The Ask and the Answer
Running so hard there ain’t nothing in my Noise–
Just the BUZZ of the bomb–
Getting louder and lower–
And 1017 raising up his hand to shield his eyes from the sun–
Why ain’t he running?
And pound pound go my feet–
And I’m chanting “Damn you, damn you”–
BUZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ–
And 1017 don’t see me coming–
I slam into him hard enough to lift him off his feet, feeling the air punched from his lungs as we fly across the grass, as we hit the ground rolling, as we go end over end across the dirt and into a shallow trench, as one titanic–
eats the entire planet in a single bite of sound
blasting away every thought and bit of Noise
picking up yer brain and shattering it into pieces
and every bit of air is sucked up and blown past us
and dirt and grass hits us in hard, heavy clods
and smoke fills our lungs
And then there’s silence.
Loud silence.
“Are you hurt?” I hear the Mayor shout, as if he’s miles and miles away and deep under water.
I sit back up in the trench, see the huge smoking crater in the middle of the field, smoke already thinning cuz there’s nothing to burn, row upon row of Spackle watching huddled from the far fields.
I’m breathing but I can’t hear it.
I turn back to 1017, still mostly under me in the trench, scrabbling to get up, and I’m opening my mouth to ask him if he’s all right even tho there’s no way for him to answer–
And he hits me in a hard slap that leaves a rake of scratches across my face.
“Hey!” I shout, tho I can barely hear myself–
He’s twisting out from under me and I reach out a hand to hold him there–
And he bites it hard with his rows of little sharp teeth–
And I pull it back, already bleeding–
And I’m ready to punch him, ready to pound him–
And he’s out from under me, running away across the crater, back towards the other Spackle–
“Hey!” I shout again, my Noise rising into red.
He’s just running and staring back and the rows of Spackle are all looking back at me, too, their stupid silent faces with less expresshun than the dumbest sheep I ever had back on the farm and my hand is bleeding and my ears are ringing and my face is stinging from the scratches and I saved his stupid life and this is the thanks I get?
Animals, I think. Stupid, worthless, effing animals.
“Todd?” says the Mayor again, riding over to me. “Are you hurt?”
I turn my face up towards him, not even sure if I’m calm enough to answer, but when I open my mouth–
The ground heaves.
My hearing’s still gone so I feel it more than hear it, feel the rumble thru the dirt, feel the air pulse with three hard vibrayshuns, one right after the other, and I see the Mayor turn his head suddenly back towards town, see Davy and all the Spackle do the same.
More bombs.
In the distance, towards the city, the biggest bombs that’ve ever exploded in the history of this world.
{VIOLA}
I’m so stupidly undone after the Mayor and his soldiers take Todd away Corinne finally has to give me something for it, though I feel the prick of the needle in my arm as little as I feel her hand on my back, not moving, not caressing, not doing anything to make it feel better, just holding me there, keeping me to earth.
I’m sorry to say, I’m not grateful.
When I wake in my bed, it’s only just dawn, the sun so low it’s not quite over the horizon yet, everything else in morning shadow.
Corinne is in the chair next to me.
“As much as it would do you good to sleep longer,” she says, “I’m afraid you can’t.”
I lean forward in the bed until I’m almost bent in half. There’s a weight in my chest so heavy, it’s like I’m being pulled into the ground. “I know,” I whisper. “I know.”
I don’t even know why he collapsed. He was dazed, nearly unconscious, foam coming from his mouth, and then the soldiers lifted him to his feet and dragged him away.
“They’ll come for me,” I say, having to swallow away the tightness in my throat. “After they’re done with Todd.”
“Yes, I expect they will,” Corinne says simply, looking at her hands, at the cream-coloured calluses raised on her fingertips, at the ash-coloured skin that flakes off the top of her hands because of so much time under hot water.
The morning is cold, surprisingly, harshly so. Even with my window closed, I can feel a shiver coming. I wrap my arms around my middle.
He’s gone.
He’s gone.
And I don’t know what’ll happen now.
“I grew up in a settlement called the Kentish Gate,” Corinne suddenly says, keeping her eyes off mine, “on the edge of a great forest.”
I look up. “Corinne?”
“My father died in the Spackle War,” she presses on, “but my mother was a survivor. From the time I could stand, I worked with her in our orchards, picking apples and crested pine and roisin fruit.”
I stare at her, wondering why now, why this story now?
“My reward for all that hard work,” she continues, “was a camping trip every year after final harvest, just me and my mother, as deep in the forest as we dared to go.” She looks out into the dark dawn. “There’s so much life here, Viola. So much, in every corner of every forest and stream and river and mountain. This planet just hums with it.”
She runs a fingertip over her calluses. “The last time we went, I was eight. We walked south for three whole days, a present for how grown-up I was getting. God only knows how many miles away we were, but we were alone, just me and her and that was all that mattered.”
She lets a long pause go by. I don’t break it.
“She was bitten by a Banded Red, on her heel, as she cooled her feet in a stream.” She’s rubbing her hands again. “It’s fatal, red snake venom, but slow.”
“Oh, Corinne,” I say, under my breath.
She stands suddenly, as if my sympathy is almost rude. She walks over to my window. “It took her seventeen hours to die,” she says, still not looking at me. “And they were awful and painful and when she went blind, she grabbed onto me and begged me to save her, begged me over and over to save her life.”
I remain silent.
“What we know now, what the healers have discovered, is that I could have saved her life just by boiling up some Xanthus root.” She crosses her arms. “Which was all around us. In abundance.”