‘Thank you,’ I replied. ‘But you know, I could not spellbind anybody when we were trapped in the Whispering Kingdom.’ ‘And you, Finlay,’ Carabella continued, turning to him. ‘To resist a super-charged Whisper! Your character must be enormously strong.’
‘Thanks,’ Finlay said. ‘But I couldn’t resist in the Whispering Kingdom, not really. Does it mean HB and I can only do it when we’re outside that Kingdom?’
HB, he had called me.
Ha.
I like the idea of Finlay giving me a nickname.
Carabella clicked her tongue quickly, thinking hard. ‘No, it’s not to do with being in the Whispering Kingdom,’ she said eventually. ‘That shouldn’t make a difference. Do you know what I think? To be a great Spellbinder, you need to draw on the love of your friends and family. To resist a super- Whisper, you’d need an enormously strong sense of your own self. Now, could it be that you felt alone when you were in the Whispering Kingdom, Honey Bee? And Finlay, was your belief in yourself a little shaky? And then, I wonder, did something happen to change these things when you got out?’
Finlay grinned. ‘Makes sense,’ he said. ‘I don’t admit this to many people, but secretly I sometimes think I’m not much of anything. Just an orphan, see? I thought the one thing us orphans had was being champions of the Spindrift Tournament, but the Brathelthwaites took that away from us. So it seemed like I’d always get beaten by the rich kids one way or another. But then Honey Bee wrote down that I was spindrift, like I am my own town. Well, that was crackerjack. Suddenly I wasn’t just an orphan in Spindrift, I was Spindrift. That’s how it felt to me anyway. It must have been that.’ He flicked the back of my head. (Ouch.) ‘Thanks, HB.’
Now they both turned to me.
I knew exactly what the answer was.
Without my parents or Aunt Rebecca, and with Carlos sick in the infirmary, of course I had felt lonely and unloved.
But then Glim had smiled at me, and asked if I was all right. And Finlay had followed me to rescue Aunt Rebecca and told me he was my friend.
At last, I had felt somewhat loved.
I felt too shy to say all this, so I shrugged and said I would think about it.
And now at last, we are all caught up.
I am writing this at the desk in the corner of the green common room. The others are chatting quietly, but I wanted to distract myself from worry about Carlos, so I decided to finish up the story.
Nobody has left as we are all waiting for better news of Carlos. He still rests on the couch, but he is breathing more like ocean waves than dried leaves now. Anita, the Prince and the twins are taking care of him together. Motoko-the-Chocolatier has arrived, having been brought here from the fairground, and she is conversing with the Queen, Mayor Franny and Carabella around a card table. The Queen is nodding often, and I rather think she is agreeing with Motoko.
Lili-Daisy and Aunt Rebecca are discussing politics while they play a board game with Finlay and Glim. Sir Brathelthwaite just challenged Victor to chess, and Hamish offered to be ‘Referee, or have I got that wrong? Is there a referee in chess?’
‘Do you even know the rules of chess, Hamish?’ Victor demanded—but then happened to notice I was watching all this and he shot me another of those guard-dog looks!
It’s very—well, I already feel odd, you know.
Too much cake.
Or it’s too hot in here, I think. Freezing too! See how shivery this paper is! Feel it. Go on. Touch the paper. It’s like an iceberg, isn’t it?
I’ll just take a bite of this pen, to warm myself up.
Now why did I do that?
Tired, I suppose.
Long day.
But ink is just EVERYWHERE!
Oh my, I do feel strange.
Honestly, everything is odd.
Trying to write the final words here, but I have LOST them. I KNOW there are more words to ice, but—
FINLAY
Honey Bee slithered off her chair, and her head went thunk! on the carpet.
‘Good gracious!’ Sir Brathelthwaite wrinkled his nose. ‘Honey Bee has fallen asleep! I do apologise, Your Majesty. That is the height of rudeness. Generally, my students do not—’
But the Queen winced as if he gave her toothache. ‘The child must be exhausted,’ she pronounced. ‘In what way is it rude to be exhausted at your school, Sir Brathelthwaite?’
We all looked at Honey Bee, sprawled on the floor, asleep.
‘The last weeks will have worn her out,’ Aunt Rebecca said, standing up. ‘Perhaps someone could help me carry her to her bed?’
‘Or pop a cushion under her head,’ Lili-Daisy advised. ‘She looks so comfortable there. Be a shame to wake her.’
So that’s what they did. Stuck a cushion under Honey Bee’s head, covered her with a blanket, smiled at her in that loving way grown-ups smile when children are asleep. As if kids are less of a nuisance when they’re sleeping.
And got back to our games and chats.
Tick, tock went the clock.
Tick tock.
Tick tock.
Then Victor leaped up so fast he knocked the chess pieces flying. ‘It was me!’ he bellowed. ‘It was me!’
And burst into tears.
Everyone stared.
‘What was you?’ Hamish prompted. ‘You mean the person who moved the knight just now? Yes, I’m certain that was you. On the other hand, the person who moved the pawn was Sir—’
‘It was me!’ Victor roared, pulling at his own hair. ‘Honey Bee’s not asleep! (sob, sob, wail.) I poisoned her! (sob, sob.) With Witch-made flu! The new kind! The killer kind! The supervisors gave it to me when we left the Whispering Kingdom! They said that I’d be told when to use it—and I was told, so I put it in the teacup—but I don’t want to kill anybody! I don’t like Honey Bee (sob, sob) but I don’t want to kill her!’
Anita darted over to Honey Bee’s side, along with the twins, and they did doctorly things and looked at each other with serious doctorly faces.
‘She’s just sleeping, isn’t she?’ Aunt Rebecca asked.
‘Victor’s right,’ Anita said. ‘This is Witch-made flu. But a far darker kind than we’ve been seeing here.’ She tried to get drops of Faery potion into Honey Bee’s mouth and it kept dribbling out.
‘In that case, store-bought Faery potion won’t work,’ Carabella said. Her voice was peculiar and she looked like she was going to cry, which was a shock. She’d seemed a very cheery type a moment ago. ‘If it’s the lethal kind, nothing will work. Oh, Honey Bee. Oh, child.’
‘Take her to the Hospital!’ Aunt Rebecca begged, but the others shook their heads.
‘I’ve seen this before,’ Carabella told Aunt Rebecca gently. ‘There’s nothing anybody can do. We’ll lose her in the next hour or so. I’m so sorry.’
The Queen pushed closer, and peered down at Honey Bee. She swung back around to Victor.
‘This was meant for the Prince, wasn’t it?’
Victor stuck his lower lip out. ‘Honey Bee took his cup.’
‘And you say someone told you to use the poison? Who?’
His head tipped forward and he put his hands in his pockets. ‘I can’t say,’ he mumbled. ‘He also told me to give the other Witch-made flu to the Prince that day he came to the Tournament. I put it on a cream puff. And I got it into Carlos’s breakfast. And then to as many people in town as I could. But that was just a flu, not a lethal flu. I didn’t mind making people sick, but I didn’t want to kill people.’
‘Who?’ we all shouted. ‘Who told you to do that?’
‘I can’t say.’
‘We’ll snap you into a thousand pieces if you don’t,’ the twins promised.
‘I can’t say.’
‘Well, I can say!’ Carabella’s voice was grim. ‘It’s a Whisperer. I knew there was one in this school the moment I arrived here. I could sense him, but the signals kept going wrong. And now I know why.’
We all stared at her.
‘I imagine it’s been very helpful to the Whispering King, having a Whisperer ally in Spindrift.’ She swung around. ‘Isn’t that right Sir Brathelthwaite?’
Sir Brathelthwaite spluttered and bleated.
Everyone else looked doubtful.
‘But Carabella,’ the Queen hissed. ‘Whisperers have long hair. And this man is—’
‘Bald!’ several people put in, the Queen being too polite to say it.
Sir Brathelthwaite grinned and patted his own head. ‘I certainly am!’
‘It’s true that Whisperers never ordinarily go bald,’ Carabella agreed. ‘But anyone can lose their hair if they’ve been cursed by a Witch. I’ve known two or three Whisperers who’ve lost their hair that way—it’s very distressing to them. They can only Whisper a few times a day when bald, and are much harder for Spellbinders to detect.’
‘Well, I have nothing to do with Witches!’ Sir Brathelthwaite chuckled. ‘I’m a headmaster!’
Motoko-the-Chocolatier spoke up. ‘You’ve been coming to the fairground to ask the local Witches for help in reversing a Witch curse!’ she scolded. ‘You want to grow your hair back! Everyone in the fairground has been laughing—vain old git, we’ve been saying.’
‘I knew I saw him there that night,’ Glim put in.
‘He went to the Empire of Witchcraft years ago,’ Motoko explained, nodding at Glim, ‘and stole some Witch-made diamond diviners. As a childish prank when he was drunk, he says. The Witches cursed him for this theft by taking his hair.’
Carabella shook her head. ‘Not as a childish prank when drunk,’ she said. ‘I know exactly who he is now. There are stories around amongst the Spellbinders that a young Whisperer once stole diamond diviners from the Witches on a mission for the Whispering King. This must be the very man. The King was ambitious and greedy for more diamonds, you see—and now that I think about it, I bet it was the diamond diviners that found the shadow thread troves where the poor children have all been working. The diviners, being shadow-made themselves, would have been drawn to buried Shadow Magic even more than to diamonds.’
We all stared from Sir Brathelthwaite to Honey Bee, who was writhing about on the floor. Everyone seemed to be crying, except Sir B.
‘This is preposterous!’ he shouted.
‘No,’ Carabella said sadly. ‘You’re working for the Whispering King. You’re his inside man in Spindrift. Pretending to run a school but actually distributing Witch-made illnesses all over Spindrift. I expect you were the extra Whisperer at the battle with the Vanquishing Covers.’
‘He was there!’ I said. ‘He chased after HB!’
Sir Brathelthwaite began to bluster. ‘If I knew how to super-charge my Whispers, I’d be doing it on all of you right now, wouldn’t I!’
‘No, you wouldn’t,’ Carabella argued. ‘Because I’d just bind them. I’m a lot stronger than you are. You’re not silly enough to try. Or you’ve already used up your Whispers for today. But I’d bet a thousand silver you have that wristband.’
The twins got hold of his fancy, flappy sleeves, pushed them up, and there it was: a red-and-black, shadow-thread wristband.
Taya wrenched it off.
‘GUARDS!’ the Queen bellowed.
‘Your Majesty.’ Sir Brathelthwaite placed a hand on her shoulder. ‘That wristband is merely jewellery! A friendship band! You are not going to listen to these madwomen, are you?’
But the Queen brushed Sir B’s hand away, and ordered her guards to take him to the dungeons.
‘Friendship band,’ the Queen sneered, as they marched him off. ‘It would be funny if there wasn’t a child dying here. Hold up, guards—before you go, toss me that medal he’s wearing.’
‘Oh!’ Sir B yelped. ‘Not my medal!’
The medal flew through the air, the Queen caught it neatly, and the door closed behind Sir B.
We swung back around to Honey Bee. Her face had turned the colour of a peppermint. White with a faint blue tinge, I mean.
‘She’s scarcely breathing,’ Anita told us. Aunt Rebecca was stretched out on the floor beside her niece, holding her hand and sobbing, ‘Honey Bee, Honey Bee, Honey Bee.’
‘She’s not going to die, is she?’ Victor begged. ‘Not really?’
‘She is,’ Anita said. ‘Very soon.’
Victor began to cry again.
‘Wait, has Sir B been Whispering Victor all this time?’ I asked, suddenly feeling sorry for the kid. ‘Is that why he’s been such a prat?’
‘Oh, he’s always been a prat,’ Hamish replied. ‘Years, I’ve known him, and years, he’s been just awful. Terribly pleased with himself. But he’s only recently become evil? I’ve been thinking to myself lately: there’s something up with Victor. Something not right. Didn’t quite trust him, see? That’s why I tossed a cushion over—hold up, can’t tell that. That’ll be a secret. Anyhow, can’t we do something for Honey Bee? I do like her.’
Carabella shook her head. ‘The only thing that might work,’ she said, ‘would be Faery elixir.’
‘Well, let’s get some!’
Again with the shaking of the head. ‘It has to be freshly made by Faeries. It only works for about ten minutes or so after it’s made.’
‘SO LET’S GET A FAERY TO MAKE SOME!’ Didn’t realise I was shouting, but everyone jumped and looked at me.
‘There are no Faeries in town,’ Mayor Franny told me, in a sad voice. ‘I’ve been petitioning constantly for Faeries to help out with all the illness and injuries here. But they’re in such high demand all over the Kingdoms and Empires and, of course, it’s too dangerous to travel these days. Even if I tried again, we’d never get one in time.’
‘SO TRY ANYWAY!’ Still yelling, I was.
‘Finlay,’ Lili-Daisy murmured. ‘It’s all right.’ ‘IT’S NOT ALL RIGHT! THERE MUST BE SOMETHING YOU CAN DO, WHAT IS THE POINT OF HAVING THE QUEEN HERE, WHAT IS UP WITH YOU ADULTS, YOU GREAT BIG BUNCH OF CRAPUSCULAR, CRABAPPLE—’
This is where Eli and Taya spoke up. Both at once.
‘Do you have to be trained to make this Faery elixir?’ they asked.
‘No.’ Anita was cradling Honey Bee’s head in her lap now, trying to get her comfortable. Honey Bee was making little noises like a toad. ‘But you have to be Faery. And we haven’t—’
‘So it’s enough just to be Faery?’ Eli asked.
‘And you just follow instructions on how to make this elixir thing?’ Taya added.
Carabella turned to them. ‘Exactly,’ she said. ‘Why?’
‘Because,’ the twins announced, ‘we think we might be Faery.’
FINLAY
‘That’s why we were laughing before,’ Taya said.
‘The Queen said blue elouisas turned her fingernails an orange-gold colour?’ Eli added.
‘When we got to Spindrift, six years ago, our fingernails were orangey-gold.’
‘Goldy-orange,’ Eli corrected.
‘Blue elouisas are only grown in the Kingdom of Kate-Bazaar,’ Taya added.
‘Tsunami hit the coast of Kate-Bazaar six years ago,’ Eli put in.
‘A lot of folks and animals got swept away.’
‘Same year, the east-west currents in the Starling Ocean ran west-east, on account of Water Sprite battles.’
‘So anyone washed away from Kate-Bazaar could have been swept towards Spindrift.’
‘The only people allowed to pick the blue elouisas are Faery children.’
‘All we can remember is we turned up on the beach here with orangey-gold nails.’
‘Goldy-orange.’
‘As if we’d been picking blue elouisas.’
‘Therefore—’ Eli said.
‘—We could be Faeries.’
They both grinned like they might burst into laughter again, then remembered Honey Bee was dying and grew serious. ‘Sorry,’ they said. ‘We find it funny. The idea we might be Faeries.’
‘Yes,’ Lili-Daisy said doubtfully. ‘You don’t think of Faeries cursing and threatening to brea
k people to pieces.’
‘But Faeries are good at healing,’ Anita said from the floor. ‘And so are the twins. You know, people only began to recover from the Witch-made flu when the twins started helping at the hospital?’
‘Faeries are often fat like we are,’ the twins said, as one.
‘True,’ Carabella agreed. ‘But all those links you just made—blue elouisas only growing in Kate-Bazaar, tsunami six years ago, currents changing—how do you know all that? Can you be sure?’
‘They can be sure,’ Glim confirmed. ‘They read newspapers all the time, and remember every single thing they read.’
The Queen raised her eyebrows. ‘Faeries have good memories too. Better than me, anyway. I think it was Kate-Bazaar where I got those blue elouisas, and now that I think about it, it was very Faery-centric there—Faery fountains, Faery dust, Faery carousels.’
‘The only thing we didn’t know until today—’ Taya began.
‘—was that blue elouisas turn your fingernails goldy-orange,’ Eli finished.
‘Orangey-gold,’ Taya muttered.
The adults looked at each other. ‘It could be so,’ they mused. ‘But maybe not…’
‘We might not be,’ the twins agreed. ‘We could easily not be.’
‘WHO CARES IF THEY ARE OR ARE NOT! THEY HAVE TO GIVE IT A TRY! HOW CAN IT HURT FOR THEM TO TRY?’ There I was, bellowing away again.
Got the room moving, didn’t it?
‘There’s a collection of Faery literature in the library,’ Hamish said.
‘We have an extensive library here,’ Victor agreed. ‘Come on then, Hamish.’
The pair of them raced off. ‘Meet you in the kitchen once we find instructions for the healing elixir!’ Hamish shouted behind him.
‘Will we have to bake a cake for it?’ Taya asked. ‘Cause we don’t bake.’
Once again, doubt rippled right across the room.
‘Faeries generally do bake,’ somebody murmured.
The twins shrugged. ‘Like we said, we might not be Faery. We might have been picking blue elouisas because we weren’t allowed to pick blue elouisas.’
‘Oh,’ said Lili-Daisy. ‘That does sound like the twins.’
‘We don’t like rules,’ the twins chanted.
The Slightly Alarming Tale of the Whispering Wars Page 30
