The Humming Room

by Ellen Potter

  So that is exactly what they did. All morning they worked hard, hauling buckets of water from the river. They found a pair of old rubber boots in the basement and they poked holes in the soles and used them as watering cans. Roo was getting stronger. She found she could hold fuller buckets of water and that she no longer tired so quickly. Again and again, she paused to check on the bare patches of soil, hoping to see something green appear, even though she knew it was silly, that it was too soon.

  When they had finished watering the garden, Roo snuck some food out of the kitchen for their lunch. They ate beneath one of the dead trees—cheese sandwiches and purple grapes and a jug of lemonade. The black squirrel stopped by to ask for a bit of their lunch. Roo gave him some bread and he ate it at a distance of a few feet away, watching Jack circumspectly. Roo watched Jack too, noticing the way he ate, focused and silent, like a person used to eating alone.

  “Don’t you get lonely out on the river?” she asked.

  Jack laughed. “How could I get lonely when the river never stops talking?”

  “Lonely for people, I mean.”

  Jack took a bite of his sandwich and considered this, as though it were a new idea. “At night sounds carry across the water. I’ll hear people talking and laughing. Sometimes I wonder how it would be to live like everyone else. I guess it would be nice for a while, but in the end I’d wind up running right back to the river. Honestly, I don’t know how people can think without a river. Sometimes I’ll be in my canoe, mulling things over, and my brain will leap right into the water and travel with it to where the perch are biting or where the raspberries just went ripe along the shore or to where there’s a warm empty house. I don’t know where I stop and the river starts, do you know what I mean? If we were separated, I think I would just…I would just unravel.”

  Suddenly, Jack’s head whipped around toward the back of the garden.

  “What is it?” she asked, following his gaze.

  He didn’t reply at first, while his gray eyes scanned the garden intently. After a minute, he looked back at her, his face perplexed.

  “I thought I saw something,” he said.

  “The squirrel?”

  Jack shook his head. “Definitely not the squirrel. It was a shadow. Up there.” He pointed at the boulder. “It’s gone now.”

  Roo bit her lip and hesitated before she confessed, “I saw it, too, the other day.”

  They were quiet, but they were both thinking of Ana because Jack suddenly said, “I saw her once when she was still alive, about four years ago.”

  “Where?” Roo asked.

  “She was by the stone arch on Cough Rock, right at the spot where I first saw you. She had this long black hair and it was windy that day, so her hair was whipping all around. It reminded me of a flock of cormorants, just as they are about to take flight. She was pacing back and forth. Then he came out, your uncle, and he wrapped his arms around her and they went back inside.” Jack looked at Roo, his eyes steady on hers, and said, “What if she’s here? In her garden? Watching us?”

  Roo thought of what Phillip had said, but she quickly shook this off.

  “I don’t believe in ghosts,” Roo said.

  “Really? That’s funny. I believe in almost anything.”

  “He’s crying for you.”

  Violet woke Roo in the very early hours of the morning. Even in the darkened room, Roo could see that her face was pinched tight with worry. “His heart is thumping so loud, you can hear it through the bedsheets.”

  Indeed, when Roo opened Phillip’s door, she was shocked at how pitiful he looked. His head was thrown back against his pillow and his face was damp with sweat and tears. In a way it was worse than seeing him flailing around, slapping and clawing. Now he just looked ill.

  Roo sat beside him on his bed, not knowing how to comfort him. For a while they sat together in silence. She tried to catch his eye but he would only look down at his blankets, which he twisted in his hands. Roo noticed that the veins on his thin hands were raised, like a snarl of electric cords.

  “Tomorrow we can try and fix the skeletons I broke,” Roo offered.

  “I had Violet throw them all out,” he replied.

  Roo glanced over at the far end of the room. The shelves that had once been filled with skeletons were now bare. Even the coyote was gone, and the desk was cleared of glue and wire.

  “But why?” Roo asked. Although she hadn’t liked them, this seemed like a bad omen.

  “I got tired of them,” Phillip murmured, then looked away.

  Roo sighed.

  “You heard her again tonight, didn’t you?” she said.

  Phillip nodded.

  “Maybe it was the river,” Roo said. “Or the wind.”

  He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes, then let them drop to the sides of his face. His dark eyes looked flat, deadened, like his father’s eyes.

  “Maybe,” he conceded.

  His quietness alarmed her. She wished he would scream and she could scream back at him. Instead, he turned over in bed with his back to her and tucked his legs to his chest.

  “Do you want me to stay?” Roo asked. She watched one narrow shoulder rise and fall in a listless shrug.

  Roo lay down beside him. It wasn’t long before Phillip fell back to sleep, but Roo remained awake. She was turning things over in her mind, feeling the tug of a decision that she didn’t want to make. She had found the garden, yes, but it wasn’t hers. Not really. It was Ana’s and so it was Phillip’s too. Maybe Ana was waiting for him, down in the garden. Maybe the garden was waiting for him too.

  Chapter 17

  Dressed in regular clothes, Phillip looked even more fragile than he had in his pajamas. His spindly arms poked out of his short-sleeved shirt and a belt was cinched tightly around his pants.

  “He won’t like me,” Phillip said.

  “He might if you don’t act like a monster,” Roo replied. She reached over and adjusted his shirt collar so that his jutting collarbone didn’t show.

  “I don’t see why he won’t just come up here to meet me.” His voice turned peevish.

  “He’s shy of people,” Roo explained.

  She had told Phillip only that she was going to take him to meet Jack. She hadn’t mentioned the garden at all. Phillip’s moods were so unpredictable that she worried he would throw a fit when he learned that the garden had been there all along, abandoned and left to die. It would be safer, she reasoned, for him to see it for himself, out of earshot.

  “Do you remember what to say to Ms. Valentine?”

  “I think so.”

  He pressed the buzzer on his nightstand. Ms. Valentine was at the door so quickly that Roo worried she had been just outside the whole time, listening. Her face revealed nothing, though, as Phillip gave her instructions: “I’m teaching Roo how to play chess today, and we are not to be disturbed.”

  “You’re dressed,” Ms. Valentine said with surprise.

  “I made him get dressed,” Roo cut in quickly. “I was sick of seeing him in his pajamas.”

  Ms. Valentine ignored her and studied Phillip’s face. “Shouldn’t you rest? You’ve had a difficult night.”

  “I’m fine,” he said.

  “Your eyes look a little bloodshot.”

  “My eyes are my business,” he snapped at her. “Now leave us alone. If you bother us again, you’ll make me mad, and I’ll tell my father when he gets back.”

  Ms. Valentine hesitated, then glanced at Roo suspiciously before she left the room.

  “She won’t bother us now,” he told Roo.

  “I don’t know how she doesn’t hate you,” Roo said, half marveling. “I would.”

  “My father pays her not to hate me,” he said simply. He started for the door, but Roo stopped him.

  “Not that way,” she said. “We’re going through here.”

  Roo led him through the door that opened out to the secret passageway, stopping by the chute. With the toe of her sneaker she
gave it a little tap.

  “That’s our way down,” she told him.

  Phillip looked at the dark chute apprehensively. “I used to throw candy wrappers down it. Where does it go?”

  “All the way to the basement.”

  Roo got down on the floor and went into the chute, feet first, careful this time to brace her legs against the edges to keep herself from sliding down. She looked up at Phillip. “Come on. I’ll hold on to you.”

  Phillip crouched down and adjusted his legs so that they were resting over her shoulders. She wrapped her arms around his calves, then she pulled them both forward into the mouth of the chute.

  “Ready?” she asked.

  “I guess so,” Phillip said, his voice faltering.

  Relaxing her legs, Roo let herself slide with Phillip sliding behind her. When they began to pick up speed, Roo heard him make a small sound, as if he were trying to stifle a scream. Quickly she pressed her legs against the side again to stop them.

  “All right up there?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “You sound funny.” She tried to twist her head to look up at him, but in that small space, it was close to impossible.

  “It’s just that…,” Phillip said, “it feels…I’ve never moved so fast.”

  “Do you want me slow down?”

  “No. I want you to go faster.”

  Roo laughed, then wrapped her arms around his legs more tightly. “You asked for it.”

  She let go and they sped downward at full speed, their backs skimming across the cool metal. It was nearly as thrilling as Dumbfounder’s Current, and the two of them laughed helplessly the whole way down, right up until they reached the bottom. And there was Jack, waiting there, looking bemused.

  “It sounded like the walls were laughing,” he said.

  Roo shimmied to the floor so fast that Phillip slid onto the platform awkwardly, his legs strangely splayed. The smile left his face and his eyes darted toward Jack ruefully, as if he were waiting for an insult. But Jack had experience with creatures that were mistrustful of him.

  “I’m Jack.” He put out his hand for Phillip to shake. Phillip took it, and Jack gave him a discreet tug, just enough so that Phillip could ease himself into a sitting position and then slip off the platform.

  His dignity recouped, Phillip now looked at Jack carefully, taking in the odd clothes, the pale hair in its short ponytail.

  “Where is Sir?” Phillip asked.

  “Just outside.” Jack nodded his head toward the basement door.

  “I’d like to see him,” Phillip said, and started for the door, but Roo grabbed him by the wrist.

  “Not yet. We wanted to show you something else first,” she said.

  She led him past the wired panel and he followed her up the narrow stairs with Jack behind him. Roo pushed open the trapdoor and they all scrambled up into the garden.

  “It’s still here,” Phillip murmured as he looked around.

  Roo braced herself for an outburst. Jack moved up beside him, hands in his pocket, his body looking deliberately relaxed.

  He’s trying to keep him calm, Roo realized. Like he did with the mink on the shoal.

  But the crying and shrieking that Roo had expected never came. Instead, Phillip began to walk through the garden, looking up at the towering trees and the lacy brown creepers clinging to the glass panes; at the bare patches of earth and the small hummocks of leaf litter that Roo and Jack had piled in the corner.

  “It used to be all green,” he said finally, “with flowers everywhere.”

  He stepped onto the stone path and began to walk along it. “This was a stream.”

  “We thought it was a footpath,” Roo said.

  “No, a stream…there were berry bushes that grew along here.” He paused to run his hands over a skeletal bush, then followed the stream to its end at the base of the rocky ledge, below the boulder. Gazing up, he said, “And this was where the waterfall was. There are pipes in the stones.”

  “I didn’t see them,” Roo said.

  “They’re hidden. Look.” He hopped out of the streambed and scrambled up the slope, his spidery body clambering over the rocks. When he got to the top, he pointed to the tiny metal pipes embedded in the stone. He showed them other things too, like the fissures in the rocks where flowers grew from and where the banana tree once stood, parsing it all out, just as he’d done with his skeletons. And in a way, Roo thought, all that was left of the garden was its bones—and a bat squeak of life beneath the soil.

  Phillip stopped talking suddenly. His head lifted as though he were listening. Then he turned to them, smiling. A small, quiet smile of relief.

  “What is it?” Roo asked.

  “She’s here,” he said.

  They found another bucket for Phillip, though he wasn’t strong enough to carry it full. At first, Sir startled at the sight of Phillip. He spread his wings and scrambled into the air, flying to a nearby tree. But soon he grew used to him. As the stately bird patrolled the shallow waters for fish, he ventured closer. Once, Phillip reached out very quickly and let his fingertips brush against the bird’s wing while Sir kept perfectly still, his round yellow eyes fixed on Jack.

  After an hour of watering, Phillip grew tired. He stretched out on the boulder above the waterfall and rested his head on his flung-out arm while Roo and Jack kept working. Soon he lay so still that Roo went up to the boulder to check on him. Phillip’s body had shifted so that it fit against the contours of the rock more comfortably. His right hip had found a depression to lean into and his right foot had slipped into a narrow crack in the lowest part of the rock. Roo put a hand to his cheek. His skin was cool and dry. He was breathing peacefully. Fast asleep.

  Satisfied that he was okay, they left him so they could cool off in the river. They went down into the hidden cove and poured bucketfuls of water over each other’s heads, while Sir paced the banks, watching them skeptically.

  Even before they reentered the garden, Roo knew something was wrong. The door to the basement was slightly ajar, when she was sure she had shut it tightly. As she and Jack climbed the ladder to the trapdoor, a sickish feeling began to fill her belly.

  “Someone’s here,” she whispered to Jack.

  A shadow passed across the open trapdoor and they heard footsteps above them.

  “Maybe Phillip’s awake,” Jack said.

  Slowly Roo climbed to the top of the stairs and peered into the garden to see a pair of long, jean-clad legs.

  “Oh, Roo,” Violet murmured. She glanced over at Phillip, still asleep on the boulder. “What were you thinking?”

  “He wanted to come,” Roo cried. “He was happy. He was laughing! I’ve never heard him laugh like that.”

  “Yes, I heard him too. I heard the both of you, though for the life of me I couldn’t figure out where the laughter was coming from. It was when I poked around outside and saw the trampled grass by the basement door that I put it together.” Violet shook her head. “What have you done, Roo?”

  “I’ve been trying to make things better.”

  “Better? What you’ve made is a colossal mess. Can’t you see the harm you’ve done? Your uncle shut the garden up for a reason.”

  “What reason?” Roo countered combatively. “Because he killed his wife? Mrs. Wixton said people think he did.”

  “I know what people think, and I know the people who think it. They have all sorts of other nonsense to say too. If they had to mind their own business for a full week, they would give themselves hernias, every last one of them.”

  “Then why did he shut the garden up?” Roo demanded.

  “I don’t know. But that’s not our concern, is it? What you should be concerned about is what will happen when your uncle comes back to find that you’ve opened the garden up and brought Phillip down here too…I wouldn’t be surprised if he tossed us all out.”

  “Then you can’t tell him,” Jack said.

  He had been hidden from Violet’s view,
behind Roo on the stairs. At the sound of this unfamiliar voice Violet’s eyes narrowed.

  “Who’s with you?” she asked.

  Roo said nothing, but an urgent tap on her back persuaded her to climb up into the garden so that Jack could do the same.

  At the sight of him, Violet caught her breath. She looked at Roo, then at Jack, then back at Roo. “It is him, isn’t it?”

  Roo nodded.

  Violet smiled, then put the back of her hand against her mouth as though to hide it. She shook her head. “If the Donkey grannies could see this…” Violet glanced back and forth at the two of them. “Even if I keep your secret—and I’m not saying I will—you’ll be caught sooner or later. Ms. Valentine doesn’t miss much. And if she doesn’t guess, Phillip is bound to spill the beans during some tantrum. Incidentally, how were you planning to sneak Phillip back in the house?”

  “I was going to wait until eleven when Ms. Valentine goes to Choke Cherry for the mail, and then tell you that Phillip wanted his lunch.”

  “And while I’m fixing it, you sneak him back upstairs.”

  Roo nodded.

  “The nerve of you two!” But she seemed more amused than angry. Her eyes returned to Jack and she shook her head. “The Faigne, here in our house! The Donkey grannies would keel over! They’d never believe me, even if I swore up, down, and round the bend…”

  Then Jack did the most astonishing thing. From his back pocket he pulled out a knife and opened it. Grabbing the top of his ponytail, he sawed at the hair above the rubber band, and in a minute he held out his blond ponytail toward Violet.

  “Show them this,” Jack said. His hair was now short and jaggedy. It made him look more like a regular sort of boy—the kind that Roo might have seen on the streets in Limpette.

  Violet stared down at the flaxen thing.

  “Is this a bribe?” she asked, raising her eyebrow at Jack.

  “Yes,” he answered, smiling. And to Roo’s relief, she could see the Faigne again in his smile, and so apparently did Violet.

  “All right.” Violet reached out and took the ponytail. “I’ll keep your secret.”

  “Thank you, Violet,” Roo said.