The Knife of Never Letting Go

Looks up to this hilltop.

Looks right at me.

He can’t see me. No way. Can he? Not without binos like the girl’s and I don’t see any on the men, never saw anything like ’em in Prentisstown. Gotta be. He can’t see me.

But like a great pitiless thing he raises his arm and points, points it directly at me, like I’m sitting across a table from him.

I’m running before I can even think, running back down the bluff and back to the girl as fast as I can, reaching behind me and pulling out my knife, Manchee barking up a storm on my heels. I get into the trees and down and round the big mess of shrubs and she’s still sitting on the rock but at least she looks up as I run to her.

“Come on!” I say, grabbing her arm. “We gotta go!”

She pulls back away from me but I don’t let go.

“No!” I shout. “We have to go! NOW!”

She starts hitting out with her fists, clonking me a coupla times on the face.

But I ain’t letting go.

“LISTEN!” I say and I open up my Noise for her. She hits me once more but then she’s looking, looking at my Noise as it comes, seeing the pictures of what’s waiting for us in the swamp. Check that, what’s not waiting for us, what’s making every effort to come get us. Aaron, who won’t die, bending all his thoughts to finding us and coming this time with men on horseback. Who are a lot faster than we are.

The girl’s face squishes up, like she’s in the worst pain ever and she opens her mouth like she’s going to yell but nothing comes out. Still nothing. Still no Noise, no sound, no nothing at all coming from her.

I just don’t get it.

“I don’t know what’s ahead,” I say. “I don’t know nothing about nothing but whatever it is, it’s gotta be better than what’s behind. It’s gotta be.”

And as she hears me, her face changes. It clears up to almost blankness again and she presses her lips together.

“Go! Go! Go!” Manchee barks.

She holds out her hand for her bag. I hand it to her. She stands, shoves the binos in, loops it over her shoulder and looks me in the eye.

“Okay, then,” I say.

And so that’s how I set off running full out towards a river for the second time in two days, Manchee with me again and this time a girl on my heels.

Well, past my heels most of the time, she’s ruddy fast, she is.

We go back up the hill and down the other side, the last of the swamp really starting to disappear around us and turning into regular woods. The ground gets way firmer and easier to run on and it’s sloping more downhill than it is up, which may be the first piece of luck we’ve had. We start catching the proper river in brief glances off to our left side as we go. My rucksack’s bashing me in the back as I run and I’m gasping for breath.

But I’m holding my knife.

I swear. I swear right now before God or whatever. If Aaron ever comes in my reach again, I will kill him. I ain’t hesitating again. No way. No how. I ain’t. I swear to you.

I will kill him.

I’ll ruddy well kill him.

You just watch me.

The ground we’re running on is getting a bit steeper side to side, taking us thru leafier, lighter trees and first closer to the river and then away from it again and again as we run. Manchee’s tongue is hanging out of his mouth in a big pant, bouncing along as we go. My heart’s thumping a million beats and my legs are about to fall off my body but still we run.

We veer close to the water again and I call out, “Wait.” The girl, who’s got pretty far in front of me, stops. I run to the river’s edge, take a swift look round for crocs, then lean down and scoop up a few handfuls of water into my mouth. Tastes sweeter than it really should. Who knows what’s in it, coming outta the swamp, but you gotta drink. I feel the girl’s silence lean down next to me as she drinks, too. I scoot a little ways away. Manchee laps up his share and you can hear us all taking in great raking breaths between slurps.

I look up to where we’re going, wiping my mouth. Next to the river is starting to become too rocky and steep to run on and I can see a path cutting its way up from the riverbank, going along the top of the canyon.

I blink, as I realize.

I can see a path. Someone’s cut a path.

The girl turns and looks. The path carries up and along as the river drops below it, getting deeper and faster and turning into rapids. Someone made that path.

“It’s gotta be the way to the other settlement,” I say. “Gotta be.”

And then, in the distance, we hear hoofbeats. Faint, but on their way.

I don’t say another word cuz we’re already on our feet and running up the path. The river falls farther and farther away beneath us and the larger mountain rears up on the other side of the river. On our side there’s a thick forest starting to stretch back from the clifftops. The path’s clearly been cut so men would have a place to travel down the river.

It’s more than wide enough for horses. More than wide enough for five or six, in fact.

It ain’t a path at all, I realize. It’s a road.

We fly along it as it bends and turns, the girl ahead, then me, then Manchee, running along.

Till I nearly bump into her and knock her off the trail.

“What’re you doing?!” I shout, grabbing onto her arms to keep us both from falling off the cliff, trying to keep the knife from accidentally killing her.

And then I see what she’s seeing.

A bridge, way on up ahead of us. It goes from one cliff edge to the other, crossing the river what’s gotta be thirty, forty metres above it. The road or path or whatever stops on our side at the bridge and becomes rock and dense forest beyond. There’s nowhere to go but the bridge.

The first shades of an idea start to form.

The hoofbeats are louder now. I look back and see clouds of dust rising from where the Mayor is following.

“Come on!” I say, running past her, making for the bridge as fast as I can. We pound down the clifftop path, kicking up our own dust, Manchee’s ears flattened back, running fast. We get there and it’s way more than just a footbridge, two metres wide at least. It looks like mostly rope tied into wooden stakes driven into the rock at either end, with tight wooden planks running all the way to the other side.

I test it with my foot but it’s so sturdy it don’t even bounce. More than enough to take me and the girl and a dog.

More than enough to take men on horseback who wanted to cross it, in fact.

Whoever built it, meant it to last.

I look back again down the river at where we’ve run. More dust, louder hoofbeats, and the whispers of men’s Noise on its way. I think I hear young Todd but I’m only imagining it cuz Aaron’ll be way behind on foot.

But I do see what I wanna see: this bridge is the only place where you can cross the river, from back where we’ve run to miles on farther ahead as you look.

Maybe another piece of luck is coming our way.

“Let’s go,” I say. We run across and it’s so well-made you can’t even see twixt the gaps in the planks of wood. We might as well still be on the path. We get to the other side and the girl stops and turns to me, no doubt seeing my idea in my Noise, already waiting for me to act.

The knife is still in my hand. Power at the end of my arm.

Maybe at last I can do some good with it.

I look over where this end of the bridge is tied to the stakes in the rock. The knife has a fearsome serrated edge on part of the blade, so I choose the likeliest looking knot and start sawing on it.