Chapter IV:

The Man that Wields It

The streets are empty on account of everyone being in church. I come up to the little grey building which is supposed to be our police station but which don't get used much seeing as we ain't got a Sherriff since the last one ran away after he pissed Pa off real bad a few months back. We'll have a new one when I turn thirteen in three months' time and Pa gives me the job. I see Mr. Hammar leant up against one of the windows with his rifle across his back, smoking and thinking awful thoughts about the girl. He twirls the cigarette between his fingers, thinking of how he might burn her flesh with it.

Thanks to the Jeffers' root my Noise ain't giving me away so he hasn't spotted me yet. I wanna keep it that way, so I grab a loose stone from the cobbled street. If you want to cause a commotion, there's only one man for the job, so I chuck it right through the church window and in ten seconds Aaron is out the front ranting and raving and of course Mr. Hammar is right over there, itching for a chance to shoot the culprit. He tries to calm Aaron down, who starts screaming about the desecration of God's own house and bad omens and all kinds of damnation. As other blokes start pouring out of the church for a look I slip into the building, closing the door behind me.

It's a cold, tiny little place, made up of a small office, the interrogation room and one tiny cell which you can just about squeeze three people in if you're in a pinch. I can tell by the serene hum of Pa's Noise that he's in the interrogation room, and there's a floaty muffled sound like I ain't never heard before coming from there. I'm half scared to look through the little glass pane in the door but when I do there ain't nothing terrible going on. Pa's sat with his back to me, his head resting on one hand. Cinda is stood opposite him with her hands held behind her back, and she looks as tired as I've ever seen anyone. The odd sound starts coming through clearer and I realise what an idiot I am, cuz it's her singing.

"O, the snow it melts the soonest when the winds begin to sing

And the swallow skims without a thought as long as it is spring;

I've seen a woman's anger melt between the night and morn

And it's surely not a harder thing to tame a woman's scorn…"

The sound is high and sweet, something like an angel might make. I don't know the song she's singing and I don't know nothing about what makes for a good singing voice in a woman, but to me she sounds other-worldly, and from the dreaminess of Pa's Noise I reckon he's thinking the same, too. His Noise is the most relaxed I think I've ever seen it, tinged pink and lapping about his head in waves. I can almost feel the warm contentedness of him, and a dollop of sadness, too. I figure he must have heard me by now by my cloudy Noise, but he don't do nothing but sit still and listen. I listen, too, my eyes getting a little wet, transfixed all the way through until the end of the song.

"O, never will I say farewell, nor farewell I'll receive

For you shall see me to the stile, and kiss and take your leave;

But I'll stay here till the woodcock crows, and the martin takes it's wing

Since the snow it melts the soonest when the wind begins to sing."

That's it, I think, with so much relief it's spilling out and lighting up my Noise again. Nothing awful, nothing evil. All Pa wanted from the last woman on Earth was a song.

"That was wonderful, Lucinda," he says, his voice a little thicker than usual. "Simply wonderful."

She shifts nervously on her feet, and it's only then that I notice that she's standing kind of funny. There's dried blood under her nose, and her one eye looks swollen. Knowing Mr. Hammar as I do, I can't help but be relieved that's all he's done to her.

"Come in, David," Pa says. He looks at me a little weird when he sees his coat around my shoulders but doesn't say anything about it. I just stand there, dumb as a horse, hoping not to get blasted with Noise.

Cinda clears her throat. Pa don't pay her no attention.

"David," she says. We both look at her, but she's talking to him, not me. She inhales sharply through her nose, and I realise it's cuz it's started bleeding again.

"Can I go?"

Pa tilts his head at her, like he's got no clue what she's talking about. Blood trickles down onto her lip and she don't even move to stop it.

"You said I could go if I sang for you."

"I said it would go in your favour," Pa says, sounding embarrassed like I've caught him in the act of something a lot worse than asking for a song. Cinda looks cheated and a little scared, licking the blood off her lips. Pa holds the room the way he always does, but it's me who talks first.

"Let her go, Pa," I say, and for once my voice don't squeak. I stick a hand in the pocket of his white jacket and pull out a handkerchief, which I hand out to Cinda. It's then that I realise that her hands are tied behind her back with rope, the rough kind we use to tie the horses with.

"She did what you wanted," I say angrily, wiping the blood off her face. "This town has done much worse to her than she's done to us. She don't deserve to be being knocked about and tied up. Just let her go."

They both stare at me like I'm some new person. I stand a little straighter with Pa's jacket round my shoulders. He stands up, and I realise for the first time that I'm almost up to his shoulders now. I wonder if I've any chance of turning out even taller than he is. He looks at me for a good long while, then at Cinda.

"Davy will take you," he says. "He'll guide you through the swamp the way you came. I trust you can find your way to the bridge from there. It's far too dangerous to let you loose out in the swamp when you're unaccustomed to the environs; there are crocs that will snap you in half, and snakes that can kill with one bite. If you could just step through to the other room, Lucinda, it would be much appreciated. I'd like a word with my son."

He stands up and holds the door open for Lucinda, who stares at him in disbelief. She shies past him, giving me a strong look as she goes, meant to give me a little courage, but it just makes my intestines tie up in knots. Pa don't say nothing once we're alone. He starts idly fussing with some tools on a table in the corner of the room, the table which gets brought out when people need their tongues loosening.

"She sings nice, Pa," I say, tucking the bloody handkerchief up my sleeve and scratching at the back of my neck where the collar of his jacket is beginning to itch. "I didn't know women could sing like that."

"Not all of them can," Pa says, with half a smile on his face. He don't scald me for sneaking in here and interrupting him. "We seem to have got lucky with this one."

"It's the right thing to do, you know. I know she snuck the knife like you said she would, but I reckon anyone would have done the same, seeing someone we love get killed. It's good that we're letting her go."

He makes a funny little sound, almost a laugh, and takes something off the table. He walks over and hands it out to me.

It's a knife.

He flashes me the picture of Cinda dead in the swamp with a man standing over her. But this time the man ain't Aaron.

It's me.

"No, Pa," I say. Inside my head it's like my brain is on fire, though the Jeffers still has my Noise blurry.

"You'll be a man in three months," he says, pressing the blade into my hands, fanning the flames in the process. "This is your chance to prove that you can do a man's work."

"No, Pa… not this…"

"That woman is a threat to us. If she goes home and tells her people that Mr. Hammar executed one of their own in cold blood, what do you think will happen? This is a small town, David. We're not ready to fight a war. Better that they think she and her fiancé simply decided to skip town, or fell foul of the elements. You do understand, don't you?"

Yes, I think. And no. I'd had the same thought myself out in the swamp. Still, I don't understand why it has to be this way, why everything has to be so ruddy unfair all of the time. I'm nodding anyway. Pa smiles in a way so unfamiliar I can't help but feel a little good, even in amongst all of this bad.

"Good, David, good. Now go out there and prove yourself the man I know you to be."

"You want me to do it now?"

"There's no time like the present. Take her out into the swamp and do your duty. Make your father proud."

His hands leave mine and he heads out to the foyer. It's just me and the blade. Me and the blade and the woman in the foyer who I've gotta kill.

I tuck the knife away in the pocket of the white jacket and follow Pa, who's saying goodbye to Cinda like she's a visiting friend.

"I must say, Lucinda, it's been a delight to share your company. You could make something of a career out of that voice of yours. It would suit you much more than being a Doctor."

He grabs her hand and kisses it. I see how stiff it makes her, like he's just planted a bomb under her skin. He grabs hold of the loose trail of rope where her hands are tied.

"You can keep the skirt," he says, like it's generous not to rip her clothes off of her. "It suits you far better than it ever did my wife."

I'm dumbstruck then, even as he puts the rope into my hands and gives me a meaningful, proud look. As we head outside Aaron's shouting about the broken window like it's the crime of the century, with Mr. Hammar and Mr. Collins at his side, the latter with three long scratch marks on his cheek, deep enough that they've been stitched up. He looks mighty unimpressed at having being woken up from his rest by Aaron's ranting. The Noise of all the other men gets louder as they see Cinda, though their voices fall quiet. I see that Todd and Cillian have skipped out on church as usual, though Ben is there, his Noise all heartbroken as he sees the woman for the first time.

"Carry on, son," Pa says, and begins ordering everyone back inside the church with the help of Mr. Tate. They do as they're told, all but Aaron, who clings to his arm like a limpet. He takes a step towards Lucinda, shaking his holy book. Andy Tate comes forwards and gets a hold of him as Pa starts trying to talk him down out of his hysterics.

"All in God's order!" Aaron yells, which don't make no sense at all. "The Deceiver becomes the deceived!"

Mr. Hammar's watches Cinda and I as we go, glaring at her like she's a rabbit that's just escaped one of his traps. We get clear of the four of them soon enough, all gathered around talking together in a little circle.

I let go of the rope as soon as we're out of viewing distance. I don't reckon Cinda's going nowhere, and even if she did make a run for it that wouldn't be such a bad thing. Part of me is hoping for it.

I feel mesmerised by the swishing of the skirt around her ankles, my Ma's skirt, which Pa has been keeping for years and years and which I didn't even know existed. I wonder what else of her he's been hiding from me.

I feel the way the knife in the pocket on Pa's jacket weighs it down funny on one side, so it feels like it'll slip off my shoulders if I'm not careful. Cinda ain't picking up on that, my Noise as cloudy as it still is. I think of what I'm supposed to do to her and how I'm tall for my age and getting taller, and how she wouldn't stand much of a chance against me even if her hands weren't tied if it wasn't for my bad arm. I think of how if I stuck her in the back with my good arm she wouldn't even see it coming. It might even be quick.

"Thank you for standing up to your Dad like that," Cinda says, rupturing the thought. "That was very brave of you."

"Weren't nothing," I lie.

"Does he always treat you that way?" she says, holding her bare arms against the cold as I guide our way through the stench of the swamp, rotten orchard apples squelching beneath our feet. She pulls the skirt up high to keep it out of the mulch as best she can.

"What way?"

"You know what way."

"That's just his way," I say, ripping a handful of leaves off a tree as I pass by and throwing them into the swamp. "He don't mean nothing by it."

Cinda don't say nothing to that.

"Why did you come here?" I finally ask. "You told Pa you had good reason. Why?"

She sighs.

"My fiancé was from Prentisstown, back when it was New Elizabeth. He grew up here as a kid with his siblings. When things started to go bad here, a lot of the kids were evacuated to Farbranch. His parents stayed; he wanted to know if the rumours were true, if all the women really had…"

Her words trail off.

"Died?" I say gently. She nods, but looks as though she wants to say more.

"He thought he might be able to find his father, at least. We'd managed to convince him not to go for years on end, but one night I woke up and he was gone. I followed him to the bridge which separates our town from yours, and he was just waiting for an opportunity to sneak past the Watchman. I couldn't convince him to come home, so I decided to go with him, and threatened to scream the place down and ruin his plans if he wouldn't let me. So across the bridge we came. We just wanted to get close enough to see the town, to keep watch from a safe distance."

"But then you ran into Mr. Hammar."

Cinda nodded. "With a belt strapped with rabbit carcases and a rifle. We tried to reason with him, but it was clear from the get-go that he was not a man to be reasoned with. We ran. Byron pulled us towards the town, thinking we could reason with them, that we could find his father and be saved because of him. But Hammar hit him on his first shot just before we broke through the trees, then shot him twice more for good measure. You know the story from there."

"So your fiancé's dad, he could be back there in town? He could have watched his son die and not known a thing about it?"

Cinda's eyes die a little in her skull. She nods.

"What was his name?" I ask, "his surname, I mean. I've never heard of a Byron, but if his Pa is still here I'll know him right away."

Cinda shakes her head. "The refugee children were given new names when they came to Farbranch, to protect them. I asked your Dad to try and find out who his father was. He said he would, but… well, he's hardly the most trustworthy person. I asked him back there in the foyer if I'd be allowed to take Byron's body home; he told me they cremated him last night. When I asked to take his bones, he told me they'd been thrown into the swamp."

"Jesus," I say, cuz I ain't got nothing else to say to that. I start remembering the horrible burning smell from last night, almost tasting the ashes on my tongue.

"I wish you could take you with me," Cinda says, in a way that makes me wish for my Ma again. The Noiseless of her starts to hurt once more, so vast and empty I could curl up in it and weep.

"The whole world isn't like this, you know. I wish you could come and live with us in Farbranch and see what life is supposed to be like."

I want to believe she means it, but how do you know if a person really means a word of what comes out of their mouth when you can't hear what's going on in their head?

"I wouldn't like to see what Pa would do if I did," I say in a joking sort of way.

"No," she says. "I wouldn't either."

We reach the outskirts of the forest. The knife just seems to be getting heavier and heavier.

"I think I know my way from here," Cinda says. She looks exhausted, like she's aged years in just a couple of days. "It'd be hard to miss the bridge, if I carry on in this direction."

I'm all nerves, not ready for the more final goodbye Pa is expecting. I swing his coat off my shoulders. I put my weak hand in the pocket, and I take out the knife.

There ain't no fear in her at all. She don't think for a second I'm gonna do what my Pa has asked me to; she just holds her hands away from her back, trusting that I'll cut her loose.

Which I do.

I ain't gonna kill her.

"You'll need this," I say, handing her the blade, "just in case you run into any trouble. And this, for the cold…" I'm more nervous about giving her Pa's coat than the knife. "You'll be home safe in Farbaranch before you know it."

"Farbranch," she corrects, her eyes smiling. I shrug my shoulders.

"You just…"

She looks at me quizzically, trying to read my Jeffers-fuzzed Noise.

"…You be careful with that arm, Davy Prentiss."

I can tell it ain't what she really wants to say, but that's all that comes out of her mouth.

"Yes M'am," I say.

Of course I ain't gonna kill her.

"That's my Ma's skirt," I say, the words coming out without me wanting them to.

Her face looks wounded, in that curious sympathetic way I don't think I've seen on a man before. She looks about apologetically, as though something else she could wear instead might magically appear hanging on a tree branch. She takes the knife and looks at me.

"Do you mind?"

"No," I say, catching her meaning. "No, it's alright, you don't have to. It's only a skirt."

She smiles knowingly. "No, it's not. You should have something of hers."

She pulls the skirt away from her legs and shears off the bottom tier so the fabric sits just above her knees at a jagged angle. Cinda hands the bundle of fabric to me, folded carefully. I take it gently, like she's handing me a kitten. The fabric is soft and pink and smells a little bit like swamp mud but a little bit like home, too. She comes right up to me and holds me round my good shoulder, pressing my bad arm into my torso a little.

"Ow," I say, but I don't really mean it. I press my head against hers, just a little.

"Things will get better for you, Davy," she says, her breath soft and comforting at my ear as crickets chirp around us. "I just know it."

She kisses me on the cheek. And then she leaves me there, with a little piece of my Ma in my hands.

"Bye, Cinda," I say, watching her go. She smiles back at me, a sad sort of smile. Then she vanishes through the trees and starts running. Some part of me runs with her, and I can't help but feel that it'll never come back.

~oOo~

I don't go home. Not straight away, anyway. Instead I cross the town, past the church where Aaron can still be heard raving to his congregation and past the police station which is empty now. I hurry past the Noise of the pub and past the clinic and the petrol station, all the way to the empty field beside Mr. Phelps' store. There's a dark streaky patch in the grass where Cinda's fiancé's body had lain, bleeding out into the mud. A little further back are the remains of the bonfire last night, the source of that horrid smell.

But it wasn't a bonfire. It was a pyre.

Pa lied about the bones. They're still here, scattered in amongst the charred firewood and ashes. I gather them up into a little pile and vow to bury them later when it's dark. I guess men don't wear no engagement ring because I can't find one in among the ruins. I do find a leather pouch, though, cast off to the side, emptied of anything worth a dime but with some shrivelled-up berries and a photograph in it. You don't see many photos here in Prentisstown, on account of the fact that Aaron declared that all the cameras should be destroyed in aim of 'rejecting vanity' and Pa for some reason agreed with him. It feels like a precious artifact even though it's curled up in the corners from the heat of the blaze and the colours have started to bleed. It feels even more precious when I turn it over and see it's a picture of a family; there's Cinda, crouching down on the ground with her arms around two kids who look nothing like her, a pretty blonde girl about my age and a lad a couple of years younger. They both look like Cinda's fiancé, so I guess these must be the siblings she was talking about. Stood behind them are her fiancé, and three other people who look so much like Cinda they can only be her parents and brother. How nice it must have been for them, having a family made up of more than just two.

I feel horribly sad looking at the picture, thinking about the bloke, Byron, and how he probably brought this with him so he could show his dad, show him the woman he loved so much and his little brother and sister who he probably has taken care of all these years since they left Prentisstown, who are now gonna be left without their brother to take care of them. I study their faces, especially the girl's, the first girl I've seen since Pa burned all the vids. I tuck the picture into the fabric of my Ma's skirt and head back into town.

Both the piece of my Ma's skirt and the photograph are hidden inside my sling by the time I get back home. I try to sneak back into the house but my Noise is almost back to normal now, the magic of the Jeffer's wearing off.

Pa steps out into the hallway and I figure he's been stood there waiting ever since he got back home. I can see in his face that he knows how I've failed. He pretends like he don't know nothing, torturing me by making me admit what a coward I am.

"I take it my jacket was too stained to bring home with you," he says lightly, not mentioning the blood, like it's fine to do the deed but not okay to talk about it.

I struggle to put into words what I've done. The shame of it burns through me, but I also feel a little bit good, too, like he's the one in the wrong for a change. I couldn't do it, that would be the right thing to say, I suppose, to admit that I'm weak and not enough of a man to do the gruesome things that men need to do.

Except that ain't quite right, is it? It ain't that I couldn't do it.

Instead I say, "I wouldn't do it."

There's a scary flare in the canyon of Pa's Noise, like an ember flickering off a dying fire. I get ready to take another hit of Noise off him, but he doesn't throw anything at me except a look.

Then he does something unexpected.

He holds his arms out to me.

My eyes well up with tears and I walk right into 'em. He hugs me, squeezing a little too hard and making my arm hurt worse. Something about the way he holds me makes me realise that he knew all along that I wouldn't do it, that this was a test and I have failed. The thought makes me a little teary again and even more ashamed, and I can't say nothing except,

"I'm sorry, Pa. I'm sorry."

"Shh," he says gently, like he's dealing with a skittish horse. He holds me for a long time, the only sounds the deep burning misery starting to radiate through my Noise.

"It was wrong of me to expect too much from you," he says into my hair. "A knife is only as good as the man who wields it… and you're not a man yet, are you?"

I shake my head.

"But you will be."

I nod against his shoulder, embracing his warmth.

"There are things you don't yet understand, David. Things which are not for boys to know. But on your thirteenth birthday, you will learn them all, and then you will have another chance to prove yourself a man. I know in my heart that you will be strong enough to take that chance."

"I will, Pa," I say, so grateful for a second chance and feeling like the only thing in the world that matters is not letting him down again. And I know he's right; next time, I'll do it. Whatever it takes, I'll do it for him.

"Of course you will," Pa says, holding me at arm's length with a smile. "You are my son, after all."

I smile at that, and my Noise blooms with such a pink flush it's like a whole garden of roses. I wipe the snot from under my nose and salute him, standing as straight as I can, almost meeting his chin. He clasps me hard on my bad shoulder and sees me off to bed.

Once I'm in my room I lie back on my pillow and unfold the fabric and the photograph from my sling. I look at the photograph again before tucking it away under my pillow where it won't be found. As I'm trying to get to sleep I hold the fabric up to my face, breathing in its motherly smell.

I can't let Pa down like that again. I decide to put aside what Cinda told me, and my worries about the Spackle germ and the horrible thought I had about what might really have happened to all the women in Prentisstown. I try not to think of those two little kids in Farbranch who'll be living without their big brother from now on.

Instead I think of Cinda and how she's safe now, how I saved her. I think of my Ma and wonder if she'd be proud. And I think how, for the first time in my life, these past couple of days I really have felt like a man.

And you know, I never thought I'd say it… but it ain't a feeling I like.