“Has he seen us?” Viola asks, her voice pulled taut.

I point the binos. Aaron rears up in them, huge and terrifying. I press a few buttons to push him back. He’s not looking at us, just rowing like an engine to get the boat to the side of the river and the road.

His face is torn and horrible, clotted and bloody, the hole in his cheek, the new hole where his nose used to be, and still, underneath all that, a look feroshus and devouring, a look without mercy, a look that won’t stop, that won’t never, never stop.

War makes monsters of men, I hear Ben saying.

There’s a monster coming towards us.

“I don’t think he’s seen us,” I say. “Not yet.”

“Can we outrun him?”

“He’s got a gun,” I say, “and you can see all the way down that road to Haven.”

“Off the road then. Through the trees.”

“There ain’t that many twixt us and the road down. We’ll have to be fast.”

“I can be fast,” she says.

And we jump on down the hill, skidding down leaves and wet vines, using rocks as handholds best we can. The tree cover is light and we can still see down the river, see Aaron as he rows.

Which means he can see us if he looks in the right place.

“Hurry!” Viola says.

Down–

And down–

And sliding to the road–

And squelching in the mud at the roadside–

And as we get to the road he’s outta sight again, still up the river–

But only for a second–

Cuz there he is–

The current bringing him fast–

Coming down the river–

In full view–

Looking right at us.

The roar of the falls is loud enough to eat you, but I still hear it.

I’d hear it if I was on the other side of the planet.

“TODD HEWITT!”

And he’s reaching for his rifle.

“Go!” I shout.

Viola’s feet hit the ground running and I’m right behind her, heading for the lip of the road that goes down to the zigzags.

It’s fifteen steps, maybe twenty till we can disappear over the edge–

We run like we’ve spent the last two weeks resting–

Pound pound pound against the road–

I check back over my shoulder–

To see Aaron try to take the rifle in one hand–

Try to balance it while keeping the boat steady–

It’s bouncing in the rapids, knocking him back and forth–

“He won’t be able to,” I yell to Viola. “He can’t row and fire at the same–”

CRACK!

A pop of mud flies up outta the road next to Viola’s feet ahead of me–

I cry out and Viola cries out and we both instinctively flinch down–

Running faster and faster–

Pound pound pound–

Run run run run run my Noise chugs like a rocket–

Not looking back–

Five steps–

Run run–

Three–

CRACK!

And Viola falls–

“NO!” I shout–

And she’s falling over the lip of the road, tripping down the other side and crashing down in a roll–

“NO!” I shout again and leap after her–

Stumbling down the steep incline–

Pounding down to where she’s rolling–

No–

Not this–

Not now–

Not when we’re–

Please no–

And she tumbles to some low shrubs at the side of the road and keeps going into them–

And stops face down.

And I’m racing towards her and I’m barely in control of my own standing up and I’m kneeling down already in the brush and I’m grabbing her and rolling her over and I’m looking for the blood and the shot and I’m saying, “No no no no no–”

And I’m almost blinded by rage and despair and the false promise of hope and no no no–

And she opens her eyes–

She’s opening her eyes and she’s grabbing me and she’s saying, “I’m not hit, I’m not hit.”

“Yer not?” I say, shaking her a little. “Yer sure?”

“I just fell,” she says. “I swear I felt the bullet fly right by my eyes and I fell. I’m not hurt.”

And I’m breathing heavy and heavy and heavy.

“Thank God,” I say. “Thank God.”

And the world spins and my Noise whirls.

And she’s already getting to her feet and I’m up after her standing in the scrub and looking at the road around and below us.

The falls are crashing over the cliff to our left and the twisting road is both behind us and in front of us as it starts doubling back on itself and making the steep zipper down to the bottom of the falls.

It’s a clear shot all the way.

No trees, just low scrub.

“He’ll pick us off,” Viola says, looking back up to the top of the road, to where we can’t see Aaron no doubt making his way to the river’s edge, stomping thru roaring water, walking on it for all I know.

“TODD HEWITT!” we hear again, faint over the roar of the water but loud as the whole entire universe.

“There’s nowhere to hide,” Viola says, looking around us and down. “Not till we get to the bottom.”

I’m looking round, too. The hillsides are too steep, the road too open, the areas between the road’s double-backs too shallow with shrubs.

Nowhere to hide.

“TODD HEWITT!”

Viola points up. “We could get up to those trees on top of the hill.”

But it’s so steep, I can already hear the hope failing in her voice.

And I spin round, looking still–

And then I see.

A little faint trail, skinny as anything, hardly even there, leading away from the first turn of the road and towards the falls. It disappears after a few metres but I follow it to where it might have gone.

Right to the cliffside.

Right down sharp to a place almost below the falls.

Right to a ledge that’s almost hidden.

A ledge underneath the waterfall itself.

I take a few steps outta the scrub and back onto the road. The little trail disappears.

So does the ledge.

“What is it?” Viola asks.

I go back into the scrub again.

“There,” I say, pointing. “Can you see it?”

She squints where I’m pointing. The fall is casting a little shadow on the ledge, darkening where the little trail ends.

“You can see it from here,” I say, “but you can’t see it from the road.” I look at her. “We’ll hide.”

“He’ll hear you,” she says. “He’ll come after us.”

“Not over this roar, not if I don’t shout in my Noise.”

Her forehead creases and she looks down at the road to Haven and up to where Aaron’s gotta be coming any second.

“We’re so close,” she says.

I take her arm and start pulling on it. “Come on. Just till he passes. Just till dark. With luck he’ll think we doubled back into the trees above.”

“If he finds us, we’re trapped.”

“And if we run for the city, he shoots us.” I look in her eyes. “It’s a chance. It gives us a chance.”

“Todd–”

“Come with me,” I say, looking right into her as hard as I can, pouring out as much hope as I can muster. Oh never leave me. “I promise I’ll get you to Haven tonight.” I squeeze her arm. Oh don’t deceive me. “I promise you.”

She looks right back at me, listening to it all, and then gives a single, sharp nod and we run to the little trail and down to where it ends and jump over the scrub to where it should continue and–

“TODD HEWITT!”

He’s almost to the falls–

And we scrabble down a steep embankment next to the edge of the water, the steepness of the hill rearing above us–

And slide down and over to the edge of the cliff–

The falls straight ahead–

And I get to the edge and I suddenly have to lean back into Viola cuz the drop goes straight down–

She grabs onto my shirt and holds me up–

And the water is smashing down right in front of us to the rocks below–

And the ledge leading under it all is just there–

Needing a jump over emptiness to get to it–

“I didn’t see this part,” I say, Viola grabbing at my waist to keep us from tumbling over.

“TODD HEWITT!”

He’s close, he’s so close–

“Now or never, Todd,” she says in my ear–

And she lets go of me–

And I jump across–

And I’m in the air–

And the edge of the falls is shooting over my head–

And I land–

And I turn–

And she’s jumping after me–

And I grab her and we fall backwards onto the ledge together–

And we lay there breathing–

And listening–

And all we hear for a second is the roar of the water over us now–

And then, faint, against it all–

“TODD HEWITT!”

And he suddenly sounds miles away.

And Viola’s on top of me and I’m breathing heavy into her face and she’s breathing heavy into mine.

And we’re looking in each other’s eyes.

And it’s too loud to hear my Noise.

After a second, she puts her hands on either side of me and pushes herself away. She looks up as she does and her eyes go wide.

I can just hear her say, “Wow.”

I roll away and look up.

Wow.

The ledge is more than just a little ledge. It carries on till it’s back, way back under the waterfall. We’re standing at the beginning of a tunnel with one wall made of rock and another made of pure falling water, roaring past white and clean and so fast it looks almost solid.

“Come on,” I say and head on down the ledge, my shoes slipping and sliding under me. It’s rocky and wet and slimy and we lean as close as we can to the rock side, away from the thundering water.

The noise is just tremendous. All-consuming, like a real thing you could taste and touch.

So loud, Noise is obliterated.

So loud, it’s the quietest I’ve ever felt.

We scramble on down the ledge, under the falls, making our way over rocky bumps and little pools with green goop growing in them. There are roots, too, hanging down from the rocks above, belonging to who knows what kinda plant.

“Do these look like steps to you?” Viola shouts, her voice small in the roar.

“TODD HEWITT!!” we hear from what sounds like a million miles away.

“Is he finding us?” Viola asks.

“I don’t know,” I say. “I don’t think so.”

The cliff face isn’t even and the ledge curves round it as it stretches forward. We’re both soaking wet and the water is cold and it’s not easy grabbing onto the roots to keep our balance.

Then the ledge suddenly drops down and widens out, carved steps becoming more obvious. It’s almost a stairway down.

Someone’s been here before.

We descend, the water thundering inches away from us.

We get to the bottom.

“Whoa,” Viola says behind me and I just know she’s looking up.

The tunnel opens up abruptly and the ledge widens at the same time to become a cavern made of water, the rocks stretching up way over our heads, the falls slamming down past them in a wall curving way out like a moving, living sail, enclosing the wall and the shelf under our feet.

But that’s not the whoa.

“It’s a church,” I say.

It’s a church. Someone has moved or carved rocks into four rows of simple pews with an aisle down the middle, all facing a taller rock, a pulpit, a pulpit with a flat surface which a preacher could stand on and preach with a blazing white wall of water crashing down behind him, the morning sun lighting it up like a sheet of stars, filling the room with shimmering sparkles on every shiny wet surface, all the way back to a carved circle in the stone with two smaller carved circles orbiting it to one side, New World and its moons, the settler’s new home of hope and God’s promise somehow painted a waterproof white and practically glowing on the rock wall, looking down and lighting up the church.

The church underneath a waterfall.

“It’s beautiful,” Viola says.

“It’s abandoned,” I say, cuz after the first shock of finding a church I see where a few of the pews have been knocked from their places and not replaced and there’s writing all over the walls, some of it carved in with tools, some of it written in the same waterproof paint as the New World carving, most of it nonsense. P.M.+M.A. and Willz & Chillz 4Ever and Abandon All Hope Ye Who something something.

“It’s kids,” Viola says. “Sneaking in here, making it their own place.”

“Yeah? Do kids do that?”

“Back on the ship we had an unused venting duct that we snuck into,” she says, looking around. “Marked it up worse than this.”

We wander in, looking round us, mouths open. The point of the roof where the water leaves the cliff must be a good ten metres above us and the ledge five metres wide easy.

“It musta been a natural cavern,” I say. “They musta found it and thought it was some kinda miracle.”

Viola crosses her arms against herself. “And then they found it wasn’t very practical as a church.”

“Too wet,” I say. “Too cold.”

“I’ll bet it was when they first landed,” she says, looking up at the white New World. “I’ll bet it was in the first year. Everything hopeful and new.” She turns round, taking it all in. “Before reality set in.”

I turn slowly, too. I can see exactly what they were thinking. The way the sun hits the falls, turning everything bright white, and it’s so loud and so silent at the same time that even without the pulpit and the pews it would have felt like we’d somehow walked into a church anyway, like it’d be holy even if no man had ever seen it.

And then I notice that at the end of the pews, there’s nothing beyond. It stops and it’s a fifty-metre drop to the rocks below.

So this is where we’re gonna have to wait.

This is where we’re gonna have to hope.

In the church under water.

“Todd Hewitt!” barely drifts in down the tunnel to us.

Viola visibly shivers. “What do we do now?”

“We wait till nightfall,” I say. “Sneak out and hope he don’t see us.”

I sit down on one of the stone benches. Viola sits down next to me. She lifts the bag over her head and sets it on the stone floor.

“What if he finds the trail?” she asks.

“We hope he don’t.”

“But what if he does?”

I reach behind me and take out the knife.

The knife.

Both of us look at it, the white water reflecting off of it, droplets of spray already catching and pooling on its blade, making it shine like a little torch.

The knife.

We don’t say nothing about it, just watch it gleam in the middle of the church.

“Todd Hewitt!”

Viola looks up to the entrance and puts her hands to her face and I can see her clench her teeth. “What does he even want?” she suddenly rages. “If the army’s all about you, what does he want with me? Why was he shooting at me? I don’t understand it.”

“Crazy people don’t need an explanayshun for nothing,” I say.

But my Noise is remembering the sacrifice that I saw him making of her way back in the swamp.

The sign, he called her.

A gift from God.

I don’t know if Viola hears this or if she remembers it herself cuz she says, “I don’t think I’m the sacrifice.”

“What?”

She turns to me, her face perplexed. “I don’t think it’s me,” she says. “He kept me asleep almost the entire time I was with him and when I did wake up, I kept seeing confusing things in his Noise, things that didn’t make sense.”

“He’s mad,” I say. “Madder than most.”

She don’t say nothing more, just looks out into the waterfall.

And reaches over and takes my hand.

“TODD HEWITT!”

I feel her hand jump right as my heart leaps.

“That’s closer,” she says. “He’s getting closer.”

“He won’t find us.”

“He will.”

“Then we’ll deal with it.”

We both look at the knife.

“TODD HEWITT!”

“He’s found it,” she says, grabbing my arm and squeezing into me.

“Not yet.”

“We were almost there,” she says, her voice high and breaking a little. “Almost there.”

“We’ll get there.”

“TODD HEWITT!”

And it’s definitely louder.

He’s found the tunnel.

I grip my knife and I look over to Viola, her face looking straight back up the tunnel, so much fear on it my chest begins to hurt.

I grip the knife harder.

If he touches her–

And my Noise reels back to the start of our journey, to Viola before she said anything, to Viola when she told me her name, to Viola when she talked to Hildy and Tam, to when she took on Wilf’s accent, to when Aaron grabbed her and stole her away, to waking up to her in Doctor Snow’s house, to her promise to Ben, to when she took on my ma’s voice and made the whole world change, just for a little while.

All the things we’ve been thru.

How she cried when we left Manchee behind.

Telling me I was all she had.

When I found out I could read her, silence or not.

When I thought Aaron had shot her on the road.

How I felt in those few terrible seconds.

How it would feel to lose her.

The pain and the unfairness and the injustice.

The rage.

And how I wished it was me.

I look at the knife in my hand.

And I realize she’s right.

I realize what’s been right all along, as insane as it is.

She’s not the sacrifice.

She’s not.

If one of us falls, we all fall.

“I know what he wants,” I say, standing up.

“What?” Viola says.

“TODD HEWITT!”

Definitely coming down the tunnel now.

Nowhere to run.

He’s coming.

She stands, too, and I move myself twixt her and the tunnel.

“Get down behind one of the pews,” I say. “Hide.”

“Todd–”

I move away from her, my hand staying on her arm till I’m too far away.

“Where are you going?” she says, her voice tightening.

I look back the way we came, up the tunnel of water.

He’ll be here any second.

“TODD HEWITT!”

“He’ll see you!” she says.

I hold up the knife in front of me.

The knife that’s caused so much trouble.

The knife that holds so much power.

“Todd!” Viola says. “What are you doing?”

I turn to her. “He won’t hurt you,” I say. “Not when he knows I know what he wants.”

“What does he want?”

I search her out, standing among the pews, the white planet and moons glowing down on her, the water shining watery light over her, I search out her face and the language of her body as she stands there watching me, and I find I still know who she is, that she’s still Viola Eade, that silent don’t mean empty, that it never meant empty.

I look right into her eyes.

“I’m gonna greet him like a man,” I say.

And even tho it’s too loud for her to hear my Noise, even tho she can’t read my thoughts, she looks back at me.

And I see her understand.

She pulls herself up a little taller.

“I’m not hiding,” she says. “If you’re not, I’m not.”

And that’s all I need.

I nod.

“Ready?” I ask.

She looks at me.

She nods once, firmly.

I turn back to the tunnel.

I close my eyes.

I take a deep breath.

And with every bit of air in my lungs and every last note of Noise in my head, I rear up–

And I shout, as loud as I can–

“AARON!!!!!!”

And I open my eyes and I wait for him to come.