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“How are we go
The shivering makes me cough, everything makes me cough, and I spit out handfuls of green goo from my lungs, but then I hold my breath and plunge in my head again.
The cold of the water feels like a vice but I hold it there, hearing the bubbling of the water rushing by and the wordless barks of a worried Manchee hopping around my feet. I can feel the bandage on my head detach and wash away in the current. I think of Manchee wriggling the bandage off his tail in a different part of the river and I forget and I laugh underwater.
I lift my head up, choking and gasping and coughing more.
I open my eyes. The world shines like it shouldn’t and there are all kindsa stars out even tho the sun is still up but at least the ground has stopped floating and all the excess Aarons and Violas and Spackles are gone.
“Can we really do it alone?” asks the boy.
“Ain’t no choice,” I say to myself.
And I turn to look at him.
He’s got a brown shirt like mine, no scars on his head, a rucksack on his back, a book in one hand and a knife in the other. I’m shaking from the cold still and it’s all I can do to stand but I breathe and cough and shake and look at him.
“C’mon, Manchee,” I say and I head back across the burnt-out settlement, back to the bluff. Just walking is tough, like the ground could cave away at any minute, cuz I weigh more than a mountain but less than a feather, but I’m walking, I’m keeping walking, I’m keeping the bluff in sight, I’m reaching it, I’m taking the first steps up it, I’m taking the next steps, I’m grabbing on to branches to pull myself along, I’m reaching the top, I’m leaning against a tree at the top, and I’m looking out.
“Is it really him?” says the boy behind my ear.
I squint out across the trees, tracing my eye down the river.
And there’s still a campsite, still at the river’s edge, so far away they’re just specks against other specks. I still have Viola’s bag around my shoulders and I reach for her binos, holding ’em up to my eyes but shaking so much it’s hard to get a clear image. They’re far enough away that the wind’s covering up his Noise but I’m sure I feel her silence out there.
I’m sure of it.
“Aaron,” Manchee says. “Viola.”
So I know it’s not a shimmer and in the shakiness I can just about catch him still kneeling, praying some prayer, and Viola laid out on the ground in front of him.
I don’t know what’s happening. I don’t know what he’s doing.
But it’s really them.
All this walking and stumbling and coughing and dying and it’s really really them, by God it’s really them.
I may not be too late and it’s only how my chest rises and my throat grips that I realize all along I’ve thought I was too late.
But I’m not.
I lean down again and (shut up) I cry, I cry, I’m crying but it has to pass cuz I have to figure it out, I have to figure it out, it’s down to me, there’s only me, I have to find a way, I have to save her, I have to save–
“What are we go
I put my palms into my eyes and rub hard, trying to think straight, trying to concentrate, trying not to listen–
“What if this is the sacrifice?” says the boy.
I look up. “What sacrifice?”
“The sacrifice you saw in his Noise,” he says. “The sacrifice of–”
“Why would he do it here?” I say. “Why would he come all this way and stop in the middle of a stupid forest and do it here?”
The boy’s expression doesn’t change. “Maybe he has to,” he says, “before she dies.”
I step forward and have to catch my balance. “Dies of what?” I say, my voice snappy, my head aching and buzzy again.
“Fear,” says the boy, taking a step backwards. “Disappointment.”
I turn away. “I ain’t listening to this.”
“Listening, Todd?” Manchee barks. “Viola, Todd. This way.”
I lean back again against the tree. I’ve got to think. I’ve got to ruddy think.
“We can’t approach,” I say, my voice thick. “He’ll hear us coming.”
“He’ll kill her if he hears us,” says the boy.
“Ain’t talking to you.” I cough up more gunk, which makes my head spin, which makes me cough more. “Talking to my dog,” I finally choke out.
“Manchee,” Manchee says, licking my hand.
“And I can’t kill him,” I say.
“You can’t kill him,” says the boy.
“Even if I want to.”
“Even if he deserves it.”
“And so there has to be another way.”
“If she’s not too scared to see you.”
I look at him again. Still there, still book and knife and rucksack.
“You need to leave,” I say. “You need to go away from me and never come back.”
“Yer probably too late to save her.”
“Yer of no use to me at all,” I say, raising my voice.
“But I’m a killer,” he says and the knife has blood on it.
I close my eyes and grit my teeth. “You stay behind,” I say. “You stay behind.”
“Manchee?” Manchee barks.
I open my eyes. The boy isn’t there. “Not you, Manchee,” I say, reaching out and rubbing his ears.
Then I regard him, Manchee. “Not you,” I say again.
And I’m thinking. In the clouds and the swirls and the shimmers and the lights and the ache and the buzz and the shaking and the coughing, I’m thinking.
And I’m thinking.
I rub the ears of my dog, my stupid goddam ruddy great dog that I never wanted but who hung around anyway and who followed me thru the swamp and who bit Aaron when he was trying to choke me and who found Viola when she was lost and who’s licking my hand with his little pink tongue and whose eye is still mostly squinted shut from where Mr Prentiss Jr kicked him and whose tail is way way shorter from when Matthew Lyle cut it off when my dog – mydog – went after a man with a machete to save me and who’s right there when I need pulling back from the darkness I fall into and who tells me who I am whenever I forget.
“Todd,” he murmurs, rubbing his face into my hand and thumping his back leg against the ground.
“I got an idea,” I say.
“What if it don’t work?” says the boy from behind the tree.
I ignore him and I pick up the binos again. Shaking still, I find Aaron’s campsite one more time and look at the area around it. They’re near the river’s edge and there’s a forked tree just this side of them along the riverbank, bleached and leafless, like it maybe once got struck by lightning.
It’ll do.
I put down the binos and take Manchee’s head in both hands. “We’re go
“Save her, Todd,” he barks, wagging his little stump.
“It won’t work,” says the boy, still outta sight.
“Then you should stay behind,” I say to the air, riding thru a cough while I send pictures of Noise to my dog to tell him what he needs to do. “It’s simple, Manchee. Run and run.”
“Run and run!” he barks.
“Good boy.” I rub his ears again. “Good boy.”
I pull myself to my feet and half-walk, half-slide, half-stumble my way back down the little bluff into the burnt-out settlement. There’s a thump in my head now, like I can hear my poisoned blood pumping, and everything in the world throbs with it. If I squeeze my eyes nearly shut, the swirling lights ain’t so bad and everything sort of stays in its place.
The first thing I need is a stick. Manchee and I tear thru the burnt-out buildings, looking for one the right size. Pretty much everything is black and crumbly but that suits me fine.
“Thith one, Thawd?” Manchee says, using his mouth to pull one about half the length of himself out from under what looks like a burnt-up pile of stacked chairs. What happened in this place?