He keeps on staring. “I never thought it might be, Todd.”
Fixing my arm didn’t take very long yesterday once he’d dragged me cross the square to a clinic where men in white coats set it and gave me two injeckshuns of bone-mending that hurt more than the break but by then he was already gone, promising I’d see Viola the next night (tonight, tonight) and already outta reach of a million and one askings about how he came to be embracing her and calling her all friendly-like by her first name and how she’s working as a doctor or something and how she had to leave to go to a funeral and–
(and how my heart just exploded from my chest when I saw her–)
(and how it hurt all over again when she left–)
And then off she went somehow to a life of her own already being lived out there somewhere without me in it and then there was just me and my arm going back to the cathedral with the painkillers making me so sleepy I barely had time to fall on my mattress before blinking right out.
I didn’t wake when Mayor Ledger came back in with his grey day-of-rubbish-collecting Noise complaints. I didn’t wake when dinner came and Mayor Ledger ate both servings. I didn’t wake when we were locked inside for the night ker-thunk.
But I surely did wake when a BOOM! shook the entire city.
And even as I sat up in the darkness and felt the queasy of the painkillers in my stomach, even without knowing what the BOOM was or where it had come from or what it meant, even then I knew things had changed again, that the world had suddenly become different one more time.
And sure enough, out we came with the Mayor and his men at first light, injuries or no, straight to the bombsite. I look at him on Morpeth. The morning sun’s shining behind him, casting his shadow over everything.
“Will I still see her tonight?” I ask.
There’s a long, quiet moment where he just stares.
“Mr. President?” calls Corporal Parker, as his men take away a long plank of wood that was blown against another tree.
Something’s been drawn onto the trunk underneath.
Even with not knowing how to–
Well, even with not knowing much, I can tell what it is.
A single letter, smeared on the trunk in blue.
A, it says. Just the letter A.
“I can’t believe he’s making us effing go back there one day after we fought off the attack,” Davy grumbles as we make our way down the long road to the monastery.
I can’t believe it neither, frankly. Davy can barely walk and even with the bone-mending doing its work on my arm, it’ll be a coupla days before everything’s back to normal. I can start to bend it already but I sure as hell can’t fight off a Spackle army with it.
“Did you tell him I saved yer life?” Davy asks, looking both angry and shy.
“Didn’t you tell him?” I say.
Davy’s mouth flattens, pulling his sad little moustache fluff even thinner. “He don’t believe me when I tell him stuff like that.”
I sigh. “I told him. He saw it in my Noise anyway.”
We ride in silence for a bit before Davy finally says, “Did he say anything?”
I hesitate. “He said, Good for him.”
“That all?”
“He said it was good for me, too.”
Davy bites his lip. “That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“I see.” He don’t say no more, just jigs Deadfall along a bit faster.
Even tho it was only one building that got blown up in the night, the whole city looks different as we ride. The patrols of soldiers are suddenly larger and there’s more of ’em, marching up and down the roads and side streets so fast it’s like they’re running. There are soldiers on rooftops now, too, here and there, holding rifles, watching watching watching.
The only non-soldier men out are hustling as fast as they can from place to place, staying outta the way, not looking up.
I ain’t seen no women this morning. Not one.
(not her)
(what was she doing with him?)
(is she lying to him?)
(is he believing her?)
(did she have something to do with the explozhun?)
“Did who have something to do with it?” Davy asks.
“Shut up.”
“Make me,” he says. But his heart ain’t in it.
We ride past a group of soldiers escorting a beat-up looking man with his wrists bound. I press my slinged arm closer to my chest and we keep on riding. The morning sun’s high in the sky by the time we pass the hill with the metal tower and come round the final bend to the monastery.
Ain’t no putting off getting there any longer.
“What happened after I left?” I say.
“We beat ’em,” Davy says, huffing a little with the rising pain in his leg, pain I can see in his Noise. “We beat ’em back good and proper.”
Something lands on Angharrad’s mane. I brush it away and something else lands on my arm. I look up.
“What the hell?” Davy says.
It’s snowing.
I only ever seen snow once in my whole life, back when I was too young to really know how I’d hardly never see it again.
Flakes of white fall thru the trees and onto the road, catching on our clothes and hair. It’s a silent fall and it’s weird how it makes everything else seem quiet, too, like it’s trying to tell you a secret, a terrible, terrible secret.
But the sun is blazing.
And this ain’t snow.
“Ash,” Davy spits when a flake lands near his mouth. “They’re burning the bodies.”
They’re burning the bodies. The men are still on the tops of the stone walls with their rifles, making the Spackle that lived pile up the bodies of the ones that died. The burning pile is huge, taller than the tallest living Spackle, and more bodies are being brought to it by Spackle with their heads down and their mouths shut.
I watch a body get thrown up to the top of the pile. It lands askew and tumbles down the side, rolling over other bodies, thru the flames, till it reaches the mud below and comes to a stop facing straight up, holes in its chest, blood dried on its wounds–
(a dead-eyed Spackle, face up in a campsite–)
(a Spackle with a knife in its chest–)
I breathe a heavy breath and I look away.
Apart from some of the clicking, the living Spackle still ain’t got no Noise. No sounds of mourning nor anger nor nothing at all bout the mess they’re having to clean up.
It’s like someone cut out their tongues.
Ivan’s there waiting for us, rifle in the crook of his arm. He’s quieter this morning and his face ain’t happy.