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The Knife of Never Letting Go
  • Текст добавлен: 17 сентября 2016, 21:18

Текст книги "The Knife of Never Letting Go"


Автор книги: Patrick Ness



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Текущая страница: 6 (всего у книги 23 страниц)


“Hey!” I say, following her over to the wreckage. “We can’t be hanging around–”

I get up to the door at the same time she pops out, making me jump back. She waits for me to step outta the way, then climbs down from the door and walks past me, carrying a bag in one hand and a coupla small packets in the other. I look back at the door and stand on tiptoes, trying to peek in. It all looks a wreck inside, as you’d expect, things tumbled everywhere, lots of busted everything.

“How’d you live thru that?” I ask, turning around.

But she’s got herself busy. She’s put down the bag and the packs and has taken out what looks like a small, flat green box. She sets it down on a dry-ish area of ground and piles some sticks on top of it.

I look at her in disbelief. “There ain’t time to make a–”

She presses a button on the side the box and whoosh we’ve got ourselves a whole, full-sized, instant campfire.

I just stand there like a fool, my mouth wide open.

I want a campfire box.

She looks at me and rubs her arms a little bit and it’s only then that I really realize I’m soaking wet and cold and achy all over and that a fire is just about the closest thing to a blessing I can think of.

I look back into the blackness of the swamp, as if I’d be able to see anyone coming. Nothing, of course, but no sounds neither. No one close. Not yet.

I look back at the fire. “Only for a second,” I say.

I walk over to the fire and start warming up my hands, keeping on my rucksack. She rips open one of the packs and throws it to me and I stare at it again till she dips her fingers into her own pack, taking out what must be a piece of dried fruit or something and eating it.

She’s giving me food. And fire.

Her face still has no kinda expression at all, just blank as a stone as she stands by the fire and eats. I start eating, too. The fruit or whatever are like little shrivelled dots but sweet and chewy and I’ve finished the whole pack in half a minute before I notice Manchee begging.

“Todd?” he says, licking his lips.

“Oh,” I say, “sorry.”

The girl looks at me, looks at Manchee, then takes out a small handful from her own pack and holds it out to Manchee. When he approaches, she jerks back a little like she can’t help it and drops the fruit on the ground instead. Manchee don’t mind. He gobbles it right up.

I nod at her. She don’t nod back.

It’s full-fledged night now, dark as anything outside our little circle of light. You can only even see stars thru the hole in the treetops made by the crashing ship. I try to think back over the last week if I heard any distant booms from the swamp but anything this far out could’ve been drowned in the Noise of Prentisstown, I spose, and been missed by everyone.

I think of certain preachers.

Nearly everyone.

“We can’t stay,” I say. “I’m sorry about yer folks and all but there’s others that’ll be after us. Even if Aaron’s dead.”

At Aaron’s name, she flinches, just a little. He must’ve said his name to her. Or something. Maybe.

“I’m sorry,” I say, tho I don’t know what for. I shift my rucksack on my back. It feels heavier than ever. “Thanks for the grub but we gotta go.” I look at her. “If yer coming with?”

The girl looks at me for a second and then uses the tip of her boot to knock the burning sticks off the little green box. She reaches down, presses the button again and picks up the box without even burning herself.

Man, I really want one of those things.

She puts it in the bag she brought outta the wreckage with her and then brings the strap of the bag over her head, like her own rucksack. Like she was planning on coming with me even before now.

“Well,” I say, when all she does is stare at me. “I guess we’re ready then.”

Neither of us move.

I look back to her ma and pa. She does, too, but only for a second. I wanna say something to her, something more, but whaddya say? I open my mouth anyway but she starts rummaging in her bag. I think it’s gonna be something to, I don’t know, remember her folks with or make some kind of gesture or something but she finds what she’s looking for and it’s only a torch. She flicks it on – so she does know how they work – and starts walking, first towards me, then past me, as if we’re already on our way.

And that’s it, like her ma and pa ain’t just lying there dead.

I watch her go for a second before saying, “Oi!”

She turns back to me.

“Not that way.” I point to our left. “That way.”

I head off the right way, Manchee follows, and I look back and the girl’s coming after us. I take one last quick look behind her and as bad as I want to stay and look thru that wreckage for more neat stuff, and boy do I, we gotta go, even tho it’s night, even tho nobody’s slept, we gotta go.

And so we do, catching sight of the horizon thru the trees when we can and heading towards the space twixt the close mountain and the two farther away mountains. Both moons are more than halfway to full and the sky is clear so there’s at least a little bit of light to walk by, even under the swamp canopy, even in the dark.

“Keep yer ears open,” I say to Manchee.

“For what?” Manchee barks.

“For things that could get us, idiot.”

You can’t really run in a dark swamp at night so we walk as fast as we can, me shining the torch in front of us, tripping our way round tree roots and trying not to tromp thru too much mud. Manchee goes ahead and comes back, sniffing round and sometimes barking, but nothing serious. The girl keeps up, never falling behind but never getting too close neither. Which is good, cuz even tho my Noise is about the quietest it’s been all day, the silence of her still presses on it whenever she comes too near.

It’s weird that she didn’t do nothing more about her ma and pa when we left, ain’t it? Didn’t cry or have one last visit or nothing? Am I wrong? I’d give anything to see Ben and even Cillian again, even if they were . . . Well, even if they are.

“Ben,” Manchee says, down by my knees.

“I know.” I scratch him twixt the ears.

We keep on.

I’d want to bury them, if that’s what it came to. I’d want to do something, I don’t know what. I stop and look back at the girl but her face is just the same, just the same as ever, and is it cuz she crashed and her parents died? Is it cuz Aaron found her? Is it cuz she’s from somewhere else?

Don’t she feel nothing? Is she just nothing at all on the inside?

She’s looking at me, waiting for me to go on.

And so, after a second, I do.

Hours. There’s hours of this silent night-time fast creeping. Hours of it. Who knows how far we’re going or if we’re heading the right way or what, but hours. Once in a while, I hear the Noise of a night-time creacher, swamp owls cooing their way to dinner, swooping down on probably short-tailed mice, whose Noise is so quiet it’s barely like language at all, but mostly all I hear is the now-and-then fast-fading Noise of a night-time creacher running away from all the ruckus we must be making by tromping thru a swamp at night.

But the weird thing is there’s still no sound of nothing behind us, nothing chasing us, no Noise, no branches breaking, nothing. Maybe Ben and Cillian threw them off the trail. Maybe the reason I’m running ain’t so important after all. Maybe–

The girl stops to pull her shoe outta some mud.

The girl.

No. They’re coming. The only maybe is that maybe they’re waiting till daybreak so they can come faster.

So on and on we go, getting more and more tired, stopping only once so that everyone can have a private pee off in the bushes. I get some of Ben’s food outta my own rucksack and feed small bits to everyone, since it’s my turn.

And then more walking and more walking.

And then there comes an hour just before dawn where there can’t be no more.

“We gotta stop,” I say, dropping the rucksack at the base of a tree. “We gotta rest.”

The girl sets her own bag down by another tree without needing any more convincing and we both just sort of collapse down, leaning on our bags like pillows.

“Five minutes,” I say. Manchee curls up by my legs and closes his eyes almost immediately. “Only five minutes,” I call over to the girl, who’s pulled a little blanket outta her bag to cover herself with. “Don’t get too comfortable.”

We gotta keep going, no question of that. I’ll only close my eyes for a minute or two, just to get a little rest, and then we’ll keep on going faster than before.

Just a little rest, that’s all.

I open my eyes and the sun is up. Only a little but ruddy well up.

Crap. We’ve lost at least an hour, maybe two.

And then I realize it’s a sound that’s woken me.

It’s Noise.

I panic, thinking of men finding us and I scramble to my feet–

Only to see that it ain’t a man.

It’s a cassor, towering over me and Manchee and the girl.

Food? says its Noise.

I knew they hadn’t left the swamp.

I hear a little gasp from over where the girl’s sleeping. Not sleeping no more. The cassor turns to look at her. And then Manchee’s up and barking, “Get! Get! Get!” and the cassor’s neck swings back our way.

Imagine the biggest bird you ever saw, imagine it got so big that it couldn’t even fly no more, we’re talking two and a half or even three metres tall, a super long bendy neck stretching up way over yer head. It’s still got feathers but they look more like fur and the wings ain’t good for much except stunning things they’re about to eat. But it’s the feet you gotta watch out for. Long legs, up to my chest, with claws at the end that can kill you with one kick if yer not careful.

“Don’t worry,” I call over to the girl. “They’re friendly.”

Cuz they are. Or they’re sposed to be. They’re sposed to eat rodents and only kick if you attack ’em, but if you don’t attack ’em, Ben says they’re friendly and dopey and’ll let you feed ’em. And they’re also good to eat, a combo which made the new settlers of Prentisstown so eager to hunt ’em for food that by the time I was born there wasn’t a cassor to be seen within miles. Yet another thing I only ever saw in a vid or Noise.

The world keeps getting bigger.

“Get! Get!” Manchee barks, running in a circle round the cassor.

“Don’t bite it!” I shout at him.

The cassor’s neck is swinging about like a vine, following Manchee around like a cat after a bug. Food? its Noise keeps asking.

“Not food,” I say, and the big neck swings my way.

Food?

“Not food,” I say again. “Just a dog.”

Dog? it thinks and starts following Manchee around again, trying to nip him with his beak. The beak ain’t a scary thing at all, like being nipped by a goose, but Manchee’s having none of it, leaping outta the way and barking, barking, barking.

I laugh at him. It’s funny.

And then I hear a little laugh that ain’t my own.

I look over. The girl is standing by her tree, watching the giant bird chase around my stupid dog, and she’s laughing.

She’s smiling.

She sees me looking and she stops.

Food? I hear and I turn to see the cassor starting to poke its beak into my rucksack.

“Hey!” I shout and start shooing it away.

Food?

“Here.” I fish out a small block of cheese wrapped in a cloth that Ben packed.

The cassor sniffs it, bites it, and gobbles it down, its neck rippling in long waves at it swallows. It snaps its beak a few times like a man might smack his lips after he ate something. But then its neck starts rippling the other way and with a loud hack, up comes the block of cheese flying right back at me, covered in spit but not hardly even crushed, smacking me on the cheek and leaving a trail of slime across my face.

Food? says the cassor and starts slowly walking off into the swamp, as if we’re no longer even as interesting as a leaf.

“Get! Get!” Manchee barks after it, but not following. I wipe the slime from my face with my sleeve and I can see the girl smiling at me while I do it.

“Think that’s funny, do ya?” I say and she keeps pretending like she’s not smiling but she is. She turns away and picks up her bag.

“Yeah,” I say, taking charge of things again. “We slept way too long. We gotta go.”

We get going on yet more walking without any more words or smiling. Pretty quick, the ground starts to get less even and a bit drier. The trees start to thin out some, letting the sun directly on us now and then. After a little bit, we get to a small clearing, almost like a little field that rises up to a short bluff, standing just over the treetops. We climb it and stop at the top. The girl holds out another pack of that fruity stuff. Breakfast. We eat, still standing.

Looking out over the trees, the way in front of us is clear. The larger mountain is on the horizon and you can see the two smaller mountains in the distance behind a little bit of haze.

“That’s where we’re going,” I say, pointing. “Or where I think we’re sposed to go, anyway.”

She sets down her fruit pack and goes into her bag again. She pulls out the sweetest little pair of binos you’ve ever seen. My old ones back home that broke years ago were like a breadbox in comparison. She holds them up to her eyes and looks for a bit, then hands ’em to me.

I take ’em and I look out to where we’re going. Everything’s so clear. The ground stretching out before us in a green forest, curving downhill into proper valleys and dales as it starts to become real land again and not just the mucky bowl of a swamp and you can even see where the marsh starts really turning back into a proper river, cutting deeper and deeper canyons as it gets closer to the mountains. If you listen, you can even hear it rushing. I look and I look and I don’t see no settlement but who knows what’s around the bends and curves? Who knows what’s up ahead?

I look behind us, back the way we came, but it’s still early enough for a mist to be covering most of the swamp, hiding everything, giving nothing away.

“Those’re sweet,” I say, handing her the binos. She puts them back in her bag and we stand there for a minute eating.

We stand arm’s length apart cuz her silence still bothers me. I chew down on a piece of dried fruit and I wonder what it must be like to have no Noise, to come from a place with no Noise. What does it mean? What kind of place is it? Is it wonderful? Is it terrible?

Say you were standing on a hilltop with someone who had no Noise. Would it be like you were alone there? How would you share it? Would you want to? I mean, here we are, the girl and I, heading outta danger and into the unknown and there’s no Noise overlapping us, nothing to tell us what the other’s thinking. Is that how it’s sposed to be?

I finish the fruit and crumple up the packet. She holds out her hand and shoves the rubbish back into her bag. No words, no exchange, just my Noise and a great big nothing from her.

Was this what it was like for my ma and pa when they first landed? Was New World a silent place all over before–

I look up at the girl suddenly.

Before.

Oh, no.

I’m such a fool.

I’m such a stupid goddam fool.

She has no Noise. And she came from a ship. Which means she came from a place with no Noise, obviously, idiot.

Which means she’s landed here and hasn’t caught the Noise germ yet.

Which means that when she does, it’s gonna do what it did to all the other women.

It’s gonna kill her.

It’s gonna kill her.

And I’m looking at her and the sun is shining down on us and her eyes are getting wider and wider as I’m thinking it and it’s then I realize something else stupid, something else obvious.

Just cuz I can’t hear any Noise from her don’t mean she can’t hear every word of mine.



“No!” I say quickly. “Don’t listen! I’m wrong! I’m wrong! It’s a mistake! I’m wrong!”

But she’s backing away from me, dropping her own empty packet of fruit things, her eyes getting wider.

“No, don’t–”

I step towards her but she takes an even quicker step away, her bag dropping to the ground.

“It’s–” I say but what do you say? “I’m wrong. I’m wrong. I was thinking of somebody else.”

Which is the stupidest thing to say of all cuz she can hear my Noise, can’t she? She can see me struggling to think of something to say and even if it’s coming out a big mess, she can see herself all over it and besides, I surely know by now there’s no taking back something that’s been sent out into the world.

Dammit. Goddam it all to hell.

“Dammit!” Manchee barks.

“Why didn’t you SAY you could hear me?” I shout, ignoring that she ain’t said a word since I met her.

She steps back farther, putting a hand up to her face to cover her mouth, her eyes sending asking marks at me.

I try to think of something, anything to make it all right, but I ain’t got nothing. Just Noise with death and despair all over it.

She turns and runs, back down the hill and away from me as fast as she can.

Crap.

“Wait!” I yell, already running after her.

She’s going back the way we came, down across the little field and disappearing into the trees, but I’m right behind her, Manchee after me. “Stop!” I shout after her. “Wait!”

But why should she? What kind of reason could she possibly have to wait around?

You know, she’s really amazingly fast when she wants to be.

“Manchee!” I call and he understands me and shoots off after her. Not that I could really lose her, any more than she could lose me. As loud as my Noise is chasing her, her silence is just as loud up ahead, even now, even knowing she’s going to die, still as silent as a grave.

“Hold on!” I shout, tripping over a root and landing hard on my elbows, which jolts every ache I’ve got in my body and face, but I have to get up. I have to get up and go after her. “Dammit!”

“Todd!” I hear Manchee bark up ahead, outta sight. I stumble on a bit and get my way round a big mass of shrubs and there she is, sitting on a big flat rock jutting outta the ground, her knees up to her chest, rocking back and forth, eyes wide but blank as ever.

“Todd!” Manchee barks again when he sees me, then he hops up on the rock next to her and starts sniffing her.

“Leave her alone, Manchee,” I say, but he doesn’t. He sniffs close at her face, licks her once or twice, then sits down next to her, leaning into her side as she rocks.

“Look,” I say to her, catching my breath and knowing I don’t know what to say next. “Look,” I say again, but nothing else is coming.

I just stand there panting, not saying nothing, and she sits there rocking till there don’t seem nothing else to do but sit down on the rock myself, keeping a distance away outta respect and safety, I guess, and so that’s what I do. She rocks and I sit and I wonder what to do.

We pass a good few minutes this way, a good few minutes when we should be moving, the swamp getting on with its day around us.

Till I finally have another thought.

“I might not be right.” I say it as soon as I think it. “I could be wrong, you see?” I turn to her and I start talking fast. “I got lied to about everything and you can search my Noise if you want to be sure that’s true.” I stand, talking faster. “There wasn’t sposed to be another settlement. Prentisstown was sposed to be it for the whole stupid planet. But there’s the other place on the map! So maybe–”

And I’m thinking and I’m thinking and I’m thinking.

“Maybe the germ was only Prentisstown. And if you ain’t been in the town, then maybe yer safe. Maybe yer fine. Cuz I sure can’t hear nothing from you anything like Noise and you don’t seem sick. So maybe yer okay.”

She’s looking at me and still rocking and I don’t know what she’s thinking. Maybe probably ain’t all that comforting a word when it’s maybe yer not dying.

I keep on thinking, letting her see my Noise as free and clear as I can. “Maybe we all caught the germ and, and, and, yeah!” I get another thought, a good one. “Maybe we cut ourselves off so the other settlement wouldn’t catch it! That must be it! And so if you stayed in the swamp, then yer safe!”

She stops rocking quite so much, still looking at me, maybe believing me?

But then like some doofus who don’t know when to stop, I let that thought go on, don’t I? Cuz if it’s true that Prentisstown was cut off, then maybe that other settlement ain’t gonna be too happy to see me strolling in, are they? Maybe it was the other settlement that did the cutting off in the first place, cuz maybe Prentisstown really was contagious.

And if you can catch the Noise from other people, then the girl can catch it from me, can’t she?

“Oh, man,” I say, leaning down and putting my hands on my knees, my whole body feeling like it’s falling, even tho I’m still standing up. “Oh, man.”

The girl hugs herself to herself again on the rock and we’re back to even worse than where we started.

This ain’t fair. I am telling you this ain’t fair at all. You’ll know what to do when you get to the swamp, Todd. You’ll know what to do. Yeah, thanks very bloody much for that, Ben, thanks for all yer help and concern cuz here I am and I ain’t got the first clue what to do. It ain’t fair. I get kicked outta my home, I get beaten up, the people who say they care for me have been lying all these years, I gotta follow a stupid map to a settlement I never knew about, I gotta somehow read a stupid book–

The book.

I slip off the rucksack and take out the book. He said all the answers were in here, so maybe they really are. Except–

I sigh and open it up. It’s all written, all words, all in my ma’s handwriting, pages and pages and pages of it and I–

Well, anyway. I go back to the map, to Ben’s writing on the other side, the first chance I’ve had to look at it in something other than torchlight, which ain’t really for reading. Ben’s words are lined up at the top. Go to are the first ones, those are definitely the first words, and then there are a coupla longer words that I don’t have time to sound out yet and then a coupla big paragraphs that I really don’t have time for right now but at the bottom of the page Ben’s underlined a group of words together.

I look at the girl, still rocking, and I turn my back to her. I put my finger under the first underlined word.

Let’s see. Yow? You, it’s gotta be you. You. Okay, me what? M. Moo? Moose? Moosed? You moosed. You moosed? What the hell does that mean? Wuh. Wuh. Warr. Warren? Tuh. Tuhee? Tuheem. You moosed warren tuheem? No, wait, them. It’s them. Course it’s them, idiot.

But You moosed warren them?

Huh?

’Member when I said Ben tried to teach me to read? ’Member when I said I wasn’t too good at it? Well–

Well, whatever.

You moosed warren them.

Idiot.

I look at the book again, flip thru the pages. Dozens of them, dozens upon dozens, all with more words in every corner, all saying nothing to me at all, no answers of any kind.

Stupid effing book.

I shove the map back inside, slam the cover shut and throw the book on the ground.

You idiot.

“Stupid effing book!” I say, out loud this time, kicking it into some ferns. I turn back to the girl. She’s still just rocking back and forth, back and forth, and I know, I know, okay, I know, but it starts to piss me off. Cuz if this is a dead end, I got nothing more to offer and she ain’t offering nothing neither.

My Noise starts to crackle.

“I didn’t ask for this, you know,” I say. She don’t even look. “Hey! I’m talking to you!”

But nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing.

“I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO!” I yell and stand and start stomping around, shouting till my voice scratches. “I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO! I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO!” I turn back to the girl. “I’m SORRY! I’m sorry this happened to you but I don’t know what to do about it AND STOP EFFING ROCKING!”

“Yelling, Todd,” Manchee barks.

“Awwghh!” I shout, putting my hands over my face. I take them away and nothing’s changed. That’s the thing I’m learning about being thrown out on yer own. Nobody does nothing for you. If you don’t change it, it don’t get changed.

“We gotta keep going,” I say, picking up my rucksack all angry-like. “You ain’t caught it yet, so maybe just keep yer distance from me and you’ll be okay. I don’t know but that’s all there is so that’s what we gotta do.”

Rock, rock, rock.

“We can’t go back so we gotta go forward and that’s that.”

Still rocking.

“I KNOW you can HEAR me!”

She don’t even flinch.

And I’m suddenly tired all over again. “Fine,” I sigh. “Fine, whatever, you stay here and rock. Who cares? Who ruddy cares about anything?”

I look at the book on the ground. Stupid thing. But it’s what I got so I reach down, pick it up, put it in the plastic bag, back in my rucksack, and put my rucksack back on.

“C’mon, Manchee.”

“Todd?!” he barks, looking twixt me and the girl. “Can’t leave, Todd!”

“She can come if she wants,” I say, “but–”

I don’t even really know what the but might be. But if she wants to stay here and die all alone? But if she wants to go back and get caught by Mr Prentiss Jr? But if she wants to risk catching the Noise from me and dying that way?

What a stupid world.

“Hey,” I say, trying to make my voice a little gentler but my Noise is so raging there’s really no point. “You know where we were heading, right? To the river twixt the mountains. Just follow it till you come to a settlement, okay?”

Maybe she’s hearing me, maybe she ain’t.

“I’ll keep an eye out for you,” I say. “I understand if you don’t wanna get too close but I’ll keep an eye out for you.”

I stand there for another minute to see if it sinks in.

“Well,” I finally say. “Nice knowing ya.”

I start walking away. When I get to the big stack of shrubs, I turn back, giving her one more chance. But she ain’t changed, just rocking and rocking.

So that’s that then. Off I go, Manchee reluctantly on my heels, looking back as much as he can, barking my name all the time. “Todd! Todd! Leaving, Todd? Todd! Can’t leave, Todd!” I finally smack him on the rump. “Ow, Todd?”

“I don’t know, Manchee, so quit asking.”

We make our way back thru the trees to where the ground dries out, to the clearing and up the little bluff where we ate our breakfast and looked at the beautiful day and I had my brilliant deducshun about her death.

The little bluff where her bag still lies on the ground.

“Oh, goddam it!”

I look at it for a second and it’s one thing after another, ain’t it? I mean, do I take it back to her? Do I just hope she finds it? Will I put her in danger if I do? Will I put her in danger if I don’t?

The sun’s well up now and the sky as blue as fresh meat. I put my hands on my hips and take a long look round like men do when they’re thinking. I look at the horizon, look back the way we came, the mist mostly burnt off by now and the whole swamp forest covered in sunlight. From the top of the bluff, you can see out over it, over where we drove our feet into oblivion by walking it all. If it were clear enough and you had powerful enough binos you could probably see all the way back to town.

Powerful binos.

I look down at her bag on the ground there.

I’m reaching for it when I think I hear something. Like a whisper. My Noise leaps and I look up to see if the girl’s following me out after all. Which makes me more relieved than I want to say.

But it ain’t the girl. I hear it again. A whisper. More than one whisper. Like the wind is carrying whispering on it.

“Todd?” Manchee says, sniffing the air.

I squint into the sunlight to look back over the swamp.

Is there something out there?

I grab the girl’s bag and look thru it for the binos. There’s all kinds of neat crap in there but I take the binos out and look thru them.

Just swamp is all I see, the tops of swamp trees, little clearings of swampy bits of water, the river eventually starting to form itself again. I take the binos away from my face and look them over. There are little buttons everywhere and I push a few and realize I can make everything look even closer. I do that a coupla times and I’m sure I can hear whispering now. I’m sure of it.

I find the gash in the swamp, the ditch, find the wreckage of her ship, but there’s nothing there except what we left. I look over the top of the binos, wondering if I see movement. I look thru them again, a little nearer to us where some trees are rustling.

But that’s only the wind, ain’t it?

I scan back and forth, pressing buttons to get closer and farther away, but I keep coming back to those rustling trees. I keep the binos trained on a kinda open, gully-type thing twixt me and them.

I keep the binos there.

I keep the binos watching, my guts twisting as maybe I’m hearing whispering, maybe I ain’t.

I keep watching.

Till the rustling reaches the clearing and I see the Mayor himself come outta the trees on horseback, leading other men, also on horses.

And they’re heading right this way.


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