The Ask and the Answer

Fly, fly, we hear, just inside the cave mouth. Away, away, away.

“I looked for them when the restrictions eased,” he says, “but I never found them. I looked in every cabin and dormitory and at every house of healing. And finally, at the last one, Mistress Coyle answered.”

He pauses and looks up. “Here they come.”

The bats swarm out of the caves, like the world’s been tipped on its side and they’re being poured out over the top of us, a flood of greater darkness against the night sky. The sheer whoosh of them makes it impossible to talk for a minute so we just sit and watch them.

Each is at least two metres across, with furred wings and short stubby ears and a green glowing dot of phosphorus on each outstretched wingtip which they use somehow to confuse and stun the moths and bugs they eat. The dots glow in the night, making a blanket of temporary fluttering stars above us. We sit, surrounded by the slapping of wings, the cheeping of their Noise, the fly fly away away away.

And in five minutes they’re gone, out into the surrounding forest, not to return until just before dawn.

“Something’s coming,” Lee says in the quiet that follows. “You know that. I can’t say what but I’m going along because there’s one more place to look for them.”

“Then I’ll go, too,” I say.

“She won’t let you.” He turns to me. “But I promise you, I’ll look for Todd. With the same eyes I look for Siobhan and my mother, I’ll look for him.”

A bell chimes out over the camp, signalling all raiding teams are off into town and all remaining people in camp are to go to bed. Lee and I sit in the dark for a while longer, his shoulder brushed up against mine, and mine brushed up against his.

[TODD]

“Not bad,” says the Mayor from atop Morpeth, “for an unskilled workforce.”

“There’d be more,” Davy says, “but it rained and then everything was just mud.”

“No, no,” the Mayor says, casting his eyes around the field. “You’ve done admirably, both of you, managing so much in just a month.”

We all take a minute to look at what we’ve managed admirably. We’ve got all the concrete foundayshuns poured for a single long building. Every guide wall is up, some have even started to be filled in by the stones we took from the monastery’s internal walls, and the tarpaulin makes a kind of roof. It already looks like a building.

He’s right, we have done admirably.

Us and 1150 Spackle.

“Yes,” says the Mayor. “Very pleasing.”

Davy’s Noise is taking on a pinkish glow that’s uncomfortable to look at.

“So what is it?” I ask.

The Mayor looks my way. “What’s what?”

“This.” I gesture at the building. “What’s it sposed to be?”

“You finish building it, Todd, and I promise to invite you to the grand opening.”

“It’s not for the Spackle, tho, is it?”

The Mayor frowns slightly. “No, Todd, it’s not.”

I rub the back of my neck with my hand and I can hear some clanking in Davy’s Noise, clanks that are gonna get louder if he thinks I’m messing up his moment of praise. “It’s just,” I say, “there’s been frost the past three nights and it’s only getting colder.”

The Mayor turns Morpeth to face me. Boy colt, he thinks. Boy colt steps back.

I step back without even thinking.

The Mayor’s eyebrows raise. “Are you wanting heaters for your workforce?”

“Well,” I look at the ground and at the building and at the Spackle who are doing their best to stay at the far end, as much away from the three of us as is possible to do when there are so many crowded into such a limited space. “Snow might come,” I say. “I don’t know that they’ll survive.”

“Oh, they’re tougher than you think, Todd.” The Mayor’s voice is low and full of something I can’t put my finger on. “A lot tougher.”

I look down again. “Yeah,” I say. “Okay.”

“I’ll have Private Farrow bring in some small fission heaters if that will make you feel better.”

I blink. “Really?”

“Really?” Davy says.

“They’ve done good work,” the Mayor says, “under your direction, and you’ve shown real dedication these past weeks, Todd. Real leadership.”

He smiles, almost warmly.

“I know you’re the kind of soul who hates to see others suffer.” He keeps hold of my eye, almost daring me to break it. “Your tenderness does you credit.”

“Tenderness,” Davy snickers.

“I’m proud of you.” The Mayor gathers up his reins. “Both of you. And you will be rewarded for your efforts.”

Davy’s Noise beams again as the Mayor rides outta the monastery gates. “Didja hear that?” he says, waggling his eyebrows. “Rewards, my tender pigpiss.”

“Shut up, Davy.” I’m already walking down the guide wall and towards the back of the building where there’s the last of the clear ground and so that’s where all the Spackle are having to crowd themselves. They get outta my way as I move thru them. “Heaters’re coming,” I say, putting it in my Noise, too. “Things’ll be better.”

But they just keep doing all they can not to touch me.

“I said things’ll be better!”

Stupid ungrateful–

I stop. I take in a breath. I keep walking.

I get to the back of the building where we’ve leaned a few unused guide walls against the building frame, forming a nook. “You can come out now,” I say.

There’s no sound for a minute, then a bit of rustling and 1017 emerges, his arm in a sling made up from one of my few shirts. He’s skinnier than ever, some redness still creeping up his arm from the break but it seems to be finally fading. “I managed to scrounge some painkillers,” I say, taking ’em outta my pocket.

He snatches ’em from my hand with a slap, scratching my palm.

“Watch it,” I say, thru clenched teeth. “You wanna be taken away to whatever they do with lame Spackle?”

There’s a burst of Noise from him, one I’ve grown to expect, and it’s the usual thing, him standing over me with a rifle, him hitting me and hitting me, me pleading for him to stop, him breaking my arm.

“Yeah,” I say. “Whatever.”