the wedding, when she come back. That same difference was there when she told me Mardew was dying, and it was even easier to see. There was a hardness in her now, where before she had always been most soft and gentle even in her teasing of me. If anything she said had ever sounded hard, it was only a game, kind of, and she always made sure I knowed it right after.
I wanted to know what had happened to her when she was away, and it come hard to me to wait. But she was right when she said to save it for another time. My head right then was full of Mardew being dead and me being the one that killed him. I had got to get myself away from that, somehow, before I could think of anything else.
I got up, slow as trees might of moved in the old times. I picked the DreamSleeve up off the ground where it had fell. I found my bundle on the ground too, and my short knife stuck in the earth point down. I must of grabbed a hold of it at some point, meaning to strike a blow with it, but I didn’t remember any such thing.
Ludden had used to have a lookout that was very like the one in Mythen Rood, except it had a ladder in place of a stair. It was easy to find, standing out over the village the way it did. I went there and climbed on up to the platform. I felt safe doing so, for nothing could come up the ladder without me hearing it.
I set my back against one of the corner posts, and stretched my legs out in front of me. I looked at my arm where it was hurting and seen that I had been bleeding there. The cutter beam had not gone all the way into me, but the edge of it had shaved me close and took the topmost layer of skin in its passing. It was not so much of a wound though, and most likely would heal up by itself. I was lucky beyond anything to scape so lightly.
I took the DreamSleeve in my two hands and kissed it.
“Yeah,” Monono said. “Missed you too. No tongues though, Koli-bou. You’ll void your warranty.”
I think it was a joke she made, but I didn’t understand it and I couldn’t of laughed right then if I did. “I’m sorry I sent you away, Monono,” I told her. “I shouldn’t of done it, and I won’t never do it again.”
“You shouldn’t,” Monono agreed. “You’re terrible at looking after yourself. What does faceless mean?”
“It means I’m disowned. Throwed out of the village, for aye and ever.”
“That sucks, Koli. Was it the shitty dead boy who did that to you?”
“Mardew. I guess it was him in part, though there was others voted too. And really I brung it on myself by asking you to play at the wedding.”
“Your friends were angry that you rickrolled them?”
“They was scared because their secrets was knowed.”
“Oh. I guess that makes more sense.”
I told her how it come about, and I didn’t lie or leave nothing out. I cried again as I told it, partly thinking about Jemiu and Athen and Mull and the shame and sorrow I brung on them, partly just thinking about my own self and what a mess I made of everything.
Monono stopped me a few times with questions, and they was not just about what happened after the wedding. They was also about Ramparts in general, and the tech and how it worked, and the Count and Seal, and my family, and Spinner and her family, and countless other things about how we lived in Mythen Rood.
I guess I thought Monono knowed all those things without me telling her, but it turned out she didn’t. I was a little shamed I never told her any of it, when she told me so much about Tokyo. But then she never put no questions to me before, except about the music I favoured and the movies and shows and such things that I already told you of.
“Why was that?” I said, for it seemed like it was another part of that change I seen in her. “Why did you only ask me what songs and stuff I liked instead of all these other things?”
Monono was quiet for a moment. Then she said, “Truth? I was following a program. Or a program was running