Monsters of Men

❮Chapters ❯

I can see all this–

And I don’t care–

(THE SKY)

“Show me!” she shouts. “Or I swear to God I’ll beat you to death with this thing!”

Viola, the Source says behind her, still holding the Knife in his arms, and I look into his voice–

And the Source’s heart is broken–

Broken so much it infects everything, reaching out into the world beyond him–

Because when the Land mourns, we mourn together–

And his grief overwhelms me, becomes my own, becomes the Land’s–

And I see the full extent of my mistake–

A mistake that may have ruined the Land, a mistake that may have cost us our peace, a mistake that may destroy the Land after all I have done to save it–

A mistake that the Sky should not have made–

I have killed the Knife–

I have finally killed the Knife–

The thing I have wanted for so long–

And it has gained me nothing–

Only knowledge of the loss I have caused–

I can see it written across the face of the voiceless one–

The voiceless one holding out a weapon she does not know how to use–

And so I open my voice and I show her–

{VIOLA}

His Noise opens up in front of me and it shows me exactly how to use the weapon, where to place my fingers and how to squeeze it to send out the white flash from the end–

He’s showing me how to kill him–

Viola, I hear Ben say again behind me. Viola, you can’t.

“Why can’t I?” I say, not looking back, keeping my eyes firmly on 1017. “He killed Todd.”

And if you kill him, Ben says, where will it stop?

This does make me turn around. “How can you say that?!” I shout. “How can you say that with Todd there in your arms?”

Ben’s face is clenched and shuttered, his Noise giving off so much pain I can hardly bear to look at him–

But still he’s saying it–

If you kill the Sky, Ben says, the war will begin again. And we’ll all die. And then the Land will be killed in huge numbers from orbit. And then the settlers who come down here will be attacked by the Land that remains. And there will be–

He can’t go on for a second but then he makes himself, makes himself say it in his own voice–

“There will be no end of it, Viola,” he says, cradling Todd against his chest.

I look back to 1017, who hasn’t moved. “He wants me to do it,” I say. “He wants me to.”

“He wants to not have to live with his mistake,” Ben says. “He wants the pain to end. But how much better a Sky will he be knowing what this mistake feels like for the rest of his life?”

“How can you talk like this, Ben?” I say.

Because I hear them, he says with his Noise. All of them. All the Land, all the men, I hear every one of them. And we can’t just let them die, Viola. We can’t. That’s the very thing Todd stopped here today. The very thing–

And then he really can’t go on. He holds Todd closer to him. Oh my son, he says. Oh my son–

(THE SKY)

She turns back to me, still pointing the weapon, her hands placed exactly on it now to fire it–

“You took him from me,” she says, her spoken words breaking. “We came all this way, all this way and we won! We WON and you took him!”

And she cannot say anything more–

I am sorry, I show again–

And it is not just the echo of the Source’s grief–

It is my own–

Not just for how I have failed as the Sky, for how I have put the entire Land in danger after saving them from it–

But for the life I have taken–

The first life I have taken, ever–

And I remember–

I remember the Knife–

And the knife that gave him his name–

The knife he used to kill the Land at the side of a river, a member of the Land who was merely fishing, who was innocent, but who the Knife saw as an enemy–

Who the Knife killed–

And who the Knife regretted killing every moment since–

Regret painted on him every day in that labour camp, every day as he dealt with the Land, regret that drove him mad with anger when he broke my arm–

Regret that caused him to save me when the Burden were all killed–

Regret that is now my own to carry with me–

Carry with me for ever–

And if that for ever is only as long as the next breath–

So be it–

The Land deserve better–

{VIOLA}

1017 is remembering Todd–

I can see it in his Noise, see it as the weapon trembles in my hand–

See Todd stabbing the Spackle with the knife when we came upon it on the side of the river–

When Todd killed the Spackle even when I was screaming for him not to–

And 1017 remembers how Todd suffered for it–

Suffering I see 1017 start feeling in himself–

Suffering I remember feeling, too, after I stabbed Aaron through the neck underneath the waterfall–

It’s a hell of a thing to kill someone–

Even when you think they deserve it–

And now 1017 knows it as well as Todd and I do–

As Todd did–

My heart is broken, broken in a way that will never be healed, broken in a way that feels like it’s going to kill me, too, right here on this stupid, freezing beach–

And I know Ben’s right. I know if I kill 1017 then there’s no way back. We’ll have killed a second Spackle leader, and in their greater numbers they would kill every single one of us they could find. And then when the settlers arrived–

Never-ending war, never-ending death–

And here’s my decision again–

My choice to send us deeper into war or keep us out of it–

I chose wrong before–

And is this the price I pay for having chosen wrong?

It’s too high–

But if I make this personal again–

If I make 1017 pay–

Then the world changes–

The world ends–

And I don’t care–

I don’t care–

Todd–

Oh please, Todd–

And, Todd? I think–

And then I realize–

My heart aching–

If I kill 1017–

And war starts again–

And we’re all killed–

Who will remember Todd?

Who will remember what he did?

Todd–

And my heart breaks even more–