Monsters of Men by Patrick Ness

Angharrad, if what he saw in battle was so bad, it somehow made him unable to even
see
it, even in his Noise, and my heart just breaks at the thought of it–
    Another reason for no more war.
    I pull the coat Simone gave me tighter. It’s cold and I’m shivering, but I can also feel myself sweating, which I know from my healer training means I have a fever. I pull up my left sleeve and look underneath the bandage. The skin around the band is still angry and red.
    And now there are red streaks from it reaching down to my wrist.
    Streaks that I know mean infection. Bad infection.
    Infection that’s not being knocked back by the bandage.
    I pull the sleeve back down and try not to think about it. Try not to think that I didn’t tell Todd how bad it was either.
    Because I’ve still got to find Mistress Coyle.
    “Well,” I say to Acorn. “She’s always talking about the ocean. I wonder if it’s really as far away as she–”
    I jump as the comm beeps suddenly in my pocket.
    “Todd?” I say, answering it immediately.
    But it’s Simone.
    “You’d better come straight back here,”
she says.
    “Why?” I say, alarmed. “What’s happened?”
    “I’ve found your Answer.”

Before

(THE RETURN)
    The sun is about to rise as I take some food from the cookfires. Members of the Land watch as I collect a pan and fill it with stew. Their voices are open – they could hardly be closed and still be members of the Land – so I can hear them discussing me, their thoughts spreading one to the other, forming one opinion, then a contrary one and back again, all so fast I can barely follow it.
    And then they come to a decision. One of the Land rises to her feet to offer me a large bone spoon so that I do not merely have to drink the stew from the bowl, and behind her I can hear the Land’s voices, their voice , offering it to me in friendship.
    I reach out to take it.
    Thank you , I say, in the language of the Burden–
    And there it is again, the slight discomfort at the language I speak, the distaste at something so alien, so individual , so representative of something shameful. It is quickly bundled away and argued against in the swirling voice, but it was definitely there for an instant.
    I do not take the spoon. I hear their voices calling after me in apology as I walk away, but I do not turn around. Instead, I walk to a path I have found and start my way up the rocky hill by the side of the road.
    The Land has mostly made its camp along the flat of the road, but I see others on the hillside as I climb, others from areas where the Land lives in mountains and who are more comfortable on the steepness. Likewise down below, there are those from where the Land lives near rivers who sleep in quickly made boats.
    But then, the Land is all one, is it not? The Land has no others , it has no they or those .
    There is only one Land.
    And I am the one who stands outside it.
    I reach a point where the hill becomes so steep I have to pull myself up. I see an outcropping where I can sit and look at the Land below me, much as the Land can look over the lip of the hill and see the Clearing.
    A place where I can be alone.
    I should not be alone.
    My one in particular should be here with me, eating our meals together as the dawn slowly brightens, fighting off sleep, waiting for the next phase of the war side by side.
    But my one in particular is not here.
    Because my one in particular was killed by the Clearing as the Burden were first rounded up from back gardens and basements, from locked rooms and servant’s quarters. My one in particular and I were kept in a garden shed, and when the shed door was opened that night, my one in particular fought. Fought for me. Fought to keep them from taking me.
    And was brought down by a heavy blade.
    I was dragged away making the inadequate clicking sound the Clearing left us with after forcing us to take its “cure”, a sound that said nothing of what it was like to be torn from my one in