The Knife of Never Letting Go

by Patrick Ness

  “Run!” I say to Ben. “Run, already!”

  I see Viola biting the hand of the man who’s grabbing her. He calls out and she stumbles back.

  “You, too!” I say to her. “Get outta here!”

  “I wouldn’t,” says the beard and there are rifles cocking all over the place.

  The birthmark is cursing and he raises his arm to strike but I’ve got my knife out in front of me. “Try it,” I say thru my teeth. “Come on!”

  “ENOUGH!” Doctor Snow yells.

  And in the sudden silence that follows, we hear the hoofbeats.

  Thump budda-thump budda-thump.

  Horses. Five of ’em. Ten. Maybe even fifteen.

  Roaring down the road like the devil hisself is on their tail.

  “Scouts?” I say to Ben tho I know they ain’t.

  He shakes his head. “Advance party.”

  “They’ll be armed,” I say to Doctor Snow and the men, thinking fast. “They’ll have as many guns as you.”

  Doctor Snow’s thinking, too. I can see his Noise whirring, see him thinking how much time they’ve got before the horses get here, how much trouble me and Ben and Viola are going to cause, how much time we’ll waste.

  I see him decide.

  “Let them go.”

  “What?” says the beard, his Noise itching to shoot something. “He’s a traitor and a murderer.”

  “And we’ve got a town to protect,” Doctor Snow says firmly. “I’ve got a son to keep safe. So do you, Fergal.”

  The beard frowns but says nothing more.

  Thump budda-thump budda-thump comes the sound from the road.

  Doctor Snow turns to us. “Go,” he says. “I can only hope you haven’t sealed our fate.”

  “We haven’t,” I say, “and that’s the truth.”

  Doctor Snow purses his lips. “I’d like to believe you.” He turns to the men. “Come on!” he shouts. “Get to your posts! Hurry!”

  The group of men breaks up, scurrying back to Carbonel Downs, the beard and the birthmark still seething at us as they go, looking for a reason to use their guns, but we don’t give ’em one. We just watch ’em go.

  I find I’m shaking a little.

  “Holy crap,” Viola says, bending at the waist.

  “We gotta get outta here,” I say. “The army’s gonna be more interested in us than it is in them.”

  I still have Viola’s bag with me, tho all it’s got in it any more are a few clothes, the water bottles, the binos and my ma’s book, still in its plastic bag.

  All the things we got in the world.

  Which means we’re ready to go.

  “This is only gonna keep happening,” Ben says. “I can’t come with you.”

  “Yes, you can,” I say. “You can leave later but we’re going now and yer coming with us. We ain’t leaving you to be caught by no army.” I look over to Viola. “Right?”

  She puts her shoulders back and looks decisive. “Right,” she says.

  “That’s settled then,” I say.

  Ben looks back and forth twixt the two of us. He furrows his brow. “Only till I know yer safe.”

  “Too much talking,” I say. “Not enough running.”

  We stay off the river road for obvious reasons and tear thru the trees, heading, as always, towards Haven, snapping thru twigs and branches, getting away from Carbonel Downs as fast as our legs can carry us.

  It’s not ten minutes before we hear the first gunshots.

  We don’t look back. We don’t look back.

  We run and the sounds fade.

  We keep running.

  Me and Viola are both faster than Ben and sometimes we have to slow down to let him catch up.

  We run past one, then two small, empty settlements, places that obviously heeded the rumours about the army better than Carbonel Downs did. We keep to the woods twixt the river and the road but we don’t even see any caravans. They must be high-tailing it to Haven.

  On we run.

  Night falls and we keep on running.

  “You all right?” I ask Ben, when we stop by the river to refill the bottles.

  “Keep on going,” he says, gasping. “Keep on going.”

  Viola sends me a worried look.

  “I’m sorry we don’t got food,” I say, but he just shakes his head and says, “Keep going.”

  So we keep going.

  Midnight comes and we run thru that, too.

  (Who knows how many days? Who cares any more?)

  Till finally, Ben says, “Wait,” and stops, hands on his knees, breathing hard in a real unhealthy way.

  I look around us by the light of the moons. Viola’s looking, too. She points. “There.”

  “Up there, Ben,” I say, pointing up the small hill Viola’s seen. “We’ll be able to get a view.”

  Ben don’t say nothing, just gasps and nods his head and follows us. There’s trees all the way up the side but a well-tended path and a wide clearing at the top.

  When we get there, we see why.

  “A sematary,” I say.

  “A what?” Viola says, looking round at all the square stones marking out their graves. Must be a hundred, maybe two, in orderly rows and well-kept grass. Settler life is hard and it’s short and lotsa New World people have lost the battle.

  “It’s a place for burying dead folk,” I say.

  Her eyes widen. “A place for doing what?”

  “Don’t people die in space?” I ask.

  “Yeah,” she says. “But we burn them. We don’t put them in holes.” She crosses her arms around herself, mouth and forehead frowning, peering around at the graves. “How can this be sanitary?”

  Ben still hasn’t said anything, just flopped down by a gravestone and leant against it, catching his breath. I take a swig from a water bottle and then hand it to Ben. I look out and around us. You can see down the road for a piece and there’s a view of the river, too, rushing by us on the left now. It’s a clear sky, the stars out, the moons starting to crescent in the sky above us.

  “Ben?” I say, looking up into the night.

  “Yeah?” he says, drinking down his water.

  “You all right?”

  “Yeah.” His breath’s getting back to normal. “I’m built for farm labour. Not sprinting.”

  I look at the moons one more time, the smaller one chasing the larger one, two brightnesses up there, still light enough to cast shadows, ignorant of the troubles of men.

  I look into myself. I look deep into my Noise.

  And I realize I’m ready.

  This is the last chance.

  And I’m ready.

  “I think it’s time,” I say. I look back at him. “I think now’s the time, if it’s ever gonna be.”

  He licks his lips and swallows his water. He puts the cap back on the bottle. “I know,” he says.

  “Time for what?” Viola asks.

  “Where should I start?” Ben asks.

  I shrug. “Anywhere,” I say, “as long as it’s true.”

  I can hear Ben’s Noise gathering, gathering up the whole story, taking one stream out of the river, finally, the one that tells what really happened, the one hidden for so long and so deep I didn’t even know it was there for my whole up-growing life.

  Viola’s silence has gone more silent than usual, as still as the night, waiting to hear what he might say.

  Ben takes a deep breath.

  “The Noise germ wasn’t Spackle warfare,” he says. “That’s the first thing. The germ was here when we landed. A naturally occurring phenomenon, in the air, always had been, always will be. We got outta our ships and within a day everyone could hear everyone’s thoughts. Imagine our surprise.”

  He pauses, remembering.

  “Except it wasn’t everyone,” Viola says.

  “It was just the men,” I say.

  Ben nods. “No one knows why. Still don’t. Our scientists were mainly agriculturalists and the doctors couldn’t find a reason and so fo
r a while, there was chaos. Just . . . chaos, like you wouldn’t believe. Chaos and confusion and Noise Noise Noise.” He scratches underneath his chin. “A lotta men scattered theirselves into far communities, getting away from Haven as fast as roads could be cut. But soon folk realized there was nothing to be done about it so for a while we all tried to live with it the best we could, found different ways to deal with it, different communities taking their own paths. Same as we did when we realized all our livestock were talking, too, and pets and local creachers.”

  He looks up into the sky and to the sematary around us and the river and road below.

  “Everything on this planet talks to each other,” he says. “Everything. That’s what New World is. Informayshun, all the time, never stopping, whether you want it or not. The Spackle knew it, evolved to live with it, but we weren’t equipped for it. Not even close. And too much informayshun can drive a man mad. Too much informayshun becomes just Noise. And it never, never stops.”

  He pauses and the Noise is there, of course, like it always is, his and mine and Viola’s silence only making it louder.

  “As the years went by,” he goes on, “times were hard all over New World and getting harder. Crops failing and sickness and no prosperity and no Eden. Definitely no Eden. And a preaching started spreading in the land, a poisonous preaching, a preaching that started to blame.”

  “They blamed the aliens,” Viola says.

  “The Spackle,” I say and the shame returns.

  “They blamed the Spackle,” Ben confirms. “And somehow preaching became a movement and a movement became a war.” He shakes his head. “They didn’t stand a chance. We had guns, they didn’t, and that was the end of the Spackle.”

  “Not all,” I say.

  “No,” he says. “Not all. But they learned better than to come too near men again, I tell you that.”

  A brief wind blows across the hilltop. When it stops, it’s like we’re the only three people left on New World. Us and the sematary ghosts.

  “But the war’s not the end of the story,” Viola says quietly.

  “No,” Ben says. “The story ain’t finished, ain’t even half finished.”

  And I know it ain’t. And I know where it’s heading.

  And I changed my mind. I don’t want it to finish.

  But I do, too.

  I look into Ben’s eyes, into his Noise.

  “The war didn’t stop with the Spackle,” I say. “Not in Prentisstown.”

  Ben licks his lips and I can feel unsteadiness in his Noise and hunger and grief at what he’s already imagining is our next parting.

  “War is a monster,” he says, almost to himself. “War is the devil. It starts and it consumes and it grows and grows and grows.” He’s looking at me now. “And otherwise normal men become monsters, too.”

  “They couldn’t stand the silence,” Viola says, her voice still. “They couldn’t stand women knowing everything about them and them knowing nothing about women.”

  “Some men thought that,” Ben says. “Not all. Not me, not Cillian. There were good men in Prentisstown.”

  “But enough thought it,” I say.

  “Yes,” he nods.

  There’s another pause as the truth starts to show itself.

  Finally. And forever.

  Viola is shaking her head. “Are you saying . . . ?” she says. “Are you really saying . . . ?”

  And here it is.

  Here’s the thing that’s the centre of it all.

  Here’s the thing that’s been growing in my head since I left the swamp, seen in flashes of men along the way, most clearly in Matthew Lyle’s but also in the reakshuns of everyone who even hears the word Prentisstown.

  Here it is.

  The truth.

  And I don’t want it.

  But I say it anyway.

  “After they killed the Spackle,” I say, “the men of Prentisstown killed the women of Prentisstown.”

  Viola gasps even tho she’s got to have guessed it, too.

  “Not all the men,” Ben says. “But many. Allowing themselves to be swayed by Mayor Prentiss and the preachings of Aaron, who used to say that what was hidden must be evil. They killed all the women and all the men who tried to protect them.”

  “My ma,” I say.

  Ben just nods in confirmayshun.

  I feel a sickness in my stomach.

  My ma dying, being killed by men I probably saw every day.

  I have to sit down on a gravestone.

  I have to think of something else, I just do. I have to put something else in my Noise so I can stand it.

  “Who was Jessica?” I say, remembering Matthew Lyle’s Noise back in Farbranch, remembering the violence in it, the Noise that now makes sense even tho it don’t make no sense at all.

  “Some people could see what was coming,” Ben says. “Jessica Elizabeth was our Mayor and she could see the way the wind was blowing.”

  Jessica Elizabeth, I think. New Elizabeth.

  “She organized some of the girls and younger boys to flee across the swamp,” Ben continues. “But before she could go herself with the women and the men who hadn’t lost their minds, the Mayor’s men attacked.”

  “And that was that,” I say, feeling numb all over. “New Elizabeth becomes Prentisstown.”

  “Yer ma never thought it would happen,” Ben says, smiling sadly to himself at some memory. “So full of love that woman, so full of hope in the goodness of others.” He stops smiling. “And then there came a moment when it was too late to flee and you were way too young to be sent away and so she gave you to us, told us to keep you safe, no matter what.”

  I look up. “How was staying in Prentisstown keeping me safe?”

  Ben’s staring right at me, sadness everywhere around him, his Noise so weighted with it, it’s a wonder he can stay upright.

  “Why didn’t you leave?” I ask.

  He rubs his face. “Cuz we didn’t think the attack would really happen either. Or I didn’t, anyway, and we had put the farm together and I thought it would blow over before anything really bad happened. I thought it was just rumours and paranoia, including on the part of yer ma, right up to the last.” He frowns. “I was wrong. I was stupid.” He looks away. “I was wilfully blind.”

  I remember his words comforting me about the Spackle.

  We’ve all made mistakes, Todd. All of us.

  “And then it was too late,” Ben says. “The deed was done and word of what Prentisstown had done spread like wildfire, starting with the few who’d managed to escape it. All men from Prentisstown were declared criminals. We couldn’t leave.”

  Viola’s arms are still crossed. “Why didn’t someone come and get you? Why didn’t the rest of New World come after you?”

  “And do what?” Ben says, sounding tired. “Fight another war but this time with heavily armed men? Lock us up in a giant prison? They laid down the law that if any man from Prentisstown crossed the swamp, he’d be executed. And then they left us to it.”

  “But they must have . . .” Viola says, holding her palms to the air. “Something. I don’t know.”

  “If it ain’t happening on yer doorstep,” Ben says, “it’s easier to think, Why go out and find trouble? We had the whole of the swamp twixt us and New World. The Mayor sent word that Prentisstown would be a town in exile. Doomed, of course, to a slow death. We’d agree never to leave and if we ever did, he’d hunt us down and kill us himself.”

  “Didn’t people try?” Viola says. “Didn’t they try and get away?”

  “They tried,” Ben says, full of meaning. “It wasn’t uncommon for people to disappear.”

  “But if you and Cillian were innocent–” I start.

  “We weren’t innocent,” Ben says strongly, and suddenly his Noise tastes bitter. He sighs. “We weren’t.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask, raising my head. The sickness in my stomach ain’t leaving. “What do you mean you weren’t innocent?”

 
“You let it happen,” Viola says. “You didn’t die with the other men who were protecting the women.”

  “We didn’t fight,” he says, “and we didn’t die.” He shakes his head. “Not innocent at all.”

  “Why didn’t you fight?” I ask.

  “Cillian wanted to,” Ben says quickly. “I want you to know that. He wanted to do whatever he could to stop them. He would have given his life.” He looks away once more. “But I wouldn’t let him.”

  “Why not?”

  “I get it,” Viola whispers.

  I look at her, cuz I sure don’t. “Get what?”

  Viola keeps looking at Ben. “They either die fighting for what’s right and leave you an unprotected baby,” she says, “or they become complicit with what’s wrong and keep you alive.”

  I don’t know what complicit means but I can guess.

  They did it for me. All that horror. They did it for me.

  Ben and Cillian. Cillian and Ben.

  They did it so I could live.

  I don’t know how I feel about any of this.

  Doing what’s right should be easy.

  It shouldn’t be just another big mess like everything else.

  “So we waited,” Ben says. “In a town-sized prison. Full of the ugliest Noise you ever heard before men started denying their own pasts, before the Mayor came up with his grand plans. And so we waited for the day you were old enough to get away on yer own, innocent as we could keep you.” He rubs a hand over his head. “But the Mayor was waiting, too.”

  “For me?” I ask, tho I know it’s true.

  “For the last boy to become a man,” Ben says. “When boys became men, they were told the truth. Or a version of it, anyway. And then they were made complicit themselves.”

  I remember his Noise from back on the farm, about my birthday, about how a boy becomes a man.

  About what complicity really means and how it can be passed on.

  How it was waiting to be passed on to me.

  And about the men who–

  I put it outta my head.

  “That don’t make no sense,” I say.

  “You were the last,” Ben says. “If he could make every single boy in Prentisstown a man by his own meaning, then he’s God, ain’t he? He’s created all of us and is in complete control.”

  “If one of us falls,” I say.