by Patrick Ness
“You sure about this?” I ask her, when they’re all gone. “You don’t know what could be up there.”
“I don’t like it much either,” she says, “but it’s how it has to be.”
And she says it a bit hard and she’s looking at me and not saying nothing.
“What?” I say. “What’s wrong?”
She starts shaking her head.
“What?” I say.
“Your Noise, Todd,” she says. “I hate it. I’m sorry. I hate it.”
{VIOLA}
He looks back at me, puzzled.
But he doesn’t sound puzzled. He doesn’t sound like anything.
“It’s a good thing that I’m quiet, Viola,” he says. “It’s gonna help us, help me, cuz if I can . . .”
He trails off because he’s still seeing the look on my face.
I have to turn away from him.
“I’m still me,” he says quietly. “I’m still Todd.”
But he isn’t. He isn’t the same Todd whose thoughts spilled out all over the place in a big, colourful mess, the one who couldn’t tell a lie if his life depended on it, who didn’t tell a lie when his life did depend on it, the Todd that saved my life more than once, in more than one way, that Todd who I could hear every uncomfortable thought of, who I could count on, who I knew–
Who I–
“I ain’t changed,” he says. “I’m just more like you, more like all the men you grew up knowing, more like Bradley used to be.”
I keep looking away from him, hoping he can’t see how weary I feel, how my arm throbs with every breath, how bad the fever is gouging me out. “I’m really tired, Todd,” I say. “It’s only tomorrow morning. I have to rest.”
“Viola–”
“You need to be out there with them anyway,” I say. “Make sure the Mayor and Mistress Coyle don’t set themselves up as interim leaders.”
He stares at me. “I don’t know what interim means.”
And that’s close enough to the Todd I know that I smile, a little. “I’ll be fine. I just need some sleep.”
He still stares. “Are you dying, Viola?”
“What?” I say. “No. No, I’m not–”
“Are you dying and yer just not telling me?” His eyes are boring into me now, filled with concern.
But I still can’t hear him.
“I’m not getting better,” I say, “but that doesn’t mean I’m going to die any time soon. Mistress Coyle’s bound to find something, and if she can’t, the convoy has all kinds more advanced medical stuff than the scout ship has. I can hang on ’til then.”
He’s still staring. “Cuz I couldn’t stand it if–” His voice is thick. “I just couldn’t take that, Viola. I just couldn’t.”
And then there it is–
His Noise, still way too quiet, but there, burning away underneath him, burning away with how he’s feeling and how true it is and how worried he is for me and I can hear it, just faintly but I can hear it–
And then I hear, I am the Circle–
And he goes quiet again, quiet as a stone.
“I’m not dying,” I say, looking away from him.
Todd just stands there for a second. “I’ll be right outside,” he finally says. “You call if you need anything. You call me and I’ll get it for you.”
“I will,” I say.
He nods, his lips held tight. He nods again.
Then he goes.
I sit there quietly for a while, listening to the ROAR of the army in the square outside and the raised voices of the Mayor and Mistress Coyle and Simone and Bradley and Lee still arguing.
But I don’t hear Todd.
[TODD]
Bradley sighs loudly, after what seems like hours spent bickering round the campfire, shivering against the freezingist part of the night. “So it’s agreed then?” he says. “We offer an immediate ceasefire on both sides, with a line drawn under all past actions. After that, the issue of the river and then we start laying the groundwork for how we can all live together.”
“Agreed,” the Mayor says. He don’t even look tired.
“Yes, fine,” Mistress Coyle says, grunting with stiffness as she stands. “It’s getting on towards morning. We need to get back.”
“Get back?” I say.
“The people on the hilltop need to know what’s going on, Todd,” she says. “Plus, I’ll need to get Wilf to bring Viola’s horse down here because she’s certainly not going to be able to walk up that hill. Not with that fever.”
I look back to the scout ship, hoping Viola’s at least sleeping inside, hoping she actually does feel better when she wakes.
Wondering if she lied about dying.
“How is she really?” I say to Mistress Coyle, getting up after her. “How sick is she?”
Mistress Coyle looks at me for a long, long moment. “She’s not well, Todd,” she says, very serious. “I just hope everyone’s doing everything they can to help her.”
And she leaves me standing there. I look back at the Mayor, who’s watching Mistress Coyle walk away from me. He comes over. “You’re worried about Viola,” he says, not asking it. “I agree she’s looked better.”
“If something happens to her cuz of that band,” I say, my voice low and strong. “I swear to God I’ll–”
He holds up a hand to stop me. “I know, Todd, even more than you think.” And again, his voice sounds as true as anything. “I’ll have my doctors redouble their efforts. Don’t worry. I’m not going to let anything happen to her.”
“Me neither,” Bradley says, overhearing us. “She’s a fighter, Todd, and if she thinks she’s strong enough to go up that hill tomorrow, we have to believe her. And I’ll be there to make sure nothing happens, believe you me.” And I hear in his Noise that he means every word. He sighs. “Though I guess that means I’m going to need a horse, too.” Even though I don’t know how to ride one, his Noise adds, a bit worried.
“I’ll ask Angharrad to take you,” I say, looking over to where she’s munching on some hay. “She can watch over both of you.”
He smiles. “You know, Viola once told us that if we were ever in doubt about what’s happening here, that we could count on you above all things.”
I feel my face get hot. “Yeah,” I say, “well.”
He gives my shoulder a hard, friendly pat. “We’ll fly back down here at dawn,” he says. “And who knows? Maybe peace by the end of the day.” He winks. “And then maybe you can show me how you keep so quiet.”
He, Lee, Simone and Mistress Coyle make their way back to the scout ship, Mistress Coyle leaving her ox-cart behind for Wilf to pick up. Bradley makes an announcement on a speaker for everyone to move back. The soldiers do, the engines start to grind, and up it rises on a cushion of air.
I hear the Mayor’s voice before the ship’s even halfway back to the hill.
“Gentlemen!” he shouts, his voice twisting and turning hard into the men nearby and echoing thru to every man in the square.
“I report to you, VICTORY!” he shouts.
And when the cheering starts, it goes on for a long, long time.
{VIOLA}
I wake as the ship bumps back down on the hilltop and the bay doors open.
I hear Mistress Coyle shout to the waiting crowd, “We are VICTORIOUS!”
And hear the huge cheer even through the thick metal walls of the ship.
“That can’t be good,” Lee says, back in the next bed, his Noise imagining Mistress Coyle, arms thrust into the air, people picking her up on their shoulders and carrying her for a victory lap.
“That’s probably not too far off,” I say, laughing a little. Which sets me on a long chain of coughing.
The door opens and Bradley and Simone enter.
“You’re missing the rally,” Bradley says sarcastically.
“She’s allowed her moment,” Simone says. “She’s an impressive women in a lot of ways.”
I make to answer but the coughing comes aga
in, so strong that Bradley takes out a medicine pad and puts it on my throat. The cooling of it feels better immediately, and I take a few slow breaths to get the fumes into my lungs.
“What’s the plan, then?” I say. “How much time do we have?”
“A couple hours,” Bradley says. “We’ll fly back down to the city, and Simone will set up the projections for both down there and up here, so everyone can see what’s going on. Then she’ll keep the ship in the air for however long our meeting lasts.”
“I’ll be looking out for you,” Simone says. “Both of you.”
“Good to hear,” Bradley says, quietly but warmly, then he says to me, “Wilf’s bringing Acorn down for you to ride up, and Todd’s giving me his horse.”
I smile. “Is he really?”
Bradley smiles back. “A show of faith, I’m guessing?”
“It means he expects you to come back.”
We hear two sets of footsteps coming up the ramp outside, and continuing cheers, too, though not as many as before. And the voices that approach are arguing.
“I don’t find this acceptable, Mistress,” Ivan is saying as Mistress Coyle comes in the door before him.
“And what makes you think your idea of acceptable is in any way relevant?” she snaps back, that fierceness in her voice that would cow most people.
Not Ivan, though, not quite. “I speak for the people.”
“I speak for the people, Ivan,” she says. “Not you.”
Ivan glances over at me and Bradley. “You’re a-sending a little girl and the Humanitarian to meet with an enemy big enough to annihilate us,” he says. “I can’t say as that would be the overwhelming choice of the people, Mistress.”
“Sometimes the people don’t know what’s best for them, Ivan,” she says. “Sometimes the people have to be convinced of things that are necessary. That’s what leadership is. Not shouting your head off in support of their every whim.”
“I hope you’re right, Mistress,” he says. “For your own sake.”
A last look at all of us and he leaves.
“Everything all right out there?” Simone says.
“Fine, fine,” Mistress Coyle says, her mind clearly somewhere else.
“They’ve started cheering again,” Lee says.
And we all hear it.
But it’s not for Mistress Coyle.
[TODD]
Boy colt, Angharrad says, nuzzling me. And then she says, Boy colt yes.
“It’s for her, really,” I say. “If something happens, I want him able to get her outta there even if he’s gotta carry her, okay?”
Boy colt, she says, pressing against me again.
“But are you sure, girl? Are you sure yer okay? Cuz I ain’t gonna send you nowhere if yer not–”
Todd, she says. For Todd.
And I get a thickness in my throat and I have to swallow a coupla times before I can say, “Thank you, girl,” trying not to think what happened the last time I asked an animal to be brave for me.
“You’re a remarkable young man, you know that?” I hear from behind me.
I sigh. There he is again. “I’m just talking to my horse,” I say.
“No, Todd,” the Mayor says, coming over from his tent. “There are some things I’ve been meaning to say to you, and I’d like you to allow me to say them before the world changes.”
“The world changes all the time,” I say, hitching up Angharrad’s reins. “At least it does for me.”
“Listen to me, Todd,” he says, real serious-like. “I want to tell you how much I’ve grown to respect you. Respect how you’ve fought by my side, yes, how you’ve been right there through every challenge and danger, but also how you’ve stood up to me when no one else would dare, how you’ve really won this peace, while all around you the world was losing its head.”
He puts a hand on Angharrad, rubbing her flank gently. She shifts a little but lets him.
So I let him, too.
“I think you’re the one the settlers are going to want to talk to, Todd,” he says. “Forget me, forget Mistress Coyle, it’s you who they’re going to see as the leader here.”
“Yeah, well,” I say. “Let’s wait till we get peace first before we start handing out credit, okay?”
He breathes out a cloud of cold air thru his nose. “I want to give you something, Todd.”
“I don’t want nothing from you,” I say.
But he’s already holding out a piece of paper in his hand.
“Take it,” he says.
I wait for a second but then I take it. It’s got a line of words written across it, dense and black and unknowable.
“Read it,” he says.
I suddenly get real mad. “You looking to get hit?”
“Please,” he says and it sounds so gentle and genuine that, even angry, I actually drop my glance back down to the paper. It’s still just words, written in what I think is the Mayor’s hand, a dark thicket in a line, like a horizon you can’t get nowhere near.
“Look at the words,” he says. “Tell me what they say.”
The paper flickers in the firelight. None of the words is too long and I reckernize at least two of ’em as my name–
Even a dummy like me knows that much–
And the first word is–
My name is Todd Hewitt and I am a man of New Prentisstown.
I blink.
That’s what it says, right across the page, every word burning clear like the sun.
My name is Todd Hewitt and I am a man of New Prentisstown.
I look back up. The Mayor’s face is all hard concentrayshun, looking deep into me, no buzz of control, just a faint hum.
(that same hum, that one I hear when I think I am the Circle–)
“What does it say?” he asks.
I look down–
And I read it–
I read it out loud.
“My name is Todd Hewitt and I am a man of New Prentisstown.”
He lets out a long breath and the hum dies away. “And now?”
I look at the words again. They’re still on the page but they’re slipping from me, slipping from their meanings–
But not all the way.
My name is Todd Hewitt and I am a man of New Prentisstown.
That’s what it says.
That’s what it still says.
“My name is Todd Hewitt,” I read, saying it more slowly cuz I’m still trying to see it, “and I am a man of New Prentisstown.”
“That you certainly are,” says the Mayor.
I look up to him. “That ain’t real reading, tho. That’s just you putting words in my head.”
“No,” he says. “I’ve been thinking about how the Spackle learn, how they must pass on information. They have no written language, but if they’re connected to each other at all times, they don’t need it. They just exchange their knowledge directly. They carry who they are and what they know in their Noise and share it in a single voice of themselves. Maybe even a single voice of this world.”
I look up at that. A single voice. The Spackle who came to the square. The one voice that seemed to be the whole world talking. Talking to me.
“I didn’t give you words, Todd,” the Mayor says. “I gave you my knowledge of reading, and you were able to take it from me, in the same way I shared my knowledge of how to stay silent. I think that was the opening of a larger connection than even I imagined, a connection like the Spackle have. It’s a blunt and inelegant process right now, but it could be refined. Just think of what we could do if we mastered it, Todd, how much knowledge we could share, and how easily.”
I look at the paper again. “My name is Todd Hewitt,” I read quietly, still seeing most of the words.
“If you let me,” he says, his voice open and honest-sounding, “I believe I could give you enough knowledge to have you reading your mother’s journal by the time the settlers arrive.”
I think about that. My ma’s book. Still cut thru with Aaron’s k
nife stab, still hidden away, read only once in the voice of Viola . . .
I don’t trust him, not never, he ain’t redeemable–
But I’m seeing him a bit different, seeing him as a man, not a monster.
Cuz if we are connected somehow, connected in a single voice–
(that hum–)
Maybe it’s a two-way thing.
Maybe he’s showing me how to do stuff–
And maybe I’m making him better in return.
We hear a distant booming, the familiar one of the scout ship taking to the air. In the eastern sky, the ship and the sun are both starting their rise.
“We’ll have to return to this discussion, Todd,” the Mayor says. “It’s time to go make peace.”
{VIOLA}
“A big day, my girl,” Mistress Coyle says to me where we’re all gathered in the healing room as Simone flies towards the town. “For you and for all of us.”
“I know how big it is,” I say quietly. Bradley’s watching the screens to monitor our progress. Lee’s stayed back on the hilltop to listen out for how things go with Ivan throughout the day.
I hear Mistress Coyle laugh to herself. “What?” I ask.
“Oh,” she says, “just the irony that I’m putting all my hopes into the girl who hates me most of all.”
“I don’t hate you,” I say, realizing that, despite all that’s happened, it’s true.
“Maybe not, my girl,” she says, “but you certainly don’t trust me.”
I don’t say anything to that.
“Make a peace, Viola,” she says, more seriously. “Make a good peace. Make it so well everyone knows it was you who did it, and not that man. I know you don’t want a world where I’m in charge, but we can’t let him be in charge of it either.” She looks over at me. “That has to be the goal, no matter what.”
I feel the nerves in my stomach. “I’ll do what I can,” I say.
She shakes her head, slowly. “You’re lucky, you know. So young. So many chances ahead of you. You could turn out to be a better version of me. A version of me who’s never forced to be so ruthless.”
