The Slightly Alarming Tale of the Whispering Wars

by Jaclyn Moriarty

  It was wonderful. I wanted to show them everything: all the things that I did with Aunt Rebecca. The local markets where we bought bread and cheese, placing these in the string bags that we ourselves had made, the woods where we picked raspberries, the hills where we rode our bicycles and then picnicked on treacle cake and raspberry muffins. Aunt Rebecca borrowed bikes from her friends for my parents to ride and the four of us rode together!

  As the sun was setting that day, I told my parents that the most exciting part of the day was yet to come. On Saturday evenings, the local orchestra plays on the beach and everybody comes out to hunt for pipis along the shore.

  My parents were sitting on Aunt Rebecca’s couch, their arms stretched along the back, their feet up. Glasses of wine stood on the table before them, red for my mother, white for my father.

  ‘Here!’ I said to my parents. ‘You take the best buckets! Ready to go?’

  They glanced at each other. Bit their lips. I knew they were going to say something disappointing.

  ‘Perhaps we could do that next time we visit?’ Mother suggested. ‘It’s just I strained a muscle riding the bicycle today, and I rather think I should rest it.’

  ‘And darling, I’m so sorry,’ Father added, ‘but my eyes just want to close. I was up until late last night labelling my ants and I’m so weary.’

  They both looked at me ruefully.

  But I shook my head.

  ‘No!’ I said. ‘We have to! What if you don’t come again on a Saturday? What if the tradition changes? What if the pipis all disappear? This could be our last chance to hunt for pipis!’

  My father sighed. My mother smiled.

  ‘We’re so sorry,’ my mother began—but I would not let her go on.

  I begged.

  I pleaded.

  I even cried and stamped my foot.

  Anyway, I made them come pipi gathering with me.

  I made them.

  Aunt Rebecca stayed behind as she had planned a splendid roast dinner for my parents’ visit, and had to tend to the potatoes and ice the chocolate-cherry mud cake.

  We did have a fun time. My parents both splashed their faces with cold water to wake themselves up. Crowds of local folks swarmed along the beach swinging their buckets and doing the ‘pipi shuffle’. Pipis are a kind of clam, in case you don’t know, and you catch them by twisting your bare feet into the sand and then scooting back until you hit one. That’s the shuffle. Father and I were laughing our heads off at my mother’s shuffle. She wiggled her hips and pursed her lips and really carried on!

  The orchestra played on the beach, as usual, and the sky turned pink with sunset. Everything was perfect—until the first arrow.

  Zip.

  A flash of light passing right by my nose.

  It wasn’t really an arrow—it was a quill from a passing berg troll. When berg trolls get too close to the shore, the water is too warm for them. They become feverish and release their quills like arrows.

  ‘HEY! HEY!’ Father shouted, trying to alert the berg troll that people were on the shore. Others joined him in yelling. Nobody was very worried at this point. Berg trolls usually mean no harm: you just have to let them know that you’re there. My parents and I waded into the waves, cupping our hands around our mouths to shout more loudly at the troll.

  Then came the sky-full of quills.

  That is the only way I can describe it. The air was suddenly alive with quills, bristling with them, some arching high, some skimming fast and low over the water.

  ‘It’s a herd of trolls,’ my father said, amazed, and then he was hit.

  He was beside me and then he was facedown in the water. Mother and I lunged down, wrenching him over. Blood formed a butterfly shape on his shirt. His eyes were closed.

  ‘We need to get him out of here,’ Mother cried.

  We set about dragging him, but here came a second wave of quills. Mother and I plunged down into the water, trying to hold Father aloft, at the same time as protecting ourselves.

  When we burst up again, gasping for air, we tried again to pull Father from the water. He was too heavy for us.

  ‘Help!’ I shouted, but all around us people were running, or throwing themselves flat on the sand.

  Aunt Rebecca’s house is up on the hill, overlooking the beach. I could see her shape through the window, moving around in there, setting the table for dinner.

  ‘Help us, Aunt Rebecca!’ I screamed. ‘Aunt Rebecca, help us!’

  But she could not hear over the sound of the violins. You see, most of the musicians had realised what was happening and had set down their instruments—but the three violinists, caught up in the music, eyes closed, were still playing madly.

  Here came another wave of quills. Back down into the water we splashed.

  ‘Help us, Aunt Rebecca!’ I screamed.

  A storm of quills again, and this time my mother was hit. Water Sprites rescued us in the end. A division swam up from the deep, and worked together, using their magic to form powerful currents. They washed the berg trolls out to sea.

  But it was too late. My parents both died in the hospital later that day. Several other locals were also hit by the quills, and injured, but the only people who died were Mother and Father.

  Honey Bee (again)

  Sorry, the page was getting all wet from tears!

  Anyhow, Uncle Dominic came and took me to live at Brathelthwaite with him. He is my father’s elder brother, and he paid lawyers to make grand speeches to a judge. ‘Imagine the marvellous life this child will have in an exclusive boarding school!’ the lawyers said. Then they sneered at Aunt Rebecca: ‘But she wants the little girl to stay here in a teeny, tiny cottage with holes in its flyscreens?!’

  Aunt Rebecca promised to fix her flyscreens but it wasn’t enough. The judge sent me off with Uncle Dominic.

  Uncle Dominic must love me very much to go to court for me! I thought, to comfort myself.

  However, it turned out that he gets all my parents’ money until I’m twenty-one. That’s what he was after, you see. My parents wrote a book called Curious Insects: Magic and Otherwise, which you might have heard of, as it was a bestseller. So lots of cash royalties come in.

  In fact, I don’t think Uncle Dominic even likes me!

  Anyhow, Finlay, there is no envelope. Amie has not found a mailbag. We don’t have a way to send out our story at all.

  I was tricking you to get you to write. Sorry about that.

  I wish there was a way to get our story out there.

  I’m just staring at the ships on the horizon right now, imagining that I am the best pitcher in the world, with the sharpest aim. I could roll the notebooks into balls and throw them onto the deck of a ship!

  Or I could turn each page into a paper dart and send it soaring across the sea!

  If I had the biggest, loudest voice, I could shout the words of the story!

  Actually, we did learn how to send messages using semaphore flags and dot-dash lights at school. Ha! I could stand on the cliff edge and send the entire tale in dots and dashes of light! Funny. It would take me all the night long and all day tomorrow and the next day. I’m sure the supervisors would give me time off from the mine to do that!! ‘Go for it, Honey Bee,’ they’d say. ‘Enjoy!’

  Ha ha! They are always patrolling, you know—I’d be caught in a flash. I’d send the first few words and—

  WAIT RIGHT HERE…

  All right, I’m back.

  Just had to pop over the cliff edge.

  Ha! Not over the cliff edge, I mean to the edge of the cliff.

  I sent a message in dot-dash lights to the ships.

  THREE BARRELS OF NINA BAY CIDER HAVE BEEN POISONED WITH WITCH-MADE FLU. THEY ARE ON THEIR WAY TO CLYBOURNE.

  Just that.

  I was going to add: Please let them know! Don’t let them drink the cider! It is dangerous! It is lethal, and so on, but one of the supervisors—a woman named Jenna who is friendly to the littler children and lets them braid w
ildflowers through her hair—anyhow, she came strolling by. She frowned at the lamp in my hand.

  I don’t think she guessed what I was doing.

  A reply flashed from one of the ships just as Jenna passed:

  MESSAGE RECEIVED. WILL ALERT CLYBOURNE.

  I don’t think Jenna noticed it.

  But anyhow! Great news. The cider won’t have reached Clybourne yet as it takes about a week to sail that far. And Finlay delivered the poison four days ago. So the ship will radio the message to Clybourne just in time.

  All will be well, and that concludes my—

  Oh, almost forgot to say: I do NOT believe that Brathelthwaite won the Spindrift Tournament at all! The Orphanage School won! That was just part of my trick to get Finlay angry enough to write.

  And of course Finlay is faster than Victor!

  Finlay is like a spark of light! As quick as a water splash! Actually, he is a water splash. Spindrift is our town name, as you know, but did you know it is also the word for the spray that flies about on the crest of waves?

  That is Finlay: darting here and there, playful and lively, exactly like sparkly waves blown about in the breeze. He belongs in Spindrift more than anybody else, for he himself is spindrift in the sunlight.

  FINLAY

  I said earlier that I never cry, but there are proper tears in my eyes right now.

  Confusing tears, mind.

  Crackerjack, happy tears where I want to dance a turkey trot (one of Lili-Daisy’s favourite), BECAUSE HONEY BEE WARNED THE SHIPS!

  CLYBOURNE WILL BE SAFE! I am NOT a murderer! Woo-hoo!

  But I’ve also got this boulder in my stomach. Not an actual boulder, that would kill me. I just mean, I’m sad for Honey Bee. The story about her parents. Poor girl, standing in the ocean with her parents dying.

  Not your fault, Honey Bee. It’s the fault of those daft berg trolls shooting off their quills.

  Those are sorrowful tears.

  And the things I’ve said about Honey Bee! That she’s annoying! (Well, to be fair, she is sometimes.) (But not that annoying!) Blaming her for her Uncle Dominic! When he’s only taking care of her for the money! And it’s not your fault who your relatives are, anyhow.

  (And did Uncle Dominic horsewhip her for cutting off her hair that day in the Radish Gnome attack? That’s been in the back of my mind awhile, but I’ve trod it down. There were welts all over her legs the next time we saw her.

  Oh crabapple.)

  No wonder she can’t abide the sounds of violins.

  Honey Bee: I am very sorry.

  Hang about, here she comes. She looks strange.

  Honey Bee just told me that Malik has called her aside.

  ‘Exciting news, Honey Bee!’ he said.

  ‘Yes, Malik?’

  ‘Tomorrow you get a break from the mines!’

  ‘Oh, well, thank you…’ (She was suspicious.)

  ‘You are a fast runner, aren’t you? You are going to do a delivery for us!’

  ‘A delivery?’

  ‘Yes. To Spindrift, actually. Isn’t that where you come from?’

  FINLAY

  One hour later.

  Me again.

  Honey Bee says she’s too nervy to hold the pencil.

  It has to happen tonight. The escape. It’s our only choice.

  I’m that jittery the pencil keeps skidding off the paper.

  That supervisor Jenna must have seen Honey Bee sending the message to the ship. Now she’s being punished. They’re going to make her deliver a fatal Witch-made flu to Spindrift tomorrow.

  We already knew we had to escape from here soon, but now we know it has to be tonight.

  IT HAS TO BE.

  We’ve just held an urgent meeting with a group of kids who meet on the cliff edge and discuss how to get out. Honey Bee recommended them—I found this unlikely, I mean, they’re TINY, but she was right. They’re sharp as swords.

  We told Hamish to borrow Malik’s guitar again, but this time to play it for us. Like, as if he was giving a concert. His strumming would drown out the sound of our talk.

  ‘At least he’s good for something, that Hamish,’ one of the kids murmured. Not sure if Hamish heard.

  ‘Right,’ I began. ‘We need to go around the circle—’

  Tricky to hear yourself think over the sound of a guitar.

  ‘Just a bit quieter,’ I suggested. Hamish softened a smidge, but went to town again when he reached a chorus. We cupped our ears and squinted, trying to hear each other.

  ‘We need to go around the circle,’ I repeated, ‘and everyone suggest a way out of here.’

  ‘There is no—’ Connor began.

  But I held up my palms. ‘Don’t want to hear it. There must be a way. We have to get out tonight.’

  I told them why. I said that no idea was stupid. (That’s not actually true. Plenty of ideas are daft as a rat after a night in a keg. Just had to get them talking.) And off we went around the circle.

  And around the circle.

  And around it again.

  We could climb down the cliff. (We’d fall and drown. It’s not your climbing sort of a cliff.)

  Tie our blankets together to make a rope to climb down the cliff. (Supervisors would be onto us in a flash. Not to mention, we’d fall and drown.)

  Sneak back to the mines, steal shovels, and dig under the fence. (They lock up all the equipment at night. Also there are Whisperers living in cottages at the mines.)

  Knock the chain-link fence over! The Whisper tells us we can’t climb over the fence, but it doesn’t say we can’t knock it down! (That was a good idea, and got us excited for a while. It’s a strong fence, but what if all the children went at the fence at once? Wouldn’t that be enough to knock it down?

  But the supervisors would Whisper us to stop before we’d got anywhere…)

  We could do it while the supervisors were sleeping? (Get every child out of the sleeping quarters, through the supervisors’ cabins, out of the wrecks and across to the fence without one supervisor waking? Hmm.)

  It kept coming back to the same thing.

  Whatever we tried, it would only take one supervisor to wake. The super-powered Whispers were just too powerful.

  ‘I swear,’ said a little girl with a hoarse old voice—she must have been only six years old—‘we’ve tried it all.’

  Hamish strummed once. ‘Have you tried cutting off their wristbands?’ he asked.

  We all jumped. Hamish hadn’t spoken for weeks.

  ‘Hamish,’ Honey Bee said. ‘That is a brilliant idea! Thank you for offering it. Well done! Now, I don’t know that they have wristbands, or how cutting them off might—’

  She was trying to be nice, like positive reinforcement so he’d keep speaking, see? But he interrupted her.

  ‘They do all have wristbands,’ he said, still playing the guitar. ‘Red-and-black wristbands. Or have I got that wrong? No. No, I really think it’s true. I keep noticing. Hold up! I think to myself, there’s another of those little wristband blighters on a supervisor’s wrist! Must be quite the fashion around here! Mostly they wear long sleeves but at some point they always push their sleeves up a little? Perhaps because they’re warm, or maybe they don’t want to get their sleeves dirty, say, you know how when you’re eating, say—what would you say? I know. Gravy. Say you have gravy on roast beef and you don’t want—’

  ‘Ah, Hamish,’ I said. Very nice to hear from him again, but we were on a deadline. ‘That’s good they have wristbands. But I’m not sure how cutting them off would help.’

  ‘Oh, as to that,’ Hamish said, plucking away at the guitar, ‘do you remember the future children?’

  Of course we remembered. The other kids were clueless, of course. Honey Bee and I filled them in, as fast as we could. The kids seemed confused, but no time to clarify. We turned back to Hamish—Honey Bee and I glancing at each other in panic, like how much time are we going to give Hamish for this rubbish?

  ‘Well,’ Hamish said, ‘
remember when Bronte and Alejandro were giving us clues about how to defeat the supercharged Whispers?’

  We all nodded. The other kids can’t have remembered as they weren’t there, but they nodded anyway. Humouring Hamish.

  ‘First they kept circling their own wrists,’ Hamish said. ‘Around and around they went. Made me dizzy. Anyhow, they were actually trying to tell us about wristbands!’

  ‘Hm,’ I said. ‘I’m not sure—’

  ‘Hush,’ said Hamish. ‘And the next thing that happened was that Bronte kept braiding and un-braiding her hair?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think that was part of the clue,’ Honey Bee said gently, ‘I think she just wanted to tidy her—’

  ‘Shush! The wristbands are braided together—we braid them together when we have the days of twisting threads. That’s what Bronte was trying to tell us. And what have they been braided out of?’

  ‘Do you know,’ Honey Bee said suddenly, ‘those Whisperers who brought us here from Spindrift in their motorcar—the man did have a red-and-black wristband! You are right, Hamish.’

  ‘Malik has one too,’ I remembered, surprised. ‘I saw it when—’

  ‘Oh do be quiet, Finlay,’ Hamish cried, playing his guitar very quickly. ‘I’m losing my chain of thought! Tell me again what the third clue was?’

  ‘They kept stamping at spots on the ground,’ I said.

  ‘Shadows!’ Hamish beamed. ‘They were stamping at shadows. I didn’t take much notice of that at the time. I thought they were doing dance steps. But yes, it was shadows.’

  There was a long moment of quiet, as Hamish concentrated on his guitar.

  ‘And?’ Honey Bee prompted him.

  Hamish looked up surprised. ‘Shadow Magic. The wristbands have been braided out of Shadow Magic.’

  We stared at him.

  ‘What do we pick out of the mines each day?’ Hamish asked. ‘Thread. Red and black. Don’t you remember the old stories about how ancient dark mages used to get their shadow thread out of the ground long ago. Before they just started imagining it? Well, now I think the stories are true. I think Whisperers have uncovered some ancient shadow thread troves. And we are getting the thread out for them, and braiding them into Shadow Magic wristbands, because it’s such fine and delicate work they need the small hands of children, and it’s shadow thread so it blisters us and makes us sick eventually. And that—’ He played an awful twang on the guitar. ‘That is how they super-charge their Whispers.’