Inkwalker

Echoes Of Magic

It had already been a busy week. Nine “Veritas”, three nomad Stars and ana Asif, and the week wasn’t half spent yet. The girl looked 17, no one knew how old she was, most people in the Blocks didn’t know how old they were. They just knew it was another day they didn’t die.

She did know lots of things, she’d been tattooing as long as she could remember, she had to be at least eleven, that’s when the tower told you your job. And she had always known she’d be stuck as “tatta” The only name given to tattoo givers in the blocks. She’d been called Tatta so long she barely remembered her given name

The bell rang and she mouthed a curse she dare not voice. She had been hoping to take off the stifling hood for a moment but the bell called her to her service. She wiped her brow, turned backwards and gestured for the man to sit. She turned back surprised to see him still standing.

“Asa,” The voice that called her given name was much older than its face looked, except the eyes.

“Honored father, you must sit.”

She didn’t know what she could add to his tattoos, and yet she didn’t see a single veritas or star among them, they were creatures she had only ever dreamed of inking, things far beyond her meager skill that she could never hope to add.

“What can I do for you honored father?”

“You can tell us about the tattoo you took without ink.”

Her breath caught in her throat. “I don’t know what you mean,” she protested.

“Asa,” he called again, “it is not an accident the tower calls you tatta, they didn’t want us finding you.” The man smiled “Please, tell us the story.”

“But I must serve.”

“You need never serve again, you need never hide your face again, What if you could give hope back to the world?”

“There is none left.”

“There is,” He said. “But she has nearly lost herself, there was a day before the blocks, when things worked as they were supposed to, When things did what they could not, when walls spoke and cars flew and tattoos became living.

“There were never such days.”

“And yet you have heard the stories, you know them as well as you know the voice you hear without words, as well as the language no one taught you.”

She was surprised, how could he know those things? How could he know what she never spoke to anyone.

“How do we know?” The man smiled. “How could we know, how do we know about the runes no one reads, that they make sense to you, that you know about the ruins.”

“Surely this has to be a trick.”

“How can it be, when if an officer had said this much he’d be damned by now? And how do we know about the ink that disappears on righteous but cannot be touched on the evil? About the creature in your dreams, the bird that talks?”

“Ok, I’ll bite honored father, how do you know these things?”

“I know them because I’m old enough to remember before things were this way. I remember when magic was more than an echo.” The voice was older now, the form thinner, as if he had lost a hundred pounds and gained a hundred years in moments.

The world faded away as her alarm roused her sleeping mind. Asa opened her eyes, she’d had the dream again, but this time she’d let the man speak, she could feel a sense of urgency.

She stood in front of the mirror and tried the poses she always saw in the old works, the ones the tower had tried to black out but eventually the pictures run through the black and you can see them again, until the minders covered them again. She laughed, covering her mouth before anyone heard her. “Decorum, decorum, at all times decorum.” the mantra was pounded into her every waking moment. But she didn’t know why she had this dream, and why it talked about the tattoo she got without taking ink. She’d been in the old ruins, and touched something, when she woke, she was at the medical center with ink she couldn’t explain.

The lines of the words had changed. She didn’t know the language but she knew the meaning, she always knew the meaning. “The city of hope.” She wrote the new letters down in her journal along with the meaning.

“Asa, you’re going to be late. Don’t you have your hood on yet?” her mother called… No, the woman she called her mother said. This woman could not be her mother, they looked nothing alike. Asa knew she was a child of the tower, given to them to raise as their own when their eldest disappeared. But there were things that still didn’t make sense.

“I, come, I come.” she said, slipping her hood on as she walked out of her room. As a Tatta she wasn’t allowed to be seen by anyone. Even her Parents hadn’t seen her face in years.

Walking out of the block, toward her shop, she knew there was bad news, windows had been blacked out, lights were dimmed, someone had stopped in the night. No one knew what else to call it, some tried ‘sleeping death’ but they weren’t asleep, they weren’t awake, they weren’t even breathing, they were just-- stopped, as if their whole bodies were frozen in time. They referred to them as ‘the stopped.”

The tattoo on her arm itched again, a common thing, but since the tattoo had come so had the voice, She didn’t tell anyone about it, since most people who heard voices were dismissed from service, sent out into the wastes to eke out a living.

But this time as she walked down the blocks it was as if the itching was trying to get her attention, She raised her eyes, a dangerous thing, but she was good at looking up without getting caught by the minders.

On the wall, next to an old doorway was a picture, she’d passed it a million times, but this time, she could see the script below it, and knew it couldn’t be a coincidence, “ASA” it said. It was her name, written in stone.

There was still a little ways before she came to the point where she could sneak out of line. And she couldn’t believe she was even thinking about sneaking out, but she couldn’t stand this, there had to be something more than this, more than service, more than being a nameless, faceless person-- was she even still that?

Is that why they stopped? Because there was nothing left of them? Because they wore the hood so long they didn’t recognize the face under it anymore. No one was anything but their job, their service. And as the only artist in the block, she became Tatta,

“There has to be more.” the words were a whisper, too low for the minders to hear. But they seemed to look at her, she adjusted her hood as if she had been looking for something, an excuse for why her head was up and why she might have said something. After a moment the minders ignored her, and without a second thought, she slipped off, following the pictures.

She had never learned more than basic reading and writing, no one did. And yet there was this whole other language she knew. It wasn’t like she looked at it and instantly knew, but it wasn’t particularly hard to learn either. Looking at it for a moment, it would be as if it was written in common.

The pictures led her to the edge of society, to the part of the city left abandoned, to the area where no one lived, or if they did they were not good people, or so they were told. But somewhere, inside, she had long ago stopped believing the tower, what were they afraid of that they made people cover their faces? Why were there minders.

She was stopped by a new rune, it took her a moment to understand it. ਪੁੱਛੋ Puchō First came the word, then came the meaning. “Ask”. was it telling her to ask something, or acknowledging the fact that she was asking?