The Knife of Never Letting Go

20. ARMY OF MEN

We duck behind some bushes, even tho it’s dark, even tho the army is across the valley, even tho they don’t know we’re up here and there’s no way they could hear my Noise amidst all the ruckus going on down there, we duck anyway.

“Can yer binos see in the dark?” I whisper.

By way of answer Viola digs them outta her bag and holds them up to her own eyes. “What’s happening?” she says, looking thru them, pressing more buttons. “Who are all those men?”

“It’s Prentisstown,” I say, holding out my hand. “It looks like every man in the whole effing town.”

“How can it be the whole town?” She looks for a second or two more then hands the binos to me. “What kind of sense does that make?”

“You got me.” The night setting on the binos turns the valley and all that’s in it a bright green. I see horses galloping down the hill into the main part of town, shooting their rifles on the way, I see the people of Farbranch shooting back but mostly running, mostly falling, mostly dying. The Prentisstown army don’t seem interested in taking prisoners.

“We have to get out of here, Todd,” Viola says.

“Yeah,” I say, but I’m still looking thru the binos.

With everything green, it’s hard to make out faces. I press a few more buttons on the binos till I find the ones that take me in closer.

The first person I see for sure is Mr Prentiss Jr, in the lead, firing his rifle into the air when he don’t have nothing else to shoot at. Then there’s Mr Morgan and Mr Collins chasing some Farbranch men into the storage barns, firing their rifles after them. Mr O’Hare’s there, too, and more of the Mayor’s usual suspects on horseback, Mr Edwin, Mr Henratty, Mr Sullivan. And there’s Mr Hammar, the smile on his face showing up green and evil even from this distance as he fires his rifle into the backs of fleeing women hustling away small children and I have to look away or throw up the nothing I had for dinner.

The men on foot march their way into town. The first one I reckernize is, of all people, Mr Phelps the storekeeper. Which is weird cuz he never seemed army-like at all. And there’s Dr Baldwin. And Mr Fox. And Mr Cardiff who was our best milker. And Mr Tate who had the most books to burn when the Mayor outlawed them. And Mr Kearney who milled the town’s wheat and who always spoke softly and who made wooden toys for each Prentisstown boy’s birthday.

What are these men doing in an army?

“Todd,” Viola says, pulling at my arm.

The men marching don’t look none too happy, I spose. Grim and cold and scary in a different way from Mr Hammar, like they’re lacking all feeling.

But they’re still marching. They’re still shooting. They’re still kicking down doors.

“That’s Mr Gillooly,” I say, binos pressed to my eyes. “He can’t even butcher his own meat.”

“Todd,” Viola says and I feel her backing away from the bushes. “Let’s go.”

What’s going on? Sure, Prentisstown was as awful a place as you could ever not wanna paint it but how can it suddenly be an army? There’s plenty of Prentisstown men who’re bad thru and thru but not all of them. Not all. And Mr Gillooly with a rifle is a sight so wrong it almost hurts my eyes just to look at it.

And then of course I see the answer.

Mayor Prentiss, not even holding a gun, just one hand on his horse’s reins, the other at his side, riding into town like he’s out for an evening canter. He’s watching the rout of Farbranch as if it was a vid and not a very interesting one at that, letting everyone else do the work but so obviously in charge no one would even think of asking him to break a sweat.

How can he make so many men do what he wants?

And is he bulletproof that he can ride so fearlessly?

“Todd,” Viola says behind me. “I swear, I’ll leave without you.”

“No, you won’t,” I say. “One more second.”

Cuz I’m looking from face to face now, ain’t I? I’m going from Prentisstown man to Prentisstown man cuz even if they’re marching into town and are gonna find out soon enough that neither me nor Viola are there and are gonna have to come this way after us, I gotta know.

I gotta know.

Face to face to face as they march and shoot and burn. Mr Wallace, Mr Asbjornsen, Mr St James, Mr Belgraves, Mr Smith the Older, Mr Smith the Younger, Mr Smith With Nine Fingers, even Mr Marjoribanks, wobbling and teetering but marching marching marching. Prentisstown man after Prentisstown man after Prentisstown man, my heart clenching and burning at each one I can identify.

“They ain’t there,” I say, almost to myself.

“Who isn’t?” Viola says.

“Ain’t!” Manchee barks, licking at his tail.

They ain’t there.

Ben and Cillian ain’t there.

Which, of course, is grand, ain’t it? Of course they ain’t part of an army of killers. Of course they ain’t, even when every other Prentisstown man is. They wouldn’t be. Not never, not no how, no matter what.

Good men, great men, both, even Cillian.

But if that’s true, then that means the other is true, too, don’t it?

If they ain’t there, then that means once and for all.

And there’s yer lesson.

There ain’t nothing good that don’t got real bad waiting to follow it.

I hope they put up the best fight ever.

I take the binos from my face and I look down and I wipe my eyes with my sleeve and I turn and I hand Viola back the binos and I say, “Let’s go.”

She takes them from me, squirming a little like she’s itching to leave, but then she says, “I’m sorry,” so she musta seen it in my Noise.

“Nothing that ain’t already happened,” I say, talking to the ground and readjusting the rucksack. “C’mon, before I put us in danger any worse.”

I take off up the path towards the top of the hill, keeping my head down, motoring fast, Viola after me, Manchee trying to keep himself from biting at his tail as we run.

Viola matches my speed before we get far at all. “Did you see… him?” she says, between breaths.

“Aaron?”

She nods.

“No,” I say. “Come to think of it, no, I didn’t. And you’d think he’d be out in front.”

We’re quiet for a minute as we hurry on our way and wonder what that means.

The road on this side of the valley is wider and we’re doing our best to keep to the darker side of it as it twists and turns up the hill. Our only lights are the moons but they’re bright enough to cast our shadows running along the road which is too bright when yer running away. I never seen no night vision binos in Prentisstown but I didn’t see no army neither so we’re both crouching as we run without either of us saying that we will. Manchee’s running on ahead of us, his nose to the ground, barking, “This way! This way!” as if he knows any better than us where we’re going.

Then at the top of the hill, the road forks.

Which just figures.

“You gotta be kidding,” I say.

One part of the road goes left, the other goes right.

(Well, it’s a fork, ain’t it?)

“The creek in Farbranch was flowing to the right,” Viola says, “and the main river was always to our right once we crossed the bridge, so it’s got to be the right fork if we want to get back there.” “But the left looks more travelled,” I say. And it does. The left fork looks smoother, flatter, like the kinda thing you should be rolling carts over. The right fork is narrower with higher bushes on each side and even tho it’s night you can just tell it’s dusty. “Did Francia say anything about a fork?” I look back over my shoulder at the valley still erupting behind us.

“No,” Viola says, also looking back. “She just said Haven was the first settlement and new settlements sprang up down the river as people moved west. Prentisstown was the farthest out. Farbranch was second farthest.” “That one probably goes to the river,” I say, pointing right, then left, “that one probably goes to Haven in a straight line.”

“Which one will they think we took?”

“We need to decide,” I say. “Quickly now.”

“To the right,” she says, then turns it into an asking. “To the right?”

We hear a BOOM that makes us jump. A mushroom of smoke is rising in the air over Farbranch. The barn where I worked all day is on fire.

Maybe our story will turn out differently if we take the left fork, maybe the bad things that are waiting to happen to us won’t happen, maybe there’s happiness at the end of the left fork and warm places with the people who love us and no Noise but no silence neither and there’s plenty of food and no one dies and no one dies and no one never never dies.

Maybe.

But I doubt it.

I ain’t what you call a lucky person.

“Right,” I decide. “Might as well be right.”

We run down the right fork, Manchee at our heels, the night and a dusty road stretching out in front of us, an army and a disaster behind us, me and Viola, running side by side.

We run till we can’t run and then we walk fast till we can run again. The sounds of Farbranch disappear behind us right quick and all we can hear are our footsteps beating on the path and my Noise and Manchee’s barking. If there are night creachers out there, we’re scaring ’em away.

Which is probably good.

“What’s the next settlement?” I gasp after a good half hour’s run-walking. “Did Francia say?”

“Shining Beacon,” Viola says, gasping herself. “Or Shining Light.” She scrunches her face. “Blazing Light. Blazing Beacon?”

“That’s helpful.”

“Wait.” She stops in the path, bending at the waist to catch her breath. I stop, too. “I need water.”

I hold up my hands in a way that says And? “So do I,” I say. “You got some?”

She looks at me, her eyebrows up. “Oh.”

“There was always a river.”

“I guess we’d better find it then.”

“I guess so.” I take a deep breath to start running again.

“Todd,” she says, stopping me. “I’ve been thinking?”

“Yeah?” I say.

“Blazing Lights or whatever?”

“Yeah?”

“If you look at it one way,” she lowers her voice to a sad and uncomfortable sound and says it again, “if you look at it one way, we led an army into Farbranch.”

I lick the dryness of my lips. I taste dust. And I know what she’s saying.

“You must warn them,” she says quietly, into the dark. “I’m sorry, but—”

“We can’t go into any other settlements,” I say.

“I don’t think we can.”

“Not till Haven.”

“Not until Haven,” she says, “which we have to hope is big enough to handle an army.”

So, that’s that then. In case we needed any further reminding, we’re really on our own. Really and truly. Me and Viola and Manchee and the darkness for company. No one on the road to help us till the end, if even there, which knowing our luck so far — I close my eyes.

I am Todd Hewitt, I think. When it goes midnight I will be a man in twenty-seven days. I am the son of my ma and pa, may they rest in peace. I am the son of Ben and Cillian, may they—

I am Todd Hewitt.

“I’m Viola Eade,” Viola says.

I open my eyes. She has her hand out, palm down, held towards me.

“That’s my surname,” she says. “Eade. E-A-D-E.”

I look at her for a second and then down at her outstretched hand and I reach out and I take it and press it inside my own and a second later I let go.

I shrug my shoulders to reset my rucksack. I put my hand behind my back to feel the knife and make sure it’s still there. I give poor, panting, half-tail Manchee a look and then match eyes with Viola.

“Viola Eade,” I say, and she nods.

And off we run into further night.

21. THE WIDER WORLD

“How can it be this far?” Viola asks. “It doesn’t make any logical sense.”

“Is there another kind of sense it does make?”

She frowns. So do I. We’re tired and getting tireder and trying not to think of what we saw at Farbranch and we’ve walked and run what feels like half the night and still no river. I’m starting to get afraid we’ve taken a seriously wrong turning which we can’t do nothing about cuz there ain’t no turning back.

“Isn’t any turning back,” I hear Viola say behind me, under her breath.

I turn to her, eyes wide. “That’s wrong on two counts,” I say. “Number one, constantly reading people’s Noise ain’t gonna get you much welcome here.”

She crosses her arms and sets her shoulders. “And the second?”

“The second is I talk how I please.”

“Yes,” Viola says. “That you do.”

My Noise starts to rise a bit and I take a deep breath but then she says, “Shhh,” and her eyes glint in the moonlight as she looks beyond me.

The sound of running water.

“River!” Manchee barks.

We take off down the road and round a corner and down a slope and round another corner and there’s the river, wider, flatter and slower than when we saw it last but just as wet. We don’t say nothing, just drop to our knees on the rocks at water’s edge and drink, Manchee wading in up to his belly to start lapping.

Viola’s next to me and as I slurp away, there’s her silence again. It’s a two-way thing, this is. However clear she can hear my Noise, well, out here alone, away from the chatter of others or the Noise of a settlement, there’s her silence, loud as a roar, pulling at me like the greatest sadness ever, like I want to take it and press myself into it and just disappear forever down into nothing.

What a relief that would feel like right now. What a blessed relief.

“I can’t avoid hearing you, you know,” she says, standing up and opening her bag. “When it’s quiet and just the two of us.”

“And I can’t avoid not hearing you,” I say. “No matter what it’s like.” I whistle for Manchee. “Outta the water. There might be snakes.”

He’s ducking his rump under the current, swishing back and forth until the bandage comes off and floats away. Then he leaps out and immediately sets to licking his tail.

“Let me see,” I say. He barks “Todd!” in agreement but when I come near he curls his tail as far under his belly as the new length will go. I uncurl it gently, Manchee murmuring “Tail, tail” to himself all the while.

“Whaddyaknow?” I say. “Those bandages work on dogs.”

Viola’s fished out two discs from her bag. She presses her thumbs inside them and they expand right up into water bottles. She kneels by the river, fills both, and tosses one to me.

“Thanks,” I say, not really looking at her.

She wipes some water from her bottle. We stand on the riverbank for a second and she’s putting her water bottle back into her bag and she’s quiet in a way that I’m learning means she’s trying to say something difficult.

“I don’t mean any offence by it,” she says, looking up to me, “but I think maybe it’s time I read the note on the map.”

I can feel myself redden, even in the dark, and I can also feel myself get ready to argue.

But then I just sigh. I’m tired and it’s late and we’re running again and she’s right, ain’t she? There’s nothing but spitefulness that’ll argue she’s wrong.

I drop my rucksack and take out the book, unfolding the map from inside the front cover. I hand it to her without looking at her. She takes out her torch and shines it on the paper, turning it over to Ben’s message. To my surprise, she starts reading it out loud and all of sudden, even with her own voice, it’s like Ben’s is ringing down the river, echoing from Prentisstown and hitting my chest like a punch.

“Go to the settlement down the river and across the bridge,” she reads. “It’s called Farbranch and the people there should welcome you.”

“And they did,” I say. “Some of them.”

Viola continues, “There are things you don’t know about our history, Todd, and I’m sorry for that but if you knew them you would be in great danger. The only chance you have of a welcome is yer innocence.”

I feel myself redden even more but fortunately it’s too dark to see.

“Yer ma’s book will tell you more but in the meantime, the wider world has to be warned, Todd. Prentisstown is on the move. The plan has been in the works for years, only waiting for the last boy in Prentisstown to become a man.” She looks up. “Is that you?” “That’s me,” I say, “I was the youngest boy. I turn thirteen in twenty-seven days and officially become a man according to Prentisstown law.”

And I can’t help but think for a minute about what Ben showed me–

About how a boy becomes–

I cover it up and say quickly, “But I got no idea what he means about them waiting for me.”

“The Mayor plans to take Farbranch and who knows what else beyond. Sillian and I—”

“Cillian,” I correct her. “With a K sound.”

“Cillian and I will try to delay it as long as we can but we won’t be able to stop it. Farbranch will be in danger and you have to warn them. Always, always, always remember that we love you like our own son and sending you away is the hardest thing we’ll ever have to do. If it’s at all possible, we’ll see you again, but first you must get to Farbranch as fast as you can and when you get there, you must warn them. Ben.” Viola looks up. “That last part’s underlined.” “I know.”

And then we don’t say nothing for a minute. There’s blame in the air but maybe it’s all coming from me.

Who can tell with a silent girl?

“My fault,” I say. “It’s all my fault.”

Viola rereads the note to herself. “They should have told you,” she says. “Not expected you to read it if you can’t—”

“If they’d told me, Prentisstown would’ve heard it in my Noise and known that I knew. We wouldn’t’ve even got the head start we had.” I glance at her eyes and look away. “I shoulda given it to someone to read and that’s all there is to it. Ben’s a good man.” I lower my voice. “Was.” She refolds the map and hands it back to me. It’s useless to us now but I put it back carefully inside the front cover of the book.

“I could read that for you,” Viola says. “Your mother’s book. If you wanted.”

I keep my back to her and put the book in my rucksack. “We need to go,” I say. “We’ve wasted too much time here.”

“Todd—”

“There’s an army after us,” I say. “No more time for reading.”

So we set off again and do our best to run for as much and as long as we can but as the sun rises, all slow and lazy and cold, we’ve had no sleep and that’s no sleep after a full day’s work and so even with that army on our tails, we’re barely able to even keep up a fast walk.

But we do, thru that next morning. The road keeps following the river as we hoped and the land starts to flatten out around us, great natural plains of grass stretching out to low hills and to higher hills beyond and, to the north at least, mountains beyond that.

It’s all wild, tho. No fences, no fields of crops, and no signs of any kind of settlement or people except for the dusty road itself. Which is good in one way but weird in another.

If New World isn’t sposed to have been wiped out, where is everybody?

“You think this is right?” I say, as we come round yet another dusty corner of the road with nothing beyond it but more dusty corners. “You think we’re going the right way?”

Viola blows out thoughtful air. “My dad used to say, There’s only forward, Vi, only outward and up.”

“There’s only forward,” I repeat.

“Outward and up,” she says.

“What was he like?” I ask. “Yer pa?”

She looks down at the road and from the side I can see half a smile on her face. “He smelled like fresh bread,” she says and then she moves on ahead and don’t say nothing more.

Morning turns to afternoon with more of the same. We hurry when we can, walk fast when we can’t hurry, and only rest when we can’t help it. The river remains flat and steady, like the brown and green land around it. I can see bluehawks way up high, hovering and scouting for prey, but that’s about it for signs of life.

“This is one empty planet,” Viola says as we stop for a quick lunch, leaning on some rocks overlooking a natural weir.

“Oh, it’s full enough,” I say, munching on some cheese. “Believe me.”

“I do believe you. I just meant I can see why people would want to settle here. Lots of fertile farmland, lots of potential for people to make new lives.”

I chew. “People would be mistaken.”

She rubs her neck and looks at Manchee, sniffing round the edges of the weir, probably smelling the wood weavers who made it living underneath.

“Why do you become a man here at thirteen?” she asks.

I look over at her, surprised. “What?”

“That note,” she says. “The town waiting for the last boy to become a man.” She looks at me. “Why wait?”

“That’s how New World’s always done it. It’s sposed to be scriptural. Aaron always went on about it symbolizing the day you eat from the Tree of Knowledge and go from innocence into sin.”

She gives me a funny look. “That sounds pretty heavy.”

I shrug. “Ben said that the real reason was cuz a small group of people on an isolated planet need all the adults they can get so thirteen is the day you start getting real responsibilities.” I throw a stray stone into the river. “Don’t ask me. All I know is it’s thirteen years. Thirteen cycles of thirteen months.” “Thirteen months?” she asks, her eyebrows up.

I nod.

“There are only twelve months in a year,” she says.

“No, there ain’t. There’s thirteen.”

“Maybe not here,” she says, “but where I come from there’s twelve.”

I blink. “Thirteen months in a New World year,” I say, feeling dumb for some reason.

She looks up like she’s figuring something out. “I mean, depending on how long a day or a month is on this planet, you might be… fourteen years old already.”

“That’s not how it works here,” I say, kinda stern, not really liking this much. “I turn thirteen in twenty-seven days.”

“Fourteen and a month, actually,” she says, still figuring it out. “Which makes you wonder how you tell how old anybody—”

“It’s twenty-seven days till my birthday,” I say firmly. I stand and put the rucksack back on. “Come on. We’ve wasted too much time talking.”

It ain’t till the sun’s finally started to dip below the tops of the trees that we see our first sign of civilizayshun: an abandoned water mill at the river’s edge, its roof burnt off who knows how many years ago. We’ve been walking so long we don’t even talk, don’t even look around much for danger, just go inside, throw our bags down against the walls and flop to the ground like it’s the softest bed ever. Manchee, who don’t seem to ever get tired, is busy running around, lifting his leg on all the plants that have grown up thru the cracked floorboards.

“My feet,” I say, peeling off my shoes, counting five, no, six different blisters.

Viola lets out a weary sigh from the opposite wall. “We have to sleep,” she says. “Even if.”

“I know.”

She looks at me. “You’ll hear them coming,” she says, “if they come?”

“Oh, I’ll hear them,” I say. “I’ll definitely hear them.”

We decide to take turns sleeping. I say I’ll wait up first and Viola can barely say good night before she’s out. I watch her sleep as the light fades. The little bit of clean we got at Hildy’s house is already long gone. She looks like I must do, face smudged with dust, dark circles under her eyes, dirt under her nails.

And I start to think.

I’ve only known her for three days, you know? Three effing days outta my whole entire life but it’s like nothing that happened before really happened, like that was all a big lie just waiting for me to find out. No, not like, it was a big lie waiting for me to find out and this is the real life now, running without safety or answer, only moving, only ever moving.

I take a sip of water and I listen to the crickets chirping sex sex sex and I wonder what her life was like before these last three days. Like, what’s it like growing up on a spaceship? A place where there’s never any new people, a place you can never get beyond the borders of.

A place like Prentisstown, come to think of it, where if you disappeared, you ain’t never coming back.

I look back over to her. But she did get out, didn’t she? She got seven months out with her ma and her pa on the little ship that crashed.

How’s that work, I wonder?

“You need to send scout ships out ahead to make local field surveys and find the best landing sites,” she says, without sitting up or even moving her head. “How does anyone ever sleep in a world with Noise?” “You get used to it,” I say. “But why so long? Why seven months?”

“That’s how long it takes to set up first camp.” She covers her eyes with her hand in an exhausted way. “Me and my mother and father were supposed to find the best place for the ships to land and build the first encampment and then we’d start building the first things that would be needed for settlers just landing. A control tower, a food store, a clinic.” She looks at me twixt her fingers. “It’s standard procedure.” “I never seen no control tower on New World,” I say.

This makes her sit up. “I know. I can’t believe you guys don’t even have communicators between settlements.”

“So yer not church settlers then,” I say, sounding wise.

“What does that have to do with anything?” she says. “Why would any reasonable church want to be cut off from itself?”

“Ben said that they came to this world for the simpler life, said that there was even a fight in the early days whether to destroy the fission generators.”

Viola looks horrified. “You would have all died.”

“That’s why they weren’t destroyed,” I shrug. “Not even after Mayor Prentiss decided to get rid of most everything else.”

Viola rubs her shins and looks up into the stars coming out thru the hole in the roof. “My mother and father were so excited,” she says. “A whole new world, a whole new beginning, all these plans of peace and happiness.” She stops.

“I’m sorry it ain’t that way,” I say.

She looks down at her feet. “Would you mind waiting outside for a little while until I fall asleep?”

“Yeah,” I say, “no problem.”

I take my rucksack and go out the opening where the front door used to be. Manchee gets up from where he’s curled and follows me. When I sit down, he recurls by my legs and falls asleep, farting happily and giving a doggy sigh. Simple to be a dog.

I watch the moons rise, the stars following ’em, the same moons and the same stars as were in Prentisstown, still out here past the end of the world. I take out the book again, the oil in the cover shining from the moonlight. I flip thru the pages.

I wonder if my ma was excited to land here, if her head was full of peace and good hope and joy everlasting.

I wonder if she found any before she died.

This makes my chest heavy so I put the book back in the rucksack and lean my head against the boards of the mill. I listen to the river flow past and the leaves shushing to themselves in the few trees around us and I look at the shadows of far distant hills on the horizon and the rustling forests on them.

I’ll wait for a few minutes, then go back inside and make sure Viola’s okay.

The next thing I know she’s waking me up and it’s hours later and my head is completely confused till I hear her saying, “Noise, Todd, I can hear Noise.”

I’m on my feet before I’m fully awake, quieting Viola and a groggy Manchee barking his complaints. They get quiet and I put my ear into the night.

Whisper whisper whisper there, like a breeze whisper whisper whisper no words and far away but hovering, a storm cloud behind a mountain whisper whisper whisper.

“We gotta go,” I say, already reaching for my rucksack.

“Is it the army?” Viola calls, running thru the door of the mill as she grabs her own bag.

“Army!” Manchee barks.

“Don’t know,” I say. “Probably.”

“Could it be the next settlement?” Viola comes back, bag round her shoulders. “We can’t be too far from it.”

“Then why didn’t we hear it when we got here?”

She bites her lip. “Damn.”

“Yeah,” I say. “Damn.”

And so the second night after Farbranch passes like the first, running in darkness, using torches when we need them, trying not to think. Just before the sun comes up, the river moves outta the flats and into another small valley like the one by Farbranch and sure enough, there’s Blazing Beacons or whatever so maybe there really are people living out this way.

They’ve got orchards, too, and fields of wheat, tho nothing looks near as well tended as Farbranch. Lucky for us, the main bit of town is on top of the hill with what looks like a bigger road going thru it, the left fork, maybe, and five or six buildings, most of which could use a lick of paint. Down on our dirt road by the river there are just boats and wormy-looking docks and dockhouses and whatever else you build on a flowing river.

We can’t ask anyone for help. Even if we got it, the army’s coming, ain’t it? We should warn them but what if they’re Matthew Lyles rather than Hildys? And what if by warning them we draw the army right to them cuz then we’re in everyone’s Noise? And what if the settlement knows we’re the reason the army’s coming and they decide to turn us over to them?

But they deserve to be warned, don’t they?

But what if that endangers us?

You see? What’s the right answer?

And so we sneak thru the settlement like thieves, running from dockhouse to dockhouse, hiding from sight of the town up the hill, waiting as quiet as we can when we see a skinny woman taking a basket into a hen house up by some trees. It’s small enough that we get thru it before the sun even fully rises and we’re out the other side and back on the road like it never existed, like it never happened, even to us.

“So that’s that settlement then,” Viola whispers as we take a look behind us and watch it disappear behind a bend. “We’ll never even know what it was properly called.”

“And now we really don’t know what’s ahead of us,” I whisper back.

“We keep going until we get to Haven.”

“And then what?”

She don’t say nothing to that.

“That’s a lotta faith we’re putting in a word,” I say.

“There’s got to be something, Todd,” she says, her face kinda grim. “There has to be something there.”

I don’t say nothing for a second and then I say, “I guess we’ll see.”

And so starts another morning. Twice on the road we see men with horse-drawn carts. Both times we hie off into the woods, Viola with her hand round Manchee’s snout and me trying to keep my Noise as Prentisstown-free as possible till they pass.

Nothing much changes as the hours go by. We don’t hear no more whispers from the army, if that’s what it even was, but there ain’t no point in finding out for sure, is there? Morning’s turned into afternoon again when we see a settlement high up on a far hill. We’re coming up a little hill ourselves, the river dropping down a bit, tho we can see it spreading out in the distance, what looks like the start of a plain we’re gonna have to cross.

Viola points her binos at the settlement for a minute, then hands them to me. It’s ten or fifteen buildings this time but even from a distance it looks scrubby and run down.

“I don’t get it,” Viola says. “Going by a regular schedule of settlement, subsistence farming should be years over by now. And there’s obviously trade, so why is there still this much struggle?” “You don’t really know nothing about settler’s lives, do you?” I say, chafing just a little.

She purses her lips. “It was required in school. I’ve been learning about how to set up a successful colony since I was five.”

“Schooling ain’t life.”

“Ain’t it?” she says, her eyebrows raising in a mock.

“What did I say before?” I snap back. “Some of us were busy surviving and couldn’t learn about subdivided farming.”

“Subsistence.”

“Don’t care.” I get myself moving again on the road.

Viola stomps after me. “We’re going to be teaching you lot a thing or two when my ship arrives,” she says. “You can be sure of that.”

“Well, won’t we dumb hicks be queuing up to kiss yer behinds in thankfulness?” I say, my Noise buzzing and not saying “behinds”.

“Yes, you will be.” She’s raising her voice. “Trying to turn back the clock to the dark ages has really worked out for you, hasn’t it? When we get here, you’ll see how people are supposed to settle.” “That’s seven months from now,” I seethe at her. “You’ll have plenty of time to see how the other half live.”

“Todd!” Manchee barks, making us jump again, and suddenly he takes off down the road ahead of us.

“Manchee!” I yell after him. “Get back here!”

And then we both hear it.

22. WILF AND THE SEA OF THINGS

It’s weird, Noise, but almost wordless, cresting the hill in front of us and rolling down, single-minded but talking in legions, like a thousand voices singing the same thing.

Yeah.

Singing.

“What is it?” Viola asks, spooked as I am. “It’s not the army, is it? How could they be in front of us?”

“Todd!” Manchee barks from the top of the small hill. “Cows, Todd! Giant cows!”

Viola’s mouth twists. “Giant cows?”

“No idea,” I say and I’m already heading up the little hill.

Cuz the sound–

How can I describe it?

Like how stars might sound. Or moons. But not mountains. Too floaty for mountains. It’s a sound like one planet singing to another, high and stretched and full of different voices starting at different notes and sloping down to other different notes but all weaving together in a rope of sound that’s sad but not sad and slow but not slow and all singing one word.

One word.

We reach the top of the hill and another plain unrolls below us, the river tumbling down to meet it and then running thru it like a vein of silver thru a rock and all over the plain, walking their way from one side of the river to the other, are creachers.

Creachers I never seen the like of in my life.

Massive, they are, four metres tall if they’re an inch, covered in a shaggy, silvery fur with a thick, fluffed tail at one end and a pair of curved white horns at the other reaching right outta their brows and long necks that stretch down from wide shoulders to the grass of the plain below and these wide lips that mow it up as they trudge on dry ground and drink water as they cross the river and there’s thousands of ’em, thousands stretching from the horizon on our right to the horizon on our left and the Noise of them all is singing one word, at different times in different notes, but one word binding ’em all together, knitting ’em as a group as they cross the plain.

“Here,” Viola says from somewhere off to my side. “They’re singing here.”

They’re singing Here. Calling it from one to another in their Noise.

Here I am.

Here we are.

Here we go.

Here is all that matters.

Here.

It’s–

Can I say?

It’s like the song of a family where everything’s always all right, it’s a song of belonging that makes you belong just by hearing it, it’s a song that’ll always take care of you and never leave you. If you have a heart, it breaks, if you have a heart that’s broken, it fixes.

It’s–

Wow.

I look at Viola and she has her hand over her mouth and her eyes are wet but I can see a smile thru her fingers and I open my mouth to speak.

“Ya won’t get ver far on foot,” says a completely other voice to our left.

We spin round to look, my hand going right to my knife. A man driving an empty cart pulled by a pair of oxes regards us from a little side path, his mouth left hanging open like he forgot to close it.

There’s a shotgun on the seat next to him, like he just put it there.

From a distance, Manchee barks “Cow!”

“They’s all go round carts,” says the man, “but not safe on foot, no. They’s squish ya right up.”

And again leaves his mouth open. His Noise, buried under all the Heres from the herd, seems to pretty much be saying exactly what his mouth is. I’m trying so hard not to think of certain words I’m already getting a headache.

“Ah kin give y’all a ride thrus,” he says. “If ya want.”

He raises an arm and points down the road, which disappears under the feet of the herd crossing it. I hadn’t even thought about how the creachers’d be blocking our way but you can see how you wouldn’t wanna try walking thru them.

I turn and I start to say something, anything, that’ll be the fastest way to get away.

But instead the most amazing thing happens.

Viola looks at the man and says, “Ah’m Hildy.” She points at me. “At’s Ben.”

“What?” I say, barking it almost like Manchee.

“Wilf,” says the man to Viola and it takes a second to realize he’s saying his name.

“Hiya, Wilf,” Viola says and her voice ain’t her own, ain’t her own at all, there’s a whole new voice coming outta her mouth, stretching and shortening itself, twisting and unravelling and the more she talks the more different she sounds.

The more she sounds like Wilf.

“We’re all fra Farbranch. Where yoo from?”

Wilf hangs his thumb back over his shoulder. “Bar Vista,” he says. “I’m gone Brockley Falls, pick up s’plies.”

“Well, at’s lucky,” Viola says. “We’re gone Brockley Falls, too.”

This is making my headache worse. I put my hands up to my temples, like I’m trying to keep my Noise inside, trying to keep all the wrong things from spilling out into the world. Luckily, the song of Here has made it like we’re already swimming in sound.

“Hop on,” Wilf says with a shrug.

“C’mon, Ben,” Viola says, walking to the back of the cart and hoisting her bag on top. “Wilf’s gone give us a ride.”

She jumps on the cart and Wilf snaps the reins on his oxes. They take off slowly and Wilf don’t even look at me as he passes. I’m still standing there in amazement when Viola goes by, waving her hand frantically to me to get on beside her. I don’t got no choice, do I? I catch up and pull myself up with my arms.

I sit down next to her and stare at her with my jaw down around my ankles. “What are you doing?” I finally hiss in what’s sposed to be a whisper.

“Shh!” she shushes, looking back over her shoulder at Wilf, but he could’ve already forgotten he picked us up for all that’s going on in his Noise. “I don’t know,” she whispers by my ear, “just play along.” “Play along with what?”

“If we can get to the other side of the herd, then it’s between us and the army, isn’t it?”

I hadn’t thought about that. “But what are you doing? What do Ben and Hildy gotta do with it?”

“He has a gun,” she whispers, checking on Wilf again. “And you said yourself how people might react about you being from a certain place. So, it just sort of popped out.”

“But you were talking in his voice.”

“Not very well.”

“Good enough!” I say, my voice going a little loud with amazement.

“Shh,” she says a second time but with the combo of the herd of creachers getting closer by the second and Wilf’s obvious not-too-brightness, we might as well be having a normal conversayshun.

“How do you do it?” I say, still pouring surprise out all over her.

“It’s just lying, Todd,” she says, trying to shush me again with her hands. “Don’t you have lying here?”

Well of course we have lying here. New World and the town where I’m from (avoiding saying the name, avoiding thinking the name) seem to be nothing but lies. But that’s different. I said it before, men lie all the time, to theirselves, to other men, to the world at large, but who can tell when it’s a strand in all the other lies and truths floating round outta yer head? Everyone knows yer lying but everyone else is lying, too, so how can it matter? What does it change? It’s just part of the river of a man, part of his Noise, and sometimes you can pick it out, sometimes you can’t.

But he never stops being himself when he does it.

Cuz all I know about Viola is what she says. The only truth I got is what comes outta her mouth and so for a second back there, when she said she was Hildy and I was Ben and we were from Farbranch and she spoke just like Wilf (even tho he ain’t from Farbranch) it was like all those things became true, just for an instant the world changed, just for a second it became made of Viola’s voice and it wasn’t describing a thing, it was making a thing, it was making us different just by saying it.

Oh, my head.

“Todd! Todd!” Manchee barks, popping up at the end of the cart, looking up thru our feet. “Todd!”

“Crap,” Viola says.

I hop off the cart and sweep him up in my arms, putting one hand round his muzzle and using the other to get back on the cart. “Td?” he puffs thru closed lips.

“Quiet, Manchee,” I say.

“I’m not even sure it matters,” Viola says, her voice stretching out.

I look up.

“Cw,” Manchee says.

A creacher is walking right past us.

We’ve entered the herd.

Entered the song.

And for a little while, I forget all about any kinda lies.

I’ve never seen the sea, only in vids. No lakes where I grew up neither, just the river and the swamp. There may have been boats once but not in my lifetime.

But if I had to imagine being on the sea, this is what I’d imagine. The herd surrounds us and takes up everything, leaving just the sky and us. It cuts around us like a current, sometimes noticing us but more usually noticing only itself and the song of Here, which in the midst of it is so loud it’s like it’s taken over the running of yer body for a while, providing the energy to make yer heart beat and yer lungs breathe.

After a while, I find myself forgetting all about Wilf and the — the other things I could think about and I’m just lying back on the cart, watching it all go by, individual creachers snuffling around, feeding, bumping each other now and again with their horns, and there’s baby ones, too, and old bulls and taller ones and shorter ones and some with scars and some with scruffier fur.

Viola’s laying down next to me and Manchee’s little doggie brain is overwhelmed by it all and he’s just watching the herd go by with his tongue hanging out and for a while, for a little while, as Wilf drives us over the plain, this is all there is in the world.

This is all there is.

I look over at Viola and she looks back at me and just smiles and shakes her head and wipes away the wet from her eyes.

Here.

Here.

We’re Here and nowhere else.

Cuz there’s nowhere else but Here.

“So this… Aaron,” Viola says after a while in a low voice and I know exactly why it’s now that she brings him up.

It’s so safe inside the Here we can talk about any dangers we like.

“Yeah?” I say, also keeping my voice low, watching a little family of creachers waltz by the end of the cart, the ma creacher nuzzling forward a curious baby creacher who’s staring at us.

Viola turns to me from where she’s lying down. “Aaron was your holy man?”

I nod. “Our one and only.”

“What kind of things did he preach?”

“The usual,” I say. “Hellfire. Damnayshun. Judgement.”

She eyes me up. “I’m not sure that’s the usual, Todd.”

I shrug. “He believed we were living thru the end of the world,” I say. “Who’s to say he was wrong?”

She shakes her head. “That’s not what the preacher we had on the ship was like. Pastor Marc. He was kind and friendly and made everything seem like it was going to be okay.”

I snort. “No, that don’t sound like Aaron at all. He was always saying, ‘God hears’ and ‘If one of us falls, we all fall’. Like he was looking forward to it.”

“I heard him say that, too.” She crosses her arms over herself.

The Here wraps us still, flowing everywhere.

I turn to her. “Did he… Did he hurt you? Back in the swamp?”

She shakes her head again and lets out a sigh. “He ranted and raved at me, and I guess it might have been preaching, but if I ran, he’d run after me and rant some more and I’d cry and ask him for help but he’d ignore me and preach some more and I’d see pictures of myself in his Noise when I didn’t even know what Noise was. I’ve never been so scared in my life, not even when our ship was crashing.” We both look up into the sun.

“If one of us falls, we all fall,” she says. “What does that even mean?”

Which, when I really think about it, I realize I don’t know and so I don’t say nothing and we just sink back into the Here and let it take us a little farther.

Here we are.

Not nowhere else.

After an hour or a week or a second, the creachers start thinning and we come out the other side of the herd. Manchee jumps down off the cart. We’re going slow enough that there’s no danger of him getting left behind so I let him. We’re not thru lying there on the cart just yet.

“That was amazing,” Viola says quietly, cuz the song is already starting to disappear. “I forgot all about how much my feet hurt.”

“Yeah,” I say.

“What were those?”

“’Em big thangs,” Wilf says, not turning round. “Jus thangs, thass all.”

Viola and I look at each other, like we forgot he was even there.

How much have we given away?

“’Em thangs got a name?” Viola asks, sitting up, acting her lie again.

“Oh, sure,” Wilf says, giving the oxes freer rein now that we’re outta the herd. “Packy Vines or Field Baysts or Anta Fants.” We see him shrug from behind. “I just call ’em thangs, thass all.”

“Thangs,” Viola says.

“Things,” I try.

Wilf looks back over his shoulder at us. “Say what, y’all from Farbranch?” he asks.

“Yessir,” Viola says with a look at me.

Wilf nods at her. “Y’all bin seen that there army?”

My Noise spikes real loud before I can quiet it but again Wilf don’t seem to notice. Viola looks at me, worry on her forehead.

“And what army’s that, Wilf?” she says, the voice missing a little.

“That there army from cursed town,” he says, still driving along like we’re talking about vegetables. “That there army come outta swamp, come takin settlements, growin as it comes? Y’all bin seen that?” “Where’d yoo hear bout an army, Wilf?”

“Stories,” Wilf says. “Stories a-come chatterin down the river. People talkin. Ya know. Stories. Y’all bin seen that?’’

I shake my head at Viola but she says, “Yeah, we seen it.”

Wilf looks back over his shoulder again. “Zit big?”

“Very big,” Viola says, looking at him seriously. “Ya gotta prepare yerself, Wilf. There’s danger comin. Yoo need to warn Brockley Hills.”

“Brockley Falls,” Wilf corrects her.

“Ya gotta warn ’em, Wilf.”

We hear Wilf grunt and then we realize it’s a laugh. “Ain’t nobody lissnen to Wilf, I tell ya what,” he says, almost to himself, then strikes the reins on the oxes again.

It takes most of the rest of the afternoon to get to the other side of the plain. Thru Viola’s binos we can see the herd of things still crossing in the distance, from south to north, like they’re never gonna run out. Wilf don’t say nothing more about the army. Viola and I keep our talking to a bare minimum so we don’t give any more away. Plus, it’s so hard to keep my Noise clear it’s taking mosta my concentrayshun. Manchee follows along on the road, doing his business and sniffing every flower.

When the sun is low in the sky, the cart finally creaks to a halt.

“Brockley Falls,” Wilf says, nodding his head to where we can see in the distance the river tumbling off a low cliff. There’s fifteen or twenty buildings gathered round the pond at the bottom of the falls before the river starts up again. A smaller road turns off from this one and leads down to it.

“We’re getting off here,” Viola says and we hop down, taking our bags from the cart.

“Thought ya mite,” Wilf says, looking back over his shoulder at us again.

“Thank ya, Wilf,” she says.

“Welcome,” he says, staring off into the distance. “Best take shelter ’fore too long. Gone rain.”

Both Viola and me automatically look straight up. There ain’t a cloud in the sky.

“Mmm,” Wilf says. “No one lissnen to Wilf.”

Viola looks back at him, her voice returning to itself, trying to get the point to him clearly. “You have to warn them, Wilf. Please. If you’re hearing that an army’s coming, then you’re right and people have to be ready.” All Wilf says is “Mmm” again before snapping the reins and turning the oxes down the split road towards Brockley Falls. He don’t even look back once.

We watch him go for a while and then turn back to our own road.

“Ow,” Viola says, stretching out her legs as she steps forward.

“I know,” I say. “Mine too.”

“You think he was right?” Viola says.

“Bout what?”

“About the army getting bigger as it marches.” She imitates his voice again. “Growin as it comes.”

“How do you do that?” I ask. “Yer not even from here.”

She shrugs. “A game I used to play with my mother,” she says. “Telling a story, using different voices for every character.”

“Can you do my voice?” I ask, kinda tentative.

She grins. “So you can have a conversayshun with yerself?”

I frown. “That don’t sound nothing like me.”

We head back down the road, Brockley Falls disappearing behind us. The time on the cart was nice but it weren’t sleep. We try to go as fast as we can but most times that ain’t much more than a walk. Plus maybe the army really is caught far behind, really will have to wait behind the creachers.

Maybe. Maybe not. But within the half hour, you know what?

It’s raining.

“People should listen to Wilf,” Viola says, looking up.

The road’s found its way back down near the river and we find a reasonably sheltered spot twixt the two. We’ll eat our dinner, see if the rain stops. If it don’t we got no choice but to walk in it anyway. I haven’t even checked to see if Ben packed me a mac.

“What’s a mac?” Viola asks as we sit down against different trees.

“A raincoat,” I say, looking thru my rucksack. Nope, no mac. Great. “And what did I say bout listening too close?”

I still feel a little calm, if you wanna know the truth, tho I probably shouldn’t. The song of Here still feels like it’s being sung, even if I can’t hear it, even if it’s miles away back on the plain. I find myself humming it, even tho it don’t have a tune, trying to get that feeling of connectedness, of belonging, of having someone there to say that you’re Here.

I look over at Viola, eating outta one of her packets of fruit.

I think about my ma’s book, still in my rucksack.

Stories in voices, I think.

Could I stand to hear my ma’s voice spoken?

Viola crinkles the fruit packet she’s just finished. “That’s the last of them.”

“I got some of this cheese left,” I say, “and some dried mutton, but we’re gonna have to start finding some of our own on the way.”

“You mean like stealing?” she asks, her eyebrows up.

“I mean like hunting,” I say. “But maybe stealing, too, if we have to. And there’s wild fruit and I know some roots we can eat if you boil ’em first.”

“Mmm.” Viola frowns. “There’s not much call for hunting on a spaceship.”

“I could show you.”

“Okay,” she says, trying to sound cheerful. “Don’t you need a gun?”

“Not if yer a good hunter. Rabbits are easy with snares. Fish with lines. You can catch squirrels with yer knife but there ain’t much meat.”

“Horse, Todd,” Manchee barks, quietly.

I laugh, for the first time in what seems like forever. Viola laughs, too. “We ain’t hunting horses, Manchee.” I reach out to pet him. “Stupid dog.”

“Horse,” he barks again, standing up and looking down the road from the direkshun we just came.

We stop laughing.

23. A KNIFE IS ONLY AS GOOD AS THE ONE WHO WIELDS IT

There’s hoofbeats on the road, distant but approaching at full gallop.

“Someone from Brockley Hills?” Viola says, hope and doubt both in her voice.

“Brockley Falls,” I say, standing. “We need to hide.”

We repack our bags in a hurry. It’s a narrow strip of trees we’ve managed to get ourselves stuck in twixt the road and the river. We daren’t cross the road and with the river at our backs, a fallen log is the best we’re gonna get. We gather the last of our things and crouch down behind it, Manchee held twixt my knees, rain splashing everywhere.

I take out my knife.

The hoofbeats keep coming, louder and louder.

“Only one horse,” Viola whispers. “It’s not the army.”

“Yeah,” I say, “but listen how fast he’s riding.”

Thump budda-thump budda-thump we hear. Thru the trees we can see the dot of him approaching. He’s coming full out down the road, even tho it’s raining and night’s falling. No one’d ride like that with good news, would they?

Viola looks behind us at the river. “Can you swim?”

“Yeah.”

“Good,” she says. “Because I can’t.”

Thump budda-thump budda-thump.

I can hear the buzz of the rider’s Noise starting but for a time the galloping is louder and I can’t hear it clearly.

“Horse,” Manchee says from down below.

It’s there. Static twixt the hoofbeats. Flashes of it. Parts of words caught. Rid— and Pa— and Dark— and Stup— and more and more.

I clench the knife harder. Viola’s not saying nothing now.

Thump budda-thump budda-thump budda—

Faster and Nightfall and Shot and Whatever it—And he’s coming down the road, round a little curve we took just a hundred metres back, leaning forward–

Thump budda—

The knife turns in my hand cuz–

Shot ’em all and She was tasty and Dark here—Thump BUDDA—

I think I reckernize–

THUMP BUDDA-THUMP BUDDA—

And he’s nearer and nearer till he’s almost–

And then Todd Hewitt? rings out as clear as day thru the rain and the galloping and the river.

Viola gasps.

And I can see who it is.

“Junior,” Manchee barks.

It’s Mr Prentiss Jr.

We try to duck down farther below the log but it ain’t no use cuz we already see him pulling back hard on the reins to stop his horse, causing it to rear up and nearly throw him.

But only nearly.

And not enough to make him drop the rifle he’s got under one arm.

Todd BLOODY HEWITT! screams his Noise.

“Oh, shit,” I hear Viola say and I know what she means.

“Well, HOOO-EEE!” Mr Prentiss Jr yells and we’re close enough to see the smile on his face and hear amazement in his voice. “Yer taking the ROAD?! You ain’t even going OFF TRAIL?!” My eyes meet Viola’s. What choice did we have?

“I been hearing yer Noise for almost yer whole stupid life, boy!” He turns his horse this way and that, trying to find where exactly we are in our little strip of woods. “You think I’m not gonna hear it if ya just HIDE?” There’s joy in his Noise. Real joy, like he can’t believe his luck.

“And wait a minute,” he says and we can hear him edging his horse off the road and into the woods. “Wait just a minute. What’s that beside you? That empty space of nothing.”

He says it so nasty Viola flinches. I got the knife in my hand but he’s on horseback and we know he’s got a gun.

“Too effing right I’ve got a gun, Todd boy,” he calls, no longer searching round but coming straight for us, getting his horse to step over bushes and round trees. “And I got another gun, too, another one special, just for yer little lady there, Todd.” I look at Viola. I know she sees what he’s thinking, what’s in his Noise, the pictures that ooze out of it. I know she does cuz I can see her face closing right up. I bump her arm and I flash my eyes over to our right, just about the only possibility we have for an escape.

“Oh, please run, boy,” Mr Prentiss Jr calls. “Please give me a reason to hurt you.”

The horse is so close we can hear its Noise, too, jittery and crazy.

There’s no farther down we can crouch.

He’s nearly on top of us.

I grip the knife and squeeze Viola’s hand once, hard, for luck.

It’s now or never.

And–

“NOW!” I yell.

We jump up and a gun blast rings out, splintering the branches over our heads, but we run anyway.

“GET!” Mr Prentiss Jr shouts to his horse and here they come.

In two bounds, his horse turns and jumps back to the road, following along it as we run. The strip twixt the road and the river ain’t getting any thicker and we can see each other as we go. Branches snap and puddles splash and feet slip and he pounds along the road matching our every step.

We ain’t gonna get away from him. We just ain’t.

But we try, each of us taking a twisty path up and over logs and thru bushes and Manchee’s panting and barking at our heels and the rain’s splashing down on us and the road’s getting closer and then it suddenly veers sharply towards the river and we got no choice but to cross it in front of him to get to the deeper woods on the other side and I can see Viola leaping over the boundary and onto the road with her arms pumping and Mr Prentiss Jr rounding the bend and he’s twirling something in his hand and we make a dash for the other side but the horse is roaring down on us and suddenly I feel something grab my legs, binding ’em so fast and so tight I fall right off my feet.

“Aaagh!” I yell and I hit my face into muck and fallen leaves and the rucksack goes over my head and nearly rips my arms off as it flies off my back and Viola sees me fall and she’s nearly cross the road but I see mud curling up from where her feet are digging in to stop herself and I shout, “NO! RUN! RUN!” and she locks my eyes and I see something change on her face but who knows what it means and as the horse bears down she turns and disappears into the woods and Manchee runs back to me and barks “Todd! Todd!” and I’m caught I’m caught I’m caught.

Cuz Mr Prentiss Jr is standing over me, breathing hard, high on his white horse, rifle cocked and pointed. I know what’s happened. He’s thrown a rope with weights at either end right at my legs and they’ve twisted round and caught me, expert, just like a hunter after swamp deer. I’m stuck down here in the mud on my belly, caught like an animal.

“My pa sure is gonna be glad to see you,” he says, his horse nervy and stepping side to side. Rain, I can hear it thinking, and Is it a snake?

“I was just sposed to see if there were rumours of you on the road ahead,” Mr Prentiss Jr sneers, “but here you are, in the real honest-to-God flesh.”

“Eff you,” I say and do you think I say eff?

I’ve still got the knife in my hand.

“And it sure is making me quake with fear,” he says, moving the rifle so I’m looking right down the barrel. “Drop it.”

I hold my arm out away from me and drop the knife. It splashes in the mud and I’m still on my belly.

“Yer little lady sure didn’t show you no loyalty, now did she?” he says, hopping off his horse, calming it with his free hand. Manchee growls at him but Mr Prentiss Jr just laughs. “What happened to its tail?” Manchee jumps, his teeth bared, but Mr Prentiss Jr is faster, kicking him away with a vicious boot to the face. Manchee yelps and cowers into the bushes.

“Friends abandoning you right and left, Todd.” He walks over to me. “But that’s the lesson you learn, eh? Dogs is dogs and women turn out to be dogs, too.”

“You shut up,” I say, clenching my teeth.

His Noise goes all fake sympathy and triumph. “Poor, poor Toddy. All this time travelling with a woman and I’m guessing you never figured out what to do with one.”

“You stop talking bout her,” I spit. I’m still on my belly and my legs are still tied.

But I find I can bend my knees.

His Noise gets uglier, louder, but his face is all blank like a terror from a dream. “What you do, Todd,” he says, squatting down to get closer to me, “is you keep the ones that’re whores and you shoot the ones that’re not.” He leans even closer. I can see the pathetic hairs on his upper lip, not even made darker by the rain coming down. He’s only two years older than me. Only two years bigger.

Snake? thinks the horse.

I put my hands slowly down on the ground.

I push a little into the mud.

“After I tie you up,” he says, turning it into a whispering taunt, “I’ll go find yer little lady and let you know which kind she is.”

Which is when I jump.

I push up with my hands and kick forward hard with my legs, launching myself right at his face. The top of my head hits his nose with a crunch and he falls backwards, me coming down right on top of him. I hit him hard in the face with each fist while he’s still too surprised to react and then ram my knee into the man’s place twixt his legs.

He curls up like a bug and lets out a low, angry moan and I roll off him back over to my knife, picking it up and getting to my feet and I kick the gun away and I jump in front of the horse screaming “Snake! Snake!” and waving my arms which does the trick instantly and it turns and runs back down the road with a terrified whinny, riderless into the rain.

I look round and BAM! Mr Prentiss Jr hits me across the bridge of the nose with his fist but I don’t fall and he yells “You piece of—” and I swing my arm out with the knife in it and I make him jump back and I swing it again, water pouring outta my eyes from both the punch and the rain and he steps away from me, looking for his gun and limping a little and he sees it in the mud and he turns his body to fetch it and I’m not thinking at all and I jump on him, knocking him back down and he hits me with his elbow but I don’t fall off and my Noise is screaming and his Noise is screaming.

And I don’t even know how but I’ve got him on his back and the point of my knife held up under his chin.

We both stop struggling.

“Why are you after us?!” I shout into his face. “Why are you chasing us?!”

And him and his stupid pathetic non-moustache smile.

I knee him again twixt his legs.

He groans again and spits at me but I’ve still got the knife which has now made a little cut.

“My father wants you,” he finally says.

“Why?” I say. “Why does he want us?”

“Us?” His eyes go wide. “There’s no effing us. He wants you, Todd. Just you.”

I can’t believe this. “What?” I say. “Why?”

But he’s not answering. He’s looking into my Noise. He’s looking and searching.

“Hey!” I say, slapping him cross the face with the back of my hand. “Hey! I’m asking you an asking!”

But the smile’s back. I can’t effing believe it but the smile’s back.

“You know what my father always says, Todd Hewitt?” he leers up at me. “He says a knife is only as good as the one who wields it.”

“Shut up,” I say.

“Yer a fighter, I’ll give you that.” Still smiling, still bleeding a little below his chin. “But you ain’t no killer.”

“Shut up!” I yell but I know he can see in my Noise that I heard those exact words from Aaron.

“Oh, yeah?” he says. “Whaddya gonna do about it? Kill me?”

“I WILL,” I shout. “I’ll KILL you!”

He just licks some rain from his lips and laughs. I have him pinned to the ground with a knife up under his chin and he’s laughing.

“STOP IT!” I scream at him and I raise the knife.

He keeps on laughing and then he looks at me and he says–

He says–

He says this–

“You wanna hear how Ben and Cillian screamed for mercy before I shot ’em twixt the eyes?”

And my Noise buzzes red.

And I clench the knife to strike at him.

And I’m going to kill him.

I’m going to kill him.

And–

And–

And–

And right at the top of my swing–

Right at the moment when I start to bring it down–

Right at the moment when the power is mine to command and do with as I please–

I hesitate–

Again–

I hesitate–

Only for a second–

But goddam me–

Goddam me forever and forever–

Cuz in that second he kicks up his legs, throws me off him and elbows me in the throat. I lean over choking and I can only feel his hand wrench the knife away from my own.

As easy as candy from a baby.

“Now, Todd,” he says, standing over me, “let me show you a thing or two about wielding.”

24. THE DEATH OF THE WORTHLESS COWARD

I deserve it. I’ve done everything wrong. I deserve it. If I had the knife back I’d kill myself with it. Except I’d probably be too much of a coward to do that, too.

“Yer some piece of work, Todd Hewitt,” Mr Prentiss Jr says, examining my knife.

I’m kneeling now, knees in the mud, hand at my throat, still trying to get my breath.

“You had this fight won and then you went and just threw it away.” He runs a finger up the blade. “Stupid as well as yella.”

“Just finish it,” I mumble into the mud.

“What was that?” Mr Prentiss Jr says, the smile back, his Noise bright.

“Just FINISH IT!” I shout up to him.

“Oh, I’m not gonna kill you,” he says, his eyes flashing. “My pa wouldn’t be too happy with that, now would he?”

He steps up to me and holds the knife near my face. He puts the tip of it into my nose so I have to hold my head back farther and farther.

“But there’s lots of things you can do with a knife,” he says, “without killing a man.”

I’m not even looking round no more for ways to get away.

I’m looking right into his eyes which are awake and alive and about to win, his Noise the same, pictures of him in Farbranch, pictures from back at my farm, pictures of me kneeling in front of him.

There ain’t nothing in my Noise but a pit full of my stupidity and worthlessness and hate.

I’m sorry, Ben.

I’m so, so sorry.

“But then again,” he says, “you ain’t a man, are ya?” He lowers his voice. “And you never will be.”

He moves the knife in his hand, turning the blade towards my cheek.

I close my eyes.

And I feel a wash of silence flow over me from behind.

My eyes snap open.

“Well, looky here,” Mr Prentiss Jr says, glancing up over the top of my head. My back is to the deeper woods opposite the river and I can feel the quiet of Viola standing there as clearly as if I could see her.

“Run!” I yell, without turning round. “Get away from here.”

She ignores me. “Step back,” I hear her say to Mr Prentiss Jr. “I’m warning you.”

“Yer warning me?” he says, pointing to himself with the knife, the smile back on his face.

Then he jumps a little as something smacks him in the chest and sticks there. It looks like a bunch of little wires with a plastic bulb on the end. Mr Prentiss Jr puts the knife underneath it and tries to flick it off but it stays stuck. He looks up at Viola, smirking. “Whatever this is sposed to be, sister,” he says, “it didn’t work.” And SMACKFLASH!!

There’s a huge clap of light and I feel a hand on the back of my collar yank me back to the point of choking. I fall back and away as Mr Prentiss Jr’s body jerks into a spasm, flinging the knife out to one side, sparks and little flashes of lightning flying out of the wires and into his body. Smoke and steam comes from everywhere, his sleeves, his collar, his pantlegs. Viola’s still pulling me back outta the way by my neck when he falls to the ground, face first in the muck, right on top of his rifle.

She lets go and we tumble together on a little bank by the side of the road. I grab my neck again and we lay there breathing heavily for a second. The sparks and flashes stop and Mr Prentiss Jr twitches in the mud.

“I was afraid —” Viola says twixt deep breaths “— all this water around —” breath “— that I might take you and me with him —” breath “— but he was about to cut—”

I stand without saying nothing, my Noise focused, my eyes on the knife. I go right to it.

“Todd—” Viola says.

I pick it up and stand over him. “Is he dead?” I ask without looking at Viola.

“Shouldn’t be,” she says. “It was just the voltage from a—”

I raise the knife.

“Todd, no!”

“Give me one good reason,” I say, knife still hovering, eyes still on him.

“You’re not a killer, Todd,” she says.

I spin round to her, my Noise roaring up like a beast. “Don’t SAY THAT!! Don’t you EVER SAY THAT!!”

“Todd,” she says, her hand out, her voice calming.

“I’M why we’re in this mess! They’re not looking for YOU! They’re looking for ME!” I turn back to Mr Prentiss Jr. “And if I could kill one of them, then maybe we—”

“Todd, no, listen to me,” she says, coming closer. “Listen to me!” I look at her. My Noise is so ugly and my face so twisted she hesitates a little but then she takes another step forward. “Listen to me while I tell you something.” And then out pour more words from her than I ever heard before.

“When you found me, back there in the swamp, I had been running from that man, from Aaron, for four days, and you were only the second person I’d ever seen on this planet and you came at me with that same knife and for all I knew you were exactly like him.” Her hands are still up, like I’m Mr Prentiss Jr’s long-gone horse in need of calming.

“But before I even understood what was going on with the Noise and with Prentisstown and with whatever your story was, I could tell about you. People can tell, Todd. We can see that you won’t hurt us. That that’s not you.” “You hit me in the face with a branch,” I say.

She puts her hands on her hips. “Well, what did you expect? You came at me with a knife. But I didn’t hit you hard enough to hurt you badly, did I?”

I don’t say nothing.

“And I was right,” she says. “You bandaged my arm. You rescued me from Aaron when you didn’t have to. You took me out of the swamp where I would have been killed. You stood up for me to that man in the orchard. You came with me when we needed to leave Farbranch.” “No,” I say, my voice low, “no, yer not reading the story right. We’re only having to run cuz I couldn’t—”

“I think I’m finally understanding the story, Todd,” she says. “Why are they coming after you so fiercely? Why is a whole army chasing you across towns and rivers and plains and the whole stupid planet?” She points to Mr Prentiss Jr. “I heard what he said. Don’t you wonder why they want you so badly?” The pit in me is just getting blacker and darker. “Cuz I’m the one who don’t fit.”

“Exactly!”

My eyes go wide. “Why is that good news? I have an army who wants to kill me cuz I’m not a killer.”

“Wrong,” she says. “You have an army who wants to make you a killer.”

I blink. “Huh?”

She takes another step forward. “If they can turn you into the kind of man they want—”

“Boy,” I say. “Not a man yet.”

She waves this away. “If they can snuff out that part of you that’s good, the part of you that won’t kill, then they win, don’t you see? If they can do it to you, they can do it to anyone. And they win. They win!” She’s near me now and she reaches out her hand and puts it on my arm, the one still holding the knife.

“We beat them,” she says, “you beat them by not becoming what they want.”

I clench my teeth. “He killed Ben and Cillian.”

She shakes her head. “No, he said he did. And you believed him.”

We look down at him. He’s not twitching no more and the steam is starting to lessen.

“I know this kind of boy,” she says. “We have this kind of boy even on spaceships. He’s a liar.”

“He’s a man.”

“How can you keep saying that?” she asks, her voice finally snappy. “How can you keep saying that he’s a man and you’re not? Just because of some stupid birthday? If you were where I came from you’d already be fourteen and a month!” “I’m not where yer from!” I shout. “I’m from here and that’s how it works here!”

“Well, how it works here is wrong.” She lets go of my arm and kneels down by Mr Prentiss Jr. “We’ll tie him up. We’ll tie him up good and tight and we’ll get the heck out of here, all right?” I don’t let go of the knife.

I will never let go of this knife, no matter what she says, no matter how she says it.

She looks up and around. “Where’s Manchee?”

Oh, no.

We find him in the bushes. He growls at us without words, just animal growls. He’s holding his left eye shut and there’s blood around his mouth. It takes a bunch of tries but I finally catch him while Viola takes out her medipak-of-wonders. I hold him down as she forces him to swallow a pill that makes him go floppy and then she cleans out his broken teeth and puts a cream in his eye. She tapes a bandage to it and he looks so small and beaten that when he says “Thawd?” thru one-eyed grogginess I just hug him to me and sit for a bit, under the bushes, outta the rain, while Viola repacks everything and gets my rucksack outta the mud.

“Your clothes are all wet,” she says after a while. “And the food is smashed. But the book’s still in the plastic. The book’s all right.”

And the thought of my ma knowing what a coward her son would be one day makes me want to throw the book in the river.

But I don’t.

We go to tie up Mr Prentiss Jr with his own rope and find that the electric shock has blown the wooden stock right off of his rifle. Which is a shame cuz it coulda come in handy.

“What was that you shocked him with?” I ask, huffing and puffing as we drag him to the side of the road. Knocked out people are heavy.

“A device for telling the ship in space where I am on the planet,” she says. “It took forever to pull apart.”

I stand up. “How will yer ship know where you are now?”

She shrugs. “We just have to hope that Haven’ll have something.”

I watch her go to her own bag and pick it up. I sure hope Haven has half what she’s expecting.

We leave. Mr Prentiss Jr was right about the stupidity of staying on the road, so we keep twenty or thirty metres away from it on the non-river side, trying to keep it in sight as best we can. We take turns carrying Manchee as the night passes.

We don’t talk much neither.

Cuz she might have a point, right? Yeah, okay, maybe that’s what the army’s after, maybe if they can make me join, they can make anyone join. Maybe I’m their test, who knows, the whole town’s crazy enough to believe something like that.

If one of us falls, we all fall.

But for one that don’t explain why Aaron’s after us and for two I’ve heard her lie now, ain’t I? Her words sound good but who’s to know if she’s making truth up rather than just saying it?

Cuz I’m never going to join the army and Mayor Prentiss must know that, not after what they did to Ben and Cillian, the truth of Mr Prentiss Jr’s Noise or not, so that’s where she’s dead wrong. Whatever they want, whatever the weakness is in me that I can’t kill a man even when he deserves it, it’s got to change for me to be a man. It’s got to or how can I hold my head up?

Midnight passes and I’m twenty-five days and a million years from becoming a man.

Cuz if I’d killed Aaron, he couldn’t’ve told Mayor Prentiss where he’d seen me last.

If I coulda killed Mr Prentiss Jr back at the farm, he wouldn’t’ve led the Mayor’s men to Ben and Cillian and wouldn’t’ve lived to harm Manchee so.

If I’d been any kinda killer, I coulda stayed and helped Ben and Cillian defend themselves.

Maybe if I was a killer, they wouldn’t be dead.

And that’s a trade I’d make any day.

I’ll be a killer, if that’s what it takes.

Watch me.

The terrain’s getting rougher and steeper as the river starts making canyons again. We rest for a while under a rocky outcropping and eat the last of the food that didn’t get ruined by the fight with Mr Prentiss Jr.

I lay Manchee across my lap. “What was in that pill?”

“It was just a little crumb of a human painkiller,” she says. “I hope it’s not too much.”

I run my hand over his fur. He’s warm and asleep so at least still living.

“Todd—” she says, but I stop her.

“I wanna keep moving as long as we can,” I say. “I know we should sleep but let’s go till we can’t go no more.”

She waits a minute and then she says, “Okay”, and we don’t say nothing more, just finish the last of the food.

The rain keeps up all night as we go and there’s no racket like rainfall in the woods, a billion drops pattering down a billion leaves, the river swelling and roaring, the squish of the mud under our feet. I hear Noise now and again in the distance, probably from woodland creachers but always outta sight, always gone when we get near.

“Is there anything out here that could harm us?” Viola asks me, having to raise her voice over the rain.

“Too many to count,” I say. I gesture to Manchee in her arms. “He awake yet?”

“Not yet,” she says, worry in her voice. “I hope I—”

And that’s how unprepared we are when we step round another rocky outcropping and into the campsite.

We both stop immediately and take in what’s in front of our eyes, all in a flash.

A fire burning.

Freshly caught fish hanging from a spit over it.

A man leaning over a stone, scraping scales from another fish.

That man looking up as we step into his campsite.

In an instant, like knowing Viola was a girl even tho I’d never seen one, I know in the second it takes me to reach for my knife, I know that he’s not a man at all.

He’s a Spackle.

25. KILLER

The world stops spinning.

The rain stops falling, the fire stops burning, my heart stops beating.

A Spackle.

There ain’t no more Spackle.

They all died in the wars.

There ain’t no more Spackle.

And here’s one standing right in front of me.

He’s tall and thin like in the vids I remember, white skin, long fingers and arms, the mouth mid-face where it ain’t sposed to be, the ear flaps down by the jaw, eyes blacker than swamp stones, lichen and moss growing where clothes should be.

Alien. As alien as you can be.

Holy crap.

You might as well just crumple up the world I know and throw it away.

“Todd?” Viola says.

“Don’t move,” I say.

Cuz thru the sound of the rain I can hear the Spackle’s Noise.

No words come out clear, just pictures, skewed up strange and with all the wrong colours, but pictures of me and Viola standing in front of him, looking shocked.

Pictures of the knife now outstretched in my hand.

“Todd,” Viola says, a small warning in her voice.

Cuz his Noise has more in it. It’s got feelings, washing up in a buzz.

Feelings of fear.

I feel his fear.

Good.

My Noise turns red.

“Todd,” Viola says again.

“Quit saying my name,” I say.

The Spackle pulls himself slowly upright from where he’s skinning the fish. He’s made his camp underneath another rocky outcropping down the slope of a small hill. A good part of it’s dry and I see bags and a roll of moss that might be a bed.

There’s also something shiny and long resting against the rock.

I can see the Spackle picture it in his Noise.

It’s the spear he’s been using to catch fish in the river.

“Don’t,” I say to him.

I think for a second, but only for a second, how clear I understand all this, how clear I can see him standing in the river, how easy he is to read, even tho it’s all pictures.

But the second passes in a flash.

Cuz I see him thinking about making a leap for the spear.

“Todd?” she says. “Put the knife down.”

And he makes his leap.

I leap at the same time.

(Watch me.)

“No!” I hear Viola scream but my Noise is roaring way too loud for me to hear it as more than a whisper.

Cuz all I’m thinking as I take running steps across the campsite, knife up and ready, bearing down on the Spackle, all skinny knees and elbows as he stumbles heading for his spear, all I’m thinking and sending forward to him in my red, red Noise are images and words and feelings, of all I know, all that’s happened to me, all the times I failed to use the knife, every bit of me screaming—I’ll show you who’s a killer.

I get to him before he gets to the spear, barrelling into him with my shoulder. We fall to the less muddy dirt with a thud and his arms and legs are all over me, long, like wrestling with a spider, and he’s striking me about the head but they’re little more than slaps really and I realize and I realize and I realize — I realize he’s weaker than me.

“Todd, stop it!” I hear Viola call.

He scrabbles away from me and I thump him on the side of his head with a fist and he’s so light it topples him over onto a pile of rocks and he looks back up at me and his mouth is making a hissing sound and there’s terror and panic flying outta his Noise.

“STOP IT!” Viola screams. “Can’t you see how scared he is?”

“And well he should be!” I yell back.

Cuz there ain’t no stopping my Noise now.

I step towards him and he tries to crawl away but I grab him by his long white ankle and drag him off the rocks back onto the ground and he’s making this horrible keening sound and I ready my knife.

And Viola must’ve put Manchee down somewhere cuz she grabs my arm and she pulls it back to stop me cutting down the spack and I push into her with my body to shake her off but she won’t let go and we go stumbling away from the Spackle who cowers down by a rock, his hands in front of his face.

“Let go of me!” I yell.

“Please, Todd!” she yells back, pulling and twisting my arm. “Stop this, please!”

I twist my arm around and use my free one to push her away and when I turn the Spackle’s skittered along the ground–

Heading for his spear–

Has his fingers on the end–

And all my hate erupts into me like a volcano at full bright red —

And I fall on him–

And I punch the knife into his chest.

It crunches as it goes in, turning to the side as it hits a bone and the Spackle screams the most terrible, terrible sound and dark red blood (red, it’s red, they bleed red) sprays outta the wound and he brings a long arm up and scratches across my face and I pull back my arm and I stab him again and a long screeching breath comes outta his mouth with a loud gurgle and his arms and legs still scramble around him and he looks at me with his black, black eyes and his Noise filled with pain and bafflement and fear — And I twist the knife–

And he won’t die and he won’t die and he won’t die–

And in a moan and a shudder he dies.

And his Noise stops altogether.

I gag in my throat and I yank out the knife and paddle my way back along the mud.

I look at my hands, at the knife. There’s blood all over everything. The knife is covered with it, even all over the handle, and both my hands and arms and the front of my clothes and a splash on my face that I wipe away mingling with my own blood from the scratch.

Even with the rain coming down on me now there’s more of it than seems possible.

The Spackle lays where I–

Where I killed him.

I hear Viola make a choking and gasping sound and I look up to her and when I do she flinches back from me.

“You don’t know!” I shout at her. “You don’t know anything! They started the war. They killed my ma! All of it, everything that’s happened, is their fault!”

And then I throw up.

And I keep throwing up.

And when my Noise starts to calm I throw up all over again.

I keep my head to the ground.

The world has stopped.

The world is still stopped.

I don’t hear nothing from Viola but her silence. I feel my rucksack digging into the back of my neck as I lean forward. I don’t look over at the Spackle.

“He woulda killed us,” I finally say, talking into the ground.

Viola don’t say nothing.

“He woulda killed us,” I say again.

“He was terrified!” Viola cries, her voice breaking. “Even I could see how scared he was.”

“He went for his spear,” I say, lifting my head.

“Because you came after him with a knife!” I can see her now. Her eyes are wide and growing more blank, like they did when she closed up on herself and started rocking.

“They killed everyone on New World,” I say.

She shakes her head, fiercely. “You idiot! You stupid fucking IDIOT!”

She don’t say effing.

“How many times have you found out that what you’ve been told isn’t true?” she says, backing away from me even further, her face twisting. “How many times?”

“Viola—”

“Weren’t all the Spackle killed in the war?” she says and my God how I hate how frightened her voice sounds. “Huh? Weren’t they?”

And the last of my anger drops outta my Noise as I realize how I’ve been the fool again–

And I turn round to the Spackle–

And I see the campsite–

And I see the fish on the lines–

And (no no no no no) I see the fear that was coming from his Noise–

(No no no, please no.)

And there’s nothing left for me to throw up but I heave anyway–

And I’m a killer–

I’m a killer–

I’m a killer–

(Oh, please no) I’m a killer.

I start to shake. I start to shake so bad I can’t stand up. I find I’m saying “No” over and over again and the fear in his Noise keeps echoing around mine and there’s nowhere to run from it, it’s just there and there and there and I’m shaking so bad I can’t even stay on my hands and knees and I fall into the mud and I can still see the blood everywhere and the rain’s not washing it off.

I squeeze my eyes shut tight.

And there’s only blackness.

Only blackness and nothing.

One more time, I’ve ruined everything. One more time, I’ve done everything wrong.

From a long way away I can hear Viola saying my name.

But it’s so far away.

And I’m alone. Here and always, alone.

I hear my name again.

From a far, far distance I feel a pull on my arm.

It’s only when I hear a squib of Noise not my own that I open my eyes.

“I think there’s more of them out there,” Viola whispers down near my ear.

I raise my head. My own Noise is so filled with junk and horror that it’s hard to hear clearly and the rain is still falling, heavy as ever, and I take a stupid moment to wonder if we’ll ever get dry again and then I hear it, murmuring and indistinct in the trees, impossible to pin down but definitely out there.

“If they didn’t want to kill us before,” Viola says, “they’ll sure want to do it now.”

“We need to go.” I try to get to my feet. I’m still shaking and it takes a try or two, but I do.

I’m still holding the knife. It’s sticky with blood.

I throw it to the ground.

Viola’s face is a terrible thing, grieved and scared and horrified, all at me, all at me, but as ever we ain’t got no choice so I just say again, “We need to go,” and I go to pick up Manchee from where she’d set him down in the dry lee of the Spackle’s outcropping.

He’s still sleeping and shivering from the cold when I pick him up and I bury my face in his fur and breathe in his familiar doggy stink.

“Hurry,” Viola says.

And I turn back to her to see her looking all around, the Noise still whispering all around thru the woods and the rain, the fear still on her face.

She returns her gaze to me and I find it impossible to hold and so I look away.

But as I’m looking away, I see movement behind her.

I see the bushes part behind where she’s standing.

And I see her see my face changing.

And she turns in time to see Aaron coming outta the woods behind her.

And he’s grabbing her by the neck with one hand and smashing a cloth over her nose and mouth with the other and as I call out and take a step forward I hear her scream from beneath it and she tries to fight with her hands but Aaron’s holding her tight and by the time I’ve taken my second and third steps she’s already swooning from whatever’s on the cloth and on my fourth and fifth steps he’s dropping her to the ground and Manchee is still in my arms and on my sixth step he’s reaching behind his back and I don’t have my knife and I have Manchee with me and I can only run towards him and on my seventh step I see him bring around a wooden staff that’s been strapped to his back and it swings thru the air and strikes me full on the side of my head with a CRACK

and I fall and Manchee tumbles from my arms and I crash into the ground on my belly and my head is ringing so hard I can’t even catch myself and the world goes wobbly and grey and full of only pain and I’m on the ground and everything is tilting and sliding and my arms and legs weigh too much to lift and my face is half in the mud but half turned up and I can see Aaron watching me on the ground and I see his Noise and Viola in it and I see him see my knife shining red in the mud and he picks it up and I try to crawl away but the weight of my body sticks me to the spot and I can only watch as he stands over me.

“I have no further use for you, boy,” he says and he raises the knife over his head and the last thing I see is him bringing it down with the full force of his arm.