The Ask and the Answer Read Free Page A

special."
    I keep breathing, trying to hold on to it but feeling myself slip away.
    "How can I know?" I finally say, my voice a croak, a slur, a thing not quite real. "How can I know she's even still alive?"
    "You can't," says the Mayor. "You only have my word."
    And waits again.
    "And if I do it," I say. "If I do what you say, you'll save her?"
    "We will do whatever's necessary," he says. Without pain, it feels almost like I don't have a body at all, almost like I'm a ghost, sitting in a chair, blinded and eternal. Like I'm dead already.
    Cuz how do you know yer alive if you don't hurt?
    "We are the choices we make, Todd," the Mayor says. "Nothing more, nothing less. I'd like you to choose to tell me. I would like that very much indeed."
    Under the bandages is just further darkness.
    Just me, alone in the black.
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    Alone with his voice. I don't know what to do. I don't know anything, (what do I do?)
    But if there's a chance, if there's even a chance--
    "Is it really such a sacrifice, Todd?" the Mayor says, listening to me think. "Here, at the end of the past? At the beginning of the future?"
    No. No, I can't. He's a liar and a murderer, no matter what he says--
    "I'm waiting, Todd."
    But she might be alive, he might keep her alive-
    "We are nearing your last opportunity, Todd."
    I raise my head. The movement opens the bandages some and I squint up into the light, up toward the Mayor's face.
    It's blank as ever.
    It's the empty, lifeless wall.
    I might as well be talking into a bottomless pit.
    I might as well be the bottomless pit.
    I look away. I look down.
    "Viola," I say into the carpet. "Her name's Viola." The Mayor lets out a long, pleased-sounding breath. "Good, Todd," he says. "I thank you." He turns to Mr. Collins. "Lock him up."
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    PART I TODD IN THE TOWER
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    1 THE OLD MAYOR
    ***
    Mr. Collins pushes me up a narrow, windowless staircase, up and up and up, turning on sharp landings but always straight up. Just when I think my legs can't take no more, we reach a door. He opens it and shoves me hard and I go tumbling into the room and down onto a wooden floor, my arms so stiff I can't even catch myself and I groan and roll to one side.
    And look down over a hundred-foot drop.
    Mr. Collins laughs as I scrabble back away from it. I'm on a ledge not more than five boards wide that runs round the walls of a square room. In the middle is just an enormous hole with some ropes dangling down thru the center. I follow em up thru a tall shaft to the biggest set of bells I ever saw, two of 'em hanging from a single wooden beam, huge things, big as a room you could live in, archways cut into the sides of the tower so the bell-ringing can be heard.
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    I jump when Mr. Collins slams the door, locking it with a ker-thunk sound that don't brook no thoughts of escape.
    I get myself up and lean against the wall till I can breathe again.
    I close my eyes.
    I am Todd Hewitt, I think. I am the son of Cillian Boyd and Ben Moore. My birthday is in fourteen days hut I am a man.
    I am Todd Hewitt and I am a man.
    (a man who told the Mayor her name)
    "I'm sorry," I whisper. "I'm so sorry."
    After a while, I open my eyes and look up and around. There are small rectangular openings at eye level all around this floor of the tower, three on each wall, fading light shining in thru the dust.
    I go to the nearest opening. I'm in the bell tower of the cathedral, obviously, way up high, looking out the front, down onto the square where I first entered the town, only this morning but it already feels like a lifetime ago. Dusk is falling, so I musta been out cold for a bit before the Mayor woke me, time where he coulda done anything to her, time where he coulda--
    (shut up, just shut up)
    I look out over the square. It's still empty, still the quiet of a silent town, a town with no Noise, a town waiting for an army to come and conquer it.
    A town that didn't even try to fight.
    The Mayor just turned up and they handed it right over
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