by Patrick Ness
“And just where do you think you’ve been?” Cillian says as soon as Manchee and I come into view off the path. He’s lying down on the ground, deep into our little fission generator, the one outside the front of the house, fixing whatever’s gone wrong with it this month. His arms are covered in grease and his face is covered in annoyance and his Noise is buzzy like mad bees and I can already feel myself getting angry and I haven’t even properly got home yet.
“I was in the swamp getting apples for Ben,” I say.
“There’s work to be done and boys are off playing.” He looks back into the generator. Something makes a clunk inside and he says, “Dammit!”
“I said I wasn’t playing, if you’d ever listen!” I say but it’s more like a shout. “Ben wanted apples so I was getting him some ruddy apples!”
“Uh-huh,” Cillian says, looking back at me. “And where might these apples be then?”
And of course I’m not holding any apples, am I? I don’t even remember dropping the bag I’d started to fill but of course I must have when–
“When what?” Cillian says.
“Quit listening so close,” I say.
He sighs his Cillian sigh and here we go: “It’s not like we ask you to do so much around here, Todd” – which is a lie – “but we can’t keep this farm running by ourselves” – which is true – “and even if you ever finish all yer chores, which you don’t” – another lie, they work me like a slave – “we’d still be playing a catch-up to nothing, now wouldn’t we?” – and this is true, too. The town can’t grow no more, it can only shrink, and help ain’t coming.
“Pay attenshun when I talk to you,” Cillian says.
“Tenshun!” Manchee barks.
“Shut up,” I say.
“Don’t talk to yer dog that way,” Cillian says.
I wasn’t talking to my dog, I think, loud and clear enough to hear.
Cillian glares at me and I glare back and this is how it always is, our Noise throbbing with red and hassle and irritashun. It’s never been so good with Cillian, not never, Ben’s always been the kind one, Cillian’s always been the other one, but it’s got worse as the day approaches when I’ll finally be a man and won’t have to listen to any more of his crap.
Cillian closes his eyes and breathes loudly once thru his nose. “Todd–” he starts, his voice a bit lower.
“Where’s Ben?” I say.
His face hardens a little more. “Lambing starts in a week, Todd.”
All I do to this is say again, “Where’s Ben?”
“You get the sheep fed and into their paddocks and then I want you to fix the gate to the east field once and for all, Todd Hewitt. I have asked you at least twice before now.”
I lean back on my heels. “‘Well, how was your trip to the swamp, Todd?’” I say, making my voice go all sarcastic. “‘Well, it was fine and dandy there, Cillian, thank you for asking.’ ‘Didja see anything interesting out there in the swamp, Todd?’ ‘Well, funny you should ask, Cillian, cuz I sure did see something interesting which might explain this here cut on my lip that you ain’t asked about but I guess it’ll have to just wait till the sheep are fed and I fix the goddam fence!’”
“Watch yer mouth,” Cillian says. “I don’t have time for yer games. Go do the sheep.”
I clench up my fists and make a sound that sounds like “awwghgh” which tells Cillian that I just can’t put up with his non-reason not for one second longer.
“Come on, Manchee,” I say.
“The sheep, Todd,” Cillian calls as I start walking away. “The sheep first.”
“Yeah, I’ll do the ruddy sheep,” I mutter to myself. I’m walking away faster now, my blood jumping and Manchee’s getting excited from the roar of my Noise. “Sheep!” he barks. “Sheep, sheep, Todd! Sheep, sheep, quiet, Todd! Quiet, quiet in swamp, Todd!”
“Shut up, Manchee,” I say.
“What was that?” Cillian says and there’s something in his voice that makes us both turn around. He’s sitting up by the generator now, his full attenshun on us, his Noise coming right at us like a laser.
“Quiet, Cillian,” Manchee barks.
“What does he mean ‘quiet’?” Cillian’s eyes and Noise are searching me all over.
“What do you care?” I turn again. “I got ruddy sheep to feed.”
“Todd, wait,” he calls after us but then something starts beeping on the generator and he says “Dammit!” again and has to go back to it tho I can feel all kinds of asking marks in his Noise following me, getting fainter as I head out to our fields.
Blast him, blast him and all, I think, in more or less those words and worse as I stomp across our farm. We live about a kilometre north-east of town and we do sheep on one half of the farm and wheat on the other. Wheat’s harder, so Ben and Cillian do most of that. Since I was old enough to be taller than the sheep, that’s who I’ve taken care of. Me, that is, not me and Manchee, tho another one of the false lying excuses why he was given to me was that I could teach him up as a sheep dog which for obvious reasons – by which I mean his complete stupidity – hasn’t worked out to plan.
Feeding and watering and shearing and lambing and even castrating and even butchering, I do all these things. We’re one of three meat and wool providers for the town, used to be one of five, soon be one of two because Mr Marjoribanks oughta be dying from his drink problem any day now. We’ll fold his flock into ours. I should say I’ll fold his flock into ours, like I did when Mr Gault disappeared two winters ago, and they’ll be new ones to butcher, new ones to castrate, new ones to shear, new ones to put in pens with ewes at the right times, and will I get a thank you? No, I will not.
I am Todd Hewitt, I think, the day just keeping on not making my Noise any quieter. I am almost a man.
“Sheep!” say the sheep when I pass their field without stopping. “Sheep!” they say, watching me go. “Sheep! Sheep!”
“Sheep!” barks Manchee.
“Sheep!” say the sheep back.
Sheep got even less to say than dogs do.
I’ve been listening out for Ben’s Noise over the farm and I’ve tracked him down to one corner of one of the wheat fields. Planting’s done, harvest is months away, so there’s not so much to do with the wheat at the minute, just make sure all the generators and the fission tractor and the electric threshers are ready to start working. You’d think this would mean I’d get a little help with the sheep but you would be wrong.
Ben’s Noise is humming a little tune out near one of the irrigashun spouts so I take a turn and head across the field towards him. His Noise ain’t nothing like Cillian’s. It’s calmer and clearer and tho you can’t see Noise, if Cillian’s always seems reddish, then Ben’s seems blue or sometimes green. They’re different men from each other, different as fire and water, Ben and Cillian, my more or less parents.
Story is, my ma was friends with Ben before they left for New World, that they were both members of the Church when the offer of leaving and starting up a settlement was made. Ma convinced Pa and Ben convinced Cillian and when the ships landed and the settlement started, it was my ma and pa who raised sheep on the next farm over from Ben and Cillian growing wheat and it was all friendly and nice and the sun never set and men and women sang songs together and lived and loved and never got sick and never never died.
That’s the story from the Noise anyway so who knows what it was actually like before? Cuz then of course I was born and everything changed. The spacks released their woman-killing germ and that was it for my ma and then the war started and was won and that was it for pretty much the rest of New World. And there’s me, just a baby, not knowing nothing bout nothing, and of course I’m not the only baby, there’re loads of us, and suddenly only half a town of men to take care of all us babies and boys. So a lot of us died and I was counted among the lucky cuz it was only natural for Ben and Cillian to take me in and feed me and raise me and teach me and generally make it possible for me to go on being alive.
And so I’m kinda like their son. Well, more than “kinda like” but less than actually being so. Ben says Cillian only fights with me all the time cuz he cares about me so much but if that’s true I say it’s a funny way to show it, a way that don’t seem much like caring at all, if you ask me.
But Ben’s a different kind of man than Cillian, a kind kind of man that makes him not normal in Prentisstown. 145 of the men in this town, even the newly made ones just past their birthdays, even Cillian tho to a lesser degree, they see me at best as something to ignore and at worst as something to hit and so I spend most of my days figuring out ways to be ignored so as I won’t get hit.
’Cept for Ben, who I can’t describe much further without seeming soft and stupid and like a boy, so I won’t, just to say that I never knew my pa, but if you woke up one day and had a choice of picking one from a selecshun, if someone said, here, then, boy, pick who you want, then Ben wouldn’t be the worst choice you could make that morning.
He’s whistling as we approach and tho I can’t see him yet and he can’t see me, he changes the tune as he senses me coming to a song I reckernize, Early one mo-o-rning, just as the sun was ri-i-sing, which he says was a favourite of my ma’s but which I think is really just a favourite of his since he’s whistled and sang it for me since I can remember. My blood is still storming away from Cillian but I immediately start to feel a little calmer.
Even tho it is a song for babies, I know, shut up.
“Ben!” Manchee barks and goes running around the irrigashun set-up.
“Hello, Manchee,” I hear as I round the corner and see Ben scratching Manchee twixt the ears. Manchee’s eyes are closed and his leg is thumping on the ground with pleasure and tho Ben can certainly tell from my Noise that I’ve been fighting with Cillian again, he don’t say nothing but, “Hello, Todd.”
“Hi, Ben.” I look at the ground, kicking a stone.
And Ben’s Noise is saying Apples and Cillian and Yer getting so big and Cillian again and itch in the crack of my arm and apples and dinner and Gosh, it’s warm out and it’s all so smooth and non-grasping it’s like laying down in a brook on a hot day.
“You calming down there, Todd?” he finally says. “Reminding yerself who you are?”
“Yeah,” I say, “just, why does he have to come at me like that? Why can’t he just say hello? Not even a greeting, it’s all ‘I know you done something wrong and I’m gonna keep at you till I find out what it is.’”
“That’s just his way, Todd. You know that.”
“So you keep saying.” I pick a blade of young wheat and stick the end in my mouth, not quite looking at him.
“Left the apples at the house, didja?”
I look at him. I chew on the wheat. He knows I didn’t. He can tell.
“And there’s a reason,” he says, still scratching Manchee. “There’s a reason which ain’t coming clear.” He’s trying to read my Noise, see what truth he can sift from it, which most men think is a good enough excuse for starting a fight, but I don’t mind with Ben. He cocks his head and stops scratching Manchee. “Aaron?”
“Yeah, I saw Aaron.”
“He did that to yer lip?”
“Yeah.”
“That sunuvahoor.” He frowns and steps forward. “I just might have to have words with that man.”
“Don’t,” I say. “Don’t. It’ll just be more trouble and it don’t hurt that much.”
He takes my chin into his fingers and lifts my head so he can see the cut. “That sunuvahoor,” he says again, quietly. He touches the cut with his fingers and I flinch away.
“It’s nothing,” I say.
“You stay away from that man, Todd Hewitt.”
“Oh, like I went running to the swamp hoping to run into him?”
“He ain’t right.”
“Well, holy crap, thanks for that bit of info, Ben,” I say and then I catch a bit of his Noise that says One month and it’s a new thing, a whole new bit of something that he quickly covers up with other Noise.
“What’s going on, Ben?” I say. “What’s going on with my birthday?”
He smiles and for a second it’s not an entirely true smile, for a second it’s a worried smile, but after that it’s a smile true enough. “It’s a surprise,” he says, “so don’t go looking.”
Even tho I’m nearly a man and even tho I’m nearly getting on up to his height now, he still bends down a little so his face is level with mine, not too close to be uncomfortable, just close enough so that it’s safe and I look away a little bit. And even tho it’s Ben, even tho I trust Ben more than anyone else in this crappy little town, even tho it’s Ben who saved my life and who I know would do it again, I still find myself reluctant to open up my Noise about what happened in the swamp, mainly cuz I can start to feel it pressing on my chest again whenever the thought gets near.
“Todd?” Ben says, looking at me closely.
“Quiet,” Manchee barks softly. “Quiet in swamp.”
Ben looks at Manchee, then back at me, his eyes going all soft and asking and full of concern. “What’s he talking about, Todd?”
I sigh. “We saw something,” I say. “Out there in the swamp. Well, we didn’t see it, it hid, but it was like a rip in the Noise, like a tear–”
I stop talking cuz he’s stopped listening to my voice. I’ve opened up my Noise for him and am remembering it as truthfully as I can and he’s looking at me something fierce and from way behind me I can hear Cillian coming and he’s calling “Ben?” and “Todd?” and there’s concern in his voice and in his Noise and Ben’s is starting to buzz a little, too, and I just keep thinking as truthfully as I can about the hole we found in the Noise but quietly, too, quietly, quietly, so as to keep the town from hearing if I can and here comes Cillian still and Ben’s just looking at me and looking at me till finally I have to ask.
“Is it spacks?” I say. “Is it the Spackle? Are they back?”
“Ben?” Cillian’s yelling it now as he’s coming across the fields.
“Are we in danger?” I ask Ben. “Will there be another war?”
But all Ben says is, “Oh, my God,” real quiet like, and then he says it again, “Oh, my God,” and then, without even moving or looking away, he says, “We have to get you outta here. We have to get you outta here right now.”
Cillian comes running up but before he says anything to us, Ben cuts him off and says, “Don’t think it!”
Ben turns to me. “Don’t you think it neither. You cover it up with yer Noise. You hide it. You hide it as best you can.” And he’s grabbing my shoulders as he’s saying it and squeezing tight enough to make my blood jump even more than it already is.
“What’s going on?” I say.
“Did you walk home thru town?” Cillian asks.
“Course I walked home thru town,” I snap. “What other effing way is there to get home?”
Cillian’s face tightens up but it’s not with being pissed off at me snapping, it’s tightening up with fear, fear I can hear loud as a shout in his Noise. They don’t yell at me for “effing” neither, which makes it all somehow worse. Manchee’s barking his head off by this point, “Cillian! Quiet! Effing! Todd!” but nobody’s bothering to tell him to shut up.
Cillian looks at Ben. “We’re gonna have to do it now.”
“I know,” Ben says.
“What’s going on?” I say again, all loud like. “Do what now?” I twist away from Ben and stand looking at them both.
Ben and Cillian take another look at each other and then back at me. “You have to leave Prentisstown,” Ben says.
My eyeballs go back and forth twixt theirs but they’re not letting nothing go in their Noise ’cept general worry. “What do you mean I have to leave Prentisstown?” I say. “There ain’t nowhere else on New World but Prentisstown.”
They take yet another look at each other.
“Stop doing that!” I say.
“Come on,” Cillian says. “We’ve al
ready got yer bag packed.”
“How can you already have my bag packed?”
Cillian says to Ben, “We probably don’t have much time.”
And Ben says to Cillian, “He can go down by the river.”
And Cillian says to Ben, “You know what this means.”
And Ben says to Cillian, “It doesn’t change the plan.”
“WHAT THE EFF IS GOING ON?” I roar, but I don’t say “eff”, now do I? Cuz it seems the situashun calls for something a little stronger. “WHAT EFFING PLAN?”
But they’re still not getting mad.
Ben lowers his voice and I can see him try to get his Noise into some kinda order and he says to me, “It’s very, very important you keep what happened in the swamp outta yer Noise as best you can.”
“Why? Are the spacks coming back to kill us?”
“Don’t think about it!” Cillian snaps. “Cover it up, keep it deep and quiet, till yer so far outta town no one can hear you. Now, come on!”
And he takes off back towards the house, running, actually running.
“Come on, Todd,” Ben says.
“Not till someone explains something.”
“You’ll get an explanashun,” Ben says, taking me by the arm and pulling me along. “You’ll get more than you ever wanted.” And there’s so much sadness to him when he says it that I don’t say nothing more, just follow along running back to the house, Manchee barking his head off behind us.
By the time we make it back to the house, I’m expecting–
I don’t know what I’m expecting. An army of Spackle coming outta the woods. A line-up of Mayor Prentiss’s men with guns at the ready. The whole house burning down. I don’t know. Ben and Cillian’s Noise ain’t making much sense, my own thoughts are boiling over like a volcano, and Manchee won’t stop barking, so who can tell anything in all this racket?
