The Knife of Never Letting Go Patrick Ness

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The Knife of Never Letting Go (Chaos Walking #1)

Patrick Ness

If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence.

George Eliot, Middlemarch

CONTENTS

PART I

1. THE HOLE IN THE NOISE 3

2. PRENTISSTOWN 17

3. BEN AND CILLIAN 29

4. DON'T THINK IT 39

5. THE THINGS YOU KNOW 48

6. THE KNIFE IN FRONT OF ME 56

PART II

7. IF THERE WAS 67

8. THE CHOICES OF A KNIFE 77

9. WHEN LUCK AIN'T WITH YOU 85

10. FOOD AND FIRE 93

11. THE BOOK OF NO ANSWERS 104

12. THE BRIDGE 114

PART III

13. ACROSS THE BRIDGE 131

14. THE WRONG END OF A GUN 141

15. BROTHERS IN SUFFERING 152

16. THE NIGHT OF NO APOLOGIES 162

17. ENCOUNTER IN AN ORCHARD 173 18- FARBRANCH 183

19. FURTHER CHOICES OF A KNIFE 198

PART IV

20. ARMY OF MEN 213

21. THE WIDER WORLD 222

22. WILF AND THE SEA OF THINGS 237

23. A KNIFE IS ONLY AS GOOD AS THE ONE WHO WIELDS IT 251

24. THE DEATH OF THE WORTHLESS COWARD 261

25. KILLER 271

PART V

26. THE END OF ALL THINGS 283

27. ON WE GO 295

28. THE SMELL OF ROOTS 307

29. AARON IN A THOUSAND WAYS 317

30. A BOY CALLED TODD 329

31. THE WICKED ARE PUNISHED 339

PART VI

32. DOWNRIVER 353

33. CARBONEL DOWNS 361

34. OH NEVER LEAVE ME 369

35. THE LAW 378

36. ANSWERS TO ASKINGS 387

37. WHAT'S THE POINT? 401

38- I HEARD A MAIDEN CALL 413

39. THE FALLS 421

40. THE SACRIFICE 430

41. IF ONE OF US FALLS 446

42. LAST ROAD TO HAVEN 464

THE HOLE IN THE NOISE

THE FIRST THING you find out when yer dog learns to talk is that dogs don't got nothing much to say. About anything.

"Need a poo, Todd."

"Shut up, Manchee."

"Poo. Poo, Todd."

"I said shut it."

We're walking across the wild fields southeast of town, those ones that slope down to the river and head on toward the swamp. Ben's sent me to pick him some swamp apples and he's made me take Manchee with me, even tho we all know Cillian only bought him to stay on Mayor Prentiss's good side and so suddenly here's this brand-new dog as a present for my birthday last year when I never said I wanted any dog, that what I said I wanted was for Cillian to finally fix the fissionbike so I wouldn't have to walk every forsaken place in this stupid town, but oh, no, happy birthday, Todd,

here's a brand-new puppy, Todd, and even tho you don't want him, even tho you never asked for him, guess who has to feed him and train him and wash him and take him for walks and listen to him jabber now he's got old enough for the talking germ to set his mouth moving? Guess who?

"Poo," Manchee barks quietly to himself. "Poo, poo, poo."

"Just have yer stupid poo and quit yapping about it."

I take a switch of grass from beside the trail and I swat after him with it. I don't reach him, I don't mean to reach him, but he just laughs his little barking laugh and carries on down the trail. I follow after him, switching the switch against the grass on either side, squinting from the sun, trying not to think about nothing at all.

We don't need apples from the swamp, truth be told. Ben can buy them at Mr. Phelps's store if he really wants them. Also true: going to the swamp to pick a few apples is not a job for a man cuz men are never allowed to be so idle. Now, I won't officially become a man for thirty more days. I've lived twelve years of thirteen long months each and another twelve months besides, all of which living means I'm still one month away from the big birthday. The plans are being planned, the preparayshuns prepared, it will be a party, I guess, tho I'm starting to get some strange pictures about it, all dark and too bright at the same time, but nevertheless I will become a man and picking apples in the swamp is not a job for a man or even an almost-man.

But Ben knows he can ask me to go and he knows I'll say yes to going because the swamp is the only place anywhere near Prentisstown where you can have half a break from all the Noise that men spill outta theirselves, all their

clamor and clatter that never lets up, even when they sleep, men and the thoughts they don't know they think even when everyone can hear. Men and their Noise. I don't know how they do it, how they stand each other. Men are Noisy creachers.

"Squirrel!" Manchee shouts and off he goes, jumping off the trail, no matter how loud I yell after him, and off I have to go, too, across the (I look round to make sure I'm alone) goddam fields cuz Cillian'll have a fit if Manchee falls down some goddam snake hole and of course it'll be my own goddam fault even tho I never wanted the goddam dog in the goddam first place.

"Manchee! Get back here!"

"Squirrel!"

I have to kick my way thru the grass, getting grublets stuck to my shoes. One smashes as I kick it off, leaving a green smear across my sneakers, which I know from experience ain't coming out. "Manchee!" I rage.

"Squirrel! Squirrel! Squirrel!"

He's barking round the tree and the squirrel's skittering back and forth on the tree trunk, taunting him. Come on, Whirler dog, says its Noise. Come on, come get, come on, come get. Whirler, Whirler, Whirler.

"Squirrel, Todd! Squirrel!" Goddam, animals are stupid.

I grab Manchee by the collar and hit him hard across his back leg. "Ow, Todd? Ow?" I hit him again. And again. "Ow? Todd?"

"Come on," I say, my own Noise raging so loud I can

barely hear myself think, which is something I'm about to regret, you watch.

Whirler boy, Whirler boy, thinks the squirrel at me. Come get Whirler boy.

"You can eff off, too," I say, except I don't say "eff," I say what "eff" stands for.

And I really, really shoulda looked round again.

Cuz here's Aaron, right here, rising outta the grass from nowhere, rising up and smacking me cross the face, scratching my lip with his big ring, then bringing his hand back the other way, closed as a fist, catching my cheekbone but at least missing my nose because I'm falling into the grass, trying to fall away from his punch, and I let go of Manchee's collar and off he runs back to the squirrel, barking his head off, the traitor, and I hit the grass with my knees and my hands, getting grublet stains all over everything.

And I stay there, on the ground, breathing. Aaron stands over me, his Noise coming at me in fragments of scripture and of his next sermon and

Language, young Todd and finding of a sacrifice . and the saint chooses his path and God hears and the wash of pictures that's in everyone's Noise, of things familiar and glancing flashes of-- What? What the forsaken-?

But up flies a loud bit of his sermon to block it out and I look up into his eyes and suddenly I don't wanna know. I can already taste the blood where his ring cut my lip and I don't wanna know. He never comes out here, men never do,

they have their reasons, men do, and it's just me and my dog only ever but here he is and I don't don't don't wanna know.

He smiles down at me, thru that beard of his, smiles down at me in the grass.

A smiling fist.

"Language, young Todd," he says, "binds us like prisoners on a chain. Haven't you learned anything from yer church, boy?" And then he says his most familiar preaching. "If one of us falls, we all fall."

Yes, Aaron, I think.

"With yer mouth, Todd."

"Yes, Aaron," I say.

"And the effs?" he says. "And the geedees? Because don't think I didn't hear them as well. Your Noise reveals you. Reveals us all."

Not all, I think, but at the same time I say, "Sorry, Aaron."

He leans down to me, his lips close to my face, and I can smell the breath that comes outta his mouth, smell the weight of it, like fingers grabbing for me. "God hears," he whispers. "God hears."

And he raises a hand again and I flinch and he laughs and then he's gone, like that, heading back toward the town, taking his Noise with him.

I'm shaking from the charge to my blood at being hit, shaking from being so fired up and so surprised and so angry and so much hating this town and the men in it that it takes me a while till I can get up and go get my dog again. What was he effing doing out here anyway? I think and I'm so

hacked off, still so raging with anger and hate (and fear, yes, fear, shut up) that I don't even look round to see if Aaron heard my Noise. I don't look round. I don't look round.

And then I do look round and I go and get my dog.

"Aaron, Todd? Aaron?"

"Don't say that name again, Manchee."

"Bleeding, Todd. Todd? Todd? Todd? Bleeding?"

"I know. Shut up."

"Whirler," he says, as if it don't mean nothing, his head as empty as the sky.

I smack his rump. "Don't say that neither."

"Ow? Todd?"

We keep on walking, staying clear of the river on our left. It runs down thru a series of gulches at the east of town, starting way up to the north past our farm and coming down the side of the town till it flattens out into a marshy part that eventually becomes the swamp. You have to avoid the river and especially that marshy part before the swamp trees start cuz that's where the crocs live, easily big enough to kill an almost-man and his dog. The fins on their backs look just like a row of rushes and if you get too close, WHOOM! - outta the water they come, flying at you with their claws grasping and their mouths snapping and you pretty much ain't got no chance at all then.

We get ourselves down past the marshy part and I try to take in the swamp quiet as it approaches. There's nothing to see down here no more, really, which is why men don't come. And the smell, too, I don't pretend it don't smell, but it don't smell nearly so bad as men make out. They're smelling their memories, they are, they're not smelling

what's really here, they're smelling it like it was then. All the dead things. Spacks and men had different ideas for burial. Spacks just used the swamp, threw their dead right into the water, let 'em sink, which was fine cuz they were suited for swamp burial, I guess. That's what Ben says. Water and muck and Spackle skin worked fine together, didn't poison nothing, just made the swamp richer, like men do to soil.

Then suddenly, of course, there were a whole lot more spacks to bury than normal, too many for even a swamp this big to swallow, and it's a ruddy big swamp, too. And then there were no live spacks at all, were there? Just spack bodies in heaps, piling up in the swamp and rotting and stinking and it took a long time for the swamp to become swamp again and not just a mess of flies and smells and who knows what extra germs they'd kept saved up for us.

I was born into all that, all that mess, the over-crowded swamp and the over-crowded sematary and the not-crowded-enough town, so I don't remember nothing, don't remember a world without Noise. My pa died of sickness before I was born and then my ma died, of course, no surprises there. Ben and Cillian took me in, raised me. Ben says my ma was the last of the women but everyone says that about everyone's ma. Ben may not be lying, he believes it's true, but who knows?

I am the youngest of the whole town, tho. I used to come out and throw rocks at field crows with Reg Oliver (seven months and eight days older) and Liam Smith (four months and twenty-nine days older) and Seb Mundy who was next youngest to me, three months and a day older, but even he don't talk to me no more now that he's a man.

No boys do once they turn thirteen.

Which is how it goes in Prentisstown. Boys become men and they go to their men-only meetings to talk about who knows what and boys most definitely ain't allowed and if yer the last boy in town, you just have to wait, all by yerself.

Well, you and a dog you don't want.

But never mind, here's the swamp and in we go, sticking to the paths that take us round and over the worst of the water, weaving our way round the big, bulby trees that grow up and outta the bog to the needly roof, yards and yards up. The air's thick and it's dark and it's heavy, but it's not a frightening kind of thick and dark and heavy. There's lots of life here, tons of it, just ignoring the town as you please, birds and green snakes and frogs and kivits and both kinds of squirrel and (I promise you) a cassor or two and sure there's red snakes to watch out for but even tho it's dark, there's slashes of light that come down from holes in the roof and if you ask me, which, granted, you may not be, to me the swamp's like one big, comfy, not very Noisy room. Dark but living, living but friendly, friendly but not grasping.

Manchee lifts his leg on practically everything till he must be running outta pee and then he heads off under a bush, burbling to himself, finding a place to do his other business, I guess.

But the swamp don't mind. How could it? It's all just life, going over itself, returning and cycling and eating itself to grow. I mean, it's not that it's not Noisy here. Sure it is, there's no escaping Noise, not nowhere at all, but it's quieter than the town. The loud is a different kind of loud,

because swamp loud is just curiosity, creachers figuring out who you are and if yer a threat. Whereas the town knows all about you already and wants to know more and wants to beat you with what it knows till how can you have any of yerself left at all?

Swamp Noise, tho, swamp Noise is just the birds all thinking their worrisome little birdie thoughts. Where's food? Where's home? Where's my safety?

And the waxy squirrels, who are all little punks, teasing you if they see you, teasing themselves if they don't, and the rusty squirrels, who are like dumb little kids, and sometimes there's swamp foxes out in the leaves who you can hear faking their Noise to sound like the squirrels they eat and even less often there are mavens singing their weird maven songs and once I swear I saw a cassor running away on two long legs but Ben says I didn't, says the cassors are long gone from the swamp. I don't know. I believe me.

Manchee comes outta the bushes and sits down next to me cuz I've stopped right there in the middle of a trail. He looks around to see what I might be seeing and then he says, "Good poo, Todd."

"I'm sure it was, Manchee."

I'd better not get another ruddy dog when my birthday comes. What I want this year is a hunting knife like the one Ben carries on the back of his belt. Now that's a present for a man.

"Poo," Manchee says quietly.

On we walk. The main bunch of apple trees is a little ways into the swamp, down a few paths and over a fallen log

that Manchee always needs help over. When we get there, I pick him up around his stomach and lift him to the top. Even tho he knows what I'm doing, he still kicks his legs all over the place like a falling spider, making a fuss for no reason at all.

"Hold still, you gonk!"

"Down, down, down!" he yelps, scrabbling away at the air. "Idiot dog."

I plop him on top of the log and climb up myself. We both jump down to the other side, Manchee barking "Jump!" as he lands and keeping on barking "Jump!" as he runs off.

The leap over the log is where the dark of the swamp really starts and the first thing you see are the old Spackle buildings, leaning out toward you from shadow, looking like melting blobs of tan-colored ice cream except hut-sized. No one knows or can remember what they were ever sposed to be but best guess by Ben, who's a best guess kinda guy, is that they had something to do with burying their dead. Maybe even some kind of church, even tho the spacks didn't have no kind of religion anyone from Prentisstown could reckernize.

I keep a wide distance from them and go into the little grove of wild apple trees. The apples are ripe, nearly black, almost edible, as Cillian would say. I pick one off the trunk and take a bite, the juice dribbling down my chin.

"Todd?"

"What, Manchee?" I take out the plastic bag I've got folded in my back pocket and start filling it with apples. "Todd?" he barks again and this time I notice how he's

barking it and I turn and he's pointed at the Spackle buildings and his fur's all ridged up on his back and his ears are flicking all over the place.

I stand up straight. "What is it, boy?"

He's growling now, his lips pulled back over his teeth. I feel the charge in my blood again. "Is it a croc?" I say.

"Quiet, Todd," Manchee growls.

"But what is it?"

"Is quiet, Todd." He lets out a little bark and it's a real bark, a real dog bark that means nothing but "Bark!" and my body electricity goes up a bit, like charges are going to start leaping outta my skin. "Listen," he growls.

And so I listen.

And I listen.

And I turn my head a little and I listen some more. There's a hole in the Noise. Which can't be.

It's weird, it is, out there, hiding somewhere, in the trees or somewhere outta sight, a spot where yer ears and yer mind are telling you there's no Noise. It's like a shape you can't see except by how everything else around it is touching it. Like water in the shape of a cup, but with no cup. It's a hole and everything that falls into it stops being Noise, stops being anything, just stops altogether. It's not like the quiet of the swamp, which is never quiet obviously, just less Noisy. But this, this is a shape, a shape of nothing, a hole where all Noise stops.

Which is impossible.

There ain't nothing but Noise in this world, nothing but the constant thoughts of men and things coming at you and

at you and at you, ever since the spacks released the Noise germ during the war, the germ that killed half the men and every single woman, my ma not excepted, the germ that drove the rest of the men mad, the germ that spelled the end for all Spackle once men's madness picked up a gun.

"Todd?" Manchee's spooked, I can hear it. "What, Todd? What's it, Todd?"

"Can you smell anything?"

"Just smell quiet, Todd," he barks, then he starts barking louder, "Quiet! Quiet!"

And then, somewhere around the spack buildings, the quiet moves.

My blood-charge leaps so hard it about knocks me over. Manchee yelps in a circle around me, barking and barking, making me double-spooked, and so I smack him on the rump again ("Ow, Todd?") to make myself calm down.

"There's no such thing as holes," I say. "No such thing as nothing. So it's gotta be a something, don't it?"

"Something, Todd," Manchee barks.

"Can you hear where it went?"

"It's quiet, Todd."

"You know what I mean."

Manchee sniffs the air and takes one step, two, then more toward the Spackle buildings. I guess we're looking for it, then. I start walking all slowlike up to the biggest of the melty ice-cream scoops. I stay outta the way of anything that might be looking out the little bendy triangle doorway. Manchee's sniffing at the door frame but he's not growling so I take a deep breath and I look inside.

It's totally empty. The ceiling rises up to a point about

another length of me above my head. Floor's dirt, swamp plants growing in it now, vines and suchlike, but nothing else. Which is to say no real nothing, no hole, and no telling what mighta been here before.

It's stupid but I gotta say it.

I'm wondering if the Spackle are back.

But that's impossible.

But a hole in the Noise is impossible.

So something impossible has to be true.

I can hear Manchee snuffling around again outside so I creep out and I go to the second scoop. There's writing on the outside of this one, the only written words anyone's ever seen in the spack language. The only words they ever saw fit to write down, I guess. The letters are spack letters, but Ben says they make the sound es'Paqili or suchlike, es'Paqili, the Spackle, "spacks" if you wanna spit it, which since what happened happened is what everyone does. Means "The People."

There's nothing in the second scoop neither. I step back out into the swamp and I listen again. I put my head down and I listen and I reach with the hearing parts of my brain and I listen there, too, and I listen and listen.

I listen.

"Quiet! Quiet!" Manchee barks twice real fast and peels off running again, toward the last scoop. I take off after him, running myself, my blood charging, cuz that's where it is, that's where the hole in the Noise is.

I can hear it.

Well, I can't hear it, that's the whole point, but when I run toward it the emptiness of it is touching my chest and

the stillness of it pulls at me and there's so much quiet in it, no, not quiet, silence, so much unbelievable silence that I start to feel really torn up, like I'm about to lose the most valuable thing ever, like there it is, a death, and I'm running and my eyes are watering and my chest is just crushing and there's no one to see but I still mind and my eyes start crying, they start crying, they start effing crying, and I stop for a minute and I bend over and Jesus H. Dammit, you can just shut up right now, but I waste a whole stupid minute, just a whole stinking, stupid minute bent over there, by which time, of course, the hole is moving away, it's moved away, it's gone.

Manchee's torn twixt racing after it and coming back to me but he finally comes back to me. "Crying, Todd?"

"Shut up," I say and aim a kick at him. It misses on purpose.

PRENTISS TOWN

WE GET OURSELVES outta the swamp and head back toward town and the world feels all black and gray no matter what the sun is saying. Even Manchee barely says nothing as we make our way back up thru the fields. My Noise churns and bubbles like a stew on the boil till finally I have to stop for a minute to calm myself down a little.

There's just no such thing as silence. Not here, not nowhere. Not when yer asleep, not when yer by yerself, never.

I am Todd Hewitt, I think to myself with my eyes closed. I am twelve years and twelve months old. I live in Prentisstown on New World. I will he a man in one month's time exactly.

It's a trick Ben taught me to help settle my Noise. You close yer eyes and as clearly and calmly as you can you tell yerself who you are, cuz that's what gets lost in all that Noise.

I am Todd Hewitt.

"Todd Hewitt," Manchee murmurs to himself beside me.

I take a deep breath and open my eyes.

That's who I am. I'm Todd Hewitt.

We walk on up away from the swamp and the river, up the slope of the wild fields to the small ridge at the south of town where the school used to be for the brief and useless time it existed. Before I was born, boys were taught by their ma at home and then when there were only boys and men left, we just got sat down in front of vids and learning modules till Mayor Prentiss outlawed such things as "detrimental to the discipline of our minds."

Mayor Prentiss, see, has a Point of View.

And so for almost half a stupid year, all the boys were gathered up by sad-faced Mr. Royal and plonked out here in an outbuilding away from the main Noise of the town. Not that it helped. It's nearly impossible to teach anything in a classroom full of boys' Noise and completely impossible to give out any sort of test. You cheat even if you don't mean to and everybody means to.

And then one day Mayor Prentiss decided to burn all the books, every single one of them, even the ones in men's homes, cuz apparently books were detrimental as well and Mr. Royal, a soft man who made himself a hard man by drinking whisky in the classroom, gave up and took a gun and put an end to himself and that was it for my classroom teaching.

Ben taught me the rest at home. Mechanics and food prep and clothes repair and farming basics and things like that. Also a lot of survival stuff like hunting and which fruits you can eat and how to follow the moons for direkshuns and

how to use a knife and a gun and snakebite remedies and how to calm yer Noise as best you can.

He tried to teach me reading and writing, too, but Mayor Prentiss caught wind of it in my Noise one morning and locked Ben up for a week and that was the end of my booklearning and what with all that other stuff to learn and all the working on the farm that still has to be done every day and all the just plain surviving, I never ended up reading too good.

Don't matter. Ain't nobody in Prentisstown ever gonna write a book.

Manchee and me get past the school building and up on the little ridge and look north and there it is, the town itself. Not that there's all that much left of it no more. One shop, used to be two. One bar, used to be two. One clinic, one jail, one nonworking gas stayshun, one big house for the Mayor, one police stayshun. The Church. One short bit of road running thru the center, paved back in the day, never upkept since, goes to gravel real quick. All the houses and such are out and about, outskirts like, farms, meant to be farms, some still are, some stand empty, some stand worse than empty.

And that's all there is of Prentisstown. Populayshun 147 and falling, falling, falling. 146 men and one almost-man.

Ben says there used to be other settlements scattered around New World, that all the ships landed about the same time, ten years or so before I was born, but that when the war started with the spacks, when the spacks released the germs and all the other settlements were wiped out, that Prentisstown was nearly wiped out, too, that it only

survived cuz of Mayor Prentiss's army skills and that even tho Mayor Prentiss is a nightmare coming and going, we at least owe him that, that cuz of him we survive alone on a whole big empty woman-less world that ain't got nothing good to say for itself, in a town of 146 men that dies a little more with every day that passes.

Cuz some men can't take it, can they? They off themselves like Mr. Royal or some of them just plain disappear, like Mr. Gault, our old neighbour who used to run the other sheep farm, or Mr. Michael, our second-best carpenter, or Mr. van Wijk, who vanished the same day his son became a man. It's not so uncommon. If yer whole world is one Noisy town with no future, sometimes you just gotta leave even if there ain't nowhere else to go.

Cuz as me the almost-man looks up into that town, I can hear the 146 men who remain. I can hear every ruddy last one of them. Their Noise washes down the hill like a flood let loose right at me, like a fire, like a monster the size of the sky come to get you cuz there's nowhere to run.

Here's what it's like. Here's what every minute of every day of my stupid, stinking life in this stupid, stinking town is like. Never mind plugging yer ears, it don't help at all:

[Image: The words of the voices talking and moaning and singing and crying.]

And them's just the words, the voices talking and moaning and singing and crying. There's pictures, too, pictures that come to yer mind in a rush, no matter how much you don't want 'em, pictures of memories and fantasies and secrets and plans and lies, lies, lies. Cuz you can lie in the Noise, even when everyone knows what yer thinking, you can bury stuff under other stuff, you can hide it in plain sight, you just don't think it clearly or you convince yerself that the opposite of what yer hiding is true and then who's going to be able to pick out from the flood what's real water and what's not going to get you wet?

Men lie, and they lie to theirselves worst of all.

In a for instance, I've never seen a woman nor a Spackle in the flesh, obviously. I've seen 'em both in vids, of course, before they were outlawed, and I see them all the time in the Noise of men cuz what else do men think about except sex and enemies? But the spacks are bigger and meaner looking in the Noise than in the vids, ain't they? And Noise women have lighter hair and bigger chests and wear less

clothes and are a lot freer with their affecshuns than in the vids, too. So the thing to remember, the thing that's most important of all that I might say in this here telling of things is that Noise ain't truth, Noise is what men want to be true, and there's a difference twixt those two things so big that it could ruddy well kill you if you don't watch out.

"Home, Todd?" Manchee barks a bit louder down by my leg cuz that's how you gotta talk in the Noise.

"Yeah, we're going," I say. We live on the other side, to the northeast, and we're going to have to go thru the town to get there so here it comes, as fast as I can get thru it.

First up is Mr. Phelps's store. It's dying, the store is, like the rest of the town and Mr. Phelps spends all his time despairing. Even when yer buying stuff from him and he's polite as can be, the despair of him seeps at you like pus from a cut. Ending, says his Noise, Ending it's all ending and My Julie, my dear, dear Julie who has a wife and who doesn't wear no clothes at all in Mr. Phelps's Noise.

"Hiya, Todd," he calls as Manchee and I hurry by.

"Hiya, Mr. Phelps."

"Beautiful day, ain't she?"

"She sure is, Mr. Phelps."

"Beaut!" barks Manchee and Mr. Phelps laughs but his Noise just keeps saying Ending, and Julie and rags and pictures of what he misses about his wife and what she used to do as if it's sposed to be unique or something.

I don't think anything particular in my Noise for Mr. Phelps, just my usual stuff you can't help. Tho I must admit I find myself thinking it all a little bit louder to cover up

thoughts about the hole I found in the swamp, to block it out behind louder Noise.

Don't know why I should do this, don't know why I should hide it.

But I'm hiding it.

Manchee and me carry on walking pretty fast cuz next is the gas stayshun and Mr. Hammar. The gas stayshun don't work no more cuz the fission generator that made the gas went kerflooey last year and just sits there beside the gas stayshun like a hulking ugly hurt toe and no one'd live next to it except Mr. Hammar and Mr. Hammar's much worse than Mr. Phelps cuz he'll aim his Noise right at you.

And it's ugly Noise, angry Noise, pictures of yerself in ways that you don't want pictures of yerself, violent pictures and bloody pictures and all you can do is make yer own Noise as loud as you can and try to sweep up Mr. Phelps's Noise in it, too, and send it right back to Mr. Hammar. Apples and Ending and first over hand and Ben and Julie and Beaut, Todd? and the generator is flickering and rags and shut up, just shut up and

Look at me, boy

And I turn my head anyway even tho I don't want to but sometimes you get caught off-guard and so I turn my head and there's Mr. Hammar in his window, looking right at me and One month, he thinks, and there's a picture from his Noise and it involves me standing on my own but somehow even more alone than that and I don't know what it means or if it's real or if it's a purposeful lie and so I think about a hammer going into Mr. Hammar's head over and over and he just smiles from his window.

The road curves round the stayshun past the clinic, which is Dr. Baldwin and all the crying and moaning men do to doctors when nothing's really wrong with 'em. Today it's Mr. Fox complaining about how he can't breathe which would be a pitiable thing if he didn't smoke so much. And then, as you pass the clinic, God Almighty, you get the stupid, stupid bar which even at this hour of the day is just a howl of Noise cuz what they do there is turn the music up so loud it's meant to drown out Noise but that only works partway and so you get loud music and loud Noise and worse, drunk Noise, which comes at you like a mallet. Shouts and howls and weeping from men whose faces never change and just horrorpilashuns of the past and all the women that used to be. A whole lot about the women that used to be but nothing that makes any sense, cuz drunk Noise is like a drunk man: blurry and boring and dangerous.

It gets hard to walk around the center of town, hard to think about the next step cuz so much Noise is weighing on yer shoulders. I honestly don't know how men do it, I don't know how I'm going to do it when I become a man 'less something changes on the day that I don't know about.

The road bears up past the bar and to the right, going by the police stayshun and the jail, all one place and in use more than you might think for a town so small. The sheriff is Mr. Prentiss Jr. who's barely two years older than me and only been a man for a short while but who took to his job well and quick and in his cell is whoever Mayor Prentiss has told Mr. Prentiss Jr. to make an example of this week. Right now it's Mr. Turner who didn't hand over enough of his corn

yield to "the good use of the whole town," which just means he didn't give no free corn to Mr. Prentiss and his men.

So you've gone thru the town with yer dog and you got all this Noise behind you, Mr. Phelps and Mr. Hammar and Dr. Baldwin and Mr. Fox and the extra extra Noise from the bar and Mr. Prentiss Jr.'s Noise and Mr. Turner's moaning Noise and yer still not done with the Noise of the town cuz here comes the Church.

The Church is why we're all here on New World in the first place, of course, and pretty much every Sunday you can hear Aaron preaching about why we left behind the corrupshun and sin of Old World and about how we'd aimed to start a new life of purity and brotherhood in a whole new Eden.

That worked out well, huh?

People still go to church tho, mainly cuz they have to, even tho the Mayor hisself hardly ever bothers, leaving the rest of us to listen to Aaron preach about how we're the only thing each of us have out here, us men together, and how all of us have gotta bind ourselves in a single community.

How if one of us falls, we all fall.

He says that one a lot.

Manchee and me are quiet as possible going past the front door of the Church. Praying Noise comes from inside, it's got a special feel to it, a special purply sick feel like men are bleeding it out, even tho it's always the same stuff but the purply blood just keeps on coming. Help us, save us, forgive us, help us, save us, forgive us, get us outta here, please God, please God,

please God, tho as far as I know no one's never heard no Noise back from this God fella.

Aaron's in there, too, back from his walk and preaching over the prayers. I can hear his voice, not just his Noise, and it's all sacrifice this and scripture that and blessings here and sainthood there and he's going on at such a rattle his Noise is like gray fire behind him and you can't pick out anything in it and he might be up to something, mightn't he? The sermon might be covering for something and I'm beginning to wonder if I know what that something is.

And then I hear young Todd? in his Noise and I say, "Hurry up, Manchee," and we scoot our way along real quick.

The last thing you pass as you crest the hill of Prentisstown is the Mayor's House which is the weirdest and hardest Noise of all cuz Mayor Prentiss-

Well, Mayor Prentiss is different.

His Noise is awful clear and I mean awful in the awful way. He believes, see, that order can be brought to Noise. He believes that Noise can be sorted out, that if you could harness it somehow, you could put it to use. And when you walk by the Mayor's House, you can hear him, hear him and the men closest to him, his deputies and things, and they're always doing these thought exercises, these counting things and imagining perfect shapes and saying orderly chants like i am the circle and the circle is me, whatever that's sposed to mean, and it's like he's molding a little army into shape, like he's preparing himself for something, like he's forging some kind of Noise weapon.

It feels like a threat. It feels like the world changing and leaving you behind.

123443211 am the circle and the circle is me 1 2 3 4 4 3 2 1 if one of us falls we all fall

I will be a man soon and men do not run in fear but I give Manchee a little push and we walk even a little faster than before, giving the Mayor's House as wide a curve as possible till we're past it and on the gravel path that heads on toward our house.

After a while, the town disappears behind us and the Noise starts to get a little bit quieter (tho it never never stops) and we can both breathe a bit easier.

Manchee barks, "Noise, Todd."

"Yesiree," I say.

"Quiet in the swamp, Todd," Manchee says. "Quiet, quiet, quiet."

"Yes," I say and then I think and I hurry and say, "Shut up, Manchee," and I smack him on his rump and he says, "Ow, Todd?" but I'm looking back toward the town but there's no stopping Noise once it's out, is there? And if it was something you could see, moving thru the air, I wonder if you could see the hole in the Noise floating right outta me, right outta my thoughts from where I was protecting it and it's such a small bit of Noise and it'd be easy to miss in the great roar of everything else but there it goes, there it goes, there it goes, heading right back toward the world of men.

BEN AND CILLIAN

And just where do you think you've been?" Cillian says as soon as Manchee and I come into view off the path. He's lying down on the ground, deep into our little fission generator, the one outside the front of the house, fixing whatever's gone wrong with it this month. His arms are covered in grease and his face is covered in annoyance and his Noise is buzzy like mad bees and I can already feel myself getting angry and I haven't even properly got home yet.

"I was in the swamp getting apples for Ben," I say.

"There's work to be done and boys are off playing." He looks back into the generator. Something makes a clunk inside and he says, "Dammit!"

"I said I wasn't playing, if you'd ever listen!" I say but it's more like a shout. "Ben wanted apples so I was getting him some ruddy apples!"

"Uh-huh," Cillian says, looking back at me. "And where might these apples be then?"

And of course I'm not holding any apples, am I? I don't even remember dropping the bag I'd started to fill but of course I must have when-

"When what?" Cillian says.

"Quit listening so close," I say.

He sighs his Cillian sigh and here we go: "It's not like we ask you to do so much around here, Todd"- which is a lie -"but we can't keep this farm running by ourselves"-which is true -"and even if you ever finish all yer chores, which you don't"- another lie, they work me like a slave -"we'd still be playing a catch-up to nothing, now wouldn't we?"- and this is true, too. The town can't grow no more, it can only shrink, and help ain't coming.

"Pay attenshun when I talk to you," Cillian says.

"Tenshun!" Manchee barks.

"Shut up," I say.

"Don't talk to yer dog that way," Cillian says. I wasn't talking to my dog, I think, loud and clear enough to hear.

Cillian glares at me and I glare back and this is how it always is, our Noise throbbing red with hassle and irritashun. It's never been so good with Cillian, not never, Ben's always been the kind one, Cillian's always been the other one, but it's got worse as the day approaches when I'll finally be a man and won't have to listen to any more of his crap.

Cillian closes his eyes and breathes loudly once thru his nose. "Todd-" he starts, his voice a bit lower.

"Where's Ben?" I say.

His face hardens a little more. "Lambing starts in a week, Todd."

All I do to this is say again, "Where's Ben?"

"You get the sheep fed and into their paddocks and then I want you to fix the gate to the east field once and for all, Todd Hewitt. I have asked you at least twice before now."

I lean back on my heels. '"Well, how was your trip to the swamp, Todd?'" I say, making my voice go all sarcastic. '"Well, it was fine and dandy there, Cillian, thank you for asking.' 'Didja see anything interesting out there in the swamp, Todd?' 'Well, funny you should ask, Cillian, cuz I sure did see something interesting which might explain this here cut on my lip that you ain't asked about but I guess it'll have to just wait till the sheep are fed and I fix the goddam fence!'"

"Watch yer mouth," Cillian says. "I don't have time for yer games. Go do the sheep."

I clench up my fists and make a sound that sounds like awwghgh which tells Cillian that I just can't put up with his nonreason not for one second longer.

"Come on, Manchee," I say.

"The sheep, Todd," Cillian calls as I start walking away. "The sheep first."

"Yeah, I'll do the ruddy sheep," I mutter to myself. I'm walking away faster now, my blood jumping and Manchee's getting excited from the roar of my Noise. "Sheep!" he barks. "Sheep, sheep, Todd! Sheep, sheep, quiet, Todd! Quiet, quiet in swamp, Todd!"

"Shut up, Manchee," I say.

"What was that?" Cillian says and there's something in his voice that makes us both turn around. He's sitting up by the generator now, his full attenshun on us, his Noise coming right at us like a laser.

"Quiet, Cillian," Manchee barks.

"What does he mean 'quiet'?" Cillian's eyes and Noise are searching me all over.

"What do you care?" I turn again. "I got ruddy sheep to feed."

"Todd, wait," he calls after us but then something starts beeping on the generator and he says "Dammit!" again and has to go back to it tho I can feel all kinds of asking marks in his Noise following me, getting fainter as I head out to our fields.

Blast him, blast him and all, I think, in more or less those words and worse as I stomp across our farm. We live about a mile northeast of town and we do sheep on one half of the farm and wheat on the other. Wheat's harder, so Ben and Cillian do most of that. Since I was old enough to be taller than the sheep, that's who I've taken care of. Me, that is, not me and Manchee, tho another one of the false lying excuses why he was given to me was that I could teach him to be a sheep dog which for obvious reasons - by which I mean his complete stupidity -- hasn't worked out as planned.

Feeding and watering and shearing and lambing and even castrating and butchering, I do all these things. We're one of three meat and wool providers for the town, used to be one of five, soon be one of two because Mr. Marjoribanks oughta be dying from his drink problem any

day now. We'll fold his flock into ours. I should say HZ fold his flock into ours, like I did when Mr. Gault disappeared two winters ago, and they'll be new ones to butcher, new ones to castrate, new ones to shear, new ones to put in pens with ewes at the right times, and will I get a thank you? No, I will not.

I am Todd Hewitt, I think, the day just keeping on not making my Noise any quieter. I am almost a man.

"Sheep!" say the sheep when I pass their field without stopping. "Sheep!" they say, watching me go. "Sheep! Sheep!"

"Sheep!" barks Manchee.

"Sheep!" say the sheep back.

Sheep got even less to say than dogs do.

I've been listening out for Ben's Noise over the farm and I've tracked him down to one corner of one of the wheat fields. Planting's done, harvest is months away, so there's not so much to do with the wheat at the minute, just make sure all the generators and the fission tractor and the electric threshers are ready to start working. You'd think this would mean I'd get a little help with the sheep but you would be wrong.

Ben's Noise is humming a little tune out near one of the irrigashun spouts so I take a turn and head across the field toward him. His Noise ain't nothing like Cillian's. It's calmer and clearer and tho you can't see Noise, if Cillian's always seems reddish, then Ben's seems blue or sometimes green. They're different men from each other, different as fire and water, Ben and Cillian, my more or less parents.

Story is, my ma was friends with Ben before they left for New World, that they were both members of the Church

when the offer of leaving and starting up a settlement was made. Ma convinced Pa and Ben convinced Cillian and when the ships landed and the settlement started, it was my ma and pa who raised sheep on the next farm over from Ben and Cillian growing wheat and it was all friendly and nice and the sun never set and men and women sang songs together and lived and loved and never got sick and never never died.

That's the story from the Noise anyway so who knows what it was actually like before? Cuz then of course I was born and everything changed. The spacks released their woman-killing germ and that was it for my ma and then the war started and was won and that was it for pretty much the rest of New World. And there's me, just a baby, not knowing nothing bout nothing, and of course I'm not the only baby, there're loads of us, and suddenly only half a town of men to take care of all us babies and boys. So a lot of us died and I was counted among the lucky cuz it was only natural for Ben and Cillian to take me in and feed me and raise me and teach me and generally make it possible for me to go on being alive.

And so I'm kinda like their son. Well, more than "kinda like" but less than actually being so. Ben says Cillian only fights with me all the time cuz he cares about me so much but if that's true I say it's a funny way to show it, a way that don't seem much like caring at all, if you ask me.

But Ben's a different kind of man than Cillian, a kind kind of man that makes him not normal in Prentisstown. 145 of the men in this town, even the newly made ones just past their birthdays, even Cillian tho to a lesser degree, they

see me at best as something to ignore and at worst as something to hit and so I spend most of my days figuring out ways to be ignored so as I won't get hit.

'Cept for Ben, who I can't describe much further without seeming soft and stupid and like a boy, so I won't, just to say that I never knew my pa, but if you woke up one day and had a choice of picking one from a selecshun, if someone said, here, then, boy, pick who you want, then Ben wouldn't be the worst choice you could make that morning.

He's whistling as we approach and tho I can't see him yet and he can't see me, he changes the tune as he senses me coming to a song I reckernize, Early one mo-o-rning as the sun was ri-i-sing, which he says was a favorite of my ma's but which I think is really just a favorite of his since he's whistled and sang it for me since I can remember. My blood is still storming away from Cillian but I immediately start to feel a little calmer.

Even tho it is a song for babies, I know, shut up.

"Ben!" Manchee barks and goes running around the irrigashun setup.

"Hello, Manchee," I hear as I round the corner and see Ben scratching Manchee twixt the ears. Manchee's eyes are closed and his leg is thumping on the ground with pleasure and tho Ben can certainly tell from my Noise that I've been fighting with Cillian again, he don't say nothing but, "Hello, Todd."

"Hi, Ben." I look at the ground, kicking a stone.

And Ben's Noise is saying Apples and Cillian and yer getting so big and Cillian again and itch in the crack of arm and apples and dinner and

Gosh, it's warm out and it's all so smooth and non-grasping it's like laying down in a brook on a hot day.

"You calming down there, Todd?" he finally says. "Reminding yerself who you are?"

"Yeah," I say, "just, why does he have to come at me like that? Why can't he just say hello? Not even a greeting, it's all 'I know you done something wrong and I'm gonna keep at you till I find out what it is.'"

"That's just his way, Todd. You know that."

"So you keep saying." I pick a blade of young wheat and stick the end in my mouth, not quite looking at him.

"Left the apples at the house, didja?"

I look at him. I chew on the wheat. He knows I didn't. He can tell.

"And there's a reason," he says, still scratching Manchee. "There's a reason which ain't coming clear." He's trying to read my Noise, see what truth he can sift from it, which most men think is a good enough excuse for starting a fight, but I don't mind with Ben. He cocks his head and stops scratching Manchee. "Aaron?"

"Yeah, I saw Aaron."

"He did that to yer lip?"

"Yeah."

"That sunuvahoor." He frowns and steps forward. "I just might have to have words with that man."

"Don't," I say. "Don't. It'll just be more trouble and it don't hurt that much."

He takes my chin into his fingers and lifts my head so he can see the cut. "That sunuvahoor," he says again, quietly. He touches the cut with his fingers and I flinch away.

"It's nothing," I say.

"You stay away from that man, Todd Hewitt."

"Oh, like I went running to the swamp hoping to run into him?"

"He ain't right."

"Well, holy crap, thanks for that bit of info, Ben," I say and then I catch a bit of his Noise that says One month and it's a new thing, a whole new bit of something that he quickly covers up with other Noise.

"What's going on, Ben?" I say. "What's going on with my birthday?"

He smiles and for a second it's not an entirely true smile, for a second it's a worried smile, but after that it's a smile true enough. "It's a surprise," he says, "so don't go looking."

Even tho I'm nearly a man and even tho I'm nearly getting on up to his height now, he still bends down a little so his face is level with mine, not too close to be uncomfortable, just close enough so that it's safe and I look away a little bit. And even tho it's Ben, even tho I trust Ben more than anyone else in this crappy little town, even tho it's Ben who saved my life and who I know would do it again, I still find myself reluctant to open up my Noise about what happened in the swamp, mainly cuz I can start to feel it pressing on my chest again whenever the thought gets near.

"Todd?" Ben says, looking at me closely.

"Quiet," Manchee barks softly. "Quiet in swamp."

Ben looks at Manchee, then back at me, his eyes going all soft and asking and full of concern. "What's he talking about, Todd?"

I sigh. "We saw something," I say. "Out there in the

swamp. Well, we didn't see it, it hid, but it was like a rip in the Noise, like a tear-"

I stop talking cuz he's stopped listening to my voice. I've opened up my Noise for him and am remembering it as truthfully as I can and he's looking at me something fierce and from way behind me I can hear Cillian coming and he's calling "Ben?" and "Todd?" and there's concern in his voice and in his Noise and Ben's is starting to buzz a little, too, and I just keep thinking as truthfully as I can about the hole we found in the Noise but quietly, too, quietly, quietly, so as to keep the town from hearing if I can and here comes Cillian still and Ben's just looking at me and looking at me till finally I have to ask.

"Is it spacks?" I say. "Is it the Spackle? Are they back?"

"Ben?" Cillian's yelling it now as he's coming across the fields.

"Are we in danger?" I ask Ben. "Will there be another war?"

But all Ben says is, "Oh, my God," real quietlike, and then he says it again, "Oh, my God," and then, without even moving or looking away, he says, "We have to get you outta here. We have to get you outta here right now."

DON 'T THINK IT

Cillian comes running up but before he says anything to us, Ben cuts him off and says, "Don't think it!"

Ben turns to me. "Don't you think it neither. You cover it up with yer Noise. You hide it. You hide it as best you can." And he's grabbing my shoulders as he's saying it and squeezing tight enough to make my blood jump even more than it already is.

"What's going on?" i say.

"Did you walk home thru town?" Cillian asks.

"Course i walked home thru town," i snap. "What other effing way is there to get home?"

Cillian's face tightens up but it's not with being pissed off at me snapping, it's tightening up with fear, fear i can hear loud as a shout in his Noise. They don't yell at me for "effing" neither, which makes it all somehow worse. Manchee's barking his head off by this point, "Cillian!

Quiet! Effing! Todd!" but nobody's bothering to tell him to shut up.

Cillian looks at Ben. "We're gonna have to do it now."

"I know," Ben says.

"What's going on?" I say again, all loudlike. "Do what now?" I twist away from Ben and stand looking at them both.

Ben and Cillian take another look at each other and then back at me. "You have to leave Prentisstown," Ben says.

My eyeballs go back and forth twixt theirs but they're not letting nothing go in their Noise 'cept general worry. "What do you mean I have to leave Prentisstown?" I say. "There ain't nowhere else on New World hut Prentisstown."

They take yet another look at each other.

"Stop doing that!" I say.

"Come on," Cillian says. "We've already got yer bag packed."

"How can you already have my bag packed?"

Cillian says to Ben, "We probably don't have much time."

And Ben says to Cillian, "He can go down by the river."

And Cillian says to Ben, "You know what this means."

And Ben says to Cillian, "It doesn't change the plan."

"WHAT THE EFF IS GOING ON?" I roar, but I don't say "eff," now do I? Cuz it seems the situashun calls for something a little stronger. "WHAT EFFING PLAN?"

But they're still not getting mad.

Ben lowers his voice and I can see him trying to get his Noise into some kinda order and he says to me, "It's very, very important you keep what happened in the swamp outta yer Noise as best you can."

"Why? Are the spacks coming back to kill us?"

"Don't think about it!" Cillian snaps. "Cover it up, keep it deep and quiet, till yer so far outta town no one can hear you. Now, come on!"

And he takes off back toward the house, running, actually running.

"Come on, Todd," Ben says.

"Not till someone explains something."

"You'll get an explanashun," Ben says, taking me by the arm and pulling me along. "You'll get more than you ever wanted." And there's so much sadness to him when he says it that I don't say nothing more, just follow along running back to the house, Manchee barking his head off behind us.

By the time we make it back to the house, I'm expecting-

I don't know what I'm expecting. An army of Spackle coming outta the woods. A lineup of Mayor Prentiss's men with guns at the ready. The whole house burning down. I don't know. Ben and Cillian's Noise ain't making much sense, my own thoughts are boiling over like a volcano, and Manchee won't stop barking, so who can tell anything in all this racket?

But there's no one there. The house, our house, is just as it was, quiet and farm-like. Cillian busts in the back door, goes into the prayer room which we never use, and starts pulling boards up from the floor. Ben goes to the pantry and starts throwing dried foods and fruit into a cloth sack, then he goes to the toilet and takes out a small medipak and throws that in, too.

I just stand there like a doofus wondering just what in the effing blazes is going on.

I know what yer thinking: how can I not know if all day, every day I'm hearing every thought of the two men who run my house? That's the thing, tho. Noise is noise. It's crash and clatter and it usually adds up to one big mash of sound and thought and picture and half the time it's impossible to make any sense of it at all. Men's minds are messy places and Noise is like the active, breathing face of that mess. It's what's true and what's believed and what's imagined and what's fantasized and it says one thing and a completely opposite thing at the same time and even tho the truth is definitely in there, how can you tell what's true and what's not when yer getting everything?

The Noise is a man unfiltered, and without a filter, a man is just chaos walking.

"I ain't leaving," I say, as they keep doing their stuff. They don't pay me no mind. "I ain't leaving," I say again, as Ben steps past me into the prayer room to help Cillian lift up boards. They find what they're looking for and Cillian lifts out a rucksack, an old one I thought I'd lost. Ben opens the top and takes a quick peek thru and I can see some clothes of mine and something that looks like--

"Is that a book?" I say. "You were sposed to burn those ages ago."

But they're ignoring me and the air has just stopped right there as Ben takes it outta the rucksack and he and Cillian look at it and I see that it's not quite a book, more a journal type thing with a nice leather cover and when Ben thumbs thru it, the pages are cream-colored and filled with handwriting.

Ben closes it like it's an important thing and he wraps it inside a plastic bag to protect it and puts it in the rucksack.

They both turn to me.

"I ain't going nowhere," I say.

And there's a knock on the front door.

For a second, nobody says nothing, everyone just freezes. Manchee's got so many things he wants to bark that nothing comes out for a minute till he finally barks "Door!" but Cillian grabs him by the collar with one hand and by the maul with the other, shutting him up. We all look up at each other, wondering what to do next.

There's another knock and then a voice comes thru the walls, "I know yer in there."

"Damn and blast," Ben says.

"Davy ruddy Prentiss," Cillian says.

That's Mr. Prentiss Jr. The man of the law.

"Do you not think I can hear yer Noise?" Mr. Prentiss Jr. says thru the door. "Benison Moore. Cillian Boyd." The voice makes a little pause. "Todd Hewitt."

"Well, so much for hiding," I say, crossing my arms, still a little annoyed at it all.

Cillian and Ben look at each other again, then Cillian lets go of Manchee, says "Stay here" to both of us and heads for the door. Ben shoves the sack of food into the rucksack and ties it shut. He hands it to me. "Put this on," he whispers.

I don't take it at first but he gestures with a serious look so I take it and put it on. It weighs a ton.

We hear Cillian open the front door. "What do you want, Davy?"

"That's Sheriff Prentiss to you, Cillian."

"We're in the middle of lunch, Davy," Cillian says. "Come back later."

"I don't think I will. I think I need to have a word with young Todd."

Ben looks at me, worry in his Noise.

"Todd's got farmwork," Cillian says. "He's just leaving out the back. I can hear him go."

And these are instructions for me and Ben, ain't they? But I ruddy well want to hear what's going on and I ignore Ben's hand on my shoulder trying to pull me toward the back door.

"You take me for a fool, Cillian?" Mr. Prentiss Jr. says.

"Do you really want an answer to that, Davy?"

"I can hear his Noise not twenty feet behind you. Ben's, too." We hear a shift in the mood. "I just want to talk to him. He ain't in no trouble."

"Why you got a rifle then, Davy?" Cillian asks and Ben squeezes my shoulder, probably without even thinking.

Mr. Prentiss Jr.'s voice and Noise both change again. "Bring him out, Cillian. You know why I'm here. Seems like a funny little word floated outta yer boy into town all innocentlike and we just want to see what it's all about, that's all."

"'We?'" Cillian says.

"His Honor the Mayor would like a word with young Todd." Mr. Prentiss Jr. raises his voice. "Y'all come out now, you hear? Ain't no trouble going on. Just a friendly chat."

Ben nods his head at the back door all firmlike and there ain't no arguing with him this time. We start stepping

toward it slowly, but Manchee's kept his trap shut for just about as long as he can bear and barks, "Todd?"

"Tall ain't thinking about sneaking out the back way, are ya?" Mr. Prentiss Jr. calls. "Outta my way, Cillian."

"Get off my property, Davy," Cillian says.

"I ain't telling you twice."

"I believe you've already told me about three times, Davy, so if yer threatening, it ain't working."

There's a pause but the Noise from them both gets louder and Ben and I know what's coming next and suddenly everything's moving fast and we hear a loud thump, followed quick by another two, and me and Ben and Manchee are running to the kitchen but when we get there, it's over. Mr. Prentiss Jr. is on the floor, holding his mouth, blood already coming from it. Cillian's got Mr. Prentiss Jr.'s rifle in his hands and is pointing it at Mr. Prentiss Jr.

"I said get off my property, Davy," he says.

Mr. Prentiss Jr. looks at him, then looks at us, still holding his bloody mouth. Like I say, he ain't barely two years older than me, barely able to even get a sentence out without his voice breaking, but he's had his birthday to be a man so there he is, our sheriff.

The blood from his mouth is getting on the little brown hairs he calls a mustache and everyone else calls nothing.

"You know this answers the asking, doncha?" He spits some blood and a tooth onto our floor. "You know this ain't the end." He looks right at my eye. "You found something, dincha, boy?"

Cillian aims the rifle at his head. "Out," he says.

"We got plans for you, boy." Mr. Prentiss Jr. smiles

bloodily at me and gets to his feet. "The boy who's last. One more month, ain't it?"

I look to Cillian but all he does is cock the rifle loudly, getting his point across.

Mr. Prentiss Jr. looks back at us, spits again, and says, "Be seeing you," trying to sound tough but his voice squeaks and he takes off as fast he can back to the town.

Cillian slams the door behind him. "Todd's gotta go now. Back thru the swamp."

"I know," Ben says. "I was hoping-"

"Me, too," Cillian says.

"Whoa, whoa," I say, "I ain't going back to the swamp. There's Spackle there!"

"Keep yer thoughts quiet," Cillian says. "That's more important than you know."

"Well, since I don't know nothing, that ain't hard," I say. "I ain't going nowhere till someone tells me what's going on!"

"Todd-" Ben starts.

"They'll be coming back, Todd," Cillian says. "Davy Prentiss will come back and he won't be alone and we won't be able to protect you from all of them at once."

"But-"

"No arguing!" Cillian says.

"Come on, Todd," Ben says. "Manchee's gonna have to go with you."

"Oh, man, this just gets better," I say.

"Todd," Cillian says and I look at him and he's changed a little. There's something new in his Noise, a sadness, a sadness like grief. "Todd," he says again, then suddenly he grabs me and hugs me to him as hard as he can. It's too rough and

I bash my cut lip on his collar and say "Ow!" and push him away.

"You may hate us for this, Todd," he says, "but try to believe it's only cuz we love you, all rightr ¹ "

"No," I say, "it's not all right. It's not all right at all."

But Cillian's not listening, as usual. He stands up and says to Ben, "Go, run, I'll hold 'em off as long as possible."

"I'll come back a different way," Ben says, "see if I can throw 'em off the trail."

They clasp hands for a long minute, then Ben looks at me, says "Come on" and as he's dragging me outta the room to get to the back door, I see Cillian pick up the rifle again and he glances up at me and catches my eye and there's a look to him, a look written all over him and his Noise that this is a bigger good-bye than it even seems, that this is it, the last time he ever expects to see me and I open my mouth to say something but then the door closes on him and he's gone.

THE THINGS YOU KNOW

I 'LL GET YOU TO THE RIVER," Ben says as we hurry across our fields for the second time this morning. "You can follow it down to where it meets the swamp."

"There ain't no path that way, Ben," I say, "and there's crocs everywhere. You trying to get me killed?"

He looks back at me, his eyes all level, but he keeps on hurrying. "There's no other way, Todd."

"Crocs! Swamp! Quiet! Poo!" Manchee barks.

I've stopped even asking what's going on since nobody seems to want to tell me nothing so we just keep on moving past the sheep, still not in their paddocks and now maybe never getting there. "Sheep!" they say, watching us pass. On we go, past the main barn, down one of the big irrigashun tracks, turning right at a smaller one, heading toward where the wilderness starts, which pretty much means the beginning of the rest of this whole empty planet.

Ben don't start talking again till we get to the tree line. "There's food in yer rucksack to last you for a bit but you should make it stretch as far as you can, eating what fruit you find and anything you can hunt."

"How long do I gotta make it last?" I ask. "How long till I can come back?"

Ben stops. We're just inside the trees. The river's a hundred feet away but you can hear it cuz this is where it starts rushing downhill to get to the swamp.

Suddenly it feels like just about the loneliest place in the whole wide world.

"You ain't coming back, Todd," Ben says, quietly. "You can't."

"Why not?" I say and my voice comes out all mewing like a kitten but I can't help it. "What'd I do, Ben?"

Ben comes up to me. "You didn't do anything, Todd. You didn't do anything at all." He hugs me real hard and I can feel my chest start to press again and I'm so confused and frightened and angry. Nothing was different in the world this morning when I got outta bed and now here I am being sent away and Ben and Cillian acting like I'm dying and it ain't fair and I don't know why it ain't fair but it just ain't fair.

"I know it ain't fair," Ben says, pulling himself away and looking me hard in the face. "But there is an explanashun." He turns me around and opens my rucksack and I can feel him taking something out.

The book.

I look at him and look away. "You know I don't read too good, Ben," I say, embarrassed and stupid.

He crouches down a bit so we're truly face-to-face. His Noise ain't making me comfortable at all.

"I know," he says, gentlelike. "I always meant to try and spend more time-" He stops. He holds out the book again. "It's yer ma's," he says. "It's her journal, starting from the day you were born, Todd." He looks down at it. "Till the day she died."

My Noise opens wide.

My ma. My ma's own book.

Ben runs his hand over the cover. "We promised her we'd keep you safe," he says. "We promised her and then we had to put it outta our minds so there was nothing in our Noise, nothing that would let anyone know what we were gonna do."

"Including me," I say.

"It had to be including you. If just a little bit got into yer Noise and then into the town ..." He don't finish.

"Like the silence I found in the swamp today," I say. "Like that getting into town and causing all this havoc."

"No, that was a surprise." He looks up at the sky, like he's telling it just how completely a surprise it all was. "No one woulda guessed that happening."

"It's dangerous, Ben. I could feel it."

But all he does is hold out the book again.

I start shaking my head. "Ben-"

"I know, Todd," he says, "but try yer best."

"No, Ben-"

He catches my eyes again. He holds em with his own. "Do you trust me, Todd Hewitt?"

I scratch my side. I don't know how to answer. "Course I do," I say, "or at least I did before you started packing bags I didn't know about for me."

He looks at me harder, his Noise focused like a sun ray. "Do you trust me?" he asks again.

I look at him and yeah, I do, even now. "I trust you, Ben."

"Then trust me when I say that the things you know right now, Todd, those things ain't true."

"Which things?" I ask, my voice rising a little. "Why can't you just tell me?"

"Cuz knowledge is dangerous," he says, as serious as I've ever seen him and when I look into his Noise to see what he's hiding, it roars up and slaps me back. "If I told you now, it would buzz in you louder than a hive at honey-gathering time and Mayor Prentiss would find you fast as he could spit. And you have to get away from here. You have to, as far away as you can."

"But where?" I say. "There ain't nowhere else!"

Ben takes a deep breath. "There is," he says. "There's somewhere else."

I don't say nothing to that.

"Folded in the front of the book," Ben says, "there's a map. I made it myself but don't look at it, not till yer well outta town, okay? Just go to the swamp. You'll know what to do from there."

But I can tell from his Noise that he's not at all sure I'll know what to do from there. "Or what I'm gonna find there, do you?"

He don't say nothing to that.

And I'm thinking.

"How did you know to have a bag already packed?" I say, stepping back a little. "If this thing in the swamp is so unexpected, why are you so ready to chuck me out into the wilderness today?"

"It was the plan all along, ever since you were little." I see him swallow, I hear his sadness everywhere. "As soon as you were old enough to make it on yer own-"

"You were just gonna throw me out so the crocs could eat me." I'm stepping back farther.

"No, Todd-" He moves forward, the book still in his hand. I step back again. He makes a gesture like, okay.

And he closes his eyes and opens up his Noise for me.

One month's time is the first thing it says-

And here comes my birthday -

The day I'll become a man-

And-

And there it all is-What happens--

What the other boys did who became men-All alone-All by themselves-

How every last bit of boyhood is killed off-

And-

And what actually happened to the people who-Holy crap-

And I don't want to say no more about it. And I can't say at all how it makes me feel.

I look at Ben and he's a different man than he always was, he's a different man than the one I've always known. Knowledge is dangerous.

"It's why no one tells you," he says. "To keep you from running."

"You wouldn't've protected me?" I say, mewing again (shut up).

"This is how we're protecting you, Todd," he says. "By getting you out. We had to be sure you could survive on yer own, that's why we taught you all that stuff. Now, Todd, you have to go-"

"If that's what's happening in a month, why wait this long? Why not take me away sooner?"

"We can't come with you. That's the whole problem. And we couldn't bear to send you off on yer own. To see you go. Not so young." He rubs the cover of the book with his fingers again. "And we were hoping there might be a miracle. One where we wouldn't have to-"

Lose you, says his Noise.

"But there ain't been no miracle," I say, after a second.

He shakes his head. He holds out the book. "I'm sorry," he says. "I'm so sorry it has to be this way."

And there's so much true sorrow in his Noise, so much worry and edginess, I know he's speaking true, I know he can't help what's happening and I hate it but I take the book from him and put it back in the plastic and into the rucksack. We don't say nothing more. What else is there to say? Everything and nothing. You can't say everything, so you don't say nothing.

He pulls me to him again, hitting my lip on his collar just like Cillian but this time I don't pull away. "Always remember," he says, "when yer ma died, you became our son, and I love you and Cillian loves you, always have, always will."

I start to say, "I don't wanna go," but it never comes out.

Cuz BANG!! goes the loudest thing I ever heard in Prentisstown, like something's blowing right up, right on up to the sky.

And it can only be coming from our farm.

Ben lets me go real quick. He ain't saying nothing but his Noise is screaming Cillian all over the place.

"I'll come back with you," I say. "I'll help you fight."

"No!" Ben shouts. "You have to get away. Promise me. Go thru the swamp and get away."

I don't say nothing for a second.

"Promise me," Ben says again, demanding it this time.

"Promise!" Manchee barks and there's fear even in that.

"I promise," I say.

Ben reaches behind his back and unclasps something. He wriggles it for a second or two before it comes unlatched completely. He hands it to me. It's his hunting knife, the big ratchety one with the bone handle and the serrated edge that cuts practically everything in the world, the knife I was hoping to get for the birthday when I became a man. It's still in its belt, so I can wear it myself.

"Take it," he says. "Take it with you to the swamp. You may need it."

"I never fought a Spackle before, Ben."

He still holds out the knife and so I take it.

There's another BANG from the farm. Ben looks back

toward it, then back to me. "Go. Follow the river down to the swamp and out. Run as fast as you can and you'd better damn well not turn back, Todd Hewitt." He takes my arm and grips it hard. "If I can find you, I'll find you, I swear it," he says. "But you keep going, Todd. You keep yer promise."

This is it. This is good-bye. A good-bye I wasn't even looking for.

"Ben-"

"Go!" he shouts and takes off, looking back once as he runs and then racing off back to the farm, back to what-ever's happening at the end of the world.

THE KNIFE IN FRONT OF ME

C 'MON, MANCHEE," I say, turning to run, tho every bit of me wants to follow Ben as he's running cross the fields a different way, just like he said, to confuse anyone out looking for Noise.

I stop for a second when I hear a bunch of smaller bangs from the direkshun of the house which gotta be rifle shots and I think of the rifle that Cillian took from Mr. Prentiss Jr. and all the rifles that Mayor Prentiss and his men have locked away in the town and how all those guns against Cillian's stolen rifle and the few others we got in the house ain't gonna be much of a fight for very long and it gets me to wondering what the bigger bangs were and I realize they were probably Cillian blowing up the generators to confuse the men and make everyone's Noise so loud they can't hear even the whisper of mine way out here.

All this for me to get away.

"C'mon, Manchee," I say again and we run the last few feet to the river. Then we take a right and start following the river downhill, keeping away from the rushes at the water's edge.

The rushes where the crocs live.

I take the knife from its sheath and I keep it in my hand as we move along fast.

"What's on, Todd?" Manchee keeps barking, which is his version of "What's going on?"

"I don't know, Manchee. Shut up so I can think."

The rucksack's banging into my back as we run but we keep going as best we can, kicking thru river shrubs and jumping over fallen logs.

I'll come back. That's what I'll do. I'll come back. They said I'd know what to do and now I do know. I'll go to the swamp and kill the Spackle if I can and then I'll come back and help Cillian and Ben and then we can all get away to this somewhere else Ben was talking about.

Yeah, that's what I'll do.

"Promised, Todd," Manchee says, sounding worried as the ridge we're going along is getting closer and closer to the rushes.

"Shut up," I say. "I promised to keep on going but maybe keep on going means coming back first."

"Todd?" Manchee says and I don't believe it either.

We've gotten outta hearing distance from the farm and the river veers away east a little before it enters the top of the swamp so it's taking us away from the town, too, and after a minute there ain't nothing following us as we run 'cept my Noise and Manchee's Noise and the sound of the

running river which is just loud enough to cover the Noise of a hunting croc. Ben says that's "evolushun" but he says not to think about it too much around Aaron.

I'm breathing heavy and Manchee's panting like he's about to keel over but we don't stop. The sun is starting to set, but it's still light as anything, light that don't feel like it's going to hide you. The ground is flattening out and we're getting down closer to river level as it all starts turning to marsh. Everything's getting muddier and it's making us slow down. There's more rushes, too, can't be helped.

"Listen for crocs," I say to Manchee. "Keep yer ears open."

Cuz the water from the river is slowing and if you can keep yer own Noise quiet enough you can start to hear them out there. The ground's got even wetter. We're barely making walking pace now, sloshing thru mud. I grip the knife harder and hold it out in front of me.

"Todd?" Manchee says.

"Do you hear them?" I whisper, trying to watch my step and watch the rushes and watch out for Manchee all at the same time.

"Crocs, Todd," Manchee says, pretty much as quiet as he can bark.

I stop and I listen hard.

And out there in the rushes, out there in more than one place, I can hear 'em. Flesh, they're saying. Flesh and feast and tooth.

"Crap," I say.

"Crocs," Manchee says again.

"C'mon," I say and we start splashing along, cuz we're in muck now. My shoes start sinking with each step and

water's coming up over the top of 'em and there's no way to go 'cept thru the rushes. I start swinging the knife as we go, trying to cut any rush that's in front of me.

I look ahead and I can see where we're going, up and to the right. We've made it past the town and it's the part where the wild fields come down by the school and meet up with the swamp and if we get thru this marshy part here we'll be on safe ground and can get onto the paths that head into the dark of the swamp.

Was it really only this morning I was here last?

"Hurry up, Manchee," I say. "Almost there."

Flesh and feast and tooth and I swear it's getting closer.

"C'mon!"

Flesh

"Todd?"

I'm cutting my way thru rushes and pulling my feet outta mud and flesh and feast and TOOTH. And then I hear Whirler dog.

And I know we're done for. "Run!" I yell.

And we run and Manchee lets out a frightened yelp and leaps past me but I see a croc rear up outta the rushes in front of him and it jumps for him but Manchee's so scared he jumps even higher, higher than he really knows how, and the croc's teeth snap on empty air and it lands with a splash next to me looking mighty pissed off and I hear its Noise hiss Whirler boy and I m running and it jumps for me and I'm not even thinking and I'm turning and I'm pushing my hand up and the croc comes crashing down on top

of me and its mouth is open and its claws are out and I think I'm about to be dead and I'm thrashing my way back outta the muck up onto the dry part and it's on its hind legs coming after me outta the rushes and it takes a minute of me yelling and of Manchee barking his head off before I realize that it's not actually coming after me no more, that the croc's dead, that my new knife is right thru its head, still stuck in the croc and the only reason the croc's still thrashing is cuz I'm still thrashing and I shake the croc off the knife and the croc falls to the ground and I sort of just fall over too in celebrayshun of not being dead.

And it's when I'm gasping for air from the rush of my blood and Manchee's barking and barking and we're both laughing from relief that I realize that we've been too loud ourselves to hear something important.

"Going somewhere, young Todd?"

Aaron. Standing right over me.

Before I can do nothing he punches me in the face.

I fall backward onto the ground, the rucksack digging into my back and making me look like an upturned turtle. My cheek and my eye are just singing with pain and I haven't even moved properly before Aaron's grabbing me by my shirtfront and the skin beneath and lifting me to my feet. I yell out from how much it hurts.

Manchee barks an angry "Aaron!" and goes for Aaron's legs, but Aaron doesn't even look before kicking him outta the way hard.

Aaron's holding me up to look him in the face. I can only keep the one non-painful eye open to meet his.

"Just what in the name of God's bounteous, glorified Eden are you doing down here in the swamp, Todd Hewitt?" he says, his breath smelling like meat and his Noise the scariest kinda crazy you never wanna hear. "Yer sposed to be at yer farm right now, boy."

With his free hand, he punches me in the stomach. I try to bend over with the pain of it but he's still holding on to my shirtfront and the skin below.

"You gotta go back," he says. "There's things you need to see."

I'm gasping for breath but the way he says it catches my ear and some of the flickers I'm catching in his Noise make it so I can see a little bit of the truth.

"You sent them," I say. "It wasn't me they heard. It was you."

"Smart boys make useless men," he says, twisting his gripping hand.

I cry out but I ruddy well keep talking, too. "They didn't hear the quiet in my Noise. They heard it in yer Noise and you sent them to me to keep them from coming after you."

"Oh, no, Todd," he says, "they heard it in yer Noise. I just made sure they did. I made sure they knew who was responsible for bringing danger to our town." He grits his teeth into a wild smile beneath his beard. "And who should be rewarded for his efforts."

"Yer crazy," I say and boy is it ever true and boy do I wish it wasn't.

His smile falls and his teeth clench harder. "It's mine, Todd," he says. "Mine."

I don't know what this means but I don't stop to think about it cuz I realize instead that both Aaron and I have forgotten one important thing.

I never let go of the knife.

A whole buncha things happen at once.

Aaron hears knife in my Noise and realizes his mistake. He pulls back his free fist to make another punch.

I pull back my knife hand and I wonder if I can actually stab him.

There's a breaking sound from the rushes and Manchee barks, "Croc!"

And all at the same time, we hear Whirler man.

Before Aaron can even turn, the croc is on him, clamping its teeth onto his shoulder and grabbing him with its claws and pulling him back toward the rushes. Aaron lets go of me and I fall to the ground again, clutching at all the bruises he's left on my chest. I look up and I see Aaron thrashing in the muck now, fighting with the croc and the fins on the backs of other crocs heading his way, too.

"Outta here!" Manchee's barking, almost shrieking.

"Too effing right," I say and I stumble to my feet, the rucksack knocking me a little off balance and my hurt eye trying to peel open but we don't stop and we run and we run and we run.

We get out of the marshes and run along the bottom of the fields to the start of the swamp path and we run into the swamp along it and when we get to the log that Manchee always needs help over he just sails right over it without even stopping and I'm right behind him and we're running our way to the Spackle buildings just like we were this morning.

And the knife is still in my hand and my Noise is thudding so loud and I'm so frightened and hurt and mad that I know beyond any shadow of a thought that I am going to find the Spackle hiding in his Noise hole and I am going to kill him dead dead dead for everything that's happened today.

"Where is it?" I ask Manchee. "Where's the quiet?"

Manchee's sniffing away like mad, running from building to building, and I'm doing my best to calm my Noise but there don't seem any chance of that.

"Hurry!" I say. "Before it runs-"

And it's barely outta my mouth before I hear it. The rip in the Noise, as big and horrible as life itself, I can hear it a little bit away, behind the Spackle buildings, behind some bushes.

It ain't getting away this time.

"Quiet!" Manchee barks, all keyed up, and he runs past the buildings and into the bushes.

And the quiet moves, too, and tho I can feel the pressure in my chest again and the terrible mournful things coming into my eyes, this time I don't stop, this time I run after my dog and I don't stop and I take in my breath and I swallow away the pressure and I wipe the water from my eyes and I grip the knife and I can hear Manchee barking and I can hear the silence and it's just around this tree just around this tree just around this tree and I'm yelling and I'm going round the tree and I'm running at the silence and my teeth are bared and I'm screaming and Manchee's barking and-

And I stop.

I stop right there in my tracks.

I don't, I do absolutely not put down the knife.

There it is, looking back at us, breathing heavy, crouched at the base of a tree, cowering from Manchee, its eyes practically dying from fright but still trying to offer up a pitiful threat with its arms.

And I just stop.

I hold my knife.

"Spackle!" Manchee barks, tho he's too chicken to attack now that I've held back. "Spackle! Spackle! Spackle!"

"Shut up, Manchee," I say. "Spackle!"

"I said shut up!" I shout, which stops him.

"Spackle?" Manchee says, unsure of things now.

I swallow, trying to get rid of the pressure in my throat, the unbelievable sadness that comes and comes as I look at it looking back at me. Knowledge is dangerous and men lie and the world keeps changing, whether I want it to or not.

Cuz it ain't a Spackle.

"It's a girl," I say.

It's a girl.

IF THERE WAS

IT 'S A GIRL," I say again. I'm still catching my breath, still feeling the pressure on my chest, definitely still holding the knife way out in front of me. A girl.

It's looking back at us like we're gonna kill it. It's hunched down in a little ball, trying to make itself as small as possible, only taking its eyes off Manchee to snatch quick glances of me.

Of me and my knife.

Manchee's huffing and puffing, his back fur all ridged, hopping around like the ground is hot, looking as charged up and confused as I am, tho completely hopeless about keeping in any way cool.

"What's girl?" he barks. "What's girl?"

By which he means, "What's a girl?"

"What's girl?" Manchee barks again and when the girl looks like it might be about to make a leap back over the

large root where it's huddling, Manchee's bark turns into a fierce growl, "Stay, stay, stay, stay, stay ..."

"Good dog," I say, tho I don't know why it's good what he's doing but what else can you say? This makes no sense, no sense at all, and everything feels like it's starting to slip, like the world is a table tilted on its side and everything on it is tipping over.

I am Todd Hewitt, I think to myself but who knows if that's even true anymore?

"Who are you?" I finally say, if it can even hear me over all my raging Noise and Manchee's nervous breakdown. "Who are you?" I say, louder and clearer. "What are you doing here? Where did you come from?"

It looks at me, finally, for more than just a second, taking its eyes off Manchee. It looks at my knife, then it looks at my face above my knife.

She looks at me.

She does.

She.

I know what a girl is. Course I do. I seen 'em in the Noise of their fathers in town, mourned like their wives but not nearly so often. I seen 'em in vids, too. Girls are small and polite and smiley. They wear dresses and their hair is long and it's pulled into shapes behind their heads or on either side. They do all the inside-the-house chores, while boys do all the outside. They reach womanhood when they turn thirteen, just like boys reach manhood, and then they're women and they become wives.

That's how New World works, or at least that's how Prentisstown works. Worked. Was meant to, anyhow, but

there ain't no girls. They're all dead. They died with their mothers and their grandmothers and their sisters and their aunties. They died in the months after I was born. All of them, every single one. But here one is.

And its hair ain't long. Her hair. Her hair ain't long. And she ain't wearing no dress, she's wearing clothes that look like way newer versions of mine, so new they're almost like a uniform, even tho they're torn and muddy, and she ain't that small, she's my size, just, by the looks of her, and she's sure as all that's unholy not smiley.

No, not smiley at all.

"Spackle?" Manchee barks quietly.

"Would you effing well shut up?" I say.

So how do I know? How do I know it's a girl?

Well, for one, she ain't no Spackle. Spackle looked like men with everything a bit swelled up, everything a bit longer and weirder than on a man, their mouths a bit higher than they should be and their ears and eyes way, way different. And spacks grew their clothes right on their bodies, like lichens you could trim away to whatever shape you needed. Product of swamp dwelling, according to another Ben-best-guess and she don't look like that and her clothes are normal and so there ain't no way she's a Spackle.

And for two, I just know. I just do. I can't tell you but I look and I see and I just know. She don't look like the girls I seen in vids or in Noise and I never seen no girl in the flesh but there she is, she's a girl and that's that. Don't ask me. Something about her shape, something about her smell, something I don't know but it's there and she's a girl.

If there was a girl, that's what she'd be.

And she ain't another boy. She just ain't. She ain't me. She ain't nothing like me at all. She's something completely other else altogether and I don't know how I know it but I know who I am, I am Todd Hewitt, and I know what I am not and I am not her.

She's looking at me. She's looking at my face, in my eyes. Looking and looking.

And I'm not hearing nothing.

Oh, man. My chest. It's like falling.

"Who are you?" I say again but my voice actually catches, like it breaks up cuz I'm so sad (shut up). I grit my teeth and I get a little madder and I say it yet again. "Who are you?" and I hold out the knife a little farther. With my other arm, I have to wipe my eyes real fast.

Something's gotta happen. Someone's gotta move. Someone's gotta do something.

And there ain't no someone but me, still, whatever the world's doing.

"Can you talk?" I say.

She just looks back at me.

"Quiet," Manchee barks.

"Shut it, Manchee," I say. "I need to think."

And she's still just looking back at me. With no Noise at all.

What do I do? It ain't fair. Ben told me I'd get to the swamp and I'd know what to do but I don't know what to do. They didn't say nothing about a girl, they didn't say nothing about why the quiet makes me ache so much I can barely stop from ruddy weeping, like I'm missing something so bad

I can't even think straight, like the emptiness ain't in her, it's in me and there ain't nothing that's ever gonna fix it.

What do I do?

She seems like maybe she's calming down. She's not shaking as much as she was, her arms aren't up so high, and she's not looking like she's about to run off at the first opportunity, tho how can you know for sure when a person's got no Noise? How can they be a person if they ain't got no Noise?

And can she hear me? Can she? Can a person with no Noise hear it at all?

I look at her and I think, as loud and clear as I can, Can you hear me? Can you?

But she don't change her face, she don't change her look.

"Okay," I say, and I take a step back. "Okay. You just stay there, okay? You just stay right there."

I take a few more steps back but I keep my eyes on her and she keeps her eyes on me. I bring my knife arm down and I slide it outta one strap of the rucksack, then I lean over and drop the rucksack to the ground. I keep the knife in one hand and with the other I open up the rucksack and fish out the book.

It's heavier than you'd think a thing made of words could be. And it smells of leather. And there's pages and pages of my ma's--

That'll have to wait.

"You watch her, Manchee," I say.

"Watch!" he barks.

I look inside the front cover and there's the paper folded

in just like Ben said. I unfold it. There's a hand-drawn map on one side and then a whole buncha writing on the back but it's all a big block of letters which I ain't got the calmness of Noise to even try right now so I just look at the map.

Our house is right at the top and the town just below with the river Manchee and I came down off to one side leading into the swamp and that's where we are now. But there's more to it, ain't there? The swamp keeps going till it starts being a river again and there's arrows drawn along the riverbank so that's where Ben is wanting me and Manchee to go and I follow the arrows with my fingers and they lead right outta the swamp, they lead right to-

WHUMPH The world goes bright for a second as something clubs me upside the head, right on the sore spot where Aaron punched me, and I fall over but as I'm falling I swing the knife up and I hear a little yelp of pain and I catch myself before I fall all the way down and I turn, sitting down on the ground hard, holding the back of my knife hand to the pain in my head but looking at where the attack came from and it's here that I learn my very first lesson: Things with no Noise can sneak right up on you. Sneak right up on you like they ain't even there.

The girl is on her butt, too, sitting on the ground away from me, holding on to one of her upper arms with her hand, blood coming from twixt her fingers. She's dropped the stick she hit me with and her face is all collapsed in on itself with what she must be feeling from that cut.

"WHAT THE HELL D'YOU DO THAT FOR?" I shout, trying not to touch my face too hard. Man, am I sick of being hit today.

The girl just looks at me, her forehead still creased, holding her cut.

Which is kinda bleeding a lot.

"Stick, Todd!" Manchee barks.

"And where the hell were your ¹ " I say to him.

"Poo, Todd."

I make a Gah! sound and kick some dirt at him. He scrabbles back, then starts sniffing at some bushes like there ain't nothing unusual going on in the world. Dogs got attenshun spans about as long as a matchstick. Idiot things.

It's starting to get dark now, the sun really setting, the already dark swamp getting even darker, and I still don't have no answer. Time keeps passing and I ain't sposed to wait here and I ain't sposed to go back and there ain't sposed to he a girl.

Boy, that cut really is bleeding on her.

"Hey," I say, my voice shaky from the charge running through me. I am Todd Hewitt, I think. I am almost a man. "Hey," I say again, trying to be a little calmer.

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