The Knife of Never Letting Go

by Patrick Ness

  “Why did the first settlers come?” Hildy asks me. “Why does anyone look for a new place to live?”

  “Cuz the place yer a-leaving ain’t worth staying for,” Tam says. “Cuz the place yer a-leaving is so bad ye gotta leave.”

  “Old World’s mucky, violent and crowded,” Hildy says, wiping her face with a napkin, “a-splitting right into bits with people a-hating each other and a-killing each other, no one happy till everyone’s miserable. Least it was all those years ago.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Viola says, “I’ve never seen it. My mother and father . . .” She drifts off.

  But I’m still thinking about being born on a spaceship, an honest to badness spaceship. Growing up while flying along the stars, able to go wherever you wanted, not stuck on some hateful planet which clearly don’t want you. You could go anywhere. If one place didn’t suit, you’d find another. Full freedom in all directions. Could there possibly be anything cooler in the whole world than that?

  I don’t notice there’s a silence fallen at the table. Hildy’s rubbing Viola’s back again and I see that Viola’s eyes are wet and leaking and she’s started to rock a little back and forth.

  “What?” I say. “What’s wrong now?”

  Viola’s forehead just creases at me.

  “What?” I say.

  “I think maybe we talked enough about Vi’s ma and pa for now,” Hildy says softly. “I think maybe it’s time for boy and girl pups to get some shut-eye.”

  “But it’s hardly late at all.” I look out a window. The sun ain’t even hardly set. “We need to be getting to the settlement–”

  “The settlement is called Farbranch,” Hildy says, “and we’ll get ye there first thing in the morning.”

  “But those men–”

  “I been a-keeping the peace here since before you were born, pup,” Hildy says, kindly but firmly. “I can handle whatever is or ain’t a-coming.”

  I don’t say nothing to this and Hildy ignores my Noise on the subject.

  “Can I ask what yer business in Farbranch might be?” Tam says, picking at his corncob, making his asking sound less curious than his Noise says it is.

  “We just need to get there,” I say.

  “Both of ye?”

  I look at Viola. She’s stopped crying but her face is still puffy. I don’t answer Tam’s asking.

  “Well there’s plenty of work going,” Hildy says, standing and taking up her plate. “If that’s what yer after. They can always use more hands in the orchards.”

  Tam stands and they clear the table, taking the dishes into their kitchen and leaving me and Viola sitting there by ourselves. We can hear them chatting in there, lightly enough and Noise-blocked enough for us not to be able to make it out.

  “Do you really think we oughta stay the whole night?” I say, keeping my voice low.

  But she answers in a violent whisper, like I didn’t even ask an asking. “Just because my thoughts and feelings don’t spill out into the world in a shout that never stops doesn’t mean I don’t have them.”

  I turn to her, surprised. “Huh?”

  She keeps whispering something fierce. “Every time you think, Oh, she’s just emptiness, or, There’s nothing going on inside her, or, Maybe I can dump her with these two, I hear it, okay? I hear every stupid thing you think, all right? And I understand way more than I want to.”

  “Oh, yeah?” I whisper back, tho my Noise ain’t a whisper at all. “Every time you think something or feel something or have some stupid thought, I don’t hear it, so how am I sposed to know any effing thing about you, huh? How am I sposed to know what’s going on if you keep it secret?”

  “I’m not keeping it secret.” She’s clenching her teeth now. “I’m being normal.”

  “Not normal for here, Vi.”

  “And how would you know? I can hear you being surprised by just about everything they say. Didn’t they have a school where you’re from? Didn’t you learn anything?”

  “History ain’t so important when yer just trying to survive,” I say, spitting it out under my breath.

  “That’s actually when it’s most important,” Hildy says, standing at the end of the table. “And if this silly argument twixt ye two ain’t enough to prove yer tired, then yer tired beyond all sense. C’mon.”

  Viola and I glare at each other but we get up and follow Hildy into a large common room.

  “Todd!” Manchee barks from a corner, not getting up from the mutton bone Tam gave him earlier.

  “We’ve long since took over our guest rooms for other purposes,” Hildy says. “Ye’ll have to make do on the settees.”

  We help her make up some sheets and beds, Viola still scowling, my Noise a buzzy red.

  “Now,” Hildy says when we’re all done. “Apologize to each other.”

  “What?” Viola says. “Why?”

  “I don’t see how this is any of yer business,” I say.

  “Never go to sleep on an argument,” Hildy says, hands on hips, looking like she ain’t never gonna budge and would be pleased to see someone try and make her. “Not if ye want to stay friends.”

  Viola and I don’t say nothing.

  “He saved yer life?” Hildy says to Viola.

  Viola looks down before finally saying, “Yeah.”

  “That’s right, I did,” I say.

  “And she saved yers at the bridge, didn’t she?” Hildy says.

  Oh.

  “Yes,” Hildy says. “Oh. Don’t ye both think that counts for something?”

  We still don’t say nothing.

  Hildy sighs. “Fine. Any two pups so close to adulthood could maybe be left to their own apologies, I reckon.” She makes her way out without even saying good night.

  I turn my back on Viola and she turns her back on me. I take off my shoes and get myself under the sheet on one of Hildy’s “settees” which seems to be just a fancy word for couch. Viola does the same. Manchee leaps up on my settee and curls himself by my feet.

  There’s no sound except my Noise and a few crackles from a fire it’s too hot for. It can’t be much later than dusk but the softness of the cushions and the softness of the sheet and the too-warm of the fire and I’m already pretty much closing my eyes.

  “Todd?” Viola says from her settee across the room.

  I swim up from sinking down to sleep. “What?”

  She don’t say nothing for a second and I guess she must be thinking of her apology.

  But no.

  “What does your book say you’re supposed to do when you get to Farbranch?”

  My Noise gets a bit redder. “Never you mind what my book says,” I say. “That’s my property, meant for me.”

  “You know when you showed me the map back in the woods?” she says. “And you said we had to get to this settlement? You remember what was written underneath?”

  “Course I do.”

  “What was it?”

  There ain’t no poking in her voice, not that I can hear, but that’s gotta be what it is, ain’t it? Poking?

  “Just go to sleep, will ya?” I say.

  “It was Farbranch,” she says. “The name of the place we’re meant to be heading.”

  “Shut up.” My Noise is getting buzzy again.

  “There’s no shame in not being able to–”

  “I said, shut up!”

  “I could help you–”

  I get up suddenly, dumping Manchee off the settee with a thump. I grab my sheets and blanket under my arm and I stomp off to the room where we ate. I throw them on the floor and lay down, a room away from Viola and all her meaningless, evil quiet.

  Manchee stays in there with her. Typical.

  I close my eyes but I don’t sleep for ages and ages.

  Till I finally do, I guess.

  Cuz I’m on a path and it’s the swamp but it’s also the town and it’s also my farm and Ben’s there and Cillian’s there and Viola’s there and they’re all saying, “What’re you doing here, Todd
?” and Manchee’s barking “Todd! Todd!” and Ben’s grabbing me by the arm to drag me out the door and Cillian’s got his arm round my shoulders pushing me up the path and Viola’s setting the campfire box by the front door of our farmhouse and the Mayor’s horse rides right thru our front door and smashes her flat and a croc with the face of Aaron is rearing up behind Ben’s shoulders and I’m yelling “No!” and–

  And I’m sitting up and I’m sweating everywhere and my heart’s racing like a horse and I’m expecting to see the Mayor and Aaron standing right over me.

  But it’s only Hildy and she’s saying, “What the devil are ye a-doing in here?” She’s standing in the doorway, morning sun flooding in behind her so bright I have to raise my hand to block it out.

  “More comfortable,” I mumble but my chest is thumping.

  “I’ll bet,” she says, reading my just-waking Noise. “Breakfast is on.”

  The smell of the mutton-strip bacon frying wakes Viola and Manchee. I let Manchee out for his morning poo but Viola and I don’t say nothing to each other. Tam comes in as we eat, having I guess been out feeding the sheep. That’s what I’d be doing if I were home.

  Home, I think.

  Anyway.

  “Buck up, pup,” Tam says, plonking a cup of coffee down in front of me. I keep my face way down as I drink it.

  “Anybody out there?” I say into my cup.

  “Not a whisper,” Tam says. “And it’s a beautiful day.”

  I glance up at Viola but she ain’t looking at me. In fact, we get all the way thru the food, thru washing our faces, thru changing our clothes and re-packing our bags, all without saying nothing to each other.

  “Good luck to ye both,” Tam says, as we’re about to leave with Hildy towards Farbranch. “It’s always nice when two people who don’t got no one else find each other as friends.”

  And we really don’t say nothing to that.

  “C’mon, pups,” Hildy says. “Time’s a-wasting.”

  We get back on the path, which before too long reconnects with the same road that musta gone across the bridge.

  “Used to be the main road from Farbranch to Prentisstown,” Hildy says, hoisting her own small pack. “Or New Elizabeth, as it was then.”

  “As what was then?” I ask.

  “Prentisstown,” she says. “Used to be called New Elizabeth.”

  “It never did,” I say, raising up my eyebrows.

  Hildy looks at me, her own eyebrows mocking mine. “Was it never? I must be mistaken then.”

  “Must be,” I say, watching her.

  Viola makes a scoffing sound with her lips. I send her a look of death.

  “Will there be somewhere we can stay?” she asks Hildy, ignoring me.

  “I’ll take ye to my sister,” Hildy says. “Deputy Mayor this year, don’t ye know?”

  “What’ll we do then?” I say, kicking at the dirt as we walk on.

  “Reckon that’s up to ye two,” Hildy says. “Ye’ve gotta be the ones in charge of yer own destinies, don’t ye?”

  “Not so far,” I hear Viola say under her breath and it’s so exactly the words I have in my Noise that we both look up and catch each other’s eyes.

  We almost smile. But we don’t.

  And that’s when we start hearing the Noise.

  “Ah,” Hildy says, hearing it too. “Farbranch.”

  The road comes out on the top of a little vale.

  And there it is.

  The other settlement. The other settlement that wasn’t sposed to be.

  Where Ben wanted us to go.

  Where we might be safe.

  The first thing I see is where the valley road winds down thru orchards, orderly rows of well-tended trees with paths and irrigashun systems, all carrying on down a hill towards buildings and a creek at the bottom, flat and easy and snaking its way back to meet the bigger river no doubt.

  And all thru-out are men and women.

  Most are scattered working in the orchard, wearing heavy work aprons, all the men in long sleeves, the women in long skirts, cutting down pine-like fruits with machetes or carrying away baskets or working on the irrigashun pipes and so on.

  Men and women, women and men.

  A coupla dozen men, maybe, is my general impression, less than Prentisstown.

  Who knows how many women.

  Living in a whole other place.

  The Noise (and silence) of them all floats up like a light fog.

  Two, please and The way I see it is and Weedy waste and She might say yes, she might not and If service ends at one, then I can always and so on and so on, never ending, amen.

  I just stop in the road and gape for a second, not ready to walk down into it yet.

  Cuz it’s weird.

  It’s more than weird, truth to tell.

  It’s all so, I don’t know, calm. Like normal chatter you’d have with yer mates. Nothing accidental nor abusive.

  And nobody’s hardly longing for nothing.

  No awful, awful, despairing longing nowhere I can hear or feel.

  “We sure as ruddy heck ain’t in Prentisstown no more,” I say to Manchee under my breath.

  Not a second later, I hear Prentisstown? float in from a field right next to us.

  And then I hear it in a coupla different places. Prentisstown? and Prentisstown? and then I notice that the men in the orchards nearby ain’t picking fruit or whatever any more. They’re standing up. They’re looking at us.

  “Come on,” Hildy says. “Keep on a-walking. It’s just curiosity.”

  The word Prentisstown multiplies along the fields like a crackling fire. Manchee brings hisself in closer to my legs. We’re being stared at on all sides as we carry on. Even Viola steps in a bit so we’re a tighter group.

  “Not to worry,” Hildy says. “There’ll just be a lot of people who’ll want to meet–”

  She stops mid-sentence.

  A man has stepped onto the path in front of us.

  His face don’t look at all like he wants to meet us.

  “Prentisstown?” he says, his Noise getting uncomfortably red, uncomfortably fast.

  “Morning, Matthew,” Hildy says, “I was just a-bringing–”

  “Prentisstown,” the man says again, no longer an asking, and he’s not looking at Hildy.

  He’s looking straight at me.

  “Yer not welcome here,” he says. “Not welcome at all.”

  And he’s got the biggest machete in his hand you ever seen.

  My hand goes right behind my rucksack to my own knife.

  “Leave it, Todd pup,” Hildy says, keeping her eyes on the man. “That’s not how this is gonna go.”

  “What do ye think yer a-bringing into our village, Hildy?” the man says, hefting his machete in his hand, still looking at me and there’s real surprise in his asking and–

  And is that hurt?

  “I’m a-bringing in a boy pup and a girl pup what’s lost their way,” Hildy says. “Stand aside, Matthew.”

  “I don’t see a boy pup nowhere,” Matthew says, his eyes starting to burn. He’s massively tall, shoulders like an ox and a thickened brow with lots of bafflement but not much tenderness. He looks like a walking, talking thunderstorm. “I see me a Prentisstown man. I see me a Prentisstown man with Prentisstown filth all over his Prentisstown Noise.”

  “That’s not what yer a-seeing,” Hildy says. “Look close.”

  Matthew’s Noise is already lurching on me like hands pressing in, forcing its way into my own thinking, trying to ransack the room. It’s angry and asking and Noisy as a fire, so uneven I can’t make hide nor hair of it.

  “Ye know the law, Hildy,” he says.

  The law?

  “The law is for men,” Hildy says, her voice staying calm, like we were standing there talking bout the weather. Can’t she see how red this man’s Noise is getting? Red ain’t yer colour if you wanna have a chat. “This here pup ain’t a man yet.”

  “I’ve still got twenty-e
ight days,” I say, without thinking.

  “Yer numbers don’t mean nothing here, boy,” Matthew spits. “I don’t care how many days away ye are.”

  “Calm yerself, Matthew,” Hildy says, sterner than I’d want her to. But to my surprise, Matthew looks at her all sore and steps back a step. “He’s a-fleeing Prentisstown, pup,” she says, a little softer. “He’s a-running away.”

  Matthew looks at her suspiciously and back to me but he’s lowering the machete. A little.

  “Just like ye did yerself once,” Hildy says to him.

  What?

  “Yer from Prentisstown?” I blurt out.

  Up comes the machete and Matthew steps forward again, threatening enough to start Manchee barking, “Back! Back! Back!”

  “I was from New Elizabeth,” Matthew growls, twixt clenched teeth. “I’m never from Prentisstown, boy, not never, and don’t ye forget it.”

  I see clearer flashes in his Noise now. Of impossible things, of crazy things, coming in a rush, like he can’t help it, things worse than the worst of the illegal vids Mr Hammar used to let out on the sly to the oldest and rowdiest of the boys in town, the kind where people seemed to die for real but there was no way of ever knowing for sure. Images and words and blood and screaming and–

  “Stop that right this second!” Hildy shouts. “Control yerself, Matthew Lyle. Control yerself right now.”

  Matthew’s Noise subsides, sudden-like but still roiling, without quite so much control as Tam but still more than any man in Prentisstown.

  But as soon as I think it, his machete raises again. “Ye’ll not say that word in our town, boy,” he says. “Not if ye know what’s good for ye.”

  “There’ll be no threats to guests of mine as long as I’m alive,” Hildy says, her voice strong and clear. “Is that understood?”

  Matthew looks at her, he don’t nod, he don’t say yes, but we all understand that he understands. He ain’t happy bout it, tho. His Noise still pokes and presses at me, slapping me if it could. He finally looks over to Viola.

  “And who might this be then?” he says, pointing the machete at her.

  And it happens before I even know I’m doing it, I swear.

  One minute I’m standing there behind everyone and the next thing I know, I’m between Matthew and Viola, I have my knife out pointing at him, my own Noise falling like an avalanche and my mouth saying, “You best take two steps away from her and you best be taking ’em right quick.”