The Knife of Never Letting Go (Chaos Walking #1) Chapter 11 Summary

The Book of No Answers

  • Todd's suspicions are right: The girl can hear his thoughts. She starts backing away in horror.
  • He tries to calm her down and distract her from his thoughts of her catching the germ and dying, but the damage is done and she runs away.
  • When Todd finds her, she's sitting on a rock, quietly rocking back and forth.
  • He can't find the right words, but he tries. He reasons that she might be okay—women being allergic to the germ could just be another lie that he was told.
  • He doesn't manage to appease her, though, and he's frustrated. Then he remembers the book.
  • Todd tries to flip the pages and can barely make out the first sentence (which is, in his pronunciation, a botched version of "you must warn them"—something that's pretty obvious to us, but clearly not to him).
  • He gets really angry and starts yelling, louder and louder. He also yells at the girl, who still will not stop rocking back and forth. He knows that she can hear her, even if she's pretending not to, and after a while he storms off, then starts to feel badly.
  • And then he hears a sound—somebody is whispering, and it's getting closer. He watches with a pair of binoculars and waits until he starts thinking that maybe it's just the wind in the trees. But then he sees the Mayor come out of the trees and into the clearing near them, along with a bunch of men.