Monsters of Men

by Patrick Ness

  You are young, he shows to me. You have seen much, too much, but you are not even fully grown. You have never lived among the Land. The heart of the Land weeps that it was too late to save the Burden–

  I interrupt him, a rudeness unheard of in the Land, You did not even know–

  But the Land rejoices that the Return was saved, he continues as if I had shown nothing. The Land rejoices that it can avenge the memory of the Burden.

  No one is avenging anything!

  And my memories spill into my voice, and it is only here, now, when the pain of them grows too great, when I am unable to speak the language of the Burden, it is only now I speak the true language of the Land, wordless and felt and pouring out of me all at once. I am unable to stop from showing them my loss, from showing how the Clearing treated us like animals, how they regarded their voices and ours as curses, as something to be cured, and I cannot stop from showing the Land my memories of the Burden dying at the hands of the Clearing, of the bullets and the blades and the silent screaming, of the field of bodies piled high–

  Of the one I lost in particular.

  The Sky shows me comfort in his voice, as do all of the Land around us, until I find I am swimming in a river of voices reaching out and touching mine to soothe it and calm it, and I have never felt so much a part of the Land, I have never felt so at home, so comforted, so at one with the single joined voice of the Land–

  And I blink as I realize that this only happens when I feel so much pain I forget myself.

  But that will pass, shows the Sky. You will grow and heal. You will find it easier to be among the Land–

  I will find it easier, I show, when the Clearing are gone from here for ever.

  You speak the language of the Burden, he shows. Which is also the language of the Clearing, of the men we fight, and though we welcome you as a brother returned to the Land, the first thing you must learn – even as I tell it to you in language you will understand – is that there is no I and there is no you. There is only the Land.

  I show nothing to him in response.

  You sought the Sky? he finally asks.

  I look up again into his eyes, small for the Land – though nothing like the hideous smallness of the eyes of the Clearing, small, mean eyes that hide and hide and hide – but the eyes of the Sky are still big enough to reflect the moons, the firelight, me looking into them.

  And I know that he waits for me.

  For I have lived my life among the Clearing and I have learned much from them.

  Including how to hide my thoughts behind other thoughts, how to conceal what I feel and think. How to layer my voice so it is harder to read.

  Alone among the Land, I am not fully joined to the Land’s single voice.

  Not yet.

  I make him wait for a moment more, then I open my voice to show him the light I saw hovering, what I suspect it to be. He understands in an instant.

  A smaller version of what flew over the Land as it marched here, he shows.

  Yes, I show and I remember. Lights in the sky, one of their machines flying down the road, so high above it was almost nothing but a sound.

  Then the Land shall make an answer, he shows, and he takes my arm again to lead me back to the hill’s edge.

  As the Sky watches the light hovering out from the hilltop, I look down upon the Clearing as they settle in for the night. I look among their too-small faces on bodies stocky and short in unhealthy shades of pink and sand.

  The Sky knows what I am looking for.

  You seek him, he shows. You seek the Knife.

  I saw him in battle. But I was too far back.

  For the Return’s own safety, the Sky shows.

  He is mine–

  But I stop.

  Because I see him.

  In the middle of the camp, he is leaning into his pack animal, his horse, in their language, talking to it, no doubt with great feeling, with great anguish at what he has seen.

  No doubt with great care and emotion and kindness.

  And this, perversely, is why the Return hates the Knife, shows the Sky.

  He is worse than the others, I show. He is worst of all of them.

  Because–

  Because he knew he was doing wrong. He felt the pain of his actions–

  But he did not amend them, shows the Sky.

  The rest are worth as much as their pack animals, I show, but worst is the one who knows better and does nothing.

  The Knife set the Return free, the Sky offers.

  He should have killed me. He killed one of the Land before with the knife in his voice that he cannot put down. But he was too cowardly to even do the Return that favour.

  If he had killed you as you wished, shows the Sky in a way that pulls my eyes towards his, then the Land would not be here.

  Yes, I show. Here where we do nothing. Here where we wait and watch instead of fight.

  Waiting and watching is part of fighting. The Clearing has grown stronger in the time of truce. Their men are fiercer, as are their weapons.

  But the Land is fierce, too, I show. Is it not?

  The Sky holds my gaze for a long moment, and then he turns and speaks in the voice of the Land, starting a message that is passed from one to another until it reaches one of the Land who I now see has prepared a bow with a burning arrow. She takes aim and lets the arrow fly into the night, sailing out from the hilltop.

  The entire Land watches it fly, either with their own eyes or through the voices of others, until it hits the hovering light, which spirals and spins and crashes into the river below.

  Today was a battle, the Sky shows to me, as a small outcry rises from the Clearing’s camp. But a war is made of many battles.

  Then he reaches across and takes my arm, the one on which I keep the sleeve of lichen growing heavily, the one that hurts, the one that will not heal. I pull away from him but he reaches again and this time I let his long white fingers lift it gently from the wrist, let him brush away the sleeve.

  And we will not forget why we are here, the Sky shows.

  And this spreads, in the language of the Burden, the language that the Land fears for its shame, it spreads among them until I can hear them all, feel them all.

  Feel all of the Land saying, We will not forget.

  As they all see my arm through the eyes of the Sky.

  As they see the metal band, with writing on it in the language of the Clearing.

  As they see the permanent mark upon me, the true name that sets me apart from them for ever.

  1017.

  {VIOLA}

  The urgency of Bradley’s Noise is awful.

  “You’re not dying,” I say from the bed where Simone is injecting bone-mending into my ankles. “Bradley–”

  “No,” he says, holding up his hands to stop me. “I feel . . .” “I can’t tell you how naked this makes me feel.”

  Simone’s turned the sleeping quarters of the scout ship into a makeshift house of healing. I’m on one bed and Bradley’s in the other, his eyes wide open, his hands mostly to his ears, his Noise getting louder and louder–

  “You’re sure he’s going to be all right?” Simone whispers close to me as she finishes the injections and starts bandaging my ankles. I can hear the strain in her voice.

  “All I know,” I whisper back, “is that men here got used to it eventually and that–”

  “There was a cure,” she interrupts. “Which this Mayor person burnt every last bit of.”

  “Yes,” I say, “but at least that means one is possible.”

  Quit whispering about me, Bradley’s Noise says.

  “Sorry,” I say.

  “For what?” he says, looking over, and then he realizes. “Could you both possibly leave me be for a while, please?”

  And his Noise says, For Chrissakes get the hell out of here and give me some peace!

  “Just let me finish up with Viola,” Simone says, voice still shaky and trying not to look at him. She ties the last
bandage around my left ankle.

  “Could you grab another one?” I ask her quietly.

  “What for?”

  “I’ll tell you outside. I don’t want to upset him any more.”

  She looks at me suspiciously for a second but then grabs another bandage out of a drawer and we make our way to the door, Bradley’s Noise filling the little room from wall to wall.

  “I still don’t understand it,” Simone says as we go. “I’m hearing it with my ears, but I’m hearing it inside my head, too. Words–” she looks at Bradley, her eyes growing wide “–and pictures.”

  She’s right, pictures are starting to come from him, pictures that could be in your head or hanging in the air in front of you–

  Pictures of us standing here watching him, pictures of himself on the bed–

  Then pictures of what we saw in the probe projection, of what happened when a flaming Spackle arrow hit it and the signal gave out–

  And then pictures of the scout ship coming down from orbit, pictures of this planet far below as they flew in, a vast bluish green ocean next to miles of forest, not even thinking to look for a Spackle army blending into the riverbank as the ship circled over New Prentisstown–

  And then other pictures–

  Pictures of Simone–

  Pictures of Simone and Bradley–

  “Bradley!” Simone says, shocked and taking a step back.

  “Please!” he shouts. “Just leave me alone! This is unbearable!”

  I’m shocked, too, because the pictures of Bradley and Simone are really clear and the more Bradley tries to cover them, the clearer they get, so I take Simone’s elbow and pull her away, hitting a panel to close the door behind us, which only muffles his Noise in the way it might muffle a loud voice.

  We head outside. Girl colt? Acorn says, coming over from where he’s been munching grass.

  “And the animals, too,” Simone says, as I rub Acorn’s nose. “What kind of place is this?”

  “It’s information,” I say, remembering Ben describing how New World was for the first settlers, telling me and Todd that night in the cemetery which seems so impossibly long ago now. “Information, all the time, never stopping, whether you want it to or not.”

  “He seems so frightened,” she says, her voice breaking on the word. “And those things he was thinking–” She turns away and I’m too embarrassed to ask if Bradley’s pictures were things he was remembering or things he wished for.

  “He’s still the same Bradley,” I say. “You’ve got to remember that. What would it be like if everyone could hear all the things you didn’t want to say out loud?”

  She sighs, looking up to the two moons, high in the sky. “There are over two thousand male settlers on the convoy, Viola. Two thousand. What’s going to happen when we wake them all up?”

  “They’ll get used to it,” I say. “Men do.”

  Simone snorts through the thickness in her voice. “Do women?”

  “Well, that’s sort of a complicated issue around here.”

  She shakes her head again, then notices she’s still holding the bandage. “What did you need this for?”

  I bite my lip for a second. “Now, don’t freak out.”

  I slowly pull back my sleeve and show her the band on my arm. The redness of the skin around it is even worse than it was before, and you can see my number shining in the moons-light. 1391.

  “Oh, Viola,” Simone says, her voice dangerously quiet. “Did that man do this to you?”

  “Not to me,” I say. “To most of the other women, though.” I cough a little. “I did this to myself.”

  “To yourself?”

  “For a good reason. Look, I’ll explain later, but I could really use a bandage on it right now.”

  She waits for a moment, then keeps her eyes on mine as she wraps the bandage gently around my arm. The coolness from the medicine feels immediately better. “Sweetheart?” she asks, so much fierce tenderness in her voice it’s hard to look at her. “Are you really okay?”

  I try a barely-there smile to shake off some of her worry. “I’ve got a lot to tell you.”

  “I think you do,” she says, tying off the bandage. “And maybe you should start.”

  I shake my head. “I can’t. I’ve got to get to Todd.”

  Her forehead furrows. “What . . . you mean now?” She stands up straighter. “You can’t wander down into the middle of a war!”

  “It’s calmed down. We saw it.”

  “We saw two huge armies camped at the front line and then our probe was shot out of the sky! There’s no way you’re going down there.”

  “It’s where Todd is,” I say. “It’s where I have to go.”

  “You aren’t. As Mission Commander, I forbid it and that’s the end of it.”

  I blink. “You forbid it?”

  And I feel a really surprising anger start to rise from my belly.

  Simone sees the look on my face and softens her own expression. “Viola, what you’ve obviously survived for the past five months is beyond amazing, but we’re here now. I love you far too much to allow you to put yourself in that kind of danger. You can’t go. No way.”

  “If we want peace, we can’t let the war get any bigger.”

  “And how are you and one boy going to stop that?”

  And then the anger really starts to rise, and I try to remember that she doesn’t know. She doesn’t know what I’ve been through, what me and Todd have done. She doesn’t know I’m about a million miles past people forbidding me to do stuff.

  I reach over for Acorn’s reins and he kneels down.

  “Viola, no,” Simone says, stomping over–

  Submit! Acorn yells, startled.

  Simone takes a frightened step back. I swing my sore but mending leg over Acorn’s saddle.

  “No one is the boss of me any more, Simone,” I say quietly, trying to stay calm but surprised at how strong I feel. “If my parents had lived, it might be different. But they didn’t.”

  She looks like she wants to come over, but she’s seriously wary of Acorn now. “Just because your parents aren’t here doesn’t mean there aren’t still people who care for you, who can care for you.”

  “Please,” I say. “You have to trust me.”

  She looks at me in a kind of sad frustration. “It’s too early for you to have grown up this much.”

  “Yeah, well,” I say, “sometimes you don’t have a choice.” Acorn stands up, ready to go. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  “Viola–”

  “I have to get to Todd. That’s all there is to it. And now that the fighting’s stopped, I’ll have to find Mistress Coyle, too, before she can start blowing things up again.”

  “You shouldn’t go alone at least,” she says. “I’ll come with you–”

  “Bradley needs you more than I do,” I say. “Whatever you might not want to find out, he needs you.”

  “Viola–”

  “It’s not as if I want to go riding into a war zone,” I say, a little softer, trying to apologize now that I realize how scared I am. I look up at the scout ship. “Maybe you could send another probe to follow me?”

  Simone looks thoughtful for a moment, then she says, “I’ve got a better idea.”

  [TODD]

  “We’ve rounded up blankets from the houses nearby,” Mr O’Hare says to the Mayor. “Food, too. We’ll be getting some to you as soon as possible.”

  “Thank you, Captain,” says the Mayor. “Make sure you bring enough for Todd as well.”

  Mr O’Hare looks up sharply. “Everything’s pretty scarce, sir–”

  “Food for Todd,” the Mayor says, more firmly. “And a blanket. It’s getting colder.”

  Mr O’Hare takes in a breath that don’t sound too happy. “Yes, sir.”

  “For my horse, too,” I say.

  Mr O’Hare scowls at me.

  “For his horse, too, Captain,” the Mayor says.

  Mr O’Hare nods and stor
ms off.

  The Mayor’s men have cleared a little area for us at the edge of the camp the army’s made. There’s a fire and space to sit around it and a coupla tents being put up for him and his officers to sleep in. I sit a bit away from him, but close enough to keep watch. I have Angharrad here with me, her head still down, her Noise still silent. I keep petting her and stroking her, but she’s not saying nothing, nothing at all.

  So far there ain’t been much to say to the Mayor neither. It’s been one report after another, Mr Tate and Mr O’Hare updating him on this and that. And plain soldiers, too, who keep coming up all shy-like to congratulate him on his victory, seeming to forget he’s the one who caused all this trouble in the first place.

  I lean my face into Angharrad. “What do I do now, girl?” I whisper.

  Cuz what do I do now? I set the Mayor free and he won the first battle, keeping the world safe for Viola, just like I made him promise.

  But he’s got an army that’ll do anything he says, that’ll die for him. What does it matter if I can beat him if there’s all these men who wouldn’t even let me try?

  “Mr President?” Mr Tate comes up now, carrying one of the Spackle’s white sticks. “First report on the new weapons.”

  “Do tell, Captain,” the Mayor says, looking very interested.

  “They seem to be a sort of acid rifle,” Mr Tate says. “There’s a chamber with what looks to be a mixture of two substances, probably botanic.” He moves his hand up the white stick to a hole that’s been cut into it. “Then a kind of ratchet aerates a dose and mixes it with a third substance that’s instantly permeated through a gel via a small incendiary–” Mr Tate points to the end of the stick “–and fired out here, vaporizing yet somehow holding cohesion until it hits its target, at which point–”

  “At which point it’s a burning acid corrosive enough to take your arm off,” the Mayor finishes. “Impressive work in a short space of time, Captain.”

  “I encouraged our chemists to work quickly, sir,” Mr Tate says with a grin I don’t like.