The Knife of Never Letting Go

He lets out a breath. “It’s time you knew, Todd,” he says. “Time you knew the truth.”

There’s a snap of branches as Viola comes rushing back to us.

“Horse on the road,” she says, outta breath.

We listen. Hoofbeats, down the river road, coming fast. Ben slinks back a little farther into the bushes. We go with him but the horseman is coming so quick he ain’t interested in us at all. We hear him thunder by on the road and turn up the bridge that heads straight into Carbonel Downs, hooves clattering on boards and then on dirt till they’re swallowed up by the loudspeaker sounds.

“That can’t be good news,” Viola says.

“It’ll be the army,” Ben says. “By now they’re probably not more than a few hours from here.”

“What!?” I say, rearing back. Viola jumps, too.

“I told you we don’t have much time,” Ben says.

“Then we gotta go!” I say. “You gotta come with us. We’ll tell people—”

“No,” he says. “No. You get yerselves to Haven. That’s all there is to it. It’s yer best chance.”

We pelt him with sudden askings.

“Is Haven safe then?” Viola asks. “From an army?”

“Is it true they have a cure for the Noise?” I ask.

“Will they have communicators? Will I be able to contact my ship?”

“Are you sure it’s safe? Are you sure?”

Ben raises his hands to stop us. “I don’t know,” he says. “I haven’t been there in twenty years.”

Viola stands up straight.

“Twenty years?” she says. “Twenty years?” Her voice is rising. “Then how can we know what we’ll find when we get there? How do we know it’s even still there?”

I rub my hand across my face and I think it’s the emptiness where Manchee used to be that makes me realize, realize what we never wanted to know.

“We don’t,” I say, only saying the truth. “We never did.”

Viola lets out a little sound and her shoulders slump down. “No,” she says. “I guess we didn’t.”

“But there’s always hope,” Ben says. “You always have to hope.”

We both look at him and there must be a word for how we’re doing it but I don’t know what it is. We’re looking at him like he’s speaking a foreign language, like he just said he was moving to one of the moons, like he’s telling us it’s all just been a bad dream and there’s candy for everybody.

“There ain’t a whole lotta hope out here, Ben,” I say.

He shakes his head. “What d’you think’s been driving you on? What d’you think’s got you this far?”

“Fear,” Viola says.

“Desperayshun,” I say.

“No,” he says, taking us both in. “No, no, no. You’ve come farther than most people on this planet will do in their lifetimes. You’ve overcome obstacles and dangers and things that should’ve killed you. You’ve outrun an army and a madman and deadly illness and seen things most people will never see. How do you think you could have possibly come this far if you didn’t have hope?” Viola and I exchange a glance.

“I see what yer trying to say, Ben—” I start.

“Hope,” he says, squeezing my arm on the word. “It’s hope. I am looking into yer eyes right now and I am telling you that there’s hope for you, hope for you both.” He looks up at Viola and back at me. “There’s hope waiting for you at the end of the road.” “You don’t know that,” Viola says and my Noise, as much as I don’t want it to, agrees with her.

“No,” Ben says, “but I believe it. I believe it for you. And that’s why it’s hope.”

“Ben—”

“Even if you don’t believe it,” he says, “believe that I do.”

“I’d believe it more if you were coming with us,” I say.

“He ain’t coming?” Viola says, surprised, then corrects herself. “Isn’t coming?”

Ben looks at her, opens his mouth and closes it again.

“What’s the truth, Ben?” I ask. “What’s the truth we need to know?”

Ben takes a long slow breath thru his nose. “Okay,” he says.

But then a loud and clear “Todd?” comes calling from across the river.

And that’s when we notice the music of Carbonel Downs is competing with the Noise of men now crossing the bridge.

Many men.

That’s the other purpose of the music, I guess. So you can’t hear men coming.

“Viola?” Doctor Snow is calling. “What are you two doing over there?”

I stand up straight and look over. Doctor Snow is crossing the bridge, little Jacob’s hand in his, leading a group of men who look like less friendly versions of himself and they’re eyeing us up and they’re seeing Ben and seeing me and Viola talking to him.

And their Noise is starting to turn different colours as what they’re seeing starts making sense to them.

And I see that some of ’em have rifles.

“Ben?” I say quietly.

“You need to run,” he says, under his breath. “You need to run now.”

“I ain’t leaving you. Not again.”

“Todd—”

“Too late,” Viola says.

Cuz they’re on us now, past the end of the bridge and heading towards the bushes where we’re not really hiding no more.

Doctor Snow reaches us first. He looks Ben up and down. “And who might this be then?”

And the sound of his Noise ain’t happy at all.

35. THE LAW

“This is Ben,” I say, trying to raise my Noise to block all the askings coming from the men.

“And who’s Ben when he’s at home?” Doctor Snow asks, his eyes alert and looking.

“Ben’s my pa,” I say. Cuz it’s true, ain’t it? In all that’s important. “My father.”

“Todd,” I hear Ben say behind me, all kindsa feelings in his Noise, but warning most of all.

“Your father?” says a bearded man behind Doctor Snow, his fingers flexing along the stock of his rifle, tho not lifting it.

Not yet.

“You might want to be careful who you start claiming as a parent, Todd,” Doctor Snow says slowly, pulling Jacob closer to him.

“You said the boy was from Farbranch,” says a third man with a purple birthmark under his eye.

“That’s what the girl told us.” Doctor Snow looks at Viola. “Didn’t you, Vi?”

Viola holds his look but don’t say nothing.

“Can’t trust the word of a woman,” says the beard. “This is a Prentisstown man if I ever saw one.”

“Leading the army right to us,” says the birthmark.

“The boy is innocent,” says Ben and when I turn I can see his hands are in the air. “I’m the one you want.”

“Correction,” says the beard, his voice angry and getting angrier. “You’re the one we don’t want.”

“Hold on a minute, Fergal,” Doctor Snow says. “Something’s not right here.”

“You know the law,” says the birthmark.