“It’d be worse if you hadn’t saved me, Todd.” He sighs in relief as the medicine reaches into the burn, moving thru his system. He sits up for the gel, showing me his face, which has a smile on it, a smile that looks almost sad. “Remember when I bandaged you, Todd?” he asks. “All those months ago.”

“I ain’t likely to be forgetting,” I say, spreading the gel on his forehead.

“I think that was the moment we first really understood one another,” he says. “Where you saw that maybe I wasn’t all bad.”

“Maybe,” I say, carefully, using two fingers to slop it across his red cheekbones.

“That was the moment where this all really started.”

“It started a hell of a lot earlier for me.”

“And now here you are bandaging me in return,” he says. “At the moment where it ends.”

I stop, hands still in the air. “Where what ends?”

“Ben’s returned, Todd. I’m not ignorant of what that means.”

“What does it mean?” I say, looking at him all wary.

He smiles again and this time there’s sadness all over it. “I can still read you,” he says. “Nobody else can but then nobody else on this whole planet is like me, are they? I can read you even when you’re as silent as the black beyond.”

I lean back from him.

“You want to go with Ben,” he says, shrugging a little. “Perfectly understandable. When this is all over, you want to take Ben and Viola and start a new life away from here.” He grimaces a little. “Away from me.”

His words ain’t threatening, they’re actually the goodbye I was expecting, but there’s this feeling in the room, this weird feeling–

(and the hum–)

(I’m noticing now for the first time–)

(it’s completely gone from my head–)

(which is somehow even more frightening than it being there–)

“I ain’t yer son,” I say.

“You might have been,” he says, almost in a whisper. “And what a son you would have made. Someone I could have finally handed over to. Someone with power in their Noise.”

“I ain’t like you,” I say. “I ain’t never gonna be like you.”

“No, you won’t,” he says. “Not with your real father here. Even though our uniforms match, eh, Todd?”

I look down at my uniform. He’s right. It’s even nearly the same size as the Mayor’s.

Then he turns his head slightly, looking past me. “You can come out now, Private. I know you’re there.”

“What?” I say, turning towards the door.

In time to see Ivan step into it. “The ramp was down,” he says, looking sheepish. “I was just a-making sure no one was in here who shouldn’t be.”

“Always seeking where the power is, Private Farrow,” the Mayor says, smiling sadly. “Well, I’m afraid it’s not in here any more.”

Ivan gives me a nervous glance. “I’ll just be a-going, then.”

“Yes,” says the Mayor. “Yes, I think you finally will.”

And he reaches calmly for his uniform jacket, folded nicely on the bed, and me and Ivan just stand there and watch as he reaches inside a pocket, takes out a gun, and without changing the expresshun on his face, shoots Ivan thru the head.

{VIOLA}

We’re right at the top of the hill when we hear it, taking the first steps into the Spackle camp, the Sky and 1017 waiting to greet us.

I turn round in the saddle, looking back towards the city.

“Was that a gunshot?” I say.

[TODD]

“Yer mad,” I say, my hands up now, edging towards the door, where Ivan’s body is spilling blood everywhere. He didn’t move, didn’t even flinch when the Mayor raised the gun, didn’t do nothing to stop his own death.

And I know why.

“You can’t control me,” I say. “You can’t. I’ll fight you and I’ll win.”

“Will you, Todd?” he says, his voice still low. “Stop right there.”

And I stop.

My feet feel like they’re frozen to the ground. My hands are still up and I ain’t going nowhere.

“All this time, you really believed you had the upper hand?” The Mayor rises from the sickbed, still holding the gun. “That’s almost sweet.” He laughs, as if fond of the sweetness. “And you know what? You did. You did have it. When you were acting like a proper son, I would have done anything you asked, Todd. I saved Viola, I saved this town, I fought for peace, all because you asked.”

“Back off,” I say, but my feet still ain’t moving, I still can’t get them off the goddam ground.

“And then you saved my life, Todd,” he says, still coming towards me. “You saved me instead of that woman and I thought, He’s with me. He’s really with me. He really is all I’ve ever wanted in a son.”

“Let me go,” I say, but I can’t even put my hands to my ears.

“And then Ben comes to town,” he says, a flash of fire in his voice. “Right at the moment when everything was complete. The moment where you and I had the fate of this world in the palm of our hands.” He opens his palm as if to show me the fate of the world. “And then it melted away just like the snow.”

VIOLA, I think at him, right at his head.

He smiles back. “Not quite as strong as you used to be, are you?” he asks. “Not quite as easy to do when your Noise is silent.”

My stomach drops as I realize what he’s done.

“Not what I’ve done, Todd,” he says, stepping right up to me. “What you’ve done. This is about what you have done.”

He raises the gun.

“You broke my heart, Todd Hewitt,” he says. “You broke a father’s heart.”

And he slams the butt of the gun against my temple and the world goes black.

The Future Arrives

(THE RETURN)

The sky rides over to me through the ice falling gently from the clouds above. It comes down like white leaves, already spreading a blanket of itself across the ground, coating us, too, on the battlemores we still ride.

It is a messenger of things to come, the Sky shows happily. A sign of a new beginning, the past wiped clean so that we can start a new future.

Or maybe it is just the weather, I show.

He laughs. That is exactly how the Sky must think. Is it the future or is it just the weather?

I ride forward to the lip of the hill, where I can see more clearly the group of three crossing the last empty field before the climb. They are coming now, not waiting until tomorrow, eager no doubt for further signs of peace to calm the dissension that is tearing them apart. The Sky already has the Land prepared where we blocked the river, as we know they will ask for it to be released, slowly, letting it resume its natural course.

And we will give it to them. After negotiation, but we will give it to them.

How do you know I will be the Sky? I ask. You cannot tell the Land who to choose. I have seen it in their voices. The Land comes to an agreement after the Sky has died.

Correct, the Sky shows, pulling his lichen cloak around him tighter. But I can see no other choice they would make.

I am not qualified, I show. I am still angry with the Clearing, and I cannot kill them, even when they deserve it.

And do you not think that conflict is what makes the Sky? he shows. To seek a third choice when the two offered seem impossible? You alone know what it is like to carry that weight. You alone have already made these choices.

Looking down, I can see now that, in addition to the Source, it is the two of the Clearing who were here before, the noisy man with the darker skin–

And the Knife’s one in particular.

And what do you make of the Knife, the Sky asks, now that you have seen him again in the flesh?

Because there he was.

Running towards the Source, seeing me but not even slowing, greeting the Source with so much joy, so much love, that I very nearly had to ride away right then. And the Source’s voice opened up so wide with the same feelings that it expanded out around everyone nearby.