Just swamp is all I see, the tops of swamp trees, little clearings of swampy bits of water, the river eventually starting to form itself again. I take the binos away from my face and look them over. There are little buttons everywhere and I push a few and realize I can make everything look even closer. I do that a coupla times and I’m sure I can hear whispering now. I’m sure of it.
I find the gash in the swamp, the ditch, find the wreckage of her ship, but there’s nothing there except what we left. I look over the top of the binos, wondering if I see movement. I look thru them again, a little nearer to us where some trees are rustling.
But that’s only the wind, ain’t it?
I scan back and forth, pressing buttons to get closer and farther away, but I keep coming back to those rustling trees. I keep the binos trained on a kinda open, gully-type thing twixt me and them.
I keep the binos there.
I keep the binos watching, my guts twisting as maybe I’m hearing whispering, maybe I ain’t.
I keep watching.
Till the rustling reaches the clearing and I see the Mayor himself come outta the trees on horseback, leading other men, also on horses.
And they’re heading right this way.
The Mayor. Not just his son but actually the Mayor. With his clean hat and his clean face and his clean clothes and his shiny boots and his upright pose. We don’t never actually get to see him much in Prentisstown, not no more, not if yer not in his close little circle, but when you do, he always looks like this, even thru a pair of binos. Like he knows how to take care of hisself and you don’t.
I push some more buttons till I’m as close as I can get. There’s five of them, no, six, the men whose Noise you hear doing those freaky exercises in the Mayor’s house. I AM THE CIRCLE AND THE CIRCLE IS ME, that kinda thing. There’s Mr Collins, Mr MacInerny, Mr O’Hare, and Mr Morgan, all on horses, too, itself a rare sight cuz horses are hard to keep alive on New World and the Mayor guards his personal herd with a whole raft of men with guns.
And there’s Mr bloody Prentiss Jr, riding up next to his father, wearing a shiner from where Cillian hit him. Good.
But then I realize that means whatever happened at the farm is definitely over with. Whatever happened to Ben and Cillian is done. I put the binos down for a sec and swallow it away.
I put the binos back up. The group’s stopped for a minute and are talking to each other, looking over a large piece of paper that’s gotta be a way better map than mine and–
Oh, man.
Oh, man, you gotta be kidding.
Aaron.
Aaron comes walking outta the trees behind ’em.
Stinking, stupid, rutting, effing, bloody Aaron.
Most of his head is wrapped in bandages but he’s pacing the ground a little way back from the Mayor, waving his hands in the air, looking like he’s probably preaching even if no one looks like listening.
HOW? How could he have lived? Doesn’t he ever ruddy DIE?
It’s my fault. My stupid effing fault. Cuz I’m a coward. I’m a weak and stupid coward and cuz of that Aaron’s alive and cuz of that he’s leading the Mayor thru the ruddy swamp after us. Cuz I didn’t kill him, he’s coming to kill me.
I feel sick. I bend over double and hold my stomach, moaning a bit. My blood is charging so hard I hear Manchee creep a little ways away from me.
“It’s my fault, Manchee,” I say. “I did this.”
“Your fault,” he says, confused and just repeating what I said but right on the money, ain’t he?
I make myself look thru the binos again and I see the Mayor call Aaron over. Since men started being able to hear their thoughts, Aaron thinks animals are unclean and won’t go near ’em so it takes the Mayor a coupla tries but eventually Aaron comes tromping over to look at the map. He listens while the Mayor asks him something.
And then he looks up.
Looks up thru the swamp trees and sky.
Looks up to this hilltop.
Looks right at me.
He can’t see me. No way. Can he? Not without binos like the girl’s and I don’t see any on the men, never saw anything like ’em in Prentisstown. Gotta be. He can’t see me.
But like a great pitiless thing he raises his arm and points, points it directly at me, like I’m sitting across a table from him.
I’m running before I can even think, running back down the bluff and back to the girl as fast as I can, reaching behind me and pulling out my knife, Manchee barking up a storm on my heels. I get into the trees and down and round the big mess of shrubs and she’s still sitting on the rock but at least she looks up as I run to her.
“Come on!” I say, grabbing her arm. “We gotta go!”
She pulls back away from me but I don’t let go.
“No!” I shout. “We have to go! NOW!”
She starts hitting out with her fists, clonking me a coupla times on the face.
But I ain’t letting go.
“LISTEN!” I say and I open up my Noise for her. She hits me once more but then she’s looking, looking at my Noise as it comes, seeing the pictures of what’s waiting for us in the swamp. Check that, what’s not waiting for us, what’s making every effort to come get us. Aaron, who won’t die, bending all his thoughts to finding us and coming this time with men on horseback. Who are a lot faster than we are.
The girl’s face squishes up, like she’s in the worst pain ever and she opens her mouth like she’s going to yell but nothing comes out. Still nothing. Still no Noise, no sound, no nothing at all coming from her.
I just don’t get it.
“I don’t know what’s ahead,” I say. “I don’t know nothing about nothing but whatever it is, it’s gotta be better than what’s behind. It’s gotta be.”
And as she hears me, her face changes. It clears up to almost blankness again and she presses her lips together.
“Go! Go! Go!” Manchee barks.
She holds out her hand for her bag. I hand it to her. She stands, shoves the binos in, loops it over her shoulder and looks me in the eye.
“Okay, then,” I say.
And so that’s how I set off running full out towards a river for the second time in two days, Manchee with me again and this time a girl on my heels.
Well, past my heels most of the time, she’s ruddy fast, she is.
We go back up the hill and down the other side, the last of the swamp really starting to disappear around us and turning into regular woods. The ground gets way firmer and easier to run on and it’s sloping more downhill than it is up, which may be the first piece of luck we’ve had. We start catching the proper river in brief glances off to our left side as we go. My rucksack’s bashing me in the back as I run and I’m gasping for breath.