I’m so stunned that I actually shake it.
“Tam’s my name!” the old man more or less shouts. “And who might ye be, pup?”
“Todd,” I say.
“Pleasedtameetya, Todd!” He puts an arm around my shoulders and pretty much drags me forward up the path. I stumble along, barely keeping my balance as he pulls us to Hildy and Viola, talking all the way. “We haven’t had guests for dinner in many a moon, so ye’ll have to be a-scusing our humble shack. Ain’t been no travellers thisaway for nigh on ten years nor more but yer welcome! Yer all welcome!”
We get to the others and I still don’t know what to say and I look from Hildy to Viola to Tam and back again.
I just want the world to make sense now and then, is that so wrong?
“Not wrong at all, Todd pup,” Hildy says kindly.
“How can you not have caught the Noise?” I ask, words finally making their way outta my head via my mouth. Then my heart suddenly rises, rises so high I can feel my eyes popping open and my throat start to clench, my own Noise coming all high hopeful white.
“Do you have a cure?” I say, my voice almost breaking. “Is there a cure?”
“Now if there were a cure,” Tam says, still pretty much shouting, “d’ye honestly think I’d be subjecting ye to all this here rubbish a-floating outta my brain?”
“Heaven help ye if ye did,” Hildy says, smiling.
“And heaven help ye if ye couldn’t tell me what I was meant to be thinking.” Tam smiles back, love fuzzing all over his Noise. “Nope, boy pup,” he says to me. “No cure that I know of.”
“Well, now,” Hildy says, “Haven’s meant to be a-working on one. So people say.”
“Which people?” Tam asks, sceptical.
“Talia,” Hildy says. “Susan F. My sister.”
Tam makes a pssht sound with his lips. “I rest my case. Rumours of rumours of rumours. Can’t trust yer sister to get her own name right much less any useful info.”
“But–” I say, looking back and forth again and again, not wanting to let it go. “But how can you be alive then?” I say to Hildy. “The Noise kills women. All women.”
Hildy and Tam exchange a look and I hear, no, I feel Tam squash something in his Noise.
“No, it don’t, Todd pup,” Hildy says, a little too gently. “Like I been telling yer girl mate Viola here. She’s safe.”
“Safe? How can she be safe?”
“Women are immune,” Tam says. “Lucky buggers.”
“No, they’re not!” I say, my voice getting louder. “No, they’re not! Every woman in Prentisstown caught the Noise and every single one of them died from it! My ma died from it! Maybe the version the Spackle released on us was stronger than yers but–”
“Todd pup.” Tam puts a hand on my shoulder to stop me.
I shake him off but I don’t know what to say next. Viola’s not said a word in all of this so I look at her. She don’t look at me. “I know what I know,” I say, even tho that’s been half the trouble, ain’t it?
How can this be true?
How can this be true?
Tam and Hildy exchange another glance. I look into Tam’s Noise but he’s as expert as anyone I’ve met at hiding stuff away when someone starts poking. What I see, tho, is all kind.
“Prentisstown’s got a sad history, pup,” he says. “A whole number of things went sour there.”
“Yer wrong,” I say, but even my voice says I ain’t sure what I’m saying he’s wrong about.
“This ain’t the place for it, Todd,” Hildy says, rubbing Viola on the shoulder, a rub that Viola don’t resist. “Ye need to get some food in ye, some sleep in ye. Vi here says ye ain’t slept hardly at all in many miles of travelling. Everything will be a-looking better when yer fed and rested.”
“But she’s safe from me?” I ask, making a point of not looking at “Vi”.
“Well, she’s definitely safe from catching yer Noise,” Hildy says, a smile breaking out. “What other safety she can get from ye is all down to a-knowing ye better.”
I want her to be right but I also want to say she’s wrong and so I don’t say nothing at all.
“C’mon,” Tam says, breaking the pause, “let’s get to some feasting.”
“No!” I say, remembering it all over again. “We ain’t got time for feasting.” I look at Viola. “There’s men after us, in case you forgot. Men who ain’t interested in our well-beings.” I look up at Hildy. “Now, I’m sure yer feastings would be fine and all–”
“Todd pup–” Hildy starts.
“I ain’t a pup!” I shout.
Hildy purses her lips and smiles with her eyebrows. “Todd pup,” she says again, a little lower this time. “No man from any point beyond that river would ever set foot across it, do ye understand?”
“Yep,” says Tam. “That’s right.”
I look from one to the other. “But–”
“I been guardian here of that bridge for ten plus years, pup,” Hildy says, “and keeper of it for years before that. It’s part of who I am to watch what comes.” She looks over to Viola. “No one’s coming. Ye all are safe.”
“Yep,” Tam says again, rocking back and forth on his heels.
“But–” I say again but Hildy don’t let me finish.
“Time for feasting.”
And that’s that, it seems. Viola still don’t look at me, still has her arms crossed and is now under the arm of Hildy as they walk on again. I’m stuck back with Tam who’s waiting for me to start. I can’t say as I feel much like walking any more but everyone else goes so I go, too. We carry on up Tam and Hildy’s private little path, Tam chattering away, making enough Noise for a whole town.
“Hildy says ye blew up our bridge,” he says.
“My bridge,” Hildy says from in front of us.
“She did build it,” Tam says to me. “Not that anyone’s used it in forever.”
“No one?” I say, thinking for a second of all those men who disappeared outta Prentisstown, all the ones who vanished while I was growing up. Not one of them got this far.
“Nice bit of engineering, that bridge was,” Tam’s going on, like he didn’t hear me and maybe he didn’t, what with how loud he’s talking. “Sad to hear it’s gone.”