BOOM!
– and the sky tears open behind us and a rush of wind comes up the road and Angharrad rears back in terror and I tumble off her to the ground and there’s dust and screaming and a throbbing in my ears as I lay there and wait to see if I’m dead or not.
Another bomb. The third this week since the first two. Not two hundred metres away from us this time.
“Bitches,” I hear Davy spit, getting to his own feet and looking back down the road.
My ears are ringing and my body’s shaking as I get to my feet. The bombs’ve come at different times of day and night, at different spots in the city. Once it was an aqueduct that fed water to the western part of town, once it was the two main bridges to the farmlands north of the river. Today, it’s–
“That’s that caff,” Davy says, trying to stop Deadfall/Acorn from bolting. “Where the soldiers eat.”
He gets Deadfall to heel and climbs back up on the saddle. “Come on!” he barks. “We’ll go see if they need help.”
I put my hands on Angharrad who’s still frightened, still saying boy colt boy colt over and over again. I say her name a buncha times and finally get back up on her.
“Don’t you go getting no funny ideas,” Davy says. He takes out his pistol and points it at me. “You ain’t sposed to leave my sight.”
Cuz that’s also how life’s gone since the bombs started.
Davy with a gun on me, every waking minute of every waking day.
So I can’t never go looking for her.
“The women certainly aren’t helping their own cause any,” says Mayor Ledger, mouth filled with chook.
I don’t say nothing, just eat my own dinner and field off the asking marks coming from his Noise. The caff was bombed at a time when it was closed, like everything else this Answer thing bombs, but just cuz it’s sposed to be empty don’t mean it always is. Davy and I found two dead soldiers when we got there and one other dead guy who probably mopped the floors or something. Three more soldiers have died in the other bombs.
It’s all really pissing off Mayor Prentiss.
I don’t hardly see him no more, not since the day of my arm break, not since the day I sorta got to see Viola again. Mayor Ledger says he’s arresting people and stuffing ’em in prisons west of town but not getting the knowledge he wants out of ’em. Mr. Morgan, Mr. O’Hare and Mr. Tate are leading parts of the army off into the hills west of town looking for the camps of the bomb-planters, who are all these women who disappeared the night of the first bombs.
But the army ain’t finding nothing and the Mayor just gets madder and madder, making more and more curfews, taking away more and more cure from his soldiers.
New Prentisstown gets louder by the day.
“The Mayor’s denying the Answer even exists,” I say.
“Well, the President can say anything he likes.” Mayor Ledger pokes at his dinner with a fork. “But people talk.” He takes another bite. “Oh, yes, they do.”
In addishun to the mattresses wedged in on the tower ledges, they’ve put in a basin with fresh water every morning and a little chemical toilet back in the darkest corner. We’re also getting better food, brought to us by Mr. Collins, who then locks us back inside.
Ker-thunk.
That’s where I am, locked up here every minute I’m not with Davy. The Mayor obviously don’t want me out looking for Viola, despite what he says about trust.
“We don’t know it’s just women,” I say, trying to keep her outta my Noise. “We don’t know for sure.”
“A group calling themselves the Answer played a role in the Spackle War, Todd. Covert bombing, night-time operations, that sort of thing.”
“And?”
“And it was all women. No Noise to be heard by the enemy, you see.” He shakes his head. “But they got out of hand at the end, became a law unto themselves. After the peace, they even attacked our own city. We were finally forced to execute some of them. A nasty business.”
“But if you executed them, how can it be them?”
“Because an idea lives on after the death of the person.” He burps quietly. “I don’t know what they think they’re going to accomplish, though. It’s only a matter of time before the President finds them.”
“Men have gone missing, too,” I say, cuz it’s true but what I’m thinking is–
(did she go with ’em?)
I lick my lips. “These healing houses where women work,” I say, “are they marked somehow? Some way to tell what they are?”
He takes a sip of his water, watching me over his cup. “Why do you want to know a thing like that?”
I rustle my Noise a little to hide anything that might give me away. “No reason,” I say. “Never mind.” I set my dinner on the little table they’ve given us, our agreed sign that he can eat the rest of mine. “I’m gonna sleep.”
I lay back on my bed and face the wall. The last of the setting sun’s coming thru the openings in the tower. There ain’t no glass in the openings and winter’s coming. I don’t know how we’re gonna get thru the cold. I put my arm under my pillow and pull my legs up to me, trying not to think too loud. I can hear Mayor Ledger eating the rest of my dinner.
But then a picture comes floating from his Noise, floating right over to me, a picture of an outstretched hand, painted in blue.
I turn to look at him. I’ve seen the hand on at least two different buildings on the way to the monastery.
“There are five of them,” he says, his voice low. “I can tell you where they are. If you want.”
I look into his Noise. He looks into mine. We’re both covering something, hiding something beneath all the other strands of our thoughts. All these days locked together and we’re still wondering if we can trust each other.
“Tell me,” I say.
“1017,” I read out to Davy as he spins the bolting tool around, latching the band to a Spackle who instantly becomes 1017.
“That’s enough for today,” Davy says, tossing the bolting tool in the bag.
“We’ve still got–”
“I said that’s enough.” He limps back over to our bottle of water and takes a swig. His leg should be healed by now. My arm is, but he still limps.
“We were sposed to be done with this in a week,” I say. “We’re going on two now.”
“I don’t see no one hurrying us along.” He spits out some water. “Do you?”
“No, but–”
“And no further instruckshuns and no new jobs . . .” He trails off, takes another swig of water and spits some more. He glares to my left. “What’re you looking at?”
1017 is still standing there, holding the band with one hand and staring at us. I think it’s a male and I think it’s young, not quite an adult. It clicks at us once and then once again and even tho it ain’t got Noise the click sure sounds like something rude.
Davy thinks so, too. “Oh, yeah?” He reaches for the rifle slung on his back, his Noise firing it again and again at fleeing Spackle.
1017 stands his ground. He looks me in the eye and clicks again.
Yeah, definitely rude.
He backs off, walking away but still staring at us, one hand rubbing his metal band. I turn to Davy, who’s got his rifle up and pointed at 1017 as he goes.
“Don’t,” I say.
“Why not?” Davy says. “Who’s gonna stop us?”
I don’t got the answer, cuz it seems there’s nobody.
The bombs have come every third or fourth day. No one knows where they’ll be or how they’re planted, but BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! The evening of the sixth bomb, a small fission reactor this time, Mayor Ledger comes in with a blackened eye and a swollen nose.
“What happened?” I ask.
“Soldiers,” he spits. He takes up his dinner plate, stew again, and winces as he takes the first bite.
“What did you do?”
His Noise rises a little and he turns an angry eye on me. “I didn’t do anything.”
“You know what I mean.”
He grumbles some, eats some more stew, then says, “Some of them got the brilliant idea that I was the Answer. Me.”
“You?” I say, maybe a bit too surprised.
He stands, setting down his stew, mostly uneaten, so I know he must be really sore. “They can’t find the women responsible and the soldiers are looking for someone to blame.” He stares outta one of the openings, watching night fall across the town that was once his home. “And did our President do anything to stop my beating?” he says, almost to himself. “No, he did not.”
I keep eating, trying to keep my Noise quiet of things I don’t wanna think.
“People are talking,” Mayor Ledger says, keeping his voice low, “about a new healer, a young one no one’s ever seen before, going in and out of this very cathedral a while back, now working at the house of healing Mistress Coyle used to run.”
Viola, I think, loud and clear before I can cover it.
Mayor Ledger turns to me. “That’s one you won’t have seen. It’s off the main road and down a little hill towards the river about halfway to the monastery. There are two barns together on the road where you need to turn.” He looks out the opening again. “You can’t miss it.”
“I can’t get away from Davy,” I say.
“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Mayor Ledger says, lying back down on his bed. “I’m merely telling you idle facts about our fair city.”
My breathing gets heavier, my mind and Noise racing thru possibilities about how I can get there, how I can get away from Davy to find the house of healing.
(to find her)
It isn’t till later that I think to ask, “Who’s Mistress Coyle?”
Even tho it’s dark, I can feel Mayor Ledger’s Noise get a little redder. “Ah, well,” he says, into the night. “She’d be your Answer, wouldn’t she?”
“That’s the last of ’em,” I say, watching Spackle 1182 slink away, rubbing her wrist.
“About effing time,” Davy says, flopping down onto the grass. There’s a crispness to the air but the sun is out and the sky is mostly clear.
“What are we sposed to do now?” I say.
“No effing idea.”
I stand there and watch the Spackle. If you didn’t know no better, you really wouldn’t think they were much smarter than sheep.
“They ain’t,” Davy says, closing his eyes to the sun.
“Shut up,” I say.
But I mean, look at ’em, tho.
They just sit on the grass, still no Noise, not saying nothing, half of ’em staring at us, half of ’em staring at each other, clicking now and then but hardly ever moving, not doing nothing with their hands or their time. All these white faces, looking drained of life, just sitting by the walls, waiting and waiting for something, whatever that something’s gonna be.
“And the time for that something is now, Todd,” booms a voice behind us. Davy scrambles to his feet as the Mayor comes in thru the main opening, his horse tied up outside.
But he looks at me, only me. “Ready for your new job?”
“Ain’t barely talked to me for weeks,” Davy’s fuming as we ride home. Things didn’t go so well twixt him and his pa. “Just keep watch on Todd this and hurry up with the Spackle that.” His hands’re gripped tightly round the reins. “Do I even get a thank you? Do I even get a nice job, David?”
“We were sposed to band the Spackle in a week,” I say, repeating what the Mayor told him. “It took us more’n twice that.”
He turns to me, his Noise really rising red. “We got attacked! How’s that sposed to be my fault?”
“I ain’t saying it was,” I say back but my Noise is remembering the band around 0038’s neck.
“So you blame me, too, do you?” He’s stopped his horse and is glaring at me, leaning forward in the saddle, ready to jump off.
I open my mouth to answer but then I glance down the road behind him.
There’s two barns by a turning in the road, a turning that heads down to the river.
I look back to Davy quickly.
He’s got an evil smile. “What’s down there?”
“Nothing.”
“Yer girl, ain’t it?” he sneers.
“Eff you, Davy.”
“No, pigpiss,” he says, sliding off his saddle to the ground, his Noise rising even redder. “Eff you.”
There ain’t nothing for it but to fight.
“Soldiers?” Mayor Ledger asks, seeing my bruises and blood as I come into the tower for dinner.
“Never you mind,” I growl. It was me and Davy’s worst fight in ages. I’m so sore I can barely reach my bed.
“You going to eat that?” Mayor Ledger asks.
A certain word in my Noise lets him know that no, I ain’t gonna eat that. He picks it up and starts chomping away without even a thank you.
“You trying to eat yer way to freedom?” I say.
“Says a boy who’s always had food provided for him.”
“I ain’t a boy.”
“The supplies we brought when we landed only lasted a year,” he says, twixt mouthfuls, “by which time our hunting and farming wasn’t quite up to where it should have been.” He takes another bite. “Lean times make you appreciate a hot meal, Todd.”
“What is it about men that makes them need to turn everything into a lesson?” I cover my face with my arm, then take it away cuz of how much my blackening eye hurts.
Night falls again. The air is even cooler and I leave most of my clothes on as I get under the blanket. Mayor Ledger starts to snore, dreaming about walking in a house with endless rooms and not being able to find the exit.
This is the safest time I got to think about her.
Cuz is she really out there?
And is she part of this Answer thing?
And other things, too.
Like what would she say if she saw me?
If she saw what I did every day?
And with who?
I swallow the cool night air and blink away the wet in my eyes.
(are you still with me, Viola?)
(are you?)
An hour later and I’m still not asleep. Something’s nagging at me and I’m turning in my sheets, trying to clear my Noise of whatever it is, trying to calm down enough so I can be ready for the new job the Mayor’s got planned for us tomorrow, one which don’t sound all that bad, if I’m honest.
But it’s like I’m missing something, something obvious, right in front of my face.
Something–
I sit up, listening to the snoring Noise of Mayor Ledger, the sleeping roar of New Prentisstown outside, the night birds chirping, even the river rushing by in the distance.
There was no ker-thunk sound after Mr. Collins let me in.
I think back.
Definitely not.
I look thru the darkness towards the door.
He forgot to lock it.
Right now, right this second.
It’s unlocked.