She turns back to me.
“Not that way.” I point to our left. “That way.”
I head off the right way, Manchee follows, and I look back and the girl’s coming after us. I take one last quick look behind her and as bad as I want to stay and look thru that wreckage for more neat stuff, and boy do I, we gotta go, even tho it’s night, even tho nobody’s slept, we gotta go.
And so we do, catching sight of the horizon thru the trees when we can and heading towards the space twixt the close mountain and the two farther away mountains. Both moons are more than halfway to full and the sky is clear so there’s at least a little bit of light to walk by, even under the swamp canopy, even in the dark.
“Keep yer ears open,” I say to Manchee.
“For what?” Manchee barks.
“For things that could get us, idiot.”
You can’t really run in a dark swamp at night so we walk as fast as we can, me shining the torch in front of us, tripping our way round tree roots and trying not to tromp thru too much mud. Manchee goes ahead and comes back, sniffing round and sometimes barking, but nothing serious. The girl keeps up, never falling behind but never getting too close neither. Which is good, cuz even tho my Noise is about the quietest it’s been all day, the silence of her still presses on it whenever she comes too near.
It’s weird that she didn’t do nothing more about her ma and pa when we left, ain’t it? Didn’t cry or have one last visit or nothing? Am I wrong? I’d give anything to see Ben and even Cillian again, even if they were . . . Well, even if they are.
“Ben,” Manchee says, down by my knees.
“I know.” I scratch him twixt the ears.
We keep on.
I’d want to bury them, if that’s what it came to. I’d want to do something, I don’t know what. I stop and look back at the girl but her face is just the same, just the same as ever, and is it cuz she crashed and her parents died? Is it cuz Aaron found her? Is it cuz she’s from somewhere else?
Don’t she feel nothing? Is she just nothing at all on the inside?
She’s looking at me, waiting for me to go on.
And so, after a second, I do.
Hours. There’s hours of this silent night-time fast creeping. Hours of it. Who knows how far we’re going or if we’re heading the right way or what, but hours. Once in a while, I hear the Noise of a night-time creacher, swamp owls cooing their way to dinner, swooping down on probably short-tailed mice, whose Noise is so quiet it’s barely like language at all, but mostly all I hear is the now-and-then fast-fading Noise of a night-time creacher running away from all the ruckus we must be making by tromping thru a swamp at night.
But the weird thing is there’s still no sound of nothing behind us, nothing chasing us, no Noise, no branches breaking, nothing. Maybe Ben and Cillian threw them off the trail. Maybe the reason I’m running ain’t so important after all. Maybe–
The girl stops to pull her shoe outta some mud.
The girl.
No. They’re coming. The only maybe is that maybe they’re waiting till daybreak so they can come faster.
So on and on we go, getting more and more tired, stopping only once so that everyone can have a private pee off in the bushes. I get some of Ben’s food outta my own rucksack and feed small bits to everyone, since it’s my turn.
And then more walking and more walking.
And then there comes an hour just before dawn where there can’t be no more.
“We gotta stop,” I say, dropping the rucksack at the base of a tree. “We gotta rest.”
The girl sets her own bag down by another tree without needing any more convincing and we both just sort of collapse down, leaning on our bags like pillows.
“Five minutes,” I say. Manchee curls up by my legs and closes his eyes almost immediately. “Only five minutes,” I call over to the girl, who’s pulled a little blanket outta her bag to cover herself with. “Don’t get too comfortable.”
We gotta keep going, no question of that. I’ll only close my eyes for a minute or two, just to get a little rest, and then we’ll keep on going faster than before.
Just a little rest, that’s all.
I open my eyes and the sun is up. Only a little but ruddy well up.
Crap. We’ve lost at least an hour, maybe two.
And then I realize it’s a sound that’s woken me.
It’s Noise.
I panic, thinking of men finding us and I scramble to my feet–
Only to see that it ain’t a man.
It’s a cassor, towering over me and Manchee and the girl.
Food? says its Noise.
I knew they hadn’t left the swamp.
I hear a little gasp from over where the girl’s sleeping. Not sleeping no more. The cassor turns to look at her. And then Manchee’s up and barking, “Get! Get! Get!” and the cassor’s neck swings back our way.
Imagine the biggest bird you ever saw, imagine it got so big that it couldn’t even fly no more, we’re talking two and a half or even three metres tall, a super long bendy neck stretching up way over yer head. It’s still got feathers but they look more like fur and the wings ain’t good for much except stunning things they’re about to eat. But it’s the feet you gotta watch out for. Long legs, up to my chest, with claws at the end that can kill you with one kick if yer not careful.
“Don’t worry,” I call over to the girl. “They’re friendly.”
Cuz they are. Or they’re sposed to be. They’re sposed to eat rodents and only kick if you attack ’em, but if you don’t attack ’em, Ben says they’re friendly and dopey and’ll let you feed ’em. And they’re also good to eat, a combo which made the new settlers of Prentisstown so eager to hunt ’em for food that by the time I was born there wasn’t a cassor to be seen within miles. Yet another thing I only ever saw in a vid or Noise.
The world keeps getting bigger.
“Get! Get!” Manchee barks, running in a circle round the cassor.
“Don’t bite it!” I shout at him.
The cassor’s neck is swinging about like a vine, following Manchee around like a cat after a bug. Food? its Noise keeps asking.
“Not food,” I say, and the big neck swings my way.
Food?
“Not food,” I say again. “Just a dog.”
Dog? it thinks and starts following Manchee around again, trying to nip him with his beak. The beak ain’t a scary thing at all, like being nipped by a goose, but Manchee’s having none of it, leaping outta the way and barking, barking, barking.
I laugh at him. It’s funny.
And then I hear a little laugh that ain’t my own.
I look over. The girl is standing by her tree, watching the giant bird chase around my stupid dog, and she’s laughing.
She’s smiling.
She sees me looking and she stops.
Food? I hear and I turn to see the cassor starting to poke its beak into my rucksack.
“Hey!” I shout and start shooing it away.
Food?
“Here.” I fish out a small block of cheese wrapped in a cloth that Ben packed.
The cassor sniffs it, bites it, and gobbles it down, its neck rippling in long waves at it swallows. It snaps its beak a few times like a man might smack his lips after he ate something. But then its neck starts rippling the other way and with a loud hack, up comes the block of cheese flying right back at me, covered in spit but not hardly even crushed, smacking me on the cheek and leaving a trail of slime across my face.
Food? says the cassor and starts slowly walking off into the swamp, as if we’re no longer even as interesting as a leaf.
“Get! Get!” Manchee barks after it, but not following. I wipe the slime from my face with my sleeve and I can see the girl smiling at me while I do it.
“Think that’s funny, do ya?” I say and she keeps pretending like she’s not smiling but she is. She turns away and picks up her bag.
“Yeah,” I say, taking charge of things again.
“We slept way too long. We gotta go.”
We get going on yet more walking without any more words or smiling. Pretty quick, the ground starts to get less even and a bit drier. The trees start to thin out some, letting the sun directly on us now and then. After a little bit, we get to a small clearing, almost like a little field that rises up to a short bluff, standing just over the treetops. We climb it and stop at the top. The girl holds out another pack of that fruity stuff. Breakfast. We eat, still standing.
Looking out over the trees, the way in front of us is clear. The larger mountain is on the horizon and you can see the two smaller mountains in the distance behind a little bit of haze.
“That’s where we’re going,” I say, pointing. “Or where I think we’re sposed to go, anyway.”
She sets down her fruit pack and goes into her bag again. She pulls out the sweetest little pair of binos you’ve ever seen. My old ones back home that broke years ago were like a breadbox in comparison. She holds them up to her eyes and looks for a bit, then hands ’em to me.
I take ’em and I look out to where we’re going. Everything’s so clear. The ground stretching out before us in a green forest, curving downhill into proper valleys and dales as it starts to become real land again and not just the mucky bowl of a swamp and you can even see where the marsh starts really turning back into a proper river, cutting deeper and deeper canyons as it gets closer to the mountains. If you listen, you can even hear it rushing. I look and I look and I don’t see no settlement but who knows what’s around the bends and curves? Who knows what’s up ahead?
I look behind us, back the way we came, but it’s still early enough for a mist to be covering most of the swamp, hiding everything, giving nothing away.
“Those’re sweet,” I say, handing her the binos. She puts them back in her bag and we stand there for a minute eating.
We stand arm’s length apart cuz her silence still bothers me. I chew down on a piece of dried fruit and I wonder what it must be like to have no Noise, to come from a place with no Noise. What does it mean? What kind of place is it? Is it wonderful? Is it terrible?
Say you were standing on a hilltop with someone who had no Noise. Would it be like you were alone there? How would you share it? Would you want to? I mean, here we are, the girl and I, heading outta danger and into the unknown and there’s no Noise overlapping us, nothing to tell us what the other’s thinking. Is that how it’s sposed to be?
I finish the fruit and crumple up the packet. She holds out her hand and shoves the rubbish back into her bag. No words, no exchange, just my Noise and a great big nothing from her.
Was this what it was like for my ma and pa when they first landed? Was New World a silent place all over before–
I look up at the girl suddenly.
Before.
Oh, no.
I’m such a fool.
I’m such a stupid goddam fool.
She has no Noise. And she came from a ship. Which means she came from a place with no Noise, obviously, idiot.
Which means she’s landed here and hasn’t caught the Noise germ yet.
Which means that when she does, it’s gonna do what it did to all the other women.
It’s gonna kill her.
It’s gonna kill her.
And I’m looking at her and the sun is shining down on us and her eyes are getting wider and wider as I’m thinking it and it’s then I realize something else stupid, something else obvious.
Just cuz I can’t hear any Noise from her don’t mean she can’t hear every word of mine.
“No!” I say quickly. “Don’t listen! I’m wrong! I’m wrong! It’s a mistake! I’m wrong!”
But she’s backing away from me, dropping her own empty packet of fruit things, her eyes getting wider.
“No, don’t–”
I step towards her but she takes an even quicker step away, her bag dropping to the ground.
“It’s–” I say but what do you say? “I’m wrong. I’m wrong. I was thinking of somebody else.”
Which is the stupidest thing to say of all cuz she can hear my Noise, can’t she? She can see me struggling to think of something to say and even if it’s coming out a big mess, she can see herself all over it and besides, I surely know by now there’s no taking back something that’s been sent out into the world.
Dammit. Goddam it all to hell.
“Dammit!” Manchee barks.
“Why didn’t you SAY you could hear me?” I shout, ignoring that she ain’t said a word since I met her.
She steps back farther, putting a hand up to her face to cover her mouth, her eyes sending asking marks at me.
I try to think of something, anything to make it all right, but I ain’t got nothing. Just Noise with death and despair all over it.
She turns and runs, back down the hill and away from me as fast as she can.
Crap.
“Wait!” I yell, already running after her.
She’s going back the way we came, down across the little field and disappearing into the trees, but I’m right behind her, Manchee after me. “Stop!” I shout after her. “Wait!”
But why should she? What kind of reason could she possibly have to wait around?
You know, she’s really amazingly fast when she wants to be.
“Manchee!” I call and he understands me and shoots off after her. Not that I could really lose her, any more than she could lose me. As loud as my Noise is chasing her, her silence is just as loud up ahead, even now, even knowing she’s going to die, still as silent as a grave.
“Hold on!” I shout, tripping over a root and landing hard on my elbows, which jolts every ache I’ve got in my body and face, but I have to get up. I have to get up and go after her. “Dammit!”
“Todd!” I hear Manchee bark up ahead, outta sight. I stumble on a bit and get my way round a big mass of shrubs and there she is, sitting on a big flat rock jutting outta the ground, her knees up to her chest, rocking back and forth, eyes wide but blank as ever.
“Todd!” Manchee barks again when he sees me, then he hops up on the rock next to her and starts sniffing her.
“Leave her alone, Manchee,” I say, but he doesn’t. He sniffs close at her face, licks her once or twice, then sits down next to her, leaning into her side as she rocks.
“Look,” I say to her, catching my breath and knowing I don’t know what to say next. “Look,” I say again, but nothing else is coming.
I just stand there panting, not saying nothing, and she sits there rocking till there don’t seem nothing else to do but sit down on the rock myself, keeping a distance away outta respect and safety, I guess, and so that’s what I do. She rocks and I sit and I wonder what to do.
We pass a good few minutes this way, a good few minutes when we should be moving, the swamp getting on with its day around us.
Till I finally have another thought.
“I might not be right.” I say it as soon as I think it. “I could be wrong, you see?” I turn to her and I start talking fast. “I got lied to about everything and you can search my Noise if you want to be sure that’s true.” I stand, talking faster. “There wasn’t sposed to be another settlement. Prentisstown was sposed to be it for the whole stupid planet. But there’s the other place on the map! So maybe–”
And I’m thinking and I’m thinking and I’m thinking.
“Maybe the germ was only Prentisstown. And if you ain’t been in the town, then maybe yer safe. Maybe yer fine. Cuz I sure can’t hear nothing from you anything like Noise and you don’t seem sick. So maybe yer okay.”
She’s looking at me and still rocking and I don’t know what she’s thinking. Maybe probably ain’t all that comforting a word when it’s maybe yer not dying.
I keep on thinking, letting her see my Noise as free and clear as I can. “Maybe we all caught the germ and, and, and, yeah!” I get another thought, a good one. “Maybe we cut ourselves off so the other settlement wouldn’t catch it! That must be it! And so if you st
ayed in the swamp, then yer safe!”
She stops rocking quite so much, still looking at me, maybe believing me?
But then like some doofus who don’t know when to stop, I let that thought go on, don’t I? Cuz if it’s true that Prentisstown was cut off, then maybe that other settlement ain’t gonna be too happy to see me strolling in, are they? Maybe it was the other settlement that did the cutting off in the first place, cuz maybe Prentisstown really was contagious.
And if you can catch the Noise from other people, then the girl can catch it from me, can’t she?
“Oh, man,” I say, leaning down and putting my hands on my knees, my whole body feeling like it’s falling, even tho I’m still standing up. “Oh, man.”
The girl hugs herself to herself again on the rock and we’re back to even worse than where we started.
This ain’t fair. I am telling you this ain’t fair at all. You’ll know what to do when you get to the swamp, Todd. You’ll know what to do. Yeah, thanks very bloody much for that, Ben, thanks for all yer help and concern cuz here I am and I ain’t got the first clue what to do. It ain’t fair. I get kicked outta my home, I get beaten up, the people who say they care for me have been lying all these years, I gotta follow a stupid map to a settlement I never knew about, I gotta somehow read a stupid book–
The book.
I slip off the rucksack and take out the book. He said all the answers were in here, so maybe they really are. Except–
I sigh and open it up. It’s all written, all words, all in my ma’s handwriting, pages and pages and pages of it and I–
Well, anyway. I go back to the map, to Ben’s writing on the other side, the first chance I’ve had to look at it in something other than torchlight, which ain’t really for reading. Ben’s words are lined up at the top. Go to are the first ones, those are definitely the first words, and then there are a coupla longer words that I don’t have time to sound out yet and then a coupla big paragraphs that I really don’t have time for right now but at the bottom of the page Ben’s underlined a group of words together.
I look at the girl, still rocking, and I turn my back to her. I put my finger under the first underlined word.
Let’s see. Yow? You, it’s gotta be you. You. Okay, me what? M. Moo? Moose? Moosed? You moosed. You moosed? What the hell does that mean? Wuh. Wuh. Warr. Warren? Tuh. Tuhee? Tuheem. You moosed warren tuheem? No, wait, them. It’s them. Course it’s them, idiot.