The Knife of Never Letting Go

And then there’s still the asking, ain’t there?

Where do I go?

I follow the road back to the army, that’s where I go.

I go to the army and somehow I save her, even if it’s changing my place for hers.

And for that I can’t go unarmed, can I?

No, I can’t.

I look at the knife again, sitting there on the moss like a thing without properties, a thing made of metal as separate from a boy as can be, a thing which casts all blame from itself to the boy who uses it.

I don’t wanna touch it. Not at all. Not never again. But I have to go over and I have to clean off the blood as best I can on some wet leaves and I have to sheath it behind me in the belt that’s still around my waist.

I have to do these things. There ain’t no choice.

The Spackle hovers on the edge of my vision but I do not look at it as I handle the knife.

“C’mon, Manchee.” I loop Viola’s bag as gingerly as I can over one shoulder.

Don’t deceive me. Never leave me.

Time to go.

“We’re gonna find her,” I say.

I keep the campsite behind me and head off in the direkshun of the road. Best to just get on it and walk back to ’em as fast as I can. I’ll hear ’em coming and can get outta the way and then I guess I’ll see if there’s any way I can save her.

Which might mean meeting them head on.

I push my way thru a row of bushes when I hear Manchee bark, “Todd?”

I turn, trying to keep from seeing the campsite. “C’mon, boy.”

“Todd!”

“I said, c’mon, now. I mean it.”

“This way, Todd,” he barks and wags his half-tail.

I turn more fully to him. “What’d you say?”

He’s pointing his nose in another direkshun altogether from the one I’m going. “This way,” he barks. He rubs at the bandage over his eye with a paw, knocking it off and squinting at me with the injured eye.

“What do you mean ‘This way’?” I ask, a feeling in my chest.

He’s nodding his head and pushing his front feet in a direkshun not only away from the road but in the opposite direkshun from the army. “Viola,” he barks, turning round in a circle and then facing that way again.

“You can smell her?” I ask, my chest rising.

He barks a bark of yes.

“You can smell her?”

“This way, Todd!”

“Not back to the road?” I say. “Not back to the army?”

“Todd!” he barks, feeling the rise in my Noise and getting excited himself.

“Yer sure?” I say. “You gotta be sure, Manchee. You gotta be.”

“This way!” and off he runs, thru the bushes and off on a track parallel to the river, away from the army.

And towards Haven.

Who knows why and who cares cuz in the moment I’m running after him as best as my injuries will let me, in the moment I see him bounding away and ahead, I think to myself, Good dog, good bloody dog.

“This way, Todd,” Manchee barks, taking us round another outcropping.

Ever since we left the Spackle campsite, the terrain’s been getting more and more rugged. The woods have been rising up into hills for an hour or two now and we rush up ’em and down ’em and up ’em again and sometimes it’s more like hiking than running. When we get up to the top of one, I see more and more rolling away in front of me, hills under trees, a few so steep you have to go around rather than over. The road and the river twist thru ’em on snaky paths off to my right and sometimes it’s all I can do to keep them in sight.

Even with the bandages doing their best to hold me together, every step I take jars my back and my head and every once in a while I can’t help but stop and sometimes throw up my empty stomach.

But on we go.

Faster, I think to myself. Go faster, Todd Hewitt.

They’ve got at least half a day’s march on us, maybe even a day and a half, and I don’t know where they’re going or what Aaron plans on doing when he gets there and so on we go.

“Yer sure?” I keep asking Manchee.

“This way,” he keeps barking.

The thing that makes no sense is that we’re pretty much on the path that Viola and I would have taken anyway, following the river, keeping back from the road, and heading east towards Haven. I don’t know why Aaron’s going there, I don’t know why he’d head away from the army, but that’s where Manchee’s smelling their scents and so that’s the way we go.

We keep on thru the middle of the day, up hills, down hills, and onwards, thru trees that turn from the broad leaves of the trees on the plains to more needly kinds, taller and more arrow-like. The trees even smell different, sending a sharp tang in the air I can taste on my tongue. Manchee and I hop over all manner of streams and creeks that feed the river and I stop now and then to refill the water bottles and on we go.

I try not to think at all. I try to keep my mind pointed ahead, pointed towards Viola and finding her. I try not to think about how she looked after I killed the Spackle. I try not to think about how afraid she was of me or how she backed away like I might hurt her. I try not to think about how scared she musta been when Aaron came after her and I was no use.

And I try not to think about the Spackle’s Noise and the fear that was in it or how surprised he musta been being killed for nothing more than being a fisherman or how the crunch felt up my arm when the knife went in him or how dark red his blood was flowing out onto me or the bafflement pouring outta him and into my Noise as he died as he died as he died as he–

I don’t think about it.

On we go, on we go.

Afternoon passes into early evening, the forest and the hills seem never-ending, and there comes another problem.

“Food, Todd?”

“There ain’t none left,” I say, dirt giving way under my feet as we make our way down a slope. “I don’t got nothing for myself neither.”

“Food?”

I don’t know how long it is since I ate last, don’t know how long since I really slept, for that matter, since passing out ain’t sleeping.

And I’ve lost track of how many days till I become a man but I can tell you it’s never felt farther away.

“Squirrel!” Manchee suddenly barks and tears around the trunk of a needly tree and into a mess of ferns beyond. I didn’t even see the squirrel but I can hear Whirler dog and “Squirrel!” and Whirler-whirler-whirler– and then it stops short.