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Oh, my head.
“Todd! Todd!” Manchee barks, popping up at the end of the cart, looking up thru our feet. “Todd!”
“Crap,” Viola says.
I hop off the cart and sweep him up in my arms, putting one hand round his muzzle and using the other to get back on the cart. “Td?” he puffs thru closed lips.
“Quiet, Manchee,” I say.
“I’m not even sure it matters,” Viola says, her voice stretching out.
I look up.
“Cw,” Manchee says.
A creacher is walking right past us.
We’ve entered the herd.
Entered the song.
And for a little while, I forget all about any kinda lies.
I’ve never seen the sea, only in vids. No lakes where I grew up neither, just the river and the swamp. There may have been boats once but not in my lifetime.
But if I had to imagine being on the sea, this is what I’d imagine. The herd surrounds us and takes up everything, leaving just the sky and us. It cuts around us like a current, sometimes noticing us but more usually noticing only itself and the song of Here, which in the midst of it is so loud it’s like it’s taken over the ru
After a while, I find myself forgetting all about Wilf and the – the other things I could think about and I’m just lying back on the cart, watching it all go by, individual creachers snuffling around, feeding, bumping each other now and again with their horns, and there’s baby ones, too, and old bulls and taller ones and shorter ones and some with scars and some with scruffier fur.
Viola’s laying down next to me and Manchee’s little doggie brain is overwhelmed by it all and he’s just watching the herd go by with his tongue hanging out and for a while, for a little while, as Wilf drives us over the plain, this is all there is in the world.
This is all there is.
I look over at Viola and she looks back at me and just smiles and shakes her head and wipes away the wet from her eyes.
Here.
Here.
We’re Here and nowhere else.
Cuz there’s nowhere else but Here.
“So this . . . Aaron,” Viola says after a while in a low voice and I know exactly why it’s now that she brings him up.
It’s so safe inside the Here we can talk about any dangers we like.
“Yeah?” I say, also keeping my voice low, watching a little family of creachers waltz by the end of the cart, the ma creacher nuzzling forward a curious baby creacher who’s staring at us.
Viola turns to me from where she’s lying down. “Aaron was your holy man?”
I nod. “Our one and only.”
“What kind of things did he preach?”
“The usual,” I say. “Hellfire. Damnayshun. Judgement.”
She eyes me up. “I’m not sure that’s the usual, Todd.”
I shrug. “He believed we were living thru the end of the world,” I say. “Who’s to say he was wrong?”
She shakes her head. “That’s not what the preacher we had on the ship was like. Pastor Marc. He was kind and friendly and made everything seem like it was going to be okay.”
I snort. “No, that don’t sound like Aaron at all. He was always saying, ‘God hears’ and ‘If one of us falls, we all fall’. Like he was looking forward to it.”
“I heard him say that, too.” She crosses her arms over herself.
The Here wraps us still, flowing everywhere.
I turn to her. “Did he . . . Did he hurt you? Back in the swamp?”
She shakes her head again and lets out a sigh. “He ranted and raved at me, and I guess it might have been preaching, but if I ran, he’d run after me and rant some more and I’d cry and ask him for help but he’d ignore me and preach some more and I’d see pictures of myself in his Noise when I didn’t even know what Noise was. I’ve never been so scared in my life, not even when our ship was crashing.”
We both look up into the sun.
“If one of us falls, we all fall,” she says. “What does that even mean?”
Which, when I really think about it, I realize I don’t know and so I don’t say nothing and we just sink back into the Here and let it take us a little farther.
Here we are.
Not nowhere else.
After an hour or a week or a second, the creachers start thi
“That was amazing,” Viola says quietly, cuz the song is already starting to disappear. “I forgot all about how much my feet hurt.”
“Yeah,” I say.
“What were those?”
“’Em big thangs,” Wilf says, not turning round. “Jus thangs, thass all.”
Viola and I look at each other, like we forgot he was even there.
How much have we given away?
“’Em thangs got a name?” Viola asks, sitting up, acting her lie again.
“Oh, sure,” Wilf says, giving the oxes freer rein now that we’re outta the herd. “Packy Vines or Field Baysts or Anta Fants.” We see him shrug from behind. “I just call ’em thangs, thass all.”
“Thangs,” Viola says.
“Things,” I try.
Wilf looks back over his shoulder at us. “Say what, y’all from Farbranch?” he asks.
“Yessir,” Viola says with a look at me.
Wilf nods at her. “Y’all bin seen that there army?”
My Noise spikes real loud before I can quiet it but again Wilf don’t seem to notice. Viola looks at me, worry on her forehead.
“And what army’s that, Wilf?” she says, the voice missing a little.
“That there army from cursed town,” he says, still driving along like we’re talking about vegetables. “That there army come outta swamp, come takin settlements, growin as it comes? Y’all bin seen that?”
“Where’d yoo hear bout an army, Wilf?”
“Stories,” Wilf says. “Stories a-come chatterin down the river. People talkin. Ya know. Stories. Y’all bin seen that?’’
I shake my head at Viola but she says, “Yeah, we seen it.”
Wilf looks back over his shoulder again. “Zit big?”
“Very big,” Viola says, looking at him seriously. “Ya gotta prepare yerself, Wilf. There’s danger comin. Yoo need to warn Brockley Hills.”
“Brockley Falls,” Wilf corrects her.
“Ya gotta warn ’em, Wilf.”
We hear Wilf grunt and then we realize it’s a laugh. “Ain’t nobody lissnen to Wilf, I tell ya what,” he says, almost to himself, then strikes the reins on the oxes again.
It takes most of the rest of the afternoon to get to the other side of the plain. Thru Viola’s binos we can see the herd of things still crossing in the distance, from south to north, like they’re never go
When the sun is low in the sky, the cart finally creaks to a halt.
“Brockley Falls,” Wilf says, nodding his head to where we can see in the distance the river tumbling off a low cliff. There’s fifteen or twenty buildings gathered round the pond at the bottom of the falls before the river starts up again. A smaller road turns off from this one and leads down to it.
“We’re getting off here,” Viola says and we hop down, taking our bags from the cart.
“Thought ya mite,” Wilf says, looking back over his shoulder at us again.
“Thank ya, Wilf,” she says.
“Welcome,” he says, staring off into the distance. “Best take shelter ’fore too long. Gone rain.”
Both Viola and me automatically look straight up. There ain’t a cloud in the sky.
“Mmm,” Wilf says. “No one lissnen to Wilf.”
Viola looks back at him, her voice returning to itself, trying to get the point to him clearly. “You have to warn them, Wilf. Please. If you’re hearing that an army’s coming, then you’re right and people have to be ready.”