Nessie Quest

by Melissa Savage

Hammy Bean pushes a button and the computer spouts, “Play.”

  And the video starts again.

  “Not to brag or anything,” I say. “But my cinematography is kind of stellar. I mean, I’m not talking an Oscar nomination, but still. I definitely think I got the soul of the shot. Look at how I pan in here, you know, for dramatic effect.”

  Dax rolls his eyes at me. “Give me a break,” he mumbles under his breath.

  “Out of the hazy waters,” I say in my very best podcast host voice, “it appears for the first time in history. The actual lair of the Loch Ness Monster has been discovered by the one and only Hamish Bean Tibby and recorded by storyteller Adelaide Ru Fitzhugh. Unfortunately, Dax Cady slept through the whole darn thing.”

  Hammy Bean laughs. “Boy, ye are a writer,” he tells me. “I canna wait to read yer story.”

  “You’ll read it?” I ask.

  “Are ye kiddin’? Why wouldna I? I’m your Ron, right? An’ there’s a monster in it?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “And—”

  “Don’t say it,” Dax warns me.

  “Don’t worry,” I say. “I was never going to make you my Hermione. I definitely have another part for you.”

  “Your Ron?”

  “No way,” Hammy Bean protests. “Ye canna be her Ron. I’m her Ron!”

  “Okay, okay,” I say. “You can both be my Ron.”

  “How are you going to make that happen?” Dax asks.

  I shrug. “It’s fiction. I can do whatever I want.”

  “I’m still thinking Wolfgang, though,” Dax says.

  I roll my eyes.

  Beep.

  “Mamo Honey to Captain Green Bean. Come in, Captain Green Bean. Over.”

  “I thought she was just downstairs making lunch,” I say.

  “She is,” Hammy Bean says, reaching for the walkie-talkie on the desk. “Captain Green Bean here. Over.”

  “You’d better be sittin’ down for this one,” Mamo Honey tells him. “Over.”

  Dax and I look at each other.

  Hammy Bean scoots his leather chair tighter under the giant wooden desk. “Roger that. What is it? Over.”

  “The BBC Highlands & Islands Edition news is on their way! Over and out!”

  Something epic is happening.

  Something amazing.

  Something legit stellar and one of a kind.

  The Loch Ness Project will be begging Hammy Bean to join them after this for sure.

  And I’m a part of that.

  Me.

  Ada Ru Fitzhugh, Nessie Juggernaut reporter/secret agent.

  When word gets around town about the Team Nessie Quest discovery, almost all of Fort Augustus shows up for the BBC Highlands & Islands Edition. Including Hammy Bean in a tweed flat cap and bow tie just like Mr. Quigley Dunbar III.

  “Are there a lot o’ people here?” Hammy Bean asks me as the news crew sets up for the interview in front of Farquhar’s Famous Fish House.

  “A ton of people,” I tell him.

  “More than the time with the Loch Watchers?”

  “Way more,” I say. “There’s even a new tour boat called the Nessie Trek (The Real Story of the Loch Ness Monster) docked with a man and two boys standing out front of it.”

  “Well, that’s well radge,” he says, tugging on his bow tie.

  “English, please,” I say.

  “It’s crazy,” he tells me. “Because it’s Kagen Bootsman, his boys, Bates an’ Bowie. They dock oot of Drumnadrochit an’ are the only tour that tells their passengers Nessie doesna exist.”

  “Veeeery interesting,” I say.

  “What about the guy with the long beard?” Hammy Bean asks. “Do ye see him?”

  I stand on my toes and scan the crowd until I see a tall, rail-thin man with a long gray beard and a tweed coat leaning against a light post.

  “I think so,” I say to Hammy Bean. “There’s a skinny guy with a long beard standing alone in the back.”

  Hammy Bean sucks air. “A long gray beard?”

  “Yeah,” I say.

  “Tweed jacket an’ a flat cap?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “How did you—”

  “That’s Albert Tod,” he says. “He’s the leader of the Loch Ness Project.”

  I gasp and grab his arm. “Oh my God, you did it,” I tell him.

  “We did,” he says.

  * * *

  The news crew is finally ready and the crowd is even bigger. Everyone from town is there and then some. Even Mr. Farquhar shows up dressed for the occasion, standing out in front of Farquhar’s Famous Fish House with a spanking clean apron without even one grease stain on his belly.

  Hammy Bean is no albatross today. He’s right smack-dab in the middle of everything, and I’ve never seen his dimples deeper.

  He’s famous.

  The woman with the dark lipstick is back, along with the same two men. The cameraman and the guy with the fingers.

  “An’ we’re on in five,” the finger guy says, holding up five fingers and then counting down.

  Four.

  Three.

  Two.

  One.

  He points to the woman.

  She smiles her dark-lipstick smile into the camera. “Thank you, Gage. We are lochside in Fort Augustus at the edge of Loch Ness…for a second time this summer, with yet another amazing story about our Nessie. In Scotland, the enduring story of Nessie has become more than folklore and legend about a prehistoric sea monster, it is a story enshrined in our current Scottish culture. I’m here today with a very special investigator”—she puts her arm around Hammy Bean—“with an incredible find. More incredible than any before it. Please tell the viewers your name, lad.”

  Hammy Bean is beaming brighter than I’ve ever seen him shine, and I couldn’t be happier for him.

  The woman holds the microphone close to him while the cameraman pans down to get him into frame.

  Hammy Bean stands straight as a board, looking dapper in his bow tie. “My name is Hamish Bean Tibby,” he says. “I’m a cryptozoological investigator here in Fort Augustus, as well as the editor in chief of the Nessie Juggernaut, a quarterly newsletter reporting on all the monster sightings, which will soon be a podcast.”

  I look over at Mamo Honey and see tears on her cheeks and I wonder if she’d use the same feeling word she told me the other day in Little Yellow to describe how she feels watching her albatross soar.

  Alive.

  Mom and Dad are here too, along with Cornelius Blaise Barrington, Dax and Mr. and Mrs. Cady, the Loch Watchers, Jasper Price, the Kumars from a Wee Spot of Tea and Biscuits, Euna Begbie and Tuna Tetrazzini.

  “I believe we have video of your discovery queued up in the studio for our viewers?”

  “That’s right,” Hammy Bean says. “This footage was shot by my amazin’ Nessie Juggernaut reporter Adelaide Ru Fitzhugh. Ada Ru?” Hammy Bean reaches out his hand.

  “I’m here,” I say, pushing through the crowd.

  “Please introduce yourself.” The woman holds the microphone close to me.

  “Um, I—I’m Ada Ru Fitzhugh.” I stare at the camera, feeling my heart start to pound inside my chest. “I—I recorded the footage.”

  Mom and Dad give me a whoop whoop.

  They’re so embarrassing.

  “Roll video back at the studio, Gage,” the newswoman calls into the microphone. “Please explain to us what the viewers are watching, Ada Ru.” She holds the microphone toward me again.

  “Just wait until ye hear this. She sets it up real good,” Hammy Bean tells the woman.

  “Out of the hazy waters,” I say, “comes the majestic lair of the fabled Nessie, a monster mystery that has spanned centuries. Is it a plesiosaur? A sirenian? Or just a plain old fish? We ar
e getting closer to learning the true identity of the species.”

  “Thank you, Ada Ru.” The newswoman smiles and turns the microphone back to Hammy Bean.

  “One question that has plagued investigators for years is, why can’t we find the monster?” he says. “It’s long been believed that there may be caves down in the loch an’ possibly even a tunnel system that connects it to other lochs—or possibly the sea. And we have just found evidence that this might be true. It’s evidence that could bring us closer to learning exactly what Nessie is. Once an’ for all.”

  “My goodness!” the woman exclaims. “That’s an amazing discovery indeed, Hamish Bean Tibby, cryptozoological investigator extraordinaire!”

  “It wasna just me,” Hammy Bean says. “It was my entire team. Team Nessie Quest, please come forward.”

  Dax, Mamo Honey, Corny and Mac-Talla proudly stand next to Hammy Bean while the man with the camera pans over the six of us.

  “My Mamo Honey, the greatest Nessie investigator o’ all time. Cornelius Blaise Barrington, who gave up his entire life in London an’ has lived lochside for twenty years, an’ o’ course Dax Cady and Adelaide Ru Fitzhugh, the very first Nessie Juggernaut employees an’…my mates.”

  The man with the fast fingers makes a circular gesture to the lady and she gives another wide lipstick smile toward the camera.

  “Well, you heard it here first, Gage,” she says into the lens. “Team Nessie Quest, led by Hamish Bean Tibby, has just taken the lead in the Nessie Race here in Fort Augustus and most possibly will be providing us very soon with some answers we’ve had about this mystery for centuries. This is Mysie Maccrum, out at the bonny, bonny banks of the Fort Augustus beach. Back to you, Gage.”

  To quote the great Dr. Tobin Sky, “A discovery is meant to be discovered only when the time is right to discover it.”

  And boy, is he right about that one.

  The summer has flown by and I can’t believe we’re leaving at the end of the week.

  Today in my feelings journal I write two words in all caps with an exclamation mark at the end.

  GOODBYES BITE!

  I can’t believe we have to leave this place.

  The green.

  The heavenly steps.

  The rolling hills.

  The people.

  And Hammy Bean.

  I’ve grown to love everything about Fort Augustus and I don’t want to leave it.

  Me, Hammy Bean and Dax all meet up at the bridge for our last-day picnic lunch at the rickety dock, the new permanent home of the mighty Little Yellow. Me with my camera and Dax with Ole Roy.

  Scotland has shown us a beautiful last few days with no moody, low-hanging storm clouds raining on us or shaking up drama in the loch. Today the water is flat calm, like black glass.

  After eating our cheese sandwiches with potato chips and cans of soda, we lie on the weathered planks in the rare and treasured Scotland sun, listening to the sounds of Loch Ness and watching the clouds change shape above us.

  I close my eyes and listen, like Hammy Bean taught me to do.

  I hear the water lick the rocks at the shore.

  A motorboat sputtering in the distance.

  Birds singing their sunny-day ditty.

  A truck on the road above us changing gears.

  “What are ye thinking about?”

  I open my eyes and see Hammy Bean facing me, his head propped up on his elbow.

  “Haud yer wheesht,” I tell him. “I’m listening to the sounds and trying to memorize them.”

  “What sounds are ye memorizin’?”

  “Every single one,” I say. “All the sounds I’m going to miss about being here. I don’t want to go home.”

  “Because o’ the sounds?”

  “Not just the sounds.”

  “Because o’ me, right? You’re goin’ to miss me?” he asks.

  I smile at the sky and don’t say anything.

  “It’s okay,” he says. “Ye doona have to say it. I know you’re goin’ to miss me.”

  “Are you going to miss me?” I ask him.

  “Big-time,” he says.

  “I’m definitely going to miss you,” I say. “But other things too.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like Mr. Quigley Dunbar the Third, Mamo Honey, Corny, a Wee Spot of Tea and Biscuits and Euna Begbie and the Loch Watchers and…just everything. I kind of love it here.”

  “But you’ll miss me the most, right?”

  “Wellllll,” I say, propping myself on my elbow too until we’re face to face. “You’re up there, but I’m going to miss the moody and the mysterious and the chock-full-of-story-possibilities Loch Ness too.”

  “Doona say tatty bye to me,” he says.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Doona say tatty bye to me on the very last day,” he says.

  “Why not?”

  “Because,” he tells me, “it’s goin’ to be a very sad day when that happens and I willna want to hear those words oot loud.”

  His voice cracks on the last word.

  “I won’t say it,” I tell him.

  He lies back flat again. “Do ye—” And then he stops.

  “What?” I ask him.

  “Haud yer wheesht,” he whispers, his body popping off the rickety dock like a rocket-ship blast. I watch him slide his shoes to the very last worn wooden plank, counting them under his breath as he slides.

  He stands there listening.

  I close my eyes and listen too.

  And I realize that he’s right, I am going to miss him most. But don’t tell him I said so; it’ll go straight to his head.

  “Did ye hear that?” he whispers from the end of the pier.

  I sit up. “What?”

  “Shhh,” he hisses.

  “Yeah.” Dax gives me an elbow. “Haud yer wheesht.”

  Me, Dax and Mac-Talla pop up off the boards now too and scramble in behind Hammy Bean, staring out at the smooth, calm waters.

  “I don’t see anything,” I whisper, scanning the loch.

  Hammy Bean sighs. “Are ye listenin’ wi’ yer eyes or yer ears?”

  I squeeze my eyelids tight and listen to the orchestra of sounds around me. The breeze blows like the orchestra conductor, guiding the tempo woodsy ballad.

  The tree branches sway and crack like a clapper.

  The leaves hisssss like cymbals sliding.

  The birds chime like twinkly flutes whistling.

  And somewhere out in the middle of the lake an engine grumbles like a drumstick dragging across a snare drum.

  And then…bubbles.

  Hammy Bean grabs my wrist. “That!” he says. “Did ye hear that?”

  “Yes,” I whisper.

  “I hear it too,” Dax says.

  “Now,” Hammy Bean says. “Open your eyes! Do it now!”

  My lids pop open and I shade my face from the sun with my forearm, my eyes darting across the flat-calm water until I see white bubbles with a large wake behind them. And then I see something coming up just below the surface. At first it looks like a large overturned boat covered in black rubber, with glistening drops of water sliding off its sides as it rises to the surface.

  I stare at it.

  Unable to move.

  Unable to speak.

  “It’s her,” Hammy Bean whispers. “She’s here to say she’ll miss ye too.”

  I cover my mouth with my hand and whisper between my fingers. “It can’t be,” I say.

  “Take a picture! Take a picture!” Hammy Bean exclaims.

  I fumble with the camera, my fingers forgetting which button is which, and then, just as I squint through the lens, she slips back into the water as gracefully as she slipped out.

  And
without a single sound either.

  I sigh. “She’s gone.”

  “Yeah, but ye got it, right? Please tell me ye got the picture?”

  Beep.

  “Captain Green Bean to Team Nessie Quest. Do ye read? Come in, Team Nessie Quest,” Hammy Bean calls from the radio. “I canna believe this!” he squeals. “I have a major bobble an’ ye just have to get over to the Nessie Juggernaut office ASAP! Over!”

  I sit up in my bed and grab the walkie-talkie.

  “I’m going to miss your early-morning wake-ups, believe it or not. Over,” I tell him.

  “I don’t want to talk about it, remember?” he says. “Over.”

  “I know, I know,” I say. “Over.”

  “Ye have to come over right away. Strings? Do ye read? Over?”

  “What time is it? Over,” Dax says from the radio.

  “Oh, just get oot o’ yer scratcher and put yer baffies on,” I tell him. “We’ve got Nessie business to attend to. Over.”

  Silence.

  “Is that some kind of new code? Over?” Dax asks.

  “Both o’ ye,” Hammy Bean tells us. “I need ye immediately. You’re going to be gobsmacked when ye hear what’s happenin’. Over.”

  “What is it? Over?” I demand.

  “I got the interview. Over,” he tells us.

  “What interview? Over?” Dax asks.

  “The interview!” Hammy Bean screeches. “The one an’ only Tobin Sky! He called last night an’ he’s Skyping me in two hours an’ ye need to get over here and get it recorded. This is the debut podcast that I wanted. It’s a dream come true! Over!”

  I swing the down comforter to the side and jump out of bed. “I’m on my way. Over,” I call into the radio.

  “Me too. Over,” Dax says.

  “I canna believe this is really happenin’,” Hammy Bean screeches. “The one an’ only Tobin Sky! Captain Green Bean over and out.”

  * * *

  Since Dad’s done with school for the summer, Mamo Honey invites both Mom and Dad over for tea after they visit the Nessie Juggernaut office to make sure we have everything set up just right.

  When we’re all set, I pace the Juggernaut floor, Dax squints out the telescope and Hammy Bean bites on his pinky nail as we anxiously await the Skype to ring.