Monsters of Men (36 page)

He’s still staring. “Cuz I couldn’t stand it if–” His voice is thick. “I just couldn’t take that, Viola. I just
couldn’t
.”

And then there it is–

His Noise, still way too quiet, but there, burning away underneath him, burning away with how he’s feeling and how true it is and how worried he is for me and I can hear it, just faintly but I can hear it–

And then I hear,
I am the Circle
–

And he goes quiet again, quiet as a stone.

“I’m not dying,” I say, looking away from him.

Todd just stands there for a second. “I’ll be right outside,” he finally says. “You call if you need anything. You call
me
and I’ll get it for you.”

“I will,” I say.

He nods, his lips held tight. He nods again.

Then he goes.

I sit there quietly for a while, listening to the
ROAR
of the army in the square outside and the raised voices of the Mayor and Mistress Coyle and Simone and Bradley and Lee still arguing.

But I don’t hear Todd.

[T
ODD
]

Bradley sighs loudly, after what seems like hours spent bickering round the campfire, shivering against the freezingist part of the night. “So it’s agreed then?” he says. “We offer an immediate ceasefire on both sides, with a line drawn under all past actions. After that, the issue of the river and then we start laying the groundwork for how we can all live together.”

“Agreed,” the Mayor says. He don’t even look tired.

“Yes, fine,” Mistress Coyle says, grunting with stiffness as she stands. “It’s getting on towards morning. We need to get back.”

“Get
back
?” I say.

“The people on the hilltop need to know what’s going on, Todd,” she says. “Plus, I’ll need to get Wilf to bring Viola’s horse down here because she’s certainly not going to be able to
walk
up that hill. Not with that fever.”

I look back to the scout ship, hoping Viola’s at least sleeping inside, hoping she actually does feel better when she wakes.

Wondering if she lied about dying.

“How is she really?” I say to Mistress Coyle, getting up after her. “How sick is she?”

Mistress Coyle looks at me for a long, long moment. “She’s not well, Todd,” she says, very serious. “I just hope everyone’s doing everything they can to help her.”

And she leaves me standing there. I look back at the Mayor, who’s watching Mistress Coyle walk away from me. He comes over. “You’re worried about Viola,” he says, not asking it. “I agree she’s looked better.”

“If something happens to her cuz of that band,” I say, my voice low and strong. “I swear to God I’ll–”

He holds up a hand to stop me. “I know, Todd, even more than you think.” And again, his voice sounds as true as anything. “I’ll have my doctors redouble their efforts. Don’t worry. I’m not going to let anything happen to her.”

“Me neither,” Bradley says, overhearing us. “She’s a fighter, Todd, and if she thinks she’s strong enough to go up that hill tomorrow, we have to believe her. And I’ll be there to make sure nothing happens, believe you me.” And I hear in his Noise that he means every word. He sighs. “Though I guess that means I’m going to need a horse, too.”
Even though I don’t know how to ride one
, his Noise adds, a bit worried.

“I’ll ask Angharrad to take you,” I say, looking over to where she’s munching on some hay. “She can watch over both of you.”

He smiles. “You know, Viola once told us that if we were ever in doubt about what’s happening here, that we could count on you above all things.”

I feel my face get hot. “Yeah,” I say, “well.”

He gives my shoulder a hard, friendly pat. “We’ll fly back down here at dawn,” he says. “And who knows? Maybe peace by the end of the day.” He winks. “And then maybe you can show me how you keep so quiet.”

He, Lee, Simone and Mistress Coyle make their way back to the scout ship, Mistress Coyle leaving her ox-cart behind for Wilf to pick up. Bradley makes an announcement on a speaker for everyone to move back. The soldiers do, the engines start to grind, and up it rises on a cushion of air.

I hear the Mayor’s voice before the ship’s even halfway back to the hill.

“Gentlemen!” he shouts, his voice twisting and turning hard into the men nearby and echoing thru to every man in the square.

“I report to you,
VICTORY
!” he shouts.

And when the cheering starts, it goes on for a long, long time.

{VIOLA}

I wake as the ship bumps back down on the hilltop and the bay doors open.

I hear Mistress Coyle shout to the waiting crowd, “We are VICTORIOUS!”

And hear the huge cheer even through the thick metal walls of the ship.

“That can’t be good,” Lee says, back in the next bed, his Noise imagining Mistress Coyle, arms thrust into the air, people picking her up on their shoulders and carrying her for a victory lap.

“That’s probably not too far off,” I say, laughing a little. Which sets me on a long chain of coughing.

The door opens and Bradley and Simone enter.

“You’re missing the rally,” Bradley says sarcastically.

“She’s allowed her moment,” Simone says. “She’s an impressive women in a lot of ways.”

I make to answer but the coughing comes again, so strong that Bradley takes out a medicine pad and puts it on my throat. The cooling of it feels better immediately, and I take a few slow breaths to get the fumes into my lungs.

“What’s the plan, then?” I say. “How much time do we have?”

“A couple hours,” Bradley says. “We’ll fly back down to the city, and Simone will set up the projections for both down there and up here, so everyone can see what’s going on. Then she’ll keep the ship in the air for however long our meeting lasts.”

“I’ll be looking out for you,” Simone says. “Both of you.”

“Good to hear,” Bradley says, quietly but warmly, then he says to me, “Wilf’s bringing Acorn down for you to ride up, and Todd’s giving me his horse.”

I smile. “Is he really?”

Bradley smiles back. “A show of faith, I’m guessing?”

“It means he expects you to come back.”

We hear two sets of footsteps coming up the ramp outside, and continuing cheers, too, though not as many as before. And the voices that approach are arguing.

“I don’t find this acceptable, Mistress,” Ivan is saying as Mistress Coyle comes in the door before him.

“And what makes you think your idea of
acceptable
is in any way relevant?” she snaps back, that fierceness in her voice that would cow most people.

Not Ivan, though, not quite. “I speak for the people.”

“
I
speak for the people, Ivan,” she says. “Not you.”

Ivan glances over at me and Bradley. “You’re a-sending a little girl and the Humanitarian to meet with an enemy big enough to annihilate us,” he says. “I can’t say as that would be the overwhelming choice of the people, Mistress.”

“Sometimes the people don’t know what’s best for them,
Ivan,
” she says. “Sometimes the people have to be convinced of things that are necessary. That’s what leadership is. Not shouting your head off in support of their every whim.”

“I hope you’re right, Mistress,” he says. “For your own sake.”

A last look at all of us and he leaves.

“Everything all right out there?” Simone says.

“Fine, fine,” Mistress Coyle says, her mind clearly somewhere else.

“They’ve started cheering again,” Lee says.

And we all hear it.

But it’s not for Mistress Coyle.

[T
ODD
]

Boy colt
, Angharrad says, nuzzling me. And then she says,
Boy colt yes
.

“It’s for her, really,” I say. “If something happens, I want him able to get her outta there even if he’s gotta carry her, okay?”

Boy colt
, she says, pressing against me again.

“But are you sure, girl? Are you
sure
yer okay? Cuz I ain’t gonna send you nowhere if yer not–”

Todd
, she says.
For Todd
.

And I get a thickness in my throat and I have to swallow a coupla times before I can say, “Thank you, girl,” trying not to think what happened the last time I asked an animal to be brave for me.

“You’re a remarkable young man, you know that?” I hear from behind me.

I sigh. There he is again. “I’m just talking to my horse,” I say.

“No, Todd,” the Mayor says, coming over from his tent. “There are some things I’ve been meaning to say to you, and I’d like you to allow me to say them before the world changes.”

“The world changes all the time,” I say, hitching up Angharrad’s reins. “At least it does for me.”

“Listen to me, Todd,” he says, real serious-like. “I want to tell you how much I’ve grown to respect you. Respect how you’ve fought by my side, yes, how you’ve been
right
there
through every challenge and danger, but also how you’ve stood up to me when no one else would dare, how
you’ve
really won this peace, while all around you the world was losing its head.”

He puts a hand on Angharrad, rubbing her flank gently. She shifts a little but lets him.

So I let him, too.

“I think you’re the one the settlers are going to want to talk to, Todd,” he says. “Forget me, forget Mistress Coyle, it’s
you
who they’re going to see as the leader here.”

“Yeah, well,” I say. “Let’s wait till we get peace first before we start handing out credit, okay?”

He breathes out a cloud of cold air thru his nose. “I want to give you something, Todd.”

“I don’t want nothing from you,” I say.

But he’s already holding out a piece of paper in his hand.

“Take it,” he says.

I wait for a second but then I take it. It’s got a line of words written across it, dense and black and unknowable.

“Read it,” he says.

I suddenly get
real
mad. “You looking to get hit?”

“Please,” he says and it sounds so gentle and genuine that, even angry, I actually drop my glance back down to the paper. It’s still just words, written in what I think is the Mayor’s hand, a dark thicket in a line, like a horizon you can’t get nowhere near.

“Look at the words,” he says. “Tell me what they say.”

The paper flickers in the firelight. None of the words is too long and I reckernize at least two of ’em as my name–

Even a dummy like me knows that much–

And the first word is–

My name is Todd Hewitt and I am a man of New Prentisstown.

I blink.

That’s what it says, right across the page, every word burning clear like the sun.

My name is Todd Hewitt and I am a man of New Prentisstown
.

I look back up. The Mayor’s face is all hard concentrayshun, looking deep into me, no
buzz
of control, just a faint
hum
.

(that same
hum,
that one I hear when I think
I am the Circle–
)

“What does it say?” he asks.

I look down–

And I read it–

I read it out loud.

“My name is Todd Hewitt and I am a man of New Prentisstown.”

He lets out a long breath and the
hum
dies away. “And now?”

I look at the words again. They’re still on the page but they’re slipping from me, slipping from their meanings–

But not all the way.

My name is Todd Hewitt and I am a man of New Prentisstown
.

That’s what it says.

That’s what it
still
says.

“My name is Todd Hewitt,” I read, saying it more slowly cuz I’m still trying to
see
it, “and I am a man of New Prentisstown.”

“That you certainly are,” says the Mayor.

I look up to him. “That ain’t real reading, tho. That’s just you putting words in my head.”

“No,” he says. “I’ve been thinking about how the Spackle learn, how they must pass on information. They have no written language, but if they’re connected to each other at all times, they don’t need it. They just exchange their knowledge directly. They carry who they are and what they know in their Noise and share it in a single voice of themselves. Maybe even a single voice of this world.”

I look up at that. A single voice. The Spackle who came to the square. The
one
voice that seemed to be the whole world talking. Talking to
me
.

“I didn’t give you words, Todd,” the Mayor says. “I gave you my
knowledge
of reading, and you were able to
take
it from me, in the same way I shared my knowledge of how to stay silent. I think that was the opening of a larger connection than even I imagined, a connection like the Spackle have. It’s a blunt and inelegant process right now, but it could be refined. Just think of what we could do if we mastered it, Todd, how much knowledge we could share, and how easily.”

I look at the paper again. “My name is Todd Hewitt,” I read quietly, still seeing most of the words.

“If you let me,” he says, his voice open and honest-sounding, “I believe I could give you enough knowledge to have you reading your mother’s journal by the time the settlers arrive.”

I think about that. My ma’s book. Still cut thru with Aaron’s knife stab, still hidden away, read only once in the voice of Viola . . .