The Knife of Never Letting Go

by Patrick Ness

  But after only a minute I feel him gently pushing me back and he says, “Listen, Todd, there ain’t much time.”

  “Ain’t much time for what?” I sniffle but I see he’s looking over at Viola.

  “Hi,” she says, eyes all alert.

  “Hi,” Ben says. “You must be her.”

  “I must be,” she says.

  “You been taking care of Todd?”

  “We’ve been taking care of each other.”

  “Good,” Ben says, and his Noise goes warm and sad. “Good.”

  “C’mon,” I say, taking his arm and trying to pull him back towards the footbridge. “We can get you something to eat. And there’s a doctor–”

  But Ben ain’t moving. “Can you keep an eye out for us?” he asks Viola. “Let us know if you see anything, anything at all. Either from the settlement or the road.”

  Viola nods and catches my eye as she steps outta the green and back to the path.

  “Things have escalated,” Ben says to me, low, serious as a heart attack. “You gotta get to a place called Haven. Fast as you can.”

  “I know that, Ben,” I say, “why do you–?”

  “There’s an army after you.”

  “I know that, too. And Aaron. But now that yer here we can–”

  “I can’t come with you,” he says.

  My mouth hangs open. “What? Course you can–”

  But he’s shaking his head. “You know I can’t.”

  “We can find a way,” I say, but already my Noise is whirling, thinking, remembering.

  “Prentisstown men ain’t welcome anywhere on New World,” he says.

  I nod. “They ain’t too happy bout Prentisstown boys, neither.”

  He takes my arm again. “Has anyone hurt you?”

  I look at him quietly. “Lots of people,” I say.

  He bites his lip and his Noise gets even sadder.

  “I looked for you,” he says. “Day and night, following the army, getting round it, ahead of it, listening for rumours of a boy and a girl travelling alone. And here you are and yer okay and I knew you would be. I knew it.” He sighs and there’s so much love and sadness in it I know he’s about to say the truth. “But I’m a danger to you in New World.” He gestures at the bush we’re hiding in, hiding in like thieves. “Yer gonna have to make it the rest of the way alone.”

  “I ain’t alone,” I say, without thinking.

  He smiles, but it’s still sad. “No,” he says. “No, yer not, are ya?” He looks around us again, peering thru the leaves and over the river to Doctor Snow’s house. “Were you sick?” he asks. “I heard yer Noise yesterday morning coming down the river but it was feverish and sleeping. I been waiting here ever since. I was worried something was really wrong.”

  “I was sick,” I say and shame starts to cloud my Noise like a slow fog.

  Ben looks at me close again. “What happened, Todd?” he says, gently reading into my Noise like he always could. “What’s happened?”

  I open up my Noise for him, all of it from the beginning, the crocs that attacked Aaron, the race thru the swamp, Viola’s ship, being chased by the Mayor on horseback, the bridge, Hildy and Tam, Farbranch and what happened there, the fork in the road, Wilf and the things that sang Here, Mr Prentiss Jr and Viola saving me.

  And the Spackle.

  And what I did.

  I can’t look at Ben.

  “Todd,” he says.

  I’m still looking at the ground.

  “Todd,” he says again. “Look at me.”

  I look up at him. His eyes, blue as ever, catching mine and holding them. “We’ve all made mistakes, Todd. All of us.”

  “I killed it,” I say. I swallow. “I killed him. It was a him.”

  “You were acting on what you knew. You were acting on what you thought best.”

  “And that excuses it?”

  But there’s something in his Noise. Something off and telling.

  “What is it, Ben?”

  He lets out a breath. “It’s time you knew, Todd,” he says. “Time you knew the truth.”

  There’s a snap of branches as Viola comes rushing back to us.

  “Horse on the road,” she says, outta breath.

  We listen. Hoofbeats, down the river road, coming fast. Ben slinks back a little farther into the bushes. We go with him but the horseman is coming so quick he ain’t interested in us at all. We hear him thunder by on the road and turn up the bridge that heads straight into Carbonel Downs, hooves clattering on boards and then on dirt till they’re swallowed up by the loudspeaker sounds.

  “That can’t be good news,” Viola says.

  “It’ll be the army,” Ben says. “By now they’re probably not more than a few hours from here.”

  “What!?” I say, rearing back. Viola jumps, too.

  “I told you we don’t have much time,” Ben says.

  “Then we gotta go!” I say. “You gotta come with us. We’ll tell people–”

  “No,” he says. “No. You get yerselves to Haven. That’s all there is to it. It’s yer best chance.”

  We pelt him with sudden askings.

  “Is Haven safe then?” Viola asks. “From an army?”

  “Is it true they have a cure for the Noise?” I ask.

  “Will they have communicators? Will I be able to contact my ship?”

  “Are you sure it’s safe? Are you sure?”

  Ben raises his hands to stop us. “I don’t know,” he says. “I haven’t been there in twenty years.”

  Viola stands up straight.

  “Twenty years?” she says. “Twenty years?” Her voice is rising. “Then how can we know what we’ll find when we get there? How do we know it’s even still there?”

  I rub my hand across my face and I think it’s the emptiness where Manchee used to be that makes me realize, realize what we never wanted to know.

  “We don’t,” I say, only saying the truth. “We never did.”

  Viola lets out a little sound and her shoulders slump down. “No,” she says. “I guess we didn’t.”

  “But there’s always hope,” Ben says. “You always have to hope.”

  We both look at him and there must be a word for how we’re doing it but I don’t know what it is. We’re looking at him like he’s speaking a foreign language, like he just said he was moving to one of the moons, like he’s telling us it’s all just been a bad dream and there’s candy for everybody.

  “There ain’t a whole lotta hope out here, Ben,” I say.

  He shakes his head. “What d’you think’s been driving you on? What d’you think’s got you this far?”

  “Fear,” Viola says.

  “Desperayshun,” I say.

  “No,” he says, taking us both in. “No, no, no. You’ve come farther than most people on this planet will do in their lifetimes. You’ve overcome obstacles and dangers and things that should’ve killed you. You’ve outrun an army and a madman and deadly illness and seen things most people will never see. How do you think you could have possibly come this far if you didn’t have hope?”

  Viola and I exchange a glance.

  “I see what yer trying to say, Ben–” I start.

  “Hope,” he says, squeezing my arm on the word. “It’s hope. I am looking into yer eyes right now and I am telling you that there’s hope for you, hope for you both.” He looks up at Viola and back at me. “There’s hope waiting for you at the end of the road.”

  “You don’t know that,” Viola says and my Noise, as much as I don’t want it to, agrees with her.

  “No,” Ben says, “but I believe it. I believe it for you. And that’s why it’s hope.”

  “Ben–”

  “Even if you don’t believe it,” he says, “believe that I do.”

  “I’d believe it more if you were coming with us,” I say.

  “He ain’t coming?” Viola says, surprised, then corrects herself. “Isn’t coming?”

  Ben looks at her, opens his mout
h and closes it again.

  “What’s the truth, Ben?” I ask. “What’s the truth we need to know?”

  Ben takes a long slow breath thru his nose. “Okay,” he says.

  But then a loud and clear “Todd?” comes calling from across the river.

  And that’s when we notice the music of Carbonel Downs is competing with the Noise of men now crossing the bridge.

  Many men.

  That’s the other purpose of the music, I guess. So you can’t hear men coming.

  “Viola?” Doctor Snow is calling. “What are you two doing over there?”

  I stand up straight and look over. Doctor Snow is crossing the bridge, little Jacob’s hand in his, leading a group of men who look like less friendly versions of himself and they’re eyeing us up and they’re seeing Ben and seeing me and Viola talking to him.

  And their Noise is starting to turn different colours as what they’re seeing starts making sense to them.

  And I see that some of ’em have rifles.

  “Ben?” I say quietly.

  “You need to run,” he says, under his breath. “You need to run now.”

  “I ain’t leaving you. Not again.”

  “Todd–”

  “Too late,” Viola says.

  Cuz they’re on us now, past the end of the bridge and heading towards the bushes where we’re not really hiding no more.

  Doctor Snow reaches us first. He looks Ben up and down. “And who might this be then?”

  And the sound of his Noise ain’t happy at all.

  “This is Ben,” I say, trying to raise my Noise to block all the askings coming from the men.

  “And who’s Ben when he’s at home?” Doctor Snow asks, his eyes alert and looking.

  “Ben’s my pa,” I say. Cuz it’s true, ain’t it? In all that’s important. “My father.”

  “Todd,” I hear Ben say behind me, all kindsa feelings in his Noise, but warning most of all.

  “Your father?” says a bearded man behind Doctor Snow, his fingers flexing along the stock of his rifle, tho not lifting it.

  Not yet.

  “You might want to be careful who you start claiming as a parent, Todd,” Doctor Snow says slowly, pulling Jacob closer to him.

  “You said the boy was from Farbranch,” says a third man with a purple birthmark under his eye.

  “That’s what the girl told us.” Doctor Snow looks at Viola. “Didn’t you, Vi?”

  Viola holds his look but don’t say nothing.

  “Can’t trust the word of a woman,” says the beard. “This is a Prentisstown man if I ever saw one.”

  “Leading the army right to us,” says the birthmark.

  “The boy is innocent,” says Ben and when I turn I can see his hands are in the air. “I’m the one you want.”

  “Correction,” says the beard, his voice angry and getting angrier. “You’re the one we don’t want.”

  “Hold on a minute, Fergal,” Doctor Snow says. “Something’s not right here.”

  “You know the law,” says the birthmark.

  The law.

  Farbranch talked about the law, too.

  “I also know these aren’t normal circumstances,” Doctor Snow says, then turns back to us. “We should at least give them a chance to explain themselves.”

  I hear Ben take a breath. “Well, I–”

  “Not you,” the beard interrupts.

  “What’s the story, Todd?” Doctor Snow says. “And it’s become really important you tell us the truth.”

  I look from Viola to Ben and back again.

  Which side of the truth do I tell?

  I hear the cock of a rifle. The beard’s raised his gun. And so have one or two of the men behind him.

  “The longer you wait,” the beard says, “the more you look like spies.”

  “We ain’t spies,” I say in a hurry.

  “The army your girl’s been talking about has been spotted marching down the river road,” Doctor Snow says. “One of our scouts just reported them as less than an hour away.”

  “Oh, no,” I hear Viola whisper.

  “She ain’t my girl,” I say, low.

  “What?” Doctor Snow says.

  “What?” Viola says.

  “She’s her own girl,” I say. “She don’t belong to anyone.”

  And does Viola ever look at me.

  “Whichever,” the birthmark says. “We’ve got a Prentiss-town army marching on us and a Prentisstown man hiding in our bushes and a Prentisstown boy who’s been in our midst for the last week. Looks mighty fishy if you ask me.”

  “He was sick,” Doctor Snow says. “He was out cold.”

  “So you say,” says the birthmark.

  Doctor Snow turns to him real slow. “Are you calling me a liar now, Duncan? Remember, please, that you’re talking to the head of the council of eldermen.”

  “You telling me you’re not seeing a plot here, Jackson?” says the birthmark, not backing down and raising his own rifle. “We’re sitting ducks. Who knows what they’ve told their army?” He aims his rifle at Ben. “But we’ll be putting an end to that right now.”

  “We ain’t spies,” I say again. “We’re running from the army just as hard as you should be.”

  And the men look at each other.

  In their Noise, I can hear just these thoughts about the army, about running from it instead of defending the town. I can also see anger bubbling, anger at having to make this choice, anger at not knowing the best way to protect their families. And I can see the anger focussing itself, not on the army, not on themselves for being unprepared despite Viola warning ’em for days, not at the world for the state it’s in.

  They’re focussing their anger on Ben.

  They’re focussing their anger on Prentisstown in the form of one man.

  Doctor Snow kneels down to get to Jacob’s level. “Hey, fella,” he says to his son. “Why don’t you run on back to the house now, okay?”

  Daddy daddy daddy I hear in Jacob’s Noise. “Why, Daddy?” he says, staring at me.

  “Well, I’ll betcha the goat’s getting lonely,” Doctor Snow says. “And who wants a lonely goat, huh?”

  Jacob looks at his father, back at me and Ben, then to the men around him. “Why is everyone so upset?” he says.

  “Oh,” Doctor Snow says, “we’re just figuring some things out, is all. It’ll all be right soon enough. You just run on back home, make sure the goat’s okay.”

  Jacob thinks about this for a second, then says, “Okay, Daddy.”

  Doctor Snow kisses him on the top of the head and ruffles his hair. Jacob goes running back over the bridge towards Doctor Snow’s house. When Doctor Snow turns back to us, a whole raft of pointed guns accompany him.

  “You can see how this doesn’t look good, Todd,” he says, and there’s real sadness in his voice.

  “He doesn’t know,” Ben says.

  “Shut your hole, murderer!” says the beard, gesturing with his rifle.

  Murderer?

  “Tell me true,” Doctor Snow says to me. “Are you from Prentisstown?”

  “He saved me from Prentisstown,” Viola speaks up. “If it hadn’t been for him–”

  “Shut up, girl,” says the beard.

  “Now’s not really the time for women to be talking, Vi,” Doctor Snow says.

  “But–” Viola says, her face getting red.

  “Please,” Doctor Snow says. Then he looks at Ben. “What have you told your army? How many men we have? What our fortifications are like–”

  “I’ve been running from the army,” Ben says, hands still in the air. “Look at me. Do I look like a well-tended soldier? I haven’t told them anything. I’ve been on the run, looking for my . . .” He pauses and I know the reason. “For my son,” he says.

  “You did this knowing the law?” Doctor Snow asks.

  “I know the law,” Ben says. “How could I possibly not know the law?”

  “What ruddy LAW?” I yell. “
What the hell is everyone talking about?”

  “Todd is innocent,” Ben says. “You can search his Noise for as long as you like and you won’t find anything to say I’m lying.”

  “You can’t trust them,” says the beard, still looking down his gun. “You know you can’t.”

  “We don’t know anything,” Doctor Snow says. “Not for ten years or more.”

  “We know they’ve raised themselves into an army,” says the birthmark.

  “Yes, but I don’t see any crime in this boy,” Doctor Snow says. “Do you?”

  A dozen different Noises come poking at me like sticks.

  He turns to Viola. “And all the girl is guilty of is a lie that saved her friend’s life.”

  Viola looks away from me, face still red with anger.

  “And we’ve got bigger problems,” Doctor Snow continues. “An army coming that may or may not know all about how we’re preparing to meet them.”

  “We ain’t SPIES!” I shout.

  But Doctor Snow is turning to the other men. “Take the boy and the girl back into town. The girl can go with the women and the boy is well enough to fight alongside us.”

  “Wait a minute!” I yell.

  Doctor Snow turns to Ben. “And though I do believe you’re just a man out looking for his son, the law’s the law.”

  “Is that your final ruling?” the beard says.

  “If the eldermen agree,” Doctor Snow says. There’s a general but reluctant nodding of heads, all serious and curt. Doctor Snow looks at me. “I’m sorry, Todd.”

  “Hold on!” I say, but the birthmark’s is already stepping forward and grabbing my arm. “Let go of me!”

  Another man’s grabbing on to Viola and she’s resisting just as much as I am.

  “Ben!” I call, looking back at him. “Ben!”

  “Go, Todd,” he says.

  “No, Ben!”

  “Remember I love you.”

  “What’re they gonna do?” I say, still pulling away from the birthmark’s hand. I turn to Doctor Snow. “What’re you gonna do?”

  He don’t say nothing but I can see it in his Noise.

  What the law demands.

  “The HELL you are!” I yell and with my free arm I’m already reaching for my knife and bringing it round towards the birthmark’s hand, slicing it across the top. He yelps and lets go.