I can’t kill him.
I want to. I want to so bad. But I can’t.
Cuz it ain’t me and cuz I lose her.
I can’t. I can’t I can’t I can’t.
I give in to the shimmering and I disappear for a while.
It’s good old Manchee, the friend who’s proved truest, who wakes me up with licks to my face and a worried murmured word coming thru his Noise and his whines.
“Aaron,” he’s yelping, quiet and tense. “Aaron.”
“Leave off, Manchee.”
“Aaron,” he whimpers, licking away.
“He ain’t really there,” I say, trying to sit up. “It’s just something–”
It’s just something Manchee can’t see.
“Where is he?” I say, getting up too fast, causing everything to swirl bright pink and orange. I reel back from what’s waiting for me.
There are a hundred Aarons at a hundred different places, all standing round me. There are Violas, too, frightened and looking to me for help, and Spackles with my knife sticking outta their chests and there’re all talking at once, all talking to me in a roar of voices.
“Coward,” they’re saying. All of ’em. “Coward” over and over again.
But I wouldn’t be a Prentisstown boy if I couldn’t ignore Noise.
“Where, Manchee?” I say, getting to my feet, trying not to see how everything’s pitching and sliding.
“This way,” he barks. “Down the river.”
I follow him thru the burnt-out settlement.
He leads me past what musta been the church and I don’t look at it as we go by and he runs up a small bluff and the wind’s getting howlier and the trees are bending and I think it’s not just how I’m seeing them and Manchee has to bark louder to let me know.
“Aaron!” he barks, sticking his nose in the air. “Upwind.”
Thru the trees on the little bluff I can see downriver. I can see a thousand Violas looking frightened of me.
I can see a thousand Spackle with my knife killing them.
I can see a thousand Aarons looking back at me and calling me “Coward” with the worst smile you ever seen.
And beyond them, in a camp by the side of the river, I see an Aaron who ain’t looking back at me at all.
I see an Aaron kneeling down in prayer.
And I see Viola on the ground in front of him.
“Aaron,” Manchee barks.
“Aaron,” I say.
Coward.
“What are we gonna do?” says the boy, creeping up to my shoulder.
I raise my head from the cold river water and let it splash down my back. I stumbled back down from the bluff, elbowing my way thru crowds all calling me coward, and I got to the riverbank and I plunged my head straight in and now the cold is making me shake violently but it’s also calming the world down. I know it won’t last, I know the fever and spack blood infection will win in the end, but for now, I’m gonna need to see as clearly as possible.
“How are we gonna get to them?” the boy asks, moving round to my other side. “He’ll hear our Noise.”
The shivering makes me cough, everything makes me cough, and I spit out handfuls of green goo from my lungs, but then I hold my breath and plunge in my head again.
The cold of the water feels like a vice but I hold it there, hearing the bubbling of the water rushing by and the wordless barks of a worried Manchee hopping around my feet. I can feel the bandage on my head detach and wash away in the current. I think of Manchee wriggling the bandage off his tail in a different part of the river and I forget and I laugh underwater.
I lift my head up, choking and gasping and coughing more.
I open my eyes. The world shines like it shouldn’t and there are all kindsa stars out even tho the sun is still up but at least the ground has stopped floating and all the excess Aarons and Violas and Spackles are gone.
“Can we really do it alone?” asks the boy.
“Ain’t no choice,” I say to myself.
And I turn to look at him.
He’s got a brown shirt like mine, no scars on his head, a rucksack on his back, a book in one hand and a knife in the other. I’m shaking from the cold still and it’s all I can do to stand but I breathe and cough and shake and look at him.
“C’mon, Manchee,” I say and I head back across the burnt-out settlement, back to the bluff. Just walking is tough, like the ground could cave away at any minute, cuz I weigh more than a mountain but less than a feather, but I’m walking, I’m keeping walking, I’m keeping the bluff in sight, I’m reaching it, I’m taking the first steps up it, I’m taking the next steps, I’m grabbing on to branches to pull myself along, I’m reaching the top, I’m leaning against a tree at the top, and I’m looking out.
“Is it really him?” says the boy behind my ear.
I squint out across the trees, tracing my eye down the river.
And there’s still a campsite, still at the river’s edge, so far away they’re just specks against other specks. I still have Viola’s bag around my shoulders and I reach for her binos, holding ’em up to my eyes but shaking so much it’s hard to get a clear image. They’re far enough away that the wind’s covering up his Noise but I’m sure I feel her silence out there.
I’m sure of it.
“Aaron,” Manchee says. “Viola.”
So I know it’s not a shimmer and in the shakiness I can just about catch him still kneeling, praying some prayer, and Viola laid out on the ground in front of him.
I don’t know what’s happening. I don’t know what he’s doing.
But it’s really them.
All this walking and stumbling and coughing and dying and it’s really really them, by God it’s really them.
I may not be too late and it’s only how my chest rises and my throat grips that I realize all along I’ve thought I was too late.
But I’m not.
I lean down again and (shut up) I cry, I cry, I’m crying but it has to pass cuz I have to figure it out, I have to figure it out, it’s down to me, there’s only me, I have to find a way, I have to save her, I have to save–
“What are we gonna do?” the boy asks again, standing a little way away, book still in one hand, knife in the other.
I put my palms into my eyes and rub hard, trying to think straight, trying to concentrate, trying not to listen–
“What if this is the sacrifice?” says the boy.
I look up. “What sacrifice?”