Midnight comes.
Fifteen days.
Fifteen days till–
Till what?
We carry on thru the night, the sky falling slowly past us, our words stopping a little as dinner wears off and tiredness takes hold again. Just before dawn we find two overturned carts in the road, grains of wheat spilled everywhere and a few empty baskets rolled on their sides across the road.
“They didn’t even take the time to save everything,” Viola says. “They left half of it on the ground.”
“Good a place as any for breakfast.” I flip over one of the baskets, drag it over to where the road overlooks the river and sit down on it.
Viola picks up another basket, brings it over right next to me and sits down. There are glimmers of light in the sky as the sun gets set to rise, the road pointing right towards it, the river, too, rushing towards the dawn. I open up the bag and take out the general store food, handing some to Viola and eating what I’ve got. We drink from the water bottles.
The bag is open on my lap. There are our remaining clothes and there are the binos.
And there’s the book again.
I feel her silence next to me, feel the pull of it on me and the hollows in my chest and stomach and head and I remember the ache I used to feel when she got too close, how it felt like grief, how it felt like a loss, like I was falling, falling into nothing, how it clenched me up and made me want to weep, made me actually weep.
But now–
Now, not so much.
I look over to her.
She’s gotta know what’s in my Noise. I’m the only one around and she’s got better and better at reading it despite how loud the river’s getting.
But she sits there, quietly eating, waiting for me to say.
Waiting for me to ask.
Cuz this is what I’m thinking.
When the sun comes up, it’ll be the day we get to Haven, the day we get to a place filled with more people than I’ve ever seen together in my life, a place filled with so much Noise you can’t never be alone, unless they found a cure, in which case I’ll be the only Noisy one which would actually be worse.
We get to Haven, we’ll be part of a city.
It won’t just be Todd and Viola, sitting by a river as the sun comes up, eating our breakfast, the only two people on the face of the planet.
It’ll be everyone, all together.
This might be our last chance.
I look away from her to speak. “You know that thing with voices that you do?”
“Yeah,” she says, quiet.
I take out the book.
“D’you think you could do a Prentisstown voice?”
“My Dearest Todd,” Viola reads, copying Ben’s accent as best she can. Which is pretty ruddy good. “My dearest son.”
My ma’s voice. My ma speaking.
I cross my arms and look down into the wheat spilled across the ground.
“I begin this journal on the day of yer birth, the day I first held you in my arms rather than in my belly. You kick just as much outside as in! And yer the most beautiful thing that’s ever happened in the whole entire universe. Yer easily the most beautiful thing on New World and there’s no contest in New Elizabeth, that’s for sure.”
I feel my face getting red but the sun’s still not high enough for anyone to see.
“I wish yer pa were here to see you, Todd, but New World and the Lord above saw fit to take him with the sickness five months ago and we’ll both just have to wait to see him in the next world.
“You look like him. Well, babies don’t look much like anything but babies but I’m telling you you look like him. Yer going to be tall, Todd, cuz yer pa was tall. Yer going to be strong, cuz yer pa was strong. And yer going to be handsome, oh, are you ever going to be handsome. The ladies of New World won’t know what hit them.”
Viola turns a page and I don’t look at her. I sense she’s not looking at me neither and I wouldn’t wanna see a smile on her face right about now.
Cuz that weird thing’s happening too.
Her words are not her words and they’re coming outta her mouth sounding like a lie but making a new truth, creating a different world where my ma is talking directly to me, Viola speaking with a voice not her own and the world, for a little while at least, the world is all for me, the world’s being made just for me.
“Let me tell you bout the place you’ve been born into, son. It’s called New World and it’s a whole planet made entirely of hope–”
Viola stops, just for a second, then carries on.
“We landed here almost exactly ten years ago looking for a new way of life, one clean and simple and honest and good, one different from Old World in all respects, where people could live in safety and peace with God as our guide and with love for our fellow man.
“There’ve been struggles. I won’t begin this story to you with a lie, Todd. It ain’t been easy here–
“Oooh, listen to me, writing down ‘ain’t’ when addressing my son. That’s settler life for you, I spose, not much time for niceties and it’s easy to sink to the level of people who revel in squandering their manners. But there’s not much harm in ‘ain’t’, surely? Okay, that’s decided then. My first bad choice as a mother. Say ‘ain’t’ all you like, Todd. I promise not to correct you.”
Viola purses her lips but I don’t say nothing so she continues.
“So there’s been hardship and sickness on New World and in New Elizabeth. There’s something called the Noise here on this planet that men have been struggling with since we landed but the strange thing is you’ll be one of the boys in the settlement who won’t know any different and so it’ll be hard to explain to you what life was like before and why it’s so difficult now but we’re managing the best we can.
“A man called David Prentiss, who’s got a son just a bit older than you, Todd, and who’s one of our better organizers – I believe he was a caretaker on the ship over, if memory serves me correct–”
Viola pauses at this, too, but this time it’s me who waits for her to say something. She don’t.
“He convinced Jessica Elizabeth, our Mayor, to found this little settlement on the far side of an enormous swamp so that the Noise of the rest of New World can’t never reach us unless we allow it to. It’s still Noisy as anything here in New Elizabeth but at least it’s people we know, at least it’s people we trust. For the most part.
“My role here is that I farm several fields of wheat up north of the settlement. Since yer pa passed, our close friends Ben and Cillian have been helping me out since theirs is the next farm over. I can’t wait for you to meet them. Well wait, you already have! They’ve already held you and said hello so look at that, one day in the world and you’ve already made two friends. It’s a good way to start, son.