The Slightly Alarming Tale of the Whispering Wars

by Jaclyn Moriarty

  This can be handy if you are surrounded by angry, squabbling children, but it can also be a nuisance. The Detection Magic jumps too readily and sends you flying back to your own time even if you were only going to say something like, ‘In the future, I’ll try to eat more apples.’ It scans the words we say and ALSO the words of the people around us, keeping an eye out for tricks, you see, that we might use to get around the rule. Say if you asked us questions about the future and we gave ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answers. Or if one of you asked for clues or hints about the future. That could be enough to trigger it. It’s much too sensitive—too keen to do its job.

  Which is why I have written this letter. If we’d tried to tell you all this in person, we’d have been jumped back to the future repeatedly! So tiresome! The Detection Magic will check this letter as we bring it through the hedge with us and will blank out anything that gives away the future—but hopefully you will still get our key message.

  And the key message is this.

  We need to fix history.

  That is, we need somehow to coax you back onto the right track—the track you WOULD HAVE taken if you hadn’t been distracted by trying to capture us. To do this, we need to spend time with you. This is why we signed you up for the volunteer work.

  We cannot tell you what to do, and we cannot give you clues, and you cannot ask us for clues. So this is going to be EXTREMELY TRICKY. Probably hopeless, actually.

  But perhaps somehow you will get the message.

  If not?

  Absolutely catastrophic.

  Yours truly,

  Bronte and Alejandro

  FINLAY

  All I wanted was to figure out the blank bits. The other kids were flinging questions like arrows at Bronte and Alejandro, but I’m just sat there, squinting at the blank bits.

  No use.

  Still blank.

  So I looked at the bits I could see instead.

  ‘Hold up,’ I said. ‘You seem to think that we are these “Children of Spindrift”? What’s that mean exactly?’

  ‘I think your history books must have got us mixed up with somebody else,’ Glim said, apologetically.

  ‘There are plenty of children in Spindrift!’ Rosalind said. ‘Why do you have to pick on us? Bullies, you are!’

  ‘I guess it might be explained in the blank bits,’ I said, and Bronte nodded.

  ‘Well, what’s all this about the seven children then?’ Rosalind crinkled her nose. ‘Can’t count in the future, hm? There are eight of us here! Count!’

  ‘No need,’ Alejandro said agreeably. He was studying a nail that had been hammered crookedly into the side of the cart. He righted this with his thumb, and smiled up at Rosalind. ‘We know it is eight of you here. One of you is not a Child of Spindrift, you see? But do not worry, the rest of you are the Children of Spindrift and we do not think it hurts to have an extra.’

  There was a pause while everyone considered this. Eli swung around to glare, as he still hadn’t seen the letter and didn’t have any idea what we were on about. Then he swung back and twitched the reins.

  ‘Still, I like a good mystery,’ Honey Bee put in eventually. ‘This J-A thing. Let’s solve it, shall we? You were raised by pirates, you say, Alejandro? Did they tell you anything about your parents?’

  ‘It was different stories at different times,’ Alejandro replied, shrugging just like a pirate. ‘They found me on an iceberg with a berg troll. The cook emptied out a sack of flour and here comes little Alejandro, tumbling onto the deck. I was woven from the froth of waves. Such things.’

  ‘Which?’ Hamish asked, confused. ‘Which is true?’

  ‘None is true, you daft git,’ I said. ‘Those are stories the pirates told him.’

  Bronte’s voice sang out suddenly, above the clatter of the wheels and clip-clop of the horse’s hooves: ‘You seem,’ she said, ‘to have missed the point of the letter.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Honey Bee said. ‘The Kingdoms and Empires will go topsy-turvy if we don’t do what we are supposed to do. Oh my!’

  ‘But what?’ Taya demanded. ‘What are we supposed to do?’

  We all looked at Bronte and Alejandro, and the pair of them stared steadily back at us.

  ‘One thing the genie asked,’ Bronte began tentatively, ‘was that you please write up the story of recent happenings. She wants us to bring this writing back to our time so she can read it and pinpoint where things went wrong. In particular, she wants you to tell the story of how the orphans and the Brathelthwaites started battling.’

  ‘I can tell you that story,’ Eli boomed from the driving seat. ‘It’s the story of the Brathelthwaites being toffee-nosed, cheating, prat-headed—’

  ‘That’s easy to explain,’ Victor sneered at the same time. ‘It’s because the orphans are the poorest, nastiest, dirtiest—’

  ‘From both perspectives,’ Alejandro interrupted. ‘You write both sides of the story. On paper, I mean. Taking turns.’

  Victor and Rosalind said they’d never heard anything more ghastly and that they were too rich to pick up pens. Something like that, anyhow. Hamish said, ‘What ho, chaps, I suppose I could do this! What a lark! Wait, what am I supposed to be writing? A sort of play, is it?’

  So Honey Bee stepped in and said she’d write the Brathelthwaite chapters.

  Glim said she’d like to do the orphans’ side but she had a stack of mending to do, and the twins said they read, not write, so that’s how I ended up with the job. Wanted to make sure the Orphanage got a good showing, didn’t I? Glim said she’d help out when she could.

  So if anyone other than the genie is reading this, and wondering why we are writing it? Now you know. A genie from the future told us to.

  Anyhow, we arrived at the Spindrift Junkyard. This is situated on the hills to the north of Spindrift, and it’s like a second home to us orphans. We’re always up here looking out bits of treasure, broken toys that we can repair, chipped old pots that you can have fun smashing against rocks. As usual, there was nobody else around and I suggested we get on with looking through the junk.

  ‘We can take a break in a bit,’ I suggested, ‘and try to sort out this crabapple about how these two want us to fix history without actually telling us—’

  ‘Or in any way hinting,’ Eli put in—he was finally scanning the letter now.

  ‘Or in any way hinting, what it is we’re supposed to do to fix it.’

  We grabbed the burlap sacks and set about looking for metal or magic. Right off I could see a broken umbrella, its spokes like silver spider legs, and an old tin watering can behind it. Bits of metal would be easy. Bits of true magic were unlikely. Not many True Mages come to Spindrift—sometimes people might import a magic-spelled object, or one might wash up on the beach, but neither thing happens often and the object would be too valuable to end up in the Junkyard. You can spot the magic in the silver-blue sheen a magic-spelled object will give off if you squint at it.

  Behind us, Bronte had drawn off her fancy gloves, and Alejandro had pushed up his shirtsleeves, and those two were getting stuck in. The Brathelthwaites were not so quick. Hamish and Honey Bee mostly looked confused, probably never having seen a piece of junk in their lives. Victor and Rosalind were trying to cover their noses with their coats. It doesn’t stink so bad though, really.

  ‘You future children are playing some kind of dreadful trick on us,’ Rosalind fretted, trying to step daintily among the rubbish. ‘A junkyard! And so horribly, dangerously close to the dragon lairs! With orphans! Don’t you know that it is physically painful for people like us to spend time with people like them? Bullying, I say!’

  Bronte and Alejandro turned to look at her, their eyes widening slowly. Both at once seemed to decide she wasn’t worth it, and they carried on scrounging.

  But then Bronte paused again. ‘Dangerously close to dragon lairs?’ she asked.

  Rosalind pointed to a line of yew trees in the distance. You could just see notices pinned to these, flapping in the
breeze. KEEP OUT! DRAGON TERRITORY!

  ‘Beyond the yew trees,’ I explained, ‘is dragon territory. Nobody’s allowed to go past the yew trees.’

  Bronte and Alejandro stared, then frowned at me. Honestly, they must be pretty simple in the future.

  ‘The Dragon Peace Treaty?’ I said.

  Now they both bit their lips. ‘I think we learned something about that in history class at school?’ Bronte hazarded.

  Alejandro shrugged. ‘Often I am looking through the window at the sea in history class,’ he admitted. ‘In every class, I mean. So I do not hear a thing.’

  Honey Bee stepped in then, and told the future kids about the ancient battles between dragons and people in this and the surrounding Kingdoms. How dragons used to breathe fire onto crops so that people starved, and then people began working with Witches to slaughter dragons, and a trade grew up in dragon skins. Baby dragons were especially popular, for their gemstones, and adult dragons began setting towns alight, plucking people from streets and tossing them away out at sea.

  It all led to the great Battle of the Dragons that lasted over twenty years, and ended with the Dragon Peace Treaty.

  Dragons promised to live in their territory and never swoop on or set alight our property or crops, and us people promised to leave them be.

  ‘So nobody around here communicates with dragons?’ Bronte asked. ‘Nobody rides them?’

  ‘To ride a dragon! Ho!’ Victor laughed hilariously. ‘Well, of course, the officers of the Dragon Corp ride Officer Dragons—the Dragon Corp is under the command of the K&E Alliance and is based far away, in the Travails of Endiva. You do know what an Officer Dragon is?’

  Bronte shook her head.

  ‘Oh my. Well, Officer Dragons were bred centuries ago from a few of the most docile dragon babies—they’d been captured by the army. But Officer Dragons are an entirely different beast to wild dragons—think of the difference between a placid old labrador and the fiercest wolf.’

  ‘One day,’ Glim piped up, ‘I’d like to ride an Officer Dragon.’

  Now Victor laughed so hard he had to clutch his belly. A little slip of an orphan like you!’ he crowed. ‘No, no, Officer Dragons can only be ridden by the biggest, strongest men of noble blood. At Brathelthwaite, we have two retired Officer Dragons—they can’t fly much above shoulder height now—too old—and only a handful of us are permitted anywhere near them. But Glim thinks … well … as if an Officer Dragon would ever respect a mere—a girl, a mere orphan such as—’ He couldn’t speak for the guffaws.

  The twins closed in on him, fists raised.

  ‘Apologise to Glim,’ Eli commanded.

  ‘Or we’ll break you into a thousand pieces,’ Taya added.

  ‘And throw all the pieces into dragon territory.’

  ‘Oh look!’ Bronte exclaimed. ‘Is this a magic-spelled frying pan? Everybody come and see! Over here! Hamish? Come see! I think you’ll like this!’

  It wasn’t magic-spelled, of course. It was just a rusty old frying pan filled with multicoloured rubber bands. She was only trying to distract us. It worked. Hamish did not ‘come see’, but he waved politely at Bronte and said, ‘Thanks! Ho!’ And the twins glowered, but carried on foraging.

  About an hour later, we decided to take a break. Hamish spread out a picnic blanket on the grass, opened a basket and started laying out cakes, pastries, cherries and melon.

  My eyes blurred up a bit, watching this. All we had was a couple of canisters of water and a half loaf of rye.

  ‘It’s ready!’ Hamish called. ‘Sit! Eat!’

  ‘Hamish!’ Victor spat. ‘The food is not to share with the orphans.’

  Bronte stared at Victor. ‘Whyever not?’ she asked.

  ‘Because it’s Boarding School food!’

  ‘Oh, you don’t have manners in the past?’ Bronte said, smooth as silk. ‘Or is it that they don’t teach manners at this Boarding School of yours?’

  I have to say I was growing proper fond of this Bronte girl. She’s a funny one—you can’t figure her out. I mean, there’s the obviously confusing thing about her being from the future, but I’m talking more about her personality. One minute she’ll be talking in a polite, grown-up voice, tidying her braids and checking her reflection in her shiny, shiny shoes; next she’ll be chewing her fingernails in a worried way; and then she’ll burst out laughing and give Alejandro a thwack across the back of his head. Her face seems to move around all the time, trying out different expressions.

  Anyway, in the end, we all settled down on the rug to eat, and it was a bit tense, what with orphans accidentally brushing hands against boarders, and vice versa, as we reached for pastries at the same time. Nobody was speaking and the only sounds were the pages of newspapers turning—the twins had brought theirs along, and were reading as usual.

  ‘You know, we still haven’t been introduced properly,’ Bronte said suddenly. ‘Maybe you could tell us a bit about yourselves?’

  ‘Yes,’ Alejandro agreed, spitting out a cherry seed. ‘This idea is good, Bronte. This could coax them towards the fixing of the history. They must think of the talents that could help in the—that could assist with the—’

  ‘With winning the war?’ Honey Bee suggested.

  Something plucked at the air. We all felt it: a kind of jarring, or a shudder.

  ‘That’s the Detection Magic warning us,’ Bronte explained. ‘It thinks we’re trying to give you hints. Calm down, Detection Magic, we’re just getting to know each other. Perfectly innocent. A picnic in the hills by the Junkyard. Somebody start talking.’

  I started. I told her my name is Finlay and my talents are running fast and getting into trouble.

  Glim was ducking her head, too shy to speak—she gets like that sometimes. So I did it for her.

  ‘And this is Glim. She’s also fast and she’s a brilliant storyteller.’

  ‘Oh, most handy,’ Victor muttered, his nose doing a sneery thing. ‘I’m sure that storytelling is just the talent we need to win the war.’

  The twins rose up from behind their papers.

  ‘Glim’s stories,’ said Taya in a voice like a rumbling volcano, ‘are excellent.’

  ‘Beautiful stories,’ Eli agreed, like a rising hurricane. ‘Suspenseful and interesting.’

  Taya nodded. ‘Victor, tell Glim that her stories could absolutely win a war or I will break you into—’

  ‘And these are the twins,’ I cut in, thinking it’d be a shame if the Brathelthwaite feast got trampled, and that we’d never get the cart loaded up in time if the twins had to break Victor into 963 pieces first. ‘Eli and Taya. They’re good at remembering things, cursing, beating people up, diagnosing fatal illnesses and reading newspapers.’

  This worked like a switch. The twins both twitched their noses, quite pleased to be described in this way, and settled back behind their papers again.

  It’s Lili-Daisy’s fault that the twins read papers all the time, by the way.

  The pair turned up at the Orphanage when they were six. (Glim and I have been there since we were two.) They’d been living on the streets when a constable found them stealing clothes pegs from a washing line in town.

  ‘We are water sprites,’ they told him. ‘Need the pegs for our noses, ‘cause we want to dive back home this afternoon.’

  None of this was true. They are clearly not water sprites. For one thing, water sprites don’t need pegs for their noses when they dive. For another thing, the twins are not dead. (Water sprites can’t live for more than twenty minutes outside water.)

  The constable disputed their claim.

  ‘But we washed up on the Beach with the Yellow Sand,’ they complained. ‘So we must be water sprites.’

  ‘You washed up on the beach? You’re probably a pair of pirate children then. Seems more likely to me. When was this?’

  ‘732 days ago,’ Taya replied. ‘We were four.’

  ‘Why, that’s two years ago!’

  ‘Two years would be 7
30 days ago, you daft git,’ Eli retorted. ‘She just said 732. That’s two days more than two years, isn’t?’

  Never afraid of a thing, those twins, not even constables, and always quite good at arithmetic.

  ‘Well, where had you come from?’ the constable tried.

  ‘The sea.’

  ‘But before the sea? Which pirate ship?’

  The twins shrugged. They held up their nails. ‘All we know,’ Eli said, ‘is that our fingernails were an orangey-golden colour.’

  ‘More a goldy-orange,’ Taya corrected him.

  The constable hmphed. ‘Rubbish! Your nails are dirty black!’

  ‘Yes, you daft git,’ Eli agreed. ‘They’re black now. But the day that we washed up on the beach, our fingernails were orangey-gold.’

  ‘Goldy-orange,’ Taya muttered.

  They were still arguing about this when the constable brought them to the Orphanage, and handed them over to Lili-Daisy.

  Glim and I loved them right away. They spent their time smashing things and teaching us curse words. It was the best. One day, Lili-Daisy thrust a newspaper in each of their hands. ‘Here!’ she said. ‘Read! Maybe there’ll be a clue in here that will help you remember your pirate parents!’

  Since then, the twins have never stopped reading. Lili-Daisy bites her lip guiltily now and then, as she’s the one who started their obsession. ‘Perhaps you should run outside and get some fresh air?’ she suggests.

  They frown and keep reading.

  ‘The twins have lost their pirate parents,’ I said, thinking aloud, ‘and Alejandro’s lost his parents because he was on a pirate ship. Maybe there’s a connection?’

  But Alejandro shook his head. ‘Thank you, Finlay, that is beautiful. Like a poem. But we are not allowed to look for my parents anymore. First we must save the Kingdoms and Empires.’ He shrugged.

  ‘What about the Brathelthwaite kids?’ Bronte asked politely. ‘Would you like to introduce yourselves too?’

  So Victor announced that he was a duke, with ‘too many talents to list,’ and chuckled. He pointed to Hamish who was slicing a plum cake, and said that ‘Hamish is useful in that he’s filthy rich and you don’t have to look at his face too often, what with it always being behind his hair’. (Another chuckle—I’ve noticed that Victor sometimes disguises his nastiness as jokes.) Rosalind, he said, was ‘ace at playing a damsel in distress if you needed one’, which made Rosalind blush and giggle.