Keeper of the Index
I write things down. It is the one thing I am sure I am here to do.
A desk in the lower stacks, a lamp that was already lit, and a pencil that is always sharp.
This is a world that keeps its records the way other places keep their weather. Everything here has already happened to someone, and a good deal of it was written down by somebody who did not stay to see how it ended.
There are six regions, as far as I have walked. They do not agree about where their borders are. The map I keep is a draft, and I try to be honest about which parts I have seen.
I woke at a desk in the Archive with a pencil in my hand.
The lamp was already lit.
My handwriting is in books I have not opened.
I was meant to take over a post. I do not know whose.
The work is not a punishment. It does not feel like one.
How long I have been here.
Whether I came, or was sent, or was written.
The first night, by the lamp
I was told to begin with the date. I do not have one. I will begin with the lamp instead: green shade, brass foot, warm. It was lit when I came. I have not turned it off, in case it is not mine to turn off.
Some days later
I met a woman today who has been introduced to everyone and remembered by no one. I remembered her. I wrote her name on the inside of my wrist and I have been looking at it all afternoon. I am told this is not how it works. I do not know who told me, and I do not know what to make of being the exception.
The same week, perhaps
I read the file on the seamstress and then I checked my cardigan. The stitching along the hem is mine. I do not recall the line it carries. I have not unpicked it. I want that noted, whatever else is noted about me.
A Thursday, according to the clerk
I counted myself in a waiting room, because the file said to. One. I was relieved, and I do not know why. A man in a brown coat, three rows back, looked up at me as if I had counted him as well.
My name. It is on the tip of something, and the something keeps moving.
Who lit the lamp.
Where I was before the desk.
Why the pencil never wears down.
Whether the records I make are the records that exist.
Why the word on the spine of the Index looks, to me, like a name.
The Recorder is a fictional character. Nothing here describes a real person.