“No, I can’t do that yet,” I say. “It’s bad anyway. I wouldn’t want to.”
She pushes Acorn up to me so our faces are close.
“You can’t redeem him, Todd,” she says, a little softer but I flinch a bit at the word redeem. “You can’t. Because he doesn’t want it.”
“I know,” I say, still not quite looking at her. “I know that.”
For a second we both just watch Mistress Coyle and Mayor Prentiss fighting.
“You have more than that!” Mistress Coyle’s saying. “We can see the size of your storehouse from the probes–”
“Can your probes see inside the storehouse, Mistress? Because that technology would amaze even me–”
Viola coughs into her hand. “Are you really okay, Todd?”
In reply, I ask, “Are you really in no danger from the band?”
And neither of us answer.
And the morning just feels colder.
{VIOLA}
The talks go on for hours, all through the morning until the sun gets high in the sky. Todd doesn’t say much and every time I try to join in, my coughing gets the better of me. It’s just Bradley and the Mayor and Mistress Coyle arguing and arguing and arguing.
A lot of things get decided, though. In addition to the exchange of medical information, transports will start twice a day, water going one way, food going the other, the Mayor providing additional vehicles along with the Answer’s carts, as well as soldiers for protection to make the exchange. It would make way more sense for us all to gather together in one place, but the Mayor refuses to leave the city and Mistress Coyle won’t leave the hilltop so we’re stuck dragging water ten kilometres one way and food ten kilometres the other.
It’s a start, I guess.
Bradley and Simone will make flying patrols over the city and our hilltop every day, in hopes of keeping the Spackle back by threat alone. And in the final agreement of a very long day, Mistress Coyle will provide the expertise of some of the Answer’s best women to help the Mayor fight the Spackle’s sneak attacks on the city.
“But only as a defence,” I insist. “You both have to make overtures of peace to them. Otherwise, none of this will do any good.”
“You can’t just stop fighting and call it peace, my girl,” Mistress Coyle says. “The war goes on even as you’re negotiating with the enemy.”
And she’s looking at the Mayor as she says it.
“Quite so,” says the Mayor, looking right back at her. “That’s how it was done before.”
“And how you’ll do it this time?” Bradley says. “We have your word?”
“As a bargain for peace,” says the Mayor, “it’s not a bad one.” He smiles that smile. “And when peace is achieved, who knows where we’ll all be standing?”
“Particularly if you’ve managed to make yourself peacemaker just before the convoy lands?” Mistress Coyle says. “Think how impressed they’ll be.”
“And how impressed they’ll be with you, Mistress, for skilfully bringing me to the bargaining table.”
“If they’re gonna be impressed with anybody,” Todd says, “it’ll be Viola here.”
“Or Todd,” Bradley jumps in, before I can say it. “They’re the ones who actually made this happen. But frankly, if either of you want a role in the future, you’d better start acting like it right now, because as of this moment as far as any objective observer can see, the President is a mass murderer and Mistress Coyle is a terrorist.”
“I’m a general,” the Mayor says.
“And I’m fighting for freedom,” says Mistress Coyle.
Bradley gives a rueful smile. “I think we’re finally finished here,” he says. “We’ve agreed what starts today and what happens tomorrow. If we can keep that up for forty more days, then there just might be a future for this planet after all.”
[TODD]
Mistress Coyle takes up the reins and snaps them on the oxes, who say Wilf? in response. “You coming?” Mistress Coyle calls over to Viola.
“You go on for a second,” Viola says. “I want to talk to Todd.”
Mistress Coyle looks like she expected as much. “Good to finally meet you, Todd,” she says, giving me a long look as the cart pulls away.
The Mayor nods his goodbyes to them and says, “Whenever you’re ready, Todd,” pulling Juliet’s Joy slowly down the road to leave me alone with Viola.
“Do you think this is going to work?” she says, coughing hard into her fist.
“Six weeks till the ships get here,” I say. “Not even. Call it five and a half.”
“Five and a half weeks and it all changes again.”
“Five and a half weeks and we can be together.”
But she don’t say nothing to that.
“Are you sure you know what you’re doing with him, Todd?” she says.
“He’s different round me, Viola. Not as whacked-out crazy evil like he used to be. I think I can keep him in line just enough so he don’t kill us all.”
“Don’t let him get into your head,” she says, serious as I’ve ever heard her. “That’s where he does the most damage.”
“He ain’t in my head,” I say. “And I can take care of myself. So you take care of yerself.” I try to smile. I don’t succeed. “You stay alive, Viola Eade. You get better. If Mistress Coyle is able heal you, you do whatever you can to make her.”
“I’m not dying,” she says. “I’d tell you if I was.”
We’re quiet for a second, then she says, “You’re the thing that matters to me, Todd. Out of this whole planet, you’re the only thing that matters.”
I swallow, hard. “You, too.”
And we both know we mean it, but as we part and she rides off one way and I ride off another, I bet we’re each wondering if the other lied about important things.
“Well, well,” says the Mayor as I catch up to him on the road back into town. “What did you make of that, Todd?”
“If the infeckshun from the band takes Viola,” I say, “you’ll beg me to kill you after what I’ll do to you.”
“I believe you,” he says, as we ride along, the ROAR of the city rising up to greet us, “and that’s why you have to believe I’d never do it.”
And I swear he says it like it could be true.
“You gotta keep yer word about these agreements, too,” I say. “We’re aiming for peace now. For real.”
“You think I want war for war’s sake, Todd,” he says. “But I don’t. I want victory. And sometimes victory means peace, doesn’t it? The convoy might not like everything I’ve done but I have a feeling they’ll listen to a man who won peace against overwhelming odds.”
Odds you made yerself, I think.
But I don’t say.
Cuz again, he sounds like he’s telling the truth.
Maybe I am rubbing off on him.
“And now,” he says. “Let’s go see if we can make a peaceful world.”
Pathways’ End
(THE RETURN)
I smooth the freshly-grown lichen over the band on my arm, touching it gently as another day ends and I sit, alone, on my outcropping. The pain from the band is still there, still my everyday reminder of who I am, of where I have come from.
Even though it will not heal, I no longer take the Land’s medicines for it.
It is illogical, but I have lately come to believe the pain will only stop when the Clearing are gone from here.
Or perhaps only then will the Return allow himself to be healed, the Sky shows, climbing up beside me. Come, he shows. It is time.
Time for what?
He sighs at my hostile tone. Time to show you why we will win this battle.
Seven nights have passed since the Clearing’s vessel bombed the Land and the Sky pulled back our invasion. Seven nights where we have done nothing but watch as our distant voices reported that the two groups of the Clearing were in contact again, as they started exchanging supplies to help one another, as the vessel on the far hilltop ro
se once more to fly over the entire valley, high over the armies of everyone, and again every day since.
Seven nights where the Sky let the Clearing grow stronger.
Seven nights while he waited for peace.
What the Return does not know, he shows as we make our way through the Land, is that the Sky rules alone.
I watch the faces of the Land as we pass, connecting their voices to each other to form the one voice, the easy link I still find so difficult to do. Yes, I show, I knew that.
He stops. No, you did not. You do not.
And he opens his voice, showing me what he means, showing me that being called “the Sky” is the same exile as being called “the Return”, and more, not an exile he chose, that he was just another member of the Land before they selected him as Sky.
And that he was separated from the voice to become so.
I see how happy he was before, happy in his connection to those closest to him, his family, his hunting companions, his one in particular with whom he planned to add to the voice of the Land, but then I see him pulled away from her, from all of them, separated, elevated, and I see how young he was, barely older–
Than the Return is now, he shows. He looms over me, his armour baked hard in the sun, his headpiece weighing heavily on his broad neck and shoulders, but held high by those same muscles. The Land looks deep inside itself to find the new Sky and there is no refusal for the one chosen. The past life is over and must be left behind, for the Land needs its Sky to watch over it and the Sky can have no other than the Land.
And there he is in his voice, assuming the garments of the role as he took the name “the Sky” and moved apart from those he ruled.
You rule alone, I show, feeling the weight of it.
But I was not always alone, he shows. Nor was the Return.
His voice reaches out to me suddenly, and before I am even aware of it–
I am back with–
–my one in particular in the shed where we live, locked in at night by our master from the Clearing, the master whose lawn we keep tidy, her flowers blooming, her vegetables growing. I have never known those who parented me, having been given to our master before I had any memories, and I have only ever really known my one in particular, not much older than me, but who shows me how to do our job well enough so that the beatings are infrequent, who shows me now how to start a cookfire, striking the flint shards together to make our only source of warmth–
–my one in particular letting me stay silent when we take our master’s vegetables to market and meet other members of the Burden whose voices reach forward in friendly greetings that push me into myself in embarrassment, my one in particular drawing their attention and letting me be shy as long as I need to–
–my one in particular curled against my stomach, coughing with illness from an infection, filled with the fever that is the worst sign of sickness in the Burden, one that will have us dragged off to Clearing veterinarians and never seen again. I press my body into my one in particular, begging the mud, the rocks, the shed, begging them all please to let the temperature fall, please, let it fall–
–my one in particular and I on a summer’s night after a young lifetime together, washing ourselves in the bucket of water our master provides once a week, washing ourselves, washing one another, and making the surprising discovery that another kind of closeness is possible–
–my one in particular silently with me after our voices are stolen by the Clearing, after we are cut off from each other and placed on separate shores, as if calling across a chasm too far to hear, my one in particular slowly, gently, through clicks and gestures, trying to make me understand–
–my one in particular rising when the shed door is opened and the Clearing are there with their guns and their blades, my one in particular standing before me again, protecting me for the final time–
The Sky lets me go as I call out, the horror alive again in my voice, alive like it is happening just now, all over again–
You miss him, the Sky shows. You loved him.
They killed my one in particular, I show, burning and dying and burning again. They took him from me.
This is why I recognized you the first day I saw you, the Sky shows. We are the same, the Sky and the Return. The Sky speaks for the Land, and the Return speaks for the Burden. And to do this, we both have to be alone.
I am still breathing heavy. Why do you make me remember this now?
Because it is important you understand who the Sky is, he shows. Because it is important to remember.
I raise my head. Why?
But all he shows is, Follow me.
We carry on through the camp until we reach a small, unremarkable path through some trees. Shortly inside, there are two Pathway guards, who bow their heads out of respect for the Sky and let us pass. The path leads up at a sharp, sudden angle, into overgrowth that hides us almost immediately. We climb up and up, to what must be the highest point of this upper valley, along a path wide enough only for one of us at a time.
It is a necessary difficulty that the Land must sometimes keep secrets from itself, the Sky shows as we walk. It is the only way to make hope possible.
Is that why they make the Sky? I show back, following him up a staircase of rocks. To bear the weight of what needs to be done?
Yes. That is precisely why. And another way in which we are alike. He glances back at me. The secrets we have learned to keep.
We reach a curtain of ivy hanging from the branches above. The Sky uses his long arm to pull it back and reveal the opening beyond.
A circle of Pathways stand in a clearing. The Pathways are members of the Land with especially open voices, chosen while young to be the Sky’s fastest messengers throughout the vast body of the Land, speeding the voice along. But these are all facing inward, concentrating their voices towards one another, each creating a link in the closed circle.
The Pathways’ End, the Sky shows to me. They live their entire lives here, their voices trained from birth to this one purpose. Once inside, a secret may be taken from a voice and kept safely here until needed again. It is where the Sky leaves thoughts that are too dangerous to be widely known.
He turns to me. And other things besides.
He raises his voice towards the Pathways’ End, and the circle shifts slightly, creating an opening.
And I see what is inside.
In the centre of the circle is a stone bed.
And on the stone bed lies a man.
A man of the Clearing, unconscious.
And dreaming.
Your Source, I show quietly as we step into the circle and it closes around us again.
A soldier, the Sky shows. Found by the side of the road, dead from his wounds, we thought. But then came his voice, unguarded and open at the very, very edge of silence. We stopped it from disappearing completely.
Stopped it? I show, staring at the man, his voice covered over by the voices of the Pathways, removing it from the larger voice so its secrets never leave this circle.
Any voice that can be heard can be healed, the Sky shows, even if it is far away from the body. And he was very far away indeed. We treated his wounds and began calling to his voice, bringing it back to himself.
Bringing him back to life, I show.
Yes. And all the while his voice told us things, things that have given us great advantage over the Clearing, things that became even more valuable after the Return came back to the Land.
I glance up. You were already thinking of an attack on the Clearing before I returned?
It is a duty of the Sky to prepare for any potential threat to the Land.
I look back down at the Source. And this is why you said we will win.
The Source’s voice tells us the leader of the Clearing is a man who forms no real alliances. That he will only rule alone no matter what temporary measures he takes with the far hilltop. That he will, if pressed, betray the other side without hesitation. This is their weakness, a
nd one the Land can exploit. Our attacks begin again at daybreak. We shall see how their alliance stands up to pressure.
I glare at him. But you would still make peace with them. I see that in you.
If that would save the Land, yes, the Sky would. And so would the Return.
He is not asking me. He is telling me I would do it.
But that is why I bring you here, he shows, directing my voice back to the man. If peace comes, if that is how matters are settled, then I will give you the Source entire. To do with as you will.
I look up to him, puzzled. Give him to me?
He is nearly healed, the Sky shows. We keep him asleep to hear his unguarded voice, but we could wake him at any time.
I turn back to the man. But why would that give me vengeance? Why would–?
The Sky makes a gesture towards the Pathways’ End, causing their voices to make room for the voice of the man–
So that I can hear it.
His voice–
I walk right up to the stone tablet and lean down towards the man’s worn face, covered in the hair that scars the faces of half of the Clearing. I see the Land’s healing pastes on his chest, the ragged clothes he wears.
And all the time I hear him.
Mayor Prentiss, he says.
And weapons.
And sheep.
And Prentisstown.
And early one morning.
And then he says–
He says–
Todd.
I whirl round to the Sky. But this is–
Yes, shows the Sky.
I have seen him in the Knife’s voice–
Yes, shows the Sky again.
This man is called Ben, I show, my voice opening wide with amazement. He is worth almost as much to the Knife as his one in particular.