The Knife of Never Letting Go

There it is, looking back at us, breathing heavy, crouched at the base of a tree, cowering from Manchee, its eyes practically dying from fright but still trying to offer up a pitiful threat with its arms.

And I just stop.

I hold my knife.

“Spackle!” Manchee barks, tho he’s too chicken to attack now that I’ve held back. “Spackle! Spackle! Spackle!”

“Shut up, Manchee,” I say.

“Spackle!”

“I said shut up!” I shout, which stops him.

“Spackle?” Manchee says, unsure of things now.

I swallow, trying to get rid of the pressure in my throat, the unbelievable sadness that comes and comes as I look at it looking back at me. Knowledge is dangerous and men lie and the world keeps changing, whether I want it to or not.

Cuz it ain’t a Spackle.

“It’s a girl,” I say.

It’s a girl.

“It’s a girl,” I say again. I’m still catching my breath, still feeling the pressure on my chest, definitely still holding the knife way out in front of me.

A girl.

It’s looking back at us like we’re go

Of me and my knife.

Manchee’s huffing and puffing, his back fur all ridged, hopping around like the ground is hot, looking as charged up and confused as I am, tho completely hopeless about keeping in any way cool.

“What’s girl?” he barks. “What’s girl?”

By which he means, “What’s a girl?”

“What’s girl?” Manchee barks again and when the girl looks like it might be about to make a leap back over the large root where it’s huddling, Manchee’s bark turns into a fierce growl, “Stay,stay,stay,stay,stay . . .”

“Good dog,” I say, tho I don’t know why it’s good what he’s doing but what else can you say? This makes no sense, no sense at all, and everything feels like it’s starting to slip, like the world is a table tilted on its side and everything on it is tipping over.

I am Todd Hewitt, I think to myself but who knows if that’s even true any more?

“Who are you?” I finally say, if it can even hear me over all my raging Noise and Manchee’s nervous breakdown. “Who are you?” I say, louder and clearer. “What are you doing here? Where did you come from?”

It looks at me, finally, for more than just a second, taking its eyes off Manchee. It looks at my knife, then it looks at my face above my knife.

She looks at me.

She does.

She.

I know what a girl is. Course I do. I seen ’em in the Noise of their fathers in town, mourned like their wives but not nearly so often. I seen ’em in vids, too. Girls are small and polite and smiley. They wear dresses and their hair is long and it’s pulled into shapes behind their heads or on either side. They do all the inside-the-house chores, while boys do all the outside. They reach womanhood when they turn thirteen, just like boys reach manhood, and then they’re women and they become wives.

That’s how New World works, or at least that’s how Prentisstown works. Worked. Was meant to, anyhow, but there ain’t no girls. They’re all dead. They died with their mothers and their grandmothers and their sisters and their aunties. They died in the months after I was born. All of them, every single one.

But here one is.

And its hair ain’t long. Her hair. Her hair ain’t long. And she ain’t wearing no dress, she’s wearing clothes that look like way newer versions of mine, so new they’re almost like a uniform, even tho they’re torn and muddy, and she ain’t that small, she’s my size, just, by the looks of her, and she’s sure as all that’s unholy not smiley.

No, not smiley at all.

“Spackle?” Manchee barks quietly.

“Would you effing well shut up?” I say.

So how do I know? How do I know it’s a girl?

Well, for one, she ain’t no Spackle. Spackle looked like men with everything a bit swelled up, everything a bit longer and weirder than on a man, their mouths a bit higher than they should be and their ears and eyes way, way different. And spacks grew their clothes right on their bodies, like lichens you could trim away to whatever shape you needed. Product of swamp-dwelling, according to another Ben-best-guess and she don’t look like that and her clothes are normal and so there ain’t no way she’s a Spackle.

And for two, I just know. I just do. I can’t tell you but I look and I see and I just know. She don’t look like the girls I seen in vids or in Noise and I never seen no girl in the flesh but there she is, she’s a girl and that’s that. Don’t ask me. Something about her shape, something about her smell, something I don’t know but it’s there and she’s a girl.

If there was a girl, that’s what she’d be.

And she ain’t another boy. She just ain’t. She ain’t me. She ain’t nothing like me at all. She’s something completely other else altogether and I don’t know how I know it but I know who I am, I am Todd Hewitt, and I know what I am not and I am not her.

She’s looking at me. She’s looking at my face, in my eyes. Looking and looking.

And I’m not hearing nothing.

Oh, man. My chest. It’s like falling.

“Who are you?” I say again but my voice actually catches, like it breaks up cuz I’m so sad (shut up). I grit my teeth and I get a little madder and I say it yet again. “Who are you?” and I hold out the knife a little farther. With my other arm, I have to wipe my eyes real fast.

Something’s gotta happen. Someone’s gotta move. Someone’s gotta do something.

And there ain’t no someone but me, still, whatever the world’s doing.

“Can you talk?” I say.

She just looks back at me.

“Quiet,” Manchee barks.

“Shut it, Manchee,” I say, “I need to think.”

And she’s still just looking back at me. With no Noise at all.

What do I do? It ain’t fair. Ben told me I’d get to the swamp and I’d know what to do but I don’t know what to do. They didn’t say nothing about a girl, they didn’t say nothing about why the quiet makes me ache so much I can barely stop from ruddy weeping, like I’m missing something so bad I can’t even think straight, like the emptiness ain’t in her, it’s in me and there ain’t nothing that’s ever go

What do I do?

What do I do?

She seems like maybe she’s calming down. She’s not shaking as much as she was, her arms aren’t up so high, and she’s not looking like she’s about to run off at the first opportunity, tho how can you know for sure when a person’s got no Noise? How can they be a person if they ain’t got no Noise?

And can she hear me? Can she? Can a person with no Noise hear it at all?

I look at her and I think, as loud and clear as I can, Can you hear me? Can you?

But she don’t change her face, she don’t change her look.

“Okay,” I say, and I take a step back. “Okay. You just stay there, okay? You just stay right there.”

I take a few more steps back but I keep my eyes on her and she keeps her eyes on me. I bring my knife arm down and I slide it outta one strap of the rucksack, then I lean over and drop the rucksack to the ground. I keep the knife in one hand and with the other I open up the rucksack and fish out the book.

It’s heavier than you think a thing made of words could be. And it smells of leather. And there’s pages and pages of my ma’s–

That’ll have to wait.

“You watch her, Manchee,” I say.