The Knife of Never Letting Go

26. THE END OF ALL THINGS

Falling no FALLING no please help me Falling The Knife The Knife Spackle spacks are dead, all spacks dead VIOLA sorry, please, sorry he’s got a spear FALLING Please please Aaron, behind you! He’s coming! no further use to me, boy Viola falling, Viola Eade spackle the screaming and the blood and no WATCH ME watch me no please watch me he woulda killed us Ben please I’m sorry Aaron! Run! E-A-D-E More of them we have to get outta here FALLING falling dark blood The Knife dead run I’m a killer please no SPACKLE Viola Viola Viola—“Viola!” I try and scream but it’s blackness, it’s blackness with no sound, blackness and I’ve fallen and I have no voice–

“Viola,” I try again and there’s water in my lungs and an ache in my gut and pain, pain in my–

“Aaron,” I whisper to myself and no one. “Run, it’s Aaron.”

And then I fall again and it’s blackness…

…

…

“Todd?”

…

“Todd?”

Manchee.

“Todd?”

I can feel a dog’s tongue on my face which means I can feel my face which means I can tell where it is and with a rush of air clanging into me, I open my eyes.

Manchee’s standing right by my head, shifting from foot to foot, licking his lips and nose nervously, the bandage still over his eye, but he’s all blurry and it’s hard to–

“Todd?”

I try to say his name to calm him but all I do is cough and a sharp pain soars thru my back. I’m still down on my belly in the muck, where I fell when Aaron–

Aaron.

When Aaron hit me in the head with his staff. I try to raise my head and a blinding ache stretches over the right side of my skull all the way down to my jaw and I have to lie there gritting my teeth for a minute just letting it hurt and blaze before I can even try speaking again.

“Todd?” Manchee whimpers.

“I’m here, Manchee,” I finally mutter but it comes up outta my chest like a growl held back by goo and it sets off more coughing–

Which I have to cut short cuz of the sharp pain in my back.

My back.

I stifle another cough and a horror feeling spreads out from my gut into the rest of me.

The last thing I saw before–

No.

Oh, no.

I cough a little in my throat, trying not to move any muscle at all, failing at it and surviving the pain till it ebbs as far as it’s gonna and then I work on making my mouth move without killing me.

“Is there a knife in me, Manchee?” I rasp.

“Knife, Todd,” he barks and there’s worry all over him. “Back, Todd.”

He comes forward to lick my face again, the dog way of trying to make it better. All I do is breathe and not move for a minute. I close my eyes and pull air inside, despite how my lungs are complaining and already seem full.

I am Todd Hewitt, I think, which is a mistake, cuz here comes all of it back, falling on me, dragging me down and the Spackle’s blood and Viola’s face frightened of me and Aaron coming outta the woods and taking her — I start to weep but the pain from the grip of the weep is so bad that for a minute I feel paralysed and a living fire burns thru my arms and back and there’s nothing to do but suffer it till it goes.

Slowly, slowly, slowly, I start to uncurl one arm from beneath me. My head and back hurt so bad I think I pass out for a minute but I wake again and slowly, slowly, slowly reach my hand up and behind me, crawling my fingers up my wet filthy shirt and up the wet filthy rucksack which unbelievably I’m still wearing and up and back till there it is under my fingertips.

The handle of the knife. Sticking outta my back.

But I’d be dead.

I’d be dead.

Am I dead?

“Not dead, Todd,” Manchee barks. “Sack! Sack!”

The knife is sticking in me, up high twixt my shoulder blades, the pain’s telling me all about it very specifically, but the knife’s gone thru the rucksack first, something in the rucksack’s stopped the knife from going all the way in — The book.

My ma’s book.

I feel with my fingers again, slowly as I can, but yes, Aaron raised his arm and brought it down thru the book in the rucksack and it’s stopped it from going all the way thru my body.

(Like it did thru the Spackle.)

I close my eyes again and try to take as deep a breath as possible which ain’t too deep and then I hold it till I can get my fingers round the knife and then I have to breathe and wait till the pain passes and then I try to pull but it’s the heaviest thing in the world and I have to wait and breathe and try again and I pull and the pain in my back increases like a gun firing and I scream out uncontrollably as I feel the knife come outta my back.

I gasp and pant for a minute and try to stop from weeping again, all the while holding the knife away from me, still stuck thru the book and the rucksack.

Manchee licks my face once more.

“Good boy,” I say, tho I don’t know why.

It takes what feels like a lifetime to get the rucksack straps off my arms and finally be able to cast the knife and the whole mess aside. Even then, I can’t come near standing up and I must pass out again cuz Manchee’s licking my face and I’m having to open my eyes and cough in my breath all over again.

As I lay there, still in the muck, I wish to myself more than anything in the whole world that Aaron’s knife had gone thru me, that I was as dead as the Spackle, that I could finish falling down that pit, down down down till there’s only blackness, down into the nowhere where there’s no more Todd to blame or screw things up or fail Ben or fail Viola, and I could fall away forever into nothingness and never have to worry no more.

But here’s Manchee, licking away.

“Get off.” I reach up an arm to push him away.

Aaron coulda killed me, coulda killed me so easy.

The knife thru my neck, the knife in my eye, the knife across my throat. I was his for the killing and he didn’t kill me. He musta known what he was doing. He musta.

Was he leaving me for the Mayor to find? But why was he so far ahead of the army? How could he have come all this way without a horse like Mr Prentiss Jr? How long had he been following us?

How long before he stepped outta the bushes and took Viola away?

I let out a little moan.

That’s why he left me alive. So I could live knowing that he took Viola. That’s how he wins, ain’t it? That’s how he makes me suffer. Living and having the sight of him taking her forever in my Noise.

A new kinda energy runs thru me and I make myself sit up, ignoring the pain and bringing myself forward and breathing till I can think about standing. The rattle in my lungs and the pain in my back make me cough more but I grit my teeth and get thru it.

Cuz I have to find her.

“Viola,” Manchee barks.

“Viola,” I say and I grit my teeth even harder and try to get to my feet.

But it’s too much, the pain takes my legs from me and I topple back in the mud and I just lay there pulled tight from it all and struggling to breathe and my mind goes all woozy and hot and in my Noise I’m running and I’m running and I’m running towards nothing and I’m hot all over and I’m sweating and I’m running in my Noise and I can hear Ben from behind the trees and I’m running towards him and he’s singing the song, he’s singing the song from my bedtimes, the song that’s for boys and not men but when I hear it my heart stretches and it’s early one morning just as the sun was rising.

I come back to myself. The song comes with me.

Cuz the song goes:

Early one morning just as the sun was rising,

I heard a maiden call from the valley below.

“Oh don’t deceive me, oh never leave me.”

I open my eyes.

Don’t deceive me. Never leave me.

I have to find her.

I have to find her.

I look up. The sun is in the sky but I have no idea how much time has passed since Aaron took Viola. That was just before dawn. It’s cloudy but bright now and so it could be late morning or early afternoon. It might not even be the same day, a thought I try to push away. I close my eyes and I try to listen. The rain’s stopped so there’s none of that clatter but the only Noise I can hear belongs to me and to Manchee and the distant wordless chatter of woodland creachers getting on with their lives that ain’t got nothing to do with mine.

No sound of Aaron. No space of silence for Viola.

I open my eyes and I see her bag.

Dropped in the struggle with Aaron, of no use or interest to him and just left on the ground like it don’t belong to no one, like it don’t matter that it’s Viola’s.

That bag so full of stupid and useful things.

My chest clenches and I cough painfully.

I can’t seem to stand so I crawl forward, gasping at the pain in my back and head but still crawling, Manchee barking, worried, “Todd, Todd,” all the time, and it takes forever, it takes too effing long but I get to the bag and I have to lean hunched with the pain for a minute before I can do anything with it. When I can breathe again I open it and fish around till I find the box with the bandages. There’s only one left but it’ll have to do. Then I start on the process of taking off my shirt which requires more stopping, more breathing, inch by inch, but finally it’s off my burning back and over my burning head and I can see blood and mud everywhere on it.

I find the scalpel in her medipak and cut the bandage in two. I put one part on my head, holding it till it sticks, and reach around slowly and put the other on my back. For a minute it hurts even more as the bandage material, the human cell whatever the hell she talked about, crawls into the wounds and makes a bind. I clench my teeth thru it but then the medicine starts to work and a flush of cool flows into my bloodstream. I wait for it to work enough till I can stand up. I’m wobbly when I first get to my feet but I can manage to just stand for a minute.

After another I can take a step. And then another.

But where do I go?

I’ve no idea where he took her. I’ve no idea how much time has passed. He could already be all the way back to the army by now.

“Viola?” Manchee barks, whimpering.

“I don’t know, fella,” I say. “Let me think.”

Even with the bandages doing their thing I can’t stand up straight all the way but I do my best and look around. The Spackle’s body is on the edge of my vision but I turn myself so I can’t see it.

Oh don’t deceive me. Oh never leave me.

I sigh and I know what I have to do.

“There ain’t nothing for it,” I say to Manchee. “We have to go back to the army.”

“Todd?” he whines.

“There ain’t nothing for it,” I say again and I put everything outta my head but moving.

First things first I need a new shirt.

I keep the Spackle to my back and turn to the rucksack.

The knife is still thru the cloth of the rucksack and the book inside. I don’t really wanna touch it and even in my haze I don’t wanna see what’s become of the book but I have to get the knife out so I brace the sack with my foot and pull hard. It takes a few tugs but it comes out and I drop it to the ground.

I look at it on the wet moss. There’s blood all over it still. Spackle blood mostly but my blood brighter red at the tip. I wonder if that means that Spackle blood got into my blood when Aaron stabbed me. I wonder if there are extra special viruses you can catch directly from Spackle.

But there’s no time for further wondering.

I open the rucksack and take out the book.

There’s a knife-shaped hole all the way thru and out the other side. The knife is so sharp and Aaron must be so strong that it’s hardly ruined the book at all. The pages have a slit running thru them all the way thru the book, my blood and Spackle blood staining the edges just a little, but it’s still readable.

I could still read it, still have it read.

If I ever deserve to.

I push that thought away too and take out a clean shirt. I cough as I do and even with the bandages it hurts so I have to wait till I stop. My lungs feel filled with water, like I’m carrying a pile of river stones in my chest, but I put the shirt on, I gather what useable things I can still get from my rucksack, some clothes, my own medipak, what ain’t been ruined by Mr Prentiss Jr or the rain and I take them and my ma’s book over to Viola’s bag and put them inside cuz there’s no way I can carry a rucksack on my back no more.

And then there’s still the asking, ain’t there?

Where do I go?

I follow the road back to the army, that’s where I go.

I go to the army and somehow I save her, even if it’s changing my place for hers.

And for that I can’t go unarmed, can I?

No, I can’t.

I look at the knife again, sitting there on the moss like a thing without properties, a thing made of metal as separate from a boy as can be, a thing which casts all blame from itself to the boy who uses it.

I don’t wanna touch it. Not at all. Not never again. But I have to go over and I have to clean off the blood as best I can on some wet leaves and I have to sheath it behind me in the belt that’s still around my waist.

I have to do these things. There ain’t no choice.

The Spackle hovers on the edge of my vision but I do not look at it as I handle the knife.

“C’mon, Manchee.” I loop Viola’s bag as gingerly as I can over one shoulder.

Don’t deceive me. Never leave me.

Time to go.

“We’re gonna find her,” I say.

I keep the campsite behind me and head off in the direkshun of the road. Best to just get on it and walk back to ’em as fast as I can. I’ll hear ’em coming and can get outta the way and then I guess I’ll see if there’s any way I can save her.

Which might mean meeting them head on.

I push my way thru a row of bushes when I hear Manchee bark, “Todd?”

I turn, trying to keep from seeing the campsite. “C’mon, boy.”

“Todd!”

“I said, c’mon, now. I mean it.”

“This way, Todd,” he barks and wags his half-tail.

I turn more fully to him. “What’d you say?”

He’s pointing his nose in another direkshun altogether from the one I’m going. “This way,” he barks. He rubs at the bandage over his eye with a paw, knocking it off and squinting at me with the injured eye.

“What do you mean ‘This way’?” I ask, a feeling in my chest.

He’s nodding his head and pushing his front feet in a direkshun not only away from the road but in the opposite direkshun from the army. “Viola,” he barks, turning round in a circle and then facing that way again.

“You can smell her?” I ask, my chest rising.

He barks a bark of yes.

“You can smell her?”

“This way, Todd!”

“Not back to the road?” I say. “Not back to the army?”

“Todd!” he barks, feeling the rise in my Noise and getting excited himself.

“Yer sure?” I say. “You gotta be sure, Manchee. You gotta be.”

“This way!” and off he runs, thru the bushes and off on a track parallel to the river, away from the army.

And towards Haven.

Who knows why and who cares cuz in the moment I’m running after him as best as my injuries will let me, in the moment I see him bounding away and ahead, I think to myself, Good dog, good bloody dog.

27. ON WE GO

“This way, Todd,” Manchee barks, taking us round another outcropping.

Ever since we left the Spackle campsite, the terrain’s been getting more and more rugged. The woods have been rising up into hills for an hour or two now and we rush up ’em and down ’em and up ’em again and sometimes it’s more like hiking than running. When we get up to the top of one, I see more and more rolling away in front of me, hills under trees, a few so steep you have to go around rather than over. The road and the river twist thru ’em on snaky paths off to my right and sometimes it’s all I can do to keep them in sight.

Even with the bandages doing their best to hold me together, every step I take jars my back and my head and every once in a while I can’t help but stop and sometimes throw up my empty stomach.

But on we go.

Faster, I think to myself. Go faster, Todd Hewitt.

They’ve got at least half a day’s march on us, maybe even a day and a half, and I don’t know where they’re going or what Aaron plans on doing when he gets there and so on we go.

“Yer sure?” I keep asking Manchee.

“This way,” he keeps barking.

The thing that makes no sense is that we’re pretty much on the path that Viola and I would have taken anyway, following the river, keeping back from the road, and heading east towards Haven. I don’t know why Aaron’s going there, I don’t know why he’d head away from the army, but that’s where Manchee’s smelling their scents and so that’s the way we go.

We keep on thru the middle of the day, up hills, down hills, and onwards, thru trees that turn from the broad leaves of the trees on the plains to more needly kinds, taller and more arrow-like. The trees even smell different, sending a sharp tang in the air I can taste on my tongue. Manchee and I hop over all manner of streams and creeks that feed the river and I stop now and then to refill the water bottles and on we go.

I try not to think at all. I try to keep my mind pointed ahead, pointed towards Viola and finding her. I try not to think about how she looked after I killed the Spackle. I try not to think about how afraid she was of me or how she backed away like I might hurt her. I try not to think about how scared she musta been when Aaron came after her and I was no use.

And I try not to think about the Spackle’s Noise and the fear that was in it or how surprised he musta been being killed for nothing more than being a fisherman or how the crunch felt up my arm when the knife went in him or how dark red his blood was flowing out onto me or the bafflement pouring outta him and into my Noise as he died as he died as he died as he — I don’t think about it.

On we go, on we go.

Afternoon passes into early evening, the forest and the hills seem never-ending, and there comes another problem.

“Food, Todd?”

“There ain’t none left,” I say, dirt giving way under my feet as we make our way down a slope. “I don’t got nothing for myself neither.”

“Food?”

I don’t know how long it is since I ate last, don’t know how long since I really slept, for that matter, since passing out ain’t sleeping.

And I’ve lost track of how many days till I become a man but I can tell you it’s never felt farther away.

“Squirrel!” Manchee suddenly barks and tears around the trunk of a needly tree and into a mess of ferns beyond. I didn’t even see the squirrel but I can hear Whirler dog and “Squirrel!” and Whirler-whirler-whirler— and then it stops short.

Manchee jumps out with a waxy squirrel drooping in his maul, bigger and browner than the ones from the swamp. He drops it on the ground in front of me, a gristly, bloody plop, and I ain’t so hungry no more.

“Food?” he barks.

“That’s all right, boy.” I look anywhere but the mess. “You can have it.”

I’m sweating more than normal and I take big drinks of water as Manchee finishes his meal. Little gnats cloud round us in near-invisible swarms and I keep having to bat ’em away. I cough again, ignoring the pain in my back, the pain in my head, and when he’s done and ready to go, I wobble just a little but on we go again.

Keep moving, Todd Hewitt. Keep going.

I don’t dare sleep. Aaron may not so I can’t. On and on, the clouds passing sometimes without me noticing, the moons rising, stars peeping. I come down to the bottom of a low hill and scare my way thru a whole herd of what look like deer but their horns are all different than the deer I know from Prentisstown and anyway they’re off flying thru the trees away from me and a barking Manchee before I hardly register they’re even there.

On we go still thru midnight (twenty-four days left? Twenty-three?). We’ve come the whole day without hearing no more sounds of Noise or other settlements, not that I could see anyway, even when I was close enough to see brief snatches of the river and the road. But as we reach the top of another wooded hill and the moons are directly overhead, I finally hear the Noise of men, clear as a crash.

We stop, crouching down even tho it’s night.

I look out from our hilltop. The moons are high and I can see two long huts in two separate clearings on hillsides across the way. From one I can hear the murmuring ruckus of sleeping men’s Noise. Julia? and on horseback and tell him it ain’t so and up the river past morning and lots of things that make no sense cuz dreaming Noise is the weirdest of all. From the other hut, there’s silence, the aching silence of women, I can feel it even from here, men in one hut, women in another, which I guess is one way of solving the problem of sleeping, and the touch of the silence from the women’s side makes me think of Viola and I have to keep my balance against a tree trunk for a minute.

But where there’s people, there’s food.

“Can you find yer way back to the trail if we leave it?” I whisper to my dog, stifling a cough.

“Find trail,” Manchee barks, seriously.

“Yer sure?”

“Todd smell,” he barks. “Manchee smell.”

“Keep quiet as we go then.” We start creeping our way down the hill, moving softly as we can thru the trees and brush till we get to the bottom of a little dale with the huts above us, sleeping on hillsides.

I can hear my own Noise spreading out into the world, hot and fusty, like the sweat that keeps pouring down my sides, and I try to keep it quiet and grey and flat, like Tam did, Tam who controlled his Noise better than any man in Prentisstown — And there’s yer proof.

Prentisstown? I hear from the men’s hut almost immediately.

We stop dead. My shoulders slump. It’s still dream Noise I’m hearing but the word repeats thru the sleeping men like echoes down a valley. Prentisstown? and Prentisstown? and Prentisstown? like they don’t know what the word means yet.

But they will when they wake.

Idiot.

“Let’s go,” I say, turning and scurrying back the way we came, back to our trail.

“Food?” Manchee barks.

“Come on.”

And so, still, no food for me but on we go, thru the night, rushing the best we can.

Faster, Todd. Get yer bloody self moving.

On we go, on we go, up hills, grabbing onto plants sometimes to pull myself up, and down hills, holding on to rocks to keep my balance now and then, the scent keeping well clear of anywhere easy it might be to walk, like the flatter parts down by the road or riverbank, and I’m coughing and sometimes stumbling and as the sun starts to show itself there comes a time when I can’t, when I just can’t, when my legs crumple beneath me and I have to sit down.

I just have to.

(I’m sorry.)

My back is aching and my head is aching and I’m sweating so stinking much and I’m so hungry and I just have to sit down at the base of a tree, just for a minute, I just have to and I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.

“Todd?” Manchee mumbles, coming up to me.

“I’m fine, boy.”

“Hot, Todd,” he says, meaning me.

I cough, my lungs rattling like rocks falling down a hill.

Get up, Todd Hewitt. Get off yer goddam butt and get going.

My mind drifts, I can’t help it, I try to hold on to Viola but there my mind goes and I’m little and I’m sick in bed and I’m real sick and Ben’s staying in my room with me cuz the fever is making me see things, horrible things, shimmering walls, people who ain’t there, Ben growing fangs and extra arms, all kindsa stuff and I’m screaming and pulling away but Ben is there with me and he’s singing the song and he’s giving me cool water and he’s taking out tabs of medicine — Medicine.

Ben giving me medicine.

I come back to myself.

I lift my head and go thru Viola’s bag, taking out her medipak again. It’s got all kindsa pills in it, too many. There’s writing on the little packets but the words make no sense to me and I can’t risk taking the tranquilizer that knocked out Manchee. I open my own medipak, nowhere near as good as hers, but there’s white tabs in it that I know are at least pain relievers, however cruddy and homemade. I chew up two and then two more.

Get up, you worthless piece of crap.

I sit and breathe for a while and fight fight fight against falling asleep, waiting for the pills to work and as the sun starts to peek up over the top of a far hill I reckon I’m feeling a little better.

Don’t know if I actually am but there ain’t no choice.

Get up, Todd Hewitt. Get an effing MOVE ON!

“Okay,” I say, breathing heavy and rubbing my knees with my hands. “Which way, Manchee?”

On we go.

The scent carries like it did before, avoiding the road, avoiding any buildings we might see at a distance, but always onward, always towards Haven, only Aaron knows why. Mid-morning we find another small creek heading down to the river. I check for crocs, tho it’s really too small a place, and refill the water bottles. Manchee wades in, lapping it up, snapping unsuccessfully at these little brass-coloured fishes that swim by, nibbling at his fur.

I sit on my knees and wash some of the sweat from my face. The water is cold as a slap and it wakes me up a little. I wish I knew if we were even gaining on ’em. I wish I knew how far they were ahead.

And I wish he’d never found us.

And I wish he’d never found Viola in the first place.

And I wish Ben and Cillian hadn’t lied to me.

And I wish Ben was here right now.

And I wish I was back in Prentisstown.

I rest back on my heels, looking up into the sun

No. No, I don’t. I don’t wish I was back in Prentisstown. Not no more, I don’t.

And if Aaron hadn’t found her then I might not have found her and that’s no good neither.

“C’mon, Manchee,” I say, turning round to pick up the bag again.

Which is when I see the turtle, sunning itself on a rock.

I freeze.

I never seen this kinda turtle before. Its shell is craggy and sharp, with a dark red streak going down either side. The turtle’s got its shell all the way open to catch as much warmth as possible, its soft back fully exposed.

You can eat a turtle.

Its Noise ain’t nothing but a long ahhhhhhh sound, exhaling under sunlight. It don’t seem too concerned about us, probably thinking it can snap its shell shut and dive underwater faster than we could get to it. And even if we did get to it, we wouldn’t be able to get the shell back open to eat it.

Unless you had a knife to kill it with.

“Turtle!” Manchee barks, seeing it. He keeps back cuz the swamp turtles we know have more than enough snap to get after a dog. The turtle just sits there, not taking us seriously.

I reach behind my back for the knife.

I’m halfway there when I feel the pain twixt my shoulder blades.

I stop. I swallow.

(Spackle and pain and bafflement.)

I glance down into the water, seeing myself, my hair a bird’s nest, bandage across half my head, dirtier than an old ewe.

One hand reaching for my knife.

(Red blood and fear and fear and fear.)

I stop reaching.

I take my hand away.

I stand. “C’mon, Manchee,” I say. I don’t look at the turtle, don’t even listen for its Noise. Manchee barks at it a few more times but I’m already crossing the creek and on we go, on we go, on we go.

So I can’t hunt.

And I can’t get near settlements.

And so if I don’t find Viola and Aaron soon I’ll starve to death if this coughing don’t kill me first.

“Great,” I say to myself and there’s nothing to do but keep going as fast as I can.

Not fast enough, Todd. Move yer effing feet, you gonk.

Morning turns to another midday, midday turns to another afternoon. I take more tabs, we keep on going, no food, no rest, just forward, forward, forward. The path is starting to tend downhill again, so at least that’s a blessing. Aaron’s scent moves closer to the road but I’m feeling so poor I don’t even look up when I hear distant Noise now and then.

It ain’t his and there’s no silence that’s hers so why bother?

Afternoon turns into another evening and it’s when we’re coming down a steep hillside that I fall.

My legs slip out from under me and I’m not quick enough to catch myself and I fall down and keep falling, sliding down the hill, bumping into bushes, picking up speed, feeling a tearing in my back, and I reach out to stop myself but my hands are too slow to catch anything and I judder judder judder along the leaves and grass and then I hit a bump and skip up into the air, tumbling over onto my shoulders, pain searing thru them, and I call out loud and I don’t stop falling till I come to a thicket of brambles at the bottom of the hill and ram into ’em with a thump.

“Todd! Todd! Todd!” I hear Manchee, running down after me, but all I can do is try and withstand the pain again and the tired again and the gunk in my lungs and the hunger gnawing in my belly and bramble scratches all over me and I think I’d be crying if I had any energy left at all.

“Todd?” Manchee barks, circling round me, trying to find a way into the brambles.

“Gimme a minute,” I say and push myself up a little. Then I lean forward and fall right over on my face.

Get up, I think. Get up, you piece of filth, GET UP!

“Hungry, Todd,” Manchee says, meaning me that’s hungry. “Eat. Eat, Todd.”

I push with hands on the ground, coughing as I come up, spitting up handfuls of gunk from my lungs. I get to my knees at least.

“Food, Todd.”

“I know,” I say. “I know.”

I feel so dizzy I have to put my head back down on the ground. “Just gimme a sec,” I say, whispering it into the leaves on the ground. “Just a quick sec.”

And I fall again into blackness.

I don’t know how long I’m out but I wake to Manchee barking. “People!” he’s barking. “People! Todd, Todd, Todd! People!”

I open my eyes. “What people?” I say.

“This way,” he barks. “People. Food, Todd. Food!”

I take shallow breaths, coughing all the way, my body weighing ninety million pounds, and I push my way out the other side of the bramble. I look up and over.

I’m in a ditch right by the road.

I can see carts up ahead on the left, a whole string of ’em, pulled by oxes and by horses, disappearing round a bend.

“Help,” I say, but my voice comes out like a gasp with not near enough volume.

Get up.

“Help,” I call again, but it’s only to myself.

Get up.

It’s over. I can’t stand no more. I can’t move no more. It’s over.

Get up.

But it’s over.

The last cart disappears round the bend and it’s over.

… give up.

I put my head down, right down, on the roadside, grit and pebbles digging into my cheek. A shiver shakes me and I roll to my side and pull myself to myself, curling my legs to my chest, and I close my eyes and I’ve failed and I’ve failed and please won’t the darkness just take me please please please—“That you, Ben?”

I open my eyes.

It’s Wilf.

28. THE SMELL OF ROOTS

“Y’all right, Ben?” he asks, putting a hand under my armpit to help me up but even with that I can’t barely stand nor even raise my head much and so I feel his other hand under my other armpit. That don’t work neither so he goes even further than that and lifts me over his shoulder. I stare down at the back of his legs as he carries me to his cart.

“Hoo is it, Wilf?” I hear a woman’s voice ask.

“’s Ben,” Wilf says. “Lookin poorly.”

Next thing I know he’s setting me down on the back of his cart. It’s piled rag-tag with parcels and boxes covered in leather skins, bits of furniture and large baskets, all tumbled together, almost overflowing with itself.

“It’s too late,” I say. “It’s over.”

The woman’s walked over the back of the cart from the seat and hops down to face me. She’s broad with a worn dress and flyaway hair and lines at the corners of her eyes and her voice is quick, like a mouse. “What’s over, young’un?” “She’s gone.” I feel my chin crumpling and my throat pulling. “I lost her.”

I feel a cool hand on my forehead and it feels so good I press into it. She takes it away and says, “Fever,” to Wilf.

“Yup,” Wilf says.

“Best make a poultice,” the woman says and I think she heads off into the ditch but that don’t make no sense.

“Where’s Hildy, Ben?” Wilf says, trying to get his eyes to meet mine. Mine are so watery it’s hard to even see him.

“Her name ain’t Hildy,” I say.

“Ah know,” Wilf says, “but at’s whatcha call her.”

“She’s gone,” I say, my eyes filling. My head falls forward again. I feel Wilf put a hand on my shoulder and he squeezes it.

“Todd?” I hear Manchee bark, unsure, a ways off the road.

“I ain’t called Ben,” I say to Wilf, still not looking up.

“Ah know,” Wilf says again. “But at’s what we’re callin ya.”

I look up to him. His face and his Noise are as blank as I remember but the lesson of forever and ever is that knowing a man’s mind ain’t knowing the man.

Wilf don’t say nothing more and goes back to the front of the cart. The woman comes back with a seriously foul-smelling rag in her hands. It stinks of roots and mud and ugly herbs but I’m so tired I let her tie it round my forehead, right over the bandage that’s still stuck on the side of my head.

“At should work onna fever,” she says, hopping back up. We both lurch forward a little bit as Wilf snaps the rein on his oxes. The woman’s eyes are wide open, looking into mine like searching for exciting news. “Yoo runnin from the army, too?” Her quiet next to me reminds me so much of Viola it’s all I can do not to just lean against her. “Kinda,” I say.

“Yoo’s what told Wilf about it, huh?” she says. “Yoo’s and a girl told Wilf bout the army, told him to tell people, tell people they had to gettaway, dincha?”

I look up at her, smelly brown root water dripping down my face, and I turn back to look at Wilf, up there driving his cart. He hears me looking. “They lissened to Wilf,” he says.

I look up and past him to the road ahead. As we go round a bend, I can hear not only the rush of the river to my right again, like an old friend, an old foe, I can see a line of carts stretching on up ahead of us on the road at least as far as the next bend, carts packed with belongings just like Wilf’s and all kindsa people straggled along the tops, holding on to anything that won’t knock ’em off.

It’s a caravan. Wilf is taking the rear of a long caravan. Men and women and I think even children, too, if I can see clearly thru the stink of the thing tied round my head, their Noise and silence floating up and back like a great, clattery thing all its own.

Army I hear a lot. Army and army and army.

And cursed town.

“Brockley Falls?” I ask.

“Bar Vista, too,” the woman says, nodding her head fast. “And others. Rumour’s been flyin up the river and road. Army from cursed town comin and comin, growin as it comes, with men pickin up arms to join in.” Growing as it comes, I think.

“Thousands strong, they say,” says the woman.

Wilf makes a scoffing sound. “Ain’t no thousand people ’tween here and cursed town.”

The woman twists her lips. “Ah’m only sayin what people are sayin.”

I look back at the empty road behind us, Manchee panting along a little distance away, and I remember Ivan, the man in the barn at Farbranch, who told me that not everyone felt the same about history, that Pren— that my town had allies still. Maybe not thousands, but still maybe growing. Getting bigger and bigger as it marches on till it’s so big how can anyone stand against it?

“We’re going to Haven,” the woman says. “They’ll pruhtekt us there.”

“Haven,” I mumble to myself.

“Say they even got a cure for Noise in them there parts,” the woman says. “Now there’s a thing Ah’d like to see.” She laughs out loud at herself. “Or hear, Ah guess.” She slaps her thigh.

“They got Spackle there?” I ask.

The woman turns to me surprised. “Spackle don’t come near people,” she says. “Not no more, not since the war. They’s keep to theirselves and we’s keep to ourselves and such is the peace kept.” It sounds like she’s reciting the last part. “Tain’t hardly none left anyway.” “I gotta go.” I put my hands down and try to lift myself up. “I gotta find her.”

All that happens is that I lose my balance and fall off the end of the cart. The woman calls to Wilf to stop and they both lift me back up on it, the woman getting Manchee up top, too. She clears a few boxes away to lay me down and Wilf gets the cart going again. He snaps the oxes a bit harder this time and I can feel us moving along faster — faster than I could walk at least.

“Eat,” the woman says, holding up some bread to my face. “Yoo can’t go nowhere till yoo eat.”

I take the bread from her and eat a bite, then tear into the rest so hungrily I forget to give some to Manchee. The woman just takes out some more and gives some to both of us, watching wide-eyed at every move I make.

“Thanks,” I say.

“Ah’m Jane,” she says. Her eyes are still way open, like she’s just bursting to say stuff. “Didja see the army?” she asks. “With yer own eyes?”

“I did,” I say. “In Farbranch.”

She sucks in her breath. “So it’s true.” Not an asking, just saying it.

“Told yoo it were true,” Wilf says from up front.

“Ah hear they’re cuttin off people’s heads and boilin their eyes,” Jane says.

“Jane!” Wilf snaps.

“Ah’m just sayin.”

“They’re killing folk,” I say, low. “Killing’s enough.”

Jane’s eyes dart all over my face and Noise but all she says after a bit is, “Wilf told me all bout yoo,” and I can’t figure out at all what her smile means.

A drip from the rag makes it to my mouth and I gag and spit and cough some more. “What is this?” I say, pressing the rag with my fingers and wincing from the smell.

“Poultice,” Jane says. “For fevers and ague.”

“It stinks.”

“Evil smell draws out evil fever,” she says, as if telling me a lesson everyone knows.

“Evil?” I say. “Fever ain’t evil. It’s fever.”

“Yeah, and this poultice treats fever.”

I stare at her. Her eyes never leave me and the wide open part of them is starting to make me uncomfortable. It’s how Aaron looks when he’s pinning you down, how he looks when he’s imparting a sermon with his fists, when he’s preaching you into a hole you might never come out of.

It’s a mad look, I realize.

I try to check the thought but Jane don’t give no sign she heard.

“I gotta go,” I say again. “Thank you kindly for the food and the poultry but I gotta go.”

“Yoo can’t go off in these woods here, nosirree,” she says, still staring, still not blinking. “Them’s dangerous woods, them is.”

“What do you mean, dangerous?” I push myself away from her a little.

“Settlements up the way,” she says, her eyes even wider and a smile now, like she can’t wait to tell me. “Crazy as anything. Noise sent ’em wild. Hear tell of one where everyone wears masks so’s no one kin see their faces. There’s another where no one don’t do nothing but sing all day long they gone so crazy. And one where everyone’s walls are made a glass and no one wears no clothes cuz no one’s got secrets in Noise, do they?” She’s closer to me now. I can smell her breath, which is worse than the rag, and I feel the silence behind all these words. How can that be so? How can silence contain so much racket?

“People can keep secrets in Noise,” I say. “People can keep all kindsa secrets.”

“Leave a boy alone,” Wilf says from his seat.

Jane’s face goes slack. “Sorry,” she says, a little grudgingly.

I raise up a little, feeling the benefit of food in my belly whatever the stinking rag may or may not be doing.

We’ve pulled closer to the rest of the caravan, close enough for me to see the backs of a few heads and hear more closely the Noise of men chattering up and down and the silence of women twixt them, like stones in a creek.

Every now and then one of them, usually a man, glances back at us, and I feel like they’re seeking me out, seeing what I’m made of.

“I need to find her,” I say.

“Yer girl?” Jane asks.

“Yeah,” I say. “Thank you, but I need to go.”

“But yer fever! And the other settlements!”

“I’ll take my chances.” I untie the dirty rag. “C’mon, Manchee.”

“Yoo can’t go,” Jane says, eyes wider than ever, worry on her face. “The army—”

“I’ll worry about the army.” I pull myself up, readying to jump down off the cart. I’m still pretty unsteady so I have to take a cloudy breath or two before I do anything.

“But they’ll get yoo!” Jane says, her voice rising. “Yer from Prentisstown—”

I look up, sharp.

Jane slaps a hand over her mouth.

“Wife!” Wilf yells, turning his head round from the front of the cart.

“Ah didn’t mean it,” she whispers to me.

But it’s too late. Already the word is bouncing up and down the caravan in a way that’s become too familiar, not just the word, but what pins it to me, what everyone knows or thinks they know about me, already faces turning about to look deeper at the last cart in the caravan, oxes and horses drawing to a stop as people turn more fully to examine us.

Faces and Noise aimed right back down the road at us.

“Who yoo got back there, Wilf?” a man’s voice says from just one cart up.

“Feverish boy,” Wilf shouts back. “Crazy with sickness. Don’t know what he’s sayin.”

“Yoo entirely sure about that?”

“Yessir,” Wilf says. “Sick boy.”

“Bring him out,” a woman’s voice calls. “Let’s see him.”

“What if he’s a spy?” another woman’s voice calls, rising in pitch. “Leadin the army right to us?”

“We don’t want no spies!” cries a different man.

“He’s Ben,” Wilf says. “He’s from Farbranch. Got nightmares of cursed town army killin what he loves. I vouch for him.”

No one shouts nothing for a minute but the Noise of the men buzzes in the air like a swarm. Everyone’s face is still on us. I try to make my own look more feverish and put the invasion of Farbranch first and foremost. It ain’t hard and it makes my heart sick.

And there’s a long moment where nobody says nothing and it’s as loud as a screaming crowd.

And then it’s enough.

Slowly but slowly the oxes and horses start moving forward again, pulling away from us, people still looking back but at least getting farther away. Wilf snaps the reins on his oxes but keeps them slower than the rest, letting a distance open between us and everyone else.

“Ah’m sorry,” Jane says again, breathless. “Wilf told me not to say. He told me but—”

“That’s okay,” I say, just wanting her to stop talking already.

“Ah’m so so sorry.”

There’s a lurch and Wilf’s stopped the cart. He waits till the caravan’s off a good distance then hops down and comes back.

“No one lissens to Wilf,” he says, maybe with a small smile. “But when they do, they believe him.”

“I need to go,” I say.

“Yup,” he says. “T’ain’t safe.”

“Ah’m sorry,” Jane keeps saying.

I jump off the cart, Manchee following me. Wilf reaches for Viola’s bag and holds it open. He looks at Jane, who understands him. She takes an armful of fruits and breads and puts them in the bag, then another armful of dried meats.

“Thanks,” I say.

“Hope yoo find her,” Wilf says as I close the bag.

“I hope so, too.”

With a nod, Wilf goes and reseats himself on the cart and snaps the reins on his oxes.

“Be careful,” Jane calls after me, in the loudest whisper you ever heard. “Watch out for the crazies.”

I stand for a minute and watch ’em pull away, coughing still, feverish still, but feeling better for the food if not the smell of roots and I’m hoping Manchee can find the trail again and I’m also wondering just exactly what kinda welcome I’m gonna get if I ever do get to Haven.

29. AARON IN A THOUSAND WAYS

It takes a little while, a horrible little while, for Manchee to find the scent again once we’re back in the woods but then he barks, “This way,” and we’re off again.

He’s a good bloody dog, have I said that?

Night’s fully fallen by now and I’m still sweating and I’m still coughing enough to win a contest and my feet ain’t made of nothing but blisters and my head’s still buzzy with feverish Noise but I’ve got food in my belly and more in the bag to see me thru a coupla days and so all that matters is still ahead of us.

“Can you smell her, Manchee?” I ask, as we balance on a log across a stream. “Is she still alive?”

“Smell Viola,” he barks, jumping off the other side. “Viola fear.”

Which hits me a little and I quicken my step. Another midnight (twenty-two days? Twenty-one?) and my torch battery gives out. I take out Viola’s but it’s the last we got. More hills and steeper, too, as we go on thru the night, harder to climb up, dangerous to climb down but we go and go and go, Manchee sniffing away, eating Wilf’s dried meat as we stumble forward, me coughing away, taking the shortest rests possible, usually bent double against trees, and the sun starts coming up over a hill so it’s like we’re walking up into the sunrise.

And it’s when light hits us full that I see the world start to shimmer.

I stop, hanging on to a fern to keep my balance against the steepness of the hill. Everything’s woozy for a second and I close my eyes but it don’t help as there’s just a wash of colours and sparkles behind my eyelids and my body is jelly-like and waving in the breeze I can feel coming off the hilltop and when it passes, it don’t really pass altogether, the world keeping its weird brightness, like I’ve woke up in a dream.

“Todd?” Manchee barks, worry there, no doubt from seeing who knows what in my Noise.

“The fever,” I say, coughing again. “I shouldn’t’ve thrown away that filthy rag.”

Ain’t nothing for it.

I take the last of the pain tabs from my medipak and we gotta keep going.

We get to the top of the hill and for a minute all the other hills in front of us and the river and the road down below rumble up and down like they’re on a blanket someone’s shaking and I do my best to blink it away till it calms down enough to keep walking. Manchee whines by my feet. I nearly tip over when I try and scratch him so instead I focus on getting down the hill without falling.

I think again of the knife at my back, of the blood that was on it when it went into my body and my blood mixed with the Spackle’s and who knows what now spinning round my insides since Aaron stabbed me.

“I wonder if he knew,” I say, to Manchee, to myself, to no one, as we get to the bottom of the hill and I lean against a tree to make the world stop moving. “I wonder if he killed me slow.”

“Course I did,” Aaron says, leaning out from behind the tree.

I yell out and fall back away from him and fling my arms in front of me trying to slap him away and I hit the ground on my butt and start scampering back before I look up–

And he’s gone.

Manchee’s got his head cocked at me. “Todd?”

“Aaron,” I say, my heart thundering, my breath catching and turning into meatier and meatier coughs.

Manchee sniffs the air again, sniffs the ground around him. “Trail this way,” he barks, shifting from foot to foot.

I look around me, coughing away, the world spotty and wavy.

No sign of him, no Noise other than mine, no silence of Viola. I close my eyes again.

I am Todd Hewitt, I think against the swirling. I am Todd Hewitt.

Keeping my eyes shut, I feel for the water bottle and take a swig and I tear a piece from Wilf’s bread and chew it down. Only then do I open my eyes again.

Nothing.

Nothing but woods and another hill to climb.

And sunlight that shimmers.

The morning passes and at the bottom of yet another hill there’s yet another creek. I refill the water bottles and take a few drinks from the cold water with my hands.

I feel bad, ain’t no two ways about it, my skin’s tingling and sometimes I’m shivering and sometimes I’m sweating and sometimes my head weighs a million pounds. I lean into the creek and splash myself with the cold.

I sit up and Aaron is reflected in the water.

“Killer,” he says, a smile across his torn-up face.

I jump back, scrabbling away for my knife (and feeling the pain shoot thru my shoulders again) but when I look up he ain’t there and Manchee’s made no sign of stopping his fish-chasing.

“I’m coming to find you,” I say to the air, air that’s started to move more and more with the wind.

Manchee’s head pops up from the water. “Todd?”

“I’ll find you if it’s the last thing I do.”

“Killer,” I hear again, whispered along the wind.

I lay for a second, breathing heavy, coughing but keeping my eyes peeled. I go back to the creek and I splash so much cold water on myself it makes my chest hurt.

I pick myself up and we carry on.

The cold water does the trick for a little while and we manage a few more hills as the sun gets to midday in the sky with minimal shimmer. When things do start to wobble again I stop us and we eat.

“Killer,” I hear from the bushes around us and then again from another part of the forest. “Killer.” And again from somewhere else. “Killer.”

I don’t look up, just eat my food.

It’s just the Spackle blood, I tell myself. Just the fever and the sickness and that’s all.

“Is that all?” Aaron says from across the clearing. “If that’s all I am, why you chasing me so bad?”

He’s wearing his Sunday robes and his face is all healed up like he’s back in Prentisstown, his hands clasped in front of him like he’s ready to lead us in prayer and he’s glowing in the sun and he’s smiling down at me.

The smiling fist I remember so well.

“The Noise binds us all, young Todd,” he says, his voice slithering and shiny like a snake. “If one of us falls, we all fall.”

“You ain’t here,” I say, clenching my teeth.

“Here, Todd,” Manchee barks.

“Ain’t I?” Aaron says and disappears in a shimmer.

My brain knows this Aaron ain’t real but my heart don’t care and it’s beating in my chest like a race. It’s hard to catch my breath and I waste more time waiting just to be able to stand up and move on into the afternoon.

The food’s helping, God bless Wilf and his crazy wife, but sometimes we can’t go much faster than a stumble. I start to see Aaron outta the corner of my eye pretty much all the time, hiding behind trees, leaning against rocks, standing on top of woodfall, but I just turn my head away and keep stumbling.

And then, from a hilltop, I see the road cross the river again down below. The landscape’s moving in a way that turns my stomach but I can definitely see a bridge down there, taking the road to the other side so there’s nothing now twixt me and the river.

I wonder for a minute about that other fork we never took back in Farbranch. I wonder where that road is in the middle of all this wilderness. I look from the hilltop to my left but there’s just woods as far as I can see and more hills that move like hills shouldn’t. I have to close my eyes for a minute.

We make our way down, too slow, too slow, the scent taking us close to the road and towards the bridge, a high rickety one with rails. Water’s gathered where the road turns into it, filling it with puddles and muck.

“Did he cross the river, Manchee?” I put my hands on my knees to catch my breath and cough.

Manchee sniffs the ground like a maniac, crossing the road, re-crossing it, going to the bridge and back to where we stand. “Wilf smell,” he barks. “Cart smell.”

“I can see the tracks,” I say, rubbing my face with my hands. “What about Viola?”

“Viola!” Manchee barks. “This way.”

He heads away from the road, keeping to this side of the river and following it. “Good dog,” I say twixt raggedy breaths. “Good dog.”

I follow him thru branches and bushes, the river rushing closer to my right than it’s been in days.

And I step right into a settlement.

I stand up straight and cough in surprise.

It’s been destroyed.

The buildings, eight or ten of them, are charcoal and ash and there ain’t a whisper of Noise nowhere.

For a second I think the army’s been here but then I see plants growing up in the burnt-out buildings and no smoke is rising from any fire and the wind just blows thru it like only the dead live here. I look round and there’s a few decrepit docks on the river, just down from the bridge, one lonely old boat knocking against it in the current and a few more half-sunk boats piled halfway up the riverbank along from what may have been a mill before it became a pile of burnt wood.

It’s cold and it’s long dead and here’s another place on New World that never made it to subdivided farming.

And I turn back round and in the centre of it stands Aaron.

His face is back to how it was when the crocs tore it open, peeled half away, his tongue lolling out the side of the gash in his cheek.

And he’s still smiling.

“Join us, young Todd,” he says. “The church is always open.”

“I’ll kill you,” I say, the wind stealing my words but I know he can hear me cuz I can hear every last thing he’s saying.

“You won’t,” he says, stepping forward, his fists clenched by his sides. “Cuz I says you ain’t a real killer, Todd Hewitt.”

“Try me,” I say, my voice sounding strange and metallic.

He smiles again, his teeth poking out the side of his face, and in a wash of shimmer he’s right in front of me. He puts his cut up hands to the opening of his robe and pulls it apart enough to show his bare chest.

“Here’s yer chance, Todd Hewitt, to eat from the Tree of Knowledge.” His voice is deep in my head. “Kill me.”

The wind’s making me shiver but I feel hot and sweaty at the same time and I can’t get no more than a third of a breath down my lungs and my head is starting to ache in a way that food ain’t helping and whenever I look anywhere fast everything I see has to slide into place to catch up.

I clench my teeth.

I’m probably dying.

But he’s going first.

I reach behind me, ignoring the pain twixt my shoulders, and I grab the knife outta the sheath. I hold it in front of me. It’s shiny with fresh blood and glinting in sunlight even tho I’m standing in shadow.

Aaron pulls his smile wider than his face can really go and he pushes his chest out to me.

I raise the knife.

“Todd?” Manchee barks. “Knife, Todd?”

“Go ahead, Todd,” Aaron says and I swear I smell the dankness of him. “Cross over from innocence to sin. If you can.”

“I’ve done it,” I say. “I’ve already killed.”

“Killing a Spackle ain’t killing a man,” he says, grinning away at how stupid I am. “Spackles are devils put here to test us. Killing one’s like killing a turtle.” He widens his eyes. “’Cept you can’t do that neither now, can ya?”

I grip the knife hard and I make a snarling sound and the world wavers.

But the knife still ain’t falling.

There’s a bubbling sound and gooey blood pours outta the gash in Aaron’s face and I realize he’s laughing.

“It took a long, long time for her to die,” he whispers.

And I call out from the pain–

And I raise the knife higher–

And I aim it at his heart–

And he’s still smiling–

And I bring the knife down–

And stab it right into Viola’s chest.

“No!” I say, in the second that it’s too late.

She looks up from the knife and right at me. Her face is filled with pain and confused Noise spills from her just like the Spackle that I–

(That I killed.)

And she looks at me with tears in her eyes and she opens her mouth and she says, “Killer”.

And as I reach out for her, she’s gone in a shimmer.

And the knife, clean of all blood, is still in my hand.

I fall onto my knees and then pitch forward and lie on the ground in the burnt-out settlement, breathing and coughing and weeping and wailing as the world melts around me so bad I don’t feel like it’s even solid no more.

I can’t kill him.

I want to. I want to so bad. But I can’t.

Cuz it ain’t me and cuz I lose her.

I can’t. I can’t I can’t I can’t.

I give in to the shimmering and I disappear for a while.

It’s good old Manchee, the friend who’s proved truest, who wakes me up with licks to my face and a worried murmured word coming thru his Noise and his whines.

“Aaron,” he’s yelping, quiet and tense. “Aaron.”

“Leave off, Manchee.”

“Aaron,” he whimpers, licking away.

“He ain’t really there,” I say, trying to sit up. “It’s just something—”

It’s just something Manchee can’t see.

“Where is he?” I say, getting up too fast, causing everything to swirl bright pink and orange. I reel back from what’s waiting for me.

There are a hundred Aarons at a hundred different places, all standing round me. There are Violas, too, frightened and looking to me for help, and Spackles with my knife sticking outta their chests and there’re all talking at once, all talking to me in a roar of voices.

“Coward,” they’re saying. All of ’em. “Coward” over and over again.

But I wouldn’t be a Prentisstown boy if I couldn’t ignore Noise.

“Where, Manchee?” I say, getting to my feet, trying not to see how everything’s pitching and sliding.

“This way,” he barks. “Down the river.”

I follow him thru the burnt-out settlement.

He leads me past what musta been the church and I don’t look at it as we go by and he runs up a small bluff and the wind’s getting howlier and the trees are bending and I think it’s not just how I’m seeing them and Manchee has to bark louder to let me know.

“Aaron!” he barks, sticking his nose in the air. “Upwind.”

Thru the trees on the little bluff I can see downriver. I can see a thousand Violas looking frightened of me.

I can see a thousand Spackle with my knife killing them.

I can see a thousand Aarons looking back at me and calling me “Coward” with the worst smile you ever seen.

And beyond them, in a camp by the side of the river, I see an Aaron who ain’t looking back at me at all.

I see an Aaron kneeling down in prayer.

And I see Viola on the ground in front of him.

“Aaron,” Manchee barks.

“Aaron,” I say.

Coward.

30. A BOY CALLED TODD

“What are we gonna do?” says the boy, creeping up to my shoulder.

I raise my head from the cold river water and let it splash down my back. I stumbled back down from the bluff, elbowing my way thru crowds all calling me coward, and I got to the riverbank and I plunged my head straight in and now the cold is making me shake violently but it’s also calming the world down. I know it won’t last, I know the fever and spack blood infection will win in the end, but for now, I’m gonna need to see as clearly as possible.

“How are we gonna get to them?” the boy asks, moving round to my other side. “He’ll hear our Noise.”

The shivering makes me cough, everything makes me cough, and I spit out handfuls of green goo from my lungs, but then I hold my breath and plunge in my head again.

The cold of the water feels like a vice but I hold it there, hearing the bubbling of the water rushing by and the wordless barks of a worried Manchee hopping around my feet. I can feel the bandage on my head detach and wash away in the current. I think of Manchee wriggling the bandage off his tail in a different part of the river and I forget and I laugh underwater.

I lift my head up, choking and gasping and coughing more.

I open my eyes. The world shines like it shouldn’t and there are all kindsa stars out even tho the sun is still up but at least the ground has stopped floating and all the excess Aarons and Violas and Spackles are gone.

“Can we really do it alone?” asks the boy.

“Ain’t no choice,” I say to myself.

And I turn to look at him.

He’s got a brown shirt like mine, no scars on his head, a rucksack on his back, a book in one hand and a knife in the other. I’m shaking from the cold still and it’s all I can do to stand but I breathe and cough and shake and look at him.

“C’mon, Manchee,” I say and I head back across the burnt-out settlement, back to the bluff. Just walking is tough, like the ground could cave away at any minute, cuz I weigh more than a mountain but less than a feather, but I’m walking, I’m keeping walking, I’m keeping the bluff in sight, I’m reaching it, I’m taking the first steps up it, I’m taking the next steps, I’m grabbing on to branches to pull myself along, I’m reaching the top, I’m leaning against a tree at the top, and I’m looking out.

“Is it really him?” says the boy behind my ear.

I squint out across the trees, tracing my eye down the river.

And there’s still a campsite, still at the river’s edge, so far away they’re just specks against other specks. I still have Viola’s bag around my shoulders and I reach for her binos, holding ’em up to my eyes but shaking so much it’s hard to get a clear image. They’re far enough away that the wind’s covering up his Noise but I’m sure I feel her silence out there.

I’m sure of it.

“Aaron,” Manchee says. “Viola.”

So I know it’s not a shimmer and in the shakiness I can just about catch him still kneeling, praying some prayer, and Viola laid out on the ground in front of him.

I don’t know what’s happening. I don’t know what he’s doing.

But it’s really them.

All this walking and stumbling and coughing and dying and it’s really really them, by God it’s really them.

I may not be too late and it’s only how my chest rises and my throat grips that I realize all along I’ve thought I was too late.

But I’m not.

I lean down again and (shut up) I cry, I cry, I’m crying but it has to pass cuz I have to figure it out, I have to figure it out, it’s down to me, there’s only me, I have to find a way, I have to save her, I have to save—“What are we gonna do?” the boy asks again, standing a little way away, book still in one hand, knife in the other.

I put my palms into my eyes and rub hard, trying to think straight, trying to concentrate, trying not to listen–

“What if this is the sacrifice?” says the boy.

I look up. “What sacrifice?”

“The sacrifice you saw in his Noise,” he says. “The sacrifice of—”

“Why would he do it here?” I say. “Why would he come all this way and stop in the middle of a stupid forest and do it here?”

The boy’s expression doesn’t change. “Maybe he has to,” he says, “before she dies.”

I step forward and have to catch my balance. “Dies of what?” I say, my voice snappy, my head aching and buzzy again.

“Fear,” says the boy, taking a step backwards. “Disappointment.”

I turn away. “I ain’t listening to this.”

“Listening, Todd?” Manchee barks. “Viola, Todd. This way.”

I lean back again against the tree. I’ve got to think. I’ve got to ruddy think.

“We can’t approach,” I say, my voice thick. “He’ll hear us coming.”

“He’ll kill her if he hears us,” says the boy.

“Ain’t talking to you.” I cough up more gunk, which makes my head spin, which makes me cough more. “Talking to my dog,” I finally choke out.

“Manchee,” Manchee says, licking my hand.

“And I can’t kill him,” I say.

“You can’t kill him,” says the boy.

“Even if I want to.”

“Even if he deserves it.”

“And so there has to be another way.”

“If she’s not too scared to see you.”

I look at him again. Still there, still book and knife and rucksack.

“You need to leave,” I say. “You need to go away from me and never come back.”

“Yer probably too late to save her.”

“Yer of no use to me at all,” I say, raising my voice.

“But I’m a killer,” he says and the knife has blood on it.

I close my eyes and grit my teeth. “You stay behind,” I say. “You stay behind.”

“Manchee?” Manchee barks.

I open my eyes. The boy isn’t there. “Not you, Manchee,” I say, reaching out and rubbing his ears.

Then I regard him, Manchee. “Not you,” I say again.

And I’m thinking. In the clouds and the swirls and the shimmers and the lights and the ache and the buzz and the shaking and the coughing, I’m thinking.

And I’m thinking.

I rub the ears of my dog, my stupid goddam ruddy great dog that I never wanted but who hung around anyway and who followed me thru the swamp and who bit Aaron when he was trying to choke me and who found Viola when she was lost and who’s licking my hand with his little pink tongue and whose eye is still mostly squinted shut from where Mr Prentiss Jr kicked him and whose tail is way way shorter from when Matthew Lyle cut it off when my dog — my dog — went after a man with a machete to save me and who’s right there when I need pulling back from the darkness I fall into and who tells me who I am whenever I forget.

“Todd,” he murmurs, rubbing his face into my hand and thumping his back leg against the ground.

“I got an idea,” I say.

“What if it don’t work?” says the boy from behind the tree.

I ignore him and I pick up the binos again. Shaking still, I find Aaron’s campsite one more time and look at the area around it. They’re near the river’s edge and there’s a forked tree just this side of them along the riverbank, bleached and leafless, like it maybe once got struck by lightning.

It’ll do.

I put down the binos and take Manchee’s head in both hands. “We’re gonna save her,” I say, right to my dog. “Both of us.”

“Save her, Todd,” he barks, wagging his little stump.

“It won’t work,” says the boy, still outta sight.

“Then you should stay behind,” I say to the air, riding thru a cough while I send pictures of Noise to my dog to tell him what he needs to do. “It’s simple, Manchee. Run and run.”

“Run and run!” he barks.

“Good boy.” I rub his ears again. “Good boy.”

I pull myself to my feet and half-walk, half-slide, half-stumble my way back down the little bluff into the burnt-out settlement. There’s a thump in my head now, like I can hear my poisoned blood pumping, and everything in the world throbs with it. If I squeeze my eyes nearly shut, the swirling lights ain’t so bad and everything sort of stays in its place.

The first thing I need is a stick. Manchee and I tear thru the burnt-out buildings, looking for one the right size. Pretty much everything is black and crumbly but that suits me fine.

“Thith one, Thawd?” Manchee says, using his mouth to pull one about half the length of himself out from under what looks like a burnt-up pile of stacked chairs. What happened in this place?

“Perfect.” I take it from him.

“This won’t work,” the boy says, hiding in a dark corner. I can see the glint of the knife in one of his hands. “You won’t save her.”

“I will.” I break off some larger splinters from the stick. Only one end is blackened charcoal but that’s exactly what I want. “Can you carry this?” I say to Manchee, holding it out.

He takes it in his mouth, tosses it a little to get it comfortable, but then it rests just fine. “Yeth!” he barks.

“Great.” I stand up straight and nearly fall over. “Now we need a fire.”

“You can’t make a fire,” the boy says, already outside waiting for us. “Her fire-making box is broken.”

“You don’t know nothing,” I say, not looking at him. “Ben taught me.”

“Ben’s dead,” says the boy.

“Early one mor-r-ning,” I sing, loud and clear, making the whirly shapes of the world go spangly and weird, but I keep on singing. “Just as the sun was ri-i-sing.”

“Yer not strong enough to make a fire.”

“I heard a maiden call from the val-l-ley below.” I find a long, flat piece of wood and use the knife to carve a little hollow in it. “Oh, don’t dece-e-ive me.” I carve a rounded end to another smaller stick. “Oh, never le-e-ave me.” “How could you use a poor maiden so?” the boy finishes.

I ignore him. I put the rounded end of the stick into the little hollow and start spinning it twixt my hands, pressing hard into the wood. The rhythm of it matches the thumping in my head and I start to see me in the woods with Ben, him and me racing to see who could get the first smoke. He always won and half the time I could never get any sorta fire at all. But those were times.

Those were times.

“C’mon,” I say to myself. I’m sweating and coughing and woozy but I’m making my hands keep on spinning. Manchee’s barking at the wood to try and help it along.

And then a little finger of smoke rises from the hollow.

“Ha!” I cry out. I protect it from the wind with my hand and blow on it to make it catch. I use some dried moss as kindling and when the first little flame shoots out it’s as near as I’ve come to joy since I don’t know when. I throw some small sticks on it, wait for them to catch, too, then some larger ones, and pretty soon there’s a real fire burning in front of me. A real one.

I leave it to burn for a minute. I’m counting on us being downwind to keep the smoke from Aaron.

And I’m counting on that wind for other reasons, too.

I lurch my way towards the riverbank, using tree trunks to keep me upright, till I make it to the dock. “C’mon, c’mon,” I say under my breath as I steady myself to walk down it. It creaks under my feet and once I nearly pitch over into the river but I do finally make it to the boat still tied there.

“It’ll sink,” says the boy, standing knee-high in the river.

I hop in the little boat and after a lot of wobbling and coughing, I stand up in it. It’s rickety and narrow and warping.

But it floats.

“You don’t know how to steer a boat.”

I get out and cross the dock and make my way back to the settlement and search round till I find a flat enough piece of wood to use as an oar.

And that’s all I need.

We’re ready.

The boy’s standing there, holding the things of mine in each hand, rucksack on his back, no real nothing on his face, no Noise that I can hear.

I stare him down. He don’t say nothing.

“Manchee?” I call but he’s already at my feet.

“Here, Todd!”

“Good boy.” We go to the fire. I take the stick he found and put the already burnt end into it. After a minute, the end is red hot and smoky, with flames catching on the new wood. “You sure you can hold this?” I say.

He takes the non-burning end into his maul and there he is, best ruddy dog in the universe, ready to carry fire to the enemy.

“Ready, friend?” I say.

“Weddy, Thawd!” he says, mouth full, tail wagging so fast I see it as a blur.

“He’ll kill Manchee,” the boy says.

I stand, world spinning and shining, my body barely my own, my lungs coughing up bits of themselves, my head thumping, my legs shaking, my blood boiling, but I stand.

I ruddy well stand.

“I am Todd Hewitt,” I say to the boy. “And I am leaving you here.”

“You can’t never do that,” he says, but I’m already turning to Manchee and saying “Go on, boy,” and he takes off back up the bluff and down the other side, burning stick in his mouth, and I count to a hundred, loud, so’s I can’t hear no one say nothing and then I make myself count to a hundred again and that’s enough and I lurch as fast as I can back to the dock and the boat and I get myself in and I take the oar onto my lap and I use the knife to cut away the last of the raggedy rope tying the little boat in place.

“You can’t never leave me behind,” the boy says, standing on the dock, book in one hand, knife in the other.

“Watch me,” I say and he gets smaller and smaller in the shimmering and fading light as the boat pulls away from the dock and starts making its way downstream.

Towards Aaron.

Towards Viola.

Towards whatever waits for me down the river.

31. THE WICKED ARE PUNISHED

There’s boats in Prentisstown but no one’s used ’em since I can remember. We got the river, sure, this same one that’s sloshing me back and forth, but our stretch is rocky and fast and when it does slow down and spread out, the only peaceful area is a marsh full of crocs. After that, it’s all wooded swamp. So I ain’t never been on a boat and even tho it looks like it should be easy to steer one down a river, it ain’t.

The one bit of luck I got is that the river here is pretty calm, despite some splashing from the wind. The boat drifts out into the current and is taken and moves its way downriver whether I do anything or not so I can put all my coughing energy into trying to keep the boat from spinning around as it goes.

It takes a minute or two before I’m successful.

“Dammit,” I say under my breath. “Effing thing.”

But after some splashing with the oar (and one or two full spins, shut up) I’m figuring out how to keep it more or less pointed the right way and when I look up, I realize I’m probably already halfway there.

I swallow and shake and cough.

This is the plan. It’s probably not a very good one but it’s all that my shimmering, flickering brain’s gonna let me have.

Manchee’ll take the burning stick upwind of Aaron and drop it somewhere to catch fire and make Aaron think I’ve lit up my own campsite. Then Manchee’ll run back to Aaron’s campsite, barking up a storm, pretending he’s trying to tell me he’s found Aaron. This is simple since all he has to do is bark my name, which is what he does all the time anyway.

Aaron’ll chase him. Aaron’ll try to kill him. Manchee’ll be faster (Run and run, Manchee, run and run). Aaron’ll see the smoke. Aaron, who fears me not one tiny little bit, will go off into the woods towards the smoke to finish me off once and for all.

I’ll float downstream, come upon his campsite from the riverside while he’s out in the woods looking for me, and I’ll rescue Viola. I’ll pick up Manchee there, too, when he circles back round ahead of a chasing Aaron (run and run).

Yeah, okay, that’s the plan.

I know.

I know, but if it don’t work, then I’ll have to kill him.

And if it comes to that, it can’t matter what I become and it can’t matter what Viola thinks.

It can’t.

It’ll have to be done and so I’ll have to do it.

I take out the knife.

The blade still has dried blood smeared on it here and there, my blood, Spackle blood, but the rest of it still shines, shimmering and flickering, flickering and shimmering. The tip of it juts out and up like an ugly thumb and the serrashuns along one side spring up like gnashing teeth and the blade edge pulses like a vein full of blood.

The knife is alive.

As long as I hold it, as long as I use it, the knife lives, lives in order to take life, but it has to be commanded, it has to have me to tell it to kill, and it wants to, it wants to plunge and thrust and cut and stab and gouge, but I have to want it to as well, my will has to join with its will.

I’m the one who allows it and I’m the one responsible.

But the knife wanting it makes it easier.

If it comes to it, will I fail?

“No,” whispers the knife.

“Yes,” whispers the wind down the river.

A drop of sweat from my forehead splashes on the blade and the knife is just a knife again, just a tool, just a piece of metal in my hand.

Just a knife.

I lay it on the floor of the boat.

I’m shaking again, still. I cough up more goo. I look up and around me, ignoring the waviness of the world and letting the wind cool me down. The river’s starting to bend and I keep on floating down it.

Here it comes, I think. Ain’t no stopping it.

I look up and over the trees to my left.

My teeth are chattering.

I don’t see no smoke yet.

C’mon, boy, it’s the next thing that has to happen.

And no smoke.

And no smoke.

And the river’s bending more.

C’mon, Manchee.

And no smoke.

And chatter chatter chatter go my teeth. I huddle my arms to myself–

And smoke! The first small puffs of it, coming up like cotton balls farther down the river.

Good dog, I think, holding my teeth together. Good dog.

The boat’s tending a bit mid-river so I row as best I can and guide it back to the river’s edge.

I’m shaking so bad I can barely hang on to the oar.

The river’s bending more.

And there’s the forked tree, the tree struck by lightning, coming up on my left.

The sign that I’m almost there.

Aaron’ll be just beyond it.

Here it comes.

I cough and sweat and tremble but I’m not letting go of the oar. I row some more, closer to the edge. If Viola can’t run for any reason, I’m gonna have to beach it to go get her.

I keep my Noise as blank as I can but the world’s closing up in folds of light and shimmer so there’s no chance of that. I’ll just have to hope the wind’s loud enough and that Manchee–

“Todd! Todd! Todd!” I hear from a distance. My dog, barking my name to lure Aaron away. “Todd! Todd! Todd!”

The wind’s keeping me from hearing Aaron’s Noise so I don’t even know if this is working but I’m moving past the forked tree so there’s nothing for it now–

“Todd! Todd!”

C’mon, c’mon–

The forked tree passing by–

I crouch down in the boat–

“Todd! Todd!” getting fainter, moving back–

Snappings of branches–

And then I hear “TODD HEWITT!!” roared loud as a lion–

As a lion moving away–

“C’mon,” I whisper to myself, “c’mon, c’mon, c’mon—”

My clenched fists trembling around the oar and–

Round the bend and–

Past the tree and–

The campsite comes and–

There she is.

There she is.

Aaron’s gone and there she is.

Lying on the ground in the middle of his campsite.

Not moving.

My heart ratchets up and I cough without even noticing and I say, “Please, please, please,” under my breath and I paddle the board furiously and get the boat closer and closer to the river’s edge and I stand and leap out into the water and I fall on my rump but I still catch the front of the boat in my hands and “please, please, please” and I get up and I drag the boat far enough up the riverbank and I let go and I run and stumble and run to Viola Viola Viola—“Please,” I say as I run, my chest clenching and coughing and hurting, “Please.”

I get to her and there she is. Her eyes are closed and her mouth is open a little and I put my head to her chest, shutting out the buzz of my Noise and the shouting of the wind and the barking and yelling versions of my name coming outta the woods around me.

“Please,” I whisper.

And thump, thump.

She’s alive.

“Viola,” I whisper fiercely. I’m starting to see little flashing spots before my eyes but I ignore them. “Viola!”

I shake her shoulders and take her face in my hand and shake that, too.

“Wake up,” I whisper. “Wake up, wake up, wake up!”

I can’t carry her. I’m too shaking and lopsided and weak.

But I’ll ruddy well carry her if I have to.

“Todd! Todd! Todd!” I hear Manchee barking from deep in the woods.

“Todd Hewitt!” I hear Aaron yell as he chases my dog.

And then, from below me, I hear, “Todd?”

“Viola?” I say and my throat is clenching and my eyes are blurring.

But she’s looking back at me.

“You don’t look too good,” she says, her voice slurring and her eyes sleepy. I notice some bruising underneath her eyes and my stomach clenches in anger.

“Ya gotta get up,” I whisper.

“He drugged…” she says, closing her eyes.

“Viola?” I say, shaking her again. “He’s coming back, Viola. We gotta get outta here.”

I can’t hear no more barking.

“We gotta go,” I say. “Now!”

“I weigh too much,” she says, her words melting together.

“Please, Viola,” I say and I’m practically weeping it. “Please.”

She blinks open her eyes.

She looks into mine.

“You came for me,” she says.

“I did,” I say, coughing.

“You came for me,” she says again, her face crumpling a little.

Which is when Manchee comes flying outta the bushes, barking my name like his life depended on it.

“TODD! TODD! TODD!” he yelps, running towards us and past. “Aaron! Coming! Aaron!”

Viola lets out a little cry and with a push that nearly knocks me over she gets to her feet and catches me as I fall and we steady ourselves against each other and I manage to point to the boat.

“There!” I say, trying hard to catch my breath.

And we run for it–

Across the campsite–

Towards the boat and the river–

Manchee bounding on ahead and clearing the front of the boat with a leap–

Viola’s stumbling ahead of me–

And we’re five–

Four–

Three steps away–

And Aaron comes pounding outta the woods behind us–

His Noise so loud I don’t even need to look–

“TODD HEWITT!!”

And Viola’s reached the front of the boat and is falling in–

And two steps–

And one–

And I reach it and push with all my strength to get it back into the river–

And “TODD HEWITT!!”

And he’s closer–

And the boat don’t move–

“I WILL PUNISH THE WICKED!”

And closer still–

And the boat don’t move–

And his Noise is hitting me as hard as a punch–

And the boat moves–

Step and step and my feet are in the water and the boat’s moving–

And I’m falling–

And I don’t have the strength to get in the boat–

And I’m falling into the water as the boat moves away–

And Viola grabs my shirt and yanks me up till my head and shoulders are over the front–

“NO, YOU DON’T!” Aaron roars–

And Viola calls out as she pulls me again and my front’s in the boat–

And Aaron’s in the water–

And he’s grabbing my feet–

“No!” Viola screams and grips me harder, pulling with all her strength–

And I’m lifted in the air–

And the boat stops–

And Viola’s face is twisted in the effort–

But it’s a tug of war which only Aaron’s ever gonna win–

And then I hear “TODD!” barked in a voice so ferocious I wonder for a minute if a croc’s raised outta the water–

But it’s Manchee–

It’s Manchee–

It’s my dog my dog my dog and he’s leaping past Viola and I feel his feet hit my back and leave it again as he launches himself at Aaron with a snarl and a howl and a “TODD!” and Aaron calls out in anger — And he lets go of my feet.

Viola lurches back but she don’t let go and I go tumbling into the boat on top of her.

The lurch pushes us farther out into the river.

The boat is starting to pull away.

My head tips and whirls as I spin round and I have to stay on my hands and knees for balance but I’m up as much I can and leaning out the boat and I’m calling, “Manchee!”

Aaron’s fallen back into the soft sand at the river’s edge, his robe getting tangled up in his legs. Manchee’s going for his face, all teeth and claws, growls and roars. Aaron tries to shake him off but Manchee gets a bite either side of Aaron’s nose and gives his head a twist.

He rips Aaron’s nose clean away from his face.

Aaron yells out in pain, blood shooting everywhere.

“Manchee!” I scream. “Hurry, Manchee!”

“Manchee!” Viola yells.

“C’mon, boy!”

And Manchee looks up from Aaron to see me calling him–

And that’s where Aaron takes his chance.

“No!” I scream.

He grabs Manchee violently by his scruff, lifting him off the ground and up in one motion.

“Manchee!”

I hear splashing and I’m dimly aware that Viola’s got the oar and is trying to stop us going any farther into the river and the world is shimmering and throbbing and–

And Aaron has my dog.

“GET BACK HERE!” Aaron yells, holding Manchee out at arm’s length. He’s too heavy to be picked up by his scruff and he’s yelping from the pain but he can’t quite get his head round to bite Aaron’s arm.

“Let him go!” I yell.

Aaron lowers his face–

There’s blood pouring outta the hole where his nose used to be and tho the gash in his cheek is healed you can still see his teeth and it’s this mess that repeats, almost calmly this time, burbling thru the blood and gore, “Come back to me, Todd Hewitt.” “Todd?” Manchee yelps.

Viola’s rowing furiously to keep us outta the current but she’s weak from the drugs and we’re getting farther and farther away. “No,” I can hear her saying. “No.”

“Let him go!” I scream.

“The girl or the dog, Todd,” Aaron calls, still with the calm that’s so much scarier than when he was shouting. “The choice is yers.”

I reach for the knife and I hold it out in front of me but my head spins too much and I fall off my hands and smack my teeth on the boat seat.

“Todd?” Viola says, still rowing against the current, the boat twisting and turning.

I sit up tasting blood and the world waves so much it nearly knocks me over again.

“I’ll kill you,” I say, but so quietly I might as well be talking to myself.

“Last chance, Todd,” Aaron says, no longer sounding so calm.

“Todd?” Manchee’s still yelping. “Todd?”

And no–

“I’ll kill you,” but my voice is a whisper–

And no–

And there ain’t no choice–

And the boat’s out in the current–

And I look at Viola, still rowing against it, tears dripping off her chin–

She looks back at me–

And there ain’t no choice–

“No,” she says, her voice choking. “Oh, no, Todd—”

And I put my hand on her arm to stop her rowing.

Aaron’s Noise roars up in red and black.

The current takes us.

“I’m sorry!” I cry as the river takes us away, my words ragged things torn from me, my chest pulled so tight I can’t barely breathe. “I’m sorry, Manchee!”

“Todd?” he barks, confused and scared and watching me leave him behind. “Todd?”

“Manchee!” I scream.

Aaron brings his free hand towards my dog.

“MANCHEE!”

“Todd?”

And Aaron wrenches his arms and there’s a CRACK and a scream and a cut-off yelp that tears my heart in two forever and forever.

And the pain is too much it’s too much it’s too much and my hands are on my head and I’m rearing back and my mouth is open in a never-ending wordless wail of all the blackness that’s inside me.

And I fall back into it.

And I know nothing more as the river takes us away and away and away.

32. DOWNRIVER

The sound of water.

And bird noise.

Where’s my safety? they sing. Where’s my safety?

Behind it, there’s music.

I swear there’s music.

Layers of it, flutey and strange and familiar–

And there’s light against the darkness, sheets of it, white and yellow.

And warmth.

And softness on my skin.

And a silence there next to me, pulling against me as strong as it ever did.

I open my eyes.

I’m in a bed, under a cover, in a small square room with white walls and sunlight pouring in at least two open windows with the sound of the river rushing by outside and birds flitting in the trees (and music, is that music?) and for a minute it’s not just that I don’t know where I am, I also don’t know who I am or what’s happened or why there’s an ache in my — I see Viola, curled up asleep on a chair next to the bed, breathing thru her mouth, her hands pressed twixt her thighs.

I’m still too groggy to make my own mouth move and say her name just yet but my Noise must say it loud enough cuz her eyes flutter open and catch mine and she’s outta her seat in a flash with her arms wrapped around me and squishing my nose against her collarbone.

“Oh, Jesus, Todd,” she says, holding so tight it kinda hurts.

I put one hand on her back and I inhale her scent.

Flowers.

“I thought you were never coming back,” she says, squeezing tight. “I thought you were dead.”

“Wasn’t I?” I croak, trying to remember.

“You were sick,” Viola says, sitting back, knees still on my bed. “Really sick. Doctor Snow wasn’t sure you’d ever wake up and when a doctor admits that much—”

“Who’s Doctor Snow?” I ask, looking round the little room. “Where are we? Are we in Haven? And what’s that music?”

“We’re in a settlement called Carbonel Downs,” she says. “We floated down the river and—”

She stops cuz she sees me looking at the foot of the bed.

At the space where Manchee ain’t.

I remember.

My chest closes up. My throat clenches shut. I can hear him barking in my Noise. “Todd?” he’s saying, wondering why I’m leaving him behind. “Todd?” with an asking mark, just like that, forever asking where I’m going without him.

“He’s gone,” I say, like I’m saying it to myself.

Viola seems like she’s about to say something but when I glance up at her, her eyes are shiny and all she does is nod, which is the right thing, the thing I’d want.

He’s gone.

He’s gone.

And I don’t know what to say about that.

“Is that Noise I hear?” says a loud voice, preceded by its own Noise thru a door opening itself at the foot of the bed. A man enters, a big man, tall and broad with glasses that make his eyes bug out and a flip in his hair and a crooked smile and Noise coming at me so filled with relief and joy it’s all I can do not to crawl out the window behind me.

“Doctor Snow,” Viola says to me, scooting off the bed to make way.

“Pleased to finally meet you, Todd,” Doctor Snow says, smiling big and sitting down on the bed and taking a device outta his front shirt pocket. He sticks two ends of it into his ears and places the other end on my chest without asking. “Could you take a deep breath for me?” I don’t do nothing, just look at him.

“I’m checking if your lungs are clear,” he says and I realize what it is I’m noticing. His accent’s the closest to Viola’s I ever heard on New World. “Not exactly the same,” he says, “but close.” “He’s the one who made you well,” Viola says.

I don’t say nothing but I take a deep breath.

“Good,” Doctor Snow says, placing the end of the device on another part of my chest. “Once more.” I breathe in and out. I find that I can breathe in and out, all the way down to the bottom of my lungs.

“You were a very sick boy,” he says. “I wasn’t sure we were going to be able to beat it. You weren’t even giving off Noise until yesterday.” He looks me in the eye. “Haven’t seen that sort of sickness for a long time.” “Yeah, well,” I say.

“Haven’t heard of a Spackle attack for a very long time,” he says. I don’t say nothing to this, just breathe deep. “That’s great, Todd,” the doctor says. “Could you take off your shirt, please?” I look at him, then over to Viola.

“I’ll wait outside,” she says and out she goes.

I reach behind me to pull my shirt over my head and as I do I realize there’s no pain twixt my shoulderblades.

“Took some stitches, that one,” Doctor Snow says, moving around behind me. He puts the device against my back.

I flinch away. “That’s cold.”

“She wouldn’t leave your side,” he says, ignoring me and checking different places for my breath. “Not even to sleep.”

“How long I been here?”

“This is the fifth morning.”

“Five days?” I say and he barely has a chance to say yes before I’m pulling back the covers and getting outta the bed. “We gotta get outta here,” I say, a little unsteady on my feet but standing nonetheless.

Viola leans back in the doorway. “I’ve been trying to tell them that.”

“You’re safe here,” Doctor Snow says.

“We’ve heard that before,” I say. I look to Viola for support but all she does is stifle a smile and I realize I’m standing there in just a pair of holey and seriously worn-out underpants that ain’t covering as much as they should. “Hey!” I say, moving my hands down to the important bits.

“You’re safe as you’re going to be anywhere,” Doctor Snow says behind me, handing me a pair of my trousers from a neatly washed pile by the bed. “We were one of the main fronts in the war. We know how to defend ourselves.” “That was Spackle.” I turn my back to Viola and shove my legs in the trousers. “This is men. A thousand men.”

“So the rumours say,” Doctor Snow says. “Even though it’s not actually numerically possible.”

“I don’t know nothing from numerickly,” I say, “but they got guns.”

“We have guns.”

“And horses.”

“We’ve got horses.”

“Do you have men who’ll join them?” I say, challenging him.

He don’t say nothing to that, which is satisfying. Then again, it ain’t satisfying at all. I button up my trousers. “We need to go.”

“You need to rest,” the doctor says.

“We ain’t staying and waiting for the army to show up.” I turn to include Viola, turn without thinking to the space where my dog’d be waiting for me to include him too.

There’s a quiet moment when my Noise fills the room with Manchee, just fills it with him, side to side, barking and barking and needing a poo and barking some more.

And dying.

I don’t know what to say about that neither.

(He’s gone, he’s gone.)

I feel empty. All over empty.

“No one’s going to make you do anything you don’t want to, Todd,” Doctor Snow says gently. “But the eldermen of the village would like to talk to you before you leave us.”

I tighten my mouth. “Bout what?”

“About anything that might help.”

“How can I help?” I say, grabbing a washed shirt to put on. “The army will come and kill everyone here who don’t join it. That’s it.”

“This is our home, Todd,” he says. “We’re going to defend it. We have no choice.”

“Then count me out—” I start to say.

“Daddy?” we hear.

There’s a little boy standing in the doorway next to Viola.

An actual boy.

He’s looking up at me, eyes wide open, his Noise a funny, bright, roomy thing and I can hear myself described as skinny and scar and sleeping boy and at the same time there are all kindsa warm thoughts towards his pa with just the word daddy repeated over and over again, meaning everything you’d want it to: askings about me, identifying his daddy, telling him he loves him, all in one word, repeated forever.

“Hey, fella,” Doctor Snow says. “Jacob, this is Todd. All woke up.”

Jacob looks at me solemnly, a finger in his mouth, and gives a little nod. “Goat’s not milking,” he says quietly.

“Is she not?” Doctor Snow says, standing up. “Well, we’d better go see if we can talk her into it, hadn’t we?”

Daddy daddy daddy says Jacob’s Noise.

“I’ll see to the goat,” Doctor Snow is saying to me, “and then I’ll go round up the rest of the eldermen.”

I can’t stop staring at Jacob. Who can’t stop staring at me.

He’s so much closer than the kids I saw at Farbranch.

And he’s so small.

Was I that small?

Doctor Snow’s still talking. “I’ll bring the eldermen back here, see if you can’t help us.” He leans down till I’m looking at him. “And if we can’t help you.”

His Noise is sincere, truthful. I believe he means what he says. I also believe he’s mistaken.

“Maybe,” he says, with a smile. “Maybe not. You haven’t even seen the place yet. Come on, Jake.” He takes his son’s hand. “There’s food in the kitchen. I’ll bet you’re starved. Be back within the hour.” I go to the door to watch them leave. Jacob, finger still in his mouth, looks back at me till he and his pa disappear outta the house.

“How old is that?” I ask Viola, still looking down the hallway. “I don’t even know how old that is.”

“He’s four,” she says. “He’s told me about 800 times. Which seems kind of young to be milking goats.”

“Not on New World, it ain’t,” I say. I turn back to her and her hands are on her hips and she’s giving me a serious look.

“Come and eat,” she says. “We need to talk.”

33. CARBONEL DOWNS

She leads me to a kitchen as clean and bright as the bedroom. River still rushing by outside, birds still Noisy, music still–

“What is that music?” I say, going to the window to look out. Sometimes it seems like I reckernize it but when I listen close, it’s voices changing over voices, running around itself.

“It’s from loudspeakers up in the main settlement,” Viola says, taking a plate of cold meat outta the fridge.

I sit down at the table. “Is there some kinda festival going on?”

“No,” she says, in a way that means just wait. “Not a festival.” She gets out bread and some orange fruit I ain’t never seen before and then some red-coloured drink that tastes of berries and sugar.

I dig into the food. “Tell me.”

“Doctor Snow is a good man,” she says, like I need to know this first. “Everything about him is good and kind and he worked so hard to save you, Todd, I mean it.”

“Okay. So what’s up?”

“That music plays all day and all night,” she says, watching me eat. “It’s faint here at the house, but in the settlement, you can’t hear yourself think.”

I pause at a mouthful of bread. “Like the pub.”

“What pub?”

“The pub in Prent—” I stop. “Where do they think we’re from?”

“Farbranch.”

I sigh. “I’ll do my best.” I take a bite of the fruit. “The pub where I come from played music all the time to try and drown out the Noise.”

She nods. “I asked Doctor Snow why they did it here, and he said, ‘To keep men’s thoughts private’.”

I shrug. “It makes an awful racket, but it kinda makes sense, don’t it? One way to deal with the Noise.”

“Men’s thoughts, Todd,” she says. “Men. And you notice he said he was going to ask the eldermen to come seek out your advice?”

I get a horrible thought. “Did the women all die here, too?”

“Oh, there’s women,” she says, fiddling with a butter knife. “They clean and they cook and they make babies and they all live in a big dormitory outside of town where they can’t interfere in men’s business.” I put down a forkful of meat. “I saw a place like that when I was coming to find you. Men sleeping in one place, women in another.”

“Todd,” she says, looking at me. “They wouldn’t listen to me. Not one thing. Not a word I said about the army. They kept calling me little girl and practically patting me on the bloody head.” She crosses her arms. “The only reason they want to talk to you about it now is because caravans of refugees started showing up on the river road.”

“Wilf,” I say.

Her eyes scan over me, reading my Noise. “Oh,” she says. “No, I haven’t seen him.”

“Wait a minute.” I swallow some more drink. It feels like I haven’t drunk anything for years. “How did we get so far ahead of the army? How come if I’ve been here five days we ain’t been overrun yet?” “We were in that boat for a day and a half,” she says, running her nail at something stuck on the table.

“A day and a half,” I repeat, thinking about this. “We musta come miles.”

“Miles and miles,” she says. “I just let us float and float and float. I was too afraid to stop at the places I passed. You wouldn’t believe some of the things…” She drifts off, shaking her head.

I remember Jane’s warnings. “Naked people and glass houses?” I ask.

Viola looks at me strange. “No,” she says, curling her lip. “Just poverty. Just horrible, horrible poverty. Some of those places looked like they would have eaten us so I just kept on and on and you got sicker and sicker and then on the second morning I saw Doctor Snow and Jacob out fishing and I could see in his Noise he was a doctor and as weird as this place is about women, it’s at least clean.” I look around the clean, clean kitchen. “We can’t stay,” I say.

“No, we can’t.” She puts her head in her hands. “I was so worried about you.” There’s feeling in her voice. “I was so worried about the army coming and nobody listening to me.” She smacks the table in frustration. “And I was feeling so bad about—” She stops. Her face creases and she looks away.

“Manchee,” I say, out loud, for the first time since–

“I’m so sorry, Todd,” she says, her eyes watery.

“Ain’t yer fault.” I stand up fast, scooting my chair back.

“He would have killed you,” she says, “and then he would have killed Manchee just because he could.”

“Stop talking about it, please,” I say, leaving the kitchen and going back to the bedroom. Viola follows me. “I’ll talk to these elder folks,” I say, picking up Viola’s bag from the floor and stuffing the rest of the washed clothes in it. “And then we’ll go. How far are we from Haven, do you know?” Viola makes a tiny smile. “Two days.”

I stand up straight. “We came that far downriver?”

“We came that far.”

I whistle quietly to myself. Two days. Just two days. Till whatever there is in Haven.

“Todd?”

“Yeah?” I say, putting her bag round my shoulders.

“Thank you,” she says.

“For what?”

“For coming after me.”

Everything’s gone still.

“Ain’t nothing,” I say, feeling my face get hot and looking away. She don’t say nothing more. “You all right?” I ask, still not looking at her. “From when he took you?”

“I don’t really—” she starts to say but we hear a door close and a sing-song daddy daddy daddy floating down the hall towards us. Jacob hugs the door frame of the room rather than come on in.

“Daddy sent me to fetch you,” he says.

“Oh?” I raise my eyebrows. “I’m meant to come to them now, am I?”

Jacob nods, very serious.

“Well, in that case, we’re coming,” I rearrange the sack and looking at Viola. “And then we’re going.”

“Too right,” Viola says and the way she says it makes me glad. We head out into the hallway after Jacob but he stops us at the door.

“Just you,” he says, looking at me.

“Just me what?”

Viola crosses her arms. “He means just you to talk to the eldermen.”

Jacob nods, again very serious. I look at Viola and back to Jacob. “Well now,” I say, squatting down to his level. “Why don’t you just go tell yer daddy that both me and Viola will be along in a minute. Okay?” Jacob opens his mouth. “But he said—”

“I don’t really care what he said,” I say gently. “Go.”

He gives a little gasp and runs out the door.

“I think I’m maybe thru of men telling me what to do,” I say and I’m surprised at the weariness in my voice and suddenly I feel like I wanna get back in that bed and sleep for another five days.

“You going to be all right to walk to Haven?” Viola says.

“Try and stop me,” I say and she smiles again.

I head on out the front door.

And for a third time I’m expecting Manchee to come bounding out with us.

His absence is so big it’s like he’s there and all the air goes outta my lungs again and I have to wait and breathe deep and swallow.

“Oh, man,” I say to myself.

His last Todd? hangs in my Noise like a wound.

That’s another thing about Noise. Everything that’s ever happened to you just keeps right on talking, for ever and ever.

I see the last of Jacob’s dust as he runs on up the trail thru some trees towards the rest of the settlement. I look round. Doctor Snow’s house ain’t too big but it stretches out to a deck overlooking the river. There’s a small dock and a really low bridge connecting the wide path that comes from the centre of Carbonel Downs to the river road that carries along on the other side. The road across the river, the one we spent so much time coming down, is almost hidden behind a row of trees as it carries on past the settlement on the final two days towards Haven.

“God,” I say. “It’s like paradise compared to the rest of New World.”

“There’s more to paradise than nice buildings,” Viola says.

I look round some more. Doctor Snow’s got a well-kept front garden on the path to the settlement. Looking up the path, I can see more buildings thru the trees and hear that music playing.

That weird music. Constantly changing to keep you from getting used to it, I guess. It’s nothing I reckernize but it’s louder out here and I guess on one level you ain’t sposed to reckernize it but I swear I heard something in it when I was waking up—“It’s almost unbearable in the middle of the settlement,” Viola says. “Most of the women don’t even bother coming in from the dormitory.” She frowns. “Which I guess is the whole point.”

“Wilf’s wife told me bout a settlement where everyone—”

I stop cuz the music changes.

Except it don’t change.

The music from the settlement stays the same, messy and wordy and bending around itself like a monkey.

But there’s more.

There’s more music than just it.

And it’s getting louder.

“Do you hear that?” I say.

I turn.

And turn again. Viola, too.

Trying to figure out what we’re hearing.

“Maybe someone’s set up another loudspeaker across the river,” she says. “Just in case the women were getting any uppity ideas about leaving.”

But I ain’t listening to her.

“No,” I whisper. “No, it can’t be.”

“What?” Viola says, her voice changing.

“Shh.” I listen close again, trying to calm my Noise so I can hear it.

“It’s coming from the river,” she whispers.

“Shh,” I say again, cuz my chest is starting to rise, my Noise starting to buzz too loud to be of any use at all.

Out there, against the rush of the water and the Noise of the birdsong, there’s–

“A song,” Viola says, real quiet. “Someone’s singing.”

Someone’s singing.

And what they’re singing is:

Early one mor-r-ning, just as the sun was ri-i-sing…

And my Noise surges louder as I say it.

“Ben.”

34. OH NEVER LEAVE ME

I run down to the river’s edge and stop and listen again.

Oh don’t deceive me.

“Ben?” I say, trying to shout and whisper at the same time.

Viola comes thumping up behind me. “Not your Ben?” she says. “Is it your Ben?”

I shush her with my hand and listen and try to pick away the river and the birds and my own Noise and there, just there under it all–

Oh never leave me.

“Other side of the river,” Viola says and takes off across the bridge, feet smacking against the wood. I’m right behind her, passing her, listening and looking and listening and looking and there and there and there — There in the leafy shrubs on the other side of the water–

It’s Ben.

It really is Ben.

He’s crouched down behind leafy greenery, hand against a tree trunk, watching me come to him, watching me run across the bridge, and as I near him, his face relaxes and his Noise opens up as wide as his arms and I’m flying into ’em both, leaping off the bridge and into the bushes and nearly knocking him over and my heart is busting open and my Noise is as bright as the whole blue sky and — And everything’s gonna be all right.

Everything’s gonna be all right.

Everything’s gonna be all right.

It’s Ben.

And he’s gripping me tight and he’s saying, “Todd,” and Viola’s standing back a ways, letting me greet him, and I’m hugging him and hugging him and it’s Ben, oh Christ Almighty, it’s Ben Ben Ben.

“It’s me,” he says, laughing a little cuz I’m crushing the air outta his lungs. “Oh, it’s good to see ya, Todd.”

“Ben,” I say, leaning back from him and I don’t know what to do with my hands so I just grab his shirt front in my fists and shake him in a way that’s gotta mean love. “Ben,” I say again.

He nods and smiles.

But there’s creases round his eyes and already I can see the beginnings of it, so soon it’s gotta be right up front in his Noise, and I have to ask, “Cillian?”

He don’t say nothing but he shows it to me, Ben running back to a farmhouse already in flames, already burning down, with some of the Mayor’s men inside but with Cillian, too, and Ben grieving, grieving still.

“Aw, no,” I say, my stomach sinking, tho I’d long guessed it to be true.

But guessing a thing ain’t knowing a thing.

Ben nods again, slow and sad, and I notice now that he’s dirty and there’s blood clotted on his nose and he looks like he ain’t eaten for a week but it’s still Ben and he can still read me like no other cuz his Noise is already asking me bout Manchee and I’m already showing him and here at last my eyes properly fill and rush over and he takes me in his arms again and I cry for real over the loss of my dog and of Cillian and of the life that was.

“I left him,” I say and keep saying, snot-filled and coughing. “I left him.”

“I know,” he says and I can tell it’s true cuz I hear the same words in his Noise. I left him, he thinks.

But after only a minute I feel him gently pushing me back and he says, “Listen, Todd, there ain’t much time.”

“Ain’t much time for what?” I sniffle but I see he’s looking over at Viola.

“Hi,” she says, eyes all alert.

“Hi,” Ben says. “You must be her.”

“I must be,” she says.

“You been taking care of Todd?”

“We’ve been taking care of each other.”

“Good,” Ben says, and his Noise goes warm and sad. “Good.”

“C’mon,” I say, taking his arm and trying to pull him back towards the footbridge. “We can get you something to eat. And there’s a doctor—”

But Ben ain’t moving. “Can you keep an eye out for us?” he asks Viola. “Let us know if you see anything, anything at all. Either from the settlement or the road.”

Viola nods and catches my eye as she steps outta the green and back to the path.

“Things have escalated,” Ben says to me, low, serious as a heart attack. “You gotta get to a place called Haven. Fast as you can.”

“I know that, Ben,” I say, “why do you—?”

“There’s an army after you.”

“I know that, too. And Aaron. But now that yer here we can—”

“I can’t come with you,” he says.

My mouth hangs open. “What? Course you can—”

But he’s shaking his head. “You know I can’t.”

“We can find a way,” I say, but already my Noise is whirling, thinking, remembering.

“Prentisstown men ain’t welcome anywhere on New World,” he says.

I nod. “They ain’t too happy bout Prentisstown boys, neither.”

He takes my arm again. “Has anyone hurt you?”

I look at him quietly. “Lots of people,” I say.

He bites his lip and his Noise gets even sadder.

“I looked for you,” he says. “Day and night, following the army, getting round it, ahead of it, listening for rumours of a boy and a girl travelling alone. And here you are and yer okay and I knew you would be. I knew it.” He sighs and there’s so much love and sadness in it I know he’s about to say the truth. “But I’m a danger to you in New World.” He gestures at the bush we’re hiding in, hiding in like thieves. “Yer gonna have to make it the rest of the way alone.” “I ain’t alone,” I say, without thinking.

He smiles, but it’s still sad. “No,” he says. “No, yer not, are ya?” He looks around us again, peering thru the leaves and over the river to Doctor Snow’s house. “Were you sick?” he asks. “I heard yer Noise yesterday morning coming down the river but it was feverish and sleeping. I been waiting here ever since. I was worried something was really wrong.” “I was sick,” I say and shame starts to cloud my Noise like a slow fog.

Ben looks at me close again. “What happened, Todd?” he says, gently reading into my Noise like he always could. “What’s happened?”

I open up my Noise for him, all of it from the beginning, the crocs that attacked Aaron, the race thru the swamp, Viola’s ship, being chased by the Mayor on horseback, the bridge, Hildy and Tam, Farbranch and what happened there, the fork in the road, Wilf and the things that sang Here, Mr Prentiss Jr and Viola saving me.

And the Spackle.

And what I did.

I can’t look at Ben.

“Todd,” he says.

I’m still looking at the ground.

“Todd,” he says again. “Look at me.”

I look up at him. His eyes, blue as ever, catching mine and holding them. “We’ve all made mistakes, Todd. All of us.”

“I killed it,” I say. I swallow. “I killed him. It was a him.”

“You were acting on what you knew. You were acting on what you thought best.”

“And that excuses it?”

But there’s something in his Noise. Something off and telling.

“What is it, Ben?”

He lets out a breath. “It’s time you knew, Todd,” he says. “Time you knew the truth.”

There’s a snap of branches as Viola comes rushing back to us.

“Horse on the road,” she says, outta breath.

We listen. Hoofbeats, down the river road, coming fast. Ben slinks back a little farther into the bushes. We go with him but the horseman is coming so quick he ain’t interested in us at all. We hear him thunder by on the road and turn up the bridge that heads straight into Carbonel Downs, hooves clattering on boards and then on dirt till they’re swallowed up by the loudspeaker sounds.

“That can’t be good news,” Viola says.

“It’ll be the army,” Ben says. “By now they’re probably not more than a few hours from here.”

“What!?” I say, rearing back. Viola jumps, too.

“I told you we don’t have much time,” Ben says.

“Then we gotta go!” I say. “You gotta come with us. We’ll tell people—”

“No,” he says. “No. You get yerselves to Haven. That’s all there is to it. It’s yer best chance.”

We pelt him with sudden askings.

“Is Haven safe then?” Viola asks. “From an army?”

“Is it true they have a cure for the Noise?” I ask.

“Will they have communicators? Will I be able to contact my ship?”

“Are you sure it’s safe? Are you sure?”

Ben raises his hands to stop us. “I don’t know,” he says. “I haven’t been there in twenty years.”

Viola stands up straight.

“Twenty years?” she says. “Twenty years?” Her voice is rising. “Then how can we know what we’ll find when we get there? How do we know it’s even still there?”

I rub my hand across my face and I think it’s the emptiness where Manchee used to be that makes me realize, realize what we never wanted to know.

“We don’t,” I say, only saying the truth. “We never did.”

Viola lets out a little sound and her shoulders slump down. “No,” she says. “I guess we didn’t.”

“But there’s always hope,” Ben says. “You always have to hope.”

We both look at him and there must be a word for how we’re doing it but I don’t know what it is. We’re looking at him like he’s speaking a foreign language, like he just said he was moving to one of the moons, like he’s telling us it’s all just been a bad dream and there’s candy for everybody.

“There ain’t a whole lotta hope out here, Ben,” I say.

He shakes his head. “What d’you think’s been driving you on? What d’you think’s got you this far?”

“Fear,” Viola says.

“Desperayshun,” I say.

“No,” he says, taking us both in. “No, no, no. You’ve come farther than most people on this planet will do in their lifetimes. You’ve overcome obstacles and dangers and things that should’ve killed you. You’ve outrun an army and a madman and deadly illness and seen things most people will never see. How do you think you could have possibly come this far if you didn’t have hope?” Viola and I exchange a glance.

“I see what yer trying to say, Ben—” I start.

“Hope,” he says, squeezing my arm on the word. “It’s hope. I am looking into yer eyes right now and I am telling you that there’s hope for you, hope for you both.” He looks up at Viola and back at me. “There’s hope waiting for you at the end of the road.” “You don’t know that,” Viola says and my Noise, as much as I don’t want it to, agrees with her.

“No,” Ben says, “but I believe it. I believe it for you. And that’s why it’s hope.”

“Ben—”

“Even if you don’t believe it,” he says, “believe that I do.”

“I’d believe it more if you were coming with us,” I say.

“He ain’t coming?” Viola says, surprised, then corrects herself. “Isn’t coming?”

Ben looks at her, opens his mouth and closes it again.

“What’s the truth, Ben?” I ask. “What’s the truth we need to know?”

Ben takes a long slow breath thru his nose. “Okay,” he says.

But then a loud and clear “Todd?” comes calling from across the river.

And that’s when we notice the music of Carbonel Downs is competing with the Noise of men now crossing the bridge.

Many men.

That’s the other purpose of the music, I guess. So you can’t hear men coming.

“Viola?” Doctor Snow is calling. “What are you two doing over there?”

I stand up straight and look over. Doctor Snow is crossing the bridge, little Jacob’s hand in his, leading a group of men who look like less friendly versions of himself and they’re eyeing us up and they’re seeing Ben and seeing me and Viola talking to him.

And their Noise is starting to turn different colours as what they’re seeing starts making sense to them.

And I see that some of ’em have rifles.

“Ben?” I say quietly.

“You need to run,” he says, under his breath. “You need to run now.”

“I ain’t leaving you. Not again.”

“Todd—”

“Too late,” Viola says.

Cuz they’re on us now, past the end of the bridge and heading towards the bushes where we’re not really hiding no more.

Doctor Snow reaches us first. He looks Ben up and down. “And who might this be then?”

And the sound of his Noise ain’t happy at all.

35. THE LAW

“This is Ben,” I say, trying to raise my Noise to block all the askings coming from the men.

“And who’s Ben when he’s at home?” Doctor Snow asks, his eyes alert and looking.

“Ben’s my pa,” I say. Cuz it’s true, ain’t it? In all that’s important. “My father.”

“Todd,” I hear Ben say behind me, all kindsa feelings in his Noise, but warning most of all.

“Your father?” says a bearded man behind Doctor Snow, his fingers flexing along the stock of his rifle, tho not lifting it.

Not yet.

“You might want to be careful who you start claiming as a parent, Todd,” Doctor Snow says slowly, pulling Jacob closer to him.

“You said the boy was from Farbranch,” says a third man with a purple birthmark under his eye.

“That’s what the girl told us.” Doctor Snow looks at Viola. “Didn’t you, Vi?”

Viola holds his look but don’t say nothing.

“Can’t trust the word of a woman,” says the beard. “This is a Prentisstown man if I ever saw one.”

“Leading the army right to us,” says the birthmark.

“The boy is innocent,” says Ben and when I turn I can see his hands are in the air. “I’m the one you want.”

“Correction,” says the beard, his voice angry and getting angrier. “You’re the one we don’t want.”

“Hold on a minute, Fergal,” Doctor Snow says. “Something’s not right here.”

“You know the law,” says the birthmark.

The law.

Farbranch talked about the law, too.

“I also know these aren’t normal circumstances,” Doctor Snow says, then turns back to us. “We should at least give them a chance to explain themselves.”

I hear Ben take a breath. “Well, I—”

“Not you,” the beard interrupts.

“What’s the story, Todd?” Doctor Snow says. “And it’s become really important you tell us the truth.”

I look from Viola to Ben and back again.

Which side of the truth do I tell?

I hear the cock of a rifle. The beard’s raised his gun. And so have one or two of the men behind him.

“The longer you wait,” the beard says, “the more you look like spies.”

“We ain’t spies,” I say in a hurry.

“The army your girl’s been talking about has been spotted marching down the river road,” Doctor Snow says. “One of our scouts just reported them as less than an hour away.”

“Oh, no,” I hear Viola whisper.

“She ain’t my girl,” I say, low.

“What?” Doctor Snow says.

“What?” Viola says.

“She’s her own girl,” I say. “She don’t belong to anyone.”

And does Viola ever look at me.

“Whichever,” the birthmark says. “We’ve got a Prentisstown army marching on us and a Prentisstown man hiding in our bushes and a Prentisstown boy who’s been in our midst for the last week. Looks mighty fishy if you ask me.” “He was sick,” Doctor Snow says. “He was out cold.”

“So you say,” says the birthmark.

Doctor Snow turns to him real slow. “Are you calling me a liar now, Duncan? Remember, please, that you’re talking to the head of the council of eldermen.”

“You telling me you’re not seeing a plot here, Jackson?” says the birthmark, not backing down and raising his own rifle. “We’re sitting ducks. Who knows what they’ve told their army?” He aims his rifle at Ben. “But we’ll be putting an end to that right now.” “We ain’t spies,” I say again. “We’re running from the army just as hard as you should be.”

And the men look at each other.

In their Noise, I can hear just these thoughts about the army, about running from it instead of defending the town. I can also see anger bubbling, anger at having to make this choice, anger at not knowing the best way to protect their families. And I can see the anger focussing itself, not on the army, not on themselves for being unprepared despite Viola warning ’em for days, not at the world for the state it’s in.

They’re focussing their anger on Ben.

They’re focussing their anger on Prentisstown in the form of one man.

Doctor Snow kneels down to get to Jacob’s level. “Hey, fella,” he says to his son. “Why don’t you run on back to the house now, okay?”

Daddy daddy daddy I hear in Jacob’s Noise. “Why, Daddy?” he says, staring at me.

“Well, I’ll betcha the goat’s getting lonely,” Doctor Snow says. “And who wants a lonely goat, huh?”

Jacob looks at his father, back at me and Ben, then to the men around him. “Why is everyone so upset?” he says.

“Oh,” Doctor Snow says, “we’re just figuring some things out, is all. It’ll all be right soon enough. You just run on back home, make sure the goat’s okay.”

Jacob thinks about this for a second, then says, “Okay, Daddy.”

Doctor Snow kisses him on the top of the head and ruffles his hair. Jacob goes running back over the bridge towards Doctor Snow’s house. When Doctor Snow turns back to us, a whole raft of pointed guns accompany him.

“You can see how this doesn’t look good, Todd,” he says, and there’s real sadness in his voice.

“He doesn’t know,” Ben says.

“Shut your hole, murderer!” says the beard, gesturing with his rifle.

Murderer?

“Tell me true,” Doctor Snow says to me. “Are you from Prentisstown?”

“He saved me from Prentisstown,” Viola speaks up. “If it hadn’t been for him—”

“Shut up, girl,” says the beard.

“Now’s not really the time for women to be talking, Vi,” Doctor Snow says.

“But—” Viola says, her face getting red.

“Please,” Doctor Snow says. Then he looks at Ben. “What have you told your army? How many men we have? What our fortifications are like—”

“I’ve been running from the army,” Ben says, hands still in the air. “Look at me. Do I look like a well-tended soldier? I haven’t told them anything. I’ve been on the run, looking for my…” He pauses and I know the reason. “For my son,” he says.

“You did this knowing the law?” Doctor Snow asks.

“I know the law,” Ben says. “How could I possibly not know the law?”

“What ruddy LAW?” I yell. “What the hell is everyone talking about?”

“Todd is innocent,” Ben says. “You can search his Noise for as long as you like and you won’t find anything to say I’m lying.”

“You can’t trust them,” says the beard, still looking down his gun. “You know you can’t.”

“We don’t know anything,” Doctor Snow says. “Not for ten years or more.”

“We know they’ve raised themselves into an army,” says the birthmark.

“Yes, but I don’t see any crime in this boy,” Doctor Snow says. “Do you?”

A dozen different Noises come poking at me like sticks.

He turns to Viola. “And all the girl is guilty of is a lie that saved her friend’s life.”

Viola looks away from me, face still red with anger.

“And we’ve got bigger problems,” Doctor Snow continues. “An army coming that may or may not know all about how we’re preparing to meet them.”

“We ain’t SPIES!” I shout.

But Doctor Snow is turning to the other men. “Take the boy and the girl back into town. The girl can go with the women and the boy is well enough to fight alongside us.”

“Wait a minute!” I yell.

Doctor Snow turns to Ben. “And though I do believe you’re just a man out looking for his son, the law’s the law.”

“Is that your final ruling?” the beard says.

“If the eldermen agree,” Doctor Snow says. There’s a general but reluctant nodding of heads, all serious and curt. Doctor Snow looks at me. “I’m sorry, Todd.”

“Hold on!” I say, but the birthmark’s is already stepping forward and grabbing my arm. “Let go of me!”

Another man’s grabbing on to Viola and she’s resisting just as much as I am.

“Ben!” I call, looking back at him. “Ben!”

“Go, Todd,” he says.

“No, Ben!”

“Remember I love you.”

“What’re they gonna do?” I say, still pulling away from the birthmark’s hand. I turn to Doctor Snow. “What’re you gonna do?”

He don’t say nothing but I can see it in his Noise.

What the law demands.

“The HELL you are!” I yell and with my free arm I’m already reaching for my knife and bringing it round towards the birthmark’s hand, slicing it across the top. He yelps and lets go.

“Run!” I say to Ben. “Run, already!”

I see Viola biting the hand of the man who’s grabbing her. He calls out and she stumbles back.

“You, too!” I say to her. “Get outta here!”

“I wouldn’t,” says the beard and there are rifles cocking all over the place.

The birthmark is cursing and he raises his arm to strike but I’ve got my knife out in front of me. “Try it,” I say thru my teeth. “Come on!”

“ENOUGH!” Doctor Snow yells.

And in the sudden silence that follows, we hear the hoofbeats.

Thump budda-thump budda-thump.

Horses. Five of ’em. Ten. Maybe even fifteen.

Roaring down the road like the devil hisself is on their tail.

“Scouts?” I say to Ben tho I know they ain’t.

He shakes his head. “Advance party.”

“They’ll be armed,” I say to Doctor Snow and the men, thinking fast. “They’ll have as many guns as you.”

Doctor Snow’s thinking, too. I can see his Noise whirring, see him thinking how much time they’ve got before the horses get here, how much trouble me and Ben and Viola are going to cause, how much time we’ll waste.

I see him decide.

“Let them go.”

“What?” says the beard, his Noise itching to shoot something. “He’s a traitor and a murderer.”

“And we’ve got a town to protect,” Doctor Snow says firmly. “I’ve got a son to keep safe. So do you, Fergal.”

The beard frowns but says nothing more.

Thump budda-thump budda-thump comes the sound from the road.

Doctor Snow turns to us. “Go,” he says. “I can only hope you haven’t sealed our fate.”

“We haven’t,” I say, “and that’s the truth.”

Doctor Snow purses his lips. “I’d like to believe you.” He turns to the men. “Come on!” he shouts. “Get to your posts! Hurry!”

The group of men breaks up, scurrying back to Carbonel Downs, the beard and the birthmark still seething at us as they go, looking for a reason to use their guns, but we don’t give ’em one. We just watch ’em go.

I find I’m shaking a little.

“Holy crap,” Viola says, bending at the waist.

“We gotta get outta here,” I say. “The army’s gonna be more interested in us than it is in them.”

I still have Viola’s bag with me, tho all it’s got in it any more are a few clothes, the water bottles, the binos and my ma’s book, still in its plastic bag.

All the things we got in the world.

Which means we’re ready to go.

“This is only gonna keep happening,” Ben says. “I can’t come with you.”

“Yes, you can,” I say. “You can leave later but we’re going now and yer coming with us. We ain’t leaving you to be caught by no army.” I look over to Viola. “Right?”

She puts her shoulders back and looks decisive. “Right,” she says.

“That’s settled then,” I say.

Ben looks back and forth twixt the two of us. He furrows his brow. “Only till I know yer safe.”

“Too much talking,” I say. “Not enough running.”

36. ANSWERS TO ASKINGS

We stay off the river road for obvious reasons and tear thru the trees, heading, as always, towards Haven, snapping thru twigs and branches, getting away from Carbonel Downs as fast as our legs can carry us.

It’s not ten minutes before we hear the first gunshots.

We don’t look back. We don’t look back.

We run and the sounds fade.

We keep running.

Me and Viola are both faster than Ben and sometimes we have to slow down to let him catch up.

We run past one, then two small, empty settlements, places that obviously heeded the rumours about the army better than Carbonel Downs did. We keep to the woods twixt the river and the road but we don’t even see any caravans. They must be high-tailing it to Haven.

On we run.

Night falls and we keep on running.

“You all right?” I ask Ben, when we stop by the river to refill the bottles.

“Keep on going,” he says, gasping. “Keep on going.”

Viola sends me a worried look.

“I’m sorry we don’t got food,” I say, but he just shakes his head and says, “Keep going.”

So we keep going.

Midnight comes and we run thru that, too.

(Who knows how many days? Who cares any more?)

Till finally, Ben says, “Wait,” and stops, hands on his knees, breathing hard in a real unhealthy way.

I look around us by the light of the moons. Viola’s looking, too. She points. “There.”

“Up there, Ben,” I say, pointing up the small hill Viola’s seen. “We’ll be able to get a view.”

Ben don’t say nothing, just gasps and nods his head and follows us. There’s trees all the way up the side but a well-tended path and a wide clearing at the top.

When we get there, we see why.

“A sematary,” I say.

“A what?” Viola says, looking round at all the square stones marking out their graves. Must be a hundred, maybe two, in orderly rows and well-kept grass. Settler life is hard and it’s short and lotsa New World people have lost the battle.

“It’s a place for burying dead folk,” I say.

Her eyes widen. “A place for doing what?”

“Don’t people die in space?” I ask.

“Yeah,” she says. “But we burn them. We don’t put them in holes.” She crosses her arms around herself, mouth and forehead frowning, peering around at the graves. “How can this be sanitary?” Ben still hasn’t said anything, just flopped down by a gravestone and leant against it, catching his breath. I take a swig from a water bottle and then hand it to Ben. I look out and around us. You can see down the road for a piece and there’s a view of the river, too, rushing by us on the left now. It’s a clear sky, the stars out, the moons starting to crescent in the sky above us.

“Ben?” I say, looking up into the night.

“Yeah?” he says, drinking down his water.

“You all right?”

“Yeah.” His breath’s getting back to normal. “I’m built for farm labour. Not sprinting.”

I look at the moons one more time, the smaller one chasing the larger one, two brightnesses up there, still light enough to cast shadows, ignorant of the troubles of men.

I look into myself. I look deep into my Noise.

And I realize I’m ready.

This is the last chance.

And I’m ready.

“I think it’s time,” I say. I look back at him. “I think now’s the time, if it’s ever gonna be.”

He licks his lips and swallows his water. He puts the cap back on the bottle. “I know,” he says.

“Time for what?” Viola asks.

“Where should I start?” Ben asks.

I shrug. “Anywhere,” I say, “as long as it’s true.”

I can hear Ben’s Noise gathering, gathering up the whole story, taking one stream out of the river, finally, the one that tells what really happened, the one hidden for so long and so deep I didn’t even know it was there for my whole up-growing life.

Viola’s silence has gone more silent than usual, as still as the night, waiting to hear what he might say.

Ben takes a deep breath.

“The Noise germ wasn’t Spackle warfare,” he says. “That’s the first thing. The germ was here when we landed. A naturally occurring phenomenon, in the air, always had been, always will be. We got outta our ships and within a day everyone could hear everyone’s thoughts. Imagine our surprise.” He pauses, remembering.

“Except it wasn’t everyone,” Viola says.

“It was just the men,” I say.

Ben nods. “No one knows why. Still don’t. Our scientists were mainly agriculturalists and the doctors couldn’t find a reason and so for a while, there was chaos. Just… chaos, like you wouldn’t believe. Chaos and confusion and Noise Noise Noise.” He scratches underneath his chin. “A lotta men scattered theirselves into far communities, getting away from Haven as fast as roads could be cut. But soon folk realized there was nothing to be done about it so for a while we all tried to live with it the best we could, found different ways to deal with it, different communities taking their own paths. Same as we did when we realized all our livestock were talking, too, and pets and local creachers.” He looks up into the sky and to the sematary around us and the river and road below.

“Everything on this planet talks to each other,” he says. “Everything. That’s what New World is. Informayshun, all the time, never stopping, whether you want it or not. The Spackle knew it, evolved to live with it, but we weren’t equipped for it. Not even close. And too much informayshun can drive a man mad. Too much informayshun becomes just Noise. And it never, never stops.” He pauses and the Noise is there, of course, like it always is, his and mine and Viola’s silence only making it louder.

“As the years went by,” he goes on, “times were hard all over New World and getting harder. Crops failing and sickness and no prosperity and no Eden. Definitely no Eden. And a preaching started spreading in the land, a poisonous preaching, a preaching that started to blame.” “They blamed the aliens,” Viola says.

“The Spackle,” I say and the shame returns.

“They blamed the Spackle,” Ben confirms. “And somehow preaching became a movement and a movement became a war.” He shakes his head. “They didn’t stand a chance. We had guns, they didn’t, and that was the end of the Spackle.” “Not all,” I say.

“No,” he says. “Not all. But they learned better than to come too near men again, I tell you that.”

A brief wind blows across the hilltop. When it stops, it’s like we’re the only three people left on New World. Us and the sematary ghosts.

“But the war’s not the end of the story,” Viola says quietly.

“No,” Ben says. “The story ain’t finished, ain’t even half finished.”

And I know it ain’t. And I know where it’s heading.

And I changed my mind. I don’t want it to finish.

But I do, too.

I look into Ben’s eyes, into his Noise.

“The war didn’t stop with the Spackle,” I say. “Not in Prentisstown.”

Ben licks his lips and I can feel unsteadiness in his Noise and hunger and grief at what he’s already imagining is our next parting.

“War is a monster,” he says, almost to himself. “War is the devil. It starts and it consumes and it grows and grows and grows.” He’s looking at me now. “And otherwise normal men become monsters, too.” “They couldn’t stand the silence,” Viola says, her voice still. “They couldn’t stand women knowing everything about them and them knowing nothing about women.”

“Some men thought that,” Ben says. “Not all. Not me, not Cillian. There were good men in Prentisstown.”

“But enough thought it,” I say.

“Yes,” he nods.

There’s another pause as the truth starts to show itself.

Finally. And forever.

Viola is shaking her head. “Are you saying…?” she says. “Are you really saying…?”

And here it is.

Here’s the thing that’s the centre of it all.

Here’s the thing that’s been growing in my head since I left the swamp, seen in flashes of men along the way, most clearly in Matthew Lyle’s but also in the reakshuns of everyone who even hears the word Prentisstown.

Here it is.

The truth.

And I don’t want it.

But I say it anyway.

“After they killed the Spackle,” I say, “the men of Prentisstown killed the women of Prentisstown.”

Viola gasps even tho she’s got to have guessed it, too.

“Not all the men,” Ben says. “But many. Allowing themselves to be swayed by Mayor Prentiss and the preachings of Aaron, who used to say that what was hidden must be evil. They killed all the women and all the men who tried to protect them.” “My ma,” I say.

Ben just nods in confirmayshun.

I feel a sickness in my stomach.

My ma dying, being killed by men I probably saw every day.

I have to sit down on a gravestone.

I have to think of something else, I just do. I have to put something else in my Noise so I can stand it.

“Who was Jessica?” I say, remembering Matthew Lyle’s Noise back in Farbranch, remembering the violence in it, the Noise that now makes sense even tho it don’t make no sense at all.

“Some people could see what was coming,” Ben says. “Jessica Elizabeth was our Mayor and she could see the way the wind was blowing.”

Jessica Elizabeth, I think. New Elizabeth.

“She organized some of the girls and younger boys to flee across the swamp,” Ben continues. “But before she could go herself with the women and the men who hadn’t lost their minds, the Mayor’s men attacked.” “And that was that,” I say, feeling numb all over. “New Elizabeth becomes Prentisstown.”

“Yer ma never thought it would happen,” Ben says, smiling sadly to himself at some memory. “So full of love that woman, so full of hope in the goodness of others.” He stops smiling. “And then there came a moment when it was too late to flee and you were way too young to be sent away and so she gave you to us, told us to keep you safe, no matter what.” I look up. “How was staying in Prentisstown keeping me safe?”

Ben’s staring right at me, sadness everywhere around him, his Noise so weighted with it, it’s a wonder he can stay upright.

“Why didn’t you leave?” I ask.

He rubs his face. “Cuz we didn’t think the attack would really happen either. Or I didn’t, anyway, and we had put the farm together and I thought it would blow over before anything really bad happened. I thought it was just rumours and paranoia, including on the part of yer ma, right up to the last.” He frowns. “I was wrong. I was stupid.” He looks away. “I was wilfully blind.” I remember his words comforting me about the Spackle.

We’ve all made mistakes, Todd. All of us.

“And then it was too late,” Ben says. “The deed was done and word of what Prentisstown had done spread like wildfire, starting with the few who’d managed to escape it. All men from Prentisstown were declared criminals. We couldn’t leave.” Viola’s arms are still crossed. “Why didn’t someone come and get you? Why didn’t the rest of New World come after you?”

“And do what?” Ben says, sounding tired. “Fight another war but this time with heavily armed men? Lock us up in a giant prison? They laid down the law that if any man from Prentisstown crossed the swamp, he’d be executed. And then they left us to it.” “But they must have…” Viola says, holding her palms to the air. “Something. I don’t know.”

“If it ain’t happening on yer doorstep,” Ben says, “it’s easier to think, Why go out and find trouble? We had the whole of the swamp twixt us and New World. The Mayor sent word that Prentisstown would be a town in exile. Doomed, of course, to a slow death. We’d agree never to leave and if we ever did, he’d hunt us down and kill us himself.” “Didn’t people try?” Viola says. “Didn’t they try and get away?”

“They tried,” Ben says, full of meaning. “It wasn’t uncommon for people to disappear.”

“But if you and Cillian were innocent—” I start.

“We weren’t innocent,” Ben says strongly, and suddenly his Noise tastes bitter. He sighs. “We weren’t.”

“What do you mean?” I ask, raising my head. The sickness in my stomach ain’t leaving. “What do you mean you weren’t innocent?”

“You let it happen,” Viola says. “You didn’t die with the other men who were protecting the women.”

“We didn’t fight,” he says, “and we didn’t die.” He shakes his head. “Not innocent at all.”

“Why didn’t you fight?” I ask.

“Cillian wanted to,” Ben says quickly. “I want you to know that. He wanted to do whatever he could to stop them. He would have given his life.” He looks away once more. “But I wouldn’t let him.” “Why not?”

“I get it,” Viola whispers.

I look at her, cuz I sure don’t. “Get what?”

Viola keeps looking at Ben. “They either die fighting for what’s right and leave you an unprotected baby,” she says, “or they become complicit with what’s wrong and keep you alive.”

I don’t know what complicit means but I can guess.

They did it for me. All that horror. They did it for me.

Ben and Cillian. Cillian and Ben.

They did it so I could live.

I don’t know how I feel about any of this.

Doing what’s right should be easy.

It shouldn’t be just another big mess like everything else.

“So we waited,” Ben says. “In a town-sized prison. Full of the ugliest Noise you ever heard before men started denying their own pasts, before the Mayor came up with his grand plans. And so we waited for the day you were old enough to get away on yer own, innocent as we could keep you.” He rubs a hand over his head. “But the Mayor was waiting, too.” “For me?” I ask, tho I know it’s true.

“For the last boy to become a man,” Ben says. “When boys became men, they were told the truth. Or a version of it, anyway. And then they were made complicit themselves.”

I remember his Noise from back on the farm, about my birthday, about how a boy becomes a man.

About what complicity really means and how it can be passed on.

How it was waiting to be passed on to me.

And about the men who–

I put it outta my head.

“That don’t make no sense,” I say.

“You were the last,” Ben says. “If he could make every single boy in Prentisstown a man by his own meaning, then he’s God, ain’t he? He’s created all of us and is in complete control.”

“If one of us falls,” I say.

“We all fall,” Ben finishes. “That’s why he wants you. Yer a symbol. Yer the last innocent boy of Prentisstown. If he can make you fall, then his army is complete and of his own perfect making.” “And if not?” I say, tho I’m wondering if I’ve already fallen.

“If not,” Ben says, “he’ll kill you.”

“So Mayor Prentiss is as mad as Aaron, then,” Viola says.

“Not quite,” Ben says. “Aaron is mad. But the Mayor knows enough to use madness to achieve his ends.”

“Which are what?” Viola says.

“This world,” Ben says calmly. “He wants all of it.”

I open my mouth to ask more stuff I don’t wanna know but then, as if there was never gonna be anything else that could ever happen, we hear it.

Thump budda-thump budda-thump. Coming down the road, relentless, like a joke that ain’t ever gonna be funny.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Viola says.

Ben’s already back on his feet, listening. “It sounds like just one horse.”

We all look down the road, shining a little in the moonlight.

“Binos,” Viola says, now right by my side. I fish ’em out without another word, click on the night setting and look, searching out the sound as it rings thru the night air.

Budda-thump budda-thump.

I search down the road farther and farther back till–

There it is.

There he is.

Who else?

Mr Prentiss Jr, alive and well and untied and back on his horse.

“Damn,” I hear from Viola, reading my Noise as I hand her the binos.

“Davy Prentiss?” Ben says, also reading my Noise.

“The one and only.” I put the water bottles back in Viola’s bag. “We gotta go.”

Viola hands the binos to Ben and he looks for himself. He takes them away from his eyes and gives the binos a quick once over. “Nifty,” he says.

“We need to go,” Viola says. “As always.”

Ben turns to us, binos still in his hand. He’s looking from one of us to the other and I see what’s forming in his Noise.

“Ben—” I start.

“No,” he says. “This is where I leave you.”

“Ben—”

“I can handle Davy bloody Prentiss.”

“He has a gun,” I say. “You don’t.”

Ben comes up to me. “Todd,” he says.

“No, Ben,” I say, my voice getting louder. “I ain’t listening.”

He looks me in the eye and I notice he don’t seem to be having to bend down any more to do it.

“Todd,” he says again. “I atone for the wrong I’ve done by keeping you safe.”

“You can’t leave me, Ben,” I say, my voice getting wet (shut up). “Not again.”

He’s shaking his head. “I can’t come to Haven with you. You know I can’t. I’m the enemy.”

“We can explain what happened.”

But he’s still shaking his head.

“The horse is getting closer,” Viola says.

Thump budda-thump budda-thump.

“The only thing that makes me a man,” Ben says, his voice steady as a rock, “is seeing you safely into becoming a man yerself.”

“I ain’t a man yet, Ben,” I say, my throat catching (shut up). “I don’t even know how many days I got left.”

And then he smiles and it’s the smile that tells me it’s over.

“Sixteen,” he says. “Sixteen days till yer birthday.” He takes my chin and lifts it. “But you’ve been a man for a good while now. Don’t let no one tell you otherwise.”

“Ben—”

“Go,” he says and he comes up to me and hands Viola the binos behind my back and takes me in his arms. “No father could be prouder,” I hear him say by my ear.

“No,” I say, my words slurring. “It ain’t fair.”

“It ain’t.” He pulls himself away. “But there’s hope at the end of the road. You remember that.”

“Don’t go,” I say.

“I have to. Danger’s coming.”

“Closer and closer,” Viola says, binos to her eyes.

Budda-thump budda-THUMP.

“I’ll stop him. I’ll buy you time.” Ben looks at Viola. “You take care of Todd,” he says. “I have yer word?”

“You have my word,” Viola says.

“Ben, please,” I whisper. “Please.”

He grips my shoulders for a last time. “Remember,” he says. “Hope.”

And he don’t say nothing more and he turns and runs down the hill from the sematary to the road. When he gets to the bottom, he looks back and sees us still watching him.

“What are you waiting for?” he shouts. “Run!”

37. WHAT'S THE POINT?

I won’t say what I feel when we run down the other side of the hill and away from Ben, for ever this time cuz how is there any life after this?

Life equals running and when we stop running maybe that’s how we’ll know life is finally finished.

“Come on, Todd,” Viola calls, looking back over her shoulder. “Please, hurry.”

I don’t say nothing.

I run.

We get down the hill and back by the river. Again. With the road on our other side. Again.

Always the same.

The river’s louder than it was, rushing by with some force, but who cares? What does it matter?

Life ain’t fair.

It ain’t.

Not never.

It’s pointless and stupid and there’s only suffering and pain and people who want to hurt you. You can’t love nothing or no one cuz it’ll all be taken away or ruined and you’ll be left alone and constantly having to fight, constantly having to run just to stay alive.

There’s nothing good in this life. Not nothing good nowhere.

What’s the effing point?

“The point is,” Viola says, stopping halfway thru a dense patch of scrub to hit me really hard on the shoulder, “he cared enough about you to maybe sacrifice himself and if you just GIVE UP” — she shouts that part — “then you’re saying that the sacrifice is worth nothing!” “Ow,” I say, rubbing my shoulder. “But why should he have to sacrifice himself? Why should I have to lose him again?”

She steps up close to me. “Do you think you’re the only person who’s lost someone?” she says in a dangerous whisper. “Do you forget that my parents are dead, too?”

I did.

I did forget.

I don’t say nothing.

“All I’ve got now is you,” she says, her voice still angry. “And all you’ve got now is me. And I’m mad he left, too, and I’m mad my parents died and I’m mad we ever thought of coming to this planet in the first place but that’s how it is and it’s crap that it’s just us but we can’t do anything about it.” I still don’t say nothing.

But there she is and I look at her, really look at her, for probably the first time since I saw her cowering next to a log back in the swamp when I thought she was a Spackle.

A lifetime ago.

She’s still kinda cleaned up from the days in Carbonel Downs (only yesterday, only just yesterday) but there’s dirt on her cheeks and she’s skinnier than she used to be and there are dark patches under her eyes and her hair is messy and tangled and her hands are covered in sooty blackness and her shirt has a green stain of grass across the front from when she once fell and there’s a cut on her lip from when a branch smacked her when we were running with Ben (and no bandages left to stitch it up) and she’s looking at me.

And she’s telling me she’s all I’ve got.

And that I’m all she’s got.

And I feel a little bit how that feels.

The colours in my Noise go different.

Her voice softens but only a little. “Ben’s gone and Manchee’s gone and my mother and father are gone,” she says. “And I hate all of that. I hate it. But we’re almost at the end of the road. We’re almost there. And if you don’t give up, I don’t give up.” “Do you believe there’s hope at the end?” I ask.

“No,” she says simply, looking away. “No, I don’t, but I’m still going.” She eyes me. “You coming with?”

I don’t have to answer.

We carry on running.

But.

“We should just take the road,” I say, holding back yet another branch.

“But the army,” she says. “And the horses.”

“They know where we’re going. We know where they’re going. We all seem to have taken the same route to get to Haven.”

“And we’ll hear them coming,” she agrees. “And the road’s fastest.

“The road’s fastest.”

And she says, “Then let’s just take the effing road and get ourselves to Haven.”

I smile, a little. “You said effing,” I say. “You actually said the word effing.”

So we take the effing road, as fast as our tiredness will let us. It’s still the same dusty, twisty, sometimes muddy river road that it was all those miles and miles ago and the same leafy, tree-filled New World all around us.

If you were just landing here and didn’t know nothing about nothing you really might think it was Eden after all.

A wide valley is opening up around us, flat at the bottom where the river is but distant hills beginning to climb up on either side. The hills are lit only by moonlight, no sign of distant settlements or anyway of ones with lights still burning.

No sign of Haven ahead neither but we’re at the flattest point of the valley and can’t see much past the twists in the road either before us or back. Forest still covers both sides of the river and you’d be tempted to think that all of New World had closed up and everyone left, leaving just this road behind ’em.

We go on.

And on.

Not till the first stripes of dawn start appearing down the valley in front of us do we stop to take on more water.

We drink. There’s only my Noise and the river rushing by.

No hoofbeats. No other Noise.

“You know this means he succeeded,” Viola says, not meeting my eye. “Whatever he did, he stopped the man on the horse.”

I just mm and nod.

“And we never heard gunshots.”

I mm and nod again.

“I’m sorry for shouting at you before,” she says. “I just wanted you to keep going. I didn’t want you to stop.”

“I know.”

We’re leaning against a pair of trees by the riverbank. The road is to our backs and across the river is just trees and the far side of the valley rises up and then only the sky above, getting lighter and more blue and bigger and emptier till even the stars start leaving it.

“When we left on the scout ship,” Viola says, looking up across the river with me, “I was really upset leaving my friends behind. Just a few kids from the other caretaker families, but still. I thought I’d be the only one my age on this planet for seven whole months.” I drink some water. “I didn’t have friends back in Prentisstown.”

She turns to me. “What do you mean, no friends? You had to have friends.”

“I had a few for a while, boys a coupla months older than me. But when boys become men they stop talking to boys,” I shrug. “I was the last boy. In the end there was just me and Manchee.”

She gazes up into the fading stars. “It’s a stupid rule.”

“It is.”

We don’t say nothing more, just me and Viola by the riverside, resting ourselves as another dawn comes.

Just me and her.

We stir after a minute, get ourselves ready to go again.

“We could reach Haven by tomorrow,” I say. “If we keep on going.”

“Tomorrow,” Viola nods. “I hope there’s food.”

It’s her turn to carry the bag so I hand it to her and the sun is peeking up over the end of the valley where it looks like the river’s running right into it and as the light hits the hills across the river from us, something catches my eye.

Viola turns immediately at the spark in my Noise. “What?”

I shield my eyes from the new sun. There’s a little trail of dust rising from the top of the far hills.

And it’s moving.

“What is that?” I say.

Viola fishes out the binos and looks thru ’em. “I can’t see properly,” she says. “Trees in the way.”

“Someone travelling?”

“Maybe that’s the other road. The fork we didn’t take.”

We watch for a minute or two as the dust trail keeps rising, heading towards Haven at the slow speed of a distant cloud. It’s weird seeing it without any sound.

“I wish I knew where the army was,” I say. “How far they were behind us.”

“Maybe Carbonel Downs put up too good a fight.” Viola points the binos upriver to see the way we came but it’s too flat, too twisty. All there is to be seen is trees. Trees and sky and quiet and a silent trail of dust making its way along the far hilltops.

“We should go,” I say. “I’m starting to feel a little spooked.”

“Let’s go then,” Viola says, quiet-like.

Back on the road.

Back to the life of running.

We have no food with us so breakfast is a yellow fruit that Viola spies on some trees we pass that she swears she ate in Carbonel Downs. They become lunch, too, but it’s better than nothing.

I think again of the knife at my back.

Could I hunt, if there was time?

But there ain’t no time.

We run past midday and into afternoon. The world is still abandoned and spooky. Just me and Viola running along the valley bottom, no settlements to be seen, no caravans or carts, no other sound loud enough to be heard over the rushing of the river, getting bigger by the hour, to the point where it’s hard even to hear my Noise, where even if we want to talk, we have to raise our voices.

But we’re too hungry to talk. And too tired to talk. And running too much to talk.

And so on we go.

And I find myself watching Viola.

The trail of dust on the far hilltop follows us as we run, pulling ahead slowly as the day gets older and finally disappearing in the distance and I watch her checking it as we hurry on. I watch her run next to me, flinching at the aches in her legs. I watch her rub them when we rest and watch her when she drinks from the water bottles.

Now that I’ve seen her, I can’t stop seeing her.

She catches me. “What?”

“Nothing,” I say and look away cuz I don’t know either.

The river and the road have straightened out as the valley gets steeper and closer on both sides. We can see a little bit back the way we came. No army yet, no horsemen neither. The quiet is almost scarier than if there was Noise everywhere.

Dusk comes, the sun setting itself in the valley behind us, setting over wherever the army might be and whatever’s left of New World back there, whatever’s happened to the men who fought against the army and the men who joined.

Whatever’s happened to the women.

Viola runs in front of me.

I watch her run.

Just after nightfall we finally come to another settlement, another one with docks on the river, another one abandoned. There are only five houses in total along a little strip of the road, one with what looks like a small general store tacked onto the front.

“Hold on,” Viola says, stopping.

“Dinner?” I say, catching my breath.

She nods.

It takes about six kicks to open the door of the general store and tho there clearly ain’t no one here at all, I still look round expecting to be punished. Inside, it’s mostly cans but we find a dry loaf of bread, some bruised fruit and a few strips of dried meat.

“These aren’t more than a day or two old,” Viola says, twixt mouthfuls. “They must have fled to Haven yesterday or the day before.”

“Rumours of an army are a powerful thing,” I say, not chewing my dried meat well enough before I swallow and coughing up a little bit of it.

We fill our bellies as best we can and I shove the rest of the food into Viola’s bag, now hanging round my shoulders. I see the book when I do. Still there, still wrapped in its plastic bag, still with the knife-shaped slash all the way thru it.

I reach in thru the plastic bag, rubbing my fingers across the cover. It’s soft to the touch and the binding still gives off a faint whiff of leather.

The book. My ma’s book. It’s come all the way with us. Survived its own injury. Just like us.

I look up at Viola.

She catches me again.

“What?” she says.

“Nothing.” I put the book back in the bag with the food. “Let’s go.”

Back on the road, back down the river, back towards Haven.

“This should be our last night, you know,” Viola says. “If Doctor Snow was right, we’ll be there tomorrow.”

“Yeah,” I say, “and the world will change.”

“Again.”

“Again,” I agree.

We go on a few more paces.

“You starting to feel hope?” Viola asks, her voice curious.

“No,” I say, fuddling my Noise. “You?”

Her eyebrows are up but she shakes her head. “No, no.”

“But we’re going anyway.”

“Oh, yeah,” Viola says. “Hell or high water.”

“It’ll probably be both,” I say.

The sun sets, the moons rise again, smaller crescents than the night before. The sky is still clear, the stars still up, the world still quiet, just the rush of the river, getting steadily louder.

Midnight comes.

Fifteen days.

Fifteen days till–

Till what?

We carry on thru the night, the sky falling slowly past us, our words stopping a little as dinner wears off and tiredness takes hold again. Just before dawn we find two overturned carts in the road, grains of wheat spilled everywhere and a few empty baskets rolled on their sides across the road.

“They didn’t even take the time to save everything,” Viola says. “They left half of it on the ground.”

“Good a place as any for breakfast.” I flip over one of the baskets, drag it over to where the road overlooks the river and sit down on it.

Viola picks up another basket, brings it over right next to me and sits down. There are glimmers of light in the sky as the sun gets set to rise, the road pointing right towards it, the river, too, rushing towards the dawn. I open up the bag and take out the general store food, handing some to Viola and eating what I’ve got. We drink from the water bottles.

The bag is open on my lap. There are our remaining clothes and there are the binos.

And there’s the book again.

I feel her silence next to me, feel the pull of it on me and the hollows in my chest and stomach and head and I remember the ache I used to feel when she got too close, how it felt like grief, how it felt like a loss, like I was falling, falling into nothing, how it clenched me up and made me want to weep, made me actually weep.

But now–

Now, not so much.

I look over to her.

She’s gotta know what’s in my Noise. I’m the only one around and she’s got better and better at reading it despite how loud the river’s getting.

But she sits there, quietly eating, waiting for me to say.

Waiting for me to ask.

Cuz this is what I’m thinking.

When the sun comes up, it’ll be the day we get to Haven, the day we get to a place filled with more people than I’ve ever seen together in my life, a place filled with so much Noise you can’t never be alone, unless they found a cure, in which case I’ll be the only Noisy one which would actually be worse.

We get to Haven, we’ll be part of a city.

It won’t just be Todd and Viola, sitting by a river as the sun comes up, eating our breakfast, the only two people on the face of the planet.

It’ll be everyone, all together.

This might be our last chance.

I look away from her to speak. “You know that thing with voices that you do?”

“Yeah,” she says, quiet.

I take out the book.

“D’you think you could do a Prentisstown voice?”

38. I HEARD A MAIDEN CALL

“My Dearest Todd,” Viola reads, copying Ben’s accent as best she can. Which is pretty ruddy good. “My dearest son.”

My ma’s voice. My ma speaking.

I cross my arms and look down into the wheat spilled across the ground.

“I begin this journal on the day of yer birth, the day I first held you in my arms rather than in my belly. You kick just as much outside as in! And yer the most beautiful thing that’s ever happened in the whole entire universe. Yer easily the most beautiful thing on New World and there’s no contest in New Elizabeth, that’s for sure.”

I feel my face getting red but the sun’s still not high enough for anyone to see.

“I wish yer pa were here to see you, Todd, but New World and the Lord above saw fit to take him with the sickness five months ago and we’ll both just have to wait to see him in the next world.

“You look like him. Well, babies don’t look much like anything but babies but I’m telling you you look like him. Yer going to be tall, Todd, cuz yer pa was tall. Yer going to be strong, cuz yer pa was strong. And yer going to be handsome, oh, are you ever going to be handsome. The ladies of New World won’t know what hit them.”

Viola turns a page and I don’t look at her. I sense she’s not looking at me neither and I wouldn’t wanna see a smile on her face right about now.

Cuz that weird thing’s happening too.

Her words are not her words and they’re coming outta her mouth sounding like a lie but making a new truth, creating a different world where my ma is talking directly to me, Viola speaking with a voice not her own and the world, for a little while at least, the world is all for me, the world’s being made just for me.

“Let me tell you bout the place you’ve been born into, son. It’s called New World and it’s a whole planet made entirely of hope—”

Viola stops, just for a second, then carries on.

“We landed here almost exactly ten years ago looking for a new way of life, one clean and simple and honest and good, one different from Old World in all respects, where people could live in safety and peace with God as our guide and with love for our fellow man.

“There’ve been struggles. I won’t begin this story to you with a lie, Todd. It ain’t been easy here—

y“ Oooh, listen to me, writing down ‘ain’t’ when addressing my son. That’s settler life for you, I spose, not much time for niceties and it’s easy to sink to the level of people who revel in squandering their manners. But there’s not much harm in ‘ain’t’, surely? Okay, that’s decided then. My first bad choice as a mother. Say ‘ain’t’ all you like, Todd. I promise not to correct you.” Viola purses her lips but I don’t say nothing so she continues.

“So there’s been hardship and sickness on New World and in New Elizabeth. There’s something called the Noise here on this planet that men have been struggling with since we landed but the strange thing is you’ll be one of the boys in the settlement who won’t know any different and so it’ll be hard to explain to you what life was like before and why it’s so difficult now but we’re managing the best we can.

“A man called David Prentiss, who’s got a son just a bit older than you, Todd, and who’s one of our better organizers — I believe he was a caretaker on the ship over, if memory serves me correct—”

Viola pauses at this, too, but this time it’s me who waits for her to say something. She don’t.

“He convinced Jessica Elizabeth, our Mayor, to found this little settlement on the far side of an enormous swamp so that the Noise of the rest of New World can’t never reach us unless we allow it to. It’s still Noisy as anything here in New Elizabeth but at least it’s people we know, at least it’s people we trust. For the most part.

“My role here is that I farm several fields of wheat up north of the settlement. Since yer pa passed, our close friends Ben and Cillian have been helping me out since theirs is the next farm over. I can’t wait for you to meet them. Well wait, you already have! They’ve already held you and said hello so look at that, one day in the world and you’ve already made two friends. It’s a good way to start, son.

“In fact, I’m sure you’ll do fine cuz you came out two weeks early. Clearly you’d decided you’d had enough and wanted to see what this world had to offer you. I can’t blame you. The sky is so big and blue and the trees so green and this is a world where the animals talk to you, really talk, and you can even talk back and there’s so much wonder to be had, so much just waiting for you, Todd, that I almost can’t stand that it’s not happening for you right now, that yer going to have to wait to see all that’s possible, all the things you might do.”

Viola takes a breath and says, “There’s a break in the page here and a little space and then it says Later like she got interrupted.” She looks up at me. “You okay?”

“Yeah, yeah,” I nod real fast, my arms still crossed. “Carry on.”

It’s getting lighter, the sun truly coming up. I turn away from her a little.

She reads.

“Later.

“Sorry, son, had to stop for a minute for a visit from our holy man, Aaron.”

Another pause, another lick of the lips.

“We’ve been lucky to have him, tho I must admit of late he’s not been saying things I exactly agree with about the natives of New World. Which are called the Spackle, by the way, and which were a BIG surprise, since they were so shy at first neither the original planners back on Old World or our first scout ships even knew they were here!

“They’re very sweet creachers. Different and maybe primitive and no spoken or written language that we can really find but I don’t agree with some of the thinking of the people here that the Spackle are animals rather than intelligent beings. And Aaron’s been preaching lately about how God has made a dividing line twixt us and them and—

“Well that’s not really something to discuss on yer first day, is it? Aaron believes what he believes devoutly, has been a pillar of faith for all of us these long years and should anyone find this journal and read it, let me say here for the record that it was a privilege to have him come by and bless you on yer first day of life. Okay?

“But I will say also on yer first day that the attractiveness of power is something you should learn about before you get too much older, it’s the thing that separates men from boys, tho not in the way most men think.

“And that’s all I’ll say. Prying eyes and all that.

“Oh, son, there’s so much wonder in the world. Don’t let no one tell you otherwise. Yes, life has been hard here on New World and I’ll even admit to you here, cuz if I’m going to start out at all it has to be an honest start, I’ll tell you that I was nearly given to despair. Things in the settlement are maybe more complicated than I can quite explain right now and there’s things you’ll learn for yerself before too long whether I like it or not and there’ve been difficulties with food and with sickness and it was hard enough even before I lost yer pa and I nearly gave up.

“But I didn’t give up. I didn’t give up cuz of you, my beautiful, beautiful boy, my wondrous son who might make something better of this world, who I promise to raise only with love and hope and who I swear will see this world come good. I swear it.

“Cuz when I held you for the first time this morning and fed you from my own body, I felt so much love for you it was almost like pain, almost like I couldn’t stand it one second longer.

“But only almost.

“And I sang to you a song that my mother sang to me and her mother sang to her and it goes,”

And here, amazingly, Viola sings.

Actually sings.

My skin goes gooseflesh, my chest crushes. She musta heard the whole tune in my Noise and of course Ben singing it cuz here it comes, rolling outta her mouth like the peal of a bell.

The voice of Viola making the world into the voice of my ma, singing the song.

“Early one morning, just as the sun was rising,

I heard a maiden call from the valley below,

‘Oh don’t deceive me, oh never leave me,

How could you use a poor maiden so?’”

I can’t look at her.

I can’t look at her.

I put my hands to my head.

“And it’s a sad song, Todd, but it’s also a promise. I’ll never deceive you and I’ll never leave you and I promise you this so you can one day promise it to others and know that it’s true.

“Oh, ha, Todd! That’s you crying. That’s you crying from yer cot, waking up from yer first sleep on yer first day, waking up and asking the world to come to you.

“And so for today I have to put this aside.

“Yer calling for me, son, and I will answer.”

Viola stops and there’s only the river and my Noise.

“There’s more,” Viola says after a while when I don’t raise my head, flipping thru the pages. “There’s a lot more.” She looks at me. “Do you want me to read more?” She looks back at the book. “Do you want me to read the end?” The end.

Read the last thing my ma wrote in the last days before–

“No,” I say quickly.

Yer calling for me, son, and I will answer.

In my Noise forever.

“No,” I say again. “Let’s leave it there for now.”

I glance over at Viola and I see that her face is pulled as sad as my Noise feels. Her eyes are wet and her chin shakes, just barely, just a tremble in the dawn sunlight. She sees me watching, feels my Noise watching her, and she turns away to face the river.

And there, in that morning, in that new sunrise, I realize something.

I realize something important.

So important that as it dawns fully I have to stand up.

I know what she’s thinking.

I know what she’s thinking.

Even looking at her back, I know what she’s thinking and feeling and what’s going on inside her.

The way she’s turned her body, the way she’s holding her head and her hands and the book in her lap, the way she’s stiffening a little in her back as she hears all this in my Noise.

I can read it.

I can read her.

Cuz she’s thinking about how her own parents also came here with hope like my ma. She’s wondering if the hope at the end of our road is just as false as the one that was at the end of my ma’s. And she’s taking the words of my ma and putting them into the mouths of her own ma and pa and hearing them say that they love her and they miss her and they wish her the world. And she’s taking the song of my ma and she’s weaving it into everything else till it becomes a sad thing all her own.

And it hurts her, but it’s an okay hurt, but it hurts still, but it’s good, but it hurts.

She hurts.

I know all this.

I know it’s true.

Cuz I can read her.

I can read her Noise even tho she ain’t got none.

I know who she is.

I know Viola Eade.

I raise my hands to the side of my head to hold it all in.

“Viola,” I whisper, my voice shaking.

“I know,” she says quietly, pulling her arms tight around her, still facing away from me.

And I look at her sitting there and she looks across the river and we wait as the dawn fully arrives, each of us knowing.

Each of us knowing the other.

39. THE FALLS

The sun creeps up into the sky and the river is loud as we look across it and we can now see it rushing fast down towards the valley’s end, throwing up whitewater and rapids.

It’s Viola who breaks the spell that’s fallen twixt us. “You know what it has to be, don’t you?” she says. She takes out the binos and looks downriver. The sun is rising at the end of the valley. She has to shield the lenses with her hand.

“What is it?” I say.

She presses a button or two and looks again.

“What do you see?” I ask.

She hands the binos to me.

I look downriver, following the rapids, the foam, right to–

Right to the end.

A few kilometres away, the river ends in mid-air.

“Another falls,” I say.

“Looks way bigger than the one we saw with Wilf,” she says.

“The road’ll find a way past it,” I say. “Shouldn’t bother us.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“What then?”

“I mean,” she says, frowning a bit at my denseness, “that falls that big’re bound to have a city at the bottom of them. That if you had to choose a place anywhere on a planet for first settlement, then a valley at the base of a waterfall with rich farmland and ready water might just look perfect from space.” My Noise rises a little but only a little.

Cuz who would dare to think?

“Haven,” I say.

“I’ll bet you anything we’ve found it,” she says. “I’ll bet you when we get to that waterfall we’ll be able to see it below us.”

“If we run,” I say, “we could be there in an hour. Less than”

She looks me in the eye for the first time since my ma’s book.

And she says, “If we run?”

And then she smiles.

A genuine smile.

And I know what that means, too.

We grab up our few things and go.

Faster than before.

My feet are tired and sore. Hers must be, too. I’ve got blisters and aches and my heart hurts from all I miss and all that’s gone. And hers does, too.

But we run.

Boy, do we run.

Cuz maybe (shut up)–

Just maybe (don’t think it)–

Maybe there really is hope at the end of the road.

The river grows wider and straighter as we rush on and the walls of the valley move in closer and closer, the one on our side getting so close the edge of the road starts to slope up. Spray from the rapids is floating in the air. Our clothes get wet, our faces, too, and hands. The roar becomes thunderous, filling up the world with itself, almost like a physical thing, but not in a bad way. Like it’s washing you, like it’s washing the Noise away.

And I think, Please let Haven be at the bottom of the falls.

Please.

Cuz I see Viola looking back to me as we run and there’s brightness on her face and she keeps urging me on with tilts of her head and smiles and I think how hope may be the thing that pulls you forward, may be the thing that keeps you going, but that it’s dangerous, too, that it’s painful and risky, that it’s making a dare to the world and when has the world ever let us win a dare?

Please let Haven be there.

Oh please oh please oh please.

The road finally starts rising a bit, pulling up above the river slightly as the water starts really crashing thru rocky rapids. There ain’t no more wooded bits twixt us and it now at all, just a hill climbing up steeper and steeper on our right side as the valley closes in and then nothing but river and the falls ahead.

“Almost there,” Viola calls from ahead of me, running, her hair bouncing off the back of her neck, the sun shining down on everything.

And then.

And then, at the edge of the cliff, the road comes to a lip and takes a sudden angle down and to the right.

And that’s where we stop.

The falls are huge, half a kilometre across easy. The water roars over the cliff in a violent white foam, sending spray hundreds of metres out into the sheer drop and above and all around, soaking us in our clothes and throwing rainbows all over the place as the rising sun lights it.

“Todd,” Viola says, so faintly I can barely hear it.

But I don’t need to.

I know what she means.

As soon as the falls start falling, the valley opens up again, wide as the sky itself, taking the river that starts again at the base of the falls, which crashes forward with whitewater before it pools and calms down and becomes a river again.

And flows into Haven.

Haven.

Gotta be.

Spread out below us like a table full of food.

“There it is,” Viola says.

And I feel her fingers wrap around my own.

The falls to our left, spray and rainbows in the sky, the sun rising ahead of us, the valley below.

And Haven, sitting waiting.

It’s three, maybe four kilometres away down the farther valley.

But there it is.

There it ruddy well is.

I look round us, round to where the road has taken a sharp turn at our feet, sloping down and cutting into the valley wall to our right but then zig-zagging its way steeply down in a twisty pattern so even it’s like a zipper running down the hillside to where it picks up the river again.

And follows it right into Haven.

“I want to see it,” Viola says, letting go of my hand and taking out the binos. She looks thru them, wipes spray off the lenses, and looks some more. “It’s beautiful,” she says and that’s all she says and she just looks and wipes off more spray.

After a minute and without saying nothing more, she hands me the binos and I get my first look at Haven.

The spray is so thick, even wiping it down you can’t see details like people or anything but there are all kindsa different buildings, mostly surrounding what looks like a big church at the centre, but other big buildings, too, and proper roads curling outta the middle thru trees to more groups of buildings.

There’s gotta be at least fifty buildings in all.

Maybe a hundred.

It’s the biggest thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life.

“I’ve got to say,” Viola shouts, “it’s kind of smaller than I expected.”

But I don’t really hear her.

With the binos, I follow the river road back from it and I see what’s probably a roadblock with what might be a fortified fence running away from it and to either side.

“They’re getting ready,” I say. “They’re getting ready to fight.”

Viola looks at me, worried. “You think it’s big enough? You think we’re safe?”

“Depends on if the rumours of the army are true or not.”

I look behind us, by instinct, as if the army was just waiting there for us to move on. I look up the valley hill next to us. Could be a good view.

“Let’s find out,” I say.

We run back down the road a piece, looking for a good climbing spot, find one and make our way up. My legs feel light as I climb, my Noise clearer than it’s been in days. I’m sad for Ben, I’m sad for Cillian, I’m sad for Manchee, I’m sad for what’s happened to me and Viola.

But Ben was right.

There’s hope at the bottom of the biggest waterfall.

And maybe it don’t hurt so much after all.

We climb up thru the trees. The hill is steep above the river and we have to pull on vines and hang on to rocks to make our way up high enough to look back down the road, till the valley is stretching out beneath us.

I still have the binos and I look downriver and down the road and over the treetops. I keep having to wipe spray away.

I look.

“Can you see them?” Viola asks.

I look, the river getting smaller into the far distance, back and back and back.

“No,” I say.

I look.

And again.

And–

There.

Down in the deepest curve of the road in the deepest part of the valley, in farthest shadow against the rising sun, there they are.

A mass that’s gotta be the army, marching its way forward, so far away I can only tell it’s them at all cuz it looks like dark water flowing into a dry riverbed. It’s hard to get detail at this distance but I can’t see individual men and I don’t think I can see horses.

Just a mass, a mass pouring itself down the road.

“How big is it?” she asks. “How big has it grown?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “Three hundred? Four? I don’t know. We’re too far to really—”

I stop.

“We’re too far to really tell.” I crack another smile. “Miles and miles.”

“We beat them,” Viola says, a smile coming, too. “We ran and they chased us and we beat them.”

“We’ll get to Haven and we’ll warn whoever’s in charge,” I say, talking faster, my Noise rising with excitement. “But they’ve got battle lines and the approach is real narrow and the army’s at least the rest of the day away, maybe even tonight, too, and I swear that can’t be a thousand men.” I swear it.

(But.)

Viola’s smiling the tiredest, happiest smile I ever saw. She takes my hand again. “We beat them.”

But then the risks of hope rise again and my Noise greys a little. “Well, we ain’t there yet and we don’t know if Haven can—”

But she’s shaking her head. “Nuh-uh,” she says. “We beat them. You listen to me and you be happy, Todd Hewitt. We’ve spent all this time outrunning an army and guess what? We outran them.”

She looks at me, smiling, expecting something from me.

My Noise is buzzing and happy and warm and tired and relieved and a little bit worried still but I’m thinking that maybe she’s right, maybe we did win and maybe I should put my arms round her if it didn’t feel weird and I find that in the middle of it all I do actually agree with her.

“We beat them,” I say.

And then she does stick her arms round me and pulls tight, like we might fall down, and we just stand there on the wet hillside and breathe for a little bit.

She smells a little less like flowers but it’s okay.

And I look out and the falls are below us, charging away, and Haven glitters thru the sunlit spray and the sun is shining down the length of the river above the falls, lighting it up like a snake made of metal.

And I let my Noise bubble with little sparks of happy and my gaze flow back along the length of the river and–

No.

Every muscle in my body jolts.

“What?” Viola says, jumping back.

She whips her head round to where I’m looking.

“What?” she says again.

And then she sees.

“No,” she says. “No, it can’t be.”

Coming down the river is a boat.

Close enough to see without binos.

Close enough to see the rifle and the robe.

Close enough to see the scars and the righteous anger.

Rowing his way furiously towards us, coming like judgement itself.

Aaron.

40. THE SACRIFICE

“Has he seen us?” Viola asks, her voice pulled taut.

I point the binos. Aaron rears up in them, huge and terrifying. I press a few buttons to push him back. He’s not looking at us, just rowing like an engine to get the boat to the side of the river and the road.

His face is torn and horrible, clotted and bloody, the hole in his cheek, the new hole where his nose used to be, and still, underneath all that, a look feroshus and devouring, a look without mercy, a look that won’t stop, that won’t never, never stop.

War makes monsters of men, I hear Ben saying.

There’s a monster coming towards us.

“I don’t think he’s seen us,” I say. “Not yet.”

“Can we outrun him?”

“He’s got a gun,” I say, “and you can see all the way down that road to Haven.”

“Off the road then. Through the trees.”

“There ain’t that many twixt us and the road down. We’ll have to be fast.”

“I can be fast,” she says.

And we jump on down the hill, skidding down leaves and wet vines, using rocks as handholds best we can. The tree cover is light and we can still see down the river, see Aaron as he rows.

Which means he can see us if he looks in the right place.

“Hurry!” Viola says.

Down–

And down–

And sliding to the road–

And squelching in the mud at the roadside–

And as we get to the road he’s outta sight again, still up the river–

But only for a second–

Cuz there he is–

The current bringing him fast–

Coming down the river–

In full view–

Looking right at us.

The roar of the falls is loud enough to eat you, but I still hear it.

I’d hear it if I was on the other side of the planet.

“TODD HEWITT!”

And he’s reaching for his rifle.

“Go!” I shout.

Viola’s feet hit the ground running and I’m right behind her, heading for the lip of the road that goes down to the zigzags.

It’s fifteen steps, maybe twenty till we can disappear over the edge–

We run like we’ve spent the last two weeks resting–

Pound pound pound against the road–

I check back over my shoulder–

To see Aaron try to take the rifle in one hand–

Try to balance it while keeping the boat steady–

It’s bouncing in the rapids, knocking him back and forth–

“He won’t be able to,” I yell to Viola. “He can’t row and fire at the same—”

CRACK!

A pop of mud flies up outta the road next to Viola’s feet ahead of me–

I cry out and Viola cries out and we both instinctively flinch down–

Running faster and faster–

Pound pound pound–

Run run run run run my Noise chugs like a rocket–

Not looking back–

Five steps–

Run run–

Three–

CRACK!

And Viola falls–

“NO!” I shout–

And she’s falling over the lip of the road, tripping down the other side and crashing down in a roll–

“NO!” I shout again and leap after her–

Stumbling down the steep incline–

Pounding down to where she’s rolling–

No–

Not this—

Not now—

Not when we’re—

Please no—

And she tumbles to some low shrubs at the side of the road and keeps going into them–

And stops face down.

And I’m racing towards her and I’m barely in control of my own standing up and I’m kneeling down already in the brush and I’m grabbing her and rolling her over and I’m looking for the blood and the shot and I’m saying, “No no no no no—”

And I’m almost blinded by rage and despair and the false promise of hope and no no no–

And she opens her eyes–

She’s opening her eyes and she’s grabbing me and she’s saying, “I’m not hit, I’m not hit.”

“Yer not?” I say, shaking her a little. “Yer sure?”

“I just fell,” she says. “I swear I felt the bullet fly right by my eyes and I fell. I’m not hurt.”

And I’m breathing heavy and heavy and heavy.

“Thank God,” I say. “Thank God.”

And the world spins and my Noise whirls.

And she’s already getting to her feet and I’m up after her standing in the scrub and looking at the road around and below us.

The falls are crashing over the cliff to our left and the twisting road is both behind us and in front of us as it starts doubling back on itself and making the steep zipper down to the bottom of the falls.

It’s a clear shot all the way.

No trees, just low scrub.

“He’ll pick us off,” Viola says, looking back up to the top of the road, to where we can’t see Aaron no doubt making his way to the river’s edge, stomping thru roaring water, walking on it for all I know.

“TODD HEWITT!” we hear again, faint over the roar of the water but loud as the whole entire universe.

“There’s nowhere to hide,” Viola says, looking around us and down. “Not till we get to the bottom.”

I’m looking round, too. The hillsides are too steep, the road too open, the areas between the road’s double-backs too shallow with shrubs.

Nowhere to hide.

“TODD HEWITT!”

Viola points up. “We could get up to those trees on top of the hill.”

But it’s so steep, I can already hear the hope failing in her voice.

And I spin round, looking still–

And then I see.

A little faint trail, skinny as anything, hardly even there, leading away from the first turn of the road and towards the falls. It disappears after a few metres but I follow it to where it might have gone.

Right to the cliffside.

Right down sharp to a place almost below the falls.

Right to a ledge that’s almost hidden.

A ledge underneath the waterfall itself.

I take a few steps outta the scrub and back onto the road. The little trail disappears.

So does the ledge.

“What is it?” Viola asks.

I go back into the scrub again.

“There,” I say, pointing. “Can you see it?”

She squints where I’m pointing. The fall is casting a little shadow on the ledge, darkening where the little trail ends.

“You can see it from here,” I say, “but you can’t see it from the road.” I look at her. “We’ll hide.”

“He’ll hear you,” she says. “He’ll come after us.”

“Not over this roar, not if I don’t shout in my Noise.”

Her forehead creases and she looks down at the road to Haven and up to where Aaron’s gotta be coming any second.

“We’re so close,” she says.

I take her arm and start pulling on it. “Come on. Just till he passes. Just till dark. With luck he’ll think we doubled back into the trees above.”

“If he finds us, we’re trapped.”

“And if we run for the city, he shoots us.” I look in her eyes. “It’s a chance. It gives us a chance.”

“Todd—”

“Come with me,” I say, looking right into her as hard as I can, pouring out as much hope as I can muster. Oh never leave me. “I promise I’ll get you to Haven tonight.” I squeeze her arm. Oh don’t deceive me. “I promise you.” She looks right back at me, listening to it all, and then gives a single, sharp nod and we run to the little trail and down to where it ends and jump over the scrub to where it should continue and—“TODD HEWITT!”

He’s almost to the falls–

And we scrabble down a steep embankment next to the edge of the water, the steepness of the hill rearing above us–

And slide down and over to the edge of the cliff–

The falls straight ahead–

And I get to the edge and I suddenly have to lean back into Viola cuz the drop goes straight down–

She grabs onto my shirt and holds me up–

And the water is smashing down right in front of us to the rocks below–

And the ledge leading under it all is just there–

Needing a jump over emptiness to get to it–

“I didn’t see this part,” I say, Viola grabbing at my waist to keep us from tumbling over.

“TODD HEWITT!”

He’s close, he’s so close–

“Now or never, Todd,” she says in my ear–

And she lets go of me–

And I jump across–

And I’m in the air–

And the edge of the falls is shooting over my head–

And I land–

And I turn–

And she’s jumping after me–

And I grab her and we fall backwards onto the ledge together–

And we lay there breathing–

And listening–

And all we hear for a second is the roar of the water over us now–

And then, faint, against it all–

“TODD HEWITT!”

And he suddenly sounds miles away.

And Viola’s on top of me and I’m breathing heavy into her face and she’s breathing heavy into mine.

And we’re looking in each other’s eyes.

And it’s too loud to hear my Noise.

After a second, she puts her hands on either side of me and pushes herself away. She looks up as she does and her eyes go wide.

I can just hear her say, “Wow.”

I roll away and look up.

Wow.

The ledge is more than just a little ledge. It carries on till it’s back, way back under the waterfall. We’re standing at the beginning of a tunnel with one wall made of rock and another made of pure falling water, roaring past white and clean and so fast it looks almost solid.

“Come on,” I say and head on down the ledge, my shoes slipping and sliding under me. It’s rocky and wet and slimy and we lean as close as we can to the rock side, away from the thundering water.

The noise is just tremendous. All-consuming, like a real thing you could taste and touch.

So loud, Noise is obliterated.

So loud, it’s the quietest I’ve ever felt.

We scramble on down the ledge, under the falls, making our way over rocky bumps and little pools with green goop growing in them. There are roots, too, hanging down from the rocks above, belonging to who knows what kinda plant.

“Do these look like steps to you?” Viola shouts, her voice small in the roar.

“TODD HEWITT!!” we hear from what sounds like a million miles away.

“Is he finding us?” Viola asks.

“I don’t know,” I say. “I don’t think so.”

The cliff face isn’t even and the ledge curves round it as it stretches forward. We’re both soaking wet and the water is cold and it’s not easy grabbing onto the roots to keep our balance.

Then the ledge suddenly drops down and widens out, carved steps becoming more obvious. It’s almost a stairway down.

Someone’s been here before.

We descend, the water thundering inches away from us.

We get to the bottom.

“Whoa,” Viola says behind me and I just know she’s looking up.

The tunnel opens up abruptly and the ledge widens at the same time to become a cavern made of water, the rocks stretching up way over our heads, the falls slamming down past them in a wall curving way out like a moving, living sail, enclosing the wall and the shelf under our feet.

But that’s not the whoa.

“It’s a church,” I say.

It’s a church. Someone has moved or carved rocks into four rows of simple pews with an aisle down the middle, all facing a taller rock, a pulpit, a pulpit with a flat surface which a preacher could stand on and preach with a blazing white wall of water crashing down behind him, the morning sun lighting it up like a sheet of stars, filling the room with shimmering sparkles on every shiny wet surface, all the way back to a carved circle in the stone with two smaller carved circles orbiting it to one side, New World and its moons, the settler’s new home of hope and God’s promise somehow painted a waterproof white and practically glowing on the rock wall, looking down and lighting up the church.

The church underneath a waterfall.

“It’s beautiful,” Viola says.

“It’s abandoned,” I say, cuz after the first shock of finding a church I see where a few of the pews have been knocked from their places and not replaced and there’s writing all over the walls, some of it carved in with tools, some of it written in the same waterproof paint as the New World carving, most of it nonsense. P.M.+M.A. and Willz & Chillz 4Ever and Abandon All Hope Ye Who something something.

“It’s kids,” Viola says. “Sneaking in here, making it their own place.”

“Yeah? Do kids do that?”

“Back on the ship we had an unused venting duct that we snuck into,” she says, looking around. “Marked it up worse than this.”

We wander in, looking round us, mouths open. The point of the roof where the water leaves the cliff must be a good ten metres above us and the ledge five metres wide easy.

“It musta been a natural cavern,” I say. “They musta found it and thought it was some kinda miracle.”

Viola crosses her arms against herself. “And then they found it wasn’t very practical as a church.”

“Too wet,” I say. “Too cold.”

“I’ll bet it was when they first landed,” she says, looking up at the white New World. “I’ll bet it was in the first year. Everything hopeful and new.” She turns round, taking it all in. “Before reality set in.” I turn slowly, too. I can see exactly what they were thinking. The way the sun hits the falls, turning everything bright white, and it’s so loud and so silent at the same time that even without the pulpit and the pews it would have felt like we’d somehow walked into a church anyway, like it’d be holy even if no man had ever seen it.

And then I notice that at the end of the pews, there’s nothing beyond. It stops and it’s a fifty-metre drop to the rocks below.

So this is where we’re gonna have to wait.

This is where we’re gonna have to hope.

In the church under water.

“Todd Hewitt!” barely drifts in down the tunnel to us.

Viola visibly shivers. “What do we do now?”

“We wait till nightfall,” I say. “Sneak out and hope he don’t see us.”

I sit down on one of the stone benches. Viola sits down next to me. She lifts the bag over her head and sets it on the stone floor.

“What if he finds the trail?” she asks.

“We hope he don’t.”

“But what if he does?”

I reach behind me and take out the knife.

The knife.

Both of us look at it, the white water reflecting off of it, droplets of spray already catching and pooling on its blade, making it shine like a little torch.

The knife.

We don’t say nothing about it, just watch it gleam in the middle of the church.

“Todd Hewitt!”

Viola looks up to the entrance and puts her hands to her face and I can see her clench her teeth. “What does he even want?” she suddenly rages. “If the army’s all about you, what does he want with me? Why was he shooting at me? I don’t understand it.” “Crazy people don’t need an explanayshun for nothing,” I say.

But my Noise is remembering the sacrifice that I saw him making of her way back in the swamp.

The sign, he called her.

A gift from God.

I don’t know if Viola hears this or if she remembers it herself cuz she says, “I don’t think I’m the sacrifice.”

“What?”

She turns to me, her face perplexed. “I don’t think it’s me,” she says. “He kept me asleep almost the entire time I was with him and when I did wake up, I kept seeing confusing things in his Noise, things that didn’t make sense.” “He’s mad,” I say. “Madder than most.”

She don’t say nothing more, just looks out into the waterfall.

And reaches over and takes my hand.

“TODD HEWITT!”

I feel her hand jump right as my heart leaps.

“That’s closer,” she says. “He’s getting closer.”

“He won’t find us.”

“He will.”

“Then we’ll deal with it.”

We both look at the knife.

“TODD HEWITT!”

“He’s found it,” she says, grabbing my arm and squeezing into me.

“Not yet.”

“We were almost there,” she says, her voice high and breaking a little. “Almost there.”

“We’ll get there.”

“TODD HEWITT!”

And it’s definitely louder.

He’s found the tunnel.

I grip my knife and I look over to Viola, her face looking straight back up the tunnel, so much fear on it my chest begins to hurt.

I grip the knife harder.

If he touches her–

And my Noise reels back to the start of our journey, to Viola before she said anything, to Viola when she told me her name, to Viola when she talked to Hildy and Tam, to when she took on Wilf’s accent, to when Aaron grabbed her and stole her away, to waking up to her in Doctor Snow’s house, to her promise to Ben, to when she took on my ma’s voice and made the whole world change, just for a little while.

All the things we’ve been thru.

How she cried when we left Manchee behind.

Telling me I was all she had.

When I found out I could read her, silence or not.

When I thought Aaron had shot her on the road.

How I felt in those few terrible seconds.

How it would feel to lose her.

The pain and the unfairness and the injustice.

The rage.

And how I wished it was me.

I look at the knife in my hand.

And I realize she’s right.

I realize what’s been right all along, as insane as it is.

She’s not the sacrifice.

She’s not.

If one of us falls, we all fall.

“I know what he wants,” I say, standing up.

“What?” Viola says.

“TODD HEWITT!”

Definitely coming down the tunnel now.

Nowhere to run.

He’s coming.

She stands, too, and I move myself twixt her and the tunnel.

“Get down behind one of the pews,” I say. “Hide.”

“Todd—”

I move away from her, my hand staying on her arm till I’m too far away.

“Where are you going?” she says, her voice tightening.

I look back the way we came, up the tunnel of water.

He’ll be here any second.

“TODD HEWITT!”

“He’ll see you!” she says.

I hold up the knife in front of me.

The knife that’s caused so much trouble.

The knife that holds so much power.

“Todd!” Viola says. “What are you doing?”

I turn to her. “He won’t hurt you,” I say. “Not when he knows I know what he wants.”

“What does he want?”

I search her out, standing among the pews, the white planet and moons glowing down on her, the water shining watery light over her, I search out her face and the language of her body as she stands there watching me, and I find I still know who she is, that she’s still Viola Eade, that silent don’t mean empty, that it never meant empty.

I look right into her eyes.

“I’m gonna greet him like a man,” I say.

And even tho it’s too loud for her to hear my Noise, even tho she can’t read my thoughts, she looks back at me.

And I see her understand.

She pulls herself up a little taller.

“I’m not hiding,” she says. “If you’re not, I’m not.”

And that’s all I need.

I nod.

“Ready?” I ask.

She looks at me.

She nods once, firmly.

I turn back to the tunnel.

I close my eyes.

I take a deep breath.

And with every bit of air in my lungs and every last note of Noise in my head, I rear up–

And I shout, as loud as I can–

“AARON!!!!!!”

And I open my eyes and I wait for him to come.

41. IF ONE OF US FALLS

I see his feet first, slipping down the steps some but not hurrying, taking his time now that he knows we’re here.

I hold the knife in my right hand, my left hand out and ready, too. I stand in the aisle of the little pews, as much in the centre of the church as I can get. Viola’s back behind me a bit, down one of the rows.

I’m ready.

I realize I am ready.

Everything that’s happened has brought me here, to this place, with this knife in my hand, and something worth saving.

Someone.

And if it’s a choice twixt her and him, there is no choice, and the army can go sod itself.

And so I’m ready.

As I’ll ever be.

Cuz I know what he wants.

“Come on,” I say, under my breath.

Aaron’s legs appear, then his arms, one carrying the rifle, the other holding his balance against the wall.

And then his face.

His terrible, terrible face.

Half torn away, the gash in his cheek showing his teeth, the hole where his nose used to be open and gaping, making him look barely human.

And he’s smiling.

Which is when I feel all the fear.

“Todd Hewitt,” he says, almost as a greeting.

I raise my voice over the water, willing it not to shake. “You can put the rifle down, Aaron.”

“Oh, can I, now?” he says, eyes widening, taking in Viola behind me. I don’t look back at her but I know she’s facing Aaron, I know she’s giving him all the bravery she’s got.

And that makes me stronger.

“I know what you want,” I say. “I figured it out.”

“Have you, young Todd?” Aaron says and I see he can’t help himself, he looks into my Noise, the little he can hear over the roar.

“She’s not the sacrifice,” I say.

He says nothing, just takes the first steps into the church, eyes glancing up at the cross and the pews and the pulpit.

“And I’m not the sacrifice neither,” I say.

His evil smile draws wider. A new tear opens up at the edge of his gash, blood waving down it in the spray. “A clever mind is a friend of the devil,” he says, which I think is his way of saying I’m right.

I steady my feet and turn with him as he steps round towards the pulpit half of the church, the half nearer the edge.

“It’s you,” I say. “The sacrifice is you.”

And I open my Noise as loud as it’ll go so that both he and Viola can see I’m telling the truth.

Cuz the thing Ben showed me back when I left our farm, the way that a boy in Prentisstown becomes a man, the reason that boys who’ve become men don’t talk to boys who are still boys, the reason that boys who’ve become men are complicit in the crimes of Prentisstown is — It’s–

And I make myself say it–

It’s by killing another man.

All by theirselves.

All those men who disappeared, who tried to disappear.

They didn’t disappear after all.

Mr Royal, my old schoolteacher, who took to whisky and shot himself, didn’t shoot himself. He was shot by Seb Mundy on his thirteenth birthday, made to stand alone and pull the trigger as the rest of the men of Prentisstown watched. Mr Gault, whose sheep flock we took over when he disappeared two winters ago, only tried to disappear. He was found by Mayor Prentiss running away thru the swamp and Mayor Prentiss was true to his agreement with the law of New World and executed him, only he did it by waiting till Mr Prentiss Jr’s thirteenth birthday and having his son torture Mr Gault to death without the help of no one else.

And so on and so on. Men I knew killed by boys I knew to become men theirselves. If the Mayor’s men had a captured escapee hidden away for a boy’s thirteenth, then fine. If not, they’d just take someone from Prentisstown who they didn’t like and say he disappeared.

One man’s life was given over to a boy to end, all on his own.

A man dies, a man is born.

Everyone complicit. Everyone guilty.

Except me.

“Oh my God,” I hear Viola say.

“But I was gonna be different, wasn’t I?” I say.

“You were the last, Todd Hewitt,” Aaron says. “The final soldier in God’s perfect army.”

“I don’t think God’s got nothing to do with yer army,” I say. “Put down the rifle. I know what I have to do.”

“But are you a messenger, Todd?” he asks, cocking his head, pulling his impossible smile wider. “Or are you a deceiver?”

“Read me,” I say. “Read me if you don’t believe I can do it.”

He’s at the pulpit now, facing me down the centre aisle, reaching out his Noise over the sound of the falls, pushing it towards me, grabbing at what he can, and the sacrifice and God’s perfect work and the martyrdom of the saint I hear.

“Perhaps, young Todd,” he says.

And he sets the rifle down on the pulpit.

I swallow and grip the knife harder.

But he looks over at Viola and laughs a little laugh. “No,” he says. “Little girls will try to take advantage, won’t they?”

And, almost casually, he tosses the rifle off the ledge into the waterfall.

It goes so fast, we don’t even see it disappear.

But it’s gone.

And so there’s just me and Aaron.

And the knife.

He opens his arms and I realize he’s assuming his preacher’s pose, the one from his own pulpit, back in Prentisstown. He leans against the pulpit stone here and holds his palms up and raises his eyes to the white shining roof of water above us.

His lips move silently.

He’s praying.

“Yer mad,” I say.

He looks at me. “I’m blessed.”

“You want me to kill you.”

“Wrong, Todd Hewitt,” he says, taking a step forward down the aisle towards me. “Hate is the key. Hate is the driver. Hate is the fire that purifies the soldier. The soldier must hate.” He takes another step.

“I don’t want you to kill me,” he says. “I want you to murder me.”

I take a step back.

The smile flickers. “Perhaps the boy promises bigger than he can deliver.”

“Why?” I say, stepping back some more. Viola moves back, too, behind and around me, underneath the carving of New World. “Why are you doing this? What possible sense does this make?”

“God has told me my path,” he says.

“I been here for almost thirteen years,” I say, “and the only thing I ever heard was men.”

“God works thru men,” Aaron says.

“So does evil,” Viola says.

“Ah,” Aaron says. “It speaks. Words of temptayshun to lull—”

“Shut up,” I say. “Don’t you talk to her.”

I’m past the back row of pews now. I move to my right, Aaron follows till we’re moving in a slow circle, Aaron’s hands still out, my knife still up, Viola keeping behind me, the spray covering everything. The room slowly turns around us, the ledge still slippery, the wall of water shining white with the sun.

And the roar, the constant roar.

“You were the final test,” Aaron says. “The last boy. The one that completes us. With you in the army, there’s no weak link. We would be truly blessed. If one of us falls, we all fall, Todd. And all of us have to fall.” He clenches his fists and looks up again. “So we can be reborn! So we can take this cursed world and remake it in—” “I wouldn’t’ve done it,” I say and he scowls at the interrupshun. “I wouldn’t’ve killed anyone.”

“Ah, yes, Todd Hewitt,” Aaron says. “And that’s why yer so very very special, ain’t ya? The boy who can’t kill.”

I sneak a glance back to Viola, off to my side a little. We’re still going round in the little circle.

And Viola and I are reaching the side with the tunnel in it.

“But God demands a sacrifice,” Aaron’s saying. “God demands a martyr. And who better for the special boy to kill than God’s very own mouthpiece?”

“I don’t think God tells you anything,” I say. “Tho I can believe he wants you dead.”

Aaron’s eyes go so crazy and empty I get a chill. “I’ll be a saint,” he says, a small fire burning in his voice. “It is my destiny.”

He’s reached the end of the aisle and is following us past the last row of benches.

Viola and I are backing up still.

Almost to the tunnel.

“But how to motivate the boy?” Aaron continues, eyes like holes. “How to bring him into manhood?”

And his Noise opens up to me, loud as thunder.

My eyes widen.

My stomach sinks to my feet.

My shoulders hunch down as I feel weakness on me.

I can see it. It’s a fantasy, a lie, but the lies of men are as vivid as their truths and I can see every bit of it.

He was going to murder Ben.

That’s how he was going to force me to kill him. That’s how they woulda done it. To perfect their army and make me a killer, they were going to murder Ben.

And make me watch.

Make me hate enough to kill Aaron.

My Noise starts to rumble, loud enough to hear. “You effing piece of—”

“But then God sent a sign,” Aaron says, looking at Viola, his eyes even wider now, the blood pouring from the gash, the hole where his nose used to be stretching taut. “The girl,” he says. “A gift from the heavens.” “Don’t you look at her!” I yell. “Don’t you even look at her!”

Aaron turns back to me, the smile still there. “Yes, Todd, yes,” he says. “That’s yer path, that’s the path you’ll take. The boy with the soft heart, the boy who couldn’t kill. What would he kill for? Who would he protect?” Another step back, another step nearer the tunnel.

“And when her cursed, evil silence polluted our swamp, I thought God had sent me a sacrifice to make myself, one last example of the evil that hides itself which I could destroy and purify.” He cocks his head. “But then her true purpose was revealed.” He looks at her and back at me. “Todd Hewitt would protect the helpless.” “She ain’t helpless,” I say.

“And then you ran.” Aaron’s eyes widen, as if in false amazement. “You ran rather than fulfil yer destiny.” He lifts his eyes to the church again. “Thereby making victory over you all the sweeter.” “You ain’t won yet,” I say.

“Haven’t I?” He smiles again. “Come, Todd. Come to me with hate in yer heart.”

“I will,” I say. “I’ll do it.”

But another step back.

“You’ve been near before, young Todd,” Aaron says. “In the swamp, the knife raised, me killing the girl, but no. You hesitate. You injure but you do not kill. And then I steal her from you and you hunt her down, as I knew you would, suffering from the wound I gave you, but again, not enough. You sacrifice yer beloved dog rather than see her come to harm, you let me break his very body rather than serve yer proper purpose.” “You shut up!” I say.

He holds his palms up to me.

“Here I am, Todd,” he says. “Fulfil yer purpose. Become a man.” He lowers his head till his eyes are looking up at me. “Fall.”

I curl my lip.

I stand up straighter.

“I already am a man,” I say.

And my Noise says it, too.

He stares at me. As if staring thru me.

And then he sighs.

Like he’s disappointed.

“Not yet a man,” he says, his face changing. “Perhaps not ever.”

I don’t step back.

“Pity,” he says.

And he leaps at me–

“Todd!” Viola yells–

“Run!” I scream–

But I’m not stepping back–

I’m moving forward–

And the fight is on.

I’m charging at him and he’s throwing himself at me and I’m holding the knife but at the last second, I leap to the side, letting him slam hard into the wall–

He whirls around, face in a snarl, swinging an arm round to hit me and I duck and slash at it with the knife, cutting across his forearm, and it don’t even slow him down–

And he’s swinging at me with his other arm and he’s catching me just under the jaw–

Knocking me back–

“Todd!” Viola calls again–

I tumble backwards onto the last pew, falling hard–

But I’m looking up–

Aaron’s turning to Viola–

She’s at the bottom of the stairs–

“Go!” I yell–

But she’s got a big flat stone in her hands and launches it at Aaron with a grimace and an angry grunt and he ducks and tries to deflect it with one hand but it catches him cross the forehead, causing him to stumble away from both her and me, towards the ledge, towards the front of the church—“Come on!” Viola yells to me–

I scramble to my feet–

But Aaron’s turned, too–

Blood running down his face–

His mouth open in a yell–

He jumps forward like a spider, grabbing Viola’s right arm–

She punches fiercely with her left hand, bloodying it on his face–

But he don’t let go–

I’m yelling as I fly at them–

Knife out–

But again I turn it at the last minute–

And I just knock into him–

We land on the upslope of the stairs, Viola falling back, me on top of Aaron, his arms boxing my head and he reaches forward with his horrible face and takes a bite out of an exposed area of my neck — I yell and jerk back, punching him with a backhand as I go–

Scooting away from him back into the church, holding my neck–

He comes at me again, his fist flying forward–

Catching me on the eye–

My head jerks back–

I stumble thru the rows of pews, back to the centre of the church–

Another punch–

I raise my knife hand to block it–

But keep the knife edge sideways–

And he hits me again–

I scrabble away from him on the wet stone–

Up the aisle towards the pulpit–

And a third time his fist reaches my face–

And I feel two teeth tear outta their roots–

And I nearly fall–

And then I do fall–

My back and head hitting the pulpit stone–

And I drop the knife.

It clatters away towards the edge.

Useless as ever.

“Yer Noise reveals you!” Aaron screams. “Yer Noise reveals you!” He’s stepping forward to me now, standing over me. “From the moment I stepped into this sacred place, I knew it would be thus!” He stops at my feet, staring down at me, his fists clenched and bloody with my blood, his face bloody with his own. “You will never be a man, Todd Hewitt! Never!” I see Viola outta the corner of my eye frantically looking for more rocks—“I’m already a man,” I say, but I’ve fallen, I’ve dropped the knife, my voice is faltering, my hand over the bleeding from my neck.

“You rob me of my sacrifice!” His eyes have turned to burning diamonds, his Noise blazing a red so fierce it’s practically steaming the water away from him. “I will kill you.” He bows his head to me. “And you will die knowing that I killed her slowly.” I clench my teeth together.

I start to pull myself to my ruddy feet.

“Come on if yer coming,” I growl.

Aaron yells out and takes a step towards me–

Hands reaching out for me–

My face rising to meet him–

And Viola CLUMPS him on the side of the head with a rock she can barely lift–

He stumbles–

Leaning towards the pews and catching himself–

And he stumbles again–

But he doesn’t fall.

He doesn’t ruddy fall.

He staggers but he stands, twixt me and Viola, uncurling himself, his back to Viola but towering over her, a whole rivulet of blood spouting from the side of his head now, but he’s effing well tall as a nightmare — He really is a monster.

“You ain’t human,” I say.

“I have told you, young Todd,” he says, his voice low and monstrous, his Noise glowering at me with a fury so pure it nearly knocks me back. “I am a saint.”

He lashes his arm out in Viola’s direkshun without even looking her way, catching her square on the eye, knocking her back as she calls out and falls falls falls, tripping over a pew, hitting her head hard on the rocks — And not rising.

“Viola!” I yell–

And I leap past him–

He lets me go–

I reach her–

Her legs are up on the stone bench–

Her head’s on the stone floor–

A little stream of blood running from it–

“Viola!” I say and I lift her–

And her head falls back–

“VIOLA!” I yell–

And I hear a low rumble from behind me–

Laughter.

He’s laughing.

“You were always going to betray her,” he says. “It was foreseen.”

“You SHUT UP!”

“And do you know why?”

“I’ll KILL YOU!”

He lowers his voice to a whisper–

But a whisper I can feel shiver thru my entire body–

“You’ve already fallen.”

And my Noise blazes red.

Redder than it’s ever been.

Murderous red.

“Yes, Todd,” Aaron hisses. “Yes, that’s the way.”

I lay Viola gently down and I stand and face him.

And my hate is so big, it fills the cavern.

“Come on, boy,” he says. “Purify yerself.”

I look at the knife–

Resting in a puddle of water–

Near the ledge by the pulpit behind Aaron–

Where I dropped it–

And I hear it calling to me–

Take me, it says–

Take me and use me, it says–

Aaron holds open his arms.

“Murder me,” he says. “Become a man.”

Never let me go, says the knife–

“I’m sorry,” I whisper under my breath tho I don’t know who to or what for–

I’m sorry–

And I leap–

Aaron doesn’t move, arms open as if to embrace me–

I barrel into him with my shoulder–

He doesn’t resist–

My Noise screams red–

We fall past the pulpit to the ledge–

I’m on top of him–

He still doesn’t resist–

I punch his face–

Over–

And over–

And over–

Breaking it further–

Breaking it into bloody messy pieces–

Hate pouring outta me thru my fists–

And still I pound him–

Still I hit–

Thru the breaking of bone–

And the snapping of gristle–

And an eye crushed under my knuckles–

Till I can no longer feel my hands–

And still I hit–

And his blood spills on me and over–

And the red of it matches the red of my Noise–

And then I lean back, still on him, covered in his blood–

And he’s laughing, he’s laughing still–

And he’s gurgling “Yes” thru broken teeth, “Yes—”

And the red rises in me–

And I can’t hold it back–

And the hate–

And I look over–

At the knife–

Just a metre away–

On the ledge–

By the pulpit–

Calling for me–

Calling–

And this time I know–

This time I know–

I’m going to use it.

And I jump for it–

My hand outstretched–

My Noise so red I can barely see–

Yes, says the knife–

Yes.

Take me.

Take the power in yer hand–

But another hand is there first–

Viola.

And as I fall towards it there’s a rush in me–

A rush in my Noise–

A rush from seeing her there–

From seeing her alive–

A rush that rises higher than the red–

And “Viola,” I say–

Just “Viola”.

And she picks up the knife.

My momentum is tumbling me towards the edge and I’m turning to try and catch myself and I can see her lifting the knife and I can see her stepping forward and I’m falling into the ledge and my fingers are slipping on wet stone and I can see Aaron sitting up and he’s only got one eye now and it’s staring at Viola as she’s raising the knife and she’s bringing it forward and I can’t stop her and Aaron is trying to rise and Viola’s moving towards him and I’m hitting the ledge with my shoulder and stopping just short of falling over and I’m watching and what’s left of Aaron’s Noise is radiating anger and fear and it’s saying No—It’s saying Not you–

And Viola’s raising her arm–

Raising the knife–

And bringing it down–

And down–

And down–

And plunging it straight into the side of Aaron’s neck–

So hard the point comes out the other side–

And there’s a crunch, a crunch I remember–

Aaron falls over from the force of it–

And Viola lets go of the knife–

She steps back.

Her face is white.

I can hear her breathing over the roar.

I lift myself with my hands–

And we watch.

Aaron’s pushing himself up.

He’s pushing himself up, one hand clawing at the knife, but it stays in his neck. His remaining eye is wide open, his tongue lolling outta his mouth.

He gets to his knees.

And then to his feet.

Viola cries out a little and steps back.

Steps back till she’s next to me.

We can hear him trying to swallow.

Trying to breathe.

He steps forward but stumbles against the pulpit.

He looks our way.

His tongue swells and writhes.

He’s trying to say something.

He’s trying to say something to me.

He’s trying to make a word.

But he can’t.

He can’t.

His Noise is just wild colours and pictures and things I won’t ever be able to say.

He catches my eye.

And his Noise stops.

Completely stops.

At last.

And gravity takes his body and he slumps sideways.

Away from the pulpit.

And over the edge.

And disappears under the wall of water.

Taking the knife with him.

42. LAST ROAD TO HAVEN

Viola sits down next to me so hard and fast it’s like she fell there.

She’s breathing heavy and staring into the space where Aaron was. The sunlight thru the falls casts waves of watery light over her face but that’s the only thing on it that moves.

“Viola?” I say, leaping up into a squat next to her.

“He’s gone,” she says.

“Yeah,” I say. “He’s gone.”

And she just breathes.

My Noise is rattling like a crashing spaceship full of reds and whites and things so different it’s like my head is being pulled apart.

I woulda done it.

I woulda done it for her.

But instead–

“I woulda done it,” I say. “I was ready to do it.”

She looks at me, her eyes wide. “Todd?”

“I woulda killed him myself.” I find my voice raising a little. “I was ready to do it!”

And then her chin starts shaking, not as if she’s going to cry, but actually shaking and then her shoulders, too, and her eyes are getting wider and she’s shaking harder and nothing leaves my Noise and it’s all still there but something else enters it and it’s for her and I grab her and hold her to me and we rock back and forth for a while so she can just shake all she wants to.

She don’t speak for a long time, just makes little moaning sounds in her throat, and I remember just after I killed the Spackle, how I could feel the crunch running down my arm, how I could keep seeing his blood, how I saw him die again and again.

How I do still.

(But I woulda.)

(I was ready.)

(But the knife is gone.)

“Killing someone ain’t nothing like it is in stories,” I say into the top of her head. “Ain’t nothing at all.”

(But I woulda.)

She’s still shaking and we’re still right next to a raging, roaring waterfall and the sun’s higher in the sky and there’s less light in the church and we’re wet and bloody and bloody and wet.

And cold and shaking.

“Come on,” I say, making to stand. “First thing we need to do is get dry, okay?”

I get her to her feet. I go get the bag, still on the floor twixt two pews and go back to her and hold out my hand.

“The sun is up,” I say. “It’ll be warm outside.”

She looks at my hand for a minute before taking it.

But she takes it.

We make our way round the pulpit, unable to keep from looking where Aaron was, his blood already washed away by the spray.

(I woulda done it.)

(But the knife.)

I can feel my hand shaking in hers and I don’t know which one of us it is.

We get to the steps and it’s halfway up that she first speaks.

“I feel sick,” she says.

“I know,” I say.

And we stop and she leans closer to the waterfall and is sick.

A lot.

I guess this it what happens when you kill someone in real life.

She leans forward, her hair wet and tangled down. She spits.

But she don’t look up.

“I couldn’t let you,” she says. “He would have won.”

“I woulda done it,” I say.

“I know,” she says, into her hair, into the falls. “That’s why I did it.”

I let out a breath. “You shoulda let me.”

“No.” She looks up from being crouched over. “I couldn’t let you.” She wipes her mouth and coughs again. “But it’s not just that.”

“What then?” I say.

She looks into my eyes. Her own are wide and they’re bloodshot from the barfing.

And they’re older than they used to be.

“I wanted to, Todd,” she says, her forehead creasing. “I wanted to do it. I wanted to kill him.” She puts her hands to her face. “Oh my God,” she breathes. “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.” “Stop it,” I say, taking her arms and pulling her hands away. “Stop it. He was evil. He was crazy evil—”

“I know!” she shouts. “But I keep seeing him. I keep seeing the knife going into his—”

“Yeah, okay, you wanted to,” I stop her before she gets worse. “So what? So did I. But he made you want to. He made it so it was him or us. That’s why he was evil. Not what you did or what I did, what he did, okay?” She looks up at me. “He did just what he promised,” she says, her voice a little quieter. “He made me fall.”

She moans again and clamps her hands over her mouth, her eyes welling up.

“No,” I say strongly. “No, see, here’s the thing, here’s what I think, okay?”

I look up to the water and the tunnel and I don’t know what I think but she’s there and I can see it and I don’t know what she’s thinking but I know what she’s thinking and I can see her and she’s teetering on the edge and she’s looking at me and she’s asking me to save her.

Save her like she saved me.

“Here’s what I think,” I say and my voice is stronger and thoughts are coming, thoughts that trickle into my Noise like whispers of the truth. “I think maybe everybody falls,” I say. “I think maybe we all do. And I don’t think that’s the asking.” I pull on her arms gently to make sure she’s listening.

“I think the asking is whether we get back up again.”

And the water’s rushing by and we’re shaking from the cold and everything else and she stares at me and I wait and I hope.

And I see her step back from the edge.

I see her come back to me.

“Todd,” she says and it ain’t an asking.

It’s just my name.

It’s who I am.

“Come on,” I say. “Haven’s waiting.”

I take her hand again and we make our way up the rest of the steps and back to the flatter part of the ledge, following the curves out from the centre, steadying ourselves again on the slippery stones. The jump back to the embankment is harder this time cuz we’re so wet and weak but I take a running go at it and then catch Viola as she comes tumbling after me.

And we’re in sunlight.

We breathe it in for a good long while, getting the wettest of the wet off of us before we gather up and climb the little embankment, pushing ourselves thru the scrub to the trail and back to the road.

We look down the hill, down the zigzag trail.

It’s still there. Haven’s still there.

“Last bit,” I say.

Viola rubs her arms to dry herself a little more. She squints at me, looking close. “You get hit in the face a lot, you know that?”

I bring my fingers up. My eye is starting to swell some and I notice a gap on the side of my mouth where I lost a few teeth.

“Thanks,” I say. “It wasn’t hurting till you said that.”

“Sorry.” She smiles a little and puts her hand up to the back of her own head and winces.

“How’s yers?” I ask.

“Sore,” she says, “but I’ll live.”

“Yer indestructible, you,” I say.

She smiles again.

And then there’s a weird zipSNICK sound in the air and Viola lets out a little gasp, a little oh sound.

We look each other in the eyes for a second, in the sunshine, both of us surprised but not sure why.

And then I follow her glance down her front.

There’s blood on her shirt.

Her own blood.

New blood.

Pouring out a little hole just to the right of her belly button.

She touches the blood and holds up her fingers.

“Todd?” she says.

And then she falls forward.

I catch her, stumbling back a bit from the weight.

And I look up behind her.

Up to the clifftop, right where the road begins.

Mr Prentiss Jr.

On horseback.

Hand outstretched.

Holding a pistol.

“Todd?” Viola says against my chest. “I think someone shot me, Todd.”

There are no words.

No words in my head or my Noise.

Mr Prentiss Jr kicks his horse and edges him down the road towards us.

Pistol still pointed.

There’s nowhere to run.

And I don’t got my knife.

The world unfolds as clear and as slow as the worst pain, Viola starting to pant heavy against me, Mr Prentiss Jr riding down the road, and my Noise rising with the knowledge that we’re finished, that there’s no way out this time, that if the world wants you, it’s gonna keep on coming till it gets you.

And who am I that can fix it? Who am I that can change this if the world wants it so badly? Who am I to stop the end of the world if it keeps on coming?

“I think she wants you bad, Todd,” Mr Prentiss Jr sneers.

I clench my teeth.

My Noise rises red and purple.

I’m Todd bloody Hewitt.

That’s who I effing well am.

I look him right in the eye, sending my Noise straight for him, and I spit out in a rasp, “I’ll thank you to call me Mr Hewitt.”

Mr Prentiss Jr flinches, actually flinches a little and pulls his reins involuntarily, making his horse rear up for a second.

“Come on, now,” he says, his voice slightly less sure.

And he knows we both can hear it.

“Hands up,” he says. “I’m taking you to my father.”

And I do the most amazing thing.

The most amazing thing I ever did.

I ignore him.

I kneel Viola down to the dirt road.

“It burns, Todd,” she says, her voice low.

I set her down and drop the bag and slip my shirt off my back, crumpling it up and holding it against the bullet hole. “You hold that tight, you hear me?” I say, my anger rising like lava. “This won’t take a second.” I look up at Davy Prentiss.

“Get up,” he says, his horse still jumpy and edgy from the heat coming off me. “I ain’t telling you twice, Todd.”

I stand.

I step forward.

“I said put yer hands up,” Davy says, his horse whinnying and bluffing and clopping from foot to foot.

I march towards him.

Faster.

Till I’m running.

“I’ll shoot you!” Davy shouts, waving the gun, trying to control his horse which is sending Charge! Charge! all over the place in its Noise.

“No, you won’t!” I yell, running right up to the horse’s head and sending a crash of Noise right at it.

SNAKE!

The horse rears up on its back legs.

“Goddammit, Todd!” Davy yells, wheeling and whirling, trying to control his horse with the one hand that’s not holding the pistol.

I jump in, slap the horse’s front quarters and jump back. The horse whinnies and rears up again.

“Yer a dead man!” Davy shouts, going in a full circle with the horse jumping and rearing.

“Yer half right,” I say.

And I’m seeing my chance–

The horse neighs loudly and shakes its head back and forth–

I wait–

Davy pulls on the reins–

I dodge–

I wait–

“Effing horse!” Davy shouts–

He tries to jerk the reins again–

The horse is twisting round one more time–

I wait–

The horse brings Davy round to me, careening him low in the saddle–

And there’s my chance–

My fist is back and waiting–

BOOM!

I catch him cross the face like a hammer falling–

I swear I feel his nose break under my fist–

He calls out in pain and falls from the saddle–

Dropping the pistol in the dust–

I jump back–

Davy’s foot catches in the stirrup–

The horse rears round again–

I smack its hindquarters as hard as I can–

And the horse has had enough.

It charges back up the hill, back up the road, Davy’s foot still caught, making him bounce hard against rocks and dirt as he’s dragged, fast, up the incline–

The pistol’s in the dust–

I move for it–

“Todd?” I hear.

And there’s no time.

There’s no time at all.

Without hardly thinking, I leave the pistol and I run back down to Viola at the edge of the scrub.

“I think I’m dying, Todd,” she says.

“Yer not dying,” I say, getting an arm under her shoulders and another under her knees.

“I’m cold.”

“Yer not effing dying!” I say. “Not today!”

And I stand, with her in my arms, and I’m at the top of the zigzag that goes down into Haven.

And that’s not going to be fast enough.

I plunge straight down. Straight down thru the scrub.

“Come on!” I say out loud as my Noise forgets itself and all there is in the universe is my legs moving.

Come on!

I run.

Thru scrub–

And across road–

Thru more scrub–

Across road again as it doubles back–

Down and down–

Kicking up clods of earth and jumping over bushes–

Stumbling over roots–

Come on.

“Hang on,” I say to Viola. “You hang on, you hear me?”

Viola grunts every time we land hard–

But that means she’s still breathing.

Down–

And down–

Come on.

Please.

I skid on some bracken–

But I do not fall–

Road and scrub–

My legs aching at the steepness–

Scrub and road–

Down–

Please–

“Todd?”

“Hang on!”

I reach the bottom of the hill and I hit it running.

She’s so light in my arms.

So light.

I run to where the road rejoins the river, the road into Haven, trees springing up again all around us, the river rushing on.

“Hang on!” I say again, running down the road, fast as my feet will carry me.

Come on.

Please.

Round curves and corners–

Under trees and by the riverbank–

Up ahead I see the battlement I spotted with the binos from the hill above, huge wooden Xs piled up in a long row out to either side with an opening across the road.

“HELP!” I’m shouting as we come to it. “HELP US!”

I run.

Come on.

“I don’t think I can—” Viola says, her voice breathless.

“Yes you CAN!” I shout. “Don’t you DARE give up!”

I run.

The battlement’s coming–

But there’s no one.

There’s no one there.

I run thru the opening on the road and to the other side.

I stop long enough to take a turn round.

There’s no one.

“Todd?”

“We’re almost there,” I say.

“I’m losing it, Todd—”

And her head rolls back.

“No, yer NOT!” I shout at her face. “You WAKE UP, Viola Eade! You keep yer ruddy eyes open.”

And she tries. I see her try.

And her eyes open, only a little, but open.

And I run again as fast as I can.

And I’m shouting “HELP!” as I go.

“HELP!”

Please.

“HELP!”

And her breath is starting to gasp.

“HELP US!”

Please no.

And I’m not seeing NO ONE.

The houses I pass are shut up and empty. The road turns from dirt to paved and still no one out and about.

“HELP!”

My feet slam against the pavement–

The road is leading to the big church up ahead, a clearing of the trees, the steeple shining down onto a town square in front of it.

And no one’s there neither.

No.

“HELP!”

I race on to the square, crossing it, looking all around, listening out–

No.

No.

It’s empty.

Viola’s breathing heavy in my arms.

And Haven is empty.

I reach the middle of the square.

I don’t see nor hear a soul.

I spin around again.

“HELP!” I cry.

But there’s no one.

Haven is completely empty.

There ain’t no hope here at all.

Viola slips a little from my grasp and I have to kneel to catch her. My shirt has dropped from her wound and I use one hand to hold it in place.

There ain’t nothing left. The bag, the binos, my ma’s book, I’m realizing it’s all left up on the hillside.

Me and Viola are all we got, everything we have in the world.

And she’s bleeding so much–

“Todd?” she says, her voice low and slurring.

“Please,” I say, my eyes welling, my voice cracking. “Please.”

Please please please please please—

“Well, since you asked so nicely,” comes a voice across the square, hardly even raising itself to a shout.

I look up.

Coming round the side of the church is a single horse.

With a single rider.

“No,” I whisper.

No.

No.

“Yes, Todd,” says Mayor Prentiss. “I’m afraid so.”

He rides his horse almost lazily across the square towards me. He looks as cool and unruffled as ever, no sweat marking his clothes, even wearing riding gloves, even clean boots.

This ain’t possible.

This ain’t possible at all.

“How can you be here?” I say, my voice rising. “How—?”

“Even a simpleton knows there’s two roads to Haven,” he says, his voice calm and silky, almost smirking but not quite.

The dust we saw. The dust we saw moving towards Haven yesterday.

“But how?” I say, so stunned I can barely get the words out. “The army’s a day away at least—”

“Sometimes the rumour of an army is just as effective as the army itself, my boy,” he says. “The terms of surrender were most favourable. One of which was clearing the streets so I could welcome you here myself.” He looks back up towards the falls. “Tho I was of course expecting my son to bring you.” I look around the square and now I can see faces, faces peering outta windows, outta doors.

I can see four more men on horseback coming round the church.

I look back at Mayor Prentiss.

“Oh, it’s President Prentiss now,” he says. “You’ll do well to remember that.”

And then I realize.

I can’t hear his Noise.

I can’t hear anyone’s.

“No,” he says. “I imagine you can’t, tho that’s an interesting story and not what you might—”

Viola slips a little more from my hands, the shift of it making her give a pained gasp. “Please!” I say. “Save her! I’ll do anything you say! I’ll join the army! I’ll—”

“All good things to those who wait,” the Mayor says, finally looking a little annoyed.

He dismounts in one easy movement and starts taking off his gloves one finger at a time.

And I know we’ve lost.

Everything is lost.

Everything is over.

“As the newly appointed President of this fair planet of ours,” the Mayor says, holding out his hand as if to show me the world for the first time, “let me be the very first to welcome you to its new capital city.” “Todd?” Viola whispers, her eyes closed.

I hold her tightly to me.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper to her. “I’m so sorry.”

We’ve run right into a trap.

We’ve run right off the end of the world.

“Welcome,” says the Mayor, “to New Prentisstown.”