My first thought is to turn and run. Run and run and run and never stop.
“I’d like to see that,” Davy says, standing inside the gate, smiling like he just won a prize.
There’s so many of ’em, so many long white faces looking back at me, their eyes too big, their mouths too small and toothy and high on their faces, their ears looking nothing like a man’s.
But you can still see a man’s face in there, can’t you? Still see a face that feels and fears–
And suffers.
It’s hard to tell which are male and which are female cuz they all got the same lichen and moss growing right on their skins for clothing but there seem to be whole Spackle families in there, larger spacks protecting their spack children and what must be spack husbands protecting spack wives, arms wrapped round each other, heads pressed close together. All of them silently–
Silently.
“I know!” Davy says. “Can you believe they gave the cure to these animals?”
They look at Davy now and a weird clicking starts passing twixt ’em all with glances and nods moving along the crowd. Davy raises his pistol and steps further into the monastery grounds. “Thinking of trying something?” he spits. “Give me a reason! Go on! GIVE ME A REASON!”
The Spackle huddle closer together in their little groups, backing away from him where they can.
“Get in here, Todd,” Davy says. “We got work to do.”
I don’t move.
“I said, get in here! They’re animals. They ain’t gonna do nothing.”
I still don’t move.
“He murdered one of y’all,” Davy says to the Spackle.
“Davy!” I shout.
“Cut its head right off with a knife. Sawed and sawed–”
“Stop it!” I run at him to get him to shut his effing mouth. I don’t know how he knows but he knows and he’s gotta shut up right effing now.
The Spackle nearest the gate scoot way back at my approach, getting outta my way as fast as they can, looking at me with frightened faces, parents getting their children behind them. I push Davy hard but he just laughs and I realize I’m inside the monastery walls now.
And I see just how many Spackle there are.
The stone wall of the monastery surrounds a huge bit of land but only one little building, some kind of storehouse. The rest is divided up into smaller fields, separated by old wooden fences with low gates. Most of ’em are badly overgrown and you can see heavy grass and brambles stretching all the way to the back walls a good hundred metres away.
But mostly you can see Spackle.
Hundreds and hundreds of ’em spread out over the grounds.
Maybe even more than a thousand.
They’re pushing themselves against the monastery wall, huddling behind the rotting fences, sitting in groups or standing in rows.
But all watching me, silent as the grave, as my Noise spills out all over the place.
“He’s a liar!” I say. “It weren’t like that! It weren’t like that at all!”
But what was it like? What was it like that I can explain?
Cuz I did do it, didn’t I?
Not how Davy said but nearly as bad and completely as big in my Noise, too big to cover with all their eyes looking back at me, too big to surround with lies and confuse the truth, too big to not think about as a crowd of Spackle faces just stare.
“It was an accident,” I say, my voice trailing off, looking from face to weird face, not seeing no pictures of Spackle Noise, not understanding the clicking they make, so doubly not knowing what’s happening. “I didn’t mean it.”
But not one of ’em says a thing back. They don’t do nothing but stare.
There’s a creak as the gate behind us opens up again. We turn to look.
It’s Ivan from Farbranch, the one who joined the army rather than fight it.
And look how right he was. He’s wearing an officer’s uniform and he’s got a group of soldiers with him.
“Mr. Prentiss Jr,” he says, nodding at Davy, who nods back. Ivan turns to me, a look in his eye I can’t read and no Noise to be heard. “It’s good to see you well, Mr. Hewitt.”
“You two know each other?” Davy says, sharp-like.
“We’ve had past acquaintance,” Ivan says, still looking at me.
But I ain’t saying a word to him.
I’m too busy putting up pictures in my Noise.
Pictures of Farbranch. Pictures of Hildy and Tam and Francia. Pictures of the massacre that happened there. The massacre that didn’t include him.
A look of annoyance crosses his face. “You go where the power is,” he says. “That’s how you stay alive.”
I put up a picture of his town burning, men and women and children burning with it.
He frowns harder. “These men will stay here as guards. Your orders are to set the Spackle a-clearing the fields and make sure they’re fed and watered.”
Davy rolls his eyes. “Well, we know that–”
But Ivan’s already turning and heading out the gate, leaving behind ten men with rifles. They take up stayshuns standing on top of the monastery wall, already getting to work unrolling coils of barbed wire along its edge.
“Ten men with rifles and us against all these Spackle,” I say, under my breath but all over my Noise.
“Ah, we’ll be okay,” Davy says. He raises his pistol at the Spackle nearest him, maybe a female, holding a Spackle baby. She turns the baby away so her body’s protecting it. “They ain’t got no fight in ’em anyway.”
I see the face of the Spackle protecting her baby.
It’s defeated, I think. They all are. And they know it.
I know how they feel.
“Hey, pigpiss, check it out,” Davy says. He raises his arms in the air, getting all the Spackle eyes on him. “People of New Prentisstown!” he shouts, waving his arms about. “I read to you yer dooooooom!”
And he just laughs and laughs and laughs.
Davy decides to oversee the Spackle clearing the fields of scrub but that’s only cuz that means I’m the one who’ll have to shovel out the fodder from the storehouse for all of ’em to eat and then fill troughs for ’em to drink from.
But it’s farm work. I’m used to it. All the chores Ben and Cillian set me to doing every day. All the chores I used to complain about.
I wipe my eyes and get on with it.
The Spackle keep their distance from me as best they can while I work. Which, I gotta say, is okay by me.
Cuz I find I can’t really look ’em in the eyes.
I keep my head down and carry on shovelling.
Davy says his pa told him the Spackle worked as servants or cooks but one of the Mayor’s first orders was for everyone to keep ’em locked away in their homes till the army collected ’em last night while I slept.
“People had ’em living in their back gardens,” Davy says, watching me shovel as the morning turns to afternoon, eating what’s sposed to be lunch for both of us. “Can you believe that? Like they’re effing members of the family.”
“Maybe they were,” I say.
“Well they ain’t no more,” Davy says, rising and taking out his pistol. He grins at me. “Back to work.”
I empty most of the storehouse of fodder but it still don’t look like nearly enough. Plus, three of the five water pumps ain’t working and by sunset, I’ve only managed to fix one.
“Time to go,” Davy says.
“I ain’t done,” I say.
“Fine,” he says, walking towards the gate. “Stay here on yer own then.”
I look back at the Spackle. Now that the work day’s thru, they’ve pushed themselves as far away from the soldiers and the front gates as possible.
As far away from me and Davy as possible, too.
I look back and forth twixt them and Davy leaving. They ain’t got enough food. They ain’t got enough water. There ain’t no place to go to the toilet and no shelter of any kind at all.
I hold out my empty hands towards ’em but that don’t do no kind of explaining that’ll make anything okay. They just stare at me as I drop my hands and follow Davy out the gate.
“So much for being a man of courage, eh, pigpiss?” Davy says, untying his horse, which he calls Deadfall but which only seems to answer to Acorn.
I ignore him cuz I’m thinking bout the Spackle. How I’ll treat them well. I will. I’ll see that they get enough water and food and I’ll do everything I can to protect ’em.
I will.
I promise that to myself.
Cuz that’s what she’d want.
“Oh, I’ll tell you what she really wants,” Davy sneers.
And we fight again.
New bedding’s been put in the tower when I get back, a mattress and a sheet spread out on one side for me and another on the other side for Mayor Ledger, already sitting on his, Noise jangling, eating a bowl of stew.
The bad smell’s gone, too.
“Yes,” says Mayor Ledger. “And guess who had to clean it up?”
It turns out he’s been put to work as a rubbish man.
“Honest labour,” he says to me, shrugging, but there are other sounds in his greyish Noise that make me think he don’t believe it’s very honest at all. “Symbolic, I suppose. I go from the top of the heap to the bottom. It’d be poetic if it weren’t so obvious.”
There’s stew for me by my bed, too, and I take it to the window to look out over the town.
Which is starting to buzz.
As the cure leaves the systems of the men of the town, you begin to hear it. From inside the houses and buildings, from down the side streets and behind the trees.
Noise is returning to New Prentisstown.
It was hard for me to even walk thru old Prentisstown and that only ever had 146 men in it. New Prentisstown’s gotta have ten times that many. And boys, too.
I don’t know how I’m gonna be able to bear it.
“You’ll get used to it,” Mayor Ledger says, finishing his stew. “Remember, I lived here for twenty years before we found a cure.”
I close my eyes but all I see is a herd of Spackle, looking back at me.
Judging me.
Mayor Ledger taps me on the shoulder and points at my bowl of stew. “Are you going to eat that?”
That night I dream–
About her–
The sun’s shining behind her and I can’t see her face and we’re on a hillside and she’s saying something but the roar of the falls behind us is too loud and I say “What?” and when I reach for her, I don’t touch her but my hand comes back covered in blood–
“Viola!” I say, sitting up on my mattress in the dark, breathing heavy.
I look over to Mayor Ledger on his mattress, facing away from me, but his Noise ain’t sleeping Noise, it’s the grey-type Noise he has when he’s awake.
“I know yer up,” I say.
“You dream quite loud,” he says, not looking back. “She someone important?”
“Never you mind.”
“We just have to get through it, Todd,” he says. “That’s all any of us has to do now. Just stay alive and get through it.”
I turn to the wall.
There ain’t nothing I can do. Not while they got her.
Not while I don’t know.
Not while they could still hurt her.
Stay alive and get thru it, I think.
And I think of her out there.
And I whisper it, whisper it to her, wherever she is. “Stay alive and get thru it.”
Stay alive.