MaddAddam 3 - MaddAddam by Atwood Margaret

Author:Atwood, Margaret [Atwood, Margaret]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
Published: 2013-12-05T05:00:00+00:00

Bone Cave

Cursive

Toby is at work on her journal. She doesn’t really have the energy for it, but Zeb went to all that trouble to bring her the materials and he’s bound to notice if she doesn’t use them. She’s writing in one of the cheap schooltime drugstore notebooks. The cover has a bright yellow sun, several pink daisies, and a boy and a girl, rudimentary figures of the kind children used to draw. Back when there were human children – how long ago? It seems like centuries since the plague swept through. Though it’s less than half a year.

The boy has blue shorts, a blue cap, and a red shirt; the girl has pigtails, a triangular skirt, red, and a blue top. They both have smudgy black blob eyes and thick red upcurved mouths; they’re laughing fit to kill.

Fit to die. They are only paper children, but they seem dead now anyway, like all the real children. She can’t look at this notebook cover too much because it hurts.

Better to concentrate on the task at hand. Don’t brood or mope. Take one day at a time.

Saint Bob Hunter and the Feast of Rainbow Warriors, Toby writes. This may not be accurate, time-wise – she’s probably out by a day or two – but it will have to do because how can she check? There’s no central authority any more for days of the month. But Rebecca might know. There were special recipes for the Festivals and Feasts. Maybe she’s memorized them; maybe she’s kept track.

Moon: Waxing gibbous. Weather: Nothing unusual. Noteworthy occurrences: Group pig aggression displayed. Painballer evidence sighted by Zeb’s expedition: piglet shot and partly butchered. Discovery of a tire tread sandal, possible clue to Adam. No definite sign of Adam One and the Gardeners.

She thinks a minute, then adds: Jimmy is conscious and improving. Crakers continue friendly.

“What are you making, Oh Toby?” It’s little Blackbeard: she didn’t hear him come in. “What are those lines?”

“Come over here,” she says. “I won’t bite you. Look. I’m doing writing: that is what these lines are. I’ll show you.”

She runs through the basics. This is paper, it is made from trees.

Does it hurt the tree? No, because the tree is dead by the time the paper is made – a tiny lie, but no matter. And this is a pen. It has a black liquid in it, it is called ink, but you do not need to have a pen to do writing. Just as well, she thinks: those rollerballs will run out soon.

You can use many things to make writing. You can use the juice of elderberries for the ink, you can use the feather of a bird for the pen, you can use a stick and some wet sand to write on. All of these things can be used to make writing.

“Now,” she says, “you have to draw the letters. Each letter means a sound. And when you put the letters together they make words. And the words stay

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.