Текст книги "The Knife of Never Letting Go"

Автор книги: Patrick Ness

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Текущая страница: 16 (всего у книги 23 страниц)

It takes a little while, a horrible little while, for Manchee to find the scent again once we’re back in the woods but then he barks, “This way,” and we’re off again.

He’s a good bloody dog, have I said that?

Night’s fully fallen by now and I’m still sweating and I’m still coughing enough to win a contest and my feet ain’t made of nothing but blisters and my head’s still buzzy with feverish Noise but I’ve got food in my belly and more in the bag to see me thru a coupla days and so all that matters is still ahead of us.

“Can you smell her, Manchee?” I ask, as we balance on a log across a stream. “Is she still alive?”

“Smell Viola,” he barks, jumping off the other side. “Viola fear.”

Which hits me a little and I quicken my step. Another midnight (twenty-two days? Twenty-one?) and my torch battery gives out. I take out Viola’s but it’s the last we got. More hills and steeper, too, as we go on thru the night, harder to climb up, dangerous to climb down but we go and go and go, Manchee sniffing away, eating Wilf’s dried meat as we stumble forward, me coughing away, taking the shortest rests possible, usually bent double against trees, and the sun starts coming up over a hill so it’s like we’re walking up into the sunrise.

And it’s when light hits us full that I see the world start to shimmer.

I stop, hanging on to a fern to keep my balance against the steepness of the hill. Everything’s woozy for a second and I close my eyes but it don’t help as there’s just a wash of colours and sparkles behind my eyelids and my body is jelly-like and waving in the breeze I can feel coming off the hilltop and when it passes, it don’t really pass altogether, the world keeping its weird brightness, like I’ve woke up in a dream.

“Todd?” Manchee barks, worry there, no doubt from seeing who knows what in my Noise.

“The fever,” I say, coughing again. “I shouldn’t’ve thrown away that filthy rag.”

Ain’t nothing for it.

I take the last of the pain tabs from my medipak and we gotta keep going.

We get to the top of the hill and for a minute all the other hills in front of us and the river and the road down below rumble up and down like they’re on a blanket someone’s shaking and I do my best to blink it away till it calms down enough to keep walking. Manchee whines by my feet. I nearly tip over when I try and scratch him so instead I focus on getting down the hill without falling.

I think again of the knife at my back, of the blood that was on it when it went into my body and my blood mixed with the Spackle’s and who knows what now spinning round my insides since Aaron stabbed me.

“I wonder if he knew,” I say, to Manchee, to myself, to no one, as we get to the bottom of the hill and I lean against a tree to make the world stop moving. “I wonder if he killed me slow.”

“Course I did,” Aaron says, leaning out from behind the tree.

I yell out and fall back away from him and fling my arms in front of me trying to slap him away and I hit the ground on my butt and start scampering back before I look up–

And he’s gone.

Manchee’s got his head cocked at me. “Todd?”

“Aaron,” I say, my heart thundering, my breath catching and turning into meatier and meatier coughs.

Manchee sniffs the air again, sniffs the ground around him. “Trail this way,” he barks, shifting from foot to foot.

I look around me, coughing away, the world spotty and wavy.

No sign of him, no Noise other than mine, no silence of Viola. I close my eyes again.

I am Todd Hewitt, I think against the swirling. I am Todd Hewitt.

Keeping my eyes shut, I feel for the water bottle and take a swig and I tear a piece from Wilf’s bread and chew it down. Only then do I open my eyes again.

Nothing.

Nothing but woods and another hill to climb.

And sunlight that shimmers.

The morning passes and at the bottom of yet another hill there’s yet another creek. I refill the water bottles and take a few drinks from the cold water with my hands.

I feel bad, ain’t no two ways about it, my skin’s tingling and sometimes I’m shivering and sometimes I’m sweating and sometimes my head weighs a million pounds. I lean into the creek and splash myself with the cold.

I sit up and Aaron is reflected in the water.

“Killer,” he says, a smile across his torn-up face.

I jump back, scrabbling away for my knife (and feeling the pain shoot thru my shoulders again) but when I look up he ain’t there and Manchee’s made no sign of stopping his fish-chasing.

“I’m coming to find you,” I say to the air, air that’s started to move more and more with the wind.

Manchee’s head pops up from the water. “Todd?”

“I’ll find you if it’s the last thing I do.”

“Killer,” I hear again, whispered along the wind.

I lay for a second, breathing heavy, coughing but keeping my eyes peeled. I go back to the creek and I splash so much cold water on myself it makes my chest hurt.

I pick myself up and we carry on.

The cold water does the trick for a little while and we manage a few more hills as the sun gets to midday in the sky with minimal shimmer. When things do start to wobble again I stop us and we eat.

“Killer,” I hear from the bushes around us and then again from another part of the forest. “Killer.” And again from somewhere else. “Killer.”

I don’t look up, just eat my food.

It’s just the Spackle blood, I tell myself. Just the fever and the sickness and that’s all.

“Is that all?” Aaron says from across the clearing. “If that’s all I am, why you chasing me so bad?”

He’s wearing his Sunday robes and his face is all healed up like he’s back in Prentisstown, his hands clasped in front of him like he’s ready to lead us in prayer and he’s glowing in the sun and he’s smiling down at me.

The smiling fist I remember so well.

“The Noise binds us all, young Todd,” he says, his voice slithering and shiny like a snake. “If one of us falls, we all fall.”

“You ain’t here,” I say, clenching my teeth.

“Here, Todd,” Manchee barks.

“Ain’t I?” Aaron says and disappears in a shimmer.

My brain knows this Aaron ain’t real but my heart don’t care and it’s beating in my chest like a race. It’s hard to catch my breath and I waste more time waiting just to be able to stand up and move on into the afternoon.

The food’s helping, God bless Wilf and his crazy wife, but sometimes we can’t go much faster than a stumble. I start to see Aaron outta the corner of my eye pretty much all the time, hiding behind trees, leaning against rocks, standing on top of woodfall, but I just turn my head away and keep stumbling.

And then, from a hilltop, I see the road cross the river again down below. The landscape’s moving in a way that turns my stomach but I can definitely see a bridge down there, taking the road to the other side so there’s nothing now twixt me and the river.

I wonder for a minute about that other fork we never took back in Farbranch. I wonder where that road is in the middle of all this wilderness. I look from the hilltop to my left but there’s just woods as far as I can see and more hills that move like hills shouldn’t. I have to close my eyes for a minute.

We make our way down, too slow, too slow, the scent taking us close to the road and towards the bridge, a high rickety one with rails. Water’s gathered where the road turns into it, filling it with puddles and muck.

“Did he cross the river, Manchee?” I put my hands on my knees to catch my breath and cough.

Manchee sniffs the ground like a maniac, crossing the road, re-crossing it, going to the bridge and back to where we stand. “Wilf smell,” he barks. “Cart smell.”

“I can see the tracks,” I say, rubbing my face with my hands. “What about Viola?”

“Viola!” Manchee barks. “This way.”

He heads away from the road, keeping to this side of the river and following it. “Good dog,” I say twixt raggedy breaths. “Good dog.”

I follow him thru branches and bushes, the river rushing closer to my right than it’s been in days.

And I step right into a settlement.

I stand up straight and cough in surprise.

It’s been destroyed.

The buildings, eight or ten of them, are charcoal and ash and there ain’t a whisper of Noise nowhere.

For a second I think the army’s been here but then I see plants growing up in the burnt-out buildings and no smoke is rising from any fire and the wind just blows thru it like only the dead live here. I look round and there’s a few decrepit docks on the river, just down from the bridge, one lonely old boat knocking against it in the current and a few more half-sunk boats piled halfway up the riverbank along from what may have been a mill before it became a pile of burnt wood.

It’s cold and it’s long dead and here’s another place on New World that never made it to subdivided farming.

And I turn back round and in the centre of it stands Aaron.

His face is back to how it was when the crocs tore it open, peeled half away, his tongue lolling out the side of the gash in his cheek.

And he’s still smiling.

“Join us, young Todd,” he says. “The church is always open.”

“I’ll kill you,” I say, the wind stealing my words but I know he can hear me cuz I can hear every last thing he’s saying.

“You won’t,” he says, stepping forward, his fists clenched by his sides. “Cuz I says you ain’t a real killer, Todd Hewitt.”

“Try me,” I say, my voice sounding strange and metallic.

He smiles again, his teeth poking out the side of his face, and in a wash of shimmer he’s right in front of me. He puts his cut up hands to the opening of his robe and pulls it apart enough to show his bare chest.

“Here’s yer chance, Todd Hewitt, to eat from the Tree of Knowledge.” His voice is deep in my head. “Kill me.”

The wind’s making me shiver but I feel hot and sweaty at the same time and I can’t get no more than a third of a breath down my lungs and my head is starting to ache in a way that food ain’t helping and whenever I look anywhere fast everything I see has to slide into place to catch up.

I clench my teeth.

I’m probably dying.

But he’s going first.

I reach behind me, ignoring the pain twixt my shoulders, and I grab the knife outta the sheath. I hold it in front of me. It’s shiny with fresh blood and glinting in sunlight even tho I’m standing in shadow.

Aaron pulls his smile wider than his face can really go and he pushes his chest out to me.

I raise the knife.

“Todd?” Manchee barks. “Knife, Todd?”

“Go ahead, Todd,” Aaron says and I swear I smell the dankness of him. “Cross over from innocence to sin. If you can.”

“I’ve done it,” I say. “I’ve already killed.”

“Killing a Spackle ain’t killing a man,” he says, grinning away at how stupid I am. “Spackles are devils put here to test us. Killing one’s like killing a turtle.” He widens his eyes. “’Cept you can’t do that neither now, can ya?”

I grip the knife hard and I make a snarling sound and the world wavers.

But the knife still ain’t falling.

There’s a bubbling sound and gooey blood pours outta the gash in Aaron’s face and I realize he’s laughing.

“It took a long, long time for her to die,” he whispers.

And I call out from the pain–

And I raise the knife higher–

And I aim it at his heart–

And he’s still smiling–

And I bring the knife down–

And stab it right into Viola’s chest.

“No!” I say, in the second that it’s too late.

She looks up from the knife and right at me. Her face is filled with pain and confused Noise spills from her just like the Spackle that I–

(That I killed.)

And she looks at me with tears in her eyes and she opens her mouth and she says, “Killer”.

And as I reach out for her, she’s gone in a shimmer.

And the knife, clean of all blood, is still in my hand.

I fall onto my knees and then pitch forward and lie on the ground in the burnt-out settlement, breathing and coughing and weeping and wailing as the world melts around me so bad I don’t feel like it’s even solid no more.

I can’t kill him.

I want to. I want to so bad. But I can’t.

Cuz it ain’t me and cuz I lose her.

I can’t. I can’t I can’t I can’t.

I give in to the shimmering and I disappear for a while.

It’s good old Manchee, the friend who’s proved truest, who wakes me up with licks to my face and a worried murmured word coming thru his Noise and his whines.

“Aaron,” he’s yelping, quiet and tense. “Aaron.”

“Leave off, Manchee.”

“Aaron,” he whimpers, licking away.

“He ain’t really there,” I say, trying to sit up. “It’s just something–”

It’s just something Manchee can’t see.

“Where is he?” I say, getting up too fast, causing everything to swirl bright pink and orange. I reel back from what’s waiting for me.

There are a hundred Aarons at a hundred different places, all standing round me. There are Violas, too, frightened and looking to me for help, and Spackles with my knife sticking outta their chests and there’re all talking at once, all talking to me in a roar of voices.

“Coward,” they’re saying. All of ’em. “Coward” over and over again.

But I wouldn’t be a Prentisstown boy if I couldn’t ignore Noise.

“Where, Manchee?” I say, getting to my feet, trying not to see how everything’s pitching and sliding.

“This way,” he barks. “Down the river.”

I follow him thru the burnt-out settlement.

He leads me past what musta been the church and I don’t look at it as we go by and he runs up a small bluff and the wind’s getting howlier and the trees are bending and I think it’s not just how I’m seeing them and Manchee has to bark louder to let me know.

“Aaron!” he barks, sticking his nose in the air. “Upwind.”

Thru the trees on the little bluff I can see downriver. I can see a thousand Violas looking frightened of me.

I can see a thousand Spackle with my knife killing them.

I can see a thousand Aarons looking back at me and calling me “Coward” with the worst smile you ever seen.

And beyond them, in a camp by the side of the river, I see an Aaron who ain’t looking back at me at all.

I see an Aaron kneeling down in prayer.

And I see Viola on the ground in front of him.

“Aaron,” Manchee barks.

“Aaron,” I say.

Coward.

“What are we gonna do?” says the boy, creeping up to my shoulder.

I raise my head from the cold river water and let it splash down my back. I stumbled back down from the bluff, elbowing my way thru crowds all calling me coward, and I got to the riverbank and I plunged my head straight in and now the cold is making me shake violently but it’s also calming the world down. I know it won’t last, I know the fever and spack blood infection will win in the end, but for now, I’m gonna need to see as clearly as possible.

“How are we gonna get to them?” the boy asks, moving round to my other side. “He’ll hear our Noise.”

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 gonna do?” the boy asks again, standing a little way away, book still in one hand, knife in the other.

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 – my dog – 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 gonna save her,” I say, right to my dog. “Both of us.”

“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?

“Perfect.” I take it from him.

“This won’t work,” the boy says, hiding in a dark corner. I can see the glint of the knife in one of his hands. “You won’t save her.”

“I will.” I break off some larger splinters from the stick. Only one end is blackened charcoal but that’s exactly what I want. “Can you carry this?” I say to Manchee, holding it out.

He takes it in his mouth, tosses it a little to get it comfortable, but then it rests just fine. “Yeth!” he barks.

“Great.” I stand up straight and nearly fall over. “Now we need a fire.”

“You can’t make a fire,” the boy says, already outside waiting for us. “Her fire-making box is broken.”

“You don’t know nothing,” I say, not looking at him. “Ben taught me.”

“Ben’s dead,” says the boy.

“Early one mor-r-ning,” I sing, loud and clear, making the whirly shapes of the world go spangly and weird, but I keep on singing. “Just as the sun was ri-i-sing.”

“Yer not strong enough to make a fire.”

“I heard a maiden call from the val-l-ley below.” I find a long, flat piece of wood and use the knife to carve a little hollow in it. “Oh, don’t dece-e-ive me.” I carve a rounded end to another smaller stick. “Oh, never le-e-ave me.”

“How could you use a poor maiden so?” the boy finishes.

I ignore him. I put the rounded end of the stick into the little hollow and start spinning it twixt my hands, pressing hard into the wood. The rhythm of it matches the thumping in my head and I start to see me in the woods with Ben, him and me racing to see who could get the first smoke. He always won and half the time I could never get any sorta fire at all. But those were times.

Those were times.

“C’mon,” I say to myself. I’m sweating and coughing and woozy but I’m making my hands keep on spinning. Manchee’s barking at the wood to try and help it along.

And then a little finger of smoke rises from the hollow.

“Ha!” I cry out. I protect it from the wind with my hand and blow on it to make it catch. I use some dried moss as kindling and when the first little flame shoots out it’s as near as I’ve come to joy since I don’t know when. I throw some small sticks on it, wait for them to catch, too, then some larger ones, and pretty soon there’s a real fire burning in front of me. A real one.

I leave it to burn for a minute. I’m counting on us being downwind to keep the smoke from Aaron.

And I’m counting on that wind for other reasons, too.

I lurch my way towards the riverbank, using tree trunks to keep me upright, till I make it to the dock. “C’mon, c’mon,” I say under my breath as I steady myself to walk down it. It creaks under my feet and once I nearly pitch over into the river but I do finally make it to the boat still tied there.

“It’ll sink,” says the boy, standing knee-high in the river.

I hop in the little boat and after a lot of wobbling and coughing, I stand up in it. It’s rickety and narrow and warping.

But it floats.

“You don’t know how to steer a boat.”

I get out and cross the dock and make my way back to the settlement and search round till I find a flat enough piece of wood to use as an oar.

And that’s all I need.

We’re ready.

The boy’s standing there, holding the things of mine in each hand, rucksack on his back, no real nothing on his face, no Noise that I can hear.

I stare him down. He don’t say nothing.

“Manchee?” I call but he’s already at my feet.

“Here, Todd!”

“Good boy.” We go to the fire. I take the stick he found and put the already burnt end into it. After a minute, the end is red hot and smoky, with flames catching on the new wood. “You sure you can hold this?” I say.

He takes the non-burning end into his maul and there he is, best ruddy dog in the universe, ready to carry fire to the enemy.

“Ready, friend?” I say.

“Weddy, Thawd!” he says, mouth full, tail wagging so fast I see it as a blur.

“He’ll kill Manchee,” the boy says.

I stand, world spinning and shining, my body barely my own, my lungs coughing up bits of themselves, my head thumping, my legs shaking, my blood boiling, but I stand.

I ruddy well stand.

“I am Todd Hewitt,” I say to the boy. “And I am leaving you here.”

“You can’t never do that,” he says, but I’m already turning to Manchee and saying “Go on, boy,” and he takes off back up the bluff and down the other side, burning stick in his mouth, and I count to a hundred, loud, so’s I can’t hear no one say nothing and then I make myself count to a hundred again and that’s enough and I lurch as fast as I can back to the dock and the boat and I get myself in and I take the oar onto my lap and I use the knife to cut away the last of the raggedy rope tying the little boat in place.

“You can’t never leave me behind,” the boy says, standing on the dock, book in one hand, knife in the other.

“Watch me,” I say and he gets smaller and smaller in the shimmering and fading light as the boat pulls away from the dock and starts making its way downstream.

Towards Aaron.

Towards Viola.

Towards whatever waits for me down the river.