He got up and looked out over New Prentisstown. “Maybe,” he said, “the war really is over.”
“Oi!” I hear Davy call as I’m halfway to the bog. I turn round. A Spackle has come up to him.
It’s holding its long white arms up and out in what may be a peaceful way and then it starts clicking, pointing to where a group of Spackle have finished tearing down a fence. It’s clicking and clicking, pointing to one of the empty water troughs, but there ain’t no way of understanding it, not if you can’t hear its Noise.
Davy steps closer to it, his eyes wide, his head nodding in sympathy, his smile dangerous. “Yeah, yeah, yer thirsty from the hard work,” he says. “Course you are, course you are, thank you for bringing that to my attenshun, thank you very much. And in reply, let me just say this.”
He smashes the butt of his pistol into the Spackle’s face. You can hear the crack of bone and the Spackle falls to the ground clutching at his jaw, long legs twisting in the air.
There’s a wave of clicking around us and Davy lifts his pistol again, bullet end facing the crowd. Rifles c**k on the fence-top, too, soldiers pointing their weapons. The Spackle slink back, the broken-jawed one still writhing and writhing in the grass.
“Know what, pigpiss?” Davy says.
“What?” I say, my eyes still on the Spackle on the ground, my Noise shaky as a leaf about to fall.
He turns to me, pistol still out. “It’s good to be in charge.”
Every minute I’ve expected life to blow apart.
But every minute, it don’t.
And every day I’ve looked for her.
I’ve looked for her from the openings outta the top of the bell tower but all I ever see is the army marching and men working. Never a face I reckernize, never a silence I can feel as hers.
I’ve looked for her when Davy and I ride back and forth to the monastery, seeking her out in the windows of the Women’s Quarter, but I never see her looking back.
I‘ve even half-looked for her in the crowds of Spackle, wondering if she’s hiding behind one, ready to pop out and yell at Davy for beating on ’em and then saying to me, like everything’s okay, “Hey, I’m here, it’s me.”
But she ain’t there.
She ain’t there.
I’ve asked Mayor Prentiss bout her every time I’ve seen him and he’s said I need to trust him, said he’s not my enemy, said if I put my faith in him that everything will be all right.
But I’ve looked.
And she ain’t there.
“Hey, girl,” I whisper to Angharrad as I saddle her up at the end of our day. I’ve got way better at riding her, better at talking to her, better at reading her moods. I’m less nervous about being on her back and she’s less nervous about being underneath me. This morning after I gave her an apple to eat, she clipped her teeth thru my hair once, like I was just another horse.
Boy colt, she says, as I climb on her back and me and Davy set off back into town.
“Angharrad,” I say, leaning forward twixt her ears, cuz this is what horses like, it seems, constant reminders that everyone’s there, constant reminders that they’re still in the herd.
Above anything else, a horse hates to be alone.
Boy colt, Angharrad says again.
“Angharrad,” I say.
“Jesus, pigpiss,” Davy moans, “why don’t you marry the effing–” He stops. “Well, goddam,” he says, his voice suddenly a whisper, “would you look at this?”
I look up.
There are women coming out of a store.
Four of ’em, together in a group. We knew they were being let out but it’s always daylight hours, always while me and Davy are at the monastery, so we always return to a city of men, like the women are just phantoms and rumour.
It’s been ages since I even seen one more than just thru a window or from up top of the tower.
They’re wearing longer sleeves and longer skirts than I saw before and they each got their hair tied behind their heads the same way. They look nervously at the soldiers that line the streets, at me and Davy, too, all of us watching ’em come down the store’s front steps.
And there’s still the silence, still the pull at my chest and I have to wipe my eyes when I’m sure Davy ain’t looking.
Cuz none of ’em is her.
“They’re late,” Davy says, his voice so quiet I guess he ain’t seen a woman for weeks neither. “They’re all sposed to be in way before sundown.”
Our heads turn as we watch ’em pass by, parcels held close, and they carry on down the road back to the Women’s Quarter and my chest tightens and my throat clenches.
Cuz none of ’em is her.
And I realize–
I realize all over again how much–
And my Noise goes all muddy.
Mayor Prentiss has used her to control me.
Duh.
Any effing idiot would know it. If I don’t do what they say, they kill her. If I try to escape, they kill her. If I do anything to Davy, they kill her.
If she ain’t dead already.
My Noise gets blacker.
No.
No, I think.
Cuz she might not be.
She mighta been out here, on this very street, in another group of four.
Stay alive, I think. Please please please stay alive.
(please be alive)
I stand at an opening as me and Mayor Ledger eat our dinners, looking for her again, trying to close my ears against the ROAR.
Cuz Mayor Ledger was right. There’s so many men that once the cure left their systems, you stopped being able to hear individual Noise. It’d be like trying to hear one drop of water in the middle of a river. Their Noise became a single loud wall, all mushed together so much it don’t say nothing but
But it’s actually something you can sorta get used to. In a way, Mayor Ledger’s words and thoughts and feelings bubbling round his own personal grey Noise are more distracting.
“Quite correct,” he says, patting his stomach. “A man is capable of thought. A crowd is not.”
“An army is,” I say.
“Only if it has a general for a brain.”
He looks out the opening next to mine as he says it. Mayor Prentiss is riding across the square, Mr. Hammar, Mr. Tate, Mr. Morgan and Mr. O’Hare riding behind him, listening to the orders he’s giving.
“The inner circle,” Mayor Ledger says.