“The Spackle buildings,” I say but she ain’t really listening.
She looks at me. “Then you came.” She looks at Manchee. “You and your dog that talks.”
“Manchee!” Manchee barks.
Her face is pale and when she meets my eyes again, her own have gone wet. “What is this place?” she asks, her voice kinda thick. “Why do the animals talk? Why do I hear your voice when your mouth isn’t moving? Why do I hear your voice a whole bunch over, piled on top of each other like there’s nine million of you talking at once? Why do I see pictures of other things when I look at you? Why could I see what that man . . .”
She fades off. She draws her knees up to her chest and hugs them. I feel like I better start talking right quick or she’s gonna start rocking again.
“We’re settlers,” I say. She looks up at this, still hugging her knees but at least not rocking. “We were settlers,” I continue. “Landed here to found New World about twenty years ago or so. But there were aliens here. The Spackle. And they . . . didn’t want us.” I’m telling her what every boy in Prentisstown knows, the history even the dumbest farm boy like yours truly knows by heart. “Men tried for years to make peace but the Spackle weren’t having it. And so war started.”
She looks down again at the word war. I keep talking.
“And the way the Spackle fought, see, was with germs, with diseases. That was their weapons. They released germs that did things. One of them we think was meant to kill all our livestock but instead it just made every animal able to talk.” I look at Manchee. “Which ain’t as much fun as it sounds.” I look back at the girl. “And another was the Noise.”
I wait. She don’t say nothing. But we both sorta know what’s coming cuz we been here before, ain’t we?
I take a deep breath. “And that one killed half the men and all the women, including my ma, and it made the thoughts of the men who survived no longer secret to the rest of the world.”
She hides her chin behind her knees. “Sometimes I can hear it clearly,” she says. “Sometimes I can tell exactly what you’re thinking. But only sometimes. Most of the time it’s just–”
“Noise,” I say.
She nods. “And the aliens?”
“There ain’t no more aliens.”
She nods again. We sit for a minute, ignoring the obvious till it can’t be ignored no longer.
“Am I going to die?” she asks quietly. “Is it going to kill me?”
The words sound different in her accent but they mean the same damn thing and my Noise can only say probably but I make it so my mouth says, “I don’t know.”
She watches me for more.
“I really don’t know,” I say, kinda meaning it. “If you’d asked me last week, I’d have been sure, but today–” I look down at my rucksack, at the book hiding inside. “I don’t know.” I look back at her. “I hope not.”
But probably, says my Noise. Probably yer gonna die, and tho I try to cover it up with other Noise it’s such an unfair thing it’s hard not to have it right at the front.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
She don’t say nothing.
“But maybe if we get to the next settlement–” I say, but I don’t finish cuz I don’t know the answer. “You ain’t sick yet. That’s something.”
“You must warn them,” she says, down into her knees.
I look up sharply. “What?”
“Earlier, when you were trying to read that book–”
“I wasn’t trying,” I say, my voice a little bit louder all of a sudden.
“I could see the words in your whatever,” she says, “and it’s ‘You must warn them’.”
“I know that! I know what it says.”
Of course it’s bloody You must warn them. Course it is. Idiot.
The girl says, “It seemed like you were–”
“I know how to read.”
She holds up her hands. “Okay.”
“I do!”
“I’m just saying–”
“Well, stop just saying,” I frown, my Noise roiling enough to get Manchee on his feet. I get to my feet as well. I pick up the rucksack and put it back on. “We should get moving.”
“Warn who?” asks the girl, still sitting. “About what?”
I don’t get to answer (even tho I don’t know the answer) cuz there’s a loud click above us, a loud clang-y click that in Prentisstown would mean one thing.
A rifle being cocked.
And standing on a rock above us, there’s someone with a freshly-cocked rifle in both hands, looking down the sight, pointing it right at us.
“What’s foremost in my mind at this partickalar juncture,” says a voice rising from behind the gun, “is what do two little pups think they’re doing a-burning down my bridge?”
“Gun! Gun! Gun!” Manchee starts barking, hopping back and forth in the dust.
“I’d quieten down yer beastie there,” says the rifle, his face obscured by looking down the sight straight at us. “Wouldn’t want anything to happen to it, now wouldja?”
“Quiet, Manchee!” I say.
He turns to me. “Gun, Todd?” he barks. “Bang, bang!”
“I know. Shut up.”
He stops barking and it’s quiet.
Aside from my Noise, it’s quiet.
“I do believe I sent out an asking to a partickalar pair of pups,” says the voice, “and I am a-waiting on my answer.”
I look back at the girl. She shrugs her shoulders, tho I notice we both have our hands up. “What?” I say back up to the rifle.
The rifle gives an angry grunt. “I’m asking,” it says, “what exactly gives ye permisshun to go a-burning down other people’s bridges?”
I don’t say nothing. Neither does the girl.
“D’ye think this is a stick I’m a-pointing at ye?” The rifle bobs up and down once.
“We were being chased,” I say, for lack of nothing else.
“Chased, were ye?” says the rifle. “Who was a-chasing ye?”
And I don’t know how to answer this. Would the truth be more dangerous than a lie? Is the rifle on the side of the Mayor? Would we be bounty? Or would rifle man have even heard of Prentisstown?
The world’s a dangerous place when you don’t know enough.
Like why is it so quiet?
“Oh, I heard of Prentisstown, all right,” says the rifle, reading my Noise with unnerving clarity and cocking the gun again, making it ready to shoot. “And if that’s where yer from–”
Then the girl speaks up and says that thing that suddenly makes me think of her as Viola and not the girl any more.
“He saved my life.”
I saved her life.
Says Viola.
Funny how that works.
“Did he now?” says the rifle. “And how do you know he don’t aim to just be a-saving it for himself?”
The girl, Viola, looks at me, her forehead creased. It’s my turn to shrug.
“But no.” The rifle’s voice changes. “No, huh-uh, no, I’m not a-seeing that in ye, am I, boy? Cuz yer just a boy pup still, ain’t ye?”
I swallow. “I’ll be a man in 29 days.”
“Not something to be proud of, pup. Not where yer from.”
And then he lowers the gun away from his face.
And that’s why it’s so quiet.
He’s a woman.
He’s a grown woman.
He’s an old woman.
“I’ll thank ye kindly to call me she,” the woman says, still pointing the rifle at us from chest level. “And not so old I won’t still shoot ye.”
She’s looking at us more closely now, reading me up and down, seeing right into my Noise with a skill I’ve only ever felt in Ben. Her face is making all kindsa shapes, like she’s considering me, like Cillian’s face does when he tries to read me to see if I’m lying. Tho this woman ain’t got no Noise at all so she might be singing a song in there for all I know.
She turns to Viola a
nd pauses for another long look.
“As pups go,” she says, looking back at me, “ye are as easy to read as a newborn, m’boy.” She turns her face to Viola. “But ye, wee girl, yer story’s not a usual one, is it?”
“I’d be happy to tell you all about it if you’d stop pointing a gun at us,” Viola says.
This is so surprising even Manchee looks up. I turn to Viola with my mouth open.
We hear a chuckle from up on the rock. The old woman is laughing to herself. Her clothes seem a real dusty leather, worn and creased for years and years with a rimmed hat and boots for ignoring mud. Like she ain’t nothing more than a farmer, really.
She’s still pointing the gun at us, tho.
“Ye were a-running from Prentisstown, were ye?” she asks, looking into my Noise again. There’s no point in hiding it so I go ahead and put forward what we were running from, what happened at the bridge, who was chasing us. She sees all of it, I know she does, but all I see her do is wrinkle up her lips and squint her eyes a bit.
“Well, now,” she says, crooking the rifle in her arm and starting to make her way down from the rocks to where we’re standing. “I can’t rightly say that I’m not peeved bout ye blowing up my bridge. Heard the boom all the way back at the farm, oh, yeah.” She steps off the last rock and stands a little ways away from us, the force of her grown-up quiet so large I feel myself stepping back without even knowing I decided to do it. “But the only place it led to ain’t been worth a-going to for a decade nor more. Only left it up outta hope.” She looks us over again. “Who’s to say I weren’t right?”
We still have our hands in the air cuz she ain’t making much sense, is she?
“I’ll ask ye this once,” the woman says, lifting the rifle again. “Am I gonna need this?”
I exchange a glance with Viola.
“No,” I say.
“No, mam,” Viola says.
Mam? I think.
“It’s like sir, bonny boy.” The woman slings the rifle over her shoulder by its strap. “For if yer a-talking to a lady.” She squats down to Manchee’s level. “And who might ye be, pup?”
“Manchee!” he barks.
“Oh, yeah, that’s definitely who ye be, innit?” says the woman, giving him a vigorous rubbing. “And ye two pups?” she asks, not looking up. “What might yer good mothers have dubbed ye?”
Me and Viola exchange another glance. It seems like a price, giving up our names, but maybe it’s a fair exchange for the gun being lowered.
“I’m Todd. That’s Viola.”
“As surely true as the sun a-coming up,” says the woman, having succeeded in getting Manchee on his back for a tummy rub.
“Is there another way over that river?” I ask. “Another bridge? Cuz those men–”
“I’m Mathilde,” the old woman interrupts, “but people who call me that don’t know me, so you can call me Hildy and one day ye may even earn the right to shake my hand.”
I look at Viola again. How can you tell if someone with no Noise is crazy?
The old woman cackles. “Yer a funny one there, boy.” She stands up from Manchee who rolls back over and stares at her, already a worshipper. “And to answer yer asking, there’s shallow crossings a couple days’ travelling upstream but there ain’t no bridges for a good distance more either way.”
She turns her gaze back to me, steady and clear, a small smile on her lips. She’s gotta be reading my Noise again but I can’t feel no prodding like I do when men try it.
And the way she keeps on looking I start to realize a few things, put a few things together. It must be right that Prentisstown was quarantined cuz of the Noise germ, huh? Cuz here’s a grown-up woman who ain’t dead from it, who’s looking at me friendly but keeping her distance, a woman ready to greet strangers from my direkshun with a rifle.
And if I’m contagious that means Viola’s probably definitely caught it by now, could be dying as we speak, and that I’m probably definitely not gonna be welcome in the settlement, probably definitely gonna be told to keep way way out and that that’s probably the end of that, ain’t it? My journey ended before I even found anywhere to go.
“Oh, ye won’t be welcome in the settlement,” the woman says. “No probably about it. But,” she winks at me, actually winks, “what ye don’t know won’t kill ye.”
“Wanna bet?” I say.
She turns back and steps up the rocks the way she came. We just watch her go till she gets to the top and turns around again.
“Ye all a-coming?” she says, as if she’s invited us along and we’re keeping her waiting.
I look at Viola. She calls up to the woman, “We’re meant to be heading for the settlement.” Viola looks at me again. “Welcome or not.”
“Oh, ye’ll get there,” says the woman, “but what ye two pups need first is a good sleeping and a good feeding. Any blind man could see that.”
The idea of sleep and hot food is so tempting, I forget for a second that she ever pointed a gun at us. But only for a second. Cuz there’s other things to think about. I make the decision for us. “We should keep on the road,” I say to Viola quietly.
“I don’t even know where we’re going,” she says, also quietly. “Do you? Honestly?”
“Ben said–”
“Ye two pups come to my farm, get some good eatings in ye, sleep on a bed – tho it ain’t soft, I grant ye that – and in the morning, we’ll go to the settlement.” And that’s how she says it, opening her eyes wide on it, like a word to make fun of us for calling it that.
We still don’t move.
“Look at it thusly,” the old woman says. “I got me a gun.” She waves it. “But I’m asking ye to come.”
“Why don’t we go with her?” Viola whispers. “Just to see.”
My Noise rises a little in surprise. “See what?”
“I could use a bath,” she says. “I could use some sleep.”
“So could I,” I say, “but there’s men who’re after us who probably ain’t gonna let one fallen bridge stop them. And besides, we don’t know nothing about her. She could be a killer for all we know.”
“She seems okay.” Viola glances up at the woman. “A little crazy, but she doesn’t seem dangerous crazy.”
“She don’t seem anything.” I feel a little vexed, if I’m honest. “People without Noise don’t seem like nothing at all.”
Viola looks at me, her brows suddenly creased and her jaw set a little.
“Well, not you, obviously,” I say.
“Every time . . .” she starts to say but then she just shakes her head.
“Every time what?” I whisper, but Viola just scrunches her eyes and turns to the woman.
“Hold on,” she says, her voice sounding annoyed. “Let me get my stuff.”
“Hey!” I say. What happened to her remembering I saved her life? “Wait a minute. We gotta follow the road. We gotta get to the settlement.”
“Roads is never the fastest way to get nowhere,” the woman says. “Don’t ye know that?”
Viola don’t say nothing, just picks up her bag, frowning all over the place. She’s ready to go, ready to head off with the first quiet person she sees, ready to leave me behind at the first sweet beckoning.
And she’s missing the thing I don’t wanna say.
“I can’t go, Viola,” I say, low, thru clenched teeth, hating myself a little as I say it, my face turning hot, which weirdly makes a bandage fall off. “I carry the germ. I’m dangerous.”
She turns to me and there’s a sting in her voice. “Then maybe you shouldn’t come.”
My jaw drops open. “You’d do that? You’d just leave?”
Viola looks away from my eyes but before she can answer, the old woman speaks. “Boy pup,” she says, “if it’s being infeckshus yer worried about, then yer girl mate can come a-walking up ahead with ol’ Hildy while ye stay back a little ways with the puppup to guard ye.”
“Manchee!” Manchee barks.
“W
hatever,” Viola says, turning and starting to climb the rocks to where the old woman stands.
“And I told ye,” the woman says, “it’s Hildy, not old woman.”
Viola reaches her and they walk off outta sight without another word. Just like that.
“Hildy,” Manchee says to me.
“Shut up,” I say.
And I don’t got no choice but to climb the rocks after them, do I?
So that’s how we make our way, along a much narrower path thru rocks and scrub, Viola and old Hildy keeping close together when they can, me and Manchee miles back, tripping our way towards who knows what further danger and the whole time I’m looking back over my shoulder, expecting to see the Mayor and Mr Prentiss Jr and Aaron all coming after us.
I don’t know. How can you know? How can Ben and Cillian have expected me to be prepared for this? Sure, the idea of a bed and hot food sounds like something worth getting shot for but maybe it’s a trick and we’re being so stupid we deserve to get caught.
And there’s people after us and we should be running.
But maybe there really ain’t another way over that river.
And Hildy could have forced us and she didn’t. And Viola said she seems okay and maybe one Noise-less person can read another.
You see? How can you know?
And who cares what Viola says?
“Look at ’em up there,” I say to Manchee. “They fell together right quick. Like they’re long-lost family or something.”
“Hildy,” Manchee says again. I swat after his rump but he runs on ahead.
Viola and Hildy are talking together but I can only hear the murmurings of words here and there. I don’t know what they’re saying at all. If they were normal Noisy people, it wouldn’t matter how far back on the trail I was, we could all talk together and nobody’d have no automatic secrets. Everybody’d be jabbering, whether they wanted to or not.
And nobody’d be left out. Nobody’d be left on his own at the first chance you had.
We all walk on.
And I’m starting to think some more.
And I’m starting to let them get a little farther ahead, too.
And I’m thinking more.
Cuz as time passes, it’s all starting to sink in.