It’s weird, Noise, but almost wordless, cresting the hill in front of us and rolling down, single-minded but talking in legions, like a thousand voices singing the same thing.

Yeah.

Singing.

“What is it?” Viola asks, spooked as I am. “It’s not the army, is it? How could they be in front of us?”

“Todd!” Manchee barks from the top of the small hill. “Cows, Todd! Giant cows!”

Viola’s mouth twists. “Giant cows?”

“No idea,” I say and I’m already heading up the little hill.

Cuz the sound–

How can I describe it?

Like how stars might sound. Or moons. But not mountains. Too floaty for mountains. It’s a sound like one planet singing to another, high and stretched and full of different voices starting at different notes and sloping down to other different notes but all weaving together in a rope of sound that’s sad but not sad and slow but not slow and all singing one word.

One word.

We reach the top of the hill and another plain unrolls below us, the river tumbling down to meet it and then running thru it like a vein of silver thru a rock and all over the plain, walking their way from one side of the river to the other, are creachers.

Creachers I never seen the like of in my life.

Massive, they are, four metres tall if they’re an inch, covered in a shaggy, silvery fur with a thick, fluffed tail at one end and a pair of curved white horns at the other reaching right outta their brows and long necks that stretch down from wide shoulders to the grass of the plain below and these wide lips that mow it up as they trudge on dry ground and drink water as they cross the river and there’s thousands of ’em, thousands stretching from the horizon on our right to the horizon on our left and the Noise of them all is singing one word, at different times in different notes, but one word binding ’em all together, knitting ’em as a group as they cross the plain.

“Here,” Viola says from somewhere off to my side. “They’re singing here.”

They’re singing Here. Calling it from one to another in their Noise.

Here I am.

Here we are.

Here we go.

Here is all that matters.

Here.

It’s–

Can I say?

It’s like the song of a family where everything’s always all right, it’s a song of belonging that makes you belong just by hearing it, it’s a song that’ll always take care of you and never leave you. If you have a heart, it breaks, if you have a heart that’s broken, it fixes.

It’s–

Wow.

I look at Viola and she has her hand over her mouth and her eyes are wet but I can see a smile thru her fingers and I open my mouth to speak.

“Ya won’t get ver far on foot,” says a completely other voice to our left.

We spin round to look, my hand going right to my knife. A man driving an empty cart pulled by a pair of oxes regards us from a little side path, his mouth left hanging open like he forgot to close it.

There’s a shotgun on the seat next to him, like he just put it there.

From a distance, Manchee barks “Cow!”

“They’s all go round carts,” says the man, “but not safe on foot, no. They’s squish ya right up.”

And again leaves his mouth open. His Noise, buried under all the Heres from the herd, seems to pretty much be saying exactly what his mouth is. I’m trying so hard not to think of certain words I’m already getting a headache.

“Ah kin give y’all a ride thrus,” he says. “If ya want.”

He raises an arm and points down the road, which disappears under the feet of the herd crossing it. I hadn’t even thought about how the creachers’d be blocking our way but you can see how you wouldn’t wanna try walking thru them.

I turn and I start to say something, anything, that’ll be the fastest way to get away.

But instead the most amazing thing happens.

Viola looks at the man and says, “Ah’m Hildy.” She points at me. “At’s Ben.”

“What?” I say, barking it almost like Manchee.

“Wilf,” says the man to Viola and it takes a second to realize he’s saying his name.

“Hiya, Wilf,” Viola says and her voice ain’t her own, ain’t her own at all, there’s a whole new voice coming outta her mouth, stretching and shortening itself, twisting and unravelling and the more she talks the more different she sounds.

The more she sounds like Wilf.

“We’re all fra Farbranch. Where yoo from?”

Wilf hangs his thumb back over his shoulder. “Bar Vista,” he says. “I’m gone Brockley Falls, pick up s’plies.”

“Well, at’s lucky,” Viola says. “We’re gone Brockley Falls, too.”

This is making my headache worse. I put my hands up to my temples, like I’m trying to keep my Noise inside, trying to keep all the wrong things from spilling out into the world. Luckily, the song of Here has made it like we’re already swimming in sound.

“Hop on,” Wilf says with a shrug.

“C’mon, Ben,” Viola says, walking to the back of the cart and hoisting her bag on top. “Wilf’s gone give us a ride.”

She jumps on the cart and Wilf snaps the reins on his oxes. They take off slowly and Wilf don’t even look at me as he passes. I’m still standing there in amazement when Viola goes by, waving her hand frantically to me to get on beside her. I don’t got no choice, do I? I catch up and pull myself up with my arms.

I sit down next to her and stare at her with my jaw down around my ankles. “What are you doing?” I finally hiss in what’s sposed to be a whisper.

“Shh!” she shushes, looking back over her shoulder at Wilf, but he could’ve already forgotten he picked us up for all that’s going on in his Noise. “I don’t know,” she whispers by my ear, “just play along.”

“Play along with what?”

“If we can get to the other side of the herd, then it’s between us and the army, isn’t it?”

I hadn’t thought about that. “But what are you doing? What do Ben and Hildy gotta do with it?”

“He has a gun,” she whispers, checking on Wilf again. “And you said yourself how people might react about you being from a certain place. So, it just sort of popped out.”

“But you were talking in his voice.”

“Not very well.”

“Good enough!” I say, my voice going a little loud with amazement.

“Shh,” she says a second time but with the combo of the herd of creachers getting closer by the second and Wilf’s obvious not-too-brightness, we might as well be having a normal conversayshun.

“How do you do it?” I say, still pouring surprise out all over her.

“It’s just lying, Todd,” she says, trying to shush me again with her hands. “Don’t you have lying here?”

Well of course we have lying here. New World and the town where I’m from (avoiding saying the name, avoiding thinking the name) seem to be nothing but lies. But that’s different. I said it before, men lie all the time, to theirselves, to other men, to the world at large, but who can tell when it’s a strand in all the other lies and truths floating round outta yer head? Everyone knows yer lying but everyone else is lying, too, so how can it matter? What does it change? It’s just part of the river of a man, part of his Noise, and sometimes you can pick it out, sometimes you can’t.

But he never stops being himself when he does it.

Cuz all I know about Viola is what she says. The only truth I got is what comes outta her mouth and so for a second back there, when she said she was Hildy and I was Ben and we were from Farbranch and she spoke just like Wilf (even tho he ain’t from Farbranch) it was like all those things became true, just for an instant the world changed, just for a second it became made of Viola’s voice and it wasn’t describing a thing, it was making a thing, it was making us different just by saying it.

Oh, my head.

“Todd! Todd!” Manchee barks, popping up at the end of the cart, looking up thru our feet. “Todd!”

“Crap,” Viola says.

I hop off the cart and sweep him up in my arms, putting one hand round his muzzle and using the other to get back on the cart. “Td?” he puffs thru closed lips.

“Quiet, Manchee,” I say.

“I’m not even sure it matters,” Viola says, her voice stretching out.

I look up.

“Cw,” Manchee says.

A creacher is walking right past us.

We’ve entered the herd.

Entered the song.

And for a little while, I forget all about any kinda lies.

I’ve never seen the sea, only in vids. No lakes where I grew up neither, just the river and the swamp. There may have been boats once but not in my lifetime.

But if I had to imagine being on the sea, this is what I’d imagine. The herd surrounds us and takes up everything, leaving just the sky and us. It cuts around us like a current, sometimes noticing us but more usually noticing only itself and the song of Here, which in the midst of it is so loud it’s like it’s taken over the running of yer body for a while, providing the energy to make yer heart beat and yer lungs breathe.

After a while, I find myself forgetting all about Wilf and the – the other things I could think about and I’m just lying back on the cart, watching it all go by, individual creachers snuffling around, feeding, bumping each other now and again with their horns, and there’s baby ones, too, and old bulls and taller ones and shorter ones and some with scars and some with scruffier fur.

Viola’s laying down next to me and Manchee’s little doggie brain is overwhelmed by it all and he’s just watching the herd go by with his tongue hanging out and for a while, for a little while, as Wilf drives us over the plain, this is all there is in the world.

This is all there is.

I look over at Viola and she looks back at me and just smiles and shakes her head and wipes away the wet from her eyes.

Here.

Here.

We’re Here and nowhere else.

Cuz there’s nowhere else but Here.

“So this . . . Aaron,” Viola says after a while in a low voice and I know exactly why it’s now that she brings him up.

It’s so safe inside the Here we can talk about any dangers we like.

“Yeah?” I say, also keeping my voice low, watching a little family of creachers waltz by the end of the cart, the ma creacher nuzzling forward a curious baby creacher who’s staring at us.

Viola turns to me from where she’s lying down. “Aaron was your holy man?”

I nod. “Our one and only.”

“What kind of things did he preach?”

“The usual,” I say. “Hellfire. Damnayshun. Judgement.”

She eyes me up. “I’m not sure that’s the usual, Todd.”

I shrug. “He believed we were living thru the end of the world,” I say. “Who’s to say he was wrong?”

She shakes her head. “That’s not what the preacher we had on the ship was like. Pastor Marc. He was kind and friendly and made everything seem like it was going to be okay.”

I snort. “No, that don’t sound like Aaron at all. He was always saying, ‘God hears’ and ‘If one of us falls, we all fall’. Like he was looking forward to it.”

“I heard him say that, too.” She crosses her arms over herself.

The Here wraps us still, flowing everywhere.

I turn to her. “Did he . . . Did he hurt you? Back in the swamp?”

She shakes her head again and lets out a sigh. “He ranted and raved at me, and I guess it might have been preaching, but if I ran, he’d run after me and rant some more and I’d cry and ask him for help but he’d ignore me and preach some more and I’d see pictures of myself in his Noise when I didn’t even know what Noise was. I’ve never been so scared in my life, not even when our ship was crashing.”

We both look up into the sun.

“If one of us falls, we all fall,” she says. “What does that even mean?”

Which, when I really think about it, I realize I don’t know and so I don’t say nothing and we just sink back into the Here and let it take us a little farther.

Here we are.

Not nowhere else.

After an hour or a week or a second, the creachers start thinning and we come out the other side of the herd. Manchee jumps down off the cart. We’re going slow enough that there’s no danger of him getting left behind so I let him. We’re not thru lying there on the cart just yet.

“That was amazing,” Viola says quietly, cuz the song is already starting to disappear. “I forgot all about how much my feet hurt.”

“Yeah,” I say.

“What were those?”

“’Em big thangs,” Wilf says, not turning round. “Jus thangs, thass all.”

Viola and I look at each other, like we forgot he was even there.

How much have we given away?

“’Em thangs got a name?” Viola asks, sitting up, acting her lie again.

“Oh, sure,” Wilf says, giving the oxes freer rein now that we’re outta the herd. “Packy Vines or Field Baysts or Anta Fants.” We see him shrug from behind. “I just call ’em thangs, thass all.”

“Thangs,” Viola says.

“Things,” I try.

Wilf looks back over his shoulder at us. “Say what, y’all from Farbranch?” he asks.

“Yessir,” Viola says with a look at me.

Wilf nods at her. “Y’all bin seen that there army?”

My Noise spikes real loud before I can quiet it but again Wilf don’t seem to notice. Viola looks at me, worry on her forehead.

“And what army’s that, Wilf?” she says, the voice missing a little.

“That there army from cursed town,” he says, still driving along like we’re talking about vegetables. “That there army come outta swamp, come takin settlements, growin as it comes? Y’all bin seen that?”

“Where’d yoo hear bout an army, Wilf?”

“Stories,” Wilf says. “Stories a-come chatterin down the river. People talkin. Ya know. Stories. Y’all bin seen that?’’

I shake my head at Viola but she says, “Yeah, we seen it.”

Wilf looks back over his shoulder again. “Zit big?”

“Very big,” Viola says, looking at him seriously. “Ya gotta prepare yerself, Wilf. There’s danger comin. Yoo need to warn Brockley Hills.”

“Brockley Falls,” Wilf corrects her.

“Ya gotta warn ’em, Wilf.”

We hear Wilf grunt and then we realize it’s a laugh. “Ain’t nobody lissnen to Wilf, I tell ya what,” he says, almost to himself, then strikes the reins on the oxes again.

It takes most of the rest of the afternoon to get to the other side of the plain. Thru Viola’s binos we can see the herd of things still crossing in the distance, from south to north, like they’re never gonna run out. Wilf don’t say nothing more about the army. Viola and I keep our talking to a bare minimum so we don’t give any more away. Plus, it’s so hard to keep my Noise clear it’s taking mosta my concentrayshun. Manchee follows along on the road, doing his business and sniffing every flower.

When the sun is low in the sky, the cart finally creaks to a halt.

“Brockley Falls,” Wilf says, nodding his head to where we can see in the distance the river tumbling off a low cliff. There’s fifteen or twenty buildings gathered round the pond at the bottom of the falls before the river starts up again. A smaller road turns off from this one and leads down to it.

“We’re getting off here,” Viola says and we hop down, taking our bags from the cart.

“Thought ya mite,” Wilf says, looking back over his shoulder at us again.

“Thank ya, Wilf,” she says.

“Welcome,” he says, staring off into the distance. “Best take shelter ’fore too long. Gone rain.”

Both Viola and me automatically look straight up. There ain’t a cloud in the sky.

“Mmm,” Wilf says. “No one lissnen to Wilf.”

Viola looks back at him, her voice returning to itself, trying to get the point to him clearly. “You have to warn them, Wilf. Please. If you’re hearing that an army’s coming, then you’re right and people have to be ready.”

All Wilf says is “Mmm” again before snapping the reins and turning the oxes down the split road towards Brockley Falls. He don’t even look back once.

We watch him go for a while and then turn back to our own road.

“Ow,” Viola says, stretching out her legs as she steps forward.

“I know,” I say. “Mine too.”

“You think he was right?” Viola says.

“Bout what?”

“About the army getting bigger as it marches.” She imitates his voice again. “Growin as it comes.”

“How do you do that?” I ask. “Yer not even from here.”

She shrugs. “A game I used to play with my mother,” she says. “Telling a story, using different voices for every character.”

“Can you do my voice?” I ask, kinda tentative.

She grins. “So you can have a conversayshun with yerself?”

I frown. “That don’t sound nothing like me.”

We head back down the road, Brockley Falls disappearing behind us. The time on the cart was nice but it weren’t sleep. We try to go as fast as we can but most times that ain’t much more than a walk. Plus maybe the army really is caught far behind, really will have to wait behind the creachers.

Maybe. Maybe not. But within the half hour, you know what?

It’s raining.

“People should listen to Wilf,” Viola says, looking up.

The road’s found its way back down near the river and we find a reasonably sheltered spot twixt the two. We’ll eat our dinner, see if the rain stops. If it don’t we got no choice but to walk in it anyway. I haven’t even checked to see if Ben packed me a mac.

“What’s a mac?” Viola asks as we sit down against different trees.

“A raincoat,” I say, looking thru my rucksack. Nope, no mac. Great. “And what did I say bout listening too close?”

I still feel a little calm, if you wanna know the truth, tho I probably shouldn’t. The song of Here still feels like it’s being sung, even if I can’t hear it, even if it’s miles away back on the plain. I find myself humming it, even tho it don’t have a tune, trying to get that feeling of connectedness, of belonging, of having someone there to say that you’re Here.

I look over at Viola, eating outta one of her packets of fruit.

I think about my ma’s book, still in my rucksack.

Stories in voices, I think.

Could I stand to hear my ma’s voice spoken?

Viola crinkles the fruit packet she’s just finished. “That’s the last of them.”

“I got some of this cheese left,” I say, “and some dried mutton, but we’re gonna have to start finding some of our own on the way.”

“You mean like stealing?” she asks, her eyebrows up.

“I mean like hunting,” I say. “But maybe stealing, too, if we have to. And there’s wild fruit and I know some roots we can eat if you boil ’em first.”

“Mmm.” Viola frowns. “There’s not much call for hunting on a spaceship.”

“I could show you.”

“Okay,” she says, trying to sound cheerful. “Don’t you need a gun?”

“Not if yer a good hunter. Rabbits are easy with snares. Fish with lines. You can catch squirrels with yer knife but there ain’t much meat.”

“Horse, Todd,” Manchee barks, quietly.

I laugh, for the first time in what seems like forever. Viola laughs, too. “We ain’t hunting horses, Manchee.” I reach out to pet him. “Stupid dog.”

“Horse,” he barks again, standing up and looking down the road from the direkshun we just came.

We stop laughing.