Viola leans back in the doorway. “I’ve been trying to tell them that.”
“You’re safe here,” Doctor Snow says.
“We’ve heard that before,” I say. I look to Viola for support but all she does is stifle a smile and I realize I’m standing there in just a pair of holey and seriously worn-out underpants that ain’t covering as much as they should. “Hey!” I say, moving my hands down to the important bits.
“You’re safe as you’re going to be anywhere,” Doctor Snow says behind me, handing me a pair of my trousers from a neatly washed pile by the bed. “We were one of the main fronts in the war. We know how to defend ourselves.”
“That was Spackle.” I turn my back to Viola and shove my legs in the trousers. “This is men. A thousand men.”
“So the rumours say,” Doctor Snow says. “Even though it’s not actually numerically possible.”
“I don’t know nothing from numerickly,” I say, “but they got guns.”
“We have guns.”
“And horses.”
“We’ve got horses.”
“Do you have men who’ll join them?” I say, challenging him.
He don’t say nothing to that, which is satisfying. Then again, it ain’t satisfying at all. I button up my trousers. “We need to go.”
“You need to rest,” the doctor says.
“We ain’t staying and waiting for the army to show up.” I turn to include Viola, turn without thinking to the space where my dog’d be waiting for me to include him too.
There’s a quiet moment when my Noise fills the room with Manchee, just fills it with him, side to side, barking and barking and needing a poo and barking some more.
And dying.
I don’t know what to say about that neither.
(He’s gone, he’s gone.)
I feel empty. All over empty.
“No one’s going to make you do anything you don’t want to, Todd,” Doctor Snow says gently. “But the eldermen of the village would like to talk to you before you leave us.”
I tighten my mouth. “Bout what?”
“About anything that might help.”
“How can I help?” I say, grabbing a washed shirt to put on. “The army will come and kill everyone here who don’t join it. That’s it.”
“This is our home, Todd,” he says. “We’re going to defend it. We have no choice.”
“Then count me out–” I start to say.
“Daddy?” we hear.
There’s a little boy standing in the doorway next to Viola.
An actual boy.
He’s looking up at me, eyes wide open, his Noise a funny, bright, roomy thing and I can hear myself described as skinny and scar and sleeping boy and at the same time there are all kindsa warm thoughts towards his pa with just the word daddy repeated over and over again, meaning everything you’d want it to: askings about me, identifying his daddy, telling him he loves him, all in one word, repeated forever.
“Hey, fella,” Doctor Snow says. “Jacob, this is Todd. All woke up.”
Jacob looks at me solemnly, a finger in his mouth, and gives a little nod. “Goat’s not milking,” he says quietly.
“Is she not?” Doctor Snow says, standing up. “Well, we’d better go see if we can talk her into it, hadn’t we?”
Daddy daddy daddy says Jacob’s Noise.
“I’ll see to the goat,” Doctor Snow is saying to me, “and then I’ll go round up the rest of the eldermen.”
I can’t stop staring at Jacob. Who can’t stop staring at me.
He’s so much closer than the kids I saw at Farbranch.
And he’s so small.
Was I that small?
Doctor Snow’s still talking. “I’ll bring the eldermen back here, see if you can’t help us.” He leans down till I’m looking at him. “And if we can’t help you.”
His Noise is sincere, truthful. I believe he means what he says. I also believe he’s mistaken.
“Maybe,” he says, with a smile. “Maybe not. You haven’t even seen the place yet. Come on, Jake.” He takes his son’s hand. “There’s food in the kitchen. I’ll bet you’re starved. Be back within the hour.”
I go to the door to watch them leave. Jacob, finger still in his mouth, looks back at me till he and his pa disappear outta the house.
“How old is that?” I ask Viola, still looking down the hallway. “I don’t even know how old that is.”
“He’s four,” she says. “He’s told me about 800 times. Which seems kind of young to be milking goats.”
“Not on New World, it ain’t,” I say. I turn back to her and her hands are on her hips and she’s giving me a serious look.
“Come and eat,” she says. “We need to talk.”
She leads me to a kitchen as clean and bright as the bedroom. River still rushing by outside, birds still Noisy, music still–
“What is that music?” I say, going to the window to look out. Sometimes it seems like I reckernize it but when I listen close, it’s voices changing over voices, running around itself.
“It’s from loudspeakers up in the main settlement,” Viola says, taking a plate of cold meat outta the fridge.
I sit down at the table. “Is there some kinda festival going on?”
“No,” she says, in a way that means just wait. “Not a festival.” She gets out bread and some orange fruit I ain’t never seen before and then some red-coloured drink that tastes of berries and sugar.
I dig into the food. “Tell me.”
“Doctor Snow is a good man,” she says, like I need to know this first. “Everything about him is good and kind and he worked so hard to save you, Todd, I mean it.”
“Okay. So what’s up?”
“That music plays all day and all night,” she says, watching me eat. “It’s faint here at the house, but in the settlement, you can’t hear yourself think.”
I pause at a mouthful of bread. “Like the pub.”
“What pub?”
“The pub in Prent–” I stop. “Where do they think we’re from?”
“Farbranch.”
I sigh. “I’ll do my best.” I take a bite of the fruit. “The pub where I come from played music all the time to try and drown out the Noise.”
She nods. “I asked Doctor Snow why they did it here, and he said, ‘To keep men’s thoughts private’.”
I shrug. “It makes an awful racket, but it kinda makes sense, don’t it? One way to deal with the Noise.”
“Men’s thoughts, Todd,” she says. “Men. And you notice he said he was going to ask the eldermen to come seek out your advice?”
I get a horrible thought. “Did the women all die here, too?”
“Oh, there’s women,” she says, fiddling with a butter knife. “They clean and they cook and they make babies and they all live in a big dormitory outside of town where they can’t interfere in men’s business.”
I put down a forkful of meat. “I saw a place like that when I was coming to find you. Men sleeping in one place, women in another.”
“Todd,” she says, looking at me. “They wouldn’t listen to me. Not one thing. Not a word I said about the army. They kept calling me little girl and practically patting me on the bloody head.” She crosses her arms. “The only reason they want to talk to you about it now is because caravans of refugees started showing up on the river road.”
“Wilf,” I say.
Her eyes scan over me, reading my Noise. “Oh,” she says. “No, I haven’t seen him.”
“Wait a minute.” I swallow some more drink. It feels like I haven’t drunk anything for years. “How did we get so far ahead of the army? How come if I’ve been here five days we ain’t been overrun yet?”
“We were in that boat for a day and a half,” she says, running her nail at something stuck on the table.
“A day and a half,” I repeat, thinking about this. “We musta come miles.”
“Miles and miles,” she says. “I just let us float and float a
nd float. I was too afraid to stop at the places I passed. You wouldn’t believe some of the things . . .” She drifts off, shaking her head.
I remember Jane’s warnings. “Naked people and glass houses?” I ask.
Viola looks at me strange. “No,” she says, curling her lip. “Just poverty. Just horrible, horrible poverty. Some of those places looked like they would have eaten us so I just kept on and on and you got sicker and sicker and then on the second morning I saw Doctor Snow and Jacob out fishing and I could see in his Noise he was a doctor and as weird as this place is about women, it’s at least clean.”
I look around the clean, clean kitchen. “We can’t stay,” I say.
“No, we can’t.” She puts her head in her hands. “I was so worried about you.” There’s feeling in her voice. “I was so worried about the army coming and nobody listening to me.” She smacks the table in frustration. “And I was feeling so bad about–”
She stops. Her face creases and she looks away.
“Manchee,” I say, out loud, for the first time since–
“I’m so sorry, Todd,” she says, her eyes watery.
“Ain’t yer fault.” I stand up fast, scooting my chair back.
“He would have killed you,” she says, “and then he would have killed Manchee just because he could.”
“Stop talking about it, please,” I say, leaving the kitchen and going back to the bedroom. Viola follows me. “I’ll talk to these elder folks,” I say, picking up Viola’s bag from the floor and stuffing the rest of the washed clothes in it. “And then we’ll go. How far are we from Haven, do you know?”
Viola makes a tiny smile. “Two days.”
I stand up straight. “We came that far downriver?”
“We came that far.”
I whistle quietly to myself. Two days. Just two days. Till whatever there is in Haven.
“Todd?”
“Yeah?” I say, putting her bag round my shoulders.
“Thank you,” she says.
“For what?”
“For coming after me.”
Everything’s gone still.
“Ain’t nothing,” I say, feeling my face get hot and looking away. She don’t say nothing more. “You all right?” I ask, still not looking at her. “From when he took you?”
“I don’t really–” she starts to say but we hear a door close and a sing-song daddy daddy daddy floating down the hall towards us. Jacob hugs the door frame of the room rather than come on in.
“Daddy sent me to fetch you,” he says.
“Oh?” I raise my eyebrows. “I’m meant to come to them now, am I?”
Jacob nods, very serious.
“Well, in that case, we’re coming,” I rearrange the sack and looking at Viola. “And then we’re going.”
“Too right,” Viola says and the way she says it makes me glad. We head out into the hallway after Jacob but he stops us at the door.
“Just you,” he says, looking at me.
“Just me what?”
Viola crosses her arms. “He means just you to talk to the eldermen.”
Jacob nods, again very serious. I look at Viola and back to Jacob. “Well now,” I say, squatting down to his level. “Why don’t you just go tell yer daddy that both me and Viola will be along in a minute. Okay?”
Jacob opens his mouth. “But he said–”
“I don’t really care what he said,” I say gently. “Go.”
He gives a little gasp and runs out the door.
“I think I’m maybe thru of men telling me what to do,” I say and I’m surprised at the weariness in my voice and suddenly I feel like I wanna get back in that bed and sleep for another five days.
“You going to be all right to walk to Haven?” Viola says.
“Try and stop me,” I say and she smiles again.
I head on out the front door.
And for a third time I’m expecting Manchee to come bounding out with us.
His absence is so big it’s like he’s there and all the air goes outta my lungs again and I have to wait and breathe deep and swallow.
“Oh, man,” I say to myself.
His last Todd? hangs in my Noise like a wound.
That’s another thing about Noise. Everything that’s ever happened to you just keeps right on talking, for ever and ever.
I see the last of Jacob’s dust as he runs on up the trail thru some trees towards the rest of the settlement. I look round. Doctor Snow’s house ain’t too big but it stretches out to a deck overlooking the river. There’s a small dock and a really low bridge connecting the wide path that comes from the centre of Carbonel Downs to the river road that carries along on the other side. The road across the river, the one we spent so much time coming down, is almost hidden behind a row of trees as it carries on past the settlement on the final two days towards Haven.
“God,” I say. “It’s like paradise compared to the rest of New World.”
“There’s more to paradise than nice buildings,” Viola says.
I look round some more. Doctor Snow’s got a well-kept front garden on the path to the settlement. Looking up the path, I can see more buildings thru the trees and hear that music playing.
That weird music. Constantly changing to keep you from getting used to it, I guess. It’s nothing I reckernize but it’s louder out here and I guess on one level you ain’t sposed to reckernize it but I swear I heard something in it when I was waking up–
“It’s almost unbearable in the middle of the settlement,” Viola says. “Most of the women don’t even bother coming in from the dormitory.” She frowns. “Which I guess is the whole point.”
“Wilf’s wife told me bout a settlement where everyone–”
I stop cuz the music changes.
Except it don’t change.
The music from the settlement stays the same, messy and wordy and bending around itself like a monkey.
But there’s more.
There’s more music than just it.
And it’s getting louder.
“Do you hear that?” I say.
I turn.
And turn again. Viola, too.
Trying to figure out what we’re hearing.
“Maybe someone’s set up another loudspeaker across the river,” she says. “Just in case the women were getting any uppity ideas about leaving.”
But I ain’t listening to her.
“No,” I whisper. “No, it can’t be.”
“What?” Viola says, her voice changing.
“Shh.” I listen close again, trying to calm my Noise so I can hear it.
“It’s coming from the river,” she whispers.
“Shh,” I say again, cuz my chest is starting to rise, my Noise starting to buzz too loud to be of any use at all.
Out there, against the rush of the water and the Noise of the birdsong, there’s–
“A song,” Viola says, real quiet. “Someone’s singing.”
Someone’s singing.
And what they’re singing is:
Early one mor-r-ning, just as the sun was ri-i-sing . . .
And my Noise surges louder as I say it.
“Ben.”
I run down to the river’s edge and stop and listen again.
Oh don’t deceive me.
“Ben?” I say, trying to shout and whisper at the same time.
Viola comes thumping up behind me. “Not your Ben?” she says. “Is it your Ben?”
I shush her with my hand and listen and try to pick away the river and the birds and my own Noise and there, just there under it all–
Oh never leave me.
“Other side of the river,” Viola says and takes off across the bridge, feet smacking against the wood. I’m right behind her, passing her, listening and looking and listening and looking and there and there and there–
There in the leafy shrubs on the other side of the water–
It’s Ben.
It really is Ben.
He’s crouch
ed down behind leafy greenery, hand against a tree trunk, watching me come to him, watching me run across the bridge, and as I near him, his face relaxes and his Noise opens up as wide as his arms and I’m flying into ’em both, leaping off the bridge and into the bushes and nearly knocking him over and my heart is busting open and my Noise is as bright as the whole blue sky and–
And everything’s gonna be all right.
Everything’s gonna be all right.
Everything’s gonna be all right.
It’s Ben.
And he’s gripping me tight and he’s saying, “Todd,” and Viola’s standing back a ways, letting me greet him, and I’m hugging him and hugging him and it’s Ben, oh Christ Almighty, it’s Ben Ben Ben.
“It’s me,” he says, laughing a little cuz I’m crushing the air outta his lungs. “Oh, it’s good to see ya, Todd.”
“Ben,” I say, leaning back from him and I don’t know what to do with my hands so I just grab his shirt front in my fists and shake him in a way that’s gotta mean love. “Ben,” I say again.
He nods and smiles.
But there’s creases round his eyes and already I can see the beginnings of it, so soon it’s gotta be right up front in his Noise, and I have to ask, “Cillian?”
He don’t say nothing but he shows it to me, Ben running back to a farmhouse already in flames, already burning down, with some of the Mayor’s men inside but with Cillian, too, and Ben grieving, grieving still.
“Aw, no,” I say, my stomach sinking, tho I’d long guessed it to be true.
But guessing a thing ain’t knowing a thing.
Ben nods again, slow and sad, and I notice now that he’s dirty and there’s blood clotted on his nose and he looks like he ain’t eaten for a week but it’s still Ben and he can still read me like no other cuz his Noise is already asking me bout Manchee and I’m already showing him and here at last my eyes properly fill and rush over and he takes me in his arms again and I cry for real over the loss of my dog and of Cillian and of the life that was.
“I left him,” I say and keep saying, snot-filled and coughing. “I left him.”
“I know,” he says and I can tell it’s true cuz I hear the same words in his Noise. I left him, he thinks.