“People can keep secrets in Noise,” I say. “People can keep all kindsa secrets.”
“Leave a boy alone,” Wilf says from his seat.
Jane’s face goes slack. “Sorry,” she says, a little grudgingly.
I raise up a little, feeling the benefit of food in my belly whatever the stinking rag may or may not be doing.
We’ve pulled closer to the rest of the caravan, close enough for me to see the backs of a few heads and hear more closely the Noise of men chattering up and down and the silence of women twixt them, like stones in a creek.
Every now and then one of them, usually a man, glances back at us, and I feel like they’re seeking me out, seeing what I’m made of.
“I need to find her,” I say.
“Yer girl?” Jane asks.
“Yeah,” I say. “Thank you, but I need to go.”
“But yer fever! And the other settlements!”
“I’ll take my chances.” I untie the dirty rag. “C’mon, Manchee.”
“Yoo can’t go,” Jane says, eyes wider than ever, worry on her face. “The army–”
“I’ll worry about the army.” I pull myself up, readying to jump down off the cart. I’m still pretty unsteady so I have to take a cloudy breath or two before I do anything.
“But they’ll get yoo!” Jane says, her voice rising. “Yer from Prentisstown–”
I look up, sharp.
Jane slaps a hand over her mouth.
“Wife!” Wilf yells, turning his head round from the front of the cart.
“Ah didn’t mean it,” she whispers to me.
But it’s too late. Already the word is bouncing up and down the caravan in a way that’s become too familiar, not just the word, but what pins it to me, what everyone knows or thinks they know about me, already faces turning about to look deeper at the last cart in the caravan, oxes and horses drawing to a stop as people turn more fully to examine us.
Faces and Noise aimed right back down the road at us.
“Who yoo got back there, Wilf?” a man’s voice says from just one cart up.
“Feverish boy,” Wilf shouts back. “Crazy with sickness. Don’t know what he’s sayin.”
“Yoo entirely sure about that?”
“Yessir,” Wilf says. “Sick boy.”
“Bring him out,” a woman’s voice calls. “Let’s see him.”
“What if he’s a spy?” another woman’s voice calls, rising in pitch. “Leadin the army right to us?”
“We don’t want no spies!” cries a different man.
“He’s Ben,” Wilf says. “He’s from Farbranch. Got nightmares of cursed town army killin what he loves. I vouch for him.”
No one shouts nothing for a minute but the Noise of the men buzzes in the air like a swarm. Everyone’s face is still on us. I try to make my own look more feverish and put the invasion of Farbranch first and foremost. It ain’t hard and it makes my heart sick.
And there’s a long moment where nobody says nothing and it’s as loud as a screaming crowd.
And then it’s enough.
Slowly but slowly the oxes and horses start moving forward again, pulling away from us, people still looking back but at least getting farther away. Wilf snaps the reins on his oxes but keeps them slower than the rest, letting a distance open between us and everyone else.
“Ah’m sorry,” Jane says again, breathless. “Wilf told me not to say. He told me but–”
“That’s okay,” I say, just wanting her to stop talking already.
“Ah’m so so sorry.”
There’s a lurch and Wilf’s stopped the cart. He waits till the caravan’s off a good distance then hops down and comes back.
“No one lissens to Wilf,” he says, maybe with a small smile. “But when they do, they believe him.”
“I need to go,” I say.
“Yup,” he says. “T’ain’t safe.”
“Ah’m sorry,” Jane keeps saying.
I jump off the cart, Manchee following me. Wilf reaches for Viola’s bag and holds it open. He looks at Jane, who understands him. She takes an armful of fruits and breads and puts them in the bag, then another armful of dried meats.
“Thanks,” I say.
“Hope yoo find her,” Wilf says as I close the bag.
“I hope so, too.”
With a nod, Wilf goes and reseats himself on the cart and snaps the reins on his oxes.
“Be careful,” Jane calls after me, in the loudest whisper you ever heard. “Watch out for the crazies.”
I stand for a minute and watch ’em pull away, coughing still, feverish still, but feeling better for the food if not the smell of roots and I’m hoping Manchee can find the trail again and I’m also wondering just exactly what kinda welcome I’m gonna get if I ever do get to Haven.
It takes a little while, a horrible little while, for Manchee to find the scent again once we’re back in the woods but then he barks, “This way,” and we’re off again.
He’s a good bloody dog, have I said that?
Night’s fully fallen by now and I’m still sweating and I’m still coughing enough to win a contest and my feet ain’t made of nothing but blisters and my head’s still buzzy with feverish Noise but I’ve got food in my belly and more in the bag to see me thru a coupla days and so all that matters is still ahead of us.
“Can you smell her, Manchee?” I ask, as we balance on a log across a stream. “Is she still alive?”
“Smell Viola,” he barks, jumping off the other side. “Viola fear.”
Which hits me a little and I quicken my step. Another midnight (twenty-two days? Twenty-one?) and my torch battery gives out. I take out Viola’s but it’s the last we got. More hills and steeper, too, as we go on thru the night, harder to climb up, dangerous to climb down but we go and go and go, Manchee sniffing away, eating Wilf’s dried meat as we stumble forward, me coughing away, taking the shortest rests possible, usually bent double against trees, and the sun starts coming up over a hill so it’s like we’re walking up into the sunrise.
And it’s when light hits us full that I see the world start to shimmer.
I stop, hanging on to a fern to keep my balance against the steepness of the hill. Everything’s woozy for a second and I close my eyes but it don’t help as there’s just a wash of colours and sparkles behind my eyelids and my body is jelly-like and waving in the breeze I can feel coming off the hilltop and when it passes, it don’t really pass altogether, the world keeping its weird brightness, like I’ve woke up in a dream.
“Todd?” Manchee barks, worry there, no doubt from seeing who knows what in my Noise.
“The fever,” I say, coughing again. “I shouldn’t’ve thrown away that filthy rag.”
Ain’t nothing for it.
I take the last of the pain tabs from my medipak and we gotta keep going.
We get to the top of the hill and for a minute all the other hills in front of us and the river and the road down below rumble up and down like they’re on a blanket someone’s shaking and I do my best to blink it away till it calms down enough to keep walking. Manchee whines by my feet. I nearly tip over when I try and scratch him so instead I focus on getting down the hill without falling.
I think again of the knife at my back, of the blood that was on it when it went into my body and my blood mixed with the Spackle’s and who knows what now spinning round my insides since Aaron stabbed me.
“I wonder if he knew,” I say, to Manchee, to myself, to no one, as we get to the bottom of the hill and I lean against a tree to make the world stop moving. “I wonder if he killed me slow.”
“Course I did,” Aaron says, leaning out from behind the tree.
I yell out and fall back away from him and fling my arms in front of me trying to slap him away and I hit the ground on my butt and start scampering back before I look up–
And he’s gone.
Manchee’s got his head cocked at me. “Todd?”
“Aaron,” I say, my heart thundering, my breath catchi
ng and turning into meatier and meatier coughs.
Manchee sniffs the air again, sniffs the ground around him. “Trail this way,” he barks, shifting from foot to foot.
I look around me, coughing away, the world spotty and wavy.
No sign of him, no Noise other than mine, no silence of Viola. I close my eyes again.
I am Todd Hewitt, I think against the swirling. I am Todd Hewitt.
Keeping my eyes shut, I feel for the water bottle and take a swig and I tear a piece from Wilf’s bread and chew it down. Only then do I open my eyes again.
Nothing.
Nothing but woods and another hill to climb.
And sunlight that shimmers.
The morning passes and at the bottom of yet another hill there’s yet another creek. I refill the water bottles and take a few drinks from the cold water with my hands.
I feel bad, ain’t no two ways about it, my skin’s tingling and sometimes I’m shivering and sometimes I’m sweating and sometimes my head weighs a million pounds. I lean into the creek and splash myself with the cold.
I sit up and Aaron is reflected in the water.
“Killer,” he says, a smile across his torn-up face.
I jump back, scrabbling away for my knife (and feeling the pain shoot thru my shoulders again) but when I look up he ain’t there and Manchee’s made no sign of stopping his fish-chasing.
“I’m coming to find you,” I say to the air, air that’s started to move more and more with the wind.
Manchee’s head pops up from the water. “Todd?”
“I’ll find you if it’s the last thing I do.”
“Killer,” I hear again, whispered along the wind.
I lay for a second, breathing heavy, coughing but keeping my eyes peeled. I go back to the creek and I splash so much cold water on myself it makes my chest hurt.
I pick myself up and we carry on.
The cold water does the trick for a little while and we manage a few more hills as the sun gets to midday in the sky with minimal shimmer. When things do start to wobble again I stop us and we eat.
“Killer,” I hear from the bushes around us and then again from another part of the forest. “Killer.” And again from somewhere else. “Killer.”
I don’t look up, just eat my food.
It’s just the Spackle blood, I tell myself. Just the fever and the sickness and that’s all.
“Is that all?” Aaron says from across the clearing. “If that’s all I am, why you chasing me so bad?”
He’s wearing his Sunday robes and his face is all healed up like he’s back in Prentisstown, his hands clasped in front of him like he’s ready to lead us in prayer and he’s glowing in the sun and he’s smiling down at me.
The smiling fist I remember so well.
“The Noise binds us all, young Todd,” he says, his voice slithering and shiny like a snake. “If one of us falls, we all fall.”
“You ain’t here,” I say, clenching my teeth.
“Here, Todd,” Manchee barks.
“Ain’t I?” Aaron says and disappears in a shimmer.
My brain knows this Aaron ain’t real but my heart don’t care and it’s beating in my chest like a race. It’s hard to catch my breath and I waste more time waiting just to be able to stand up and move on into the afternoon.
The food’s helping, God bless Wilf and his crazy wife, but sometimes we can’t go much faster than a stumble. I start to see Aaron outta the corner of my eye pretty much all the time, hiding behind trees, leaning against rocks, standing on top of woodfall, but I just turn my head away and keep stumbling.
And then, from a hilltop, I see the road cross the river again down below. The landscape’s moving in a way that turns my stomach but I can definitely see a bridge down there, taking the road to the other side so there’s nothing now twixt me and the river.
I wonder for a minute about that other fork we never took back in Farbranch. I wonder where that road is in the middle of all this wilderness. I look from the hilltop to my left but there’s just woods as far as I can see and more hills that move like hills shouldn’t. I have to close my eyes for a minute.
We make our way down, too slow, too slow, the scent taking us close to the road and towards the bridge, a high rickety one with rails. Water’s gathered where the road turns into it, filling it with puddles and muck.
“Did he cross the river, Manchee?” I put my hands on my knees to catch my breath and cough.
Manchee sniffs the ground like a maniac, crossing the road, re-crossing it, going to the bridge and back to where we stand. “Wilf smell,” he barks. “Cart smell.”
“I can see the tracks,” I say, rubbing my face with my hands. “What about Viola?”
“Viola!” Manchee barks. “This way.”
He heads away from the road, keeping to this side of the river and following it. “Good dog,” I say twixt raggedy breaths. “Good dog.”
I follow him thru branches and bushes, the river rushing closer to my right than it’s been in days.
And I step right into a settlement.
I stand up straight and cough in surprise.
It’s been destroyed.
The buildings, eight or ten of them, are charcoal and ash and there ain’t a whisper of Noise nowhere.
For a second I think the army’s been here but then I see plants growing up in the burnt-out buildings and no smoke is rising from any fire and the wind just blows thru it like only the dead live here. I look round and there’s a few decrepit docks on the river, just down from the bridge, one lonely old boat knocking against it in the current and a few more half-sunk boats piled halfway up the riverbank along from what may have been a mill before it became a pile of burnt wood.
It’s cold and it’s long dead and here’s another place on New World that never made it to subdivided farming.
And I turn back round and in the centre of it stands Aaron.
His face is back to how it was when the crocs tore it open, peeled half away, his tongue lolling out the side of the gash in his cheek.
And he’s still smiling.
“Join us, young Todd,” he says. “The church is always open.”
“I’ll kill you,” I say, the wind stealing my words but I know he can hear me cuz I can hear every last thing he’s saying.
“You won’t,” he says, stepping forward, his fists clenched by his sides. “Cuz I says you ain’t a real killer, Todd Hewitt.”
“Try me,” I say, my voice sounding strange and metallic.
He smiles again, his teeth poking out the side of his face, and in a wash of shimmer he’s right in front of me. He puts his cut up hands to the opening of his robe and pulls it apart enough to show his bare chest.
“Here’s yer chance, Todd Hewitt, to eat from the Tree of Knowledge.” His voice is deep in my head. “Kill me.”
The wind’s making me shiver but I feel hot and sweaty at the same time and I can’t get no more than a third of a breath down my lungs and my head is starting to ache in a way that food ain’t helping and whenever I look anywhere fast everything I see has to slide into place to catch up.
I clench my teeth.
I’m probably dying.
But he’s going first.
I reach behind me, ignoring the pain twixt my shoulders, and I grab the knife outta the sheath. I hold it in front of me. It’s shiny with fresh blood and glinting in sunlight even tho I’m standing in shadow.
Aaron pulls his smile wider than his face can really go and he pushes his chest out to me.
I raise the knife.
“Todd?” Manchee barks. “Knife, Todd?”
“Go ahead, Todd,” Aaron says and I swear I smell the dankness of him. “Cross over from innocence to sin. If you can.”
“I’ve done it,” I say. “I’ve already killed.”
“Killing a Spackle ain’t killing a man,” he says, grinning away at how stupid I am. “Spackles are devils put here to test us. Killing one’s like killing a turtle.”
He widens his eyes. “’Cept you can’t do that neither now, can ya?”
I grip the knife hard and I make a snarling sound and the world wavers.
But the knife still ain’t falling.
There’s a bubbling sound and gooey blood pours outta the gash in Aaron’s face and I realize he’s laughing.
“It took a long, long time for her to die,” he whispers.
And I call out from the pain–
And I raise the knife higher–
And I aim it at his heart–
And he’s still smiling–
And I bring the knife down–
And stab it right into Viola’s chest.
“No!” I say, in the second that it’s too late.
She looks up from the knife and right at me. Her face is filled with pain and confused Noise spills from her just like the Spackle that I–
(That I killed.)
And she looks at me with tears in her eyes and she opens her mouth and she says, “Killer”.
And as I reach out for her, she’s gone in a shimmer.
And the knife, clean of all blood, is still in my hand.
I fall onto my knees and then pitch forward and lie on the ground in the burnt-out settlement, breathing and coughing and weeping and wailing as the world melts around me so bad I don’t feel like it’s even solid no more.
I can’t kill him.
I want to. I want to so bad. But I can’t.
Cuz it ain’t me and cuz I lose her.
I can’t. I can’t I can’t I can’t.
I give in to the shimmering and I disappear for a while.
It’s good old Manchee, the friend who’s proved truest, who wakes me up with licks to my face and a worried murmured word coming thru his Noise and his whines.
“Aaron,” he’s yelping, quiet and tense. “Aaron.”
“Leave off, Manchee.”
“Aaron,” he whimpers, licking away.
“He ain’t really there,” I say, trying to sit up. “It’s just something–”
It’s just something Manchee can’t see.
“Where is he?” I say, getting up too fast, causing everything to swirl bright pink and orange. I reel back from what’s waiting for me.
There are a hundred Aarons at a hundred different places, all standing round me. There are Violas, too, frightened and looking to me for help, and Spackles with my knife sticking outta their chests and there’re all talking at once, all talking to me in a roar of voices.