The Knife of Never Letting Go

by Patrick Ness

  The church underneath a waterfall.

  “It’s beautiful,” Viola says.

  “It’s abandoned,” I say, cuz after the first shock of finding a church I see where a few of the pews have been knocked from their places and not replaced and there’s writing all over the walls, some of it carved in with tools, some of it written in the same waterproof paint as the New World carving, most of it nonsense. P.M.+M.A. and Willz & Chillz 4Ever and Abandon All Hope Ye Who something something.

  “It’s kids,” Viola says. “Sneaking in here, making it their own place.”

  “Yeah? Do kids do that?”

  “Back on the ship we had an unused venting duct that we snuck into,” she says, looking around. “Marked it up worse than this.”

  We wander in, looking round us, mouths open. The point of the roof where the water leaves the cliff must be a good ten metres above us and the ledge five metres wide easy.

  “It musta been a natural cavern,” I say. “They musta found it and thought it was some kinda miracle.”

  Viola crosses her arms against herself. “And then they found it wasn’t very practical as a church.”

  “Too wet,” I say. “Too cold.”

  “I’ll bet it was when they first landed,” she says, looking up at the white New World. “I’ll bet it was in the first year. Everything hopeful and new.” She turns round, taking it all in. “Before reality set in.”

  I turn slowly, too. I can see exactly what they were thinking. The way the sun hits the falls, turning everything bright white, and it’s so loud and so silent at the same time that even without the pulpit and the pews it would have felt like we’d somehow walked into a church anyway, like it’d be holy even if no man had ever seen it.

  And then I notice that at the end of the pews, there’s nothing beyond. It stops and it’s a fifty-metre drop to the rocks below.

  So this is where we’re gonna have to wait.

  This is where we’re gonna have to hope.

  In the church under water.

  “Todd Hewitt!” barely drifts in down the tunnel to us.

  Viola visibly shivers. “What do we do now?”

  “We wait till nightfall,” I say. “Sneak out and hope he don’t see us.”

  I sit down on one of the stone benches. Viola sits down next to me. She lifts the bag over her head and sets it on the stone floor.

  “What if he finds the trail?” she asks.

  “We hope he don’t.”

  “But what if he does?”

  I reach behind me and take out the knife.

  The knife.

  Both of us look at it, the white water reflecting off of it, droplets of spray already catching and pooling on its blade, making it shine like a little torch.

  The knife.

  We don’t say nothing about it, just watch it gleam in the middle of the church.

  “Todd Hewitt!”

  Viola looks up to the entrance and puts her hands to her face and I can see her clench her teeth. “What does he even want?” she suddenly rages. “If the army’s all about you, what does he want with me? Why was he shooting at me? I don’t understand it.”

  “Crazy people don’t need an explanayshun for nothing,” I say.

  But my Noise is remembering the sacrifice that I saw him making of her way back in the swamp.

  The sign, he called her.

  A gift from God.

  I don’t know if Viola hears this or if she remembers it herself cuz she says, “I don’t think I’m the sacrifice.”

  “What?”

  She turns to me, her face perplexed. “I don’t think it’s me,” she says. “He kept me asleep almost the entire time I was with him and when I did wake up, I kept seeing confusing things in his Noise, things that didn’t make sense.”

  “He’s mad,” I say. “Madder than most.”

  She don’t say nothing more, just looks out into the waterfall.

  And reaches over and takes my hand.

  “TODD HEWITT!”

  I feel her hand jump right as my heart leaps.

  “That’s closer,” she says. “He’s getting closer.”

  “He won’t find us.”

  “He will.”

  “Then we’ll deal with it.”

  We both look at the knife.

  “TODD HEWITT!”

  “He’s found it,” she says, grabbing my arm and squeezing into me.

  “Not yet.”

  “We were almost there,” she says, her voice high and breaking a little. “Almost there.”

  “We’ll get there.”

  “TODD HEWITT!”

  And it’s definitely louder.

  He’s found the tunnel.

  I grip my knife and I look over to Viola, her face looking straight back up the tunnel, so much fear on it my chest begins to hurt.

  I grip the knife harder.

  If he touches her–

  And my Noise reels back to the start of our journey, to Viola before she said anything, to Viola when she told me her name, to Viola when she talked to Hildy and Tam, to when she took on Wilf’s accent, to when Aaron grabbed her and stole her away, to waking up to her in Doctor Snow’s house, to her promise to Ben, to when she took on my ma’s voice and made the whole world change, just for a little while.

  All the things we’ve been thru.

  How she cried when we left Manchee behind.

  Telling me I was all she had.

  When I found out I could read her, silence or not.

  When I thought Aaron had shot her on the road.

  How I felt in those few terrible seconds.

  How it would feel to lose her.

  The pain and the unfairness and the injustice.

  The rage.

  And how I wished it was me.

  I look at the knife in my hand.

  And I realize she’s right.

  I realize what’s been right all along, as insane as it is.

  She’s not the sacrifice.

  She’s not.

  If one of us falls, we all fall.

  “I know what he wants,” I say, standing up.

  “What?” Viola says.

  “TODD HEWITT!”

  Definitely coming down the tunnel now.

  Nowhere to run.

  He’s coming.

  She stands, too, and I move myself twixt her and the tunnel.

  “Get down behind one of the pews,” I say. “Hide.”

  “Todd–”

  I move away from her, my hand staying on her arm till I’m too far away.

  “Where are you going?” she says, her voice tightening.

  I look back the way we came, up the tunnel of water.

  He’ll be here any second.

  “TODD HEWITT!”

  “He’ll see you!” she says.

  I hold up the knife in front of me.

  The knife that’s caused so much trouble.

  The knife that holds so much power.

  “Todd!” Viola says. “What are you doing?”

  I turn to her. “He won’t hurt you,” I say. “Not when he knows I know what he wants.”

  “What does he want?”

  I search her out, standing among the pews, the white planet and moons glowing down on her, the water shining watery light over her, I search out her face and the language of her body as she stands there watching me, and I find I still know who she is, that she’s still Viola Eade, that silent don’t mean empty, that it never meant empty.

  I look right into her eyes.

  “I’m gonna greet him like a man,” I say.

  And even tho it’s too loud for her to hear my Noise, even tho she can’t read my thoughts, she looks back at me.

  And I see her understand.

  She pulls herself up a little taller.

  “I’m not hiding,” she says. “If you’re not, I’m not.”

  And that’s all I need.

  I nod.

  “Ready?” I ask.

  She looks at me.


  She nods once, firmly.

  I turn back to the tunnel.

  I close my eyes.

  I take a deep breath.

  And with every bit of air in my lungs and every last note of Noise in my head, I rear up–

  And I shout, as loud as I can–

  “AARON!!!!!!”

  And I open my eyes and I wait for him to come.

  I see his feet first, slipping down the steps some but not hurrying, taking his time now that he knows we’re here.

  I hold the knife in my right hand, my left hand out and ready, too. I stand in the aisle of the little pews, as much in the centre of the church as I can get. Viola’s back behind me a bit, down one of the rows.

  I’m ready.

  I realize I am ready.

  Everything that’s happened has brought me here, to this place, with this knife in my hand, and something worth saving.

  Someone.

  And if it’s a choice twixt her and him, there is no choice, and the army can go sod itself.

  And so I’m ready.

  As I’ll ever be.

  Cuz I know what he wants.

  “Come on,” I say, under my breath.

  Aaron’s legs appear, then his arms, one carrying the rifle, the other holding his balance against the wall.

  And then his face.

  His terrible, terrible face.

  Half torn away, the gash in his cheek showing his teeth, the hole where his nose used to be open and gaping, making him look barely human.

  And he’s smiling.

  Which is when I feel all the fear.

  “Todd Hewitt,” he says, almost as a greeting.

  I raise my voice over the water, willing it not to shake. “You can put the rifle down, Aaron.”

  “Oh, can I, now?” he says, eyes widening, taking in Viola behind me. I don’t look back at her but I know she’s facing Aaron, I know she’s giving him all the bravery she’s got.

  And that makes me stronger.

  “I know what you want,” I say. “I figured it out.”

  “Have you, young Todd?” Aaron says and I see he can’t help himself, he looks into my Noise, the little he can hear over the roar.

  “She’s not the sacrifice,” I say.

  He says nothing, just takes the first steps into the church, eyes glancing up at the cross and the pews and the pulpit.

  “And I’m not the sacrifice neither,” I say.

  His evil smile draws wider. A new tear opens up at the edge of his gash, blood waving down it in the spray. “A clever mind is a friend of the devil,” he says, which I think is his way of saying I’m right.

  I steady my feet and turn with him as he steps round towards the pulpit half of the church, the half nearer the edge.

  “It’s you,” I say. “The sacrifice is you.”

  And I open my Noise as loud as it’ll go so that both he and Viola can see I’m telling the truth.

  Cuz the thing Ben showed me back when I left our farm, the way that a boy in Prentisstown becomes a man, the reason that boys who’ve become men don’t talk to boys who are still boys, the reason that boys who’ve become men are complicit in the crimes of Prentisstown is–

  It’s–

  And I make myself say it–

  It’s by killing another man.

  All by theirselves.

  All those men who disappeared, who tried to disappear.

  They didn’t disappear after all.

  Mr Royal, my old schoolteacher, who took to whisky and shot himself, didn’t shoot himself. He was shot by Seb Mundy on his thirteenth birthday, made to stand alone and pull the trigger as the rest of the men of Prentisstown watched. Mr Gault, whose sheep flock we took over when he disappeared two winters ago, only tried to disappear. He was found by Mayor Prentiss running away thru the swamp and Mayor Prentiss was true to his agreement with the law of New World and executed him, only he did it by waiting till Mr Prentiss Jr’s thirteenth birthday and having his son torture Mr Gault to death without the help of no one else.

  And so on and so on. Men I knew killed by boys I knew to become men theirselves. If the Mayor’s men had a captured escapee hidden away for a boy’s thirteenth, then fine. If not, they’d just take someone from Prentisstown who they didn’t like and say he disappeared.

  One man’s life was given over to a boy to end, all on his own.

  A man dies, a man is born.

  Everyone complicit. Everyone guilty.

  Except me.

  “Oh my God,” I hear Viola say.

  “But I was gonna be different, wasn’t I?” I say.

  “You were the last, Todd Hewitt,” Aaron says. “The final soldier in God’s perfect army.”

  “I don’t think God’s got nothing to do with yer army,” I say. “Put down the rifle. I know what I have to do.”

  “But are you a messenger, Todd?” he asks, cocking his head, pulling his impossible smile wider. “Or are you a deceiver?”

  “Read me,” I say. “Read me if you don’t believe I can do it.”

  He’s at the pulpit now, facing me down the centre aisle, reaching out his Noise over the sound of the falls, pushing it towards me, grabbing at what he can, and the sacrifice and God’s perfect work and the martyrdom of the saint I hear.

  “Perhaps, young Todd,” he says.

  And he sets the rifle down on the pulpit.

  I swallow and grip the knife harder.

  But he looks over at Viola and laughs a little laugh. “No,” he says. “Little girls will try to take advantage, won’t they?”

  And, almost casually, he tosses the rifle off the ledge into the waterfall.

  It goes so fast, we don’t even see it disappear.

  But it’s gone.

  And so there’s just me and Aaron.

  And the knife.

  He opens his arms and I realize he’s assuming his preacher’s pose, the one from his own pulpit, back in Prentisstown. He leans against the pulpit stone here and holds his palms up and raises his eyes to the white shining roof of water above us.

  His lips move silently.

  He’s praying.

  “Yer mad,” I say.

  He looks at me. “I’m blessed.”

  “You want me to kill you.”

  “Wrong, Todd Hewitt,” he says, taking a step forward down the aisle towards me. “Hate is the key. Hate is the driver. Hate is the fire that purifies the soldier. The soldier must hate.”

  He takes another step.

  “I don’t want you to kill me,” he says. “I want you to murder me.”

  I take a step back.

  The smile flickers. “Perhaps the boy promises bigger than he can deliver.”

  “Why?” I say, stepping back some more. Viola moves back, too, behind and around me, underneath the carving of New World. “Why are you doing this? What possible sense does this make?”

  “God has told me my path,” he says.

  “I been here for almost thirteen years,” I say, “and the only thing I ever heard was men.”

  “God works thru men,” Aaron says.

  “So does evil,” Viola says.

  “Ah,” Aaron says. “It speaks. Words of temptayshun to lull–”

  “Shut up,” I say. “Don’t you talk to her.”

  I’m past the back row of pews now. I move to my right, Aaron follows till we’re moving in a slow circle, Aaron’s hands still out, my knife still up, Viola keeping behind me, the spray covering everything. The room slowly turns around us, the ledge still slippery, the wall of water shining white with the sun.

  And the roar, the constant roar.

  “You were the final test,” Aaron says. “The last boy. The one that completes us. With you in the army, there’s no weak link. We would be truly blessed. If one of us falls, we all fall, Todd. And all of us have to fall.” He clenches his fists and looks up again. “So we can be reborn! So we can take this cursed world and remake it in–”

  “I wouldn’t’ve done it,”
I say and he scowls at the interrupshun. “I wouldn’t’ve killed anyone.”

  “Ah, yes, Todd Hewitt,” Aaron says. “And that’s why yer so very very special, ain’t ya? The boy who can’t kill.”

  I sneak a glance back to Viola, off to my side a little. We’re still going round in the little circle.

  And Viola and I are reaching the side with the tunnel in it.

  “But God demands a sacrifice,” Aaron’s saying. “God demands a martyr. And who better for the special boy to kill than God’s very own mouthpiece?”

  “I don’t think God tells you anything,” I say. “Tho I can believe he wants you dead.”

  Aaron’s eyes go so crazy and empty I get a chill. “I’ll be a saint,” he says, a small fire burning in his voice. “It is my destiny.”

  He’s reached the end of the aisle and is following us past the last row of benches.

  Viola and I are backing up still.

  Almost to the tunnel.

  “But how to motivate the boy?” Aaron continues, eyes like holes. “How to bring him into manhood?”

  And his Noise opens up to me, loud as thunder.

  My eyes widen.

  My stomach sinks to my feet.

  My shoulders hunch down as I feel weakness on me.

  I can see it. It’s a fantasy, a lie, but the lies of men are as vivid as their truths and I can see every bit of it.

  He was going to murder Ben.

  That’s how he was going to force me to kill him. That’s how they woulda done it. To perfect their army and make me a killer, they were going to murder Ben.

  And make me watch.

  Make me hate enough to kill Aaron.

  My Noise starts to rumble, loud enough to hear. “You effing piece of–”

  “But then God sent a sign,” Aaron says, looking at Viola, his eyes even wider now, the blood pouring from the gash, the hole where his nose used to be stretching taut. “The girl,” he says. “A gift from the heavens.”