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the road ahead," Mr. Prentiss Jr. sneers, "but here you are, in the real honest-to-God flesh."

"Eff you," I say and do you think I say eff?

I've still got the knife in my hand.

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

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

"Yer little lady sure didn't show you no loyalty, now did she?" he says, hopping off his horse, calming it with his free hand. Manchee growls at him but Mr. Prentiss Jr. just laughs. "What happened to its tail?"

Manchee jumps, his teeth bared, but Mr. Prentiss Jr. is faster, kicking him away with a vicious boot to the face. Manchee yelps and cowers in the bushes.

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

"You shut up," I say, clenching my teeth.

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

"You stop talking bout her," I spit. I'm still on my belly and my legs are still tied.

But I find I can bend my knees.

His Noise gets uglier, louder, but his face is all blank like a terror from a dream. "What you do, Todd," he says, squatting down to get closer to me, "is you keep the ones that're whores and you shoot the ones that're not."

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He leans even closer. I can see the pathetic hairs on his upper lip, not even made darker by the rain coming down. He's only two years older than me. Only two years bigger.

Snake? thinks the horse.

I put my hands slowly down on the ground.

I push a little into the mud.

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

Which is when I jump.

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

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

I look round and BAM! Mr. Prentiss Jr. hits me across the bridge of the nose with his fist but I don't fall and he yells "You piece of--" and I swing my arm out with the knife in it and I make him jump back and I swing it again, water pouring outta my eyes from both the punch and the rain and he steps away from me, looking for his gun and limping a little and he sees it in the mud and he turns his body to

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fetch it and I'm not thinking at all and I jump on him, knocking him back down and he hits me with his elbow but I don't fall off and my Noise is screaming and his Noise is screaming.

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

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

And him and his stupid pathetic nonmustache smile. I knee him again twixt his legs.

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

"My father wants you," he finally says.

"Why?" I say. "Why does he want us?"

"Us?" His eyes go wide. "There's no effing us. He wants you, Todd. Just you."

I can't believe this. "What?" I say. "Why?"

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

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

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

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

"Shut up," I say.

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

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

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

"I WILL," I shout. "Ill KILL you!"

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

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

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

He says-

He says this--

"You wanna hear how Ben and Cillian screamed for mercy before I shot 'em twixt the eyes?" And my Noise buzzes red. And I clench the knife to strike at him. And I'm going to kill him. I'm going to kill him. And-And-And-

And right at the top of my swing-Right at the moment when I start to bring it down-Right at the moment when the power is mine to command and do with as I please-I hesitate - Again-- I hesitate-Only for a second--

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But goddam me-

Goddam me forever and forever--

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

As easy as candy from a baby.

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

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24

THE DEATH OF THE WORTHLESS COWARD

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

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

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

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

"Just finish it," I mumble into the mud.

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

"Just FINISH IT!" I shout up to him.

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

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

"But there's lots of things you can do with a knife," he says, "without killing a man."

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

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

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

I'm sorry, Ben.

I'm so, so sorry.

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

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

I close my eyes.

And I feel a wash of silence flow over me from behind. My eyes snap open.

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

"Run!" I yell, without turning around. "Get away from here."

She ignores me. "Step back," I hear her say to Mr. Prentiss Jr. "I'm warning you."

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

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

And SMACKFLASHH

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

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

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

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

"Todd-" Viola says.

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

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"Shouldn't be," she says. "It was just the voltage from a-" I raise the knife. "Todd, no!"

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

"You're not a killer, Todd," she says.

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

"Todd," she says, her hands out, her voice calming.

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

"Todd, no, listen to me," she says, coming closer. "Listen to me!" I look at her. My Noise is so ugly and my face so twisted she hesitates a little but then she takes another step forward. "Listen to me while I tell you something."

And then out pour more words from her than I ever heard before.

"When you found me, back there in the swamp, I had been running from that man, from Aaron, for four days, and you were only the second person I'd ever seen on this planet and you came at me with that same knife and for all I knew you were exactly like him."

Her hands are still up, like I'm Mr. Prentiss Jr.'s long-gone horse in need of calming.

"But before I even understood what was going on with the Noise and with Prentisstown and with whatever your story was, I could tell about you. People can tell, Todd. We can see that you won't hurt us. That's not you."

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"You hit me in the face with a branch," I say.

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

I don't say nothing.

"And I was right," she says. "You bandaged my arm. You rescued me from Aaron when you didn't have to. You took me out of the swamp where I would have been killed. You stood up for me to that man in the orchard. You came with me when we needed to leave Farbranch."

"No," I say, my voice low, "no, yer not reading the story right. We're only having to run cuz I couldn't-"

"I think I'm finally understanding the story Todd," she says. "Why are they coming after you so fiercely? Why is a whole army chasing you across towns and rivers and plains and the whole stupid planet?" She points to Mr. Prentiss Jr. "I heard what he said. Don't you wonder why they want you so badly?"

The pit in me is just getting blacker and darker. "Cuz I'm the one who don't fit."

"Exactly!"

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

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

I blink. "Huh?"

She takes another step forward. "If they can turn you into the kind of man they want--"

"Boy," I say. "Not a man yet."

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She waves this away. "If they can snuff out that part of you that's good, the part of you that won't kill, then they win, don't you see? If they can do it to you, they can do it to anyone. And they win. They win!"

She's near me now and she reaches out her hand and puts it on my arm, the one still holding the knife.

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

I clench my teeth. "He killed Ben and Cillian."

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

We look down at him. He's not twitching no more and the steam is starting to blow away.

"I know this kind of boy," she says. "We have this kind of boy even on spaceships. He's a liar."

"He's a man."

"How can you keep saying that?" she asks, her voice finally snappy. "How can you keep saying that he's a man and you're not? Just because of some stupid birthday? If you were where I came from you'd already be fourteen and a month!"

"I'm not where yer from!" I shout. "I'm from here and that's how it works here!"

"Well, how it works here is wrong." She lets go of my arm and kneels down by Mr. Prentiss Jr. "We'll tie him up. We'll tie him up good and tight and we'll get the heck out of here, all right?"

I don't let go of the knife.

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

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She looks up and around. "Where's Manchee?" Oh, no.

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

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

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

But I don't.

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

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

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

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

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She shrugs. "We just have to hope that Haven'll have something."

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

We leave. Mr. Prentiss Jr. was right about the stupidity of staying on the road, so we keep a hundred or so feet away from it on the nonriver side, trying to keep it in sight as best we can. We take turns carrying Manchee as the night passes.

We don't talk much neither.

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

If one of us falls, we all fall.

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

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

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

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

If I coulda killed Mr. Prentiss Jr. back at the farm, he

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wouldn't've led the Mayor's men to Ben and Cillian and wouldn't've lived to harm Manchee.

If I'd been any kinda killer, I could've stayed and helped Ben and Cillian defend themselves.

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

And that's a trade I'd make any day.

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

Watch me.

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

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

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

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

"Todd--" she says, but I stop her.

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

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

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

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

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

"Not yet," she says, worry in her voice. "I hope I-"

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

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

A fire burning.

Freshly caught fish hanging from a spit over it. A man leaning over a stone, scraping scales from another fish.

That man looking up as we step into his campsite.

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

He's a Spackle.

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25

KILLER

The world stops spinning.

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

There ain't no more Spackle.

They all died in the war.

There ain't no more Spackle.

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

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

Alien. As alien as you can be.

Holy crap.

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

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"Todd?" Viola says. "Don't move," I say.

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

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

Pictures of the knife now outstretched in my hand.

"Todd," Viola says, a small warning in her voice.

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

Feelings of fear.

I feel his fear.

Good.

My Noise turns red. "Todd," Viola says again. "Quit saying my name," I say.

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

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

I can see the Spackle picture it in his Noise.

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

"Don't," I say to him.

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

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But the second passes in a flash.

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

"Todd?" she says. "Put the knife down." And he makes his leap. I leap at the same time. (Watch me.)

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

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

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

I realize he's weaker than me.

"Todd, stop it!" I hear Viola call.

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

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"STOP IT!" Viola screams. "Can't you see how scared he is?"

"And well he should be!" I yell back.

Cuz there ain't no stopping my Noise now.

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

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

"Let go of me!" I yell.

"Please, Todd!" she yells back, pulling and twisting my

arm. "Stop this, please!"

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

Heading for his spear-Has his fingers on the end-

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

And I fall on him-

And I punch the knife into his chest.

It crunches as it goes in, turning to the side as it hits a bone and the Spackle screams the most terrible, terrible

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sound and dark red blood (red, it's red, they bleed red) sprays outta the wound and he brings a long arm up and scratches across my face and I pull back my arm and I stab him again and a long screeching breath comes outta his mouth with a loud gurgle and his arms and legs still scramble around him and he looks at me with his black, black eyes and his Noise filled with pain and bafflement and fear-

And I twist the knife -

And he won't die and he won't die and he won't die-And in a moan and a shudder he dies. And his Noise stops altogether.

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

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

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

The Spackle lays where I--

Where I killed him.

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

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

And then I throw up.

And I keep throwing up.

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

I keep my head to the ground. The world has stopped. The world is still stopped.

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

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

Viola don't say nothing.

"He woulda killed us," I say again.

"He was terrified)." Viola cries, her voice breaking. "Even I could see how scared he was."

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

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

"They killed everyone on New World," I say.

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

She don't say effing.

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

"Viola-"

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

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

And I turn around to the Spackle -

And I see the campsite -

And I see the fish on the lines -

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

(No no no, please no.)

And there's nothing left for me to throw up but I heave anyway-

And I'm a killer-- I'm a killer-- I'm a killer--

(Oh, please no) I'm a killer.

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

I squeeze my eyes shut tight.

And there's only blackness.

Only blackness and nothing.

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

From a long way away I can hear Viola saying my name. But it's so far away.

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

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I hear my name again.

From a far, far distance I feel a pull on my arm. It's only when I hear a squib of Noise not my own that I open my eyes.

"I think there's more of them out there," Viola whispers down near my ear.

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

"If they didn't want to kill us before," Viola says, "they'll sure want to now."

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

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

I throw it to the ground.

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

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

"Hurry," Viola says.

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

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

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

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

And I see her see my face changing.

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

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

CRACK and I fall and Manchee tumbles from my arms and I crash into the ground on my belly and my head is ringing so hard I can't even catch myself and the world goes wobbly and gray and full of only pain and I'm on the ground and everything is tilting and sliding and my arms and legs weigh too much to lift and my face is half in the mud but half turned up and I can see Aaron watching me on the ground and I see his Noise and Viola in it and I see him see my knife shining red

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in the mud and he picks it up and I try to crawl away but the weight of my body sticks me to the spot and I can only watch as he stands over me.

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

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26

THE END OF ALL THINGS

FALLING NO FALLING no please help me Falling The Knife The Knife Spackle spacks are dead, all spacks dead VIOLA sorry, please, sorry he's got a spear FALLING Please please Aaron, behind you! He's coming! no further use for you, boy Viola falling, Viola Eade Spackle the screaming and the blood and no WATCH ME watch me no please watch me he woulda killed us Ben please I'm sorry Aaron! Run! E-A-D-E More of them we have to get outta here FALLING falling dark blood The Knife dead run I'm a killer please no SPACKLE Viola Viola Viola--

"Viola!" I try to scream but it's blackness, it's blackness with no sound, blackness and I've fallen and I have no voice-

"Viola," I try again and there's water in my lungs and an ache in my gut and pain, pain in my-

"Aaron," I whisper to myself and no one. "Run, it's Aaron."

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And then I fall again and it's blackness ...

...

"Todd?"

...

"Todd?"

Manchee.

"Todd?"

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

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

"Todd?"

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

Aaron.

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

"Todd?" Manchee whimpers.

"I'm here, Manchee," I finally mutter but it comes up outta my chest like a growl held back by goo and it sets off more coughing-

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

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My back.

I stifle another cough and a horror feeling spreads out from my gut into the rest of me. The last thing I saw before-No.

Oh, no.

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

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

"Knife, Todd," he barks and there's worry all over him. "Back, Todd."

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

I am Todd Hewitt, I think, which is a mistake, cuz here comes all of it back, falling on me, dragging me down and the Spackle's blood and Viola's face frightened of me and Aaron coming outta the woods and taking her-

I start to weep but the pain from the grip of the weep is so bad that for a minute I feel paralyzed and a fire burns thru my arms and back and there's nothing to do but suffer till it goes.

Slowly, slowly, slowly, I start to uncurl one arm from beneath me. My head and back hurt so bad I think I pass out for a minute but I wake again and slowly, slowly, slowly reach my hand up and behind me, crawling my fingers up my wet filthy shirt and up the wet filthy rucksack which

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unbelievably I'm still wearing and up and back till there it is under my fingertips.

The handle of the knife. Sticking outta my back.

But I'd be dead.

I'd be dead.

Am I dead?

"Not dead, Todd," Manchee barks. "Sack! Sack!"

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

The book.

My ma's book.

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

(Like it did thru the Spackle.)

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

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

Manchee licks my face once more.

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"Good boy," I say, tho I don't know why.

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

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

But here's Manchee, licking away.

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

Aaron coulda killed me, coulda killed me so easy.

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

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

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

I let out a little moan.

That's why he left me alive. So I could live knowing that he took Viola. That's how he wins, ain't it? That's how he

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makes me suffer. Living and having the sight of him taking her forever in my Noise.

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

Cuz I have to find her.

"Viola," Manchee barks.

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

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

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

Cuz the song goes:

Early one morning just as the sun was rising, I heard a maiden call from the valley below. "Oh don't deceive me, oh never leave me."

I open my eyes.

Don't deceive me. Never leave me. I have to find her.

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I have to find her.

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

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

I open my eyes and I see her bag.

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

That bag so full of stupid and useful things.

My chest clenches and I cough painfully.

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

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

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

But where do I go?

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

"Viola?" Manchee barks, whimpering.

"I don't know, fella," I say. "Let me think."

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

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

I sigh and I know what I have to do.

"There ain't nothing for it," I say to Manchee. "We have to go back to the army."

"Todd?" he whines.

"There ain't nothing for it," I say again and I put everything outta my head but moving.

First things first. I need a new shirt.

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

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

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

But there's no time for further wondering.

I open the rucksack and take out the book.

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

I could still read it, still have it read.

If I ever deserve to.

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

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And then there's still the asking, ain't there? Where do I go?

I follow the road back to the army, that's where I go. I go to the army and somehow I save her, even if it's changing my place for hers.

And for that I can't go unarmed, can I? No, I can't.

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

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

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

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

"C'mon, Manchee." I loop Viola's bag as gingerly as I can over one shoulder.

Don't deceive me. Never leave me.

Time to go.

"We're gonna find her," I say.

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

Which might mean meeting them head-on.

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

I turn, trying to keep from seeing the campsite. "C'mon, boy."

"Todd!"

"I said c'mon, now. I mean it."

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

I turn more fully to him. "What'd you say?"

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

"What do you mean 'This way'?" I ask, a feeling in my chest.

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

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

He barks a bark of yes.

"You can smell her?"

"This way, Todd!"

"Not back to the road?" I say. "Not back to the army?"

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

"Yer sure?" I say. "You gotta be sure, Manchee. You gotta be."

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

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And toward Haven.

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

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27

ON WE GO

THIS WAY, TODD," Manchee barks, taking us round another outcropping.

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

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

But on we go.

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

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

"Yer sure?" I keep asking Manchee. "This way," he keeps barking.

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

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

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

And I try not to think about the Spackle's Noise and the

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fear that was in it or how surprised he musta been being killed for nothing more than being a fisherman or how the crunch felt up my arm when the knife went in him or how dark red his blood was flowing out onto me or the bafflement pouring outta him and into my Noise as he died as he died as he died as he-

I don't think about it.

On we go, on we go.

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

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

"Food?"

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

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

"Squirrel!" Manchee suddenly barks and tears around the trunk of a needly tree and into a mess of ferns beyond. I didn't even see the squirrel but I can hear Whirler dog and "Squirrel!" and Whirler- Whirler- Whirler - and then it stops short. Manchee jumps out with a waxy squirrel drooping in his mouth, bigger and browner than the ones from the swamp. He drops it on the ground in front of me, a gristly, bloody plop, and I ain't so hungry no more.

"Food?" he barks.

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"That's all right, boy." I look anywhere but the mess. "You can have it."

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

Keep moving, Todd Hewitt. Keep going.

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

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

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

I look out from our hilltop. The moons are high and I can see two long huts in two separate clearings on hillsides across the way. From one I can hear the murmuring ruckus of sleeping men's Noise. Julia ? and on horseback and

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tell him it ain't so and up the river past morning and lots of things that make no sense cuz dreaming Noise is the weirdest of all. From the other hut, there's silence, the aching silence of women, I can feel it even from here, men in one hut, women in another, which I guess is one way of solving the problem of sleeping, and the touch of the silence from the women's side makes me think of Viola and I have to keep my balance against a tree trunk for a minute.

But where there's people, there's food. "Can you find yer way back to the trail if we leave it?" I whisper to my dog, stifling a cough.

"Find trail," Manchee barks, seriously. "Yer sure?"

"Todd smell," he barks. "Manchee smell."

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

I can hear my own Noise spreading out into the world, hot and fusty, like the sweat that keeps pouring down my sides, and I try to keep it quiet and gray and flat, like Tam did, Tam who controlled his Noise better than any man in Prentisstown--

And there's yer proof.

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

We stop dead. My shoulders slump. It's still dream Noise I'm hearing but the word repeats thru the sleeping

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men like echoes down a valley. Prentisstown? and Prentisstown? and Prentisstown? like they don't know what the word means yet.

But they will when they wake.

Idiot.

"Let's go," I say, turning and scurrying back the way we came, back to our trail. "Food?" Manchee barks. Come on.

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

Faster, Todd. Get yer damn self moving.

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

I just have to.

(I'm sorry.)

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

"Todd?" Manchee mumbles, coming up to me.

"I'm fine, boy."

"Hot, Todd," he says, meaning me.

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I cough, my lungs rattling like rocks falling down a hill. Get up, Todd Hewitt. Get off yer goddam butt and get going.

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

Medicine.

Ben giving me medicine. I come back to myself.

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

Get up, you worthless piece of crap.

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

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

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

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"Okay," I say, breathing heavy and rubbing my knees with my hands. "Which way, Manchee?" On we go.

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

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

And I wish he'd never found us.

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

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

And I wish Ben was here right now.

And I wish I was back in Prentisstown.

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

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

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

"C'mon, Manchee," I say, turning round to pick up the bag again.

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

I never seen this kinda turtle before. Its shell is craggy

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and sharp, with a dark red streak going down either side. The turtle's got its shell all the way open to catch as much warmth as possible, its soft back fully exposed. You can eat a turtle.

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

Unless you had a knife to kill it with.

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

I reach behind my back for the knife. I'm halfway there when I feel the pain twixt my shoulder blades.

I stop. I swallow.

(Spackle and pain and bafflement.)

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

One hand reaching for my knife.

(Red blood and fear and fear and fear.)

I stop reaching.

I take my hand away.

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

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So I can't hunt.

And I can't get near settlements.

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

"Great," I say to myself and there's nothing to do but keep going as fast as I can.

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

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

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

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

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

"Todd! Todd! Todd!" I hear Manchee, running down

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after me, but all I can do is try and withstand the pain again and the tired again and the gunk in my lungs and the hunger gnawing in my belly and bramble scratches all over me and I think I'd be crying if I had any energy left at all.

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

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

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

"Hungry, Todd," Manchee says, meaning me that's hungry. "Eat. Eat, Todd."

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

"Food, Todd."

"I know," I say. "I know."

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

And I fall again into blackness.

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

I open my eyes. "What people?" I say.

"This way," he barks. "People. Food, Todd. Food!"

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

I'm in a ditch right by the road.

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

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

Get up.

"Help," I call again, but it's only to myself. Get up.

It's over. I can't stand no more. I can't move no more. It's over. Get up. But it's over.

The last cart disappears round the bend and it's over... . give up.

I put my head down, right down, on the roadside, grit and pebbles digging into my cheek. A shiver shakes me and I roll to my side and pull myself to myself, curling my legs to my chest, and I close my eyes and I've failed and I've failed and please won't the darkness just take me please please please-

"That you, Ben?"

I open my eyes.

It's Wilf.

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28

THE SMELL OF ROOTS

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

"Hoo is it, Wilf?" I hear a woman's voice ask.

'"s Ben," Wilf says. "Lookin poorly."

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

"It's too late," I say. "It's over."

The woman's walked over the back of the cart from the seat and hops down to face me. She's broad with a worn dress

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and flyaway hair and lines at the corners of her eyes and her voice is quick, like a mouse. "What's over, young'un?"

"She's gone." I feel my chin crumpling and my throat pulling. "I lost her."

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

"Yup," Wilf says.

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

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

"Her name ain't Hildy," I say.

"Ah know," Wilf says, "but at's whatcha call her."

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

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

"I ain't called Ben," I say to Wilf, still not looking up.

"Ah know," Wilf says again. "But at's what we're callin ya."

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

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

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"At should work onna fever," she says, hopping back up. We both lurch forward a little bit as Wilf snaps the rein on his oxen. The woman's eyes are wide open, looking into mine like searching for exciting news. "Yoo runnin from the army, too?"

Her quiet next to me reminds me so much of Viola it's all I can do not to just lean against her. "Kinda," I say.

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

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

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

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

Army I hear a lot. Army and army and army

And cursed town

"Brockley Falls?" I ask.

"Bar Vista, too," the woman says, nodding her head fast.

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"And others. Rumor's been flyin up the river and road. Army from cursed town comin and comin, growin as it comes, with men pickin up arms to join in."

Growing as it comes, I think.

"Thousands strong, they say," says the woman.

Wilf makes a scoffing sound. "Ain't no thousand people 'tween here and cursed town."

The woman twists her lips. "Ah'm only sayin what people are sayin."

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

"We're going to Haven," the woman says. "They'll pruhtekt us there."

"Haven," I mumble to myself.

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

"They got Spackle there?" I ask.

The woman turns to me surprised. "Spackle don't come near people," she says. "Not no more, not since the war. They's keep to theirselves and we's keep to ourselves and such is the peace kept." It sounds like she's reciting the last part. "Tain't hardly none left anyway."

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"I gotta go." I put my hands down and try to lift myself up. "I gotta find her."

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

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

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

"Thanks," I say.

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

"I did," I say. "In Farbranch."

She sucks in her breath. "So it's true." Not an asking, just saying it.

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

"Ah hear they're cuttin off people's heads and boilin their eyes," Jane says.

"Jane!" Wilf snaps.

"Ah'm just sayin."

"They're killing folk," I say, low. "Killing's enough." Jane's eyes dart all over my face and Noise but all she

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says after a bit is, "Wilf told me all bout yoo," and I can't figure out at all what her smile means.

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

"Poultice," Jane says. "For fevers and ague."

"It stinks."

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

"Evil?" I say. "Fever ain't evil. It's fever."

"Yeah, and this poultice treats fever."

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

It's a mad look, I realize.

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

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

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

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

"Settlements up the way," she says, her eyes even wider and a smile now, like she can't wait to tell me. "Crazy as anything. Noise sent 'em wild. Hear tell of one where everyone wears masks so's no one kin see their faces.

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There's another where no one don't do nothing but sing all day long they gone so crazy. And one where everyone's walls are made a glass and no one wears no clothes cuz no one's got secrets in Noise, do they?"

She's closer to me now. I can smell her breath, which is worse than the rag, and I feel the silence behind all these words. How can that be so? How can silence contain so much racket?

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

"Leave a boy alone," Wilf says from his seat.

Jane's face goes slack. "Sorry," she says, a little grudgingly.

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

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

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

"I need to find her," I say.

"Yer girl?" Jane asks.

"Yeah," I say. "Thank you, but I need to go."

"But yer fever! And the other settlements!"

"I'll take my chances." I untie the dirty rag. "C'mon, Manchee."

"Yoo can't go," Jane says, eyes wider than ever, worry on her face. "The army--"

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

"But they'll get yoo!" Jane says, her voice rising. "Yer from Prentisstown-"

I look up, sharp.

Jane slaps a hand over her mouth.

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

"Ah didn't mean it," she whispers to me.

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

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

"Who yoo got back there, Wilf?" a man's voice says from just one cart up.

"Feverish boy," Wilf shouts back. "Crazy with sickness. Don't know what he's sayin."

"Yoo entirely sure about that?"

"Yessir," Wilf says. "Sick boy."

"Bring him out," a woman's voice calls. "Let's see him."

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

"We don't want no spies!" cries a different man.

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

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

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

And then it's enough.

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

"Ah'm sorry," Jane says again, breathless. "Wilf told me not to say. He told me but-"

"That's okay," I say, just wanting her to stop talking already.

"Ah'm so so sorry."

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

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

"I need to go," I say. "Yup," he says. "T'ain't safe."

"Ah'm sorry," Jane keeps saying.

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

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"Thanks," I say.

"Hope yoo find her," Wilf says as I close the bag. "I hope so, too."

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

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

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

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29

AARON IN A THOUSAND WAYS

IT TAKES A LITTLE WHILE, a horrible little while, for Manchee to find the scent again once we're back in the woods but then he barks, "This way," and we're off again.

He's a good ruddy dog, have I said that?

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

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

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

Which hits me a little and I quicken my step. Another midnight (twenty-two days? twenty-one?) and my flashlight

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battery gives out. I take out Viola's but it's the last we got. More hills and steeper, too, as we go on thru the night, harder to climb up, dangerous to climb down but we go and go and go, Manchee sniffing away, eating Wilf's dried meat as we stumble forward, me coughing away, taking the shortest rests possible, usually bent double against trees, and the sun starts coming up over a hill so it's like we're walking up into the sunrise.

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

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

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

"The fever," I say, coughing again. "I shouldn't've thrown away that filthy rag."

Ain't nothing for it.

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

We get to the top of the hill and for a minute all the other hills in front of us and the river and the road down below rumble up and down like they're on a blanket someone's shaking and I do my best to blink it away till it calms down enough for me to keep walking. Manchee whines by

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my feet. I nearly tip over when I try to scratch him so instead I focus on getting down the hill without falling.

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

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

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

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

And he's gone.

Manchee's got his head cocked at me. "Todd?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Nothing.

Nothing but woods and another hill to climb. And sunlight that shimmers.

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

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

I sit up and Aaron is reflected in the water.

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

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

"I'm coming to find you," I say to the air, air that's started to move more and more with the wind.

Manchee's head pops up from the water. "Todd?"

"I'll find you if it's the last thing I do."

"Killer," I hear again, whispered along the wind.

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

I pick myself up and we carry on.

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

"Killer," I hear from the bushes around us and then

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again from another part of the forest. "Killer." And again from somewhere else. "Killer."

I don't look up, just eat my food.

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

"Is that all?" Aaron says from across the clearing. "If that's all I am, why you chasing me so had?"

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

The smiling fist I remember so well.

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

"You ain't here," I say, clenching my teeth.

"Here, Todd," Manchee barks.

"Ain't I?" Aaron says and disappears in a shimmer.

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

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

And then, from a hilltop, I see the road cross the river again down below. The landscape's moving in a way that turns my stomach but I can definitely see a bridge down

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there, taking the road to the other side so there's nothing now twixt me and the river.

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

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

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

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

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

"Viola!" Manchee barks. "This way."

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

I follow him thru branches and bushes, the river rushing closer to my right than it's been in days. And I step right into a settlement. I stand up straight and cough in surprise. It's been destroyed.

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

For a second I think the army's been here but then I see

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

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

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

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

And he's still smiling.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The wind's making me shiver but I feel hot and sweaty

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at the same time and I can't get no more than a third of a breath down my lungs and my head is starting to ache in a way that food ain't helping and whenever I look anywhere fast everything I see has to slide into place to catch up.

I clench my teeth.

I'm probably dying.

But he's going first.

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

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

I raise the knife.

"Todd?" Manchee barks. "Knife, Todd?"

"Go ahead, Todd," Aaron says and I swear I smell the dank-ness of him. "Cross over from innocence to sin. If you can."

"I've done it," I say. "I've already killed."

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

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

But the knife still ain't falling.

There's a bubbling sound and gooey blood pours outta the gash in Aaron's face and I realize he's laughing. "It took a long, long time for her to die," he whispers. And I call out from the pain-

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And I raise the knife higher-

And I aim it at his heart-

And he's still smiling -

And I bring the knife down-

And stab it right into Viola's chest.

"No!" I say, in the second that it's too late.

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

(That I killed.)

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

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

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

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

I can't kill him.

I want to. I want to so bad. But I can't. Cuz it ain't me and cuz I lose her. I can't. I can't, I can't, I can't.

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

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

"Aaron," he's yelping, quiet and tense. "Aaron."

"Buzz off, Manchee."

"Aaron," he whimpers, licking away.

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"He ain't really there," I say, trying to sit up. "It's just something--"

It's just something Manchee can't see. "Where is he?" I say, getting up too fast, causing everything to swirl bright pink and orange. I reel back from what's waiting for me.

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

"Coward," they're saying. All of 'em. "Coward" over and over again.

[Image: The voices saying coward.]

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

[Image: The voices saying coward.]

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

[Image: The voices saying coward.]

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[Image: The voices saying coward.]

"This way," he barks. "Down the river."

[Image: The voices saying coward.]

I follow him thru the burned-out settlement--^

[Image: The voices saying coward.]

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

[Image: The voices saying coward.]

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

[Image: The voices saying coward.]

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

[Image: The voices saying coward.]

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[Image: The voices saying coward.]

I can see a thousand Spackle with my knife killing 'em.

[Image: The voices saying coward.]

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

[Image: The voices saying coward.]

A nd beyond 'em ; in a camp by the side of the river, I see an Aaron who ain't looking back at me at all.

[Image: The voices saying coward.]

I see an Aaron kneeling down in prayer.

[Image: The voices saying coward.]

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

[Image: The voices saying coward.]

"Aaron," Manchee barks.

[Image: The voices saying coward.]

"Aaron," I say. Coward.

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30

A BOY CALLED TODD

WHAT ARE WE GONNA DO ?" says the boy, creeping up to my shoulder.

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

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

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

The cold of the water feels like a vise but I hold it there, hearing the bubbling of the water rushing by and the

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wordless barks of a worried Manchee hopping around my feet. I can feel the bandage on my head detach and wash away in the current. I think of Manchee wriggling the bandage off his tail in a different part of the river and I forget and I laugh underwater.

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

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

"Can we really do it alone?" asks the boy.

"Ain't no choice," I say to myself.

And I turn to look at him.

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

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

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

I squint out across the trees, tracing the way down the river.

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

I'm sure of it.

"Aaron," Manchee says. "Viola."

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

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

But it's really them.

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

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

But I'm not.

I lean down again and (shut up) I cry, I cry, I'm crying but it has to pass cuz I have to figure it out, I have to figure it out, it's down to me, there's only me, I have to find a way, I have to save her, I have to save-

"What are we gonna do?" the boy asks again, standing a little ways away, book still in one hand, knife in the other.

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

"What if this is the sacrifice?" says the boy.

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I look up. "What sacrifice?"

"The sacrifice you saw in his Noise," he says. "The sacrifice of-"

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

The boy's expression doesn't change. "Maybe he has to," he says, "before she dies."

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

"Fear," says the boy, taking a step backwards. "Disappointment."

I turn away. "I ain't listening to this."

"Listening, Todd?" Manchee barks. "Viola, Todd. This way."

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

"We can't approach," I say, my voice thick. "He'll hear us coming."

"He'll kill her if he hears us," says the boy.

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

"Manchee," Manchee says, licking my hand.

"And I can't kill him," I say.

"You can't kill him," says the boy.

"Even if I want to."

"Even if he deserves it."

"And so there has to be another way."

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"If she's not too scared to see you."

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

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

"Yer probably too late to save her."

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

"But I'm a killer," he says and the knife has blood on it.

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

"Manchee?" Manchee barks.

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

Then I regard him, Manchee. "Not you," I say again.

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

And I'm thinking.

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

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"Todd," he murmurs, rubbing his face into my hand and thumping his back leg against the ground. "I got an idea," I say.

"What if it don't work?" says the boy from behind the tree.

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

It'll do.

I put down the binocs and take Manchee's head in both hands. "We're gonna save her," I say, right to my dog. "Both of us."

"Save her, Todd," he barks, wagging his little stump.

"It won't work," says the boy, still outta sight.

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

"Run and run!" he barks.

"Good boy." I rub his ears again. "Good boy."

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

The first thing I need is a stick. Manchee and I tear thru the burned-out buildings, looking for one the right size.

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Pretty much everything is black and crumbly but that suits me fine.

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

"Perfect." I take it from him.

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

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

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

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

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

"You don't know nothing," I say, not looking at him. "Ben taught me."

"Ben's dead," says the boy.

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

"Yer not strong enough to make a fire."

"I heard a maiden call from the val-l-ley below." I find a long, flat piece of wood and use the knife to carve a little hollow in it. "Oh, don't dece-e-ive me." I carve a rounded end on another smaller stick. "Oh, never le-e-ave me."

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"How could you use a poor maiden so?" the boy finishes.

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

There were times.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"It'll sink," says the boy, standing knee-high in the river.

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

But it floats.

"You don't know how to steer a boat."

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

And that's all I need.

We're ready.

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

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

"Manchee?" I call but he's already at my feet.

"Here, Todd!"

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

He takes the nonburning end into his mouth and there he is, best ruddy dog in the universe, ready to carry fire to the enemy.

"Ready, friend?" I say.

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

"He'll kill Manchee," the boy says.

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

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I ruddy well stand.

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

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

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

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

Toward Aaron.

Toward Viola.

Toward whatever waits for me down the river.

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31

THE WICKED ARE PUNISHED

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

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

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

"Dammit," I say under my breath. "Effing thing."

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

I swallow and shake and cough.

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

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

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

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

Yeah, okay, that's the plan.

I know.

I know, but if it don't work, then I'll have to kill him. And if it comes to that, it can't matter what I become and it can't matter what Viola thinks. It can't.

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

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I take out the knife.

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

The knife is alive.

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

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

But the knife wanting it makes it easier.

If it comes to it, will I fail?

"No," whispers the knife.

"Yes," whispers the wind down the river.

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

Just a knife.

I lay it on the floor of the boat.

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

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

I look up and over the trees to my left.

My teeth are chattering.

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I don't see no smoke yet.

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

And no smoke.

And the river's bending more.

C'mon, Manchee.

And no smoke.

And chatter, chatter, chatter go my teeth. I huddle my arms to myself-

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

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

The boat's tending slightly midriver so I row as best I can and guide it back to the river's edge.

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

The river's bending more.

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

The sign that I'm almost there. Aaron'll be just beyond it. Here it comes.

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

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

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

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

"Todd! Todd!"

C'mon, c'mon--

The forked tree passing by-

I crouch down in the boat-

"Todd! Todd!" getting fainter, moving back-

Snappings of branches-

And then I hear "TODD HEWITT!!" roared loud as a lion-

As a lion moving away--

"C'mon," I whisper to myself, "c'mon, c'mon, c'mon--"

My clenched fists trembling around the oar and-

Round the bend and-

Past the tree and--

The campsite comes and-

There she is.

Aaron's gone and there she is.

Lying on the ground in the middle of his campsite.

Not moving.

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

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"Please," I say as I run, my chest clenching and coughing and hurting, "Please."

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

"Please," I whisper.

And thump, thump.

She's alive.

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

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

"Wake up," I whisper. "Wake up, wake up, wake up!"

I can't carry her. I'm too shaky and lopsided and weak.

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

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

"Todd Hewitt!" I hear Aaron yell as he chases my dog. And then, from below me, I hear, "Todd?"

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

But she's looking back at me.

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

"Ya gotta get up," I whisper.

"He drugged ..." she says, closing her eyes.

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"Viola?" I say, shaking her again. "He's coming back, Viola. We gotta get outta here." I can't hear no more barking. "We gotta go," I say. "Now!"

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

"Please, Viola," I say and I'm practically weeping it. "Please."

She blinks open her eyes. She looks into mine. "You came for me," she says. "I did," I say, coughing.

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

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

"TODD! TODD! TODD!" he yelps, running toward us and past. "Aaron! Coming! Aaron!"

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

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

And we run for it-

Across the campsite-

Toward the boat and the river -

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

Viola stumbling ahead of me--

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And we're five-Four-

Three steps away-

And Aaron comes pounding outta the woods behind us-His Noise so loud I don't even need to look-"TODD HEWITT!!"

And Viola's reached the front of the boat and is falling in-

And two steps -And one-

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

And "TODD HEWITT!!"

And he's closer-

And the boat don't move-

"I WILL PUNISH THE WICKED!"

And closer still--

And the boat don't move-

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

And the boat moves -

Step and step and my feet are in the water and the boat's moving-And I'm falling--

And I don't have the strength to get in the boat-

And I'm falling into the water as the boat moves away-

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

"NO, YOU DON'T!" Aaron roars-

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

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And Aaron's in the water -And he's grabbing my feet-

"No!" Viola screams and grips me harder, pulling with all her strength-

And I'm lifted in the air-

And the boat stops -

And Viola's face is twisted in the effort -

But it's a tug of war which only Aaron's ever gonna win-

And then I hear "TODD!" barked in a voice so ferocious I wonder for a minute if a croc's raised outta the water-But it's Manchee-It's Manchee-

It's my dog my dog my dog and he's leaping past Viola and I feel his feet hit my back and leave it again as he launches himself at Aaron with a snarl and a howl and a "TODD!" and Aaron calls out in anger-

And he lets go of my feet.

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

The lurch pushes us farther out into the river. The boat is starting to pull away.

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

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

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He rips Aaron's nose clean away from his face. Aaron yells out in pain, blood shooting everywhere. "Manchee!" I scream. "Hurry, Manchee!"

"Manchee!" Viola yells. "C'mon, boy!"

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

And that's where Aaron takes his chance. "No!" I scream.

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

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

And Aaron has my dog.

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

"Let him go!" I yell.

Aaron lowers his face-

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

"Todd?" Manchee yelps.

Viola's rowing furiously to keep us outta the current but

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she's weak from the drugs and we're getting farther and farther away. "No," I can hear her saying. "No."

"Let him go!" I scream.

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

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

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

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

"I'll kill you," I say, but so quietly I might as well be talking to myself.

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

"Todd?" Manchee's still yelping. "Todd?" And no-

"I'll kill you," but my voice is a whisper -And no-

And there ain't no choice -And the boat's out in the current -And I look at Viola, still rowing against it, tears dripping off her chin-

She looks back at me-And there ain't no choice -

"No," she says, her voice choking. "Oh, no, Todd--" And I put my hand on her arm to stop her rowing.

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Aaron's Noise roars up in red and black. The current takes us.

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

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

"Manchee!" I scream.

Aaron brings his free hand toward my dog.

"MANCHEE!"

"Todd?"

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

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

And I fall back into it.

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

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359

32

DOWNRIVER

The sound of water.

And bird noise.

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

Behind it, there's music. I swear there's music.

Layers of it, flutey and strange and familiar -And there's light against the darkness, sheets of it, white and yellow.

And warmth.

And softness on my skin.

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

I'm in a bed, under a cover, in a small square room with white walls and sunlight pouring in at least two open windows with the sound of the river rushing by outside and

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birds flitting in the trees (and music, is that music?) and for a minute it's not just that I don't know where I am, I also don't know who I am or what's happened or why there's an ache in my-

I see Viola, curled up asleep on a chair next to the bed, breathing thru her mouth, her hands pressed twixt her thighs.

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

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

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

Flowers.

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

"Wasn't I?" I croak, trying to remember.

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

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

"We're in a settlement called Carbonel Downs," she says. "We floated down the river and-"

She stops cuz she sees me looking at the foot of the bed. At the space where Manchee ain't. I remember.

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

"He's gone," I say, like I'm saying it to myself.

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

He's gone.

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

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

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

"Pleased to finally meet you, Todd," Doctor Snow says, smiling big and sitting down on the bed and taking a device outta his front shirt pocket. He sticks two ends of it into his ears and places the other end on my chest without asking. "Could you take a deep breath for me?"

I don't do nothing, just look at him.

"I'm checking if your lungs are clear," he says and I realize what it is I'm noticing. His accent's the closest to Viola's I ever heard on New World. "Not exactly the same," he says, "but close."

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"He's the one who made you well," Viola says.

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

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

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

"Yeah, well," I say.

"Haven't heard of a Spackle attack for a very long time," he says. I don't say nothing to this, just breathe deep. "That's great, Todd," the doctor says. "Could you take off your shirt, please?"

I look at him, then over to Viola.

"I'll wait outside," she says and out she goes.

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

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

I flinch. "That's cold."

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

"How long I been here?"

"This is the fifth morning."

"Five days?" I say and he barely has a chance to say yes before I'm pulling back the covers and getting outta the

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bed. "We gotta get outta here," I say, a little unsteady on my feet but standing nonetheless.

Viola leans back in the doorway. "I've been trying to tell them that."

"You're safe here," Doctor Snow says.

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

"You're safe as you're going to be anywhere," Doctor Snow says behind me, handing me a pair of my pants from a neatly washed pile by the bed. "We were one of the main fronts in the war. We know how to defend ourselves."

"That was Spackle." I turn my back to Viola and shove my legs in the pants. "This is men. A thousand men."

"So the rumors say," Doctor Snow says. "Even though it's not actually numerically possible."

"I don't know nothing from numerickly," I say, "but they got guns."

"We have guns."

"And horses."

"We've got horses."

"Do you have men who'll join them?" I say, challenging him.

He don't say nothing to that, which is satisfying. Then again, it ain't satisfying at all. I button up my pants. "We need to go."

"You need to rest," the doctor says.

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

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

And dying.

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

(He's gone, he's gone.)

I feel empty. All over empty.

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

I tighten my mouth. " 'Bout what?"

"About anything that might help."

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

"This is our home, Todd," he says. "We're going to defend it. We have no choice."

"Then count me out--" I start to say.

"Daddy?" we hear.

There's a little boy standing in the doorway next to Viola. An actual boy.

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

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his daddy, telling him he loves him, all in one word, repeated forever.

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

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

"She isn't?" Doctor Snow says, standing up. "Well, we'd better go see if we can talk her into it, hadn't we?"

Daddy, daddy , daddy says Jacob's Noise.

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

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

He's so much closer than the kids I saw at Farbranch. And he's so small. Was I that small?

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

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

"Maybe," he says, with a smile. "Maybe not. You haven't even seen the place yet. Come on, Jake." He takes his son's hand. "There's food in the kitchen. I'll bet you're starved. Be back within the hour."

I go to the door to watch them leave. Jacob, finger still in his mouth, looks back at me till he and his pa disappear outta the house.

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

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"He's four," she says. "He's told me about eight hundred times. Which seems kind of young to be milking goats."

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

"Come and eat," she says. "We need to talk."

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33

CARBONEL DOWNS

SHE LEADS ME TO A KITCH E N as clean and bright as the bedroom. River still rushing by outside, birds still Noisy, music still-

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

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

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

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

I dig into the food. "Tell me."

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

"Okay. So what's up?"

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

I pause with a mouthful of bread. "Like the bar."

"What bar?"

"The bar in Prent-" I stop. "Where do they think we're from?"

"Farbranch."

I sigh. "I'll do my best." I take a bite of the fruit. "The bar where I come from played music all the time to try and drown out the Noise."

She nods. "I asked Doctor Snow why they did it here, and he said, 'To keep men's thoughts private.'"

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

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

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

"Oh, there's women," she says, fiddling with a butter knife. "They clean and they cook and they make babies and they all live in a big dormitory outside of town where they can't interfere in men's business."

I put down a forkful of meat. "I saw a place like that

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when I was coming to find you. Men sleeping in one place, women in another."

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

"Wilf," I say.

Her eyes scan over me, reading my Noise. "Oh," she says. "No, I haven't seen him."

"Wait a minute." I swallow some more drink. It feels like I haven't drunk anything for years. "How did we get so far ahead of the army? How come if I've been here five days we ain't been overrun yet?"

"We were in that boat for a day and a half," she says, running her nail at something stuck on the table.

"A day and a half," I repeat, thinking about this. "We must've come miles."

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

I remember Jane's warnings. "Naked people and glass houses?" I ask.

Viola looks at me strange. "No," she says, curling her lip. "Just poverty. Just horrible, horrible poverty. Some of those places looked like they would have eaten us so I just kept on and on and you got sicker and sicker and then on the

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second morning I saw Doctor Snow and Jacob out fishing and I could see in his Noise he was a doctor and as weird as this place is about women, it's at least clean."

I look around the clean, clean kitchen. "We can't stay," I say.

"No, we can't." She puts her head in her hands. "I was so worried about you." There's feeling in her voice. "I was so worried about the army coming and nobody listening to me." She smacks the table in frustration. "And I was feeling so bad about-"

She stops. Her face creases and she looks away.

"Manchee," I say, out loud, for the first time since-

"fm so sorry, Todd," she says, her eyes watery.

"Ain't yer fault." I stand up fast, scooting my chair back.

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

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

Viola makes a tiny smile. "Two days."

I stand up straight. "We came that far downriver?"

"We came that far."

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

"Yeah?" I say, putting her bag round my shoulders. "Thank you," she says. "For what?"

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"For coming after me." Everything's gone still.

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

"I don't really-" she starts to say but we hear a door down the hall toward us. Jacob hugs the door frame of the room rather than coming in.

"Oh?" I raise my eyebrows. "I'm sposed to come to them now, am I?"

Jacob nods, very serious.

"Well, in that case, we're coming," I rearrange the sack and look at Viola. "And then we're going."

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

"Just you," he says, looking at me.

"Just me what?"

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

Jacob nods, again very serious. I look at Viola and back to Jacob. "Well now," I say, squatting down to his level. "Why don't you just go tell yer daddy that both me and Viola will be along in a minute. Okay?"

Jacob opens his mouth. "But he said-"

"I don't really care what he said," I say gently. "Go."

He gives a little gasp and runs out the door.

"I think I'm maybe thru with men telling me what to

Daddy sent me to fetch you," he says.

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do," I say and I'm surprised at the weariness in my voice and suddenly I feel like I wanna get back in that bed and sleep for another five days.

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

"Try and stop me," I say and she smiles again.

I head on out the front door.

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

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

"Oh, man," I say to myself.

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

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

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

"God," I say. "It's like paradise compared to the rest of New World."

"There's more to paradise than nice buildings," Viola says.

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

That weird music. Constantly changing to keep you from getting used to it, I guess. It's nothing I reckernize but it's louder out here and I guess on one level you ain't sposed to reckernize it but I swear I heard something in it when I was waking up-

"It's almost unbearable in the middle of the settlement," Viola says. "Most of the women don't even bother coming in from the dormitory." She frowns. "Which I guess is the whole point."

"Wilf's wife told me bout a settlement where everyone-"

I stop cuz the music changes. Except it don't change.

The music from the settlement stays the same, messy and wordy and bending around itself like a monkey. But there's more. There's more music than just it. And it's getting louder. "Do you hear that?" I say. I turn.

And turn again. Viola, too.

Trying to figure out what we're hearing.

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

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But I ain't listening to her.

"No," I whisper. "No, it can't be."

"What?" Viola says, her voice changing.

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

"It's coming from the river," she whispers.

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

Out there, against the rush of the water and the Noise of the birdsong, there's-

"A song," Viola says, real quiet. "Someone's singing."

Someone's singing.

And what they're singing is:

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

And my Noise surges louder as I say it.

"Ben."

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34

OH NEVER LEAVE ME

I RUN DOWN TO THE RIVER'S EDGE and stop and listen again. Oh don't deceive me.

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

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

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