“We wait till nightfall,” I say. “Sneak out and hope he don’t see us.”
I sit down on one of the stone benches. Viola sits down next to me. She lifts the bag over her head and sets it on the stone floor.
“What if he finds the trail?” she asks.
“We hope he don’t.”
“But what if he does?”
I reach behind me and take out the knife.
The knife.
Both of us look at it, the white water reflecting off of it, droplets of spray already catching and pooling on its blade, making it shine like a little torch.
The knife.
We don’t say nothing about it, just watch it gleam in the middle of the church.
“Todd Hewitt!”
Viola looks up to the entrance and puts her hands to her face and I can see her clench her teeth. “What does he even want?” she suddenly rages. “If the army’s all about you, what does he want with me? Why was he shooting at me? I don’t understand it.”
“Crazy people don’t need an explanayshun for nothing,” I say.
But my Noise is remembering the sacrifice that I saw him making of her way back in the swamp.
The sign, he called her.
A gift from God.
I don’t know if Viola hears this or if she remembers it herself cuz she says, “I don’t think I’m the sacrifice.”
“What?”
She turns to me, her face perplexed. “I don’t think it’s me,” she says. “He kept me asleep almost the entire time I was with him and when I did wake up, I kept seeing confusing things in his Noise, things that didn’t make sense.”
“He’s mad,” I say. “Madder than most.”
She don’t say nothing more, just looks out into the waterfall.
And reaches over and takes my hand.
“TODD HEWITT!”
I feel her hand jump right as my heart leaps.
“That’s closer,” she says. “He’s getting closer.”
“He won’t find us.”
“He will.”
“Then we’ll deal with it.”
We both look at the knife.
“TODD HEWITT!”
“He’s found it,” she says, grabbing my arm and squeezing into me.
“Not yet.”
“We were almost there,” she says, her voice high and breaking a little. “Almost there.”
“We’ll get there.”
“TODD HEWITT!”
And it’s definitely louder.
He’s found the tunnel.
I grip my knife and I look over to Viola, her face looking straight back up the tunnel, so much fear on it my chest begins to hurt.
I grip the knife harder.
If he touches her–
And my Noise reels back to the start of our journey, to Viola before she said anything, to Viola when she told me her name, to Viola when she talked to Hildy and Tam, to when she took on Wilf’s accent, to when Aaron grabbed her and stole her away, to waking up to her in Doctor Snow’s house, to her promise to Ben, to when she took on my ma’s voice and made the whole world change, just for a little while.
All the things we’ve been thru.
How she cried when we left Manchee behind.
Telling me I was all she had.
When I found out I could read her, silence or not.
When I thought Aaron had shot her on the road.
How I felt in those few terrible seconds.
How it would feel to lose her.
The pain and the unfairness and the injustice.
The rage.
And how I wished it was me.
I look at the knife in my hand.
And I realize she’s right.
I realize what’s been right all along, as insane as it is.
She’s not the sacrifice.
She’s not.
If one of us falls, we all fall.
“I know what he wants,” I say, standing up.
“What?” Viola says.
“TODD HEWITT!”
Definitely coming down the tunnel now.
Nowhere to run.
He’s coming.
She stands, too, and I move myself twixt her and the tunnel.
“Get down behind one of the pews,” I say. “Hide.”
“Todd–”
I move away from her, my hand staying on her arm till I’m too far away.
“Where are you going?” she says, her voice tightening.
I look back the way we came, up the tunnel of water.
He’ll be here any second.
“TODD HEWITT!”
“He’ll see you!” she says.
I hold up the knife in front of me.
The knife that’s caused so much trouble.
The knife that holds so much power.
“Todd!” Viola says. “What are you doing?”
I turn to her. “He won’t hurt you,” I say. “Not when he knows I know what he wants.”
“What does he want?”
I search her out, standing among the pews, the white planet and moons glowing down on her, the water shining watery light over her, I search out her face and the language of her body as she stands there watching me, and I find I still know who she is, that she’s still Viola Eade, that silent don’t mean empty, that it never meant empty.
I look right into her eyes.
“I’m gonna greet him like a man,” I say.
And even tho it’s too loud for her to hear my Noise, even tho she can’t read my thoughts, she looks back at me.
And I see her understand.
She pulls herself up a little taller.
“I’m not hiding,” she says. “If you’re not, I’m not.”
And that’s all I need.
I nod.
“Ready?” I ask.
She looks at me.
She nods once, firmly.
I turn back to the tunnel.
I close my eyes.
I take a deep breath.
And with every bit of air in my lungs and every last note of Noise in my head, I rear up–
And I shout, as loud as I can–
“AARON!!!!!!”
And I open my eyes and I wait for him to come.
I see his feet first, slipping down the steps some but not hurrying, taking his time now that he knows we’re here.
I hold the knife in my right hand, my left hand out and ready, too. I stand in the aisle of the little pews, as much in the centre of the church as I can get. Viola’s back behind me a bit, down one of the rows.
I’m ready.
I realize I am ready.
Everything that’s happened has brought me here, to this place, with this knife in my hand, and something worth saving.
Someone.
And if it’s a choice twixt her and him, there is no choice, and the army can go sod itself.