Monsters of Men

“He ain’t in my head,” I say. “And I can take care of myself. So you take care of yerself.” I try to smile. I don’t succeed. “You stay alive, Viola Eade. You get better. If Mistress Coyle is able heal you, you do whatever you can to make her.”

“I’m not dying,” she says. “I’d tell you if I was.”

We’re quiet for a second, then she says, “You’re the thing that matters to me, Todd. Out of this whole planet, you’re the only thing that matters.”

I swallow, hard. “You, too.”

And we both know we mean it, but as we part and she rides off one way and I ride off another, I bet we’re each wondering if the other lied about important things.

“Well, well,” says the Mayor as I catch up to him on the road back into town. “What did you make of that, Todd?”

“If the infeckshun from the band takes Viola,” I say, “you’ll beg me to kill you after what I’ll do to you.”

“I believe you,” he says, as we ride along, the ROAR of the city rising up to greet us, “and that’s why you have to believe I’d never do it.”

And I swear he says it like it could be true.

“You gotta keep yer word about these agreements, too,” I say. “We’re aiming for peace now. For real.”

“You think I want war for war’s sake, Todd,” he says. “But I don’t. I want victory. And sometimes victory means peace, doesn’t it? The convoy might not like everything I’ve done but I have a feeling they’ll listen to a man who won peace against overwhelming odds.”

Odds you made yerself, I think.

But I don’t say.

Cuz again, he sounds like he’s telling the truth.

Maybe I am rubbing off on him.

“And now,” he says. “Let’s go see if we can make a peaceful world.”

Pathways’ End

(THE RETURN)

I smooth the freshly-grown lichen over the band on my arm, touching it gently as another day ends and I sit, alone, on my outcropping. The pain from the band is still there, still my everyday reminder of who I am, of where I have come from.

Even though it will not heal, I no longer take the Land’s medicines for it.

It is illogical, but I have lately come to believe the pain will only stop when the Clearing are gone from here.

Or perhaps only then will the Return allow himself to be healed, the Sky shows, climbing up beside me. Come, he shows. It is time.

Time for what?

He sighs at my hostile tone. Time to show you why we will win this battle.

Seven nights have passed since the Clearing’s vessel bombed the Land and the Sky pulled back our invasion. Seven nights where we have done nothing but watch as our distant voices reported that the two groups of the Clearing were in contact again, as they started exchanging supplies to help one another, as the vessel on the far hilltop rose once more to fly over the entire valley, high over the armies of everyone, and again every day since.

Seven nights where the Sky let the Clearing grow stronger.

Seven nights while he waited for peace.

What the Return does not know, he shows as we make our way through the Land, is that the Sky rules alone.

I watch the faces of the Land as we pass, connecting their voices to each other to form the one voice, the easy link I still find so difficult to do. Yes, I show, I knew that.

He stops. No, you did not. You do not.

And he opens his voice, showing me what he means, showing me that being called “the Sky” is the same exile as being called “the Return”, and more, not an exile he chose, that he was just another member of the Land before they selected him as Sky.

And that he was separated from the voice to become so.

I see how happy he was before, happy in his connection to those closest to him, his family, his hunting companions, his one in particular with whom he planned to add to the voice of the Land, but then I see him pulled away from her, from all of them, separated, elevated, and I see how young he was, barely older–

Than the Return is now, he shows. He looms over me, his armour baked hard in the sun, his headpiece weighing heavily on his broad neck and shoulders, but held high by those same muscles. The Land looks deep inside itself to find the new Sky and there is no refusal for the one chosen. The past life is over and must be left behind, for the Land needs its Sky to watch over it and the Sky can have no other than the Land.

And there he is in his voice, assuming the garments of the role as he took the name “the Sky” and moved apart from those he ruled.

You rule alone, I show, feeling the weight of it.

But I was not always alone, he shows. Nor was the Return.

His voice reaches out to me suddenly, and before I am even aware of it–

I am back with–

–my one in particular in the shed where we live, locked in at night by our master from the Clearing, the master whose lawn we keep tidy, her flowers blooming, her vegetables growing. I have never known those who parented me, having been given to our master before I had any memories, and I have only ever really known my one in particular, not much older than me, but who shows me how to do our job well enough so that the beatings are infrequent, who shows me now how to start a cookfire, striking the flint shards together to make our only source of warmth–

–my one in particular letting me stay silent when we take our master’s vegetables to market and meet other members of the Burden whose voices reach forward in friendly greetings that push me into myself in embarrassment, my one in particular drawing their attention and letting me be shy as long as I need to–

–my one in particular curled against my stomach, coughing with illness from an infection, filled with the fever that is the worst sign of sickness in the Burden, one that will have us dragged off to Clearing veterinarians and never seen again. I press my body into my one in particular, begging the mud, the rocks, the shed, begging them all please to let the temperature fall, please, let it fall–

–my one in particular and I on a summer’s night after a young lifetime together, washing ourselves in the bucket of water our master provides once a week, washing ourselves, washing one another, and making the surprising discovery that another kind of closeness is possible–

–my one in particular silently with me after our voices are stolen by the Clearing, after we are cut off from each other and placed on separate shores, as if calling across a chasm too far to hear, my one in particular slowly, gently, through clicks and gestures, trying to make me understand–