Chaos Walking: The Complete Trilogy Read Online Free PDF

was only natural for Ben and Cillian to take me in and feed me and raise me and teach me and generally make it possible for me to go on being alive.
    And so I’m kinda like their son. Well, more than “kinda like” but less than actually being so. Ben says Cillian only fights with me all the time cuz he cares about me so much but if that’s true I say it’s a funny way to show it, a way that don’t seem much like caring at all, if you ask me.
    But Ben’s a different kind of man than Cillian, a kind kind of man that makes him not normal in Prentisstown. 145 of the men in this town, even the newly made ones just past their birthdays, even Cillian tho to a lesser degree, they see me at best as something to ignore and at worst as something to hit and so I spend most of my days figuring out ways to be ignored so as I won’t get hit.
    ’Cept for Ben, who I can’t describe much further without seeming soft and stupid and like a boy, so I won’t, just to say that I never knew my pa, but if you woke up one day and had a choice of picking one from a selecshun, if someone said, here, then, boy, pick who you want, then Ben wouldn’t be the worst choice you could make that morning.
    He’s whistling as we approach and tho I can’t see him yet and he can’t see me, he changes the tune as he senses me coming to a song I reckernize, Early one mo-o-rning, just as the sun was ri-i-sing, which he says was a favourite of my ma’s but which I think is really just a favourite of his since he’s whistled and sang it for me since I can remember. My blood is still storming away from Cillian but I immediately start to feel a little calmer.
    Even tho it is a song for babies, I know, shut up.
    “Ben!” Manchee barks and goes running around the irrigashun set-up.
    “Hello, Manchee,” I hear as I round the corner and see Ben scratching Manchee twixt the ears. Manchee’s eyes are closed and his leg is thumping on the ground with pleasure and tho Ben can certainly tell from my Noise that I’ve been fighting with Cillian again, he don’t say nothing but, “Hello, Todd.”
    “Hi, Ben.” I look at the ground, kicking a stone.
    And Ben’s Noise is saying Apples and Cillian and Yer getting so big and Cillian again and itch in the crack of my arm and apples and dinner and Gosh, it’s warm out and it’s all so smooth and non-grasping it’s like laying down in a brook on a hot day.
    “You calming down there, Todd?” he finally says. “Reminding yerself who you are?”
    “Yeah,” I say, “just, why does he have to come at me like that? Why can’t he just say hello? Not even a greeting, it’s all ‘I know you done something wrong and I’m gonna keep at you till I find out what it is.’”
    “That’s just his way, Todd. You know that.”
    “So you keep saying.” I pick a blade of young wheat and stick the end in my mouth, not quite looking at him.
    “Left the apples at the house, didja?”
    I look at him. I chew on the wheat. He knows I didn’t. He can tell.
    “And there’s a reason,” he says, still scratching Manchee. “There’s a reason which ain’t coming clear.” He’s trying to read my Noise, see what truth he can sift from it, which most men think is a good enough excuse for starting a fight, but I don’t mind with Ben. He cocks his head and stops scratching Manchee. “Aaron?”
    “Yeah, I saw Aaron.”
    “He did that to yer lip?”
    “Yeah.”
    “That sunuvahoor.” He frowns and steps forward. “I just might have to have words with that man.”
    “Don’t,” I say. “Don’t. It’ll just be more trouble and it don’t hurt that much.”
    He takes my chin into his fingers and lifts my head so he can see the cut. “That sunuvahoor,” he says again, quietly. He touches the cut with his fingers and I flinch away.
    “It’s nothing,” I say.
    “You stay away from that man, Todd Hewitt.”
    “Oh, like I went running to the swamp hoping to run into him?”
    “He ain’t right.”
    “Well, holy