Read Online Chaos Walking: The Complete Trilogy by Patrick Ness - Free Book Online

Her hair ain’t long. And she ain’t wearing no dress, she’s wearing clothes that look like way newer versions of mine, so new they’re almost like a uniform, even tho they’re torn and muddy, and she ain’t that small, she’s my size, just, by the looks of her, and she’s sure as all that’s unholy not smiley.
    No, not smiley at all.
    “Spackle?” Manchee barks quietly.
    “Would you effing well shut up ?” I say.
    So how do I know? How do I know it’s a girl?
    Well, for one, she ain’t no Spackle. Spackle looked like men with everything a bit swelled up, everything a bit longer and weirder than on a man, their mouths a bit higher than they should be and their ears and eyes way, way different. And spacks grew their clothes right on their bodies, like lichens you could trim away to whatever shape you needed. Product of swamp-dwelling, according to another Ben-best-guess and she don’t look like that and her clothes are normal and so there ain’t no way she’s a Spackle.
    And for two, I just know. I just do. I can’t tell you but I look and I see and I just know. She don’t look like the girls I seen in vids or in Noise and I never seen no girl in the flesh but there she is, she’s a girl and that’s that. Don’t ask me. Something about her shape, something about her smell, something I don’t know but it’s there and she’s a girl.
    If there was a girl, that’s what she’d be.
    And she ain’t another boy. She just ain’t. She ain’t me. She ain’t nothing like me at all. She’s something completely other else altogether and I don’t know how I know it but I know who I am, I am Todd Hewitt, and I know what I am not and I am not her.
    She’s looking at me. She’s looking at my face, in my eyes. Looking and looking.
    And I’m not hearing nothing .
    Oh, man. My chest. It’s like falling.
    “Who are you?” I say again but my voice actually catches, like it breaks up cuz I’m so sad (shut up). I grit my teeth and I get a little madder and I say it yet again. “Who are you?” and I hold out the knife a little farther. With my other arm, I have to wipe my eyes real fast.
    Something’s gotta happen. Someone’s gotta move. Someone’s gotta do something .
    And there ain’t no someone but me, still, whatever the world’s doing.
    “Can you talk?” I say.
    She just looks back at me.
    “Quiet,” Manchee barks.
    “Shut it, Manchee,” I say, “I need to think.”
    And she’s still just looking back at me. With no Noise at all.
    What do I do? It ain’t fair. Ben told me I’d get to the swamp and I’d know what to do but I don’t know what to do. They didn’t say nothing about a girl, they didn’t say nothing about why the quiet makes me ache so much I can barely stop from ruddy weeping, like I’m missing something so bad I can’t even think straight, like the emptiness ain’t in her, it’s in me and there ain’t nothing that’s ever gonna fix it.
    What do I do?
    What do I do?
    She seems like maybe she’s calming down. She’s not shaking as much as she was, her arms aren’t up so high, and she’s not looking like she’s about to run off at the first opportunity, tho how can you know for sure when a person’s got no Noise? How can they be a person if they ain’t got no Noise?
    And can she hear me? Can she? Can a person with no Noise hear it at all?
    I look at her and I think, as loud and clear as I can, Can you hear me? Can you?
    But she don’t change her face, she don’t change her look.
    “Okay,” I say, and I take a step back. “Okay. You just stay there, okay? You just stay right there.”
    I take a few more steps back but I keep my eyes on her and she keeps her eyes on me. I bring my knife arm down and I slide it outta one strap of the rucksack, then I lean over and drop the rucksack to the ground. I keep the knife in one hand and with the other I open up the rucksack and fish out the book.
    It’s heavier than you think a thing made of words could be. And it