“Get outta my head,” I say.

“I’m only talking, Todd. That’s all I’m doing.”

I don’t answer him. I just keep whispering to Angharrad. “I’m here, girl.”

“But you’ll be fine,” the Mayor says. “So will your horse. You’ll both be stronger. You’ll be better for it.”

I look at him. “How can anyone be better after that? How can anyone be more of a man after that?”

He leans down close to me. “Because it was exciting, too, wasn’t it?”

I don’t say nothing to that.

(cuz it was–)

(for a minute there–)

But then I remember the soldier dying, the one reaching for his baby son in his Noise, the one who won’t never see him again–

“You felt the excitement when we chased them up the hill,” the Mayor’s saying. “I saw it. It blazed through your Noise like a fire. Every man in the army felt the same thing, Todd. You’re never more alive than in battle.”

“Never more dead after,” I say.

“Ah, philosophy,” he smiles. “I didn’t know you had it in you.”

I turn away from him, back to Angharrad.

And then I hear it.

I AM THE CIRCLE AND THE CIRCLE IS ME.

I look back at him and I slap VIOLA at him.

He flinches but he don’t lose his smile. “Exactly, Todd,” he says. “I said it before. Control your Noise and you control yourself. Control yourself–”

“And you control the world,” I finish. “Yeah, I heard you the first time. I only wanna control myself, thank you. I ain’t got no interest in the rest of the world.”

“Everyone says that. Until they get their first taste of power.” He looks up again at the probe. “I wonder if Viola’s friends would be able to tell us what sort of numbers we’re actually up against.”

“Too many, that’s how many,” I say. “It’s probably the whole Spackle world up there. You can’t kill ’em all.”

“Cannons against arrows, my boy,” he says, looking back at me. “Even with their nifty new fire weapon and whatever those white sticks are, they don’t have cannons. They don’t–” he nods to the eastern horizon where the scout ship landed “–have flying ships. I’d call us just about even.”

“All the more reason to end it now,” I say.

“All the more reason to keep fighting,” he says back. “There’s only room on this planet for one side to be dominant, Todd.”

“Not if we–”

“No,” he says more strongly. “You set me free for one reason. To make this planet safe for your Viola.”

I don’t say nothing to that.

“And I’ve agreed to your condition and now you will let me do what needs to be done. You will let me make this planet safe for her and for the rest of us. And you will let me do this for you, because you cannot do it for yourself.”

And I remember how the soldiers followed his every command, throwing themselves into battle and dying, just cuz he told ’em to.

And he’s right, I don’t know that I’d ever be able to do that.

I need him. I hate that I do, but I do.

I turn away from him again. I close my eyes and press my forehead against Angharrad.

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

If I can control my Noise, I can control myself.

And if I can control myself–

Maybe I can control him.

“Maybe you can,” he says. “I’ve always said you had power.”

I look at him.

He’s still smiling.

“Now,” he says. “Settle your horse down for the night and get some rest.”

He sniffs in some air, it’s starting to feel cold now that we’re not thinking about dying every second, and he looks up the hill to the glow of Spackle campfires coming over the hilltop.

“We’ve won the first skirmish, Todd,” he says. “But the war has only just begun.”

And a Third

(THE RETURN)

The Land waits. I wait with them.

And I burn with the waiting.

Because we had our enemy beaten. At the foot of their own hill, on the outskirts of their own city, we had the army of men surrounded and at our mercy. They were broken and confused and ready to be conquered–

The battle was nearly won. We had them beaten.

But then the ground erupted beneath our feet and our bodies were thrown into the air.

And we retreated. We pulled back, stumbling up the hill over broken rock and damaged road to reach the hilltop to treat our wounds and mourn our dead.

But we were close to victory. We were so close I could taste it.

I still can taste it, as I look out onto the valley below, where the men from the Clearing make their camp, tend to their own wounds, and bury their dead while leaving ours in carelessly thrown piles.

I remember other piles of bodies, in another place.

And I burn again at the memory.

Then I see something from where I sit on the edge of the hilltop, beside where the river crashes into the valley below. I see a light, hovering in the night air.

Watching us. Watching the Land.

I get to my feet to go and find the Sky.

I walk down the river road, deeper into our camp, the night’s full blackness held back by campfires. Wet spray from the rushing river throws up mist, and the light from the fires gives everything a low glow. The Land watches me as I weave through them, their faces friendly, if weary from the battle, their voices open.

The Sky? I show with my voice as I walk. Which way to the Sky?

In answer, they show me the way among the campfires and secreted bivouacs, the feeding crèches and the paddocks for the battlemores–

Battlemore, I hear whispered just out of sight, whispered with no small shock and even disgust, as the word is not a word in the language of the Land, it is a word from the language of the enemy, of the Clearing, and so I make my voice even louder to cover it and I show The Sky?

The Land keeps showing me the way.

But behind their helpfulness, do I hear their doubts?

For who am I, after all?

Am I hero? Am I saviour?

Or am I broken? Am I danger?

Am I beginning or end?

Am I truly of the Land?

If I am honest, I do not know the answers either.

And so they show me the way to the Sky as I move through them up the road and I feel like a leaf floating on the river, above it, on it.

But perhaps not of it.

And then they begin to send ahead news of my coming.

The Return approaches, they show, one to the other. The Return approaches.

For that is their name for me. The Return.

But I have another name, too.

I have had to learn what the Land calls things, pulling words from their wordless language, from the great single voice of the Land, so that I can understand them. The Land is what they call themselves, have always called themselves, for are they not the very Land of this world? With the Sky watching over them?

Men do not call them the Land. They invented a name based on a mistaken first attempt at communication and were never curious enough to fix it. Maybe that was where all the problems began.

“The Clearing” is the Land’s name for men, the parasites who came from nowhere and sought to make this world a nowhere of their own, killing the Land in huge numbers until a truce forced a separation, the Land and the Clearing for ever apart.

Except, that is, for the Land that was left behind. The Land that remained as slaves to the Clearing as a concession to peace. The Land that ceased being called the Land, the Land that ceased being the Land, forced even to take on the language of the Clearing. The Land that was left behind was a great shame for the Land, a shame that came to be called the Burden.

Until that Burden was erased by the Clearing in a single afternoon of killing.

And then there is me, the Return. So called not only because I am the single survivor returned from the Burden, but because my return has caused the Land to return here to this hilltop, after the years of truce, poised and ready above the Clearing, with better weapons, with better numbers, with a better Sky.