Chaos Walking: The Complete Trilogy (15 page)

I feel the bandage touch the swollen area and immediately it gets cooler, immediately the pain starts to edge back, like it’s all being swept away by feathers. She puts another one on a cut I have at my hairline and her fingers brush my face as she puts another one just below my lower lip. It all feels so good I haven’t even opened my eyes yet.

“I don’t have anything for your teeth,” she says.

“’S okay,” I say, almost whispering it. “Man, these
are
better than mine.”

“They’re partially alive,” she says. “Synthetic human tissue. When you’re healed, they die.”

“Uh-huh,” I say, acting like I might know what that means.

There’s a longer silence, long enough to make me open my eyes again. She’s stepped back, back to a rock she can sit down on, watching me, watching my face.

We wait. Cuz it seems like we should.

And we should cuz after a little bit of waiting, she begins to talk.

“We crashed,” she starts quietly, looking away. Then she clears her throat and says it again. “We crashed. There was a fire and we were flying low and we thought we’d be okay but something went wrong with the safety flumes and–” She holds open her hands to explain what follows the
and
. “We crashed.”

She stops.

“Was that yer ma and pa?” I ask, after a bit.

But she just looks up into the sky, blue and spare, with clouds that look like bones. “And when the sun came up,” she says, “that man came.”

“Aaron.”

“And it was so weird. He would shout and he would scream and then he’d
leave
. And I’d try to run away.” She folds her arms. “I
kept
trying so he wouldn’t find me, but I was going in circles and wherever I hid, there he’d be, I don’t know how, until I found these sort of hut things.”

“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 and 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.