Chapter III:

Suffer the Witch

The picture of the girl dead in the swamp makes me half ready to throw up. Pa knows straight away what I've seen cuz it's all over my Noise in an instant.

"No, Pa," I say, in a voice so squeaky I'm about ready to drop down dead of shame. "Oh, no."

Be quiet, he says with his Noise, his voice so loud in my head it's as though my eyes are vibrating in their sockets. I put my hands to my temples, wishing I could pull his Noise right outta my ears, crouching all the way down and pressing my head against the tiles. Everything's hazy for I don't know how long, until I realize the girl has come back into the kitchen and is down on her knees beside me, trying to make things better, 'cept there's nothing she can do but hold round my shoulders as I fight with dwindling effort against what Pa is doing to me.

I wonder for a second why he ain't stopped, why he ain't just letting me be and pretending nothing's happened to cover himself… but he's worried, ain't he? He's trying to drown out my Noise so that Cinda won't pick up on what I've seen, so I can't warn her of what he's planning on letting Aaron do to her. She ain't hearing nothing, she can't understand that he's in my head, unravelling me like an old sweater with YER NOTHING YER NOTHING YER NOTHING rattling round my brain in a carousel loop.

"He's fine," I hear Pa say, and he's winning, ain't he, cuz the last thing I'm thinking about is those pictures I saw in his Noise of what horrible thing he's planning on letting happen when my whole world is in so much agony. His Noise in my head rattles about like the voice of God and it says GET UP, and I'm getting up, GET OUT, and I'm getting out, he's pushing me out of the house with nothing but the raw power of his Noise, I can feel it at my back shoving me, and it stays there until I scramble to get the door open and slam it behind me.

I collapse the other side of the white door, touching my legs, feeling my arms, just remembering what it's like to be back in my body and not trapped in my head with whatever the hell it is Pa is learning to do with his Noise. Usually when he blasts me with his Noise it's a short sharp shock, the kind you get from messing around with a faulty generator, but that was something else. It was almost like he was controlling me; I didn't want to leave the house, and yet here I am, out in the cold. I wonder if he's as surprised as I am.

As the ringing in my head clears I start to pay attention to what's going on behind the door. The girl is talking, not quite yelling but damn near it, and she's full of worry for me, thinking Pa must have hit me from the way I was all curled up and cradling my head. Pa is talking back but I can't make out what lies he's telling her, his voice quiet in its usual way.

Some tendrils of his Noise find me out on the patio and I hear OUT right in the middle of my head again. I scarper to my feet and do as I'm told, not wanting to face another dose of whatever it is he's been hitting me with all these years.

I head to the stables. Our bitch don't even twitch her ears when I come in, which just goes to show she ain't much use as a guard dog. I head over to Deadfall just because I need someone here with me (shut up), wrapping my arms around his neck and just holding him for a long minute, breathing hard and closing my eyes against his warmth.

Boy Colt, he thinks. He ain't learned he's supposed to call me Master yet. He senses how shook up I am and his hooves start going in a nervous way. Scared, Boy Colt? Bitten? Is it a Snake?

"No snake, boy," I reassure him, stroking the white stripe down his nose until he calms back down. He clips my hair with his teeth affectionately, then starts sniffing at my pockets for a treat. Apple?

I look over to the house, pretend not to hear the shrill shouting that Cinda's started doing inside. I hope and pray Pa ain't giving her cause for all that screaming. I pull Deadfall's turnout coat over him to keep him warm and lead him out of the stables.

"Come on, boy. Let's go get you some apples."

Even though it's pitch black and freezing out and I ain't even got a coat there's nothing else for it but to get as far away from the house as possible. Deadfall trots beside me happily as we trample over the rubble that leads out of Prentisstown, everything coated in its usual grey gloom. There ain't no life about except the lights coming from the pub and the church, both of which are more full than usual, and there's an awful smell on the air, like a barbeque from hell. I can see smoke rising off the bonfire on the outskirts of town and consider heading there instead for a bit of warmth, but Deadfall's expecting his apples now so we carry on towards the fields, passing by the silos all covered in graffiti and the two biggest farms, where Mr. Majoribanks and Todd's family tend to their sheep.

I pause for half a minute outside Todd's house. There are lights in the windows glittering invitingly, like the family inside are just waiting for you to knock on the door, like they've got a beer and a smile just waiting for you. 'Cept they ain't, have they? I'm out here freezing while Pigpiss is all tucked up with his perfect little family, no Ma but two Pa's who love him more than the whole world.

Two Pa's, I think. Maybe I ain't so jealous of him after all; I'm just about surviving with the one. But I'll tell you what, I'd give the world to have Ma back. So what if I don't remember her? People say you can't miss someone you've never known, something you've never had, but those people are thick as horse muck. If my Ma was still alive maybe Pa wouldn't be so pissy all the time and maybe he wouldn't be slapping me around with his Noise left right and centre. Maybe I'd have someone to comfort me when I'm upset instead of a damn horse.

Boy Colt, Deadfall thinks, nudging me a little with his nose. Apples. Apples.

"We're getting your ruddy apples," I say, and lead him past the farm and into the outskirts of the swamp, treading carefully because it's too dark for all this now even though I've brought the torch from the stables, and because the mud'll make you slip up on your arse if you don't watch your step. It stinks to high heaven out here. Deadfall gets a little skittish at the funny hootings and rustlings from the trees and bushes all around.

Snake? He thinks, Is it a Snake?

"It ain't no snake, boy," I reassure him, keeping a good hold on his bridle. "Just bloody squirrels."

Whirlers, they hiss about overhead. Whirler Horse, Whirler Boy! Go home, Whirler Boy!

I tell 'em to eff off and throw a rock up at the tree, which helps Deadfall calm down a bit. Some people might be scared out here on their own at night with only a scaredy colt for company, but I ain't. There's nothing to be scared of if you stick to the outskirts. There's no Spackle left to grab you and the Crocs that move about in the swamp'll only try to take a chunk out of you if you're fool enough to get near the water. My boots are too good for any snake to get it's fangs through, and everything else 'round here that could hurt you I know by name, and ain't frightened of none of 'em 'cept Mr. Hammar… and Pa, of course, but that goes without saying.

Nothing out here to be frightened of… at least that's what I thought, until the one thing in this world I was sure of, that there weren't no hope and no women left on this planet, turned out not to be true. Cuz if Cinda really is from a town, that means there's a whole lotta people out there, people that could be mighty mad about us killing one of their own. But even though everything's falling apart right now, I gotta smile at that, because that's the key to everything, ain't it? More people. More women. It means there's a future for Prentisstown, a future for all the youngsters like Todd and Liam and me. There's a future beyond the one I've been dreading all my life, a future of watching Pa and everyone else I've ever known get old and pop their clogs until it's just me and Todd, the two of us probably topping ourselves to put an end to our misery. If we could manage to make peace with these folks of Cinda's there could be a bit of happiness on this miserable old planet again. Maybe Todd and I could meet some girls and get married. I could be a Pa myself one day. Just think of that!

When Deadfall and I get to the orchard the smile is still on my face. The trees are full of apples, their weird waxy skin glimmering black in the moonlight. Deadfall knickers at the fallen fruit around us, his noise all warm and fuzzy.

The mealy fruit off the ground might be good enough for a horse, but they won't be good enough for Pa. I pick out the best-looking tree and get right to climbing, holding the torch between my teeth. If I get some of the good clotted cream off Mr. Cardiff and make a decent apple pie it might go well towards Pa not going too hard on me over what happened back at the house, and maybe it'll help to cheer Cinda up, too.

That is if Pa don't kill her first.

The picture comes back again of Aaron with the knife. Here's where Pa was planning on having him do it, somewhere out in the swamp. I can't think on that too much cuz it starts to make me feel like I'm gonna throw up all the food I scoffed back at the dinner table. Maybe cuz of what I saw Pa's has changed his plans and is doing it now with his own hands. Maybe it's already done. The thought makes me scared to go home, afraid of what I might walk into and too scared to try and stop it. I sit up on my branch for as long as I can stand it, feeling all kinds of shame for my cowardice. I stay up there till Deadfall's had his fill of apples. He starts circling round the tree trunk, nickering up at me.

Home, Boy Colt, he's thinking, warm barn. Home.

"Yeah, boy," I tell him, trying not to think on how no matter what's gone on at home while I've been out I'll be expected to sleep right out in the barn with Deadfall tonight, and not for the first time. "We're going home."

I gather up what little courage I've got and shift my weight on the branch, twisting about so that I can climb down. I get a decent footing, a little encumbered by all the apples I've got on me, stuffed down into the pockets on my trousers and down the front of my tucked-in shirt. I lose my grip on the torch between my teeth and reach out to save it on instinct, almost losing my grip; I pull myself back quick into the trunk, missing the torch and losing the couple of apples I'd had tucked up under my chin.

I swear to myself, loudly cuz there ain't no one else to hear. The torch smacks the ground below with a thunk, frightening Deadfall so that he's pacing about all nervous-like, thinking to himself,

Snake! It's a Snake!

"It's not a snake, boy," I laugh, shaking my head at how stupid horses can be as I start back down the tree, going slow because it's real dark now. My laughter is overlapped by a weird little snick sound as the branch I'm stepping onto cracks under my weight.

"Oh, shi-!"

I ain't got it in me to save myself a second time and I go plummeting down to the ground, apples flying out everywhere and Deadfall screaming, Snake! Snake!

There's a horrible snapping sound when I hit the ground just like that of the branch, except that this one comes from somewhere inside me. There's a flash of pain so strong I can't even pinpoint where it's coming from and the world grows even darker. Deadfall pushes at me with his nose, his Noise all worrisome and thinking, Boy Colt! Boy Colt! Bitten? Hurt? Dead?

I might as well be dead cuz I ain't feeling nothing 'cept the pain in my neck and in my arm and the horrible way the mushed-up apples underneath me push up into my back. My ears are painful and ringing, the smell of rotting apples overwhelming me. My eyes start to close and it's almost like I'm hearing Pa's noise back in my head again, telling me over and over yer nothing yer nothing yer nothing YER NOTHING.

And right there, lying in the dirt, I figure he's right.

~oOo~

I must have passed out right about then cuz the next thing I know I'm hearing a voice, something like an angel. I open my eyes and she's right there over me, and I think I really must be dead before I remember that it turns out women still exist after all.

I'm propped half-up on the sofa at home, a blanket pulled up to just under my right arm, which is all bandaged up and broken. It's starting to get late now, gone eight according to the clock. Everything comes back to me all at once, from the dead body to Pa forcing me out of the house with his Noise and the pain of it, and the pain in my arm, to, snapped in half like a twig from the fall, and I make a stupid little cry and Cinda puts her arm around me and she's kissing me on the top of my head like I'm just a little baby (shut up), and it feels so good and my arm feels so bad that I really do start crying then, crying against her like she's my own Ma, and it's nice and awful all at once and the man in me is pushing her away but the rest of me just wants to grab on and never let go.

I hear Pa's voice, not his horrible invasive Noise but his real voice coming out of his mouth, and I shove Cinda away best I can. I wipe my eyes with my good arm as he comes in from the hallway, hoping and praying he ain't seen none of that foolishness, but of course it's all over my Noise anyway.

"My my, David," he says in his usual frosty way. Mr. Collins hides a smirk, sitting in Pa's armchair with his rifle in his lap, crunching away at a swamp apple. "This is all very embarrassing. I hardly think there's a need for waterworks."

"His arm is broken," Cinda barks at him, and I can't help but be knocked back by how she don't think nothing of talking to him like he's a naughty kid, in a way I ain't never heard no one talk to him before; no one who's left alive in this town, anyway. "He's a child and he's in pain."

"I ain't," I say, but it comes out so weak I hardly believe it.

Pa smiles at that. I try and sit up a little straighter like there's nothing wrong, even though there's still tears swimming in my eyes.

"Besides, I've had worse," I add. It ain't true.

The first thing Pa does is make me drink a tea made up of boiled water and Jeffers' root, which is this horrible-tasting tuber plant which no one in their right mind would ever wanna eat, but the leaves make crazy-strong painkillers if you boil 'em up. Only Dr. Baldwin is allowed to prescribe Jeffers since Pa banned it on account of the fact that a lot of men took to using it like a drug because not only are the leaves strong enough to make you 'absolutely inebriated', as Pa says, but they also make your Noise all foggy and way harder to read. I ain't been sick enough to have Jeffers before, not even when I broke my nose in a fight with Mr. Smith's son. Pa says painkillers are for women and the weak, says pain's good for real men like us, teaches us lessons, but I ain't learned nothing from being in pain so far in my life 'cept that it ruddy hurts.

"Quite the late-night adventure you had, it would seem. Whatever possessed you to go scrumping in the black of night I've no idea. It was quite ridiculous of you, David."

It makes my Noise go a little pinker to think how he's looking out for me as he holds the tea to my lips. "Sorry, Pa."

"I should think so. You have your horse to thank for our being able to find you, Mr. Collins to thank for bringing you home, and Dr. Baldwin to thank for resetting your broken arm. You can thank Lucinda for making the Jeffers' tea."

Cinda goes to squeeze my good hand, but I pull away.

"Thanks," I say.

She smiles a little. "I'm training to be a Doctor."

"I think the term 'Healer' would be more appropriate," Pa says, which makes Cinda's mouth switch into a hard line.

"I hardly think there's a difference."

Pa smiles curtly. "Either way, I hardly think it takes a doctorate to make tea."

Mr. Collins laughs. There's a knock at the door, and he leaves us to answer it. I can hear who's come to visit by his Noise; it's Todd ruddy Hewitt, sparking all over with how nervous he is to be anywhere near our house. Pa hears, too, and is up on his feet before Mr. Collins even gets the door open.

"Lucinda," he says, pausing to admire himself in the hall mirror, "if you could step into the kitchen for a moment and close the door."

Cinda frowns.

"What an arsehole," she mutters quietley. The shock almost finishes me off.

"You can't say that," I whisper. She takes it to mean I'm defending Pa, but really I'm just amazed that she said it. She lowers her voice to match mine.

"I'm sorry. I know he's your dad, but he seems like a grade-A bastard to me. I don't like the way he talks to you. Or the pristine suit, the good manners, that bloody perfect smile. I don't believe any of it. They say Lucifer was the best-looking of the Angels, you know."

I don't get nothing much from that, 'cept that she thinks he's good-looking, and the picture of the three of us as a family pops up again in my Noise. I go to squash it down before she can spot it, and realise I don't have to; my Noise is sounding weird, sort of fuzzy. Thanks to the Jeffers. As Cinda stands up I notice something different about her; she's wearing a full length skirt, the fabric sewn in tiers, just like a woman from a vid.

"Where's that come from?" I ask. I ain't never seen a skirt before.

She looks down at herself from the kitchen doorway, not quite sure what I mean for a second.

"Oh," she says, smoothing down the fabric, "your Dad insisted on it. He found it out from upstairs."

My Noise, fuzzier still, fills up with asking marks.

"Lucinda," Pa barks from the hallway, interrupting the thought; she frowns back at him and closes the door on herself.

Pa can't keep the smile off his face as he walks Todd into the living room, carrying a basket filled with good mutton and these weird little pastry things which Ben loves to make. If it was anyone else he'd have turned them away at the door, but for some reason he's got a soft spot for the little runt. It makes me hate both of 'em a little bit. Todd shuffles about on the carpet, his boots all muddy. Pa don't say a word about it.

"Got you these," Todd says, gesturing to the basket. "Sorry I'm here so late but Ben only started making 'em when he heard what had happened."

"Thanks," I manage. I can feel how much he wants to get out of here, and I ain't feeling much like talking anyway, with my head starting to feel all sorts of heavy from the Jeffers', which is already working wonders on the pain.

"D'you want me to put it in the kitchen?"

"I'm sure we can manage that for ourselves," Pa says, taking the goods off Todd, whose eyes are fixed on the kitchen door. I wonder if he's sensing a little of the weird hole left by Cinda. I ain't gonna tell him nothing about her, though. That stuff's for men, not boys.

Todd's Noise is even louder than mine sometimes, and right now it's screaming all the things he don't want us to hear, about how he don't wanna be nowhere near this place but how his Pa's have insisted he come round with a basket for me to try and get 'em on the Mayor's good side. He's thinking how scared he is of Pa and how tall he is and how I'm starting to look just like him, but mostly he's looking about at how nice our house is compared to his, with our good furniture and an upstairs and he's thinking that ain't very fair at all.

"Does it 'urt?" Todd asks.

"Yeah."

"What's wrong with your Noise?"

I shrug. Todd gives me a sympathetic frown, struggling to keep eye contact with either of us. Pa holds us both there with his stare, looking weirdly hopeful, like he wants the two of us to keep on talking. We play together sometimes but we ain't friends, not really, so it's awkward and horribly quiet with only Todd's Noise yelling about. Pa gives a little sigh, thanks Todd and sees him out of the house. When he comes back he frowns at me, then at the basket, then at the kitchen door.

"You can come back in now, Lucinda," he says to the closed door. It creaks slowly open. Cinda shuffles back in, looking a little too innocent. She even smiles at him.

Pa don't smile.

"Hand it over, please."

"Hand what over?"

Pa just frowns.

"Mr. Collins," he calls, reaching out to him with his Noise. "If you'd prefer to be man handled that's your prerogative."

"Fine," Cinda relents, hitching up her skirt a little and pulling a kitchen knife out of her sock, one of the good serrated ones that'll cut through anything. She holds it away from herself and drops it without having to be told to.

Pa gives her a stern look. I get to thinking how crazy it is that he read her mind without her even having Noise.

"Mr. Collins, if you would."

Cliff marches across the room, kicking the knife to the skirting board and grabbing Cinda by the arm. She yells at him not to touch her and I start yelling too, but the Jeffers has just about done its work and I can hardly keep my eyes open, let along do anything to interfere. Pa comes over and puts his hands on my shoulders, telling me to rest, as Cliff wrestles Cinda out of the room. She's shouting still, but at Pa rather than Mr. Collins, calling him a tyrant and a murder. I can't make out much else of what she's saying, just catching weird words drifting by like they're Noise- misogynist, Byron, genocide. I don't know what a single one of 'em means.

"Where's he taking her?!" I ask, barely able to get the words out, "not to Aaron, Pa! Not Aaron!"

"Hush now," Pa says, brushing a gloved hand over my hair. "You just rest, son. Leave everything else to me."

I try to protest, but even with all the shouting Cinda's doing as Mr. Collins takes her out into the street I'm just about ready to go to sleep, numbing to everything but the pull of the Jeffers' tea and the feel of Pa's hand smoothing over me hair. I close my eyes and just like that I'm asleep, dead to the world and all its horrors.

~oOo~

When I wake up it's morning; Sunday morning, to be exact, which means everybody ought tobe at church. I open my eyes to find that Pa is sitting on the opposite arm of the sofa, eating one of Ben's pastries with a weird dreamy look on his face like the cream's got him hypnotised. When he sees me stirring he swallows the rest of it whole like a snake and looks stern as anything again.

It's quiet in the room, with my Noise squashed by the medicine and Pa's as silent and stirring as always. But it ain't quiet in the same way it was before, because Cinda ain't here, I realise.

Cinda ain't here.

I find myself filled with a confused sort of disappointment in Cinda. Cuz she's betrayed us, ain't she? We've been good to her and she's betrayed us, ready to knife any of us just like Pa said she would. The feeling is a little numb, not as strong as it should be. I think again of the picture from Pa's Noise, of Aaron standing over her corpse in the swamp.

For the first time in my life the thought stays completely inside my head, no Noise coming off it. I'm not totally silent, there's still a funny hum about my head, but it's more like Pa's Noise than anyone else's. It's a weird feeling, knowing that the thought is my own and no one else's; this must be what's it's like being a woman, your thoughts all secret like buried treasure. So that's why Pa let me have the Jeffers, then, not cuz I was in pain but because he knew it'd dial down my Noise enough to drown out what I was thinking and hide his plans from Cinda. He frowns at me in a strange way, like he ain't quite sure who I am. I realise that for the first time in my life he can't hear what I'm thinking. It feels like having a superpower.

"Where is she?" I ask, afraid to hear the answer.

"Mr. Collins stayed up all night keeping watch on Lucinda while she tended to you, so while he rests Mr. Hammar is keeping his eye on her. They're over at the interrogation unit in the police station."

There's a stab in my heart almost as bad as the one that's coming back into my arm. I can't help but remember how Pa promised Cinda that there'd be no interrogation. I'm glad he can't figure what I'm thinking, because the horrible pictures from Mr. Hammar's Noise are back between my ears.

Pa boils up another cup of Jeffers and at first I turn it down but he's insistent and it's so nice to have him actually doing something for me for a change, even if it is for his own ends, that I give in pretty quick.

"It seems she was not as trustworthy as we would like to have imagined," Pa says. "I understand that you're disappointed, naive as to the ways of women as you are. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, that's what we used to say. They are fickle, son. Ruled by the cycles of the moons and their own incorrigible emotions. They change as frequently as the winds."

And then he does something remarkable. He takes his white-gloved hand and smooths down my hair before leaning down over me and kissing my forehead. I stare up at him, half-hypnotized. He ain't kissed me since I was a tiny little kid.

"I'm grateful that you'll never have to learn that lesson."

He leaves the room. I hear him getting his coat and hat in the hallway. It's only when the door closes and the pink fog that's fallen over me clears that I start to worry about what that might mean.

Cuz that means he's gonna do it, ain't he? It means he's had enough of that girl causing him trouble and he's gonna do what he was planning all along; he's gonna hand her over to crazy old Aaron, and Aaron is gonna kill her. He's gonna kill Cinda, and there ain't a damn thing I can do to stop it.

Is there? Is there?

I try to make sense of it all. If Pa has been dead set on killing her from the start, then why did he bother sending me out of the house to hide my Noise from her yesterday? Why bother being nice to her at all? He could have given her to Aaron or dragged her out into the dark, cut her throat himself and be done with it. Even if he'd done it in broad daylight no one would have tried to stop him. He's the ruddy Mayor, after all. Why drag it out?

I sink down a little further down into the pillows at the growing thought that maybe Pa ain't so different from other men as I like to imagine, and that maybe me seeing his plan in his Noise ain't the only reason he wanted me out of the house. I think again of what was in Mr. Hammar's Noise, and what was in the Noise of so many of the other men in town. Pa's a man after all, no matter how Noiseless he might be. Maybe under all that calmness and control he thinks just the same as any other man.

I ain't ever seen nothing like that from Pa, it's a miracle I even exist with how little he thinks about anything to do with sex, but that's what it must have looked like to every idiot but me when he dragged her off to his own house yesterday and locked the door behind. I can't help but think of the Butcher's house on slaughter days, cuz that's the way of it, isn't it? Mayor Prentiss always gets first pickings, no matter what's on offer. And even though it's a horrible, evil thought, even though it's Pa, Pa who would never do nothing like the sort of things Mr. Hammar dreams up, I can't help thinking it, cuz he's still a Prentisstown man, and she's still the only woman anyone's seen in ten years.

But she ain't the only woman, is she? According to her she's from a town, a town where there weren't no Spackle germ… but that's just stupid, ain't it? Cuz if there weren't no germ that killed all the Prentisstown women then how come they're all lying in the graveyard, as Noiseless now as they were in life? But if she were lying about the Spack virus, she'd be dead like the rest of the women. Even if Prentisstown had been quarantined from any other towns, she'd still have caught the sickness by now from being around all us Noise-infected men. So someone ain't telling the truth, and it ain't her.

I think of Mr. Collins and how he hit her as hard as he could when she started talking about the Spackle germ, and how Pa blasted me with his Noise when I mentioned it. She called Prentisstown by some other name, too… a woman's name. New Elizabeth, she said. I dunno why that's such a surprise to me- of course the town wouldn't always have had our name before a Prentiss became Mayor- but does that mean a woman was in charge? And if it weren't the Spack germ that killed her, then who did?

I smack myself in the broken arm, just to feel something. It snaps me awake a little, fighting off the tiredness which is coming from the second dose of Jeffers. Of course she's lying. She's a damn woman, and women are liars. Even an idiot like me knows that much. It's in their blood, just as much as cleaning and cooking and looking after little ones. They might look nice and talk sweet and smile at you like you're the greatest thing they've ever seen, but they're liars under it all. It's a wonder men could stand it when they were alive, all the lying and secrets and the bloody smiling and men never being able to figure out what was real and what was fake, never knowing what they were really thinking.

Maybe it's a good job the Spack virus got 'em all. It's a miracle the men didn't kill 'em themselves.

And that's when I think it. I think something so God damn awful that I can't bare it a moment longer, and I hit myself in the arm for it again and again and again, until the pain is so bad I'm crying like a little kid for the second time today. This time there ain't no one to hold me so I just cry and cry and cry.

The pain's bad, but I'm awake now, really awake. My Noise is a little clearer, makes a little more sense. The Jeffers in my system ain't got such a grip on me no more. I push back the blankets and get to my feet.

My head swirls a little and my arm is hanging all weird in its sling but I'm up. I ain't got no plan except to try reasoning with Pa and that ain't done me much good this far in life, but I know I don't want that woman to die and I know he's gonna have her killed and maybe Mr. Hammar will do even worse to her before that so I gotta try and do something even if it means getting blasted so hard by Pa's Noise that it turns my brains to jelly.

I hobble through to the hallway, finding that my legs are bruised from the fall in all the worst ways, and I look in the hallway mirror. There stands an almost-man, a little cut-up and bruised but there I am, David Prentiss Jr, still standing. The name is Pa's and the eyes are Pa's but they're mine, too, and I reckon if I'm starting to look so much like him then maybe I'll get a bit of his steely strength as well.

I can't get a coat on with the sling tied around me so I pull one of Pa's white jackets off the stand and slink it over my shoulders. I try for the door and find that Pa's locked me in. I dig in the pocket of my coat for my key and find that he's took them, too. Luckily for me I know where he keeps his spare set, tucked down in the sole of his favourite white boots which he only wears when he's giving speeches. As I get the door open and his coat flaps round my shoulders I get to wondering if he'll be annoyed to see me wearing something of his. I take one last look at the almost-man in the mirror, and as I slam the door behind me, I figure that I don't much care.