Monsters of Men

1017 isn’t yet, though.

The infection seems to spread more slowly through him, and he’s declining to take the cure, saying he’ll suffer the pain of the band until Todd wakes up, as a reminder of all that was, of all that almost was, and of what we should all never return to.

I can’t help it. I’m a little glad that it still hurts him.

The Sky would like to visit, Ben says lightly, as if he could already read the Noise I don’t have.

“No.”

He’s arranged all this, Viola. If we get Todd back–

“If,” I say. “That’s the key word, isn’t it?”

It’ll work, he says. It will.

“Fine,” I say. “When it does, then we can ask Todd if he wants to see the Spackle who put him here in the first place.”

Viola–

I smile to stop him from the argument we’ve already had two dozen times already. An argument about how I can’t quite forgive 1017 yet.

And maybe never.

I know he often waits outside the Pathways’ End, asking Ben how Todd is. I can hear him sometimes. Right now, though, all I hear is Angharrad, munching on grass, patiently waiting with us for her boy colt.

The Sky will be a better leader for all this, Ben says. We might actually be able to live with them in peace. Maybe even in the paradise we always wanted.

“If Mistress Lawson and the convoy rework the cure for the Noise,” I say. “If the men and women who land don’t feel threatened by being so out-numbered by the native species. If there’s always enough food to go around–”

Try to have some hope, Viola, he says.

And there’s that word again.

“I do,” I say. “But I’m giving it all to Todd right now.”

Ben looks back down at his son. He’ll come back to us.

I nod to agree, but we don’t know that he will, not for sure.

But we hope.

And that hope is so delicate, I’m scared to death of letting it out.

So I keep quiet.

And I wait.

And I hope.

What part have you reached? Ben asks, nodding at the journal.

“I’m near the end again,” I say.

He comes away from Todd and sits down in the other Spackle-made chair next to me. Read it through, he says. And then we can start all over where his ma was full of optimism.

There’s a smile on his face and so much tender hope in his Noise that I can’t help but smile back.

He’ll hear you, Viola. He’ll hear you and he’ll come back to us.

And we look at Todd again, laid out on the stone tablet, warmed by the fire, Spackle healing pastes on the wound in his chest, his Noise ticking in and out of hearing like a barely-remembered dream.

“Todd,” I whisper. “Todd?”

And then I pick up the journal again.

And I continue reading.

Is this right?      I blink and I’m in one memory, like this one here, back in a classroom in old Prentisstown before Mayor Prentiss closed down the school and we’re learning about why the settlers came here in the first place–            And then here I am again, in this one, where she and I are sleeping in an abandoned windmill just after leaving Farbranch and the stars are coming out and she asks me to sleep outside because my Noise is keeping her awake–                  Or now here, with Manchee, with my brilliant, brilliant dog, when he takes the burning ember into his mouth and sets off to start a fire, the fire that will let me save–Let me save–   Are you there?Are you there?                                                      (Viola?)And then sometimes there are memories of things I never saw–   Spackle families in huts in a vast desert I didn’t even know existed but that now, right here, as I stand in it, I know it’s on the other side of New World, as far away as you can get but I’m inside the Spackle voices and I’m hearing what they say, seeing it, understanding it even tho the language ain’t mine and I can see that they know about the men on the other side of the planet, that they know everything about us that the Spackle near us do, that the voice of this world circles it, reaches into every corner and if we could just–      Or here, here I am on a hilltop next to someone whose face I just about reckernize (Luke? Les? Lars? His name is there, just there, just outta reach–) but I reckernize the blindness in his eyes and I reckernize the face of the man next to him who I know is seeing for him somehow and they’re taking the weapons away from an army and they’re sealing ’em in a mine and they’d rather just destroy the whole lot of ’em but the voices around ’em all want the weapons there, just in case, just in case things go wrong, but the seeing man is telling the blind man that maybe there’s hope anyway–         Or here, too, here I am, looking down from a hilltop as a huge ship, bigger than a whole town, flies overhead and comes in for a landing–            And at the same time I’m having a memory of being next to a creek bed and there’s a baby Spackle playing and there are men coming outta the woods and they’re dragging the mother off and the baby is crying and the men come back and pick him up and load him on a cart with other babies and I know this is a memory that ain’t mine and that the baby is, the baby Spackle is–And sometimes it’s just dark–      –sometimes there’s nothing but voices I can’t quite hear, voices just beyond reach and I’m alone in the darkness and it feels like I’ve been here for a long, long time and I–I can’t remember my name sometimes–Are you there?

      Viola?

And I don’t remember who Viola is–

      Only that I need to find her–            That she’s the only one who’ll save me–

She’s the only one who can–      Viola?

Viola?

“. . . my son, my beautiful son . . .”      And there!            Like that!

                     Sometimes there it is in the middle of the darkness, in the middle of the memories, in the middle of wherever I am, doing whatever I’m doing, sometimes even in the middle of the million voices that create the ground I walk on–

      Sometimes I hear–

            “. . . I wish yer pa were here to see you, Todd . . .”      Todd–               Todd–

That’s me–      (I think–)

            (Yes–)                  And that voice, that voice saying those words–

“. . . say ‘ain’t’ all you like, Todd, I promise not to correct you . . .”         Is that Viola’s voice?Is it?(Is it you?)

Because I’m hearing it more often lately, more often as the days pass, as I’m flying thru these memories and spaces and darknesses–      I’m hearing it more often among all the other millions–“. . . Yer calling for me, and I will answer . . .”

      I will answer–

Todd will answer–

Viola?

         Are you calling for me?