by Patrick Ness
“I wanted to talk to you, my girl,” she says, looking me in the eye, maybe seeing if I’ll look away.
I don’t. “I want to talk to you, too.”
“Then let me go first, my girl,” she says.
And then she says something I never expected in a million years.
[TODD]
“Fires, sir,” Mr O’Hare says, not a minute after I hang up with Viola.
“I am not in fact blind, Captain,” the Mayor says, “but thank you once again for pointing out the obvious.”
We’ve stopped on the road back into town from the bloody house cuz there are fires on the horizon. Some of the abandoned farmhouses on the north hill of the valley are burning.
At least I hope they’re abandoned.
Mr O’Hare’s caught up to us with a group of about twenty soldiers, who look as tired as I feel. I watch ’em, reading their Noise. They’re all ages, old and young, but all old in the eyes now. Hardly any of this group wanted to be soldiers but were forced into it by the Mayor, forced from families, from farms and shops and schools.
And then they started seeing death every day.
I am the Circle and the Circle is me, I think again.
I do it all the time now, reaching for the silence, making the thoughts and memories go away, and most of the time it works on the outside, too. People can’t hear my Noise, I can hear ’em not hearing me, just like Mr Tate and Mr O’Hare, and I gotta think that’s part of the reason the Mayor showed me, thinking to make me one of his men.
Like that’s ever gonna happen.
I ain’t told Viola bout it, tho. I don’t know why.
Maybe cuz I ain’t seen her, which is something I’ve hated about the past eight days. She’s stayed up on the hilltop to keep tabs on Mistress Coyle but every time I call she’s in that bed and looking paler and weaker and I know she’s sick and getting sicker and she ain’t telling me about it, probably so I don’t worry, which only makes me worry more cuz if something’s wrong with her, if something happens to her–
I am the Circle and the Circle is me.
And everything calms down a bit.
I ain’t told her. I don’t want her to worry. I got it under control.
Boy colt? Angharrad asks nervously under me.
“It’s okay, girl,” I say. “We’ll be home soon.” I wouldn’t have taken her out if I’d known how bad the scene at the house was gonna be. She only let me back up on her two days ago and she still starts at the slightest snap of a twig.
“I can send men up to fight the fires,” Mr O’Hare says.
“There’d be no point,” the Mayor says. “Let them burn.”
Submit! Juliet’s Joy screeches underneath him at no one in particular.
“I’ve got to get a new horse,” the Mayor mutters.
And then he lifts his head in a way that makes me notice.
“What?” I say.
But he’s looking round, first to the path back to the bloody house, then to the road into town. Nothing’s changed.
Except the look on the Mayor’s face.
“What?” I say again.
“Can you not hear–?”
He stops again.
And then I do hear it–
Noise–
Noise that ain’t human–
Coming from all sides–
Everywhere, like the soldier said–
“They wouldn’t,” the Mayor says, his face pinching with anger. “They wouldn’t dare.”
But I can hear it clearly now–
We’re surrounded, as quickly as that.
Spackle are coming straight for us.
{VIOLA}
What Mistress Coyle says to me is, “I never apologized to you for the bomb at the cathedral.”
I don’t say anything back.
I’m too astonished.
“It wasn’t an attempt to murder you,” she says. “Nor did I think your life was worth less than anyone else’s.”
I swallow hard. “Get out,” I say and I’m surprised at myself. It must be the fever talking. “Right now.”
“I was hoping the President would look through your bag,” she says. “He’d take out the bomb and that would be the end of our problems. But I also thought it would only come into play if you were captured. And if you were captured, you were already likely dead.”
“That wasn’t your decision to make.”
“It was, my girl.”
“If you’d asked me, I might have even said–”
“You’d do nothing that might harm your boy.” She waits for me to contradict her. I don’t. “Leaders must sometimes make monstrous decisions,” she says, “and my monstrous decision was that if your life was likely to be lost on an errand you insisted on taking, then I would at least take the chance, however slim, to make your death worth it.”
I can feel how red my face is getting and I begin to shake from both fever and pure hot anger. “That’s only one way it could have worked out. There are a whole bunch of other things that could have happened, all of which end up with me and Lee blown to bits.”
“Then you would have been a martyr for the cause,” Mistress Coyle says, “and we would have fought in your name.” She looks at me hard. “You’d be surprised at how powerful a martyr can be.”
“Those are words a terrorist would use–”
“Nevertheless, Viola, I wanted to say to you that you were right.”
“I’ve had just about enough–”
“Let me finish,” she says. “It was a mistake, the bomb. Though I may have had good reasons in my desperation to get to him, that’s still not enough to take such a heavy risk with a life that isn’t my own.”
“Damn right–”
“And for that, I’m sorry.”
There’s a silence now as she says the actual words, a heavy silence which lasts, and then lasts some more, and then she makes to leave.
“What do you want here?” I say, stopping her. “Do you really want peace or do you just want to beat the Mayor?”
She arches an eyebrow at me. “Surely one is required for the other.”
“But what if trying for both means you don’t get either?”
“It has to be a peace worth living for, Viola,” she says. “If it just goes back to the way it was before, then what’s the point? Why have any of us died?”
“There’s a convoy of almost 5000 people on the way. It won’t be at all like it was before.”
“I know that, my girl–”
“And think what a powerful position you could be in if you’re the one who helps us make a new truce? Who helps make the world peaceful for them?
She looks thoughtful for a moment, then she runs her hand up the side of the door frame as a way of not looking at me. “I told you once how impressed I was with you. Do you remember that?”
I swallow, because that memory involves Maddy, who was shot while helping me to be impressive. “I do.”
“I still am. Even more than before.” She’s still not looking at me. “I was never a girl here, you know. I was already grown when we landed, and I tried to help found the fishing village with some others.” She purses her lips. “And we failed. The fish ate more of us than we ate of them.”
“You could try again,” I say. “With the new settlers. You said the ocean wasn’t all that far, two days’ ride–”
“One day, really,” she says. “A couple hours on a fast horse. I told you two days because I didn’t want you following me there.”
I frown. “Yet another lie–”
“But I was wrong about that, too, my girl. You would have come if it had taken a month. That’s how impressed I am with you. How you’ve survived, how you’ve kept yourself in a position to make a real impact, how you’re singlehandedly trying to win your peace.”
“Then help me,” I say.
She taps the door frame with the flat of her hand once or twice, as if still thinking.
“I’m just wondering, my girl,” she finally says. �
�Wondering if you’re ready.”
“Ready for what?”
But then she turns and leaves without another word.
“Ready for what?” I call after her, and then I swing myself out of bed, getting my feet to the floor and standing up–
And immediately falling right onto the other bed out of sheer dizziness.
I take a few deep breaths to make the world stop spinning–
Then I stand back up and set out after her.
[TODD]
The soldiers raise their rifles and start looking all round but the Spackle ROAR seems to be coming from everywhere, closing in fast from all direkshuns–
The Mayor’s got his own rifle up. I got mine, too, one hand on Angharrad to steady her, but there’s nothing to see, not yet–
And then a soldier down the road from us falls to the ground, screaming and grabbing at his chest–
“There!” shouts the Mayor–
As suddenly a whole platoon of Spackle, dozens of ’em, come blazing outta the woods down the road, shooting their white sticks at the soldiers, who start falling even as they’re firing back–
And the Mayor’s riding past me, shooting his gun and ducking under an arrow coming at him–
Boy colt! Angharrad is screaming and I’m wanting to ride her away, to get her outta this–
And there are Spackle falling everywhere under the firing of the rifles–
But as soon as one falls, there’s another right behind him–
FALL BACK! I hear in my Noise–
The Mayor, sending it out–
FALL BACK TO ME!
Not even yelling it, not even buzzing, just there, right in yer head–
And I see it–
Not believing it for a second–
All the soldiers left alive, about twelve now, move all together–
FALL BACK TO ME!
Like a herd of sheep moving from the bark of a dog–
EVERY MAN!
They move, still firing their guns, but coming backwards toward the Mayor, too, their feet even walking in the same rhythm, all those different men suddenly looking like the same man, like one man, climbing over the bodies of other soldiers like they ain’t even there–
TO ME!
TO ME!
And even I can feel my hands turning Angharrad’s reins to line up behind the Mayor–
Moving with the rest of ’em–
Boy colt!?
I curse myself and turn her away from the main fight–
But the soldiers are still coming, even as one and then another of ’em falls, here they come, now in two short rows, firing in unison–
And Spackle are dying in the gunfire, dropping to the ground–
And the men move back–
And Mr O’Hare’s come up next to me on his own horse, firing, too, in exact timing with the rest of ’em and I see a Spackle coming outta the woods nearest us, raising a white stick right at Mr O’Hare and–
GET DOWN! I think–
Think but don’t say–
And there’s a buzz from me to him, fast as anything–
And he gets down and the Spackle fires right over the top of him–
Mr O’Hare rises again and shoots the Spackle, then he turns back to me–
But instead of saying thanks, his eyes are full of white fury–
And then suddenly there’s silence–
The Spackle are gone. Not even so you can see ’em running away, just gone, and the attack’s over and there are dead soldiers and dead Spackle and the whole thing took less than a minute–
And here are two rows of surviving soldiers standing in perfectly straight lines, rifles all held up exactly the same, all looking to the spot where the Spackle first came from, all waiting to shoot again–
All waiting for their next order from the Mayor.
I see his face, burning with concentrayshun and a fierceness it’s hard to even look at.
And I know what it means.
It means his control’s getting better.
Getting quicker and stronger and sharper.
(But so’s mine, I think, so’s mine)
“Indeed,” the Mayor says. “Indeed it is, Todd.”
And it takes me a second to realize that even tho my Noise was silent, he still heard me–
“Let’s get back to town, Todd,” he says, smiling for the first time in ages. “I think maybe it’s time I tried something new.”
{VIOLA}
“That’s terrific, Wilf,” I hear Bradley say as I exit the scout ship, looking all around for Mistress Coyle. Wilf is moving a cart with huge vats of fresh water into place near the ship, ready for distribution.
“Tain’t nothin,” Wilf says to Bradley. “Just doin what needs doin.”
“Glad someone is,” I hear behind me. It’s Lee, returning early from the day’s hunting party.
“Did you see which way Mistress Coyle went?” I ask him.
“Hello to you, too,” he laughs. He holds up the forest hens he’s carrying. “I’m saving the fattest one for us. Simone and the Humanitarian can have the small one.”
“Don’t call him that,” I say, frowning.
Lee looks over at Bradley, who’s heading back into the ship. The half-circle of people who sit by the bay doors and watch – bigger today – just mutter to each other, and in the Noise of the few men there, Ivan included, I hear it again, The Humanitarian.
“He’s trying to save us,” I say to them. “He’s trying to make it so all of the people coming can live here in peace. With the Spackle.”
“Yeah,” Ivan calls over. “And while he’s doing it, he doesn’t seem to notice that his weapons’d bring peace a hell of a lot faster than humanitarian efforts.”
“His humanitarian efforts could guarantee you a long life, Ivan,” I say. “And you should mind your own goddam business.”
“I do believe survival is our business,” Ivan says loudly, and there’s a woman next to him agreeing, a smug smile on her dirty face, and even though she looks ashen from the same fever I’ve got and wears the same band I wear, I still want to smack her and smack her and smack her so she never looks at me that way again.
But Lee’s already taking my arm and leading me away, around the scout ship to the far side by the engines, still off, still cool, but the one place on the hill where no one’s going to make a tent.
“Stupid, small-minded people–” I’m ranting.
“I’m sorry, Viola,” Lee says, “but I kind of agree with them.”
“Lee–”
“President Prentiss killed my mother and sister,” he says. “Anything we could do to help stop the Spackle and him is fine by me.”
“You’re as bad as Mistress Coyle,” I say. “And she tried to kill you.”
“I’m just saying, if we’ve got the weapons, we could show more strength–”
“And guarantee slaughter for years to come!”
He smirks a little, infuriatingly. “You sound like Bradley. He’s the only one around here who talks like that.”
“Yes, because a hilltop full of frightened and hungry people are really going to offer a rational–”
And then I stop because Lee’s just looking at me. Looking at my nose. I can tell, because I can see myself in his Noise, see me shouting and getting angry, see my nose wrinkling like it must do when I’m mad, see the warmth of his feelings around that wrinkle–
And in a flash, there’s a picture of him and me in his Noise, holding each other tight, no clothes anywhere, and I’m seeing the blond hairs on his chest that I’ve never seen in real life, the downy, soft, surprisingly thick hair that trails all the way down to his belly button and below and–
“Oh, crap,” he says, stepping back.
“Lee?” I say, but he’s already turning and walking away fast, his Noise flooding with bright yellow embarrassment and he’s saying, loud, “I’m going back to the hunting party,” and walking away even faster–
And as I head off
again in search of Mistress Coyle, I realize my skin feels incredibly hot, like I’m blushing all over–
[TODD]
Boy colt? Angharrad says to me all the way back into town after the Spackle attack, going faster than I’m even asking her to. Boy colt?
“Almost there, girl,” I say.
I ride into camp just behind the Mayor, who’s still practically glowing from how he controlled the men on the road just now. He slides off Juliet’s Joy, handing her to James, who’s waiting for us. I ride over to him, too, jumping off Angharrad’s saddle.
“I need some feed for her,” I say quickly. “Some water, too.”
“I’ve got feed all ready,” he says, as I guide her over to my tent. “But we’re rationing water so–”
“No,” I say, unbuckling the saddle from her as fast as I can. “You don’t unnerstand. She needs water now. We’ve just–”
“Is she bossing you around again?” James says.
And I turn to him, eyes wide open. He’s smiling back at me, not getting what we’ve just been thru at all, thinking that I’m being pushed around by my horse and not that I know how to take care of her, that she needs me–
“She’s a beauty,” he says, pulling a tangle outta Angharrad’s mane. “But you’re still the boss.”
And I can see him thinking, thinking about his farm, thinking about the horses he and his pa used to have, three of ’em, all tan-coloured with white noses, thinking about how they were taken by the army but how he ain’t seen ’em since, which probably means they died in battle–
A thought which makes Angharrad say Boy colt? again all worried-like–
And that makes me even angrier–
“No,” I say to James. “Get some extra water for her now.”
And barely even aware that I’m doing it, I’m staring at him hard, pushing with my Noise, reaching out and grabbing his–
Taking hold of it–
Taking hold of him–
And I am the Circle and the Circle is me–
“What are you doing, Todd?” he says, swatting away at the front of his face like he’s batting back a fly.
“Water,” I say. “Now.”