Monsters of Men

by Patrick Ness

  But still he’s saying it–

  If you kill the Sky, Ben says, the war will begin again. And we’ll all die. And then the Land will be killed in huge numbers from orbit. And then the settlers who come down here will be attacked by the Land that remains. And there will be–

  He can’t go on for a second but then he makes himself, makes himself say it in his own voice–

  “There will be no end of it, Viola,” he says, cradling Todd against his chest.

  I look back to 1017, who hasn’t moved. “He wants me to do it,” I say. “He wants me to.”

  “He wants to not have to live with his mistake,” Ben says. “He wants the pain to end. But how much better a Sky will he be knowing what this mistake feels like for the rest of his life?”

  “How can you talk like this, Ben?” I say.

  Because I hear them, he says with his Noise. All of them. All the Land, all the men, I hear every one of them. And we can’t just let them die, Viola. We can’t. That’s the very thing Todd stopped here today. The very thing–

  And then he really can’t go on. He holds Todd closer to him. Oh my son, he says. Oh my son–

  (THE SKY)

  She turns back to me, still pointing the weapon, her hands placed exactly on it now to fire it–

  “You took him from me,” she says, her spoken words breaking. “We came all this way, all this way and we won! We WON and you took him!”

  And she cannot say anything more–

  I am sorry, I show again–

  And it is not just the echo of the Source’s grief–

  It is my own–

  Not just for how I have failed as the Sky, for how I have put the entire Land in danger after saving them from it–

  But for the life I have taken–

  The first life I have taken, ever–

  And I remember–

  I remember the Knife–

  And the knife that gave him his name–

  The knife he used to kill the Land at the side of a river, a member of the Land who was merely fishing, who was innocent, but who the Knife saw as an enemy–

  Who the Knife killed–

  And who the Knife regretted killing every moment since–

  Regret painted on him every day in that labour camp, every day as he dealt with the Land, regret that drove him mad with anger when he broke my arm–

  Regret that caused him to save me when the Burden were all killed–

  Regret that is now my own to carry with me–

  Carry with me for ever–

  And if that for ever is only as long as the next breath–

  So be it–

  The Land deserve better–

  {VIOLA}

  1017 is remembering Todd–

  I can see it in his Noise, see it as the weapon trembles in my hand–

  See Todd stabbing the Spackle with the knife when we came upon it on the side of the river–

  When Todd killed the Spackle even when I was screaming for him not to–

  And 1017 remembers how Todd suffered for it–

  Suffering I see 1017 start feeling in himself–

  Suffering I remember feeling, too, after I stabbed Aaron through the neck underneath the waterfall–

  It’s a hell of a thing to kill someone–

  Even when you think they deserve it–

  And now 1017 knows it as well as Todd and I do–

  As Todd did–

  My heart is broken, broken in a way that will never be healed, broken in a way that feels like it’s going to kill me, too, right here on this stupid, freezing beach–

  And I know Ben’s right. I know if I kill 1017 then there’s no way back. We’ll have killed a second Spackle leader, and in their greater numbers they would kill every single one of us they could find. And then when the settlers arrived–

  Never-ending war, never-ending death–

  And here’s my decision again–

  My choice to send us deeper into war or keep us out of it–

  I chose wrong before–

  And is this the price I pay for having chosen wrong?

  It’s too high–

  It’s too high–

  But if I make this personal again–

  If I make 1017 pay–

  Then the world changes–

  The world ends–

  And I don’t care–

  I don’t care–

  Todd–

  Oh please, Todd–

  And, Todd? I think–

  And then I realize–

  My heart aching–

  If I kill 1017–

  And war starts again–

  And we’re all killed–

  Who will remember Todd?

  Who will remember what he did?

  Todd–

  Todd–

  And my heart breaks even more–

  Breaks for ever–

  And I fall to my knees in the snow and sand–

  And I yell out, wordless and empty–

  And I drop the weapon.

  (THE SKY)

  She drops the weapon.

  It falls to the sand unfired.

  And so I am still the Sky.

  I am still the voice of the Land.

  “I don’t want to see you,” she says, not looking up, her voice cracking. “I don’t want to see you ever again.”

  No, I show. No, I understand–

  Viola? the Source shows–

  “I didn’t do it,” she says to him. “But if I see him again I don’t know if I’ll be able to stop myself another time.” She looks up beside me, not at me, not able to face me. “Get out of here,” she says. “Get out of here!”

  I look to the Source, but he is not seeing me either–

  All his pain and sorrow, all his attention fixed on the body of his son–

  “GO!” she shouts–

  And I turn away and go to my battlemore and look back once more, the Source still huddled over the Knife, the girl called Viola slowly crawling towards him–

  Excluding me, forcing themselves not to see me.

  And I understand.

  I climb back up on my mount. I will return to the valley, return to the Land.

  And we will see what the future of this world holds for all of us. The Land and the Clearing both.

  Saved first today by the actions of the Sky.

  Saved again by the actions of the Knife.

  Saved once more by the actions of the Knife’s one in particular.

  And now we have done all that, we will have to make it a world worth saving.

  Viola? I hear the Source show again–

  And I notice a puzzlement growing in his grief–

  {VIOLA}

  Viola? Ben says again.

  I find that I can’t stand up and so I have to crawl over to him and Todd, crawl next to Angharrad’s legs as she paces in sadness, saying Boy colt, boy colt, over and over again.

  I force myself to look at Todd’s face, at his still-open eyes.

  Viola, Ben says again, looking up at me, his face streaked with tears–

  But his eyes are open, wide open–

  “What?” I say. “What is it?’

  He doesn’t answer right away, just puts his face down close to Todd’s, peering into it, then looking down to where his own hand rests on all the ice he packed on Todd’s chest–

  Can you–? Ben says, stopping again, concentration crossing his face.

  “Can I what?” I say. “Can I what, Ben?”

  He looks up at me. Can you hear that?

  I blink at him, hearing my own breathing, the crash of the waves, Angharrad’s cries, Ben’s Noise–

  “Hear what?”

  I think– he says, stopping again and listening.

  I think I can hear him.

  He looks up at me. Viola, he says. I can hear Todd.

  And he’s already rising to his feet, Todd in his arms–

  “I can hear him!” he’s shouting from his mouth, lif
ting his son into the air. “I can hear his voice!”

  “And there’s a chill in the air, son,” I read, “and I don’t mean just the winter coming. I’m beginning to worry a little about the days ahead.”

  I look over at Todd. He still lies there, eyes unblinking, unchanged.

  But every now and again, every once in a while, his Noise will open and a memory will surface, a memory of me and him when we first met Hildy, or of him and Ben and Cillian, where Todd is younger than I ever knew him and the three of them are going fishing in the swamp outside of old Prentisstown and Todd’s Noise just glows with happiness–

  And my heart beats a little faster with hope–

  But then his Noise fades and he’s silent again–

  I sigh and lean back on the Spackle-made chair, under cover of a large Spackle-made tent, next to a Spackle-made fire, all of it surrounding a Spackle-made stone tablet where Todd rests and has rested since we got him back from the beach.

  A pack of Spackle cure is pasted onto where his chest is scarred and burnt–

  But healing.

  And we wait.

  I wait.

  Wait to see if he’ll come back to us.

  Outside the tent, a circle of Spackle surround us without moving, their Noises forming some kind of shield. The Pathways’ End, Ben says it’s called, says it’s where he slept all those months while his bullet wound healed, all those months beyond sight of the living, on the very edge of death, the bullet wound that should have killed him but didn’t because of Spackle intervention.

  Todd was dead. I was sure of it then, I’m sure of it now.

  I watched him die, watched him die in my arms, something that makes me upset even now and so I don’t want to talk about that any more–

  But Ben put snow on Todd’s chest, cooling him down fast, cooling down the terrible burns that were paralysing him, cooling down an already cold Todd, an already exhausted Todd who’d been fighting the Mayor, and Ben says Todd’s Noise must have stopped because Todd had become used to not broadcasting it, that Todd must not have actually died, more shut down from the shock and the cold, and then the further cold of the snow kept him there, kept him just enough there that he wasn’t quite dead–

  But I know otherwise.

  I know he left us, I know he didn’t want to, I know he held on as tight as he could, but I know he left us.

  I watched him go.

  But maybe he didn’t go far.

  Maybe I held him there, maybe me and Ben did, just close enough that maybe he didn’t go too far.

  Maybe not so far that he couldn’t come back.

  Tired? Ben says, entering the tent.

  “I’m okay,” I say, setting down Todd’s mother’s journal, which I’ve read to him every day these past few weeks, hoping he’ll hear me.

  Every day hoping he’ll come back from wherever he’s gone.

  How’s he doing? Ben asks, walking over to Todd, putting a hand on his arm.

  “The same,” I say.

  Ben turns back to me. He’ll come back, Viola. He will.

  “We hope.”

  I came back. And I didn’t have you to call for me.

  I look away from him. “You came back changed.”

  It was 1017 who suggested the Pathways’ End and Ben agreed with him and since New Prentisstown was nothing but a new lake at the bottom of a new falls and since the alternative was locking Todd in a bed in the scout ship until the new convoy arrived – a method favoured quite strongly by Mistress Lawson, who’s now head of pretty much everything she doesn’t let Wilf or Lee run – I reluctantly agreed with Ben.

  Who nods at what I said, looking back down at Todd. I expect he’ll be changed, too. He smiles back at me. But I seem to be doing okay.

  I watch Ben these days and I wonder if I’m watching the future of New World, if every man will eventually give himself over so totally to the voice of the planet, keeping his individuality but allowing in all the individualities of everyone else at the same time and willingly joining the Spackle, joining the rest of the world.

  Not all men will, I know that, not with how much they valued the cure.

  And what about the women?

  Ben is certain women do have Noise and that if men can silence theirs, why shouldn’t women be able to un-silence theirs?

  He wonders if I might be willing to give it a try.

  I don’t know.

  Why can’t we learn to live with how we are? And whatever anybody chooses is okay by the rest of us?

  Either way, we’re about to have 5000 opportunities to find out.

  The convoy just confirmed, Ben says. The ships entered orbit an hour ago, The landing ceremony will go ahead this afternoon as planned. He arches an eyebrow at me. You coming?

  I smile. “Bradley can represent me just fine. Are you going?”

  He looks back at Todd. I have to, he says. I have to introduce them to the Sky. I’m the conduit between the settlers and the Land, whether I like it or not. He brushes Todd’s hair away from his forehead. But I’ll come back here straight after.

  I haven’t left Todd’s side since we brought him here and won’t until he wakes, not even for new settlers. I even made Mistress Lawson come to me to confirm what the Mayor said about the cure. She tested it inside and out, and he was telling the truth. Every woman is healthy now.

  1017 isn’t yet, though.

  The infection seems to spread more slowly through him, and he’s declining to take the cure, saying he’ll suffer the pain of the band until Todd wakes up, as a reminder of all that was, of all that almost was, and of what we should all never return to.

  I can’t help it. I’m a little glad that it still hurts him.

  The Sky would like to visit, Ben says lightly, as if he could already read the Noise I don’t have.

  “No.”

  He’s arranged all this, Viola. If we get Todd back–

  “If,” I say. “That’s the key word, isn’t it?”

  It’ll work, he says. It will.

  “Fine,” I say. “When it does, then we can ask Todd if he wants to see the Spackle who put him here in the first place.”

  Viola–

  I smile to stop him from the argument we’ve already had two dozen times already. An argument about how I can’t quite forgive 1017 yet.

  And maybe never.

  I know he often waits outside the Pathways’ End, asking Ben how Todd is. I can hear him sometimes. Right now, though, all I hear is Angharrad, munching on grass, patiently waiting with us for her boy colt.

  The Sky will be a better leader for all this, Ben says. We might actually be able to live with them in peace. Maybe even in the paradise we always wanted.

  “If Mistress Lawson and the convoy rework the cure for the Noise,” I say. “If the men and women who land don’t feel threatened by being so out-numbered by the native species. If there’s always enough food to go around–”

  Try to have some hope, Viola, he says.

  And there’s that word again.

  “I do,” I say. “But I’m giving it all to Todd right now.”

  Ben looks back down at his son. He’ll come back to us.

  I nod to agree, but we don’t know that he will, not for sure.

  But we hope.

  And that hope is so delicate, I’m scared to death of letting it out.

  So I keep quiet.

  And I wait.

  And I hope.

  What part have you reached? Ben asks, nodding at the journal.

  “I’m near the end again,” I say.

  He comes away from Todd and sits down in the other Spackle-made chair next to me. Read it through, he says. And then we can start all over where his ma was full of optimism.

  There’s a smile on his face and so much tender hope in his Noise that I can’t help but smile back.

  He’ll hear you, Viola. He’ll hear you and he’ll come back to us.

  And we look at Todd again, laid out on the stone tablet, warmed
by the fire, Spackle healing pastes on the wound in his chest, his Noise ticking in and out of hearing like a barely-remembered dream.

  “Todd,” I whisper. “Todd?”

  And then I pick up the journal again.

  And I continue reading.

  Is this right?

  I blink and I’m in one memory, like this one here, back in a classroom in old Prentisstown before Mayor Prentiss closed down the school and we’re learning about why the settlers came here in the first place–

  And then here I am again, in this one, where she and I are sleeping in an abandoned windmill just after leaving Farbranch and the stars are coming out and she asks me to sleep outside because my Noise is keeping her awake–

  Or now here, with Manchee, with my brilliant, brilliant dog, when he takes the burning ember into his mouth and sets off to start a fire, the fire that will let me save–

  Let me save–

  Are you there?

  Are you there?

  (Viola?)

  And then sometimes there are memories of things I never saw–

  Spackle families in huts in a vast desert I didn’t even know existed but that now, right here, as I stand in it, I know it’s on the other side of New World, as far away as you can get but I’m inside the Spackle voices and I’m hearing what they say, seeing it, understanding it even tho the language ain’t mine and I can see that they know about the men on the other side of the planet, that they know everything about us that the Spackle near us do, that the voice of this world circles it, reaches into every corner and if we could just–

  Or here, here I am on a hilltop next to someone whose face I just about reckernize (Luke? Les? Lars? His name is there, just there, just outta reach–) but I reckernize the blindness in his eyes and I reckernize the face of the man next to him who I know is seeing for him somehow and they’re taking the weapons away from an army and they’re sealing ’em in a mine and they’d rather just destroy the whole lot of ’em but the voices around ’em all want the weapons there, just in case, just in case things go wrong, but the seeing man is telling the blind man that maybe there’s hope anyway–