Chaos Walking: The Complete Trilogy by Patrick Ness

Author:Patrick Ness [Ness, Patrick]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Tags: epic fantasy
ISBN: 9780763661700
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Candlewick Press
Published: 2011-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

[TODD]

“Don’t let this period of quiet fool you,” says the Mayor, standing atop the platform, voice booming thru the square from speakers set at every corner, extra loud to be heard above the ROAR. The people of New Prentisstown stare up at him in the cold morning, the men gathered in front of the platform, surrounded by the army, with the women back on the side streets.

Here we all are again.

Davy and I are behind the platform on our horses, directly behind the Mayor.

Kinda like an honour guard.

Wearing our new uniforms.

I think, I am the Circle and the Circle is me.

Cuz when I think it, I don’t gotta think about nothing else at all.

“Even now our enemies move against us. Even now they plot our destruction. Even now we have reason to believe an attack is imminent.”

The Mayor takes a long sweeping look across the crowd. It’s easy to forget how many people are still here, still working, still trying to eat, still getting on with their daily lives. They’re tired-looking, hungry, many of ’em dirty, but still staring, still listening.

“The Answer could strike in any place, at any time, against anyone,” he says, tho the Answer ain’t done no such thing, not for almost a month now. The prison break was the last we heard from ’em before they disappeared into the wild, the soldiers who woulda chased ’em killed while sleeping in their bunkers.

But that just means they’re out there, gloating on their victory and planning the next.

“Three hundred escaped prisoners,” the Mayor says. “Almost two hundred soldiers and civilians dead.”

“Up they go again,” Davy mutters under his breath, talking about the numbers. “Next time he gives this speech, the whole city’ll be dead.” He looks to me to see if I’ll laugh. I don’t. I don’t even look at him. “Yeah, whatever,” he says, turning back.

“And not to mention the genocide,” says the Mayor.

The crowd murmurs at this and the ROAR gets a bit louder and redder.

“The very same Spackle who served in your homes so peacefully for the past decade, the ones we had all grown to admire for their pluck under duress, the ones we had come to regard as our partners on New World.”

He pauses again. “All dead, all gone.”

The crowd ROARs some more. The deaths of the Spackle really did affect the people, even more than the deaths of the soldiers or the townspeople caught up in the attack. Men even started joining the army again. Then the Mayor let some of the women who remained in prison out, some of ’em even back with their families and not even in dormitories. He upped everyone’s food rashuns, too.

And he started holding these rallies. Explaining things.

“The Answer says it fights for freedom. But are these the people in whom you put your faith for salvation? The ones who would kill an entire unarmed population?”

I feel a choke rising and I make my Noise empty space, make it a wasteland, thinking nothing, feeling nothing, except–

I am the Circle and the Circle is me.

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