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And I think, Please let Haven be at the bottom of the falls.
Please.
Cuz I see Viola looking back to me as we run and there’s brightness on her face and she keeps urging me on with tilts of her head and smiles and I think how hope may be the thing that pulls you forward, may be the thing that keeps you going, but that it’s dangerous, too, that it’s painful and risky, that it’s making a dare to the world and when has the world ever let us win a dare?
Please let Haven be there.
Oh please oh please oh please.
The road finally starts rising a bit, pulling up above the river slightly as the water starts really crashing thru rocky rapids. There ain’t no more wooded bits twixt us and it now at all, just a hill climbing up steeper and steeper on our right side as the valley closes in and then nothing but river and the falls ahead.
“Almost there,” Viola calls from ahead of me, ru
And then.
And then, at the edge of the cliff, the road comes to a lip and takes a sudden angle down and to the right.
And that’s where we stop.
The falls are huge, half a kilometre across easy. The water roars over the cliff in a violent white foam, sending spray hundreds of metres out into the sheer drop and above and all around, soaking us in our clothes and throwing rainbows all over the place as the rising sun lights it.
“Todd,” Viola says, so faintly I can barely hear it.
But I don’t need to.
I know what she means.
As soon as the falls start falling, the valley opens up again, wide as the sky itself, taking the river that starts again at the base of the falls, which crashes forward with whitewater before it pools and calms down and becomes a river again.
And flows into Haven.
Haven.
Gotta be.
Spread out below us like a table full of food.
“There it is,” Viola says.
And I feel her fingers wrap around my own.
The falls to our left, spray and rainbows in the sky, the sun rising ahead of us, the valley below.
And Haven, sitting waiting.
It’s three, maybe four kilometres away down the farther valley.
But there it is.
There it ruddy well is.
I look round us, round to where the road has taken a sharp turn at our feet, sloping down and cutting into the valley wall to our right but then zig-zagging its way steeply down in a twisty pattern so even it’s like a zipper ru
And follows it right into Haven.
“I want to see it,” Viola says, letting go of my hand and taking out the binos. She looks thru them, wipes spray off the lenses, and looks some more. “It’s beautiful,” she says and that’s all she says and she just looks and wipes off more spray.
After a minute and without saying nothing more, she hands me the binos and I get my first look at Haven.
The spray is so thick, even wiping it down you can’t see details like people or anything but there are all kindsa different buildings, mostly surrounding what looks like a big church at the centre, but other big buildings, too, and proper roads curling outta the middle thru trees to more groups of buildings.
There’s gotta be at least fifty buildings in all.
Maybe a hundred.
It’s the biggest thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life.
“I’ve got to say,” Viola shouts, “it’s kind of smaller than I expected.”
But I don’t really hear her.
With the binos, I follow the river road back from it and I see what’s probably a roadblock with what might be a fortified fence ru
“They’re getting ready,” I say. “They’re getting ready to fight.”
Viola looks at me, worried. “You think it’s big enough? You think we’re safe?”
“Depends on if the rumours of the army are true or not.”
I look behind us, by instinct, as if the army was just waiting there for us to move on. I look up the valley hill next to us. Could be a good view.
“Let’s find out,” I say.
We run back down the road a piece, looking for a good climbing spot, find one and make our way up. My legs feel light as I climb, my Noise clearer than it’s been in days. I’m sad for Ben, I’m sad for Cillian, I’m sad for Manchee, I’m sad for what’s happened to me and Viola.
But Ben was right.
There’s hope at the bottom of the biggest waterfall.
And maybe it don’t hurt so much after all.
We climb up thru the trees. The hill is steep above the river and we have to pull on vines and hang on to rocks to make our way up high enough to look back down the road, till the valley is stretching out beneath us.
I still have the binos and I look downriver and down the road and over the treetops. I keep having to wipe spray away.
I look.
“Can you see them?” Viola asks.
I look, the river getting smaller into the far distance, back and back and back.
“No,” I say.
I look.
And again.
And–
There.
Down in the deepest curve of the road in the deepest part of the valley, in farthest shadow against the rising sun, there they are.
A mass that’s gotta be the army, marching its way forward, so far away I can only tell it’s them at all cuz it looks like dark water flowing into a dry riverbed. It’s hard to get detail at this distance but I can’t see individual men and I don’t think I can see horses.
Just a mass, a mass pouring itself down the road.
“How big is it?” she asks. “How big has it grown?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “Three hundred? Four? I don’t know. We’re too far to really–”
I stop.
“We’re too far to really tell.” I crack another smile. “Miles and miles.”
“We beat them,” Viola says, a smile coming, too. “We ran and they chased us and we beat them.”
“We’ll get to Haven and we’ll warn whoever’s in charge,” I say, talking faster, my Noise rising with excitement. “But they’ve got battle lines and the approach is real narrow and the army’s at least the rest of the day away, maybe even tonight, too, and I swear that can’t be a thousand men.”
I swear it.
(But.)
Viola’s smiling the tiredest, happiest smile I ever saw. She takes my hand again. “We beat them.”
But then the risks of hope rise again and my Noise greys a little. “Well, we ain’t there yet and we don’t know if Haven can–”
But she’s shaking her head. “Nuh-uh,” she says. “We beat them. You listen to me and you be happy, Todd Hewitt. We’ve spent all this time outru
She looks at me, smiling, expecting something from me.
My Noise is buzzing and happy and warm and tired and relieved and a little bit worried still but I’m thinking that maybe she’s right, maybe we did win and maybe I should put my arms round her if it didn’t feel weird and I find that in the middle of it all I do actually agree with her.
“We beat them,” I say.
And then she does stick her arms round me and pulls tight, like we might fall down, and we just stand there on the wet hillside and breathe for a little bit.
She smells a little less like flowers but it’s okay.
And I look out and the falls are below us, charging away, and Haven glitters thru the sunlit spray and the sun is shining down the length of the river above the falls, lighting it up like a snake made of metal.
And I let my Noise bubble with little sparks of happy and my gaze flow back along the length of the river and–
No.
Every muscle in my body jolts.
“What?” Viola says, jumping back.
She whips her head round to where I’m looking.
“What?” she says again.
And then she sees.
“No,” she says. “No, it can’t be.”
Coming down the river is a boat.
Close enough to see without binos.
Close enough to see the rifle and the robe.