Monsters of Men

by Patrick Ness

  “Ah’m only lissnen,” he says. “Ah’m only lissnen to what’s true.”

  Are you listening? the Source shows, next to me.

  Do not speak, I show.

  But are you listening? he shows. Listening as this man is?

  I do not know what you mean–

  And then I hear it, hear it through the man called Wilf, his voice calm and open, speaking the voices of all his people.

  As if he was their Sky.

  And with that thought, I am listening to my own voice–

  Listening to the Land massing behind me, streaming towards this place, at the command of the Sky–

  But–

  But they are also speaking. They are speaking of fear and regret. Of worry for the Clearing and for the Clearing to come from the black world above. They see the man Wilf in front of me, see his wish for peace, see his innocence–

  They are not all like this, I show to the Land. They are violent creatures. They kill us, enslave us–

  But here is the man called Wilf with the Clearing behind him (and an army ready, I can see it in his voice, a frightened but willing army led by a blind man) and here is the Sky with the Land behind him, willing to do what the Sky wants, willing to march forward and obliterate the Clearing from this planet, should I tell them to do so–

  But they fear as well. They saw peace as the same chance that the man called Wilf saw it, as a chance, an opportunity, a way to live without constant threat–

  They will do what I tell them–

  Without hesitation, they will do it–

  But what I tell them is not what they want–

  I see it now. I see it as clearly as anything in the voice of the man called Wilf.

  We are here for my revenge. Not even the Sky’s revenge, the revenge of the Return. I have made this war personal. Personal for the Return.

  And I am no longer the Return.

  One action is all it takes, shows the Source. The fate of this world, the fate of the Land, rests on what you do now.

  I turn to him. But what do I do? I show, asking it unexpectedly, even to myself. How do I act?

  You act, he shows, like the Sky.

  I look back at the man called Wilf, see the Clearing behind him through his voice, feel the weight of the Land behind me in my own voice.

  The voice of the Sky.

  I am the Sky.

  I am the Sky.

  And so I act like the Sky.

  {VIOLA}

  We’re outrunning the fog now, but the snow keeps falling, thicker here, even through the trees. We keep the flooded river to our left in the valley below and go as fast as the horses can carry us.

  The horses.

  Acorn no longer responds to anything I ask him, his Noise focused only on running through the pain in his legs and his chest and I can feel how much this is costing him–

  And I realize it at the same time I realize he must know it, too–

  He won’t be making the journey back.

  “Acorn,” I whisper between his ears. “Acorn, my friend.”

  Girl colt, he says back, almost tenderly, and he thunders on, through a thinning forest that opens out onto an unexpected plateau, sandwiched under the snow clouds, a thick dusting of white already accumulated across it, and we race through a surprised herd of animals calling Here to each other in alarm, and just before we plunge back into the forest–

  “There it is!” Bradley calls–

  Our first, fleeting view of the ocean.

  It’s so big I’m almost overwhelmed–

  Eating the world all the way to the cloudy horizon, seeming bigger than the black beyond, just like Mistress Coyle said, because it hides its hugeness–

  And then we’re back in the trees.

  “It’s still a ways,” Bradley calls. “But we’ll make it by nightfall–”

  And Acorn collapses beneath me.

  (THE SKY)

  There is a long silence as I lower my weapon while the whole world waits to see what I mean by it–

  While I wait to see what I mean by it, too.

  And again I see the Clearing through the Noise of the man called Wilf, see them rush with a feeling behind him, a feeling I know very little of–

  It’s hope, the Source shows.

  I know what it is, I show back.

  And I feel the Land behind me, waiting as well–

  And I feel the hope there, too–

  And that is the decision of the Sky made. The Sky must act in the best interests of the Land. That is who the Sky is.

  The Sky is the Land.

  And the Sky who forgets that is no kind of Sky at all.

  I open my voice to the Land and pass a message back to them, back to all those who have joined the fight, back to all those who united behind me when I called them–

  And who now unite behind my decision not to attack–

  Because another decision accompanies it. A decision necessary for the Sky, necessary for the safety of the Land.

  I must find the man who attacked us, I show to the Source. And I must kill him. That is what is best for the Land.

  The Source nods and rides his beast into the fog ahead of us, disappearing past the man called Wilf and I hear him calling out to the Clearing, telling them we will not attack. Their relief is so pure and strong that the wave of it nearly knocks me off my mount.

  I look to the soldiers beside me to see if they only agree with my decision through obedience to the Sky, but they are already turning their voices back to their own lives, the lives of the Land, the lives that will now, inevitably, involve the Clearing in ways no one can foresee, ways that will first involve cleaning up the mess the Clearing made.

  Perhaps even helping them to survive.

  Who can say?

  The Source returns. I feel his concern as he approaches. The Mayor’s flown the ship to the ocean, he shows. Bradley and Viola have already set out to find him.

  Then so shall the Sky, I show.

  I’ll go with you, the Source shows and I see why.

  The Knife is with him, I show.

  The Source nods.

  You think I will kill the Knife, I show back. If I finally have the chance.

  The Source shakes his head, but I see his uncertainty. I’ll come with you, he shows again.

  We stare at each other for a long moment, then I turn to some of the Land soldiers at the front line and show them my intention, telling ten of them to accompany me.

  Accompany me and the Source.

  I turn back to him. Then let us be on our way.

  And I tell my battlemore to run towards the ocean, faster than it has ever run before.

  {VIOLA}

  Acorn’s front legs crumple mid-stride and I go tumbling hard through some undergrowth, jamming my left hip and arm into the ground with a painful grunt, and I hear Bradley yell, “Viola!” but Acorn’s still falling forward, still crashing in a heap in the brush–

  “ACORN!” I yell and I’m getting up and limping quickly over to where he’s lying twisted and broken and I get to his head, his breath coming out of him in great raking sounds, his chest heaving with the effort. “Acorn, please–”

  Bradley and Angharrad ride over to us, Bradley leaping down and Angharrad putting her nose down close to Acorn’s–

  Girl colt, Acorn says, pain wracking through his Noise, not just from his front legs, which I can see are broken, but the tearing in his chest which caused him to collapse in the first place, it’s too much, he’s run too hard–

  Girl colt, he says–

  “Shh,” I say, “it’s okay, it’s okay–”

  And then he says–

  He says–

  Viola.

  And then he falls silent, his breath and his Noise both stopping in a final sigh–

  “No!” I say, holding onto him tighter, pushing my face into his mane. I feel Bradley’s hands on my shoulders behind me as I cry, and I hear Angharrad quietly say, Follow, as she rubs her nose against Ac
orn’s.

  “I’m so sorry,” Bradley says, gently as ever. “Viola, are you hurt yourself?”

  I can’t speak, still holding onto Acorn, but I shake my head.

  “I’m sorry, sweetheart,” Bradley says, “but we have to keep going. There’s too much at stake.”

  “How?” I say, my voice thick.

  Bradley pauses. “Angharrad?” he asks. “Can you take Viola the rest of the way to save Todd?”

  Boy colt, Angharrad says, her Noise strong at the mention of Todd. Boy colt yes.

  “We can’t kill her, too,” I say.

  But Angharrad’s already putting her nose under my arm, urging me up. Boy colt, she says. Boy colt save.

  “But Acorn–”

  “I’ll take care of him,” Bradley says. “You just get there. You get there and you make it worth it, Viola Eade.’

  I look up at him, look at his faith in me, his certainty that good is still possible.

  And I give Acorn a last, tearful kiss on his unmoving head, and I stand and let Angharrad kneel next to me. I get up on her slowly, my vision still cloudy, my voice still thick. “Bradley,” I say.

  “It can only be you,” he says, giving me a sad smile. “It can only be you who saves him.”

  I nod slowly and I try to put my mind on Todd, on what’s happening to him right now–

  On saving him, saving us, once and for bloody all–

  I find I can’t say goodbye to Bradley but I think he understands as I give a yell to Angharrad and we race off on the final stretch to the ocean.

  Here I come, Todd, I think. Here I come–

  [TODD]

  I don’t know how long it takes me to loosen the strap around one wrist even slightly. Whatever medicine was in that bandage, still stuck to my neck, itching where I can’t scratch it, it was enough to slow me way down, in body and Noise–

  But I work and work and all the while the Mayor’s out there somewhere, on what I guess is the beach, a little stretch of snow-covered sand thru the broken wall in the corner. I see a sliver of waves crashing, too, a sound that’s constant with another sound beyond it, a roar I reckernize as the river, loud and full of all that water now finally returning to the ocean. The Mayor musta flown us straight down it, landing here to wait for whatever’s sposed to happen. The two armies fighting their last war.

  All of us dying under a million Spackle.

  I strain against the strap on my right wrist again, feeling it give a little.

  I wonder what it musta been like to live here, to settle a community by the big, big water for fishing. Viola told me the ocean fish on this planet are more likely to eat you than the other way round, but ways coulda been found, ways to make a life there, a life like we nearly did in the valley.

  What a sad thing men are. Can’t do nothing good without being so weak we have to mess it up. Can’t build something up without tearing it down.

  It ain’t the Spackle that drove us to the end.

  It was ourselves.

  “I couldn’t agree more,” the Mayor says, coming back inside the chapel. His face is different, way downcast. Like something’s wrong. Like something really big is really wrong.

  “Events transpire out of my hands, Todd,” he says, looking nowhere, as if he’s hearing something, something that’s disappointed him beyond belief. “Events on a far hilltop–”

  “What hilltop?” I say. “What’s happened to Viola?”

  He sighs. “Captain Tate’s failed me, Todd,” he says. “The Spackle have failed me, too.”

  “What?” I say. “How can you know that?”

  “This world, Todd, this world,” he says, ignoring my asking. “This world that I thought I could control and did control.” His eyes flash at me. “Until I met you.”

  I don’t say nothing.

  Cuz he’s looking scarier.

  “Maybe you did transform me, Todd,” he says. “But not just you.”

  “You let me go,” I say. “I’ll show you all about how I’m gonna transform you.”

  “You’re not listening,” he says and there’s a pain in my head, enough to leave me speechless for a second. “You transformed me, yes, and I’ve had no small effect on you.” He walks down the side of the table. “But I’ve also been transformed by this world.”

  For the first time I notice how weird his voice sounds, like it ain’t entirely his own no more, all echoey and strange.

  “This world, because I’ve noticed it, because I’ve studied it,” he continues, “has warped me out of recognition from the proud and strong man I used to be.” He stops at my feet. “War makes monsters of men, you once said to me, Todd. Well, so does too much knowledge. Too much knowledge of your fellow man, too much knowledge of his weakness, his pathetic greed and vanity, and how laughably easy it is to control him.”

  He gives a sour chuckle. “You know, Todd, it’s only the stupid who can truly handle Noise. The sensitive, the smart, people like you and me, we suffer by it. And people like us have to control people like them. For their own good and ours.”

  He drifts off, looking at nothing. I strain harder at the ropes.

  “You did transform me, Todd,” he says again. “You made me better. But only enough to see how bad I actually was. I never knew until I compared myself to you, Todd. I thought I was doing good.” He stops over me. “Until you showed me otherwise.”

  “You were bad from the beginning,” I say. “I didn’t do nothing.”

  “Oh, but you did, Todd,” he says. “That was the hum you felt in your head, the hum that connected us. It was the good in me, the good you made me see. Something I could only see through you.” His eyes go blacker. “And then Ben arrived and you were going to take it away. You let me glimpse a goodness I’d never be able to grasp on my own, and for that sin, Todd Hewitt, for that sin of self-knowledge.”

  He reaches down and starts untying my leg.

  “One of us is going to have to die,” he says.

  {VIOLA}

  Angharrad feels different than Acorn, broader, stronger, faster, but still I worry.

  “Please be okay,” I whisper, not even to her, knowing it won’t do any good.

  Because she just says Boy colt and runs even faster.

  We press on through more trees as the hills begin to flatten out and lower down closer to the river, which I see more and more often to my left, wide and rushing over a flooded riverbank.

  But I don’t see the ocean, just more trees and more trees again. The snow remains thick, coming down in fat flakes, twisting through the air and starting to leave noticeable drifts even in fairly dense forest.

  And as the daylight starts to fade, I get a sick feeling in my heart at not knowing what’s happened on the hilltop, what’s happened to Bradley, what’s happened to Todd at the ocean ahead–

  And then, all at once, there it is–

  Through a break in the trees, close enough to see the waves crashing, close enough to see docks on a small harbour with abandoned buildings and there, sitting among them, the scout ship–

  And it disappears behind more trees–

  But we’re nearly there. We’re nearly there.

  “Hang on, Todd,” I say. “Hang on.”

  [TODD]

  “It’s gonna be you,” I say, as he unties my other leg. “It’s gonna be you who dies.”

  “You know what, Todd?” he says, his voice low. “A part of me hopes you’re right.”

  I keep still till he unties my right hand and then I take a swing at him but he’s already backing away towards the opening out to the beach, watching me free my other hand with an amused look on his face.

  “I’ll be waiting for you, Todd,” he says, stepping outside.

  I try to send a VIOLA at him but I’m still feeling weak and he don’t take any notice before disappearing. I pull at the final knots and I’m free and I leap off the table and have to take a groggy minute to catch my balance but then I’m moving, moving out thru the opening–

&nbs
p; Onto the freezing cold beach beyond.

  The first thing I see is a row of broken-down houses, some of ’em nothing more than piles of wood and sand, with a few concrete ones like the chapel lasting a bit better. To the north of me, I can see a road heading off into the woods, the road that no doubt goes all the way back to New Prentisstown tho it’s covered in a rushing, overflowing river before it gets any further than the second tree.

  The snow is really coming down fast now and the wind has picked up, too. The cold cuts thru my uniform like a stab with a steely knife and I clutch the jacket closer around me.

  And then I turn towards the ocean–

  Oh my God–

  It’s effing huge.

  Bigger than anything possible, stretching outta sight not just towards the horizon but north and south, too, like an endlessness that’s set itself down on yer doorstep, waiting to swallow you up the second you turn yer back. The snow don’t have no effect on it neither. The ocean just keeps on churning, like it wants to fight you, like the waves are punches it’s throwing to try and knock you down.

  And there’s creachers in it. Even in the frothy and muddy waters churning on the shore, even in the spray and foam from the river crashing into it to the north of me, even then you can see shadows moving in the water–

  Big shadows–

  “Quite something, isn’t it?” I hear.

  The Mayor’s voice.

  I whip round. He ain’t nowhere to be seen. I turn round again slowly. I’m noticing there’s a bit of sand-covered concrete beneath my feet, like this used to be a little square or walk along the beach or something, something that came outta the front of the chapel a long time ago where people could sit in the sun.

  Except I’m here now and I’m effing freezing.

  “SHOW YERSELF, YOU COWARD!” I shout.

  “Oh, cowardice is one thing you could never accuse me of, Todd.” His voice again but sounding like it’s coming from somewhere else.

  “THEN WHY ARE YOU HIDING?” I shout, turning again, crossing my arms hard against the cold. We’re both gonna die if we stay out here.