“My pa sure is gonna be glad to see you,” he says, his horse nervy and stepping side to side. Rain, I can hear it thinking, and Is it a snake?
“I was just sposed to see if there were rumours of you on the road ahead,” Mr Prentiss Jr sneers, “but here you are, in the real honest-to-God flesh.”
“Eff you,” I say and do you think I say eff?
I’ve still got the knife in my hand.
“And it sure is making me quake with fear,” he says, moving the rifle so I’m looking right down the barrel. “Drop it.”
I hold my arm out away from me and drop the knife. It splashes in the mud and I’m still on my belly.
“Yer little lady sure didn’t show you no loyalty, now did she?” he says, hopping off his horse, calming it with his free hand. Manchee growls at him but Mr Prentiss Jr just laughs. “What happened to its tail?”
Manchee jumps, his teeth bared, but Mr Prentiss Jr is faster, kicking him away with a vicious boot to the face. Manchee yelps and cowers into the bushes.
“Friends abandoning you right and left, Todd.” He walks over to me. “But that’s the lesson you learn, eh? Dogs is dogs and women turn out to be dogs, too.”
“You shut up,” I say, clenching my teeth.
His Noise goes all fake sympathy and triumph. “Poor, poor Toddy. All this time travelling with a woman and I’m guessing you never figured out what to do with one.”
“You stop talking bout her,” I spit. I’m still on my belly and my legs are still tied.
But I find I can bend my knees.
His Noise gets uglier, louder, but his face is all blank like a terror from a dream. “What you do, Todd,” he says, squatting down to get closer to me, “is you keep the ones that’re whores and you shoot the ones that’re not.”
He leans even closer. I can see the pathetic hairs on his upper lip, not even made darker by the rain coming down. He’s only two years older than me. Only two years bigger.
Snake? thinks the horse.
I put my hands slowly down on the ground.
I push a little into the mud.
“After I tie you up,” he says, turning it into a whispering taunt, “I’ll go find yer little lady and let you know which kind she is.”
Which is when I jump.
I push up with my hands and kick forward hard with my legs, launching myself right at his face. The top of my head hits his nose with a crunch and he falls backwards, me coming down right on top of him. I hit him hard in the face with each fist while he’s still too surprised to react and then ram my knee into the man’s place twixt his legs.
He curls up like a bug and lets out a low, angry moan and I roll off him back over to my knife, picking it up and getting to my feet and I kick the gun away and I jump in front of the horse screaming “Snake! Snake!” and waving my arms which does the trick instantly and it turns and runs back down the road with a terrified whinny, riderless into the rain.
I look round and BAM! Mr Prentiss Jr hits me across the bridge of the nose with his fist but I don’t fall and he yells “You piece of–” and I swing my arm out with the knife in it and I make him jump back and I swing it again, water pouring outta my eyes from both the punch and the rain and he steps away from me, looking for his gun and limping a little and he sees it in the mud and he turns his body to fetch it and I’m not thinking at all and I jump on him, knocking him back down and he hits me with his elbow but I don’t fall off and my Noise is screaming and his Noise is screaming.
And I don’t even know how but I’ve got him on his back and the point of my knife held up under his chin.
We both stop struggling.
“Why are you after us?!” I shout into his face. “Why are you chasing us?!”
And him and his stupid pathetic non-moustache smile.
I knee him again twixt his legs.
He groans again and spits at me but I’ve still got the knife which has now made a little cut.
“My father wants you,” he finally says.
“Why?” I say. “Why does he want us?”
“Us?” His eyes go wide. “There’s no effing us. He wants you, Todd. Just you.”
I can’t believe this. “What?” I say. “Why?”
But he’s not answering. He’s looking into my Noise. He’s looking and searching.
“Hey!” I say, slapping him cross the face with the back of my hand. “Hey! I’m asking you an asking!”
But the smile’s back. I can’t effing believe it but the smile’s back.
“You know what my father always says, Todd Hewitt?” he leers up at me. “He says a knife is only as good as the one who wields it.”
“Shut up,” I say.
“Yer a fighter, I’ll give you that.” Still smiling, still bleeding a little below his chin. “But you ain’t no killer.”
“Shut up!” I yell but I know he can see in my Noise that I heard those exact words from Aaron.
“Oh, yeah?” he says. “Whaddya gonna do about it? Kill me?”
“I WILL,” I shout. “I’ll KILL you!”
He just licks some rain from his lips and laughs. I have him pinned to the ground with a knife up under his chin and he’s laughing.
“STOP IT!” I scream at him and I raise the knife.
He keeps on laughing and then he looks at me and he says–
He says–
He says this–
“You wanna hear how Ben and Cillian screamed for mercy before I shot ’em twixt the eyes?”
And my Noise buzzes red.
And I clench the knife to strike at him.
And I’m going to kill him.
I’m going to kill him.
And–
And–
And–
And right at the top of my swing–
Right at the moment when I start to bring it down–
Right at the moment when the power is mine to command and do with as I please–
I hesitate–
Again–
I hesitate–
Only for a second–
But goddam me–
Goddam me forever and forever–
Cuz in that second he kicks up his legs, throws me off him and elbows me in the throat. I lean over choking and I can only feel his hand wrench the knife away from my own.
As easy as candy from a baby.
“Now, Todd,” he says, standing over me, “let me show you a thing or two about wielding.”
I deserve it. I’ve done everything wrong. I deserve it. If I had the knife back I’d kill myself with it. Except I’d probably be too much of a coward to do that, too.
“Yer some piece of work, Todd Hewitt,” Mr Prentiss Jr says, examining my knife.
I’m kneeling now, knees in the mud, hand at my throat, still trying to get my breath.
“You had this fight won and then you went and just threw it away.” He runs a finger up the blade. “Stupid as well as yella.”
“Just finish it,” I mumble into the mud.
“What was that?” Mr Prentiss Jr says, the smile back, his Noise bright.
“Just FINISH IT!” I shout up to him.
“Oh, I’m not gonna kill you,” he says, his eyes flashing. “My pa wouldn’t be too happy with that, now would he?”
He steps up to me and holds the knife near my face. He puts the tip of it into my nose so I have to hold my head back farther and farther.
“But there’s lots of things you can do with a knife,” he says, “without killing a man.”
I’m not even looking round no more for ways to get away.
I’m looking right into his eyes which are awake and alive and about to win, his Noise the same, pictures of him in Farbranch, pictures from back at my farm, pictures of me kneeling in front of him.
There ain’t nothing in my Noise but a pit full of my stupidity and worthlessness and hate.
I’m sorry, Ben.
I’m so, so sorry.
“But then again,” he says, “you ain??
?t a man, are ya?” He lowers his voice. “And you never will be.”
He moves the knife in his hand, turning the blade towards my cheek.
I close my eyes.
And I feel a wash of silence flow over me from behind.
My eyes snap open.
“Well, looky here,” Mr Prentiss Jr says, glancing up over the top of my head. My back is to the deeper woods opposite the river and I can feel the quiet of Viola standing there as clearly as if I could see her.
“Run!” I yell, without turning round. “Get away from here.”
She ignores me. “Step back,” I hear her say to Mr Prentiss Jr. “I’m warning you.”
“Yer warning me?” he says, pointing to himself with the knife, the smile back on his face.
Then he jumps a little as something smacks him in the chest and sticks there. It looks like a bunch of little wires with a plastic bulb on the end. Mr Prentiss Jr puts the knife underneath it and tries to flick it off but it stays stuck. He looks up at Viola, smirking. “Whatever this is sposed to be, sister,” he says, “it didn’t work.”
And SMACKFLASH!!
There’s a huge clap of light and I feel a hand on the back of my collar yank me back to the point of choking. I fall back and away as Mr Prentiss Jr’s body jerks into a spasm, flinging the knife out to one side, sparks and little flashes of lightning flying out of the wires and into his body. Smoke and steam comes from everywhere, his sleeves, his collar, his pantlegs. Viola’s still pulling me back outta the way by my neck when he falls to the ground, face first in the muck, right on top of his rifle.
She lets go and we tumble together on a little bank by the side of the road. I grab my neck again and we lay there breathing heavily for a second. The sparks and flashes stop and Mr Prentiss Jr twitches in the mud.
“I was afraid –” Viola says twixt deep breaths “– all this water around –” breath “– that I might take you and me with him –” breath “– but he was about to cut–”
I stand without saying nothing, my Noise focused, my eyes on the knife. I go right to it.
“Todd–” Viola says.
I pick it up and stand over him. “Is he dead?” I ask without looking at Viola.
“Shouldn’t be,” she says. “It was just the voltage from a–”
I raise the knife.
“Todd, no!”
“Give me one good reason,” I say, knife still hovering, eyes still on him.
“You’re not a killer, Todd,” she says.
I spin round to her, my Noise roaring up like a beast. “Don’t SAY THAT!! Don’t you EVER SAY THAT!!”
“Todd,” she says, her hand out, her voice calming.
“I’M why we’re in this mess! They’re not looking for YOU! They’re looking for ME!” I turn back to Mr Prentiss Jr. “And if I could kill one of them, then maybe we–”
“Todd, no, listen to me,” she says, coming closer. “Listen to me!” I look at her. My Noise is so ugly and my face so twisted she hesitates a little but then she takes another step forward. “Listen to me while I tell you something.”
And then out pour more words from her than I ever heard before.
“When you found me, back there in the swamp, I had been running from that man, from Aaron, for four days, and you were only the second person I’d ever seen on this planet and you came at me with that same knife and for all I knew you were exactly like him.”
Her hands are still up, like I’m Mr Prentiss Jr’s long-gone horse in need of calming.
“But before I even understood what was going on with the Noise and with Prentisstown and with whatever your story was, I could tell about you. People can tell, Todd. We can see that you won’t hurt us. That that’s not you.”
“You hit me in the face with a branch,” I say.
She puts her hands on her hips. “Well, what did you expect? You came at me with a knife. But I didn’t hit you hard enough to hurt you badly, did I?”
I don’t say nothing.
“And I was right,” she says. “You bandaged my arm. You rescued me from Aaron when you didn’t have to. You took me out of the swamp where I would have been killed. You stood up for me to that man in the orchard. You came with me when we needed to leave Farbranch.”
“No,” I say, my voice low, “no, yer not reading the story right. We’re only having to run cuz I couldn’t–”
“I think I’m finally understanding the story, Todd,” she says. “Why are they coming after you so fiercely? Why is a whole army chasing you across towns and rivers and plains and the whole stupid planet?” She points to Mr Prentiss Jr. “I heard what he said. Don’t you wonder why they want you so badly?”
The pit in me is just getting blacker and darker. “Cuz I’m the one who don’t fit.”
“Exactly!”
My eyes go wide. “Why is that good news? I have an army who wants to kill me cuz I’m not a killer.”
“Wrong,” she says. “You have an army who wants to make you a killer.”
I blink. “Huh?”
She takes another step forward. “If they can turn you into the kind of man they want–”
“Boy,” I say. “Not a man yet.”
She waves this away. “If they can snuff out that part of you that’s good, the part of you that won’t kill, then they win, don’t you see? If they can do it to you, they can do it to anyone. And they win. They win!”
She’s near me now and she reaches out her hand and puts it on my arm, the one still holding the knife.
“We beat them,” she says, “you beat them by not becoming what they want.”
I clench my teeth. “He killed Ben and Cillian.”
She shakes her head. “No, he said he did. And you believed him.”
We look down at him. He’s not twitching no more and the steam is starting to lessen.
“I know this kind of boy,” she says. “We have this kind of boy even on spaceships. He’s a liar.”
“He’s a man.”
“How can you keep saying that?” she asks, her voice finally snappy. “How can you keep saying that he’s a man and you’re not? Just because of some stupid birthday? If you were where I came from you’d already be fourteen and a month!”
“I’m not where yer from!” I shout. “I’m from here and that’s how it works here!”
“Well, how it works here is wrong.” She lets go of my arm and kneels down by Mr Prentiss Jr. “We’ll tie him up. We’ll tie him up good and tight and we’ll get the heck out of here, all right?”
I don’t let go of the knife.
I will never let go of this knife, no matter what she says, no matter how she says it.
She looks up and around. “Where’s Manchee?”
Oh, no.
We find him in the bushes. He growls at us without words, just animal growls. He’s holding his left eye shut and there’s blood around his mouth. It takes a bunch of tries but I finally catch him while Viola takes out her medipak-of-wonders. I hold him down as she forces him to swallow a pill that makes him go floppy and then she cleans out his broken teeth and puts a cream in his eye. She tapes a bandage to it and he looks so small and beaten that when he says “Thawd?” thru one-eyed grogginess I just hug him to me and sit for a bit, under the bushes, outta the rain, while Viola repacks everything and gets my rucksack outta the mud.
“Your clothes are all wet,” she says after a while. “And the food is smashed. But the book’s still in the plastic. The book’s all right.”
And the thought of my ma knowing what a coward her son would be one day makes me want to throw the book in the river.
But I don’t.
We go to tie up Mr Prentiss Jr with his own rope and find that the electric shock has blown the wooden stock right off of his rifle. Which is a shame cuz it coulda come in handy.
“What was that you shocked him with?” I ask, huffing and puffing as we drag him to the side of the road. Knocked out people are heavy.
“A device for telling the
ship in space where I am on the planet,” she says. “It took forever to pull apart.”
I stand up. “How will yer ship know where you are now?”
She shrugs. “We just have to hope that Haven’ll have something.”
I watch her go to her own bag and pick it up. I sure hope Haven has half what she’s expecting.
We leave. Mr Prentiss Jr was right about the stupidity of staying on the road, so we keep twenty or thirty metres away from it on the non-river side, trying to keep it in sight as best we can. We take turns carrying Manchee as the night passes.
We don’t talk much neither.
Cuz she might have a point, right? Yeah, okay, maybe that’s what the army’s after, maybe if they can make me join, they can make anyone join. Maybe I’m their test, who knows, the whole town’s crazy enough to believe something like that.
If one of us falls, we all fall.
But for one that don’t explain why Aaron’s after us and for two I’ve heard her lie now, ain’t I? Her words sound good but who’s to know if she’s making truth up rather than just saying it?
Cuz I’m never going to join the army and Mayor Prentiss must know that, not after what they did to Ben and Cillian, the truth of Mr Prentiss Jr’s Noise or not, so that’s where she’s dead wrong. Whatever they want, whatever the weakness is in me that I can’t kill a man even when he deserves it, it’s got to change for me to be a man. It’s got to or how can I hold my head up?
Midnight passes and I’m twenty-five days and a million years from becoming a man.
Cuz if I’d killed Aaron, he couldn’t’ve told Mayor Prentiss where he’d seen me last.
If I coulda killed Mr Prentiss Jr back at the farm, he wouldn’t’ve led the Mayor’s men to Ben and Cillian and wouldn’t’ve lived to harm Manchee so.
If I’d been any kinda killer, I coulda stayed and helped Ben and Cillian defend themselves.
Maybe if I was a killer, they wouldn’t be dead.
And that’s a trade I’d make any day.
I’ll be a killer, if that’s what it takes.
Watch me.
The terrain’s getting rougher and steeper as the river starts making canyons again. We rest for a while under a rocky outcropping and eat the last of the food that didn’t get ruined by the fight with Mr Prentiss Jr.