aviary | open | prompt five

[ Ben and Ma and what's the use of that the boy thinks and the girl with the pale face and the large, knowing eyes doesn't speak back, doesn't even blink. It's hard to tell just how old she is — thirteen, ten, sixteen eleven — and that's mostly because her face is young but her gaze is old. As old as dirt, as old as stars, and she'd been there when they'd fallen down from the sky and onto the people, down from the trees, and everything was fire and light and the Man.

A picture of him forms in the boy's mind — smudge of dirt on his cheek, wet stains in the pits of his shirt, and hill upon hill rolling behind him. Then light, then blindness, then—

She hadn't died, no. But maybe she'd wanted that. Maybe she'd wanted to die too.

Did you stay, did you run. Did you promise, either way.

The thought occurs to him as if it was his own, but it is not his voice speaking. ]

[ Todd knows the Noise. Born into it, wasn't he? Just like all the other boys of Prentisstown. The ones born on New World, least, who've never known anything but the buzz of other men's thoughts in their head. The pictures, the words that ain't his, those things don't bother him. Almost seem more like home than silence ever does still.

Till he sees where they're coming from, that is, and then his own Noise comes alive with shock (Not Viola but Like Viola but She's got Noise) and confusion (How come she's got Noise?) ]

Hey! Hey, how you doin' that?

[ She's seen the others, has known the stars. Has walked through the dreams of dreamers, of Babcock, of Morrison of Chávez. Of Baffes-Turrell-Winston-Sosa-Echols-Lambright-Martinez-Reinhardt-Carter. And even though she has tasted these dreams (memory and longing, bone and blood, a sickness a sickness that will blanket the land) few have chosen to speak back in a voice that refuses sound. Still he hums both around and inside her and that makes the girl smile with her eyes and no mouth.

I speak with my voice. Can you hear, can you hear me.

Even though he's confused, the girl remains quiet; the voice in her throat has finally seen use, but the speech from inside, from where the others are, is the one that still remains true.

I am—

There are names, names upon names, and this girl, the One Who Walked In, she knows every one as if it were her own, as if it were Amy Harper Belafonte, baptized and written in the records of her heart. She is them and they are her, but this boy, the one who says he has the Noise, is not among them.

Who are you. ]

[ Can you hear me, her Noise asks, and it makes Todd want to laugh and want to clap his hands over his ears, 'cept even then he knows it wouldn't keep her out. It'd be like the music they played in the bar in Prentisstown, thinking it might drown out the Noise a bit, tellin' theirselves it was workin' tho it never did. Not ever really.

She's a girl, his Noise says, A girl a girl and Viola and How many lies they gonna tell? and Even their lies got lies. The thoughts spin round and round in his head, chaotic, noisier even than Noise usually is.

Todd presses his lips together and thinks, firmly, I am Todd Hewitt. Centring himself, calming his thoughts like Ben once taught him to do. And then again, still firmly but more aimed at her, as best as Todd can: Girls don't got Noise. How you doin' that? ]

[ Quiet, quiet, she says. His Noise is noisy and there's been enough noise already — first cities burning followed by a long silence and then First Colony and the others, still scattered. First a murmur, then a rustle, and then the Zero and the Twelve had come together and all was noise again.

A girl a girl, his noise had said and maybe his wrong and maybe he is right. A girl, perhaps; a child, no; a woman, never, not in the thousand years she's already seen and not in the next thousand to come. But a girl's what they call her, cause there's no other word for it — what she is, who she holds, the names upon names.

Amy Harper Belafonte, she tells him. It's the name of a ghost, of more than a ghost. She who holds the promise of always in her veins but is not of the Twelve nor Zero nor man.

The Girl from Nowhere. Amy of Multitudes. (The Man's daughter.)

The Twelve make noise, make blood and sorrow. I speak with my voice. I speak with many. Carefully she leans towards him. The girl has a way of staring that does not stare; a way of looking that does not look and yet sees him nevertheless. My name is Amy. Say hello. ]

[ There's something strange about this girl, Amy, not that all girls ain't strange. Something about her Noise that isn't like any of the Noises Todd is used to. But he can't tell if that's something about her or something about girls (who Todd still isn't used to, even after Viola and Hildy and them) or something about happens to Noise when it's coming from a girl (Not supposed to have Noise. Hildy said they was immune. )

But her Noise doesn't feel dangerous neither. It's not the thick self-loathing or the sharp red hatred or the fear or the longing or any of the other things Todd's used to hearing from the men of Prentisstown. And it ain't the everyday calm of the men of Farbranch. It's strange Noise, but it feels deep and sure and steady. (Like it wouldn't fall over if you pushed it..) ]

Hi, [ he says but then, because she seems to prefer it this way, he adds, Hi. She still hasn't answered his question, but he don't ask again, if if some of the curiousity still leaks through in his Noise. ]

[ She's not like the Twelve or Zero, she cannot infect the way that they infect even though when she says quiet quiet there is a lull that falls over him and tries to cover him like a blanket, tries to hold him like arms careful and sure.

When he says hi with his mind and with his voice (both within and without) it fills her with a brightness that soothes the not knowing, the blank space where Todd Hewitt should be inside her but there is nothing, just light and silence. A smile appears on her face, sudden and unfettered, her lips spreading to reveal two rows of awkwardly-spaced teeth — milkteeth that she will never grow out of.

Her voice is quiet, its tone even (too even, perhaps, the more that she speaks. ]

Hi.

[ When the quiet comes over him, Todd can't help but stiffen a little, feels all his joints buckle up like they're bracing for something. This is what he knows from women and girls: silence. But it's not silence like Viola's quiet (Like somethin' punched out of the world) which makes him feel empty and sad. This quiet seems to lie just on top of the world, so that Todd can still feel that there is something there, moving beneath. And, unlike Viola's silence, for a moment, it seems like it's his not hers.

It sharpens his curiosity for a moment, gives a more insistent edge to all the questions he's trying to hold back. And then worry follows right after: If they came for Viola, what will they do to you?. But thinking them sorts of things is only gonna frighten her, so he tries to push the thought down under the rest of his noise.

He tries to smile instead. ]

Amy. I ain't never met a girl named Amy. [ Ain't never known a girl before Viola. For all he knows, there might be a hundred Amy's on New World. Somewhere beyond the swamp. ]

[ She continues to smile, despite his questions, despite the doom that clings to the thought what will they do to you. There had been a time when the others had come for her too, come to put down the shadow's shadow, the one who moved behind the tear in the sky, who filled the tear with light and who was the tear as well. They'd come out of fear and unknowing for her lungs were filled with the breath of Noah and yet she remained untouched by the taint and its madness. Perhaps this is what happened to the boy's Viola too, the one who fills his thoughts the way dust motes speckle their way through a shaft of light. ]

I've never met a girl named Amy either, [ she says. Lacey and Alicia and Sara Amy thinks and each name floats to the surface of Todd's mind, just breaking the surface of his subconscious to reveal itself and a face with it. She reaches up and touches her own face when she says Amy as if he'd somehow forget that this face is hers and Amy is her name and these two things should go together.

Her smile quiets but does not go away. A thought curls up from the feet of his memories and brushes against him like a cat looking for milk.

Who is Viola, why are you frightened. Does she scare you, is she gone, will you get her. ]

[ Viola isn't gone, least not last he saw her, tho maybe the fact he's here now and she ain't means she's gone now. That the men from Prentisstown followed and caught up and took her. Or that the people of Farbranch ain't all their calm men-Noise and knowing women-silences had led them to believe.

Todd tries very hard to think how he can explain it in words, but he ain't one for words really. No one is since the books was burned. ('Cept Aaron, and he's crazy.) In the end, he decides there's nothing for it but to do as she did, so he opens his Noise up, lets the pictures and thoughts flow through.

There's Ben, face full of worry, pushing him out the door of the farmhouse. And Viola, with her long hair and neat uniform, hiding in her silence in the swamp. And then Aaron with his bloody face and violence and the thoughts in his Noise about sacrifice and God. And then running and running and a bridge on fire and horses behind them and Hildy with her gun and then Farbranch and its safety (Or is it safety? They won't want no Prentisstown boy in Farbranch.)

And it's too much, even, for Todd himself, so he shuts it off, breathing in deeply through his nose and reminding himself I am Todd Hewitt. ]

[ I am Todd Hewitt.

There is a blank place inside herself where Todd Hewitt should be. Not an emptiness, because no part of Amy is empty, but not a fullness either. When he opens himself up, her mind rushes forward, looking to be enveloped, looking to slip below the surface of that buzz and feel the thrum color the spaces where no Todd Hewitt exists. She breathes him, drinks him; she makes her lungs and her belly ache with him. For Todd is a soul, he's a life full of Noise, and Amy is Her, the girl the who is legion. The one with the souls inside her; the Passage.

She takes him in until he closes up again. But even with the tap so quickly shut there is a whisper — some of him now in her or was it her inside of him — not loud, just a murmur, like a lullaby sung in a distant room, something to fill the silences. (A shaft of light in the darkness, a tear.)

It's okay if he doesn't have words and why that is, Amy shows him. (An abandoned house, only not a house at all, rows shops lining every distant hall, their contents wrecked and raided, and at the very center—) She'd lived almost a hundred years beneath the carousel at the very heart of the mall, hiding when the stars hovered in every window, only coming out when the sun was hottest and her tummy grumbled (not hunger, just upsetness).

She tilts her head to one side, some of her dark hair falling across her eyes and her face. ]

You are Todd Hewitt, [ Amy says aloud. Her heart says differently.

I am Todd Hewitt. ]

open | prompt five | ENDINGS

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject