The Slightly Alarming Tale of the Whispering Wars

by Jaclyn Moriarty

  Anita, the schoolteacher/trainee doctor appeared out of nowhere, darting between beds.

  ‘No, no!’ she scolded, pressing him back into his bed. ‘You are ill! You must rest. It is very good of you to try to cheer the little ones, but you must rest.’

  The Prince smiled faintly, arguing, ‘I’m fine!’ but his head fell back against his pillows. When Anita turned away, I think I saw tears in her eyes.

  Behind the Hospital there is a courtyard where patients can sit and take the sun. After a couple of hours of work, the Matron sent us out there for a break. ‘Better off without you lot underfoot,’ she complained.

  We sat around a table, watching some of the healthier patients digging a vegetable garden. These were being planted everywhere, what with the food shortages. Beyond the vegetable garden was a big sports field, where football games are usually played, but where soldiers were now doing training exercises. This field ran to the hills. The Junkyard was up there somewhere, and so was dragon territory. Now and then the silhouette of a dragon rose in the distance, and puffs of smoke faded against clouds.

  We filled in Bronte and Alejandro on all that had happened after they vanished last time—how we’d rescued Prince Jakob, the destruction in town—and then we tried to make plans to rescue children from the Whispering Kingdom.

  But our words kept fading into listlessness. I think we were wondering what we were doing. We were supposed to be planning a rescue and this would ‘fix history’ and stop the Kingdoms and Empires going topsy-turvy.

  But whom were we fooling? We were mere children ourselves! The Whisperers had become a mighty force, thousands of dark mages on their side! Indeed, just one Witch coven had nearly destroyed our town. And we thought we could somehow better them?

  Madness!

  Also, to be honest, I was beginning to find the Bronte-and-Alejandro situation exasperating. I mean, they knew what we were supposed to be doing, but they could not tell us anything!

  I was in a fierce, glum mood. Do you know that one of the people killed in the Witch attack was a girl who had worked in the kitchen at our school? Many a time had I smiled at her as she peeled potatoes in the garden, and she had smiled back, sometimes sighing in a comical way at the enormous pile of potatoes still to peel.

  Now she was dead.

  No more potatoes would she peel.

  A terrible war was underway, and a vicious influenza, possibly Witch-made, was sweeping our town—my dear friend Carlos and my somewhat less dear friend Rosalind both remained seriously ill. I mean to say, this was—

  ‘This is daft,’ Finlay said suddenly, as if he’d been reading my mind. ‘We can’t rescue children. We can hardly even rescue ourselves.’

  ‘Agreed,’ said Victor.

  ‘As for you two,’ Eli added, looking at the future children in his ferocious way, ‘you’re pretty useless. No offence.’

  So they were all thinking along my lines.

  This was a relief.

  ‘Yes,’ I chimed in. ‘It is terrible that we cannot rescue Jaskafar and the other children, but it was foolish to imagine it. I think it likely that your genie was mistaken about what was meant to happen. I can’t imagine any history in which we go to the Whispering Kingdom and rescue children.’

  ‘And so far,’ Glim said quietly, ‘stars haven’t fallen from the skies and the horizon is still in its place.’

  ‘It’s time to disband this group,’ Taya declared. ‘Let’s volunteer separately from now on.’

  ‘Horrible shame,’ Hamish said. ‘I will miss you all.’

  ‘Let’s shake hands,’ Finlay suggested, ‘and call it a day.’

  We reached out our hands and then—

  ‘There!’ cried Bronte.

  ‘Look at that,’ murmured Alejandro.

  ‘Now they’re ready to rescue the children,’ Bronte declared. She did not seem the least bothered that Eli had just called her useless.

  Alejandro gave a rather lovely shrug. ‘For the first time, they have all agreed on something. Now they are ready to be a team. To be friends even. And, of course, they have already figured out how to get to the Whispering Kingdom, have they not?’

  We stared. ‘We have?’

  ‘Last time?’ he prodded. ‘Just before the warning bells rang?’

  ‘But that was when the twins suggested we allow ourselves to be captured by Whisperers!’ I remembered.

  Bronte and Alejandro both opened their hands out, as if concluding a magic trick.

  ‘Are you saying we should do that?’ I enquired.

  They watched us, not blinking.

  ‘Well now, hang about,’ Hamish argued. ‘Even if a Whisperer does capture us and take us to their Kingdom, how do we escape, if you see what I’m saying? There’s no way around those super-charged Whispers, is there? Or am I missing something?’

  There was another powerful silence from the future children. They simply sat and gazed.

  Glim shifted suddenly. She looked hard at Bronte and Alejandro. ‘They know,’ she hissed. ‘They know a way around the super-charged Whispers!’

  ‘Oh brilliant!’ Hamish said. ‘They could give us a cl—’

  ‘SHHHHH!’ We all turned on him.

  There was another long pause. Nobody said a word. We watched the future children and they watched us back.

  ‘Alejandro,’ Bronte said. ‘How might you fire a cannon?’

  I blinked, rather surprised, but Bronte remained still—except for one thing. As she spoke, she touched her own wrist, and then slowly she ran a finger around it.

  Beside her, Alejandro also touched his own wrist, and ran a finger around it in the same way as Bronte. Mysterious. ‘Of course!’ he said. ‘It is like this. First, you must have eight people. It is many, I know. But there it is. One puts the gunpowder down the barrel, and next the cannon ball.’

  He paused. For a moment, he and Bronte sat running their fingers around their own wrists. We all frowned.

  Now Bronte stood. She pulled the ties from her hair, tilted her head so that her hair fell over her shoulder, and began to braid it. It made me rather miss my own braid.

  Gosh, I thought suddenly. She’s not very good at that!

  She was braiding in such a slow and precise way! I wanted to leap up and do it for her.

  ‘Go on, Alejandro,’ she said now, rather chattily, as she braided.

  ‘And then this person shouts, Run out! And the others drag the cannon to the gunport,’ Alejandro said.

  Bronte completed the braid, ran her fingers through it, releasing the strands, and started over again. ‘Mm-hm.’

  Alejandro nodded. ‘Hold a lit taper over the touch-hole, which makes—’

  Now he also stood up. He pointed his boot at a spot on the paving stones. We all looked down. Nothing there. He slid his boot along and stopped. Another jab with his toe. Still nothing there. Just scattered shadows.

  ‘Which makes the cannonball fly out,’ Bronte finished. As she spoke her own boot was reaching out to touch the exact spots that Alejandro had just pointed out. Thud went her foot. She began to braid again. ‘And the cannon itself jolts back, a little like those super-charged Whispers, which—’

  At this point there was a great surge in the air. It had a sort of HEY!!! quality to it—and once again the future children disappeared.

  FINLAY

  Ha, that’s exactly what it was like. HEY!!! You got this sense that the Detection Magic had been leaning against the wall, humming to itself, bored by instructions on how to fire a cannon—blahdy-blah, ho hum—and then it suddenly cottoned on to what they were doing.

  They were giving us clues.

  Clues about the super-charged Whispers.

  Not especially helpful clues, mind. I mean, winding rings around your wrist and then poking your foot at the ground.

  Eh?

  We all thought the clues meant different things. Got into a big fight about it right away. Ha ha. The future children thought we were buddies now and ready to ‘work tog
ether’ but there was plenty of fight left between us!

  The twins thought the clues meant we should break the Whisperers’ wrists and then slam them against the floor, all the while firing cannons at them.

  ‘The cannon instructions were a cover for the actual clues, you dolts,’ Victor sighed. Between you and me, I agreed with him about the cannon instructions being a cover, but I couldn’t have him calling the twins dolts. So I got him in a headlock. He twisted himself out of it.

  Hamish thought they’d been teaching us a sort of dance where you spun in place and then pointed your toes. He got himself dizzy trying to demonstrate. When we asked what the dance had to do with super-charged Whispers he said, ‘Oh golly, is that what this is about?’ and sat down.

  Honey Bee thought the wrist-winding thing indicated time passing, like a watch going around, maybe meaning that super-charged Whispers wore off after a certain point.

  ‘Time passing, eh?’ Victor sneered. ‘So what, each spin of their wrists was an hour going by? Or a day? A week?’

  Honey Bee’s face fell. ‘I’m not sure…’

  ‘And how many spins did they each give?’

  ‘I don’t know…’

  ‘Most helpful then, Honey Bee. Brilliant deduction, full of—’

  ‘Nine,’ said the twins in unison. ‘Bronte and Alejandro both spun their fingers around their wrists nine times.’

  That irritated Victor. He crinkled his nose. ‘Well, clearly,’ he said, ‘the circling finger is a universal symbol for somebody who is cuckoo. And I for one—’

  ‘Maybe something is buried underneath this courtyard?’ Glim suggested. ‘They kept pointing out the same spots on the paving stones.’

  And so on.

  Eventually, we gave up trying to figure out the clues, and we all headed off, thinking our own thoughts.

  Nobody mentioned the idea of getting a Whisperer to capture us. But we had definitely sparked up. It was the way the future kids tricked the Detection Magic, I think. And the way they stomped all over our decision to call off the rescue.

  Anyhow, that’s how I’m feeling. A bit more sparked. And you know what? Secretly, I’m thinking that I’ll do it.

  Not to fix the future, not to stop the Kingdoms and Empires falling apart. I’ve started to think, like Honey Bee, that that is a load of crabapple.

  No, I’ll do it because those children need rescuing.

  I’ll figure out a way to let the Whisperers take me.

  And once I’m in the Whispering Kingdom, no Whisperer will be able to stop me. I can stand up to a turbo-boosted, super-powered Whisper!

  I’m the boy who rockets down the laundry chute each birthday, and nobody tells me what to do.

  Honey Bee

  Yes, that’s what I’m thinking too, also secretly.

  I mean, not exactly that. I don’t rocket down laundry chutes and people can tell me what to do. I’m quite afraid of teachers, actually.

  But I’m thinking that I will wander the streets alone until a Whisperer spies me and takes me to the Whispering Kingdom.

  And once I get there, I’ll Spellbind the whole Kingdom and rescue the children.

  Because guess what?

  I know what my blue toenails meant.

  I searched through medical books in our school library right after it happened. They mean I am a Spellbinder.

  If your toenails turn blue, especially under the light of the full moon, you are a Spellbinder.

  I also know what is happening in the teachers’ wing at my school. They’re not codebreakers at all. They’re Spellbinders. Practising their art. That explains why Constable Rachel Rally is there.

  Net-weaving, potions and chants are the tools of the Spellbinders, I read in the first book I opened.

  And those were the three things I had seen in the teachers’ wing. People weaving nets on looms. People making potions of peppercorns. People chanting.

  The book I’ve been reading the most the last week or so is The Art of Spellbinding: A Beginner’s Guide. I’ve been studying it. Here’s the introduction:

  Spellbinders work by TYING UP the Shadow Magic of Witches, Sirens, Radish Gnomes and all the other Shadow Mages. They do this by WEAVING AN IMAGINARY NET around that magic.

  When you need to stop a Shadow Mage, begin by closing your eyes and SEEING the Shadow Magic. Visualise it.

  Next, move your hands as if you are weaving a net. As you do so, imagine that the Shadow Magic is WITHIN THE NET. Trap it tightly in your net! Do so quick as a flash!

  Your Spellbinding will be stronger if you learn some chants and drink some potions. (We recommend reading E.E. Cho, The Hundred Best Spellbinder Chants and Litia Ahmed, Potions that Pack a Punch: Drink Your Way to Superior Spellbinding.)

  But you don’t really need the chants or the potions. The key is in your hand movements: try weaving actual nets first, to get it right.

  My school library doesn’t have copies of The Hundred Best Spellbinder Chants or Potions that Pack a Punch, and neither does the Spindrift Public Library, but that’s all right. The book says the key is in the hand movements!

  I plan to find some fisherfolk, and ask if they’ll teach me net-making. In the meantime, I’ve been studying manuals on fishing nets, and practising the sheet bend knot, moving my hands about, in the darkness of my room each night.

  As I fall asleep, a secret thought plays in my mind: I am a Spellbinder! I am a Spellbinder!

  And each day, a secret song sings in my mind:

  Of all of us

  I am the one

  The only one

  Who can defeat the Whisperers.

  I know you’re supposed to get trained really, and I know this song is a bit conceited of me, and I know it doesn’t rhyme or anything.

  FINLAY

  Well.

  A lot has happened.

  Guess where we are?

  I’ll give you a clue: it’s not Spindrift.

  Ah, you’ll never guess. I’ll tell you.

  The Whispering Kingdom.

  Honey Bee and I have decided we’ll carry on writing the story. Not so much for the genie now, but it might be handy for people to know how we ended up here and what’s going on.

  Our fifth Tuesday volunteer day was my birthday. I was pretty chuffed about this. Well, obviously I was. It was my birthday.

  But what I mean is, I was chuffed that we were doing volunteer duty that day. Not because I wanted to see the Brathelthwaite kids, you daft git. I’m not saying I’d lost my ruddy marbles.

  No, it was because the Brathelthwaite kids brought along their picnic basket each week, and Bronte always made them share it with us.

  I tell you, there was enough food in that basket for two hundred kids. Shortages and rationing everywhere else, but the Brathelthwaites could cram a wicker basket with pastries, cakes, apricot conserves, oranges, raspberries and cream. There was this one particular twisty pastry and when you unwrapped it from its cloth napkin, it was warm and buttery, which was something in itself, but listen, inside this pastry?

  Melted chocolate.

  I am not messing with you.

  You’d bite into this thing and there it would be, filling your mouth: warm, oozing chocolate.

  A bit dizzy now, actually, writing that down.

  Maybe I should end my chapter here—nah, I’ll be okay.

  Thing is, I planned to nab that twisty pastry on my birthday. It was the first thing came to mind when I woke up.

  But the picnic never happened.

  What actually happened that day shocked me more than the time I was six years old and I fell off the wharf into a nest of zapper eels. Now that I look back, I can see that it shouldn’t have shocked me at all.

  For a start, everywhere you turned around Spindrift, you’d see a sign flapping in the wind: WATCH OUT, WHISPERERS ABOUT!

  There were plenty of strangers in town People move around a lot in wartime, see, on account of having lost their homes or families.

  Or on account
of wanting to make some quick cash.

  That kind of folk set up stalls in the Town Square, crowding out our local vendors. They sold Patented Whisper-Proof Helmets, or Anti-Whisper Lime Popsicles or Crushed Ginger Biscuit Powder With Magical Properties That Will Render You Immune to Whispers If You Take Just a Spoonful Three Times a Day.

  Every single one was a con artist.

  Charlatans, Glim called them.

  The constables kept moving them on, but locals would chase after them anyway, begging for their goods and handing over their silver.

  People were pretty scared, see. Every day there were more stories about the Whisperers rampaging across the Kingdoms and Empires, along with their Shadow Mage and pirate allies, stealing children and taking down cities and ports. Not just destroying buildings and killing people, mind. Other stuff too. Newspaper headlines rattled on about how Whisperers were infiltrating everybody’s life.

  How a Whisperer Stole My Boyfriend

  A Whisperer Gave Me a Pimple on My Wedding Day

  Whisperers Made Me Fail my Algebra Exam

  Some of these headlines were a crateload of crabapple, I’m sure. But people couldn’t get enough of them.

  Here comes the point of all this. Those signs and headlines? They never made it clear that the problem Whisperers were not your regular Whisperers. Nobody ever said: Watch out for Whisperers who are using Shadow Magic to give them supercharged Whispers. It was just plain Watch out for Whisperers.

  Of course, my version is not exactly pithy. But they still needed to specify! Because pretty soon, everyone forgot that Whisperers had ever been nice, gentle folk.

  A handful of Whisperers live in our town, and they’ve never caused a single bit of trouble.

  But suddenly, people were gossiping about them. Notices were going up outside restaurants and inns: