The Knife of Never Letting Go

Which means she’s landed here and hasn’t caught the Noise germ yet.

Which means that when she does, it’s gonna do what it did to all the other women.

It’s gonna kill her.

And I’m looking at her and the sun is shining down on us and her eyes are getting wider and wider as I’m thinking it and it’s then I realize something else stupid, something else obvious.

Just cuz I can’t hear any Noise from her don’t mean she can’t hear every word of mine.

“No!” I say quickly. “Don’t listen! I’m wrong! I’m wrong! It’s a mistake! I’m wrong!”

But she’s backing away from me, dropping her own empty packet of fruit things, her eyes getting wider.

“No, don’t–”

I step towards her but she takes an even quicker step away, her bag dropping to the ground.

“It’s–” I say but what do you say? “I’m wrong. I’m wrong. I was thinking of somebody else.”

Which is the stupidest thing to say of all cuz she can hear my Noise, can’t she? She can see me struggling to think of something to say and even if it’s coming out a big mess, she can see herself all over it and besides, I surely know by now there’s no taking back something that’s been sent out into the world.

Dammit. Goddam it all to hell.

“Dammit!” Manchee barks.

“Why didn’t you SAY you could hear me?” I shout, ignoring that she ain’t said a word since I met her.

She steps back farther, putting a hand up to her face to cover her mouth, her eyes sending asking marks at me.

I try to think of something, anything to make it all right, but I ain’t got nothing. Just Noise with death and despair all over it.

She turns and runs, back down the hill and away from me as fast as she can.

Crap.

“Wait!” I yell, already running after her.

She’s going back the way we came, down across the little field and disappearing into the trees, but I’m right behind her, Manchee after me. “Stop!” I shout after her. “Wait!”

But why should she? What kind of reason could she possibly have to wait around?

You know, she’s really amazingly fast when she wants to be.

“Manchee!” I call and he understands me and shoots off after her. Not that I could really lose her, any more than she could lose me. As loud as my Noise is chasing her, her silence is just as loud up ahead, even now, even knowing she’s going to die, still as silent as a grave.

“Hold on!” I shout, tripping over a root and landing hard on my elbows, which jolts every ache I’ve got in my body and face, but I have to get up. I have to get up and go after her. “Dammit!”

“Todd!” I hear Manchee bark up ahead, outta sight. I stumble on a bit and get my way round a big mass of shrubs and there she is, sitting on a big flat rock jutting outta the ground, her knees up to her chest, rocking back and forth, eyes wide but blank as ever.

“Todd!” Manchee barks again when he sees me, then he hops up on the rock next to her and starts sniffing her.

“Leave her alone, Manchee,” I say, but he doesn’t. He sniffs close at her face, licks her once or twice, then sits down next to her, leaning into her side as she rocks.

“Look,” I say to her, catching my breath and knowing I don’t know what to say next. “Look,” I say again, but nothing else is coming.

I just stand there panting, not saying nothing, and she sits there rocking till there don’t seem nothing else to do but sit down on the rock myself, keeping a distance away outta respect and safety, I guess, and so that’s what I do. She rocks and I sit and I wonder what to do.

We pass a good few minutes this way, a good few minutes when we should be moving, the swamp getting on with its day around us.

Till I finally have another thought.

“I might not be right.” I say it as soon as I think it. “I could be wrong, you see?” I turn to her and I start talking fast. “I got lied to about everything and you can search my Noise if you want to be sure that’s true.” I stand, talking faster. “There wasn’t sposed to be another settlement. Prentisstown was sposed to be it for the whole stupid planet. But there’s the other place on the map! So maybe–”

And I’m thinking and I’m thinking and I’m thinking.

“Maybe the germ was only Prentisstown. And if you ain’t been in the town, then maybe yer safe. Maybe yer fine. Cuz I sure can’t hear nothing from you anything like Noise and you don’t seem sick. So maybe yer okay.”

She’s looking at me and still rocking and I don’t know what she’s thinking. Maybe probably ain’t all that comforting a word when it’s maybe yer not dying.

I keep on thinking, letting her see my Noise as free and clear as I can. “Maybe we all caught the germ and, and, and, yeah!” I get another thought, a good one. “Maybe we cut ourselves off so the other settlement wouldn’t catch it! That must be it! And so if you stayed in the swamp, then yer safe!”

She stops rocking quite so much, still looking at me, maybe believing me?

But then like some doofus who don’t know when to stop, I let that thought go on, don’t I? Cuz if it’s true that Prentisstown was cut off, then maybe that other settlement ain’t gonna be too happy to see me strolling in, are they? Maybe it was the other settlement that did the cutting off in the first place, cuz maybe Prentisstown really was contagious.

And if you can catch the Noise from other people, then the girl can catch it from me, can’t she?

“Oh, man,” I say, leaning down and putting my hands on my knees, my whole body feeling like it’s falling, even tho I’m still standing up. “Oh, man.”

The girl hugs herself to herself again on the rock and we’re back to even worse than where we started.

This ain’t fair. I am telling you this ain’t fair at all. You’ll know what to do when you get to the swamp, Todd. You’ll know what to do. Yeah, thanks very bloody much for that, Ben, thanks for all yer help and concern cuz here I am and I ain’t got the first clue what to do. It ain’t fair. I get kicked outta my home, I get beaten up, the people who say they care for me have been lying all these years, I gotta follow a stupid map to a settlement I never knew about, I gotta somehow read a stupid book–

The book.

I slip off the rucksack and take out the book. He said all the answers were in here, so maybe they really are. Except–