Close enough so I can see the smile, a smile I know full well, a smile that clubs, a smile that beats, a smile that dominates.
Patrick NessShe regards me quietly and then she quotes something Mistress Coyle once said to me. “We are the choices we make.” It takes me a second to realize she's just said goodbye.
Patrick NessBut the Spackle War was over a long time ago, wasn't it?”
“Thirteen years now.”
“Thirteen years where you could have righted a wrong.”
She finally looks at me. “Life is only that simple when you're young, my girl.
What if it'd been Simone down there instead of Todd?” I say.
And Simone is all over his Noise, his deep feelings for her, feelings I don't think are returned. “You're right,” he says, “I don't know. I hope I'd make the right choice, but Viola it is a choice. To say you have no choice is to release yourself from responsibility and that's not how a person with integrity acts.
She turns to me sharply. “To live _is_ to fight,” she snaps. “To preserve life is to fight _everything_ that man stands for.” She takes an angry huff of air. “And now her, too, with all the bombs. I fight them every time I bandage the blackened eye of a woman, every time I remove shrapnel from a bomb victim.”
Her voice has raised but she lowers it again. “That's my war,” she says. “That's the war I'm fighting.
Patience,” she says again. But she says it impatiently.
Patrick NessIt's always darkest before the dawn, Todd.”
I look at him, baffled. “No, it ain't! What kinda stupid saying is that? It's always lightest before the dawn!
Ideals, my girl,” she says. “Always easier to believe in than live.”
“But if you don't at least try to live them,” Bradley says, “then there's no point in living at all.
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. You're never more alive than in battle.”
“Never more dead after,” I say.
That's because the desire of most folks is to be told what to do.” He looks back across the square, covered in tents and soldiers and townsfolk all huddled together. “People say they want freedom, but what they really want is freedom from worry. If I take care of their problems, they don't mind being told what to do.
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