“I ain’t sparing you,” I say. “I would if I thought I could save you, but I can’t. I’m sorry bout that, but you can’t be saved.”
“I know,” he says. He smiles again, full of sadness this time, sadness I can feel is real. “You did change me, you know, Todd. In a little way, for the better. Enough to recognize love when I see it.” He looks over at Viola and back at me. “Enough for me to save you now.”
“Save me?” I say and I think Step back and he steps back one more step.
“Yes, Todd,” he says, sweat forming on his upper lip, trying to resist me. “I want you to stop forcing me into the surf–”
“Fat chance of that–”
“Because I’ll go into it myself.”
I blink at him. “No more games,” I say, forcing him back another step. “This is finished.”
“But Todd Hewitt,” he says, “you’re the boy who couldn’t kill.”
“I ain’t no boy,” I say. “And I’ll kill you.”
“I know,” he says. “And that would make you just a little bit more like me, wouldn’t it?”
I stop, holding him there for a second, the waves crashing in behind him, the creachers starting to fight amongst themselves, and boy are they big–
“I never lied about your power, Todd,” he says. “Powerful enough to be the new me, if you wanted–”
“I don’t–”
“Or powerful enough to be like Ben.”
I frown. “What’s Ben got to do with it?”
“He hears the voice of the planet, too, Todd, just like me. Just like you will eventually. But he lives within it, lets himself be part of it, lets himself ride the current of it without losing himself.”
The snow’s still falling, sticking to the Mayor’s hair in white bits. I realize again how cold I am.
“You could be me,” the Mayor says. “Or you could be him.”
He takes a step back.
A step that I didn’t make him take.
“If you kill me, it’s one step further away from being him,” he says. “And if that’s as far as the goodness of you has changed me, goodness enough to stop you becoming me, then that’ll have to do.”
He turns to Viola. “The cure for the bands is real.”
Viola glances at me. “What?”
“I put a slow-acting poison in the first batch to kill all the women. The Spackle too.”
“WHAT?” I shout.
“But the cure is real,” the Mayor says. “I did it for Todd. I’ve left the research on the scout ship. Mistress Lawson can easily confirm it. And that,” he says, nodding at her, “is my parting gift to you, Viola.”
He looks back at me, the sad, sad smile on his face. “This world will be shaped by the two of you for years to come, Todd.”
He sighs deeply.
“And I, for one,” he says, “am glad that I shall never have to see it.”
And he spins round and takes one big stride toward the surf, then another and another–
“Wait!” Viola calls after him–
But he don’t stop, he keeps striding, almost running, and I feel Viola slip off Angharrad and both of ’em come over next to me and we watch the Mayor’s boots splash in the water and he wades in deeper, a wave nearly knocking him over, but he keeps upright–
He twists back to look at us–
His Noise is silent–
His face unreadable–
And with a yawning grunt, one of the shadows in the water breaks the surface, all mouth and black teeth and horrible slime and scales, surging towards the Mayor–
Twisting its head sideways to grab his torso–
And the Mayor makes no sound as the huge creacher slams him into the sand–
And drags him back under the water–
And as quick as that–
He’s gone.
{VIOLA}
“He’s gone,” Todd says, and I share every bit of the disbelief in his voice. “He just walked in.” He turns to me. “He just walked right in.”
He’s breathing heavy, looking startled and exhausted by what’s just happened.
And then he sees me, really sees me.
“Viola,” he says–
And I take him in my arms and he takes me in his and we don’t have to say anything, anything at all.
Because we know.
“It’s over,” I whisper. “I can’t believe it. It’s over.”
“I think he really wanted to go,” Todd says, still holding me. “I think it was destroying him in the end, trying to control it all.”
We look back at the ocean and see the huge creatures still circling, waiting to see if Todd or I will offer ourselves up next. Angharrad sticks her nose right between us, bumping Todd in the face, saying Boy colt with enough feeling to bring tears to my eyes. Boy colt.
“Hey, girl,” Todd says, rubbing a hand along her nose but still holding onto me, and then his face looks sad as he reads her Noise. “Acorn,” he says.
“I left Bradley behind,” I say, tearing up again. “Wilf and Lee, too, but I don’t know what happened–”
“The Mayor said Mr Tate failed him,” Todd says. “Said the Spackle failed him, too. That can only be good.”
“We need to get back.” I twist in his arms and look at the scout ship. “I don’t suppose he taught you how to fly that?”
And then Todd says, “Viola,” in a way that makes me turn back to him.
“I don’t wanna be like the Mayor,” he says.
“You won’t,” I say. “That’s impossible.”
“No,” he says. “That’s not what I mean.”
And he looks me in the eyes.
And I feel it coming, feel the strength surging through him, finally free of the presence of the Mayor–
He opens up his Noise.
Opens it and opens it and opens it–
And there he is, all of him, open to me, showing me everything that’s happened, everything he felt–
Everything he feels–
Everything he feels for me–
“I know,” I say. “I can read you, Todd Hewitt.”
And he smiles that crooked smile–
And then we hear a sound up the beach, back where the trees meet the sand–
(THE SKY)
My battlemore makes the final leap onto the beach and for a moment I am dazzled by the ocean, the sheer huge fact of it filling my voice–
But my mount races on, turning towards the abandoned Clearing settlement–
And I am too late–
The Knife’s one in particular is here with her horse–
But the Knife is nowhere to be seen–
Only the leader of the Clearing, grabbing onto the Knife’s one in particular, his uniform a dark blot against the snow and the sand, and he is holding the Knife’s one in particular close to him, imprisoning her in his arms–
And so the Knife must be dead–
The Knife must be gone–
And I feel a surprising hollowness because of that, an emptiness–
Because even the one you hate leaves an absence when they go–
But those are the feelings of the Return–
And I am not the Return–
I am the Sky–
The Sky who made peace–
The Sky who must kill the leader of the Clearing in order to secure that peace–
And so I race forward, the figures in the far distance coming closer–
And I raise my weapon–
[TODD]
I squint thru the snow, which is getting thicker by the minute–
“Who’s that?” I say.
“That’s not a horse,” Viola says, stepping away from me. “That’s a battlemore.”
“A battlemore?” I say. “But I thought–”
And the air is torn from my lungs–
(THE SKY)
He pushes the girl away, seeing me coming, and I have an open shot–
I hear a voice behind me, shouting something in the distance–
A voice shouting Wait–
But it is hesitation that has hurt me in the past, being at the moment to act and not acting–