Текст книги "The Knife of Never Letting Go"

Автор книги: Patrick Ness

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Текущая страница: 20 (всего у книги 23 страниц)

I won’t say what I feel when we run down the other side of the hill and away from Ben, for ever this time cuz how is there any life after this?

Life equals running and when we stop running maybe that’s how we’ll know life is finally finished.

“Come on, Todd,” Viola calls, looking back over her shoulder. “Please, hurry.”

I don’t say nothing.

I run.

We get down the hill and back by the river. Again. With the road on our other side. Again.

Always the same.

The river’s louder than it was, rushing by with some force, but who cares? What does it matter?

Life ain’t fair.

It ain’t.

Not never.

It’s pointless and stupid and there’s only suffering and pain and people who want to hurt you. You can’t love nothing or no one cuz it’ll all be taken away or ruined and you’ll be left alone and constantly having to fight, constantly having to run just to stay alive.

There’s nothing good in this life. Not nothing good nowhere.

What’s the effing point?

“The point is,” Viola says, stopping halfway thru a dense patch of scrub to hit me really hard on the shoulder, “he cared enough about you to maybe sacrifice himself and if you just GIVE UP” – she shouts that part – “then you’re saying that the sacrifice is worth nothing!”

“Ow,” I say, rubbing my shoulder. “But why should he have to sacrifice himself? Why should I have to lose him again?”

She steps up close to me. “Do you think you’re the only person who’s lost someone?” she says in a dangerous whisper. “Do you forget that my parents are dead, too?”

I did.

I did forget.

I don’t say nothing.

“All I’ve got now is you,” she says, her voice still angry. “And all you’ve got now is me. And I’m mad he left, too, and I’m mad my parents died and I’m mad we ever thought of coming to this planet in the first place but that’s how it is and it’s crap that it’s just us but we can’t do anything about it.”

I still don’t say nothing.

But there she is and I look at her, really look at her, for probably the first time since I saw her cowering next to a log back in the swamp when I thought she was a Spackle.

A lifetime ago.

She’s still kinda cleaned up from the days in Carbonel Downs (only yesterday, only just yesterday) but there’s dirt on her cheeks and she’s skinnier than she used to be and there are dark patches under her eyes and her hair is messy and tangled and her hands are covered in sooty blackness and her shirt has a green stain of grass across the front from when she once fell and there’s a cut on her lip from when a branch smacked her when we were running with Ben (and no bandages left to stitch it up) and she’s looking at me.

And she’s telling me she’s all I’ve got.

And that I’m all she’s got.

And I feel a little bit how that feels.

The colours in my Noise go different.

Her voice softens but only a little. “Ben’s gone and Manchee’s gone and my mother and father are gone,” she says. “And I hate all of that. I hate it. But we’re almost at the end of the road. We’re almost there. And if you don’t give up, I don’t give up.”

“Do you believe there’s hope at the end?” I ask.

“No,” she says simply, looking away. “No, I don’t, but I’m still going.” She eyes me. “You coming with?”

I don’t have to answer.

We carry on running.

But.

“We should just take the road,” I say, holding back yet another branch.

“But the army,” she says. “And the horses.”

“They know where we’re going. We know where they’re going. We all seem to have taken the same route to get to Haven.”

“And we’ll hear them coming,” she agrees. “And the road’s fastest.

“The road’s fastest.”

And she says, “Then let’s just take the effing road and get ourselves to Haven.”

I smile, a little. “You said effing,” I say. “You actually said the word effing.”

So we take the effing road, as fast as our tiredness will let us. It’s still the same dusty, twisty, sometimes muddy river road that it was all those miles and miles ago and the same leafy, tree-filled New World all around us.

If you were just landing here and didn’t know nothing about nothing you really might think it was Eden after all.

A wide valley is opening up around us, flat at the bottom where the river is but distant hills beginning to climb up on either side. The hills are lit only by moonlight, no sign of distant settlements or anyway of ones with lights still burning.

No sign of Haven ahead neither but we’re at the flattest point of the valley and can’t see much past the twists in the road either before us or back. Forest still covers both sides of the river and you’d be tempted to think that all of New World had closed up and everyone left, leaving just this road behind ’em.

We go on.

And on.

Not till the first stripes of dawn start appearing down the valley in front of us do we stop to take on more water.

We drink. There’s only my Noise and the river rushing by.

No hoofbeats. No other Noise.

“You know this means he succeeded,” Viola says, not meeting my eye. “Whatever he did, he stopped the man on the horse.”

I just mm and nod.

“And we never heard gunshots.”

I mm and nod again.

“I’m sorry for shouting at you before,” she says. “I just wanted you to keep going. I didn’t want you to stop.”

“I know.”

We’re leaning against a pair of trees by the riverbank. The road is to our backs and across the river is just trees and the far side of the valley rises up and then only the sky above, getting lighter and more blue and bigger and emptier till even the stars start leaving it.

“When we left on the scout ship,” Viola says, looking up across the river with me, “I was really upset leaving my friends behind. Just a few kids from the other caretaker families, but still. I thought I’d be the only one my age on this planet for seven whole months.”

I drink some water. “I didn’t have friends back in Prentisstown.”

She turns to me. “What do you mean, no friends? You had to have friends.”

“I had a few for a while, boys a coupla months older than me. But when boys become men they stop talking to boys,” I shrug. “I was the last boy. In the end there was just me and Manchee.”

She gazes up into the fading stars. “It’s a stupid rule.”

“It is.”

We don’t say nothing more, just me and Viola by the riverside, resting ourselves as another dawn comes.

Just me and her.

We stir after a minute, get ourselves ready to go again.

“We could reach Haven by tomorrow,” I say. “If we keep on going.”

“Tomorrow,” Viola nods. “I hope there’s food.”

It’s her turn to carry the bag so I hand it to her and the sun is peeking up over the end of the valley where it looks like the river’s running right into it and as the light hits the hills across the river from us, something catches my eye.

Viola turns immediately at the spark in my Noise. “What?”

I shield my eyes from the new sun. There’s a little trail of dust rising from the top of the far hills.

And it’s moving.

“What is that?” I say.

Viola fishes out the binos and looks thru ’em. “I can’t see properly,” she says. “Trees in the way.”

“Someone travelling?”

“Maybe that’s the other road. The fork we didn’t take.”

We watch for a minute or two as the dust trail keeps rising, heading towards Haven at the slow speed of a distant cloud. It’s weird seeing it without any sound.

“I wish I knew where the army was,” I say. “How far they were behind us.”

“Maybe Carbonel Downs put up too good a fight.” Viola points the binos upriver to see the way we came but it’s too flat, too twisty. All there is to be seen is trees. Trees and sky and quiet and a silent trail of dust making its way along the far hilltops.

“We should go,” I say. “I’m starting to feel a little spooked.”

“Let’s go then,” Viola says, quiet-like.

Back on the road.

Back to the life of running.

We have no food with us so breakfast is a yellow fruit that Viola spies on some trees we pass that she swears she ate in Carbonel Downs. They become lunch, too, but it’s better than nothing.

I think again of the knife at my back.

Could I hunt, if there was time?

But there ain’t no time.

We run past midday and into afternoon. The world is still abandoned and spooky. Just me and Viola running along the valley bottom, no settlements to be seen, no caravans or carts, no other sound loud enough to be heard over the rushing of the river, getting bigger by the hour, to the point where it’s hard even to hear my Noise, where even if we want to talk, we have to raise our voices.

But we’re too hungry to talk. And too tired to talk. And running too much to talk.

And so on we go.

And I find myself watching Viola.

The trail of dust on the far hilltop follows us as we run, pulling ahead slowly as the day gets older and finally disappearing in the distance and I watch her checking it as we hurry on. I watch her run next to me, flinching at the aches in her legs. I watch her rub them when we rest and watch her when she drinks from the water bottles.

Now that I’ve seen her, I can’t stop seeing her.

She catches me. “What?”

“Nothing,” I say and look away cuz I don’t know either.

The river and the road have straightened out as the valley gets steeper and closer on both sides. We can see a little bit back the way we came. No army yet, no horsemen neither. The quiet is almost scarier than if there was Noise everywhere.

Dusk comes, the sun setting itself in the valley behind us, setting over wherever the army might be and whatever’s left of New World back there, whatever’s happened to the men who fought against the army and the men who joined.

Whatever’s happened to the women.

Viola runs in front of me.

I watch her run.

Just after nightfall we finally come to another settlement, another one with docks on the river, another one abandoned. There are only five houses in total along a little strip of the road, one with what looks like a small general store tacked onto the front.

“Hold on,” Viola says, stopping.

“Dinner?” I say, catching my breath.

She nods.

It takes about six kicks to open the door of the general store and tho there clearly ain’t no one here at all, I still look round expecting to be punished. Inside, it’s mostly cans but we find a dry loaf of bread, some bruised fruit and a few strips of dried meat.

“These aren’t more than a day or two old,” Viola says, twixt mouthfuls. “They must have fled to Haven yesterday or the day before.”

“Rumours of an army are a powerful thing,” I say, not chewing my dried meat well enough before I swallow and coughing up a little bit of it.

We fill our bellies as best we can and I shove the rest of the food into Viola’s bag, now hanging round my shoulders. I see the book when I do. Still there, still wrapped in its plastic bag, still with the knife-shaped slash all the way thru it.

I reach in thru the plastic bag, rubbing my fingers across the cover. It’s soft to the touch and the binding still gives off a faint whiff of leather.

The book. My ma’s book. It’s come all the way with us. Survived its own injury. Just like us.

I look up at Viola.

She catches me again.

“What?” she says.

“Nothing.” I put the book back in the bag with the food. “Let’s go.”

Back on the road, back down the river, back towards Haven.

“This should be our last night, you know,” Viola says. “If Doctor Snow was right, we’ll be there tomorrow.”

“Yeah,” I say, “and the world will change.”

“Again.”

“Again,” I agree.

We go on a few more paces.

“You starting to feel hope?” Viola asks, her voice curious.

“No,” I say, fuddling my Noise. “You?”

Her eyebrows are up but she shakes her head. “No, no.”

“But we’re going anyway.”

“Oh, yeah,” Viola says. “Hell or high water.”

“It’ll probably be both,” I say.

The sun sets, the moons rise again, smaller crescents than the night before. The sky is still clear, the stars still up, the world still quiet, just the rush of the river, getting steadily louder.

Midnight comes.

Fifteen days.

Fifteen days till–

Till what?

We carry on thru the night, the sky falling slowly past us, our words stopping a little as dinner wears off and tiredness takes hold again. Just before dawn we find two overturned carts in the road, grains of wheat spilled everywhere and a few empty baskets rolled on their sides across the road.

“They didn’t even take the time to save everything,” Viola says. “They left half of it on the ground.”

“Good a place as any for breakfast.” I flip over one of the baskets, drag it over to where the road overlooks the river and sit down on it.

Viola picks up another basket, brings it over right next to me and sits down. There are glimmers of light in the sky as the sun gets set to rise, the road pointing right towards it, the river, too, rushing towards the dawn. I open up the bag and take out the general store food, handing some to Viola and eating what I’ve got. We drink from the water bottles.

The bag is open on my lap. There are our remaining clothes and there are the binos.

And there’s the book again.

I feel her silence next to me, feel the pull of it on me and the hollows in my chest and stomach and head and I remember the ache I used to feel when she got too close, how it felt like grief, how it felt like a loss, like I was falling, falling into nothing, how it clenched me up and made me want to weep, made me actually weep.

But now–

Now, not so much.

I look over to her.

She’s gotta know what’s in my Noise. I’m the only one around and she’s got better and better at reading it despite how loud the river’s getting.

But she sits there, quietly eating, waiting for me to say.

Waiting for me to ask.

Cuz this is what I’m thinking.

When the sun comes up, it’ll be the day we get to Haven, the day we get to a place filled with more people than I’ve ever seen together in my life, a place filled with so much Noise you can’t never be alone, unless they found a cure, in which case I’ll be the only Noisy one which would actually be worse.

We get to Haven, we’ll be part of a city.

It won’t just be Todd and Viola, sitting by a river as the sun comes up, eating our breakfast, the only two people on the face of the planet.

It’ll be everyone, all together.

This might be our last chance.

I look away from her to speak. “You know that thing with voices that you do?”

“Yeah,” she says, quiet.

I take out the book.

“D’you think you could do a Prentisstown voice?”

“My Dearest Todd,” Viola reads, copying Ben’s accent as best she can. Which is pretty ruddy good. “My dearest son.”

My ma’s voice. My ma speaking.

I cross my arms and look down into the wheat spilled across the ground.

“I begin this journal on the day of yer birth, the day I first held you in my arms rather than in my belly. You kick just as much outside as in! And yer the most beautiful thing that’s ever happened in the whole entire universe. Yer easily the most beautiful thing on New World and there’s no contest in New Elizabeth, that’s for sure.”

I feel my face getting red but the sun’s still not high enough for anyone to see.

“I wish yer pa were here to see you, Todd, but New World and the Lord above saw fit to take him with the sickness five months ago and we’ll both just have to wait to see him in the next world.

“You look like him. Well, babies don’t look much like anything but babies but I’m telling you you look like him. Yer going to be tall, Todd, cuz yer pa was tall. Yer going to be strong, cuz yer pa was strong. And yer going to be handsome, oh, are you ever going to be handsome. The ladies of New World won’t know what hit them.”

Viola turns a page and I don’t look at her. I sense she’s not looking at me neither and I wouldn’t wanna see a smile on her face right about now.

Cuz that weird thing’s happening too.

Her words are not her words and they’re coming outta her mouth sounding like a lie but making a new truth, creating a different world where my ma is talking directly to me, Viola speaking with a voice not her own and the world, for a little while at least, the world is all for me, the world’s being made just for me.

“Let me tell you bout the place you’ve been born into, son. It’s called New World and it’s a whole planet made entirely of hope–”

Viola stops, just for a second, then carries on.

“We landed here almost exactly ten years ago looking for a new way of life, one clean and simple and honest and good, one different from Old World in all respects, where people could live in safety and peace with God as our guide and with love for our fellow man.

“There’ve been struggles. I won’t begin this story to you with a lie, Todd. It ain’t been easy here–

y“Oooh, listen to me, writing down ‘ain’t’ when addressing my son. That’s settler life for you, I spose, not much time for niceties and it’s easy to sink to the level of people who revel in squandering their manners. But there’s not much harm in ‘ain’t’, surely? Okay, that’s decided then. My first bad choice as a mother. Say ‘ain’t’ all you like, Todd. I promise not to correct you.”

Viola purses her lips but I don’t say nothing so she continues.

“So there’s been hardship and sickness on New World and in New Elizabeth. There’s something called the Noise here on this planet that men have been struggling with since we landed but the strange thing is you’ll be one of the boys in the settlement who won’t know any different and so it’ll be hard to explain to you what life was like before and why it’s so difficult now but we’re managing the best we can.

“A man called David Prentiss, who’s got a son just a bit older than you, Todd, and who’s one of our better organizers – I believe he was a caretaker on the ship over, if memory serves me correct–”

Viola pauses at this, too, but this time it’s me who waits for her to say something. She don’t.

“He convinced Jessica Elizabeth, our Mayor, to found this little settlement on the far side of an enormous swamp so that the Noise of the rest of New World can’t never reach us unless we allow it to. It’s still Noisy as anything here in New Elizabeth but at least it’s people we know, at least it’s people we trust. For the most part.

“My role here is that I farm several fields of wheat up north of the settlement. Since yer pa passed, our close friends Ben and Cillian have been helping me out since theirs is the next farm over. I can’t wait for you to meet them. Well wait, you already have! They’ve already held you and said hello so look at that, one day in the world and you’ve already made two friends. It’s a good way to start, son.

“In fact, I’m sure you’ll do fine cuz you came out two weeks early. Clearly you’d decided you’d had enough and wanted to see what this world had to offer you. I can’t blame you. The sky is so big and blue and the trees so green and this is a world where the animals talk to you, really talk, and you can even talk back and there’s so much wonder to be had, so much just waiting for you, Todd, that I almost can’t stand that it’s not happening for you right now, that yer going to have to wait to see all that’s possible, all the things you might do.”

Viola takes a breath and says, “There’s a break in the page here and a little space and then it says Later like she got interrupted.” She looks up at me. “You okay?”

“Yeah, yeah,” I nod real fast, my arms still crossed. “Carry on.”

It’s getting lighter, the sun truly coming up. I turn away from her a little.

She reads.

“Later.

“Sorry, son, had to stop for a minute for a visit from our holy man, Aaron.”

Another pause, another lick of the lips.

“We’ve been lucky to have him, tho I must admit of late he’s not been saying things I exactly agree with about the natives of New World. Which are called the Spackle, by the way, and which were a BIG surprise, since they were so shy at first neither the original planners back on Old World or our first scout ships even knew they were here!

“They’re very sweet creachers. Different and maybe primitive and no spoken or written language that we can really find but I don’t agree with some of the thinking of the people here that the Spackle are animals rather than intelligent beings. And Aaron’s been preaching lately about how God has made a dividing line twixt us and them and–

“Well that’s not really something to discuss on yer first day, is it? Aaron believes what he believes devoutly, has been a pillar of faith for all of us these long years and should anyone find this journal and read it, let me say here for the record that it was a privilege to have him come by and bless you on yer first day of life. Okay?

“But I will say also on yer first day that the attractiveness of power is something you should learn about before you get too much older, it’s the thing that separates men from boys, tho not in the way most men think.

“And that’s all I’ll say. Prying eyes and all that.

“Oh, son, there’s so much wonder in the world. Don’t let no one tell you otherwise. Yes, life has been hard here on New World and I’ll even admit to you here, cuz if I’m going to start out at all it has to be an honest start, I’ll tell you that I was nearly given to despair. Things in the settlement are maybe more complicated than I can quite explain right now and there’s things you’ll learn for yerself before too long whether I like it or not and there’ve been difficulties with food and with sickness and it was hard enough even before I lost yer pa and I nearly gave up.

“But I didn’t give up. I didn’t give up cuz of you, my beautiful, beautiful boy, my wondrous son who might make something better of this world, who I promise to raise only with love and hope and who I swear will see this world come good. I swear it.

“Cuz when I held you for the first time this morning and fed you from my own body, I felt so much love for you it was almost like pain, almost like I couldn’t stand it one second longer.

“But only almost.

“And I sang to you a song that my mother sang to me and her mother sang to her and it goes,”

And here, amazingly, Viola sings.

Actually sings.

My skin goes gooseflesh, my chest crushes. She musta heard the whole tune in my Noise and of course Ben singing it cuz here it comes, rolling outta her mouth like the peal of a bell.

The voice of Viola making the world into the voice of my ma, singing the song.

“Early one morning, just as the sun was rising,

I heard a maiden call from the valley below,

‘Oh don’t deceive me, oh never leave me,

How could you use a poor maiden so?’”

I can’t look at her.

I can’t look at her.

I put my hands to my head.

“And it’s a sad song, Todd, but it’s also a promise. I’ll never deceive you and I’ll never leave you and I promise you this so you can one day promise it to others and know that it’s true.

“Oh, ha, Todd! That’s you crying. That’s you crying from yer cot, waking up from yer first sleep on yer first day, waking up and asking the world to come to you.

“And so for today I have to put this aside.

“Yer calling for me, son, and I will answer.”

Viola stops and there’s only the river and my Noise.

“There’s more,” Viola says after a while when I don’t raise my head, flipping thru the pages. “There’s a lot more.” She looks at me. “Do you want me to read more?” She looks back at the book. “Do you want me to read the end?”

The end.

Read the last thing my ma wrote in the last days before–

“No,” I say quickly.

Yer calling for me, son, and I will answer.

In my Noise forever.

“No,” I say again. “Let’s leave it there for now.”

I glance over at Viola and I see that her face is pulled as sad as my Noise feels. Her eyes are wet and her chin shakes, just barely, just a tremble in the dawn sunlight. She sees me watching, feels my Noise watching her, and she turns away to face the river.

And there, in that morning, in that new sunrise, I realize something.

I realize something important.

So important that as it dawns fully I have to stand up.

I know what she’s thinking.

I know what she’s thinking.

Even looking at her back, I know what she’s thinking and feeling and what’s going on inside her.

The way she’s turned her body, the way she’s holding her head and her hands and the book in her lap, the way she’s stiffening a little in her back as she hears all this in my Noise.

I can read it.

I can read her.

Cuz she’s thinking about how her own parents also came here with hope like my ma. She’s wondering if the hope at the end of our road is just as false as the one that was at the end of my ma’s. And she’s taking the words of my ma and putting them into the mouths of her own ma and pa and hearing them say that they love her and they miss her and they wish her the world. And she’s taking the song of my ma and she’s weaving it into everything else till it becomes a sad thing all her own.

And it hurts her, but it’s an okay hurt, but it hurts still, but it’s good, but it hurts.

She hurts.

I know all this.

I know it’s true.

Cuz I can read her.

I can read her Noise even tho she ain’t got none.

I know who she is.

I know Viola Eade.

I raise my hands to the side of my head to hold it all in.

“Viola,” I whisper, my voice shaking.

“I know,” she says quietly, pulling her arms tight around her, still facing away from me.

And I look at her sitting there and she looks across the river and we wait as the dawn fully arrives, each of us knowing.

Each of us knowing the other.