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The world keeps getting bigger.
“Get! Get!” Manchee barks, ru
“Don’t bite it!” I shout at him.
The cassor’s neck is swinging about like a vine, following Manchee around like a cat after a bug. Food? its Noise keeps asking.
“Not food,” I say, and the big neck swings my way.
Food?
“Not food,” I say again. “Just a dog.”
Dog? it thinks and starts following Manchee around again, trying to nip him with his beak. The beak ain’t a scary thing at all, like being nipped by a goose, but Manchee’s having none of it, leaping outta the way and barking, barking, barking.
I laugh at him. It’s fu
And then I hear a little laugh that ain’t my own.
I look over. The girl is standing by her tree, watching the giant bird chase around my stupid dog, and she’s laughing.
She’s smiling.
She sees me looking and she stops.
Food? I hear and I turn to see the cassor starting to poke its beak into my rucksack.
“Hey!” I shout and start shooing it away.
Food?
“Here.” I fish out a small block of cheese wrapped in a cloth that Ben packed.
The cassor sniffs it, bites it, and gobbles it down, its neck rippling in long waves at it swallows. It snaps its beak a few times like a man might smack his lips after he ate something. But then its neck starts rippling the other way and with a loud hack, up comes the block of cheese flying right back at me, covered in spit but not hardly even crushed, smacking me on the cheek and leaving a trail of slime across my face.
Food? says the cassor and starts slowly walking off into the swamp, as if we’re no longer even as interesting as a leaf.
“Get! Get!” Manchee barks after it, but not following. I wipe the slime from my face with my sleeve and I can see the girl smiling at me while I do it.
“Think that’s fu
“Yeah,” I say, taking charge of things again. “We slept way too long. We gotta go.”
We get going on yet more walking without any more words or smiling. Pretty quick, the ground starts to get less even and a bit drier. The trees start to thin out some, letting the sun directly on us now and then. After a little bit, we get to a small clearing, almost like a little field that rises up to a short bluff, standing just over the treetops. We climb it and stop at the top. The girl holds out another pack of that fruity stuff. Breakfast. We eat, still standing.
Looking out over the trees, the way in front of us is clear. The larger mountain is on the horizon and you can see the two smaller mountains in the distance behind a little bit of haze.
“That’s where we’re going,” I say, pointing. “Or where I think we’re sposed to go, anyway.”
She sets down her fruit pack and goes into her bag again. She pulls out the sweetest little pair of binos you’ve ever seen. My old ones back home that broke years ago were like a breadbox in comparison. She holds them up to her eyes and looks for a bit, then hands ’em to me.
I take ’em and I look out to where we’re going. Everything’s so clear. The ground stretching out before us in a green forest, curving downhill into proper valleys and dales as it starts to become real land again and not just the mucky bowl of a swamp and you can even see where the marsh starts really turning back into a proper river, cutting deeper and deeper canyons as it gets closer to the mountains. If you listen, you can even hear it rushing. I look and I look and I don’t see no settlement but who knows what’s around the bends and curves? Who knows what’s up ahead?
I look behind us, back the way we came, but it’s still early enough for a mist to be covering most of the swamp, hiding everything, giving nothing away.
“Those’re sweet,” I say, handing her the binos. She puts them back in her bag and we stand there for a minute eating.
We stand arm’s length apart cuz her silence still bothers me. I chew down on a piece of dried fruit and I wonder what it must be like to have no Noise, to come from a place with no Noise. What does it mean? What kind of place is it? Is it wonderful? Is it terrible?
Say you were standing on a hilltop with someone who had no Noise. Would it be like you were alone there? How would you share it? Would you want to? I mean, here we are, the girl and I, heading outta danger and into the unknown and there’s no Noise overlapping us, nothing to tell us what the other’s thinking. Is that how it’s sposed to be?
I finish the fruit and crumple up the packet. She holds out her hand and shoves the rubbish back into her bag. No words, no exchange, just my Noise and a great big nothing from her.
Was this what it was like for my ma and pa when they first landed? Was New World a silent place all over before–
I look up at the girl suddenly.
Before.
Oh, no.
I’m such a fool.
I’m such a stupid goddam fool.
She has no Noise. And she came from a ship. Which means she came from a place with no Noise, obviously, idiot.
Which means she’s landed here and hasn’t caught the Noise germ yet.
Which means that when she does, it’s go
It’s go
It’s go
And I’m looking at her and the sun is shining down on us and her eyes are getting wider and wider as I’m thinking it and it’s then I realize something else stupid, something else obvious.
Just cuz I can’t hear any Noise from her don’t mean she can’t hear every word of mine.
“No!” I say quickly. “Don’t listen! I’m wrong! I’m wrong! It’s a mistake! I’m wrong!”
But she’s backing away from me, dropping her own empty packet of fruit things, her eyes getting wider.
“No, don’t–”
I step towards her but she takes an even quicker step away, her bag dropping to the ground.
“It’s–” I say but what do you say? “I’m wrong. I’m wrong. I was thinking of somebody else.”
Which is the stupidest thing to say of all cuz she can hear my Noise, can’t she? She can see me struggling to think of something to say and even if it’s coming out a big mess, she can see herself all over it and besides, I surely know by now there’s no taking back something that’s been sent out into the world.
Dammit. Goddam it all to hell.
“Dammit!” Manchee barks.
“Why didn’t you SAY you could hear me?” I shout, ignoring that she ain’t said a word since I met her.
She steps back farther, putting a hand up to her face to cover her mouth, her eyes sending asking marks at me.
I try to think of something, anything to make it all right, but I ain’t got nothing. Just Noise with death and despair all over it.
She turns and runs, back down the hill and away from me as fast as she can.
Crap.
“Wait!” I yell, already ru
She’s going back the way we came, down across the little field and disappearing into the trees, but I’m right behind her, Manchee after me. “Stop!” I shout after her. “Wait!”
But why should she? What kind of reason could she possibly have to wait around?
You know, she’s really amazingly fast when she wants to be.
“Manchee!” I call and he understands me and shoots off after her. Not that I could really lose her, any more than she could lose me. As loud as my Noise is chasing her, her silence is just as loud up ahead, even now, even knowing she’s going to die, still as silent as a grave.
“Hold on!” I shout, tripping over a root and landing hard on my elbows, which jolts every ache I’ve got in my body and face, but I have to get up. I have to get up and go after her. “Dammit!”