The Knife of Never Letting Go cw-1

by Patrick Ness

  I close my eyes again and try to take as deep a breath as possible which ain’t too deep and then I hold it till I can get my fingers round the knife and then I have to breathe and wait till the pain passes and then I try to pull but it’s the heaviest thing in the world and I have to wait and breathe and try again and I pull and the pain in my back increases like a gun firing and I scream out uncontrollably as I feel the knife come outta my back.

  I gasp and pant for a minute and try to stop from weeping again, all the while holding the knife away from me, still stuck thru the book and the rucksack.

  Manchee licks my face once more.

  “Good boy,” I say, tho I don’t know why.

  It takes what feels like a lifetime to get the rucksack straps off my arms and finally be able to cast the knife and the whole mess aside. Even then, I can’t come near standing up and I must pass out again cuz Manchee’s licking my face and I’m having to open my eyes and cough in my breath all over again.

  As I lay there, still in the muck, I wish to myself more than anything in the whole world that Aaron’s knife had gone thru me, that I was as dead as the Spackle, that I could finish falling down that pit, down down down till there’s only blackness, down into the nowhere where there’s no more Todd to blame or screw things up or fail Ben or fail Viola, and I could fall away forever into nothingness and never have to worry no more.

  But here’s Manchee, licking away.

  “Get off.” I reach up an arm to push him away.

  Aaron coulda killed me, coulda killed me so easy.

  The knife thru my neck, the knife in my eye, the knife across my throat. I was his for the killing and he didn’t kill me. He musta known what he was doing. He musta.

  Was he leaving me for the Mayor to find? But why was he so far ahead of the army? How could he have come all this way without a horse like Mr Prentiss Jr? How long had he been following us?

  How long before he stepped outta the bushes and took Viola away?

  I let out a little moan.

  That’s why he left me alive. So I could live knowing that he took Viola. That’s how he wins, ain’t it? That’s how he makes me suffer. Living and having the sight of him taking her forever in my Noise.

  A new kinda energy runs thru me and I make myself sit up, ignoring the pain and bringing myself forward and breathing till I can think about standing. The rattle in my lungs and the pain in my back make me cough more but I grit my teeth and get thru it.

  Cuz I have to find her.

  “Viola,” Manchee barks.

  “Viola,” I say and I grit my teeth even harder and try to get to my feet.

  But it’s too much, the pain takes my legs from me and I topple back in the mud and I just lay there pulled tight from it all and struggling to breathe and my mind goes all woozy and hot and in my Noise I’m running and I’m running and I’m running towards nothing and I’m hot all over and I’m sweating and I’m running in my Noise and I can hear Ben from behind the trees and I’m running towards him and he’s singing the song, he’s singing the song from my bedtimes, the song that’s for boys and not men but when I hear it my heart stretches and it’s early one morning just as the sun was rising.

  I come back to myself. The song comes with me.

  Cuz the song goes:

  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.”

  I open my eyes.

  Don’t deceive me. Never leave me.

  I have to find her.

  I have to find her.

  I look up. The sun is in the sky but I have no idea how much time has passed since Aaron took Viola. That was just before dawn. It’s cloudy but bright now and so it could be late morning or early afternoon. It might not even be the same day, a thought I try to push away. I close my eyes and I try to listen. The rain’s stopped so there’s none of that clatter but the only Noise I can hear belongs to me and to Manchee and the distant wordless chatter of woodland creachers getting on with their lives that ain’t got nothing to do with mine.

  No sound of Aaron. No space of silence for Viola.

  I open my eyes and I see her bag.

  Dropped in the struggle with Aaron, of no use or interest to him and just left on the ground like it don’t belong to no one, like it don’t matter that it’s Viola’s.

  That bag so full of stupid and useful things.

  My chest clenches and I cough painfully.

  I can’t seem to stand so I crawl forward, gasping at the pain in my back and head but still crawling, Manchee barking, worried, “Todd, Todd,” all the time, and it takes forever, it takes too effing long but I get to the bag and I have to lean hunched with the pain for a minute before I can do anything with it. When I can breathe again I open it and fish around till I find the box with the bandages. There’s only one left but it’ll have to do. Then I start on the process of taking off my shirt which requires more stopping, more breathing, inch by inch, but finally it’s off my burning back and over my burning head and I can see blood and mud everywhere on it.

  I find the scalpel in her medipak and cut the bandage in two. I put one part on my head, holding it till it sticks, and reach around slowly and put the other on my back. For a minute it hurts even more as the bandage material, the human cell whatever the hell she talked about, crawls into the wounds and makes a bind. I clench my teeth thru it but then the medicine starts to work and a flush of cool flows into my bloodstream. I wait for it to work enough till I can stand up. I’m wobbly when I first get to my feet but I can manage to just stand for a minute.

  After another I can take a step. And then another.

  But where do I go?

  I’ve no idea where he took her. I’ve no idea how much time has passed. He could already be all the way back to the army by now.

  “Viola?” Manchee barks, whimpering.

  “I don’t know, fella,” I say. “Let me think.”

  Even with the bandages doing their thing I can’t stand up straight all the way but I do my best and look around. The Spackle’s body is on the edge of my vision but I turn myself so I can’t see it.

  Oh don’t deceive me. Oh never leave me.

  I sigh and I know what I have to do.

  “There ain’t nothing for it,” I say to Manchee. “We have to go back to the army.”

  “Todd?” he whines.

  “There ain’t nothing for it,” I say again and I put everything outta my head but moving.

  First things first I need a new shirt.

  I keep the Spackle to my back and turn to the rucksack.

  The knife is still thru the cloth of the rucksack and the book inside. I don’t really wanna touch it and even in my haze I don’t wanna see what’s become of the book but I have to get the knife out so I brace the sack with my foot and pull hard. It takes a few tugs but it comes out and I drop it to the ground.

  I look at it on the wet moss. There’s blood all over it still. Spackle blood mostly but my blood brighter red at the tip. I wonder if that means that Spackle blood got into my blood when Aaron stabbed me. I wonder if there are extra special viruses you can catch directly from Spackle.

  But there’s no time for further wondering.

  I open the rucksack and take out the book.

  There’s a knife-shaped hole all the way thru and out the other side. The knife is so sharp and Aaron must be so strong that it’s hardly ruined the book at all. The pages have a slit running thru them all the way thru the book, my blood and Spackle blood staining the edges just a little, but it’s still readable.

  I could still read it, still have it read.

  If I ever deserve to.

  I push that thought away too and take out a clean shirt. I cough as I do and even with the bandages it hurts so I have to wait till I stop. My lungs feel filled with water, like I’m carrying a pile of river stones in my chest, but I put the shirt on, I gather what useable things I c
an still get from my rucksack, some clothes, my own medipak, what ain’t been ruined by Mr Prentiss Jr or the rain and I take them and my ma’s book over to Viola’s bag and put them inside cuz there’s no way I can carry a rucksack on my back no more.

  And then there’s still the asking, ain’t there?

  Where do I go?

  I follow the road back to the army, that’s where I go.

  I go to the army and somehow I save her, even if it’s changing my place for hers.

  And for that I can’t go unarmed, can I?

  No, I can’t.

  I look at the knife again, sitting there on the moss like a thing without properties, a thing made of metal as separate from a boy as can be, a thing which casts all blame from itself to the boy who uses it.

  I don’t wanna touch it. Not at all. Not never again. But I have to go over and I have to clean off the blood as best I can on some wet leaves and I have to sheath it behind me in the belt that’s still around my waist.

  I have to do these things. There ain’t no choice.

  The Spackle hovers on the edge of my vision but I do not look at it as I handle the knife.

  “C’mon, Manchee.” I loop Viola’s bag as gingerly as I can over one shoulder.

  Don’t deceive me. Never leave me.

  Time to go.

  “We’re gonna find her,” I say.

  I keep the campsite behind me and head off in the direkshun of the road. Best to just get on it and walk back to ’em as fast as I can. I’ll hear ’em coming and can get outta the way and then I guess I’ll see if there’s any way I can save her.

  Which might mean meeting them head on.

  I push my way thru a row of bushes when I hear Manchee bark, “Todd?”

  I turn, trying to keep from seeing the campsite. “C’mon, boy.”

  “Todd!”

  “I said, c’mon, now. I mean it.”

  “This way, Todd,” he barks and wags his half-tail.

  I turn more fully to him. “What’d you say?”

  He’s pointing his nose in another direkshun altogether from the one I’m going. “This way,” he barks. He rubs at the bandage over his eye with a paw, knocking it off and squinting at me with the injured eye.

  “What do you mean ‘This way’?” I ask, a feeling in my chest.

  He’s nodding his head and pushing his front feet in a direkshun not only away from the road but in the opposite direkshun from the army. “Viola,” he barks, turning round in a circle and then facing that way again.

  “You can smell her?” I ask, my chest rising.

  He barks a bark of yes.

  “You can smell her?”

  “This way, Todd!”

  “Not back to the road?” I say. “Not back to the army?”

  “Todd!” he barks, feeling the rise in my Noise and getting excited himself.

  “Yer sure?” I say. “You gotta be sure, Manchee. You gotta be.”

  “This way!” and off he runs, thru the bushes and off on a track parallel to the river, away from the army.

  And towards Haven.

  Who knows why and who cares cuz in the moment I’m running after him as best as my injuries will let me, in the moment I see him bounding away and ahead, I think to myself, Good dog, good bloody dog.

  27. ON WE GO

  “This way, Todd,” Manchee barks, taking us round another outcropping.

  Ever since we left the Spackle campsite, the terrain’s been getting more and more rugged. The woods have been rising up into hills for an hour or two now and we rush up ’em and down ’em and up ’em again and sometimes it’s more like hiking than running. When we get up to the top of one, I see more and more rolling away in front of me, hills under trees, a few so steep you have to go around rather than over. The road and the river twist thru ’em on snaky paths off to my right and sometimes it’s all I can do to keep them in sight.

  Even with the bandages doing their best to hold me together, every step I take jars my back and my head and every once in a while I can’t help but stop and sometimes throw up my empty stomach.

  But on we go.

  Faster, I think to myself. Go faster, Todd Hewitt.

  They’ve got at least half a day’s march on us, maybe even a day and a half, and I don’t know where they’re going or what Aaron plans on doing when he gets there and so on we go.

  “Yer sure?” I keep asking Manchee.

  “This way,” he keeps barking.

  The thing that makes no sense is that we’re pretty much on the path that Viola and I would have taken anyway, following the river, keeping back from the road, and heading east towards Haven. I don’t know why Aaron’s going there, I don’t know why he’d head away from the army, but that’s where Manchee’s smelling their scents and so that’s the way we go.

  We keep on thru the middle of the day, up hills, down hills, and onwards, thru trees that turn from the broad leaves of the trees on the plains to more needly kinds, taller and more arrow-like. The trees even smell different, sending a sharp tang in the air I can taste on my tongue. Manchee and I hop over all manner of streams and creeks that feed the river and I stop now and then to refill the water bottles and on we go.

  I try not to think at all. I try to keep my mind pointed ahead, pointed towards Viola and finding her. I try not to think about how she looked after I killed the Spackle. I try not to think about how afraid she was of me or how she backed away like I might hurt her. I try not to think about how scared she musta been when Aaron came after her and I was no use.

  And I try not to think about the Spackle’s Noise and the fear that was in it or how surprised he musta been being killed for nothing more than being a fisherman or how the crunch felt up my arm when the knife went in him or how dark red his blood was flowing out onto me or the bafflement pouring outta him and into my Noise as he died as he died as he died as he — I don’t think about it.

  On we go, on we go.

  Afternoon passes into early evening, the forest and the hills seem never-ending, and there comes another problem.

  “Food, Todd?”

  “There ain’t none left,” I say, dirt giving way under my feet as we make our way down a slope. “I don’t got nothing for myself neither.”

  “Food?”

  I don’t know how long it is since I ate last, don’t know how long since I really slept, for that matter, since passing out ain’t sleeping.

  And I’ve lost track of how many days till I become a man but I can tell you it’s never felt farther away.

  “Squirrel!” Manchee suddenly barks and tears around the trunk of a needly tree and into a mess of ferns beyond. I didn’t even see the squirrel but I can hear Whirler dog and “Squirrel!” and Whirler-whirler-whirler— and then it stops short.

  Manchee jumps out with a waxy squirrel drooping in his maul, bigger and browner than the ones from the swamp. He drops it on the ground in front of me, a gristly, bloody plop, and I ain’t so hungry no more.

  “Food?” he barks.

  “That’s all right, boy.” I look anywhere but the mess. “You can have it.”

  I’m sweating more than normal and I take big drinks of water as Manchee finishes his meal. Little gnats cloud round us in near-invisible swarms and I keep having to bat ’em away. I cough again, ignoring the pain in my back, the pain in my head, and when he’s done and ready to go, I wobble just a little but on we go again.

  Keep moving, Todd Hewitt. Keep going.

  I don’t dare sleep. Aaron may not so I can’t. On and on, the clouds passing sometimes without me noticing, the moons rising, stars peeping. I come down to the bottom of a low hill and scare my way thru a whole herd of what look like deer but their horns are all different than the deer I know from Prentisstown and anyway they’re off flying thru the trees away from me and a barking Manchee before I hardly register they’re even there.

  On we go still thru midnight (twenty-four days left? Twenty-three?). We’ve come the whole day without hearing no more soun
ds of Noise or other settlements, not that I could see anyway, even when I was close enough to see brief snatches of the river and the road. But as we reach the top of another wooded hill and the moons are directly overhead, I finally hear the Noise of men, clear as a crash.

  We stop, crouching down even tho it’s night.

  I look out from our hilltop. The moons are high and I can see two long huts in two separate clearings on hillsides across the way. From one I can hear the murmuring ruckus of sleeping men’s Noise. Julia? and on horseback and tell him it ain’t so and up the river past morning and lots of things that make no sense cuz dreaming Noise is the weirdest of all. From the other hut, there’s silence, the aching silence of women, I can feel it even from here, men in one hut, women in another, which I guess is one way of solving the problem of sleeping, and the touch of the silence from the women’s side makes me think of Viola and I have to keep my balance against a tree trunk for a minute.

  But where there’s people, there’s food.

  “Can you find yer way back to the trail if we leave it?” I whisper to my dog, stifling a cough.

  “Find trail,” Manchee barks, seriously.

  “Yer sure?”

  “Todd smell,” he barks. “Manchee smell.”

  “Keep quiet as we go then.” We start creeping our way down the hill, moving softly as we can thru the trees and brush till we get to the bottom of a little dale with the huts above us, sleeping on hillsides.

  I can hear my own Noise spreading out into the world, hot and fusty, like the sweat that keeps pouring down my sides, and I try to keep it quiet and grey and flat, like Tam did, Tam who controlled his Noise better than any man in Prentisstown — And there’s yer proof.

  Prentisstown? I hear from the men’s hut almost immediately.

  We stop dead. My shoulders slump. It’s still dream Noise I’m hearing but the word repeats thru the sleeping men like echoes down a valley. Prentisstown? and Prentisstown? and Prentisstown? like they don’t know what the word means yet.

  But they will when they wake.

  Idiot.

  “Let’s go,” I say, turning and scurrying back the way we came, back to our trail.

  “Food?” Manchee barks.