By Ben and Nathan
I sit down on the bench. I place my bag on the floor and take out my notebook and check that I’m alone. As usual, I am.
Just me and my thoughts.
I open my book but immediately slam it shut as I hear a babble of Noise coming down the road towards me.
Amongst the mess of thoughts I hear something about me,
What a weirdo.
I ignore it. You can’t take thoughts personally here.
When I’m sure they’ve gone I open my notebook once more. On the first page is a title:
My notebook by Felicity Blackwell
After that it’s mainly mess. My thoughts. My Noise written down on paper. However if you skip to the back there is a page with just one thing written on it. A single question. A single word.
Bands?
The question everyone is reluctant to answer. But I’ve never asked. Not once. I wonder about everyday. Sometimes I’m up all night just thinking about it. About life here before we arrived. About the Mayor and the Mistress. About the Spackle. About Todd and Viola and how they changed the world. About how we can only live in peace now because of what Todd and Viola did and are still doing today.
It’s time for some answers…
* * *
I walk hesitantly into our living room. Nan is by the window. I stand and watch her for a full couple of minutes. I watch, working out in my head how to ask that question.
“Ouch!” my Nan suddenly cries out. She’s knocked her band against the oak windowsill. She turns around and begins to walk forward. Her head is bent down studying her arm so much so that she almost walks into me.
“Oh hello dear,” she says surprised hurriedly pulling her sleeve over her band, “I didn’t see you there! I didn’t even hear you come in. What can I do for you? Would you like a drink?”
I don’t know what to say for a second I don’t want to ask but then I suddenly splutter out, “Why do the women wear bands?”
My Nan looks at me, almost sympathetically, she looks unsure. Then uncomfortable. Before finally, “Why don’t you talk to your mother about this?”
I reply ‘no’ almost immediately. For some reason I was uncomfortable around my Mother, she made me feel as though I shouldn’t ask the questions I wanted to. Besides she hadn’t even been born in then times of Todd and Viola and the bands.
She sits me down.
“Right the first thing I should probably warn you is that the story isn’t nice and it will be hard to understand why some of the people in it did some of the things they did.” My Nan soothes.
“Ok, ok. I’ll be fine.” I say.
“Then I will tell you. It all begins in a town called Prentisstown.”
“Oh yeah I’ve heard of that.” I interrupt.
“Anyway in this town there were only men. There was a war after some of the women stood up for themselves. They were all killed. The Mayor of this town was Mayor Prentiss.
We now skip forward several years to the days of New Prentisstown ruled again by Mayor Prentiss. Already you know the events that lead up to this. The Mayor wanted control over the Spackle because of a war long which had happened long before. He made Todd and his son Davy, along with others, brand all the Spackle with a band.”
“Wait, Todd helped brand the Spackle. I thought he was the good one in all of this!”
“My dear girl you did not live then. Mayor Prentiss was manipulative. He could control people with his noise. He used it as a weapon. Viola couldn’t understand it at first but after she came to understand that the Mayor had convinced Todd to so something so cruel but she could forgive him because of what he did after and his regret.”
My Nan reclines into the chair and I do the same. I feel a spring which has been knocked out of place. I’m about to adjust my position but my Nan continues the story so I sit tight.
She continues to tell me about the cruelty of the Mayor and his desire to kill all the women. I learn that he put a slow acting poison in the band to kill them and to this I burst out, “What why would he do that! Have you still got the poison in your band? Are you ill?” I cried images running through my head.
“No, not at all don’t worry! I was one of the first ones to take the cure that the Mayor gave out-”
“Wait a minute, the Mayor gave out the cure, I thought he wanted to kill the women?” I interrupt.
“Fliss, dear I said it was confusing, but you have to understand that the Mayor was actually doing a lot for Todd. For the Mayor, Todd had become the son he had always wanted. Brave, clever he had all the characteristics that the Mayor had wanted Davy to possess.”
I picture it in my mind and I see now why the Mayor would have helped. I had seen Viola with her band even in her old age now and I know Todd would want to save her. I sit there in silence. What can I say?
It’s hard to come to terms with it. Life seems much less complicated now. Before I had thought that it was only the violence and the war they had to deal with but now I see it must have been very difficult to choose a side and to do the right thing or to even no what was the right thing. I actually find tears welling up in my eyes. Real tears.
My grandmother sees me and says, “I’ll tell you what though, I personally have seen Viola’s caring side and I know that she would never do anything which she considered not the right thing to do.”
“What do you mean? Have you met her or something.”
“Once but she won’t remember me. It was a long, long time ago. When she worked with Mistress Coyle I was one of the girls she treated at the healing house and she was very good. After that things got very complicated but she really developed herself and her character. And if there is one thing you should ever, ever remember about Todd and Viola is that it is they should be two people you always look up to because they were the only two people who others could trust.”
