The List

Smith Fearfall is a scavenger working on the beach. He catches a metal canister with the letters NICENE on it, but he doesn’t know what it means. He puts it in a bag with some other items and goes home.

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.