Monsters of Men

by Patrick Ness

  “What the hell did all that mean?” I ask the Mayor as Mr Tate leaves.

  “Didn’t you finish your chemistry in school?”

  “You closed the school and burnt all the books.”

  “Ah, so I did.” He looks to the hilltop, to the glow we can see up above it in the spray from the waterfall, the glow from the campfires of the Spackle army. “They used to be just hunters and collectors, Todd, with some limited wild farming. Not exactly scientists.”

  “Which means what?”

  “Which means,” he says, “that our enemy has spent the thirteen years since the last war listening to us, learning from us, no doubt, on this planet of information.” He taps his chin. “I wonder how they learn. If they’re all part of some larger single voice.”

  “If you hadn’t killed all the ones in town,” I say, “you coulda asked.”

  He ignores me. “All of which adds up to the fact that our enemy gets more formidable by the moment.”

  I frown. “You sound almost happy.”

  Captain O’Hare comes back over to us, his hands full and his face sour. “Blankets and food, sir,” he says. The Mayor nods towards me, forcing Mr O’Hare to hand them over to me himself. He does and then storms away again, tho like Mr Tate, you can’t hear his Noise to see what’s making him so mad.

  I spread the blanket over Angharrad, but she still ain’t saying nothing. Her wound is healing already so it ain’t that. She just stands there, head down, staring at the ground, not eating, not drinking, not responding to nothing I do.

  “You could tie her up with the other horses, Todd,” the Mayor says. “She’d at least be warmer that way.”

  “She needs me,” I say. “I gotta stick by her.”

  He nods. “Your loyalty is admirable. A fine quality I’ve always noticed in you.”

  “Seeing as you don’t got none at all?”

  In reply, all he does is smile that smile again, that one that makes you want to knock his head right off. “You should eat and sleep while you can, Todd. You never know when the battle will need you.”

  “A battle you started,” I say. “We wouldn’t even be here if you hadn’t–”

  “Here we go again,” he says, his voice sharper. “It’s time you stopped whining about what might have been and start thinking about what is.”

  And this makes me a little mad–

  And so I look at him–

  And I think about what is–

  I think about him falling in the ruins of the cathedral after I blasted him with Viola’s name. I think about him shooting his own son without even pausing for thought–

  “Todd–”

  I think about him watching Viola struggle under the water in the Office of the Ask as he tortured her. I think about my ma talking about him in her journal when Viola read it to me and what he did to the women of old Prentisstown–

  “That isn’t true, Todd,” he says. “That’s not what happened–”

  I think about the two men who raised me, who loved me, and how Cillian died on our farm to buy me time to escape and how Davy shot Ben on the roadside for doing exactly the same thing. I think about Manchee, my brilliant bloody dog, dying after saving me, too–

  “Those were nothing to do with me–”

  I think about the fall of Farbranch. I think about the people there being shot while the Mayor watched. I think about–

  I AM THE CIRCLE AND THE CIRCLE IS ME.

  He sends it, hard, straight into the middle of my head.

  “Stop that!” I yell, flinching back.

  “You give too much away, Todd Hewitt,” he snaps, finally almost angry. “How do you ever expect to lead men if you broadcast every last sentiment?”

  “I don’t expect to lead men,” I spit back.

  “You were going to lead this army when you had me tied up, and if that day comes again, you’ll need to keep your own counsel, now won’t you? Have you kept up your practice with what I taught you?”

  “I don’t want nothing you could teach me.”

  “Oh, but you do.” He steps closer. “I’ll say it to you as often as it takes you to believe it: there’s power in you, Todd Hewitt, power that could rule this planet.”

  “Power that could rule you.”

  He smiles again, but it’s white hot. “Do you know how I keep my Noise from being heard, Todd?” he says, his voice all twisty and low. “Do you know how I keep everyone from hearing every last secret I’ve got?”

  “No–”

  He leans forward. “With as little effort as possible.”

  And I’m saying, “Get back!” but–

  There it is again, right in my head, I AM THE CIRCLE AND THE CIRCLE IS ME–

  But this time it’s different–

  There’s a lightness–

  A breath-stealing feeling–

  A weightlessness to it that makes my stomach rise–

  “I give you a gift,” he says, his voice floating thru my head like a cloud on fire. “The same gift I’ve given to my captains. Use it. Use it to defeat me. I dare you.”

  I look into his eyes, into the blackness of them, the blackness that swallows me whole–

  I AM THE CIRCLE AND THE CIRCLE IS ME.

  And that’s all I can hear in the whole world.

  {VIOLA}

  The town is eerily quiet as Acorn and I walk through it, some of it even silent, the people of New Prentisstown having fled into the cold night somewhere. I can’t imagine how terrified they must be, not knowing what’s happening or what might be waiting for them.

  I look behind me as we ride through the empty square in front of the ruins of the cathedral. Hanging up there in the sky, above the still-standing bell tower, is another probe, keeping its distance from Spackle arrows but tracking me, watching me go.

  But that’s not all I’ve got.

  Acorn and I make our way out of the square and down the road that leads to the battlefield, closer and closer to the army. Close enough so I can see them waiting there. They watch me as I ride up, soldiers sitting on their camprolls, huddled around fires. Their faces are tired and almost shocked, looking at me like I could be a ghost coming out of the darkness.

  “Oh, Acorn,” I whisper nervously. “I don’t really have a plan here.”

  One of the soldiers stands as I approach, pointing his rifle at me. “Stop right there,” he says. He’s young, dirty-haired, with a fresh wound on his face, stitched badly by firelight.

  “I want to see the Mayor,” I say, trying to keep my voice steady.

  “The who?”

  “Who is it?” another soldier asks, standing up, too, also young, maybe even as young as Todd.

  “One of them terrorists,” the first one says. “Come here to set off a bomb.”

  “I’m not a terrorist,” I say, glancing over their heads, trying to find Todd out there, trying to hear his Noise in the rising ROAR–

  “Off the horse,” the first soldier says. “Now.”

  “My name is Viola Eade,” I say, Acorn shifting beneath me. “The Mayor, your President, knows me.”

  “I don’t care what yer name is,” says the first one. “Off the horse.”

  Girl colt, Acorn warns–

  “I said, off the horse!”

  I hear the cocking of a rifle, and I start yelling, “Todd!”

  “I’m not warning you again!” says the soldier and other soldiers are standing now–

  “TODD!” I shout again–

  The second soldier grabs Acorn’s reins and others are pressing forward. Submit! Acorn snarls, teeth bared, but the soldier just hits him in the head with his rifle–

  “TODD!”

  And hands are grabbing at me and Acorn’s whinnying Submit, submit! but the soldiers are pulling me off the saddle and I’m holding on as hard as I can–

  “Let her go,” a voice says, cutting through all of the shouting, even though it doesn’t sound raised at all.

  The soldiers let me go at once, and I right myself o
n Acorn’s saddle.

  “Welcome, Viola,” the Mayor says, as a space opens between us.

  “Where’s Todd?” I say. “What have you done with him?”

  And then I hear his voice–

  “Viola?”

  –a step behind the Mayor and pushing past him, shoving him hard in the shoulder as he forces his way towards me, his eyes wide and dazed, but here he comes–

  “Viola,” he says, reaching up to me and he’s smiling and I’m reaching for him, too–

  But for a second, just a quick second, there’s something weird about his Noise, something light, something vanishing–

  For a second, I can barely hear it–

  And then his feelings wash over it and he’s Todd again and he grips me hard and says, “Viola.”

  [TODD]

  “And then Simone said, I’ve got a better idea,” Viola says and opens the flap on the new bag she’s carrying. She reaches in and takes out two flat metal things. They’re small as skimming stones, curved and shiny, shaped perfectly to fit in yer palm. “Comms,” she says. “You and I can talk to each other no matter where we are.”

  She reaches over and puts one in my hand–

  –and I feel her fingers there for a second and I feel the relief all over again, the relief of seeing her, the relief of having her here, right here in front of me, even in the way her silence pulls at me still, even in the way she’s still looking at me a bit funny–

  It’s my Noise she’s looking at, I know it is.

  I am the Circle and the Circle is me. He put it into my head, light and disappearing. Said it was a “teknique”, something I could practise to make it so I could be just as silent as him and his captains.

  And for a minute there, for a minute there I think I was–

  “Comm one,” she says into her comm and suddenly the metal on mine turns into a palm-sized screen filled with Viola’s smiling face.

  It’s like I’m holding her right in my hand.

  She shows me her comm with a little laugh and there’s my own face, looking surprised.

  “The signal’s relayed through the probe,” she says, pointing back towards the city, where a dot of light is hovering far down the road. “Simone’s keeping it back so this one doesn’t get shot down.”

  “Smart move,” says the Mayor, from where he’s been standing nearby. “May I see one of those?”

  “Nope,” Viola says, not even looking at him. “If you do this,” she says to me, pressing her comm at the edge, “you can talk to the scout ship, too. Simone?”

  “I’m here,” says a woman, popping up next to Viola on the screen in my hand. “Are you okay down there? There was a minute where–”

  “I’m okay,” says Viola. “I’m with Todd. This is him, by the way.”

  “Nice to meet you, Todd,” says the woman.

  “Uh,” I say. “Hi?”

  “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” Viola says to the woman.

  “I’ll be watching. And Todd?”

  “Yeah?” I say, looking at the woman’s little face.

  “You take care of Viola, you hear?”

  “Don’t you worry,” I say.

  Viola presses her comm again and the faces disappear. She takes a long breath and gives me a tired smile. “So I leave you for five minutes and you go off and fight a war?” she says and she’s saying it to be kinda funny but I wonder–

  I wonder if seeing all that death is why she looks a little different to me. More real, more there, like it’s just the most incredible thing in the world that we’re both still alive and I feel my chest get all funny and tight and I think, Here she is, right here, my Viola, she came for me, she’s here–

  And I find myself thinking how I want to take her hand again and never let it go, to feel the skin of it, the warmth of it, hold it tight against my own hand and–

  “Your Noise is funny,” she says, looking at me strange again. “It’s blurry. I can feel the feelings there–” and she looks away and my face goes red for no reason at all “–but it’s hard to read clearly.”

  I’m about to tell her about the Mayor, about how I sorta blanked out for a minute but when I opened my eyes again, my Noise was lighter, was quieter–

  I’m about to tell her this–

  But she lowers her voice and leans in close. “Is it like with your horse?” she asks, cuz she saw how quiet Angharrad was when she rode up, Acorn not even able to get a herd-greeting out of her. “Is it because of what you saw?”

  And that’s enough to make the battle come rushing back to the front of my thoughts, rushing back in all its horror, and even if my Noise is blurry she must be able to tell cuz she takes my hand and it’s just care and calm and I suddenly feel like I want to curl up into it for the rest of my life and just cry there for ever and my eyes get wet and she sees and she breathes, “Todd,” with all her kindness and I have to look away from her again and somehow we both end up looking over at the Mayor, standing across the campfire, watching everything we do.

  I hear her sigh. “Why’d you let him go, Todd?” she whispers.

  “I didn’t have no choice,” I whisper back. “The Spackle were coming and the army was only gonna follow him into war.”

  “But it’s probably him the Spackle want in the first place. They’re only attacking because of the genocide.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m not all that sure about that,” I say and for the first time I let myself really think about 1017 again, about me breaking his arm once in anger, about pulling him from the pile of Spackle bodies, about how no matter what I did, good or bad, he still wanted me dead.

  I look back at her. “What do we do now, Viola?”

  “We stop the war is what we do,” she says. “Mistress Coyle says there was a truce, so we try to get one again. Maybe Bradley and Simone can talk to the Spackle. Tell them we’re not all like this.”

  “But what if they attack again before you can?” We look over to the Mayor again, who nods at us. “We’re gonna need him to stop ’em from killing us in the meantime.”

  Viola frowns. “So he gets away with his crimes again. Because we need him.”

  “He’s the one with the army,” I say. “They follow him. Not me.”

  “And he follows you?”

  I sigh. “That’s the plan. He’s kept his word so far.”

  “So far,” she says quietly. Then she yawns and rubs her eyes with the heels of her hands. “I can’t remember the last time I slept.”

  I look down at my own hand, no longer holding hers and remember what she said to Simone. “So yer going back?”

  “I have to,” she says. “I’ve got to find Mistress Coyle so she can’t make it any worse.”

  I sigh again. “Okay. Remember what I said, tho. I ain’t leaving you. Not even in my head.”

  And then she does take my hand again and she don’t say nothing but she don’t have to cuz I know, I know her and she knows me and we sit there for a little while more but then there’s nothing for it and she has to go. She gets stiffly to her feet. Acorn gives one last nuzzle to Angharrad, then comes back over to pick Viola up.

  “I’ll tell you how I’m doing,” she says, holding up the comm. “Tell you where I am. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  “Viola?” the Mayor says, stepping over from the campfire as she climbs on Acorn’s saddle.

  Viola rolls her eyes. “What?”

  “I was wondering, please,” he says, like he was just asking to borrow an egg, “if you could kindly tell the people on your ship that I will happily meet them at their earliest convenience.”

  “Yeah, I’ll be sure to do that,” she says. “And in return, let me say this.” She points back at the probe, still hanging there in the distant sky. “We’re watching you. You lay a hand on Todd, and there are weapons on that ship that will blow you to smithereens just because I tell them to.”

  And I swear the Mayor’s smile just gets bigger.

  Viola gives me a last, long look, but
then she’s on her way, back thru the city, back to find wherever Mistress Coyle might be hiding.

  “She’s quite a girl,” the Mayor says, stepping up beside me.

  “Yer not allowed to talk about her,” I say. “Not never.”

  He lets that slide by. “It’s almost dawn,” he says. “You should get some rest. It’s been a big day.”

  “One I don’t wanna repeat.”

  “I’m afraid there’s nothing we can do about that.”

  “Yes, there is,” I say, feeling better now that Viola’s said there might be a way outta this. “We’re gonna make a truce with the Spackle again. You just need to hold ’em back till we do.”

  “Is that so?” he says, sounding amused.

  “Yes,” I say, a little harder.

  “That’s not quite how it works, Todd. They won’t be interested in talking to you if they think they’re in a position of strength. Why would they want peace if they’re certain they can annihilate us?”

  “But–”

  “Don’t worry, Todd. I know this war. I know how to win this war. You show your enemy you can beat him and then you can have any kind of peace you want.”

  I start to say something back but I’m finally too tired to argue. I can’t remember the last time I slept neither.

  “You know something, Todd?” the Mayor says to me. “I could swear your Noise is a bit quieter.”

  And–

  I AM THE CIRCLE AND THE CIRCLE IS ME.

  He sends into my head again, with that same lightness, that same floating feeling–

  That same feeling that makes my Noise disappear–

  The feeling I didn’t tell Viola about–

  (cuz it makes the screaming of the war disappear, too, makes it so I don’t gotta see all the dying over and over–)

  (and is there something else there, too?)

  (a low hum behind the lightness–)

  “You stay outta my head,” I say. “I told you if you tried to control me, I’d–

  “I’m not in your head, Todd,” he says. “That’s the beauty of it. It’s all you. Practise it. It’s a gift.”

  “I don’t want no gift from you.”

  “I’m sure that’s the case entirely,” he says, still smiling.