The Knife of Never Letting Go

“Todd?”

I try to say his name to calm him but all I do is cough and a sharp pain soars thru my back. I’m still down on my belly in the muck, where I fell when Aaron–

Aaron.

When Aaron hit me in the head with his staff. I try to raise my head and a blinding ache stretches over the right side of my skull all the way down to my jaw and I have to lie there gritting my teeth for a minute just letting it hurt and blaze before I can even try speaking again.

“Todd?” Manchee whimpers.

“I’m here, Manchee,” I finally mutter but it comes up outta my chest like a growl held back by goo and it sets off more coughing–

Which I have to cut short cuz of the sharp pain in my back.

My back.

I stifle another cough and a horror feeling spreads out from my gut into the rest of me.

The last thing I saw before–

No.

Oh, no.

I cough a little in my throat, trying not to move any muscle at all, failing at it and surviving the pain till it ebbs as far as it’s gonna and then I work on making my mouth move without killing me.

“Is there a knife in me, Manchee?” I rasp.

“Knife, Todd,” he barks and there’s worry all over him. “Back, Todd.”

He comes forward to lick my face again, the dog way of trying to make it better. All I do is breathe and not move for a minute. I close my eyes and pull air inside, despite how my lungs are complaining and already seem full.

I am Todd Hewitt, I think, which is a mistake, cuz here comes all of it back, falling on me, dragging me down and the Spackle’s blood and Viola’s face frightened of me and Aaron coming outta the woods and taking her — I start to weep but the pain from the grip of the weep is so bad that for a minute I feel paralysed and a living fire burns thru my arms and back and there’s nothing to do but suffer it till it goes.

Slowly, slowly, slowly, I start to uncurl one arm from beneath me. My head and back hurt so bad I think I pass out for a minute but I wake again and slowly, slowly, slowly reach my hand up and behind me, crawling my fingers up my wet filthy shirt and up the wet filthy rucksack which unbelievably I’m still wearing and up and back till there it is under my fingertips.

The handle of the knife. Sticking outta my back.

But I’d be dead.

I’d be dead.

Am I dead?

“Not dead, Todd,” Manchee barks. “Sack! Sack!”

The knife is sticking in me, up high twixt my shoulder blades, the pain’s telling me all about it very specifically, but the knife’s gone thru the rucksack first, something in the rucksack’s stopped the knife from going all the way in — The book.

My ma’s book.

I feel with my fingers again, slowly as I can, but yes, Aaron raised his arm and brought it down thru the book in the rucksack and it’s stopped it from going all the way thru my body.

(Like it did thru the Spackle.)

I close my eyes again and try to take as deep a breath as possible which ain’t too deep and then I hold it till I can get my fingers round the knife and then I have to breathe and wait till the pain passes and then I try to pull but it’s the heaviest thing in the world and I have to wait and breathe and try again and I pull and the pain in my back increases like a gun firing and I scream out uncontrollably as I feel the knife come outta my back.

I gasp and pant for a minute and try to stop from weeping again, all the while holding the knife away from me, still stuck thru the book and the rucksack.

Manchee licks my face once more.

“Good boy,” I say, tho I don’t know why.

It takes what feels like a lifetime to get the rucksack straps off my arms and finally be able to cast the knife and the whole mess aside. Even then, I can’t come near standing up and I must pass out again cuz Manchee’s licking my face and I’m having to open my eyes and cough in my breath all over again.

As I lay there, still in the muck, I wish to myself more than anything in the whole world that Aaron’s knife had gone thru me, that I was as dead as the Spackle, that I could finish falling down that pit, down down down till there’s only blackness, down into the nowhere where there’s no more Todd to blame or screw things up or fail Ben or fail Viola, and I could fall away forever into nothingness and never have to worry no more.

But here’s Manchee, licking away.

“Get off.” I reach up an arm to push him away.

Aaron coulda killed me, coulda killed me so easy.

The knife thru my neck, the knife in my eye, the knife across my throat. I was his for the killing and he didn’t kill me. He musta known what he was doing. He musta.

Was he leaving me for the Mayor to find? But why was he so far ahead of the army? How could he have come all this way without a horse like Mr Prentiss Jr? How long had he been following us?

How long before he stepped outta the bushes and took Viola away?

I let out a little moan.

That’s why he left me alive. So I could live knowing that he took Viola. That’s how he wins, ain’t it? That’s how he makes me suffer. Living and having the sight of him taking her forever in my Noise.

A new kinda energy runs thru me and I make myself sit up, ignoring the pain and bringing myself forward and breathing till I can think about standing. The rattle in my lungs and the pain in my back make me cough more but I grit my teeth and get thru it.

Cuz I have to find her.

“Viola,” Manchee barks.

“Viola,” I say and I grit my teeth even harder and try to get to my feet.

But it’s too much, the pain takes my legs from me and I topple back in the mud and I just lay there pulled tight from it all and struggling to breathe and my mind goes all woozy and hot and in my Noise I’m running and I’m running and I’m running towards nothing and I’m hot all over and I’m sweating and I’m running in my Noise and I can hear Ben from behind the trees and I’m running towards him and he’s singing the song, he’s singing the song from my bedtimes, the song that’s for boys and not men but when I hear it my heart stretches and it’s early one morning just as the sun was rising.

I come back to myself. The song comes with me.

Cuz the song goes:

Early one morning just as the sun was rising,

I heard a maiden call from the valley below.

“Oh don’t deceive me, oh never leave me.”

I open my eyes.

Don’t deceive me. Never leave me.

I have to find her.

I have to find her.

I look up. The sun is in the sky but I have no idea how much time has passed since Aaron took Viola. That was just before dawn. It’s cloudy but bright now and so it could be late morning or early afternoon. It might not even be the same day, a thought I try to push away. I close my eyes and I try to listen. The rain’s stopped so there’s none of that clatter but the only Noise I can hear belongs to me and to Manchee and the distant wordless chatter of woodland creachers getting on with their lives that ain’t got nothing to do with mine.

No sound of Aaron. No space of silence for Viola.

I open my eyes and I see her bag.

Dropped in the struggle with Aaron, of no use or interest to him and just left on the ground like it don’t