“Schooling ain’t life.”
“Ain’t it?” she says, her eyebrows raising in a mock.
“What did I say before?” I snap back. “Some of us were busy surviving and couldn’t learn about subdivided farming.”
“Subsistence.”
“Don’t care.” I get myself moving again on the road.
Viola stomps after me. “We’re going to be teaching you lot a thing or two when my ship arrives,” she says. “You can be sure of that.”
“Well, won’t we dumb hicks be queuing up to kiss yer behinds in thankfulness?” I say, my Noise buzzing and not saying “behinds”.
“Yes, you will be.” She’s raising her voice. “Trying to turn back the clock to the dark ages has really worked out for you, hasn’t it? When we get here, you’ll see how people are supposed to settle.”
“That’s seven months from now,” I seethe at her. “You’ll have plenty of time to see how the other half live.”
“Todd!” Manchee barks, making us jump again, and suddenly he takes off down the road ahead of us.
“Manchee!” I yell after him. “Get back here!”
And then we both hear it.
It’s weird, Noise, but almost wordless, cresting the hill in front of us and rolling down, single-minded but talking in legions, like a thousand voices singing the same thing.
Yeah.
Singing.
“What is it?” Viola asks, spooked as I am. “It’s not the army, is it? How could they be in front of us?”
“Todd!” Manchee barks from the top of the small hill. “Cows, Todd! Giant cows!”
Viola’s mouth twists. “Giant cows?”
“No idea,” I say and I’m already heading up the little hill.
Cuz the sound–
How can I describe it?
Like how stars might sound. Or moons. But not mountains. Too floaty for mountains. It’s a sound like one planet singing to another, high and stretched and full of different voices starting at different notes and sloping down to other different notes but all weaving together in a rope of sound that’s sad but not sad and slow but not slow and all singing one word.
One word.
We reach the top of the hill and another plain unrolls below us, the river tumbling down to meet it and then running thru it like a vein of silver thru a rock and all over the plain, walking their way from one side of the river to the other, are creachers.
Creachers I never seen the like of in my life.
Massive, they are, four metres tall if they’re an inch, covered in a shaggy, silvery fur with a thick, fluffed tail at one end and a pair of curved white horns at the other reaching right outta their brows and long necks that stretch down from wide shoulders to the grass of the plain below and these wide lips that mow it up as they trudge on dry ground and drink water as they cross the river and there’s thousands of ’em, thousands stretching from the horizon on our right to the horizon on our left and the Noise of them all is singing one word, at different times in different notes, but one word binding ’em all together, knitting ’em as a group as they cross the plain.
“Here,” Viola says from somewhere off to my side. “They’re singing here.”
They’re singing Here. Calling it from one to another in their Noise.
Here I am.
Here we are.
Here we go.
Here is all that matters.
Here.
It’s–
Can I say?
It’s like the song of a family where everything’s always all right, it’s a song of belonging that makes you belong just by hearing it, it’s a song that’ll always take care of you and never leave you. If you have a heart, it breaks, if you have a heart that’s broken, it fixes.
It’s–
Wow.
I look at Viola and she has her hand over her mouth and her eyes are wet but I can see a smile thru her fingers and I open my mouth to speak.
“Ya won’t get ver far on foot,” says a completely other voice to our left.
We spin round to look, my hand going right to my knife. A man driving an empty cart pulled by a pair of oxes regards us from a little side path, his mouth left hanging open like he forgot to close it.
There’s a shotgun on the seat next to him, like he just put it there.
From a distance, Manchee barks “Cow!”
“They’s all go round carts,” says the man, “but not safe on foot, no. They’s squish ya right up.”
And again leaves his mouth open. His Noise, buried under all the Heres from the herd, seems to pretty much be saying exactly what his mouth is. I’m trying so hard not to think of certain words I’m already getting a headache.
“Ah kin give y’all a ride thrus,” he says. “If ya want.”
He raises an arm and points down the road, which disappears under the feet of the herd crossing it. I hadn’t even thought about how the creachers’d be blocking our way but you can see how you wouldn’t wanna try walking thru them.
I turn and I start to say something, anything, that’ll be the fastest way to get away.
But instead the most amazing thing happens.
Viola looks at the man and says, “Ah’m Hildy.” She points at me. “At’s Ben.”
“What?” I say, barking it almost like Manchee.
“Wilf,” says the man to Viola and it takes a second to realize he’s saying his name.
“Hiya, Wilf,” Viola says and her voice ain’t her own, ain’t her own at all, there’s a whole new voice coming outta her mouth, stretching and shortening itself, twisting and unravelling and the more she talks the more different she sounds.
The more she sounds like Wilf.
“We’re all fra Farbranch. Where yoo from?”
Wilf hangs his thumb back over his shoulder. “Bar Vista,” he says. “I’m gone Brockley Falls, pick up s’plies.”
“Well, at’s lucky,” Viola says. “We’re gone Brockley Falls, too.”
This is making my headache worse. I put my hands up to my temples, like I’m trying to keep my Noise inside, trying to keep all the wrong things from spilling out into the world. Luckily, the song of Here has made it like we’re already swimming in sound.
“Hop on,” Wilf says with a shrug.
“C’mon, Ben,” Viola says, walking to the back of the cart and hoisting her bag on top. “Wilf’s gone give us a ride.”
She jumps on the cart and Wilf snaps the reins on his oxes. They take off slowly and Wilf don’t even look at me as he passes. I’m still standing there in amazement when Viola goes by, waving her hand frantically to me to get on beside her. I don’t got no choice, do I? I catch up and pull myself up with my arms.