The Ask and the Answer
He steps into the light again, stopping in front of me, his hands still behind his back, whatever he picked up still hidden.
“But the process I want to begin here, Todd,” he says, “is the one where you learn that I am not your enemy.”
I’m so surprised I stop being afraid for a second.
Not my enemy?
I open my eyes wide.
Not my enemy?
“No, Todd,” he says. “Not your enemy.”
“Yer a murderer,” I say, without thinking.
“I am a general,” he says. “Nothing more, nothing less.”
I stare at him. “You killed people on yer march here. You killed the people of Farbranch.”
“Regrettable things happen in wartime, but that war is now over.”
“I saw you shoot them,” I say, hating how the words of a man without Noise sound so solid, so much like unmoveable stone.
“Me personally, Todd?”
I swallow away a sour taste. “No, but it was a war you started!”
“It was necessary,” he says. “To save a sick and dying planet.”
My breathing is getting faster, my mind getting cloudier, my head heavier than ever. But my Noise is redder, too. “You murdered Cillian.”
“Deeply regrettable,” he says. “He would have made a fine soldier.”
“You killed my mother,” I say, my voice catching (shut up), my Noise filling with rage and grief, my eyes screwing up with tears (shut up, shut up, shut up). “You killed all the women of Prentisstown.”
“Do you believe everything you hear, Todd?”
There’s a silence, a real one, as even my own Noise takes this in. “I have no desire to kill women,” he adds. “I never did.”
My mouth drops open. “Yes, you did–”
“Now is not the time for a history lesson.”
“Yer a liar!”
“And you presume to know everything, do you?” His voice goes cold and he steps away from me and Mr. Collins strikes me so hard on the side of the head I nearly fall over onto the floor.
“Yer a LIAR AND A MURDERER!” I shout, my ears still ringing from the punch.
Mr. Collins hits me again the other way, hard as a block of wood.
“I am not your enemy, Todd,” the Mayor says again. “Please stop making me do this to you.”
My head is hurting so bad I don’t say nothing. I can’t say nothing. I can’t say the word he wants. I can’t say nothing else without getting beaten senseless.
This is the end. It’s gotta be the end. They won’t let me live. They won’t let her live.
It’s gotta be the end.
“I hope it is the end,” the Mayor says, his voice actually making the sounds of truth. “I hope you’ll tell me what I want to know so we can stop all this.”
And then he says–
Then he says–
He says, “Please.”
I look up, blinking thru the swelling coming up round my eyes.
His face has a look of concern on it, a look of almost pleading.
What the hell? What the ruddy hell?
And I hear the buzz of it inside my head again–
Different than just hearing someone’s Noise–
PLEASE like it’s said in my own voice–
PLEASE like it’s coming from me–
Pressing on me–
On my insides–
Making me feel like I wanna say it–
PLEASE–
“The things you think you know, Todd,” the Mayor says, his voice still twining around inside my own head. “Those things aren’t true.”
And then I remember–
I remember Ben–
I remember Ben saying the same thing to me–
Ben who I lost–
And my Noise hardens, right there.
Cutting him off.
The Mayor’s face loses the look of pleading.
“All right,” he says, frowning a little. “But remember that it is your choice.” He stands up straight. “What is her name?”
“You know her name.”
Mr. Collins strikes me across the head, careening me sideways.
“What is her name?”
“You already know it–”
Boom, another blow, this time the other way.
“What is her name?”
“No.”
Boom.
“Tell me her name.”
“No!”
BOOM!
“What is her name, Todd?”
“EFF YOU!”
Except I don’t say “eff” and Mr. Collins hits me so hard my head whips back and the chair over-balances and I do topple sideways to the floor, taking the chair with me. I slam into the carpet, hands tied so I can’t catch myself, my eyes filling up with little New Worlds till there ain’t nothing else to see.
I breathe into the carpet.
The toes of the Mayor’s boots approach my face.
“I am not your enemy, Todd Hewitt,” he says one more time. “Just tell me her name and this will all stop.”
I take in a breath and have to cough it away.
I take in another and say what I have to say.
“Yer a murderer.”
Another silence.
“So be it,” says the Mayor.
His feet move away and I feel Mr. Collins pull my chair up from the floor, taking me up with it, my body groaning against its own weight, till I’m sat up again in the circle of coloured light. My eyes are so swollen now I can’t hardly see Mr. Collins at all even tho he’s right in front of me.
I hear the Mayor at the small table again. I hear him moving things round on the top. I hear again the scrape of metal.
I hear him step up beside me.
And after all that promising, here it really, finally is.
My end.
I’m sorry, I think. I’m so, so sorry.
The Mayor puts a hand on my shoulder and I flinch away from it but he keeps it there, pressing down steadily. I can’t see what he’s holding, but he’s bringing something towards me, towards my face, something hard and metal and filled with pain and ready to make me suffer and end my life and there’s a hole inside me that I need to crawl into, away from all this, down deep and black, and I know this is the end, the end of all things, I can never escape from here and he’ll kill me and kill her and there’s no chance, no life, no hope, nothing.
I’m sorry.
And the Mayor lays a bandage across my face.
I gasp from the coolness of it and jerk away from his hands but he keeps pressing it gently into the lump on my forehead and onto the wounds on my face and chin, his body so close I can smell it, the cleanliness of it, the woody odour of his soap, the breath from his nose brushing over my cheek, his fingers touching my cuts almost tenderly, dressing the swelling round my eyes, the splits on my lip, and I can feel the bandages get to work almost instantly, feel the swelling going right down, the painkillers flooding into my system, and I think for a second how good the bandages are in Haven, how much like her bandages, and the relief comes so quick, so unexpected that my throat clenches and I have to swallow it away.