“Yer crazy,” I say and boy is it ever true and boy do I wish it wasn’t.
His smile falls and his teeth clench. “It’s mine, Todd,” he says. “Mine.”
I don’t know what this means but I don’t stop to think about it cuz I realize instead that both Aaron and I have forgotten one important thing.
I never let go of the knife.
A whole buncha things happen at once.
Aaron hears knife in my Noise and realizes his mistake. He pulls back his free fist to make another punch.
I pull back my knife hand and I wonder if I can actually stab him.
There’s a breaking sound from the rushes and Manchee barks, “Croc!”
And all at the same time, we hear Whirler man.
Before Aaron can even turn, the croc is on him, clamping its teeth onto his shoulder and grabbing him with its claws and pulling him back towards the rushes. Aaron lets go of me and I fall to the ground again, clutching at all the bruises he’s left on my chest. I look up and I see Aaron thrashing in the muck now, fighting with the croc and the sails on the backs of other crocs heading his way, too.
“Outta here!” Manchee’s barking, almost shrieking.
“Too effing right,” I say and I stumble to my feet, the rucksack knocking me a little off balance and my hurt eye trying to peel open but we don’t stop and we run and we run and we run.
We get out of the marshes and run along the bottom of the fields to the start of the swamp path and we run into the swamp along it and when we get to the log that Manchee always needs help over he just sails right over it without even stopping and I’m right behind him and we’re running our way to the Spackle buildings just like we were this morning.
And the knife is still in my hand and my Noise is thudding so loud and I’m so frightened and hurt and mad that I know beyond any shadow of a thought that I am going to find the Spackle hiding in his Noise hole and I am going to kill him dead dead dead for everything that’s happened today.
“Where is it?” I ask Manchee. “Where’s the quiet?”
Manchee’s sniffing away like mad, running from building to building, and I’m doing my best to calm my Noise but there don’t seem any chance of that.
“Hurry!” I say. “Before it runs–”
And it’s barely outta my mouth before I hear it. The rip in the Noise, as big and horrible as life itself, I can hear it a little bit away, behind the Spackle buildings, behind some bushes.
It ain’t getting away this time.
“Quiet!” Manchee barks, all keyed up, and he runs past the buildings and into the bushes.
And the quiet moves, too, and tho I can feel the pressure in my chest again and the terrible mournful things coming into my eyes, this time I don’t stop, this time I run after my dog and I don’t stop and I take in my breath and I swallow away the pressure and I wipe the water from my eyes and I grip the knife and I can hear Manchee barking and I can hear the silence and it’s just around this tree just around this tree just around this tree and I’m yelling and I’m going round the tree and I’m running at the silence and my teeth are bared and I’m screaming and Manchee’s barking and–
And I stop.
I stop right there in my tracks.
I don’t, I do absolutely not put down the knife.
There it is, looking back at us, breathing heavy, crouched at the base of a tree, cowering from Manchee, its eyes practically dying from fright but still trying to offer up a pitiful threat with its arms.
And I just stop.
I hold my knife.
“Spackle!” Manchee barks, tho he’s too chicken to attack now that I’ve held back. “Spackle! Spackle! Spackle!”
“Shut up, Manchee,” I say.
“Spackle!”
“I said shut up!” I shout, which stops him.
“Spackle?” Manchee says, unsure of things now.
I swallow, trying to get rid of the pressure in my throat, the unbelievable sadness that comes and comes as I look at it looking back at me. Knowledge is dangerous and men lie and the world keeps changing, whether I want it to or not.
Cuz it ain’t a Spackle.
“It’s a girl,” I say.
It’s a girl.
“It’s a girl,” I say again. I’m still catching my breath, still feeling the pressure on my chest, definitely still holding the knife way out in front of me.
A girl.
It’s looking back at us like we’re gonna kill it. It’s hunched down in a little ball, trying to make itself as small as possible, only taking its eyes off Manchee to snatch quick glances of me.
Of me and my knife.
Manchee’s huffing and puffing, his back fur all ridged, hopping around like the ground is hot, looking as charged up and confused as I am, tho completely hopeless about keeping in any way cool.
“What’s girl?” he barks. “What’s girl?”
By which he means, “What’s a girl?”
“What’s girl?” Manchee barks again and when the girl looks like it might be about to make a leap back over the large root where it’s huddling, Manchee’s bark turns into a fierce growl, “Stay, stay, stay, stay, stay . . .”
“Good dog,” I say, tho I don’t know why it’s good what he’s doing but what else can you say? This makes no sense, no sense at all, and everything feels like it’s starting to slip, like the world is a table tilted on its side and everything on it is tipping over.
I am Todd Hewitt, I think to myself but who knows if that’s even true any more?
“Who are you?” I finally say, if it can even hear me over all my raging Noise and Manchee’s nervous breakdown. “Who are you?” I say, louder and clearer. “What are you doing here? Where did you come from?”
It looks at me, finally, for more than just a second, taking its eyes off Manchee. It looks at my knife, then it looks at my face above my knife.
She looks at me.
She does.
She.
I know what a girl is. Course I do. I seen ’em in the Noise of their fathers in town, mourned like their wives but not nearly so often. I seen ’em in vids, too. Girls are small and polite and smiley. They wear dresses and their hair is long and it’s pulled into shapes behind their heads or on either side. They do all the inside-the-house chores, while boys do all the outside. They reach womanhood when they turn thirteen, just like boys reach manhood, and then they’re women and they become wives.
That’s how New World works, or at least that’s how Prentisstown works. Worked. Was meant to, anyhow, but there ain’t no girls. They’re all dead. They died with their mothers and their grandmothers and their sisters and their aunties. They died in the months after I was born. All of them, every single one.
But here one is.
And its hair ain’t long. Her hair. Her hair ain’t long. And she ain’t wearing no dress, she’s wearing clothes that look like way newer versions of mine, so new they’re almost like a uniform, even tho they’re torn and muddy, and she ain’t that small, she’s my size, just, by the looks of her, and she’s sure as all that’s unholy not smiley.
No, not smiley at all.
“Spackle?” Manchee barks quietly.
“Would you effing well shut up?” I say.