The Ask and the Answer

  "What are we sposed to do now?" I say.

  "No effing idea."

  I stand there and watch the Spackle. If you didn't know no better, you really wouldn't think they were much smarter than sheep.

  "They ain't," Davy says, closing his eyes to the sun.

  "Shut up," I say.

  But I mean, look at 'em, tho.

  They just sit on the grass, still no Noise, not saying nothing, half of 'em staring at us, half of 'em staring at each other, clicking now and then but hardly ever moving, not doing nothing with their hands or their time. All these white faces, looking drained of life, just sitting by the walls, waiting and waiting for something, whatever that something's gonna be.

  "And the time for that something is now, Todd," booms a voice behind us. Davy scrambles to his feet as the Mayor comes in thru the main opening, his horse tied up outside.

  But he looks at me, only me. "Ready for your new job?"

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  ***

  "Ain't barely talked to me for weeks," Davy's fuming as we ride home. Things didn't go so well twixt him and his pa. "Just keep watch on Todd this and hurry up with the Spackle that." His hands're gripped tightly round the reins. "Do I even get a thank you? Do I even get a nice job, David?"

  "We were sposed to band the Spackle in a week," I say, repeating what the Mayor told him. "It took us more'n twice that."

  He turns to me, his Noise really rising red. "We got attacked] How's that sposed to be my fault?"

  "I ain't saying it was," I say back but my Noise is remembering the band around 0038's neck.

  "So you blame me, too, do you?" He's stopped his horse and is glaring at me, leaning forward in the saddle, ready to jump off.

  I open my mouth to answer but then I glance down the road behind him.

  There's two barns by a turning in the road, a turning that heads down to the river.

  I look back to Davy quickly.

  He's got an evil smile. "What's down there?"

  "Nothing."

  "Yer girl, ain't it?" he sneers. "Eff you, Davy."

  "No, pigpiss," he says, sliding off his saddle to the ground, his Noise rising even redder. "Eff you." There ain't nothing to do but fight.

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  ***

  "Soldiers?'' Mayor Ledger asks, seeing my bruises and blood as I come into the tower for dinner.

  "Never you mind," I growl. It was me and Davy's worst fight in ages. I'm so sore I can barely reach my bed.

  "You going to eat that?" Mayor Ledger asks.

  A certain word in my Noise lets him know that no, I ain't gonna eat that. He picks it up and starts chomping away without even a thank you.

  "You trying to eat yer way to freedom?" I say.

  "Says a boy who's always had food provided for him."

  "I ain't a boy."

  "The supplies we brought when we landed only lasted a year," he says, twixt mouthfuls, "by which time our hunting and farming wasn't quite up to where it should have been." He takes another bite. "Lean times make you appreciate a hot meal, Todd."

  "What is it about men that makes them need to turn everything into a lesson?" I cover my face with my arm, then take it away cuz of how much my blackening eye hurts.

  Night falls again. The air is even cooler and I leave most of my clothes on as I get under the blanket. Mayor Ledger starts to snore, dreaming about walking in a house with endless rooms and not being able to find the exit.

  This is the safest time I got to think about her.

  Cuz is she really out there?

  And is she part of this Answer thing?

  And other things, too.

  Like what would she say if she saw me?

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  If she saw what I did every day? And with who?

  I swallow the cool night air and blink away the wet in my eyes.

  (are you still with me, Viola?) (are you?)

  An hour later and I'm still not asleep. Something's nagging at me and I'm turning in my sheets, trying to clear my Noise of whatever it is, trying to calm down enough so I can be ready for the new job the Mayor's got planned for us tomorrow, one which don't sound all that bad, if I'm honest.

  But it's like I'm missing something, something obvious, right in front of my face.

  Something--

  i sit up, listening to the snoring Noise of Mayor Ledger, the sleeping roar of New Prentisstown outside, the night birds chirping, even the river rushing by in the distance.

  There was no ker-thunk sound after Mr. Collins let me in.

  i think back.

  Definitely not.

  I look thru the darkness toward the door.

  He forgot to lock it.

  Right now, right this second.

  It's unlocked.

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  ii 16 WHO ARE YOU

  ***

  (Viola )

  "I HEAR NOISE OUTSIDE," Mrs. Fox says as I refill her water jug for the night.

  "It'd only be remarkable if you didn't, Mrs. Fox."

  "Just by the window-"

  "Soldiers smoking their cigarettes."

  "No, I'm sure it was-"

  "I'm really very busy, Mrs. Fox, if you don't mind." I replace her pillows and empty her bedpan. She doesn't speak again until I'm almost ready to go.

  "Things aren't like they used to be," she says quietly. "You can say that again."

  "Haven used to be better," she says. "Not perfect. But better than this."

  And she just looks out of her window.

  I'm dying with tiredness at the end of my rounds but I sit down

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  on my bed and take out the note that hasn't left my pocket. I read it for the hundredth, thousandth time.

  My girl,

  Now is the time you must choose.

  Can we count on you?

  The Answer

  Not even a name, not even her name.

  Almost three weeks I've had this note. Three weeks and nothing, so maybe that's how much they think they can count on me. Not another note, not another sign, just stuck here in this house with Corinne-or Mistress Wyatt, as I have to call her now-and the patients. Women who've fallen sick in the normal course of things, yes, but also women who've returned from "interviews" with the Mayor's men about the Answer, women with bruises and cuts, women with broken ribs, broken fingers, broken arms. Women with burns.

  And those are the lucky ones, the ones who aren't in prison.

  And every third or fourth day, BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! And more are arrested and more are sent here. And there's no word from Mistress Coyle. And no word from the Mayor.

  No word about why I'm being left alone. You'd think I'd be the one who'd be taken in first, the one who'd have interview after interview, the one who'd be sitting rotting in a prison cell.

  "But nothing," I whisper. "Nothing at all."

  And no word from Todd.

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  I close my eyes. I'm too tired to feel anything. Every day, I look for ways to get to the communications tower but there are soldiers everywhere now, way too many to find a pattern, and it only gets worse with each new bomb.

  "I've got to do something," I say out loud. "I have to or I'll go crazy." I laugh. "I'll go crazy and start talking to myself."

  I laugh some more, a lot more than how funny it actually is.

  And there's a knock at my window.

  I sit up, my heart pumping.

  "Mistress Coyle?" I say.

  Is this it? Is it now?

  Is this where I have to choose?

  Can they count on me?

  (but is that Noise I can hear...?)

  I get to my knees on the bed and pull the curtains back just far enough to look through a slit outside, expecting that frown, those fingers going over her forehead-

  But it's not her.

  It's not her at all.

  "Todd!"

  And I'm throwing back the sash and lifting up the glass and he's leaning in and his Noise is saying my name and I'm putting my arms around
him and dragging him inside, actually lifting him off the ground and pulling him through my window and he's climbing up and we fall onto my bed and

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  I'm on my back and he's lying on top of me and my face is close to his and I remember how we were like this after we'd jumped under the waterfall with Aaron right behind us and I looked right into his eyes.

  And I knew we'd be safe.

  "Todd."

  In the light of my room, I see his eye is blackened and there's blood on his nose and I'm saying, "What happened? Are you hurt? I can-"

  But he just says, "It's you."

  I don't know how much time passes with us just lying there, just feeling that the other is really there, really true, really alive, feeling the safety of him, his weight against mine, the roughness of his fingers touching my face, his warmth and his smell and the dustiness of his clothes, and we barely speak and his Noise is roiling with feeling, with complicated things, with memories of me being shot, of how he felt when he thought I was dying, of how I feel now at his fingertips, but at the front of it all, he's just saying, Viola, Viola, Viola.

  And it's Todd.

  Bloody hell, it's Todd.

  And everything's all right.

  And then there are footsteps in the hall.

  Footsteps that stop right outside my room.

  We both look toward the door. A shadow is cast underneath it, two legs of someone standing just on the other side.

  I wait for the knock.

  I wait for the order to get him out of here.

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  I wait for the fight I'll put up. But then the feet walk away. "Who was that?" Todd asks.

  "Mistress Wyatt," I say, and I can hear the surprise in my own voice.

  "And then the bombs started going off," I finish, "and he only called for me twice, early on, to ask me if I knew anything and I didn't, I truly didn't, and then that was it. Nothing. That's all I know about him, I swear."

  "He ain't barely spoken to me since the bombs neither," Todd says, looking down at his feet. "I was worried it was you setting 'em off."

  I see the bridge blowing up in his Noise. I see me being the one to do it. "No," I say, thinking of the note in my pocket. "It wasn't me."

  Todd swallows, then he says simply, clearly, "Should we run?"

  "Yes," I say, betraying Corinne so fast I feel a red blush of shame already coming over me, but yes, we should run, we should run and run.

  "Where, tho?" he asks. "Where is there to go?" I open my mouth to answer-But I hesitate.

  "Where are the Answer hiding?" he asks. "Can we go there?"

  And I notice some tension in his Noise, disapproval and reluctance.

  The bombs. He doesn't like the bombs either.

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  I see a picture of some dead soldiers in the wreckage of a café.

  But there's more, too, isn't there? I hesitate again.

  I'm wondering, just for the briefest moment, just as if it's a fly I'm brushing away, I'm wondering-I'm wondering if I can tell him.

  "I don't know," I say. "I really don't. They didn't tell me in case I couldn't be trusted." Todd looks up at me.

  And for a second, I see the doubt on his face, too.

  "You don't trust me," I say, before I think to stop.

  "You don't trust me neither," he says. "Yer wondering if I'm working for the Mayor right now. And yer wondering what took me so long to find you." He looks down sadly at the floor again. "I can still read you," he says. "Nearly as well as my own self."

  I look at him, into his Noise. "You wonder if I'm part of the Answer. You think it's something I'd do."

  He doesn't look at me, but he nods. "I was just trying to stay alive, looking for ways to find you, hoping you hadn't left me behind."

  "Never," I say. "Not ever."

  He looks back up at me. "I'd never leave you neither."

  "You promise?"

  "Cross my heart, hope to die," he says, grinning shyly.

  "I promise, too," I say and I smile at him. "I ain't never leaving you, Todd Hewitt, not never again."

  He smiles harder when I say ain't but it fades and then I see him gathering his Noise to tell me something, something

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  difficult, something he's ashamed of, but before he does, I want him to know, I want him to know for sure.

  "I think they're at the ocean," I say. "Mistress Coyle told me a story about it before she left. I think she was trying to tell me that's where they were going."

  He looks back up at me.

  "Now tell me I don't trust you, Todd Hewitt."

  And then I see my mistake.

  "What?" he says, seeing the look on my face.

  "It's in your Noise," I say, standing up. "Todd, it's all over your Noise. Ocean, over and over and over again."

  "It ain't on purpose," he says but his eyes are widening and I see the door of his cell left unlocked and I see a man in the cell with him telling him where I am and I see asking marks rising-

  "I'm so stupid," Todd says, standing, too. "Such an effing idiot! We need to go. Now!"

  "Todd-"

  "How far away is the ocean?"

  "Two days' ride-"

  "Four days' walk then." He's pacing now. His Noise says Ocean again , clear as a bomb itself. He sees me looking at him, sees me seeing it. "I'm not spying on you," he says. "I'm not, but he musta left the door open so I'd-" He pulls his hair in frustration. "I'll hide it. I hid the truth about Aaron and I can hide this."

  My stomach flutters, remembering what the Mayor said to me about Aaron.

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  "But we have to go," Todd's saying. "Do you have any food we can take?"

  "I can get some," I say. "Hurry."

  As I turn to leave, I hear my name in his Noise. Viola, it says, and it's covered in worry, worry that we've been set up, worry that I think he was sent here on purpose, worry that I think he's lying, and all I can do is just look at him and think his name.

  Todd.

  And hope he knows what I mean.

  I burst into the canteen and run to the cabinets. I leave most of the lights off, trying to keep quiet as I grab meal-packs and loaves of bread.

  "That fast, huh?" Corinne says.

  She's sitting at a table far back in the darkness, cup of coffee in front of her. "Your friend shows up and you just leave." She stands and walks over to me.

  "I have to," I say. "I'm sorry."

  "You're sorry?" she says, eyebrows raised. "And what happens here, then? What happens to all the patients who need you?"

  "I'm a terrible healer, Corinne, all I do is wash and feed them-"

  "So that I can have time to do the very little healing that I'm capable of."

  "Corinne-"

  Her eyes flash. "Mistress Wyatt."

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  I sigh. "Mistress Wyatt," I say and then I think and say it at the same time. "Come with us!"

  She looks startled, threatened almost. "What?"

  "Can't you see where this is all headed? Women in prison, women with injuries. Can't you see this isn't going to get any better?"

  "Not with bombs going off every day, it isn't."

  "It's the President who's the enemy," I say. She crosses her arms. "You think you can have just one enemy?"

  "Corinne-"

  "A healer doesn't take life," she says. "A healer never takes life. Our first oath is to do no harm."

  "The bombs are set for empty targets."

  "Which aren't always empty, are they?" She shakes her head, her face looking suddenly sad, sadder than I've ever seen it. "I know who I am, Viola. In my soul, I know it. I heal the sick, I heal the wounded, that's who I am."

  "If we stay here, they'll eventually come for us."

  "If we leave, patients will die." She doesn't even sound angry anymore, which is scarier than before.

  "And if you're taken in?" I say, my voice getting challenging. "Who'll heal them then?"

  "I was hoping you would."

 
I just breathe for a second. "It's not that simple."

  "It is to me."

  "Corinne, if I can get away, if I can contact my people-"

  "Then what? They're still five months away, you said. Five months is a long time."

  I turn back to the cabinets, continue filling the sack with

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  food. "I have to try," I say. "I have to do something." I turn back to her, bag full. "That's who I am." I think of Todd, waiting for me, and my heart races faster. "That's who I've become, anyway."

  She regards me quietly and then she quotes something Mistress Coyle once said to me. "We are the choices we make."

  It takes me a second to realize she's just said good-bye.

  "What took so long?" Todd says, anxiously looking out of the window.

  "Nothing," I say. "I'll tell you later."

  "You got the food?" I hold up the bag.

  "And I'm guessing we just follow the river again?" he says. "I guess so."

  He takes a second to look at me awkwardly, trying not to smile. "Here we go again."

  And I feel this funny rush and I know that however much danger we're in, the rush is happiness and he feels it, too, and we clasp hands hard for just a second and then he stands on the bed, puts a leg on the sill and jumps through.

  I pass the bag of food to him and climb out, my shoes thudding on the hard mud. "Todd," I whisper.

  "Yeah?"

  "Someone told me there's a communications tower somewhere outside of town," I say. "It's probably surrounded by soldiers but I was thinking if we could find it-"

  "Big metal tower?" he interrupts. "Higher than the trees?"

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  I blink. "Probably," I say and my eyes open wide. "You know where it is?"

  He nods. "I pass it every day."

  "Really?"

  "Yes, really," he says and I see it in his Noise, I see the road-

  "And I think finally that's enough," says a voice from the darkness.

  A voice we both recognize.