The Slightly Alarming Tale of the Whispering Wars

by Jaclyn Moriarty

  The others were there too, a tight little crowd, panting and trembling. The twins cursed magnificently. Sand blew on the wind and stung our eyes. The beach had stopped roiling now, but we were surrounded by hundreds of plungingly deep pits.

  ‘It’s like honeycomb!’ cried Hamish. ‘The beach is honeycombed with holes. Now, I tell you, what I wouldn’t give for some honeycomb right now. Love the stuff. Find it calms me down in a crisis, wouldn’t you agree, everyone? Honeycomb?’

  ‘Never tasted it,’ Eli said, sounding fierce.

  ‘And if you do not shut your mouth about honeycomb,’ Taya put in, ‘I will—’

  ‘How are we going to get off the beach?’ Finlay interrupted. ‘The boardwalk looks all right, but there are too many holes between here and there.’

  ‘And the spaces between the holes, they are too narrow,’ Alejandro agreed.

  ‘It’s like the beach is a piece of paper,’ Glim said, ‘and somebody has cut out so many sections there are only flimsy bits of paper left between.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Victor said coldly, ‘for wasting our time with your terribly helpful analogies.’

  Glim pretended not to hear. ‘If we tried to walk along the thin bits,’ she continued, ‘they might collapse into the pits.’

  ‘The pits look awfully deep,’ Hamish said, shuddering. ‘I wouldn’t want to fall into one. Even if I did have some honeycomb.’

  The twins growled at him.

  ‘I think if you fell, the sand would collapse in and suffocate you,’ Bronte observed. ‘Look what’s happened to the hut.’

  Carefully, we swivelled to peer down at the Beach Hut. It had vanished. Buried in sand now, only a corner of the roof visible. Along the beach, most of the other huts had also disappeared. So had our spades, and all the sandbags we’d filled. So much for all that work!

  ‘Should we just wait until the Spellbinders come?’ I wondered. ‘They’ll reverse the spell.’

  ‘But where are the Spellbinders?’ Finlay wondered back. ‘I think the Witches might have overcome them.’

  ‘Can’t stay here,’ Eli grunted. ‘This isn’t stable either.’

  ‘I’m not walking on that sand,’ Victor announced. ‘We must simply wait.’

  Glim’s eyes became dreamy. ‘If only we could fly,’ she began, but Victor grunted angrily.

  ‘Oh Glim and her flying again,’ he complained. ‘You really are a tiresome girl. Could you please get it into your head that you will never, ever fly?’

  There was a silence. The waves crashed onto the shores. Boats creaked out at sea. I took a deep breath.

  ‘I think,’ I said, ‘that we must form a human chain.’

  FINLAY

  So that’s what we did.

  We argued first, of course. Some people, such as Victor, thought we should stay put until Spellbinders came. Some, such as me, thought it was too dangerous to wait because the sand could fall from beneath us any moment. Then Victor refused to hold ‘an orphan’s hand’ and kept swatting Honey Bee and Hamish’s hands away from ours, saying, ‘Germs! Careful! Germs!’

  In the end, Bronte and Alejandro formed the link between us.

  Fair play to them for hanging around, by the way. They could’ve vanished themselves into the future at any point during the Witch attack, but they stuck it out.

  It was a long, long trek along the thin bridges of sand, and even with the future kids between us, we had to trust each other. We skirted holes as their edges slipped and crumbled. More than once, someone skidded downwards, screaming, and the rest of us dragged them out. Honey Bee’s shoe slipped off and tumbled into a hole, and we all watched as the sand turned itself over, swallowing the shoe. Our hands were clasped together so tightly that our palms bled from the clutch of fingernails. You could see the muscles in everyone’s arms tensing. My muscles were a fair bit more pronounced than Victor’s, by the way. I happened to notice that.

  We made it.

  Obviously we did or we wouldn’t be here telling this story. Still. Thinking back now, I can’t believe it.

  Once we’d collapsed onto the boardwalk, nobody made a sound. We just sort of flopped, and the wood felt good, warm and steady.

  ‘Oh,’ said a tiny voice, and I looked up. Honey Bee was staring at the beach. The roiling and rolling had started up again with vigour. Sand piles were shifting, sinking and reforming.

  The patch of sand we’d been standing on had disappeared entirely.

  ‘Told you so,’ I really, really wanted to say to Victor.

  But I showed strength of character and didn’t.

  Honey Bee

  We stared at the beach as it tossed and billowed like a great beast trying to get comfortable.

  ‘It’s like the rules of nature are broken,’ Eli said. ‘Like when the currents of the Starling Ocean ran west-east instead of east-west six years ago.’

  ‘What makes you think we need a geography lesson?’ Victor demanded.

  Eli shrugged. ‘Read about it in a paper once.’

  ‘Could we go back to town now?’ Glim wondered. ‘Or would the Witch’s spell have affected other areas?’

  A chill washed over me as I imagined the Town Square and the streets dipping and folding, homes and shops crashing into bottomless pits.

  At that moment, several dragons swept over us.

  ‘It’s the Dragon Corp!’ Hamish cried.

  We all looked up, sceptical, but sure enough, there were people riding the dragons! Officers! Big, burly men in crash helmets and armour. One hovered low and called out gruffly: ‘Everyone all right down here?’ We gave him the thumbs-up, and he wheeled around and flew away with the others.

  Victor chuckled. ‘There you go, Glim,’ he said. ‘That’s the closest you’ll ever get to riding a dragon. A glimpse of a proper officer.’

  Both the future children made curious sounds—Bronte’s sound was like an angry scowl come to life. But Glim turned to the pair and spoke shyly. ‘I know you can’t tell me about the future,’ she said, ‘but is it possible that regular people—not just officers—can fly dragons there?’

  Bronte bit her lip, frowning.

  ‘Well,’ Alejandro began.

  The air vibrated sternly and the future children vanished. ‘Now look what you’ve done,’ Victor said, rolling his eyes. ‘You are tiresome, Glim.’

  ‘Oi!’ the twins said simultaneously, both stepping up to Victor. Finlay also raised his fists, and suddenly everyone was bellowing.

  That was when I saw him.

  At the far end of the beach, moving along the boardwalk, was a young man. Even from this distance, it was clear he was walking oddly.

  A slow dawdle, little skip, slow dawdle, little skip.

  ‘Golly!’ Hamish exclaimed. ‘Whoever is that?’

  The others dropped their argument to squint into the distance.

  As we watched, the young man stopped. He gazed out to sea.

  He coughed. It was one of those dreadful, deep coughs, like the bark of a walrus. It echoed.

  The man’s body shook. He wiped his hand across his face and his mouth opened: ‘Hey ho! Hey ho!’ A little wiggle.

  ‘Good gracious!’ Hamish said. ‘He’s singing! And what is that, a dance of some kind?’

  Another chill ran through me. I thought of Rosalind. The coughing. The singing.

  The young man had the influenza.

  And then, as we stared, he stepped jauntily off the boardwalk, and down onto the rolling, turning beach.

  FINLAY

  Honey Bee took off first.

  She was tearing along the boardwalk while the rest of us gawked in amazement.

  Why would he go down to the sand?

  What, is he mad? He is a daft git!

  That’s the sort of thing I was thinking.

  Then the rest of us were running too, sprinting and pounding along.

  Honey Bee was already skidding onto the sand, which was daft-gittish of her, but you could tell she hadn’t stopped to think. Just hurtle
d after the fellow. She grabbed hold of his hand and started pulling, but he shook her off. I caught sight of his face. He was smiling in a friendly way, and trying to head further down the beach like someone on a picnic.

  Next I caught sight of Honey Bee’s face and it was not friendly. She was gritting her teeth, wrapping her arms around him and dragging.

  The rest of us were on the edge of the boardwalk, screaming: ‘GET BACK HERE! COME BACK! GET OFF THE BEACH!’

  The young man turned and gave us a cheery wave. Barmy.

  Right about then, the sand at his feet began to crumble and he swayed in place a moment, looked down, saw himself sinking and finally figured it out.

  ‘I’m terribly sorry,’ he said stumbling back, and turning to Honey Bee. His voice was loud and clear. ‘I do not mean to offend you, but this seems a trifle unsafe as a holiday destination, wouldn’t you say? Got any better suggestions?’

  Honey Bee, to give her credit, did not sock him in the face. She got a firmer grip on his arm, gave a mighty tug, and half-dragged him back up the slope and onto the boardwalk.

  There he stood, swaying and beaming around. ‘At any rate,’ he began—and he collapsed. Head hit the board with a thud.

  ‘He’s got the influenza,’ Honey Bee said, panting. ‘Somebody fetch him a doctor.’

  Honey Bee

  He looked dreadful.

  I mean, you could see he was handsome with his black hair and his fine cheekbones, but that was rather in the background. In the foreground was his scrawny neck, the pale purple colour that washed over his face, and his glowing white lips. I never knew lips could be white! Blood trickled out of these lips, scarlet by contrast. When I touched his forehead, it was so clammy that I wiped my hand on my skirt.

  Finlay and Glim raced off towards town to fetch a doctor—I hoped that was what they were doing, anyway—and the rest of us hovered around the sick man.

  ‘Golly,’ Hamish said. ‘Is he dead? I mean to say, he looks thoroughly dead to me, and he’s perfectly still. Wouldn’t that suggest that he is dead? What do we—I mean to say, what does one do in this situation? When one finds a dead man?’

  ‘Stay away from him for a start,’ Victor snapped, sounding a little ill himself. ‘We’re no use to him if we catch it.’

  Which was nonsense, because you don’t catch influenza instantly. It would take effect in a day or two, giving us plenty of time to be useful to the young man. However, I let that go.

  ‘Move aside,’ the twins instructed, and they elbowed their way into place. One held the man’s wrist, the other studied his chest. They each lifted an eyelid.

  ‘He’s got a pulse,’ one twin said. ‘Faint.’

  ‘He’s still breathing,’ said the other. ‘Just.’

  Taya rested her head against the man’s chest. ‘Serious rattle, though,’ she said.

  Eli took his turn listening. ‘Double pneumonia,’ he nodded. ‘And he’s dehydrated. Anyone got water?’

  ‘We would scarcely have water,’ Victor sneered. ‘Our picnic is buried in the hut in the sand, did you forget that little detail? For goodness sake, this is—’

  Hamish drew a flask from his pocket. ‘Always carry my water bottle! Never know when I might get thirsty!’

  Eli pulled his sleeve over his hand and gently wiped the blood from the man’s mouth. Taya opened the bottle and let a few drops fall onto his lips.

  We did nothing then. The beach had settled down again and I began to worry about how many holes might have formed on the road into town. What if Finlay and Glim had fallen into one? Before long, however, the pair appeared in the distance, jogging along the boardwalk with a young woman.

  ‘Oh good,’ Eli said. ‘Anita.’

  ‘She’s our teacher,’ Taya told me. ‘Also a doctor-in-training.’

  ‘Thank you so much, Taya!’ I cried. She frowned. It was rather odd for me to thank her, but I was excited that she had spoken an ordinary sentence to me—one without a threat to break some part of me.

  This Anita was tiny and spry, her black eyes filled with spark. A medical kit swung from her hand, and she pelted the last few steps, fell to her knees, skidded along and opened the kit, all in one smooth move. It rather took your breath away.

  After examining the patient, she unclasped the top button of his shirt and her sparky eyes darted around in thought. She appeared to make a decision, drew a bottle from the kit, prised open the young man’s lips and tipped in a few drops.

  ‘What’s in the bottle?’ Eli asked.

  Anita turned to him. ‘Store-bought Faery potion. This influenza going around, I think it’s more than influenza. I think it’s Witch-made.’

  Witch-made influenza?

  My dearest Carlos had Witch-made influenza? But in that case, he’d never get well! (Nor would Rosalind—oh dear, I reminded myself quickly.)

  ‘Do the doctors at the hospital agree?’ Finlay asked.

  ‘No, they think it’s regular influenza,’ Anita admitted. ‘But they humour me and let me give the patients a little Faery potion. It can’t hurt them—but it’s not fresh-made, so it’ll never cure a Witch-made flu. You’d need Faeries to administer it. Still, it eases the symptoms.’

  She watched the young man’s face. ‘He needs to be in the Hospital,’ she said. ‘Who’ll help me carry him?’

  All except Victor agreed. We gathered around the young man, ready to lift.

  Before we had done so, however, Anita stopped and stared at the man’s face again. Unexpectedly, she grinned. ‘You know who you’ve rescued, don’t you?’ she asked.

  We blinked.

  ‘The Prince,’ she said. ‘This is Prince Jakob. I recognise him from his official royal portrait. All right, on three, we lift. One, two—’

  ‘Here!’ Victor leapt forward. ‘Perhaps I will help after all.’

  FINLAY

  Turned out, the Prince had climbed out of his fancy hotel bed and wandered onto the boardwalk. His royal entourage had been distracted, watching the Witch coven through the windows.

  I thought the Queen might give us diamond-crusted medals or something, for saving her son, but she was busy with the war. She only sent a little notecard. My heartfelt thanks, it said. Heartfelt is all very well, but it’s not diamonds.

  Spindrift was wrecked by the Witch attack.

  Plenty of streets had folded themselves up same way the beach did, scaring the heck out of everyone, even our meanest local pirates.

  Our buddy Ronnie lost his art supplies down a pit in the Town Square. The grocer lost a cartload of cantaloupes. A cantaloupe is not my favourite melon, so I was okay with that, although I heard that the grocer cried. She loved her cantaloupes.

  Avril had trouble running to shelter on account of her old ankle injury. Got hit by a stack of falling shovels from a display outside the hardware store. Cracked three of her ribs.

  Also, seven people died falling into the holes, twenty-five were seriously injured and a lot of families lost their homes.

  I said that bit fast, not wanting to think about it.

  I didn’t know any of the people who died, but I saw plenty of folk crying into their handkerchiefs. It gets you down, that. Men with red eyes, women being hugged and comforted. The sounds of grown-ups sobbing.

  Gets me down, anyhow.

  It turned out that the Witch coven had taken down our Spellbinders when they arrived in town, using an imprisonment spell on them. By the time the Spellbinders shook off the Witch chains, and rushed to bind the Witch spell, the damage had been done.

  The whole town has been angry ever since, arguing about why we don’t get more Spellbinders, better, more powerful Spellbinders.

  Fed up, everyone is. Had enough of the Whispering Wars. Novelty completely worn off.

  Honey Bee

  One week later, our fourth Tuesday, Mayor Franny sent us to the hospital for our volunteer work.

  Finlay is right. We are all a bit flat. Not literally flat—we have not been run down by a steamroller. I only
mean that nobody is in the mood for much of anything these days. And that fourth Tuesday—which was only a few days ago—was no exception.

  Spindrift Hospital is in the north of the town. It is four floors high with a huge basement, concrete stairs, a creaking lift and slowly turning ceiling fans. The basins have taps that screech when you turn them on, and screech again when you turn them off. Never happy, those taps.

  The Matron snapped at us when we arrived. ‘Can’t think what help you lot are going to be,’ she complained, and then she gave us a long list of tasks. We were to roll bandages, mop floors, mix medicines, put wildflowers in vases to ‘pretty the place up’, and carry trestle beds up from the basement.

  ‘Seems to me we can be a lot of help,’ Finlay whistled, reading the list, but the Matron only shooed us away, muttering that she was ‘busy enough as it was, thank you very much’.

  It was rather distressing being in the Hospital. Some wards were cheerful: beds up against the windows, patients sitting cross-legged doing crossword puzzles, or playing cards with other patients. Other wards, however, were miserable. Patients who had been seriously injured in the war lay staring at the ceiling, moaning softly, chinks of metal melted into their skin. Or they cried out in pain and then quickly apologised for being a nuisance.

  One ward was full of people who had lost their laughter in a Sterling Silver Fox attack, and a doctor was doing exercises with them to try to bring it back. Awful gargling sounds they were making, nothing like laughter at all, and their faces were greyish-blue.

  The top floor was dedicated to the influenza. I helped Alejandro to carry a trestle bed all the way from the basement to this floor—we used the lift so it was not as bad as that might seem—and it was noisy with coughing, sneezing and sniffling.

  In one bed was Lili-Daisy Casimati, the Orphanage Director—the twins had ignored all of the Matron’s instructions and were taking special care of her. She did not look well!

  In another bed, the Prince lay flat, eyes closed. He looked a little better than he had the day we rescued him, but was still gaunt and pale, and we could hear his wheeze even as the lift door opened. As we watched, a little child in a bed near the Prince’s began to cry for her mother, and at once the Prince sat up. ‘Hush,’ he said—or croaked rather. ‘It’ll be all right.’ And he began to sing—or croak—softly for the child.