“What?” I say. “What is it?’
He doesn’t answer right away, just puts his face down close to Todd’s, peering into it, then looking down to where his own hand rests on all the ice he packed on Todd’s chest–
Can you–? Ben says, stopping again, concentration crossing his face.
“Can I what?” I say. “Can I what, Ben?”
He looks up at me. Can you hear that?
I blink at him, hearing my own breathing, the crash of the waves, Angharrad’s cries, Ben’s Noise–
“Hear what?”
I think– he says, stopping again and listening.
I think I can hear him.
He looks up at me. Viola, he says. I can hear Todd.
And he’s already rising to his feet, Todd in his arms–
“I can hear him!” he’s shouting from his mouth, lifting his son into the air. “I can hear his voice!”
“And there’s a chill in the air, son,” I read, “and I don’t mean just the winter coming. I’m beginning to worry a little about the days ahead.”
I look over at Todd. He still lies there, eyes unblinking, unchanged.
But every now and again, every once in a while, his Noise will open and a memory will surface, a memory of me and him when we first met Hildy, or of him and Ben and Cillian, where Todd is younger than I ever knew him and the three of them are going fishing in the swamp outside of old Prentisstown and Todd’s Noise just glows with happiness–
And my heart beats a little faster with hope–
But then his Noise fades and he’s silent again–
I sigh and lean back on the Spackle-made chair, under cover of a large Spackle-made tent, next to a Spackle-made fire, all of it surrounding a Spackle-made stone tablet where Todd rests and has rested since we got him back from the beach.
A pack of Spackle cure is pasted onto where his chest is scarred and burnt–
But healing.
And we wait.
I wait.
Wait to see if he’ll come back to us.
Outside the tent, a circle of Spackle surround us without moving, their Noises forming some kind of shield. The Pathways’ End, Ben says it’s called, says it’s where he slept all those months while his bullet wound healed, all those months beyond sight of the living, on the very edge of death, the bullet wound that should have killed him but didn’t because of Spackle intervention.
Todd was dead. I was sure of it then, I’m sure of it now.
I watched him die, watched him die in my arms, something that makes me upset even now and so I don’t want to talk about that any more–
But Ben put snow on Todd’s chest, cooling him down fast, cooling down the terrible burns that were paralysing him, cooling down an already cold Todd, an already exhausted Todd who’d been fighting the Mayor, and Ben says Todd’s Noise must have stopped because Todd had become used to not broadcasting it, that Todd must not have actually died, more shut down from the shock and the cold, and then the further cold of the snow kept him there, kept him just enough there that he wasn’t quite dead–
But I know otherwise.
I know he left us, I know he didn’t want to, I know he held on as tight as he could, but I know he left us.
I watched him go.
But maybe he didn’t go far.
Maybe I held him there, maybe me and Ben did, just close enough that maybe he didn’t go too far.
Maybe not so far that he couldn’t come back.
Tired? Ben says, entering the tent.
“I’m okay,” I say, setting down Todd’s mother’s journal, which I’ve read to him every day these past few weeks, hoping he’ll hear me.
Every day hoping he’ll come back from wherever he’s gone.
How’s he doing? Ben asks, walking over to Todd, putting a hand on his arm.
“The same,” I say.
Ben turns back to me. He’ll come back, Viola. He will.
“We hope.”
I came back. And I didn’t have you to call for me.
I look away from him. “You came back changed.”
It was 1017 who suggested the Pathways’ End and Ben agreed with him and since New Prentisstown was nothing but a new lake at the bottom of a new falls and since the alternative was locking Todd in a bed in the scout ship until the new convoy arrived – a method favoured quite strongly by Mistress Lawson, who’s now head of pretty much everything she doesn’t let Wilf or Lee run – I reluctantly agreed with Ben.
Who nods at what I said, looking back down at Todd. I expect he’ll be changed, too. He smiles back at me. But I seem to be doing okay.
I watch Ben these days and I wonder if I’m watching the future of New World, if every man will eventually give himself over so totally to the voice of the planet, keeping his individuality but allowing in all the individualities of everyone else at the same time and willingly joining the Spackle, joining the rest of the world.
Not all men will, I know that, not with how much they valued the cure.
And what about the women?
Ben is certain women do have Noise and that if men can silence theirs, why shouldn’t women be able to un-silence theirs?
He wonders if I might be willing to give it a try.
I don’t know.
Why can’t we learn to live with how we are? And whatever anybody chooses is okay by the rest of us?
Either way, we’re about to have 5000 opportunities to find out.
The convoy just confirmed, Ben says. The ships entered orbit an hour ago, The landing ceremony will go ahead this afternoon as planned. He arches an eyebrow at me. You coming?
I smile. “Bradley can represent me just fine. Are you going?”
He looks back at Todd. I have to, he says. I have to introduce them to the Sky. I’m the conduit between the settlers and the Land, whether I like it or not. He brushes Todd’s hair away from his forehead. But I’ll come back here straight after.
I haven’t left Todd’s side since we brought him here and won’t until he wakes, not even for new settlers. I even made Mistress Lawson come to me to confirm what the Mayor said about the cure. She tested it inside and out, and he was telling the truth. Every woman is healthy now.
1017 isn’t yet, though.
The infection seems to spread more slowly through him, and he’s declining to take the cure, saying he’ll suffer the pain of the band until Todd wakes up, as a reminder of all that was, of all that almost was, and of what we should all never return to.
I can’t help it. I’m a little glad that it still hurts him.
The Sky would like to visit, Ben says lightly, as if he could already read the Noise I don’t have.
“No.”
He’s arranged all this, Viola. If we get Todd back–
“If,” I say. “That’s the key word, isn’t it?”
It’ll work, he says. It will.
“Fine,” I say. “When it does, then we can ask Todd if he wants to see the Spackle who put him here in the first place.”
Viola–
I smile to stop him from the argument we’ve already had two dozen times already. An argument about how I can’t quite forgive 1017 yet.
And maybe never.
I know he often waits outside the Pathways’ End, asking Ben how Todd is. I can hear him sometimes. Right now, though, all I hear is Angharrad, munching on grass, patiently waiting with us for her boy colt.
The Sky will be a better leader for all this, Ben says. We might actually be able to live with them in peace. Maybe even in the paradise we always wanted.
“If Mistress Lawson and the convoy rework the cure for the Noise,” I say. “If the men and women who land don’t feel threatened by being so out-numbered by the native species. If there’s always enough food to go around–”
Try to have some hope, Viola, he says.
And there’s that word again.
“I do,” I say. “But I’m giving it all to Todd right now.”
Ben looks back down at his son. He’ll come back to us.
I nod to agree, but we don’t know that he will, not for sure.
But we hope.
And that hope is so delicate, I’m scared to death of letting it out.