Monsters of Men

“I wanna go with Ben,” I say. “I don’t–”

“I’m sorry, Todd,” the Mayor says, “I really am, but you have to stay here with me, as usual, and make sure I don’t do anything anyone would disapprove of.”

“No,” Viola says, surprisingly loud.

“All this time and you’re worried now?” the Mayor says to her, smiling. “It’s only a few hours, Viola, and with Mistress Coyle gone, the credit for winning this war falls solely to me. I’ve got plenty of reason to behave, believe me. The convoy may just crown me king.”

There’s a long pause where everyone looks at each other, considering this.

I have to say that all sounds rather sensible, Ben finally says. Aside from the king part, obviously.

And I watch the Mayor as everyone starts talking it thru. He looks right back at me. I expect to see anger.

But all I see is sadness.

And I realize–

He’s saying goodbye.

{VIOLA}

“That Ben’s Noise is amazing,” Lee says, as I help him up on the cart that will take them back to the hilltop. “It’s like the whole world in there, and everything is so clear.”

We decided, after a bit more debate, to go with the Mayor’s plan. Me, Bradley and Ben will ride up to the Spackle now. Lee, Wilf and Mistress Lawson will go to the hilltop to calm things down. Todd and the Mayor will stay in town to hold things together here. And we’ll all try to get back together as fast as we can.

Todd says he thinks the Mayor just wants to say goodbye to him in private, now that Ben’s come back, and that it would probably be more dangerous for Todd not to be there. I still argued against it until Ben agreed with Todd, saying it was the last hours before real peace and whatever good influence Todd had over the Mayor, now was when it would be needed most.

I’m still worried, though.

“He says it’s how all the Spackle talk,” I say to Lee. “How all the Spackle are, how they evolved. To fit the planet perfectly.”

“And us not so much?”

“He said we could learn if he did.”

“And the women?” Lee asks. “What about them?”

“What about the Mayor? He doesn’t have Noise any more.”

“Neither does Todd,” Lee says, and he’s right. The farther Todd gets away from Ben, the quieter he is. And then I see Todd in Lee’s Noise, see me and Todd in Todd’s tent, see me and Todd–

“Hey!” I say, blushing red. “That didn’t happen!”

“Something did,” he mumbles. “You were in there for ages.”

I don’t say anything, just watch Wilf yoke up oxes to the front of the cart and Mistress Lawson fuss over supplies she wants to take back to the hilltop.

“He asked me to go away with him,” I say, after a long minute.

“When?” Lee asks. “Where?”

“When this is all over,” I say. “As soon as we can.”

“And will you?”

I don’t answer.

“He loves you, you idiot,” Lee says, not unkindly. “Even a blind man can see that.”

“I know,” I whisper, looking back over to the campfire where Todd’s saddling up Angharrad for Bradley to ride.

“We’re ready,” Wilf says, coming over.

I embrace him. “Good luck, Wilf,” I say. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Yoo too, Viola.”

I embrace Lee as well who whispers in my ear, “I’ll miss you when you go.”

I pull away and even hug Mistress Lawson. “You’re looking so healthy,” she says. “Like a new girl.”

Then Wilf strikes the reins and the cart starts making its way around the ruins of the cathedral, around the lonely bell tower, still standing after all this time.

I watch them until they disappear.

And then a snowflake lands on the tip of my nose.

[TODD]

I’m smiling like a loon as I hold out my hand to catch the flakes as they fall. They land like perfect little crystals before almost instantly melting on my palm, where the skin from my burns is still red.

“First time in years,” the Mayor says, looking up like everyone else, into the snow dropping down like white feathers, everywhere and everywhere and everywhere.

“Ain’t that something?” I say, still smiling. “Hey, Ben!” I start over to where he’s introducing Angharrad to his battlemore.

“Wait for a moment, Todd,” the Mayor says.

“What?” I say, a little impayshuntly cuz I’d much rather be sharing snow with Ben than the Mayor.

“I think I know what happened to him,” the Mayor says and we both look over to Ben again, still talking to Angharrad and the other horses now, too.

“Nothing happened to him,” I say. “He’s still Ben.”

“Is he?” the Mayor asks. “He’s been opened up by the Spackle. We don’t really know what that will do to a man.”

I frown and feel a roil in my stomach. It’s anger.

But there’s a little bit of fear there, too.

“He’s fine,” I say.

“I say this out of concern for you, Todd,” he says, sounding sincere. “I can see how happy you are to have him back. How much it means to have your father again.”

I stare at him, trying to figure him out, keeping my own Noise light, so we’re just two stones giving nothing away to each other.

Two stones getting slowly covered in snow.

“You think he may be in danger?” I finally say.

“This planet is information,” the Mayor says. “All the time, never-ceasing. Information it wants to give you, information it wants to take from you to share with everyone else. And I think you can respond to that in two ways. You can control how much you give it, like you and I have done in shutting off our Noise–”

“Or you can open yourself up to it completely,” I say, looking back at Ben, who catches my eye and smiles back.

“And which way is the proper way,” the Mayor says, “well, we’ll have to see. But I’d keep an eye on your Ben if I were you. For his own good.”

“You don’t have to worry about that,” I say, turning back to him. “I’ll be keeping an eye on him the rest of his life.”

And I’m smiling as I say it, still warm from Ben’s smile to me, but I catch a glint in the eye of the Mayor, brief and vanishing, but there.

And it’s a glint of pain.