Monsters of Men

“I report to you, VICTORY!” he shouts.

And when the cheering starts, it goes on for a long, long time.

{VIOLA}

I wake as the ship bumps back down on the hilltop and the bay doors open.

I hear Mistress Coyle shout to the waiting crowd, “We are VICTORIOUS!”

And hear the huge cheer even through the thick metal walls of the ship.

“That can’t be good,” Lee says, back in the next bed, his Noise imagining Mistress Coyle, arms thrust into the air, people picking her up on their shoulders and carrying her for a victory lap.

“That’s probably not too far off,” I say, laughing a little. Which sets me on a long chain of coughing.

The door opens and Bradley and Simone enter.

“You’re missing the rally,” Bradley says sarcastically.

“She’s allowed her moment,” Simone says. “She’s an impressive women in a lot of ways.”

I make to answer but the coughing comes again, so strong that Bradley takes out a medicine pad and puts it on my throat. The cooling of it feels better immediately, and I take a few slow breaths to get the fumes into my lungs.

“What’s the plan, then?” I say. “How much time do we have?”

“A couple hours,” Bradley says. “We’ll fly back down to the city, and Simone will set up the projections for both down there and up here, so everyone can see what’s going on. Then she’ll keep the ship in the air for however long our meeting lasts.”

“I’ll be looking out for you,” Simone says. “Both of you.”

“Good to hear,” Bradley says, quietly but warmly, then he says to me, “Wilf’s bringing Acorn down for you to ride up, and Todd’s giving me his horse.”

I smile. “Is he really?”

Bradley smiles back. “A show of faith, I’m guessing?”

“It means he expects you to come back.”

We hear two sets of footsteps coming up the ramp outside, and continuing cheers, too, though not as many as before. And the voices that approach are arguing.

“I don’t find this acceptable, Mistress,” Ivan is saying as Mistress Coyle comes in the door before him.

“And what makes you think your idea of acceptable is in any way relevant?” she snaps back, that fierceness in her voice that would cow most people.

Not Ivan, though, not quite. “I speak for the people.”

“I speak for the people, Ivan,” she says. “Not you.”

Ivan glances over at me and Bradley. “You’re a-sending a little girl and the Humanitarian to meet with an enemy big enough to annihilate us,” he says. “I can’t say as that would be the overwhelming choice of the people, Mistress.”

“Sometimes the people don’t know what’s best for them, Ivan,” she says. “Sometimes the people have to be convinced of things that are necessary. That’s what leadership is. Not shouting your head off in support of their every whim.”

“I hope you’re right, Mistress,” he says. “For your own sake.”

A last look at all of us and he leaves.

“Everything all right out there?” Simone says.

“Fine, fine,” Mistress Coyle says, her mind clearly somewhere else.

“They’ve started cheering again,” Lee says.

And we all hear it.

But it’s not for Mistress Coyle.

[TODD]

Boy colt, Angharrad says, nuzzling me. And then she says, Boy colt yes.

“It’s for her, really,” I say. “If something happens, I want him able to get her outta there even if he’s gotta carry her, okay?”

Boy colt, she says, pressing against me again.

“But are you sure, girl? Are you sure yer okay? Cuz I ain’t gonna send you nowhere if yer not–”

Todd, she says. For Todd.

And I get a thickness in my throat and I have to swallow a coupla times before I can say, “Thank you, girl,” trying not to think what happened the last time I asked an animal to be brave for me.

“You’re a remarkable young man, you know that?” I hear from behind me.

I sigh. There he is again. “I’m just talking to my horse,” I say.

“No, Todd,” the Mayor says, coming over from his tent. “There are some things I’ve been meaning to say to you, and I’d like you to allow me to say them before the world changes.”

“The world changes all the time,” I say, hitching up Angharrad’s reins. “At least it does for me.”

“Listen to me, Todd,” he says, real serious-like. “I want to tell you how much I’ve grown to respect you. Respect how you’ve fought by my side, yes, how you’ve been right there through every challenge and danger, but also how you’ve stood up to me when no one else would dare, how you’ve really won this peace, while all around you the world was losing its head.”

He puts a hand on Angharrad, rubbing her flank gently. She shifts a little but lets him.

So I let him, too.

“I think you’re the one the settlers are going to want to talk to, Todd,” he says. “Forget me, forget Mistress Coyle, it’s you who they’re going to see as the leader here.”

“Yeah, well,” I say. “Let’s wait till we get peace first before we start handing out credit, okay?”

He breathes out a cloud of cold air thru his nose. “I want to give you something, Todd.”

“I don’t want nothing from you,” I say.

But he’s already holding out a piece of paper in his hand.

“Take it,” he says.

I wait for a second but then I take it. It’s got a line of words written across it, dense and black and unknowable.

“Read it,” he says.

I suddenly get real mad. “You looking to get hit?”

“Please,” he says and it sounds so gentle and genuine that, even angry, I actually drop my glance back down to the paper. It’s still just words, written in what I think is the Mayor’s hand, a dark thicket in a line, like a horizon you can’t get nowhere near.

“Look at the words,” he says. “Tell me what they say.”

The paper flickers in the firelight. None of the words is too long and I reckernize at least two of ’em as my name–

Even a dummy like me knows that much–

And the first word is–

My name is Todd Hewitt and I am a man of New Prentisstown.

I blink.

That’s what it says, right across the page, every word burning clear like the sun.