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And I’m shouting “HELP!” as I go.
“HELP!”
Please.
“HELP!”
And her breath is starting to gasp.
“HELP US!”
Please no.
And I’m not seeing NO ONE.
The houses I pass are shut up and empty. The road turns from dirt to paved and still no one out and about.
“HELP!”
My feet slam against the pavement–
The road is leading to the big church up ahead, a clearing of the trees, the steeple shining down onto a town square in front of it.
And no one’s there neither.
No.
“HELP!”
I race on to the square, crossing it, looking all around, listening out–
No.
No.
It’s empty.
Viola’s breathing heavy in my arms.
And Haven is empty.
I reach the middle of the square.
I don’t see nor hear a soul.
I spin around again.
“HELP!” I cry.
But there’s no one.
Haven is completely empty.
There ain’t no hope here at all.
Viola slips a little from my grasp and I have to kneel to catch her. My shirt has dropped from her wound and I use one hand to hold it in place.
There ain’t nothing left. The bag, the binos, my ma’s book, I’m realizing it’s all left up on the hillside.
Me and Viola are all we got, everything we have in the world.
And she’s bleeding so much–
“Todd?” she says, her voice low and slurring.
“Please,” I say, my eyes welling, my voice cracking. “Please.”
Please please please please please–
“Well, since you asked so nicely,” comes a voice across the square, hardly even raising itself to a shout.
I look up.
Coming round the side of the church is a single horse.
With a single rider.
“No,” I whisper.
No.
No.
“Yes, Todd,” says Mayor Prentiss. “I’m afraid so.”
He rides his horse almost lazily across the square towards me. He looks as cool and unruffled as ever, no sweat marking his clothes, even wearing riding gloves, even clean boots.
This ain’t possible.
This ain’t possible at all.
“How can you be here?” I say, my voice rising. “How–?”
“Even a simpleton knows there’s two roads to Haven,” he says, his voice calm and silky, almost smirking but not quite.
The dust we saw. The dust we saw moving towards Haven yesterday.
“But how?” I say, so stu
“Sometimes the rumour of an army is just as effective as the army itself, my boy,” he says. “The terms of surrender were most favourable. One of which was clearing the streets so I could welcome you here myself.” He looks back up towards the falls. “Tho I was of course expecting my son to bring you.”
I look around the square and now I can see faces, faces peering outta windows, outta doors.
I can see four more men on horseback coming round the church.
I look back at Mayor Prentiss.
“Oh, it’s President Prentiss now,” he says. “You’ll do well to remember that.”
And then I realize.
I can’t hear his Noise.
I can’t hear anyone’s.
“No,” he says. “I imagine you can’t, tho that’s an interesting story and not what you might–”
Viola slips a little more from my hands, the shift of it making her give a pained gasp. “Please!” I say. “Save her! I’ll do anything you say! I’ll join the army! I’ll–”
“All good things to those who wait,” the Mayor says, finally looking a little a
He dismounts in one easy movement and starts taking off his gloves one finger at a time.
And I know we’ve lost.
Everything is lost.
Everything is over.
“As the newly appointed President of this fair planet of ours,” the Mayor says, holding out his hand as if to show me the world for the first time, “let me be the very first to welcome you to its new capital city.”
“Todd?” Viola whispers, her eyes closed.
I hold her tightly to me.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper to her. “I’m so sorry.”
We’ve run right into a trap.
We’ve run right off the end of the world.
“Welcome,” says the Mayor, “to New Prentisstown.”
An excerpt from The Ask and the Answer
“Your Noise reveals you, Todd Hewitt.”
A voice —
In the darkness —
I blink open my eyes. Everything is shadows and blur and it feels like the world’s spi
I blink again.
Wait —
No, wait —
Just now, just now we were in the square —
Just now she was in my arms —
She was dying in my arms —
“Where is she?” I spit into the dark, tasting blood, my voice croaking, my Noise rising like a sudden hurricane, high and red and furious. “WHERE IS SHE?”
“I will be the one doing the asking here, Todd.”
That voice.
His voice.
Somewhere in the dark.
Somewhere behind me, somewhere unseen.
Mayor Prentiss.
I blink again and the murk starts to turn into a vast room, the only light coming from a single window, a wide circle up high and far away, its glass not clear but colored into shapes of New World and its two circling moons, the light from it slanting down onto me and nothing else.
“What have you done with her?” I say, loud, blinking against fresh blood trickling into my eyes. I try to reach up to clear it away but I find my hands are tied behind my back and panic rises in me and I struggle against the binds and my breathing speeds up and I shout again, “WHERE IS SHE?”
A fist comes from nowhere and punches me in the stomach.
I lean forward into the shock of it and realize I’m tied to a wooden chair, my feet bound to its legs, my shirt gone somewhere up on a dusty hillside and as I’m throwing up my empty stomach I notice there’s carpet beneath me, repeating the same pattern of New World and its moons, over and over and over, stretching out for ever.
And I’m remembering we were in the square, in the square where I’d run, holding her, carrying her, telling her to stay alive, stay alive till we got safe, till we got to Haven so I could save her —
But there weren’t no safety, no safety at all, there was just him and his men and they took her from me, they took her from my arms —
“You notice that he does not ask, Where am I?” says the Mayor’s voice, moving out there, somewhere. “His first words are, Where is she?, and his Noise says the same. Interesting.”
My head’s throbbing along with my stomach and I’m waking up some more and I’m remembering I fought them, I fought them when they took her till the butt of a gun smashed against my temple and knocked me into blackness —
I swallow away the tightness in my throat, swallow away the panic and the fear —
Cuz this is the end, ain’t it?
The end of it all.
The Mayor has me.
The Mayor has her.
“If you hurt her —” I say, the punch still aching in my belly. Mr. Collins stands in front of me, half in shadow, Mr. Collins who farmed corn and cauliflower and who tended the Mayor’s horses and who stands over me now with a pistol in a holster, a rifle slung round his back and a fist rearing up to punch me again.
“She seemed quite hurt enough already, Todd,” the Mayor says, stopping Mr. Collins. “The poor thing.”
My fists clench in their bindings. My Noise feels lumpy and half-battered but it still rises with the memory of Davy Prentiss’s gun pointed at us, of her falling into my arms, of her bleeding and gasping —