by Patrick Ness
It won’t just be Todd and Viola, sitting by a river as the sun comes up, eating our breakfast, the only two people on the face of the planet.
It’ll be everyone, all together.
This might be our last chance.
I look away from her to speak. “You know that thing with voices that you do?”
“Yeah,” she says, quiet.
I take out the book.
“D’you think you could do a Prentisstown voice?”
“My Dearest Todd,” Viola reads, copying Ben’s accent as best she can. Which is pretty ruddy good. “My dearest son.”
My ma’s voice. My ma speaking.
I cross my arms and look down into the wheat spilled across the ground.
“I begin this journal on the day of yer birth, the day I first held you in my arms rather than in my belly. You kick just as much outside as in! And yer the most beautiful thing that’s ever happened in the whole entire universe. Yer easily the most beautiful thing on New World and there’s no contest in New Elizabeth, that’s for sure.”
I feel my face getting red but the sun’s still not high enough for anyone to see.
“I wish yer pa were here to see you, Todd, but New World and the Lord above saw fit to take him with the sickness five months ago and we’ll both just have to wait to see him in the next world.
“You look like him. Well, babies don’t look much like anything but babies but I’m telling you you look like him. Yer going to be tall, Todd, cuz yer pa was tall. Yer going to be strong, cuz yer pa was strong. And yer going to be handsome, oh, are you ever going to be handsome. The ladies of New World won’t know what hit them.”
Viola turns a page and I don’t look at her. I sense she’s not looking at me neither and I wouldn’t wanna see a smile on her face right about now.
Cuz that weird thing’s happening too.
Her words are not her words and they’re coming outta her mouth sounding like a lie but making a new truth, creating a different world where my ma is talking directly to me, Viola speaking with a voice not her own and the world, for a little while at least, the world is all for me, the world’s being made just for me.
“Let me tell you bout the place you’ve been born into, son. It’s called New World and it’s a whole planet made entirely of hope–”
Viola stops, just for a second, then carries on.
“We landed here almost exactly ten years ago looking for a new way of life, one clean and simple and honest and good, one different from Old World in all respects, where people could live in safety and peace with God as our guide and with love for our fellow man.
“There’ve been struggles. I won’t begin this story to you with a lie, Todd. It ain’t been easy here–
“Oooh, listen to me, writing down ‘ain’t’ when addressing my son. That’s settler life for you, I spose, not much time for niceties and it’s easy to sink to the level of people who revel in squandering their manners. But there’s not much harm in ‘ain’t’, surely? Okay, that’s decided then. My first bad choice as a mother. Say ‘ain’t’ all you like, Todd. I promise not to correct you.”
Viola purses her lips but I don’t say nothing so she continues.
“So there’s been hardship and sickness on New World and in New Elizabeth. There’s something called the Noise here on this planet that men have been struggling with since we landed but the strange thing is you’ll be one of the boys in the settlement who won’t know any different and so it’ll be hard to explain to you what life was like before and why it’s so difficult now but we’re managing the best we can.
“A man called David Prentiss, who’s got a son just a bit older than you, Todd, and who’s one of our better organizers – I believe he was a caretaker on the ship over, if memory serves me correct–”
Viola pauses at this, too, but this time it’s me who waits for her to say something. She don’t.
“He convinced Jessica Elizabeth, our Mayor, to found this little settlement on the far side of an enormous swamp so that the Noise of the rest of New World can’t never reach us unless we allow it to. It’s still Noisy as anything here in New Elizabeth but at least it’s people we know, at least it’s people we trust. For the most part.
“My role here is that I farm several fields of wheat up north of the settlement. Since yer pa passed, our close friends Ben and Cillian have been helping me out since theirs is the next farm over. I can’t wait for you to meet them. Well wait, you already have! They’ve already held you and said hello so look at that, one day in the world and you’ve already made two friends. It’s a good way to start, son.
“In fact, I’m sure you’ll do fine cuz you came out two weeks early. Clearly you’d decided you’d had enough and wanted to see what this world had to offer you. I can’t blame you. The sky is so big and blue and the trees so green and this is a world where the animals talk to you, really talk, and you can even talk back and there’s so much wonder to be had, so much just waiting for you, Todd, that I almost can’t stand that it’s not happening for you right now, that yer going to have to wait to see all that’s possible, all the things you might do.”
Viola takes a breath and says, “There’s a break in the page here and a little space and then it says Later like she got interrupted.” She looks up at me. “You okay?”
“Yeah, yeah,” I nod real fast, my arms still crossed. “Carry on.”
It’s getting lighter, the sun truly coming up. I turn away from her a little.
She reads.
“Later.
“Sorry, son, had to stop for a minute for a visit from our holy man, Aaron.”
Another pause, another lick of the lips.
“We’ve been lucky to have him, tho I must admit of late he’s not been saying things I exactly agree with about the natives of New World. Which are called the Spackle, by the way, and which were a BIG surprise, since they were so shy at first neither the original planners back on Old World or our first scout ships even knew they were here!
“They’re very sweet creachers. Different and maybe primitive and no spoken or written language that we can really find but I don’t agree with some of the thinking of the people here that the Spackle are animals rather than intelligent beings. And Aaron’s been preaching lately about how God has made a dividing line twixt us and them and–
“Well that’s not really something to discuss on yer first day, is it? Aaron believes what he believes devoutly, has been a pillar of faith for all of us these long years and should anyone find this journal and read it, let me say here for the record that it was a privilege to have him come by and bless you on yer first day of life. Okay?
“But I will say also on yer first day that the attractiveness of power is something you should learn about before you get too much older, it’s the thing that separates men from boys, tho not in the way most men think.
“And that’s all I’ll say. Prying eyes and all that.
“Oh, son, there’s so much wonder in the world. Don’t let no one tell you otherwise. Yes, life has been hard here on New World and I’ll even admit to you here, cuz if I’m going to start out at all it has to be an honest start, I’ll tell you that I was nearly given to despair. Things in the settlement are maybe more complicated than I can quite explain right now and there’s things you’ll learn for yerself before too long whether I like it or not and there’ve been difficulties with food and with sickness and it was hard enough even before I lost yer pa and I nearly gave up.
“But I didn’t give up. I didn’t give up cuz of you, my beautiful, beautiful boy, my wondrous son who might make something better of this world, who I promise to raise only with love and hope and who I swear will see this world come good. I swear it.
“Cuz when I held you for the first time this morning and fed you from my own body, I felt so much love for you it was almost like pain, almost like I couldn’t stand it one second longer.
“But only almost.
“And I sang to you a song that my mother
sang to me and her mother sang to her and it goes,”
And here, amazingly, Viola sings.
Actually sings.
My skin goes gooseflesh, my chest crushes. She musta heard the whole tune in my Noise and of course Ben singing it cuz here it comes, rolling outta her mouth like the peal of a bell.
The voice of Viola making the world into the voice of my ma, singing the song.
“Early one morning, just as the sun was rising,
I heard a maiden call from the valley below,
‘Oh don’t deceive me, oh never leave me,
How could you use a poor maiden so?’”
I can’t look at her.
I can’t look at her.
I put my hands to my head.
“And it’s a sad song, Todd, but it’s also a promise. I’ll never deceive you and I’ll never leave you and I promise you this so you can one day promise it to others and know that it’s true.
“Oh, ha, Todd! That’s you crying. That’s you crying from yer cot, waking up from yer first sleep on yer first day, waking up and asking the world to come to you.
“And so for today I have to put this aside.
“Yer calling for me, son, and I will answer.”
Viola stops and there’s only the river and my Noise.
“There’s more,” Viola says after a while when I don’t raise my head, flipping thru the pages. “There’s a lot more.” She looks at me. “Do you want me to read more?” She looks back at the book. “Do you want me to read the end?”
The end.
Read the last thing my ma wrote in the last days before–
“No,” I say quickly.
Yer calling for me, son, and I will answer.
In my Noise forever.
“No,” I say again. “Let’s leave it there for now.”
I glance over at Viola and I see that her face is pulled as sad as my Noise feels. Her eyes are wet and her chin shakes, just barely, just a tremble in the dawn sunlight. She sees me watching, feels my Noise watching her, and she turns away to face the river.
And there, in that morning, in that new sunrise, I realize something.
I realize something important.
So important that as it dawns fully I have to stand up.
I know what she’s thinking.
I know what she’s thinking.
Even looking at her back, I know what she’s thinking and feeling and what’s going on inside her.
The way she’s turned her body, the way she’s holding her head and her hands and the book in her lap, the way she’s stiffening a little in her back as she hears all this in my Noise.
I can read it.
I can read her.
Cuz she’s thinking about how her own parents also came here with hope like my ma. She’s wondering if the hope at the end of our road is just as false as the one that was at the end of my ma’s. And she’s taking the words of my ma and putting them into the mouths of her own ma and pa and hearing them say that they love her and they miss her and they wish her the world. And she’s taking the song of my ma and she’s weaving it into everything else till it becomes a sad thing all her own.
And it hurts her, but it’s an okay hurt, but it hurts still, but it’s good, but it hurts.
She hurts.
I know all this.
I know it’s true.
Cuz I can read her.
I can read her Noise even tho she ain’t got none.
I know who she is.
I know Viola Eade.
I raise my hands to the side of my head to hold it all in.
“Viola,” I whisper, my voice shaking.
“I know,” she says quietly, pulling her arms tight around her, still facing away from me.
And I look at her sitting there and she looks across the river and we wait as the dawn fully arrives, each of us knowing.
Each of us knowing the other.
The sun creeps up into the sky and the river is loud as we look across it and we can now see it rushing fast down towards the valley’s end, throwing up whitewater and rapids.
It’s Viola who breaks the spell that’s fallen twixt us. “You know what it has to be, don’t you?” she says. She takes out the binos and looks downriver. The sun is rising at the end of the valley. She has to shield the lenses with her hand.
“What is it?” I say.
She presses a button or two and looks again.
“What do you see?” I ask.
She hands the binos to me.
I look downriver, following the rapids, the foam, right to–
Right to the end.
A few kilometres away, the river ends in mid-air.
“Another falls,” I say.
“Looks way bigger than the one we saw with Wilf,” she says.
“The road’ll find a way past it,” I say. “Shouldn’t bother us.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“What then?”
“I mean,” she says, frowning a bit at my denseness, “that falls that big’re bound to have a city at the bottom of them. That if you had to choose a place anywhere on a planet for first settlement, then a valley at the base of a waterfall with rich farmland and ready water might just look perfect from space.”
My Noise rises a little but only a little.
Cuz who would dare to think?
“Haven,” I say.
“I’ll bet you anything we’ve found it,” she says. “I’ll bet you when we get to that waterfall we’ll be able to see it below us.”
“If we run,” I say, “we could be there in an hour. Less than”
She looks me in the eye for the first time since my ma’s book.
And she says, “If we run?”
And then she smiles.
A genuine smile.
And I know what that means, too.
We grab up our few things and go.
Faster than before.
My feet are tired and sore. Hers must be, too. I’ve got blisters and aches and my heart hurts from all I miss and all that’s gone. And hers does, too.
But we run.
Boy, do we run.
Cuz maybe (shut up)–
Just maybe (don’t think it)–
Maybe there really is hope at the end of the road.
The river grows wider and straighter as we rush on and the walls of the valley move in closer and closer, the one on our side getting so close the edge of the road starts to slope up. Spray from the rapids is floating in the air. Our clothes get wet, our faces, too, and hands. The roar becomes thunderous, filling up the world with itself, almost like a physical thing, but not in a bad way. Like it’s washing you, like it’s washing the Noise away.
And I think, Please let Haven be at the bottom of the falls.
Please.
Cuz I see Viola looking back to me as we run and there’s brightness on her face and she keeps urging me on with tilts of her head and smiles and I think how hope may be the thing that pulls you forward, may be the thing that keeps you going, but that it’s dangerous, too, that it’s painful and risky, that it’s making a dare to the world and when has the world ever let us win a dare?
Please let Haven be there.
Oh please oh please oh please.
The road finally starts rising a bit, pulling up above the river slightly as the water starts really crashing thru rocky rapids. There ain’t no more wooded bits twixt us and it now at all, just a hill climbing up steeper and steeper on our right side as the valley closes in and then nothing but river and the falls ahead.
“Almost there,” Viola calls from ahead of me, running, her hair bouncing off the back of her neck, the sun shining down on everything.
And then.
And then, at the edge of the cliff, the road comes to a lip and takes a sudden angle down and to the right.
And that’s where we stop.
The falls are huge, half a kilometre across easy. The water roars over the cliff in a violent white foam, sending spray hund
reds of metres out into the sheer drop and above and all around, soaking us in our clothes and throwing rainbows all over the place as the rising sun lights it.
“Todd,” Viola says, so faintly I can barely hear it.
But I don’t need to.
I know what she means.
As soon as the falls start falling, the valley opens up again, wide as the sky itself, taking the river that starts again at the base of the falls, which crashes forward with whitewater before it pools and calms down and becomes a river again.
And flows into Haven.
Haven.
Gotta be.
Spread out below us like a table full of food.
“There it is,” Viola says.
And I feel her fingers wrap around my own.
The falls to our left, spray and rainbows in the sky, the sun rising ahead of us, the valley below.
And Haven, sitting waiting.
It’s three, maybe four kilometres away down the farther valley.
But there it is.
There it ruddy well is.
I look round us, round to where the road has taken a sharp turn at our feet, sloping down and cutting into the valley wall to our right but then zig-zagging its way steeply down in a twisty pattern so even it’s like a zipper running down the hillside to where it picks up the river again.
And follows it right into Haven.
“I want to see it,” Viola says, letting go of my hand and taking out the binos. She looks thru them, wipes spray off the lenses, and looks some more. “It’s beautiful,” she says and that’s all she says and she just looks and wipes off more spray.
After a minute and without saying nothing more, she hands me the binos and I get my first look at Haven.
The spray is so thick, even wiping it down you can’t see details like people or anything but there are all kindsa different buildings, mostly surrounding what looks like a big church at the centre, but other big buildings, too, and proper roads curling outta the middle thru trees to more groups of buildings.
There’s gotta be at least fifty buildings in all.
Maybe a hundred.
It’s the biggest thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life.
“I’ve got to say,” Viola shouts, “it’s kind of smaller than I expected.”
