Viola? [ Todd asks, and it echoes around in his noise, insistent and confused and uncertain: Viola? But it don't feel like Viola, this silence. It don't feel like a big hole someone carved in the world, hidden inside a little girl. There isn't that same hollow emptiness that made Todd feel like crying when he first found her and still does sometimes, when he thinks about it too closely (shut up shut yer mouth shut up).
Instead, it feels like something. Something which is still a hole but which ain't at the same time. Something that isn't full but not because it can't be. And Todd feels like it's reaching out for him, even if in the same breath he feels like there ain't no way a thing can do that and still be a silent, empty thing.
Manchee's around somewhere, but Todd ain't too concerned about that. And he's not paying much attention to the swamp sucking at his feet as he steps forward toward the place that seems like the source of the silence. ] Who's there?
[ No, Todd, not Viola; not something, not nothing, but both at the same time. Clever, Todd, clever, to have figured that all on your own, more clever than anyone else Amy's known and she — the one who walked in, the girl from nowhere, the architect of this dream and all dreams before and after — has known everyone. (Has been everyone. Has been no one.)
Overhead something chirps (several somethings, in fact) but then fall deathly quiet again as the nothingness moves between the trees up ahead — the groan of a trunk, the creak of a bough, but no wet footfall, no tiptoe through the marsh. ]
WHO'S THERE, WHO'S THERE? COME OUT, COME OUT.
[ The echo comes from within, not without, not from the silence or from Todd's own Noise but from a different place, a place within himself. (The part of him that dreams, that wants to cry whenever Viola's silence is near, that gave Manchee his name and a home, the part of him that is Todd Hewitt and nobody else.) A pale white hand appears from behind a nearby tree, attached to an equally pale arm, its owner hidden by the breadth of the trunk. It does not wave or beckon, just tiptoes across the rough surface of the bark before flickering away again. ]
[ It's like Noise, but it's not, and the reality of that -- something so familiar and so different, both at the same time -- makes it all the more unsettling. Todd whips around as the words sound in his head, not coming from anywhere particular but like they're coming from inside instead. 'Cept Todd knows he ain't the one who thought them.
A big part of him don't want to follow that hand. It ain't that he's scared (What's there to be scared of? It's just a hand.) ('Cept what the hand's attached to.) (Shut up, Todd.)
He whistles for Manchee but when he ain't fast about coming, Todd takes another step forward, shaking mud off his boots and pushing underbrush out of the way. ]
[ A breeze shivers through the trees, the sound too bright and too sharp for a place as heady as the swamps, an indication that this is not real, that this place is as much inside himself as the Noise, as the voice in his head that beckons.
A breeze shivers through the trees and it whispers Todd, Todd, Todd, as another voice whispers (without, within, everwhere): ]
HUSH. WALK. COME, TODD, COME.
[ The words perhaps serve as little comfort — their closeness, their distance, their inside-ness presses against him, against the inside of his mind, like water looking to fill a skin and bloat it with that fullness.
The hand reappears and then an arm. An elbow, a shoulder, the pale expanse of a throat. The girl from nowhere, tear upon the darkness, she is thirteen and sixteen and a hundred, a thousand. She is wearing a tattered dressed, mottled with ruddy stains and a hem that dances with the wind just above her knocky knees. Her lips do not move and yet she speaks (she is). ]
[ A girl. Todd's met enough girls and women-folk in the past day that he shouldn't be all that shocked to see one now. This one's got the same dress (even if it's dirtier) and the same hair (even if it ain't so tidy) as they do. But her eyes. Her eyes are big and knowing, and something about them makes that sadness Todd's been missing well up all suddenlike in his chest (shut up don't).
So maybe it's her eyes or maybe it's the fact that he still ain't as used to girls as he'd like to be but either way Todd Hewitt takes a startled step back, nearly finds himself tripping and toppling over thanks to a rough patch of ground beneath the muck of the swamp.
And then she says "Hello" in that voice-not voice, noise-not noise, of hers and Todd takes another abrupt step back, and his eyes get wide and large too. (You can't be doin' that.) And he asks the only question he can think to ask, ]
[ The girl asks without asking, says without saying, and the wind in the trees and the animals of the swamp and the stars in the sky which aren't stars at all but gnats and fireflies and things alive and dead — all of it echoes in drawn out chorus together and perhaps that echo, a question regiven, is the boy's answer. Nothing is one, save the One who Walked In, not even the Twelve and their Noah blood, not even the legion born of that blood, not even Zero himself. So this world, in its unity, with its single voice made of a chorus of voices, how could it possibly be real?
But what of the girl in it, the girl of it, who made it. The girl who smiles without moving her mouth in a way that maybe, just maybe, is kind?
Every time he steps backwards she moves forward in kind, the motion small and nearing imperceptible and yet she is closer and closer still. ]
[ Todd does trip finally, maybe it was inevitable, but the thing he trips on is a log and so instead of ending up shoulder-deep in swamp muck, he just ends up sitting down on an old, wet hunk of tree. He can feel the damp of it seeping into his pant leg, its rotting, mossy bark coming apart under his fingers. (If it feels this real, it has to be real, don't it?) (But how can it be?) ]
What're you talking about? [ How're you talking? You ain't moving your lips, but girls ain't got Noise. ] What sadness? [ Todd asks, even though he knows (shut up), and he has to scramble to hide it deep below other Noise, stuff that don't matter like how many steps he thinks he took today and what he's gonna do for food when he wakes up and, and...
But it's hard because there ain't a lot Todd can think about right now that don't make him sad somehow and thoughts of Viola and Ben and Cillian seem to well up the more he tries to shove them down. ]
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no subject
Instead, it feels like something. Something which is still a hole but which ain't at the same time. Something that isn't full but not because it can't be. And Todd feels like it's reaching out for him, even if in the same breath he feels like there ain't no way a thing can do that and still be a silent, empty thing.
Manchee's around somewhere, but Todd ain't too concerned about that. And he's not paying much attention to the swamp sucking at his feet as he steps forward toward the place that seems like the source of the silence. ] Who's there?
no subject
Overhead something chirps (several somethings, in fact) but then fall deathly quiet again as the nothingness moves between the trees up ahead — the groan of a trunk, the creak of a bough, but no wet footfall, no tiptoe through the marsh. ]
WHO'S THERE, WHO'S THERE? COME OUT, COME OUT.
[ The echo comes from within, not without, not from the silence or from Todd's own Noise but from a different place, a place within himself. (The part of him that dreams, that wants to cry whenever Viola's silence is near, that gave Manchee his name and a home, the part of him that is Todd Hewitt and nobody else.) A pale white hand appears from behind a nearby tree, attached to an equally pale arm, its owner hidden by the breadth of the trunk. It does not wave or beckon, just tiptoes across the rough surface of the bark before flickering away again. ]
no subject
A big part of him don't want to follow that hand. It ain't that he's scared (What's there to be scared of? It's just a hand.) ('Cept what the hand's attached to.) (Shut up, Todd.)
He whistles for Manchee but when he ain't fast about coming, Todd takes another step forward, shaking mud off his boots and pushing underbrush out of the way. ]
I know yer out there. Who are you?
no subject
A breeze shivers through the trees and it whispers Todd, Todd, Todd, as another voice whispers (without, within, everwhere): ]
HUSH. WALK. COME, TODD, COME.
[ The words perhaps serve as little comfort — their closeness, their distance, their inside-ness presses against him, against the inside of his mind, like water looking to fill a skin and bloat it with that fullness.
The hand reappears and then an arm. An elbow, a shoulder, the pale expanse of a throat. The girl from nowhere, tear upon the darkness, she is thirteen and sixteen and a hundred, a thousand. She is wearing a tattered dressed, mottled with ruddy stains and a hem that dances with the wind just above her knocky knees. Her lips do not move and yet she speaks (she is). ]
HELLO.
no subject
So maybe it's her eyes or maybe it's the fact that he still ain't as used to girls as he'd like to be but either way Todd Hewitt takes a startled step back, nearly finds himself tripping and toppling over thanks to a rough patch of ground beneath the muck of the swamp.
And then she says "Hello" in that voice-not voice, noise-not noise, of hers and Todd takes another abrupt step back, and his eyes get wide and large too. (You can't be doin' that.) And he asks the only question he can think to ask, ]
Is this real?
no subject
[ The girl asks without asking, says without saying, and the wind in the trees and the animals of the swamp and the stars in the sky which aren't stars at all but gnats and fireflies and things alive and dead — all of it echoes in drawn out chorus together and perhaps that echo, a question regiven, is the boy's answer. Nothing is one, save the One who Walked In, not even the Twelve and their Noah blood, not even the legion born of that blood, not even Zero himself. So this world, in its unity, with its single voice made of a chorus of voices, how could it possibly be real?
But what of the girl in it, the girl of it, who made it. The girl who smiles without moving her mouth in a way that maybe, just maybe, is kind?
Every time he steps backwards she moves forward in kind, the motion small and nearing imperceptible and yet she is closer and closer still. ]
WHAT IS YOUR SADNESS? HOW IS IT REAL?
no subject
What're you talking about? [ How're you talking? You ain't moving your lips, but girls ain't got Noise. ] What sadness? [ Todd asks, even though he knows (shut up), and he has to scramble to hide it deep below other Noise, stuff that don't matter like how many steps he thinks he took today and what he's gonna do for food when he wakes up and, and...
But it's hard because there ain't a lot Todd can think about right now that don't make him sad somehow and thoughts of Viola and Ben and Cillian seem to well up the more he tries to shove them down. ]