[Viola]
I'm clutching his hand, like I have been for the last 3 weeks, always trusting, never wavering in my faith that he will come back to me.
Since I watched him die right in my arms.
His noise slowly dying, fading away, the life leaving his eyes.
My beautiful, brave Todd.
Since my Todd died in my desperate, helpless arms.
I'd heard his last words as his life disappeared away, dying into nothing and fading into the wet sand beneath him.
I'd sobbed over his limp body, wailing for there to be another way, another possibility, another chance. Screaming at the whole effing world in disbelief. Cos we'd always figured it out in the past. We'd made it through New world, New Prentisstown, we'd made it through and past Mayor Prentiss - made it through hell. We'd survived the spackle; survived the war; survived the attacks - we'd survived the pain and the sorrow and the lies and had still stayed effing alive.
And he'd made me say "effing".
Hope had danced in front of our miserable, desperate faces, tricking us into thinking that everything would be alright, only to dart away the second we caught a glimpse of it, back into the shadows and leaving us behind.
•
But then something had changed in the air at that moment - on the wet, muddy sand with the dark ocean roaring behind us. Ben had sworn that he had heard a murmur. A slight murmur; a whisper, really, amongst the crashing sky and the thrashing waves.
Todd's noise.
From out of his body, limp and worn, bloody in places and held up only by Ben's careful hands.
Whispering, murmuring, so faint that perhaps only the most desperate and hopeful would notice.
But nonetheless Todd's noise, softly murmuring as a sleepy child might mumble in their sleep.
And it was then, almost as if it had been after second thoughts, that hope had decided that it might have liked it here, in New World. The moment in which it had peaked out from its hiding place, in a flickering moment, and decided to stay and let us clutch onto the possibility after all. Because I knelt down and hoped, with all my will, that Todd would make it back.
×××××
Hope grew stronger; it carried him to the Spackle camp to heal, just as it had with Ben. It had grown so strong there was no way I could let go after that, and so I did the only thing possible - to wait.
I read his mother's journal everyday by his side, in that old accent I'd used from the time I first read to him.
But I sing, too.
Early one morning
Just as the sun was rising
I heard a maiden call from the valley below
Oh, don't deceive me
Oh, never leave me
How could you use a poor maiden so?
The song that sits so close to his heart that I have to sing it, in the hope that he'll hear it somewhere in the depths of his mind.
And it's as I finish reading the journal for the eighth time that I quietly close it shut, with a soft sigh and clasp his cold hand. It's been three weeks, and I'm starting to worry.
"Todd,"I whisper.
Despite the fact that I can hardly look at him, his dark, messy hair, the spray of wild freckles and slightly crooked nose make me miss him more than ever. More than I could ever imagine possible. "Please come back. Hear me. Wake up, before it's too late." His other hand held by my own, clasped together the way I've repeated countless times before, I murmur with a plead. "Come on, Todd. We've all been waiting for you," a pause, "I've been waiting for you - and you just need to wake up..." I press my lips against his forehead, and a lump spikes in my throat that I try to hold down. "...I love you, Todd..."
The lump in my throat persists, and I feel my eyes start to go blurry so I sit back in my chair and try to hold back my emotions. And I wait. I wait. Wait for anything to happen.