5), as she transcribes words. When she hears two voices in Benjamin’s study, she enters with two cups of tea. Benjamin tells a gavver—one of John Noa’s law enforcers—that using only 500 words is “not human.” The gavver, whose name is Carver, says 700 words is already too many, then takes the tray from Letta and asks, in stunted English, “What is?” When Letta says, “Burdock tea,” Carver corrects her, saying that Burdock is not a “List word.” He drops the tray, and the tea burns her ankles. When she speaks with Benjamin afterwards, she forbids him from speaking List. They are wordsmiths and can speak freely. Benjamin reminds her that they’re the last two wordsmiths left and encourages her to trust John Noa. Letta looks out at the uniform landscape of identical houses built before the Melting.

As a child, Letta only knew List words. In 10 days, each schoolchild will receive the new List Benjamin has been asked to curate. Currently, she is preparing boxes for the students of Mrs. Truckle, the schoolteacher. Each card contains one word. Each box contains 500 cards. Although she knows the work is necessary, Letta hates removing words from the language. The current words slated for erasure are the following: “Dream, Hope, Love, Faith” (7).

Benjamin asks if anything arrived in the drop box, where Ark’s citizens deposit stray words. The word Ant is that day’s only delivery. Insects is now the only acceptable word that can be used to describe any member of the insect kingdom. Benjamin tells her that he is leaving in the morning. Mrs. Truckle will help her as needed. He urges caution because of unrest, both inside and outside of Ark.

Letta was born in Ark, and her parents were loyal to Noa. She imagines traveling with Benjamin and finding new words. Once, on the shore, Benjamin had showed her that the tide wouldn’t harm them. Now Letta tries to imagine the Melting and the tidal waves. She misses her parents and salutes them across the water.

Letta makes three boxes of words for a carpenter’s three apprentices. She gives them each 25 carpentry-related words in addition to their 500. One of them is named Daniel. His tally stick has at least 15 notches, signaling “[f]ifteen breaches of the language law” (16).

Next, Letta prepares to remove words for 30 types of fruit, like pineapple. List doesn’t include fruits unavailable in Ark. A boy knocks on the door and asks for a box, claiming to be an apprentice. She explains that she is the wordsmith while Benjamin is away. Their conversation is stunted because they speak List.

In Benjamin’s library, she retrieves a box of words. She notices Benjamin’s banner that reads, “In the beginning was the Word” (19). Letta wonders why the apprentice’s master didn’t give him his words. When she returns from the library, the boy is on the floor, bleeding from a bullet wound. Unsure of why she’s helping him, Letta takes him to the Monk’s Room. As she hears the siren that announces the gavvers, she leaves him and answers the door, finding Carver on the porch. Carver slaps Letta when she feigns ignorance of the boy. A second gavver enters and tells Carver to come with him.

Before passing out, the boy tells Letta that his name is Marlo. While he sleeps, she examines him. There are scars on his back, and she wonders about the Black Angel, a drug invented by the Green Warriors. She wonders if it might have been in the bullet they shot him with. In his sleep, Marlo is feverish. He shouts the name “Finn” and tells Letta, in clear speech, not to tell anyone about the pump house. The old tongue makes Letta uneasy. She wonders if Marlo is a wordsmith, although Benjamin is supposedly the last.

When he awakes, Marlo tells her that he dreamed that he was a hare the night before. He saw red eyes watching him from the brush. He asks Letta if she dreams, and she’s surprised he knows the word Dream, since it is Non-List.

As Letta watches him sleep instead of working, she recalls the spread of violent gangs after the Melting. They now live in the woods, and she wonders if Marlo is a criminal. She is uneasy but excited.

Central Kitchen is busy as two gavvers watch Mary Pepper serve food. Letta feels like they’re watching her. Letta asks for two lunches, which makes Mary suspicious. Letta lies and says that the second lunch is for Benjamin, who will return by noon.

A gavver stops Letta and asks if she saw the boy. Letta admits that she saw him at the shop. When she tells Marlo about the conversation, it scares him. He says the gavvers shot him with a bullet tainted by Black Angel. Letta hides him in a cupboard when Mrs. Truckle knocks on the door. Downstairs, Letta collects 42 tally sticks for her. Mrs. Truckle hates the punishment system and blames the parents for teaching children Non-List words. She says Letta has eyes like her father and leaves.

By afternoon, Marlo is slightly improved. Letta goes to the water station, where handsome, arrogant Werber Downes, whom she dislikes, is distributing the rations. Everyone knows that he wants Letta for a mate, but she doesn’t have to worry about it until she is 18.

Carver is in the shop when she returns. He searches the study and then goes upstairs, but Marlo’s bed is empty. He calls Marlo a “Desecrator” (45). To Letta’s relief, the cupboard is empty as well. Carver breaks a box of her possessions, including a lock of her mother’s hair and a ribbon with F for Freya. After Carver leaves, Letta finds Marlo is in the Monk’s Room.

The chapter then switches to an italicized, internal monologue of John Noa, Ark’s creator. Noa watches a wolf and thinks about the word extinction. The process in Ark is harder than he expected, but it’s worth it. He will deal with the traitors and criminals. He is grateful that he and Amelia are alive. Noa thinks about the eventual results of his plan—without providing details for the reader—and goes to his tower.

Letta collects her mother’s hair and closes the box. Her parents had gone on a voyage outside Ark, against Noa’s orders. While cleaning, she wonders if Marlo is his real name. Desecrators, scavengers, and the Wordless live outside, in places like the shanty, Tintown. The Wordless are “strange troubled souls who wandered aimlessly, silent and half-mad” (52). Letta thinks Marlo had already been shot when he arrived.

Letta hears noise outside and sees that four gavvers have seized Daniel, the healer’s son. One gavver hits him with a bat as his mother, Rose pleads with them. Letta goes to Daniel’s parents after they take him away. Daniel stole potatoes and will now be banished, which infuriates Letta. She follows the gavvers to a place called 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 (55).

Letta knows Marlo’s fate will be worse than Daniel’s if they catch him. She climbs a hill and stops in front of a marble statue of a figure known as the Goddess. There are rumors that she was a prophetess, or the first clone. Now the clones are gone. Letta doesn’t know how to believe in her, and wonders why she is called a Goddess, not a prophetess.

At the shop, Marlo says he is an apprentice of his uncle, who is a Creator, which is what Letta would call a Desecrator. When Letta says he should be ashamed, Marlo asks if she just believes anything Noa says. Letta ignores him. She knows the Desecrators are dangerous rebels who use art, music, and plays as anti-Noa propaganda. Letta worries about how to get Marlo out of the house. He tells her that he dreamed he was a fox running from dogs in the forest. He also says his friends might be able to help Daniel, which intrigues her. Marlo says they can contact his uncle Finn during a show on Friday. He promises that he will be healthy enough, and Letta commits to go with him.

Letta sleeps poorly. In the morning she sees a shrew in the street. It is protected by Ark law, like all animals. On the beach, she wonders what Benjamin would do in her situation. Her parents had been sailors who undertook one more exploratory voyage, even after Noa gave up on finding more land. They gave themselves 60 days and never returned.

Letta imagines their sailboat on the horizon and the first sight of her parents. Marlo is not healing, and she hopes that Friday’s meeting will at least let her give him to his people. He isn’t like she imagined the Desecrators. She goes across the street to find the healer, John Lurt. In a hard voice, he asks who is sick.

Letta leaves quickly and finds Mrs. Truckle in the shop, waiting for more boxes. When there is a crash upstairs, Mrs. Truckle tells Letta to be careful. Letta locks the door after she leaves. Marlo is on the floor. After lifting him to the bed, he raves and shouts all night, which terrifies her.

The fever breaks by Friday and Marlo asks why Letta is helping him. She doesn’t want him to be banished but doesn’t say so. She leaves him in the Monk’s Room and goes to find Finn. By the wheat fields, she finds a low shed that Marlo had described to her. Letta sees a woman playing a saxophone on the roof. Letta knows the word Saxophone but not the sound. The men with scythes stop working to listen. Letta sees Finn, a massive, bearded man. She tells him Marlo is at the wordsmith’s shop, then runs. Letta hears the music stop. When she looks back, people are scattering, but the roof is empty.