Monsters of Men

Girl colt, Acorn warns–

“I said, off the horse!”

I hear the cocking of a rifle, and I start yelling, “Todd!”

“I’m not warning you again!” says the soldier and other soldiers are standing now–

“TODD!” I shout again–

The second soldier grabs Acorn’s reins and others are pressing forward. Submit! Acorn snarls, teeth bared, but the soldier just hits him in the head with his rifle–

“TODD!”

And hands are grabbing at me and Acorn’s whinnying Submit, submit! but the soldiers are pulling me off the saddle and I’m holding on as hard as I can–

“Let her go,” a voice says, cutting through all of the shouting, even though it doesn’t sound raised at all.

The soldiers let me go at once, and I right myself on Acorn’s saddle.

“Welcome, Viola,” the Mayor says, as a space opens between us.

“Where’s Todd?” I say. “What have you done with him?”

And then I hear his voice–

“Viola?”

–a step behind the Mayor and pushing past him, shoving him hard in the shoulder as he forces his way towards me, his eyes wide and dazed, but here he comes–

“Viola,” he says, reaching up to me and he’s smiling and I’m reaching for him, too–

But for a second, just a quick second, there’s something weird about his Noise, something light, something vanishing–

For a second, I can barely hear it–

And then his feelings wash over it and he’s Todd again and he grips me hard and says, “Viola.”

[TODD]

“And then Simone said, I’ve got a better idea,” Viola says and opens the flap on the new bag she’s carrying. She reaches in and takes out two flat metal things. They’re small as skimming stones, curved and shiny, shaped perfectly to fit in yer palm. “Comms,” she says. “You and I can talk to each other no matter where we are.”

She reaches over and puts one in my hand–

–and I feel her fingers there for a second and I feel the relief all over again, the relief of seeing her, the relief of having her here, right here in front of me, even in the way her silence pulls at me still, even in the way she’s still looking at me a bit funny–

It’s my Noise she’s looking at, I know it is.

I am the Circle and the Circle is me. He put it into my head, light and disappearing. Said it was a “teknique”, something I could practise to make it so I could be just as silent as him and his captains.

And for a minute there, for a minute there I think I was–

“Comm one,” she says into her comm and suddenly the metal on mine turns into a palm-sized screen filled with Viola’s smiling face.

It’s like I’m holding her right in my hand.

She shows me her comm with a little laugh and there’s my own face, looking surprised.

“The signal’s relayed through the probe,” she says, pointing back towards the city, where a dot of light is hovering far down the road. “Simone’s keeping it back so this one doesn’t get shot down.”

“Smart move,” says the Mayor, from where he’s been standing nearby. “May I see one of those?”

“Nope,” Viola says, not even looking at him. “If you do this,” she says to me, pressing her comm at the edge, “you can talk to the scout ship, too. Simone?”

“I’m here,” says a woman, popping up next to Viola on the screen in my hand. “Are you okay down there? There was a minute where–”

“I’m okay,” says Viola. “I’m with Todd. This is him, by the way.”

“Nice to meet you, Todd,” says the woman.

“Uh,” I say. “Hi?”

“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” Viola says to the woman.

“I’ll be watching. And Todd?”

“Yeah?” I say, looking at the woman’s little face.

“You take care of Viola, you hear?”

“Don’t you worry,” I say.

Viola presses her comm again and the faces disappear. She takes a long breath and gives me a tired smile. “So I leave you for five minutes and you go off and fight a war?” she says and she’s saying it to be kinda funny but I wonder–

I wonder if seeing all that death is why she looks a little different to me. More real, more there, like it’s just the most incredible thing in the world that we’re both still alive and I feel my chest get all funny and tight and I think, Here she is, right here, my Viola, she came for me, she’s here–

And I find myself thinking how I want to take her hand again and never let it go, to feel the skin of it, the warmth of it, hold it tight against my own hand and–

“Your Noise is funny,” she says, looking at me strange again. “It’s blurry. I can feel the feelings there–” and she looks away and my face goes red for no reason at all “–but it’s hard to read clearly.”

I’m about to tell her about the Mayor, about how I sorta blanked out for a minute but when I opened my eyes again, my Noise was lighter, was quieter–

I’m about to tell her this–

But she lowers her voice and leans in close. “Is it like with your horse?” she asks, cuz she saw how quiet Angharrad was when she rode up, Acorn not even able to get a herd-greeting out of her. “Is it because of what you saw?”

And that’s enough to make the battle come rushing back to the front of my thoughts, rushing back in all its horror, and even if my Noise is blurry she must be able to tell cuz she takes my hand and it’s just care and calm and I suddenly feel like I want to curl up into it for the rest of my life and just cry there for ever and my eyes get wet and she sees and she breathes, “Todd,” with all her kindness and I have to look away from her again and somehow we both end up looking over at the Mayor, standing across the campfire, watching everything we do.

I hear her sigh. “Why’d you let him go, Todd?” she whispers.

“I didn’t have no choice,” I whisper back. “The Spackle were coming and the army was only gonna follow him into war.”

“But it’s probably him the Spackle want in the first place. They’re only attacking because of the genocide.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not all that sure about that,” I say and for the first time I let myself really think about 1017 again, about me breaking his arm once in anger, about pulling him from the pile of Spackle bodies, about how no matter what I did, good or bad, he still wanted me dead.