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“He will.”
“Then we’ll deal with it.”
We both look at the knife.
“TODD HEWITT!”
“He’s found it,” she says, grabbing my arm and squeezing into me.
“Not yet.”
“We were almost there,” she says, her voice high and breaking a little. “Almost there.”
“We’ll get there.”
“TODD HEWITT!”
And it’s definitely louder.
He’s found the tu
I grip my knife and I look over to Viola, her face looking straight back up the tu
I grip the knife harder.
If he touches her–
And my Noise reels back to the start of our journey, to Viola before she said anything, to Viola when she told me her name, to Viola when she talked to Hildy and Tam, to when she took on Wilf’s accent, to when Aaron grabbed her and stole her away, to waking up to her in Doctor Snow’s house, to her promise to Ben, to when she took on my ma’s voice and made the whole world change, just for a little while.
All the things we’ve been thru.
How she cried when we left Manchee behind.
Telling me I was all she had.
When I found out I could read her, silence or not.
When I thought Aaron had shot her on the road.
How I felt in those few terrible seconds.
How it would feel to lose her.
The pain and the unfairness and the injustice.
The rage.
And how I wished it was me.
I look at the knife in my hand.
And I realize she’s right.
I realize what’s been right all along, as insane as it is.
She’s not the sacrifice.
She’s not.
If one of us falls, we all fall.
“I know what he wants,” I say, standing up.
“What?” Viola says.
“TODD HEWITT!”
Definitely coming down the tu
Nowhere to run.
He’s coming.
She stands, too, and I move myself twixt her and the tu
“Get down behind one of the pews,” I say. “Hide.”
“Todd–”
I move away from her, my hand staying on her arm till I’m too far away.
“Where are you going?” she says, her voice tightening.
I look back the way we came, up the tu
He’ll be here any second.
“TODD HEWITT!”
“He’ll see you!” she says.
I hold up the knife in front of me.
The knife that’s caused so much trouble.
The knife that holds so much power.
“Todd!” Viola says. “What are you doing?”
I turn to her. “He won’t hurt you,” I say. “Not when he knows I know what he wants.”
“What does he want?”
I search her out, standing among the pews, the white planet and moons glowing down on her, the water shining watery light over her, I search out her face and the language of her body as she stands there watching me, and I find I still know who she is, that she’s still Viola Eade, that silent don’t mean empty, that it never meant empty.
I look right into her eyes.
“I’m go
And even tho it’s too loud for her to hear my Noise, even tho she can’t read my thoughts, she looks back at me.
And I see her understand.
She pulls herself up a little taller.
“I’m not hiding,” she says. “If you’re not, I’m not.”
And that’s all I need.
I nod.
“Ready?” I ask.
She looks at me.
She nods once, firmly.
I turn back to the tu
I close my eyes.
I take a deep breath.
And with every bit of air in my lungs and every last note of Noise in my head, I rear up–
And I shout, as loud as I can–
“AARON!!!!!!”
And I open my eyes and I wait for him to come.
I see his feet first, slipping down the steps some but not hurrying, taking his time now that he knows we’re here.
I hold the knife in my right hand, my left hand out and ready, too. I stand in the aisle of the little pews, as much in the centre of the church as I can get. Viola’s back behind me a bit, down one of the rows.
I’m ready.
I realize I am ready.
Everything that’s happened has brought me here, to this place, with this knife in my hand, and something worth saving.
Someone.
And if it’s a choice twixt her and him, there is no choice, and the army can go sod itself.
And so I’m ready.
As I’ll ever be.
Cuz I know what he wants.
“Come on,” I say, under my breath.
Aaron’s legs appear, then his arms, one carrying the rifle, the other holding his balance against the wall.
And then his face.
His terrible, terrible face.
Half torn away, the gash in his cheek showing his teeth, the hole where his nose used to be open and gaping, making him look barely human.
And he’s smiling.
Which is when I feel all the fear.
“Todd Hewitt,” he says, almost as a greeting.
I raise my voice over the water, willing it not to shake. “You can put the rifle down, Aaron.”
“Oh, can I, now?” he says, eyes widening, taking in Viola behind me. I don’t look back at her but I know she’s facing Aaron, I know she’s giving him all the bravery she’s got.
And that makes me stronger.
“I know what you want,” I say. “I figured it out.”
“Have you, young Todd?” Aaron says and I see he can’t help himself, he looks into my Noise, the little he can hear over the roar.
“She’s not the sacrifice,” I say.
He says nothing, just takes the first steps into the church, eyes glancing up at the cross and the pews and the pulpit.
“And I’m not the sacrifice neither,” I say.
His evil smile draws wider. A new tear opens up at the edge of his gash, blood waving down it in the spray. “A clever mind is a friend of the devil,” he says, which I think is his way of saying I’m right.
I steady my feet and turn with him as he steps round towards the pulpit half of the church, the half nearer the edge.
“It’s you,” I say. “The sacrifice is you.”
And I open my Noise as loud as it’ll go so that both he and Viola can see I’m telling the truth.
Cuz the thing Ben showed me back when I left our farm, the way that a boy in Prentisstown becomes a man, the reason that boys who’ve become men don’t talk to boys who are still boys, the reason that boys who’ve become men are complicit in the crimes of Prentisstown is–
It’s–
And I make myself say it–
It’s by killing another man.
All by theirselves.
All those men who disappeared, who tried to disappear.
They didn’t disappear after all.
Mr Royal, my old schoolteacher, who took to whisky and shot himself, didn’t shoot himself. He was shot by Seb Mundy on his thirteenth birthday, made to stand alone and pull the trigger as the rest of the men of Prentisstown watched. Mr Gault, whose sheep flock we took over when he disappeared two winters ago, only tried to disappear. He was found by Mayor Prentiss ru
And so on and so on. Men I knew killed by boys I knew to become men theirselves. If the Mayor’s men had a captured escapee hidden away for a boy’s thirteenth, then fine. If not, they’d just take someone from Prentisstown who they didn’t like and say he disappeared.
One man’s life was given over to a boy to end, all on his own.
A man dies, a man is born.
Everyone complicit. Everyone guilty.
Except me.
“Oh my God,” I hear Viola say.
“But I was go