“That’s a name for it,” the girl said.
“And Aquavania is made up of different worlds, created by the minds of kids, right?” This was something he had learned from Fiona. She had told him stories about worlds made of ice and robots, of clouds and jungles. Fantastic places, all born from the imagination.
“You got the basic gist of it,” the girl told him.
“And the kids who created the worlds have ultimate power,” Alistair went on. “They can invite you in and send you home with nothing more than a simple wish. I definitely didn’t create this place, and I don’t think Fiona did. So somehow I ended up in your world, right? Can’t you wish me wherever I need to go?”
“I didn’t hear ‘pretty please,’” the girl said.
Alistair paused. He wasn’t deaf to sarcasm, but he also wasn’t taking any chances. “Um … then … Can you show me where Fiona is and then send us home? Pretty … please?”
The girl looked around for a moment. “Um … how about … no.” She laughed, sharp and deep.
“What?”
“I’m messing with you,” she said. “Jeez, you’re such a doggie-paddler. And boy are you clueless about your … situation. I can’t wish a damn thing because this world is as much mine as it is yours. I’m like you. I can swim, but I can’t create.”
“If this isn’t your world, then whose is it?” Alistair asked.
The girl shrugged. “Some Neanderthal from way back. Beats me. Soul got sucked out like the rest of ’em, I guess.” She placed her gloved fingers to her mouth and made a slurping sound like someone working on a stubborn milk shake.
“Who are you, then?”
“Well, since I didn’t create this place, it means I’m not a daydreamer. And I wasn’t created in this place, so I’m not a figment,” the girl said. “Which makes me a swimmer. A swimmer is basically a wanderer, an adventurer, a nomad. And as swimmers go, I’m the best there is. Name is Polly Dobson. And you are?”
“Alistair Cleary.”
“Nice to meet you.” She didn’t present a hand. Instead she turned to the tribe, raised her arms, and hollered, “Figments! I thank you for finding me this swimmer, but now you must continue preparing the feast and give us our privacy. For we must discuss watery things!”
Tribe members nodded, whispered to one another, and turned away. There wasn’t a single objection or word of dissent. They were fully under Polly’s sway. “Pretty cool, right?” Polly said.
* * *
In a small clearing about two minutes’ walk from the settlement, Polly placed her helmet down on a stone and sat on a tree trunk that was freshly fallen and still sprouting green leaves. Polly’s hair, wavy but short, was the color of corn, and her skin was mottled, scarred by the sun. She looked more like a surfer than an astronaut.
Sitting on a stump across from her, Alistair asked, “Why do you wear a spacesuit?”
“You never know where you might end up,” Polly said. “Besides, it impresses the figments. Lends an air of authority.”
“So you’re a visitor here too?”
“I wouldn’t want to live here forever with these troglodytes, if that’s what you mean,” she said. “But they cook a mean barbecue. And this is the place to meet new swimmers.”
“Is it like … an entryway?” Alistair asked.
“In a manner of speaking,” Polly said. “So tell me. How did you get here?”
“You wouldn’t believe it.”
“You’d be surprised,” Polly said. “Let me guess. There’s some girl. Some Fiona Lupus.”
“Loomis,” Alistair replied, wincing as if Polly’s mistake was a thorn scraping his skin.
“Whatever,” Polly said. “She’s a girl, that’s what matters. And you’re gaga for her. And you live in some podunk town where nothing bad happens. Until, of course, sweet li’l Fiona goes missing. Am I right so far?”
Jaw clenched, Alistair mumbled, “Go on.”
“And you, all in love, go searching for her.” Polly hopped down and poked the tip of her puffy gray boot in a puddle. “Then you discover a fountain behind her house or maybe a vase in her bedroom. Something that holds water.”
“A boiler in her basement,” Alistair admitted.
Polly pumped her gloved fists like she was at the horse races. “Oooo, a boiler! Extra spooky!” she cheered. “So I bet you hear a voice coming from that creepy boiler and you go to investigate and poof, it disappears and water is floating in the air and you touch the water and it transports you to another world. A world made of ash. Sound familiar?”
“Yes,” Alistair whispered, but he might as well have yelled, Holy crap, how did you know that?
Polly winked. “And in this world of ash there’s a river and it’s all sparkly and rainbowish and you decide to dive in it, or maybe you fall in it because it’s the only thing that’s not crumbling all around you. And the river sweeps you along and brings you all the way to a field where you’re surrounded by these cavemen, including one with dragonfly breath. Is that the gist of it?”
“You’re … You’re…”
“A genius?” Polly said. “Could be. But anyone would’ve figured that one out. It’s basically every swimmer’s story. We stumble in where we aren’t supposed to be. And we doggie-paddle at first, but then we get the hang of it.”
“Get the hang of what?”
“Living here. Traveling. Dealing with the figments.”
Alistair knew the definition—creations of the imagination—but Polly’s use of the word seemed odd. “Figments?” he asked. “You keep saying that. I don’t know what you mean.”
Polly pointed back toward the settlement. “Those cavemen. They’re something that someone thought up a long time ago. They’re not real. At least not like you and me. They’re like action figures brought to life. Ideas of people, but not really people.”
“What happened to the person who brought them to life?”
“Like I said…” Polly put a pinkie to her mouth and started to slurp. “Soul. Sucked away.”
Alistair knew the answer to his next question, but he asked it anyway. “By who?”
Polly considered this as she looked back at that puddle. “Depends what name you use,” she finally said. “There’s Coco. Rawhead. There’s Nøkken. The Whisper. Monstret. Bavbav. I kind of like the Bugbear. Mánguang Anak. There’s the Riverman. There’s Lulu—”
“The Riverman?” Alistair asked. “The Whisper? Those are some of his names?”
Eyes up, eyebrows up, Polly responded, “Then you’ve heard of him?”
1981 to 1983
Alistair had no first memory of Charlie Dwyer, no specific moment to revisit, to say this is where their relationship began. Charlie was there, always. Cross-legged in front of the television, or standing at the front door, or pleading on the telephone for Alistair to come over and play. He was Alistair’s neighbor and, by default, also his best friend. At least for a time.
When they were four, they would sit in a sandbox together, dig their bare toes in, and imagine that they were giants ruling over some vast desert. Plastic action figures were the inhabitants of this desert, and the boys crushed them with their feet, but not because they knew all that much about death.
“I wanna see how far they bend,” Alistair said once, and Charlie wanted the same thing.
Sometimes they would try to dig to China.
When they were five, they learned to ride bikes together. Tottering up and down the driveway on training wheels, they’d encourage each other.
“You’re getting it!”
“You’re doing it!”
“We’re the best in the world!”
Charlie’s brother, Kyle, who was eleven at the time, didn’t agree with the silly superlatives, but he did agree to help them. “Don’t stop pedaling,” he told them time and again. “You stop, you fall. It’s that simple.”
Alistair was the better cyclist of the two, but no one ever clued Charlie in on that fact. Not even Kyle, which was
saying something.
When they were six, Alistair and Charlie presided over a funeral. Alistair’s goldfish, found belly-up in his bowl, was buried in Alistair’s backyard, and the boys wore ties and played music. Alistair’s sister, Keri, watched through the window of the house, and even though she was already eight and knew that countless goldfish died every day, she cried a little bit and turned away from the glass, switched on the TV, and searched for cartoons.
* * *
Alistair did have a first memory of the Riverman, of the one who would call himself the Whisper. Of course, Alistair didn’t realize what he was seeing, not back then. But revisiting that moment was like rewinding a mystery, going back over the evidence that may not have seemed like evidence in the first place.
It was June, a few weeks after the goldfish funeral, and the two boys were in Charlie’s backyard. Long piles of cut grass spit out from the lawn mower looked like anacondas speckled yellow, due to all the dandelions. Alistair ran his fingers through the clippings and felt the dampness and smelled the greenness. The warm weather, the long days—summer had finally arrived in Thessaly.
Charlie sat next to Alistair. In one of Charlie’s hands, there was a jar of rubber cement. Wedged in the crook of his other elbow and balancing on his forearm like a waiter’s tray, there was a piece of limestone. In the middle of the stone, there was a potato bug, frozen by fear, by the sight of the boy.
“I’m making a fossil,” Charlie announced.
Alistair examined the ill-fated bug. “Can we sell it to a museum?”
“Probably,” Charlie responded as he lifted and tipped the jar of rubber cement. The goo fell slowly, like tree sap. When it finally hit the stone, it wrapped itself around the bug and enclosed it in a round shell, a bubble that would dry the color of root beer. Charlie set the stone in the yard where the sun could firm it up.
“How many do we have to make to get rich?” Alistair asked.
“A hundred,” Charlie said definitively.
“That’ll take a long time.”
“I have a plan,” Charlie said, handing Alistair the jar and forging a path on hands and knees to the other side of the yard. It was there that a wasp crawled along the edge of a hole in the ground. It examined the dirt with its pincers and antennae, touched the grass, eventually decided there were more interesting places in the world, and took to the sky.
“There’s a whole hive down there,” Charlie said, pointing at the hole. “Dad ran over it with the mower. He’s gonna have to use Raid. Unless…”
Alistair took this as his cue. He poised the open jar of rubber cement above the hole. Minus the small amount that Charlie had poured on the potato bug, the jar was full. “How many are in there, do you think?” Alistair asked.
“A hundred at least. Enough.”
“And how do we get the hive out once it’s covered?”
“Shovel.”
It seemed like a good plan, and Alistair had visions of a papery hive the size of a watermelon, sheathed in rubber cement, wasps trapped on its surface or in the middle of flight, a real-life fossil created for the cost of craft supplies and displayed in a glass case at a natural history museum.
So Alistair tipped the jar.
As the rubber cement oozed into the hole, it disappeared from sight. Was it coating everything like glaze on a donut or was it soaking into the earth? The answer didn’t come right away, but when it came, it came in force.
Wasps burst out of the hole like water from a broken pipe. In stories both boys would tell later, the wasps would number in the thousands, but in truth it was probably only thirty or so. Still, enough to cause some serious pain.
A wasp stung Alistair first, in the dead center of his wrist. Yelping, he dropped the jar of rubber cement. Another wasp lanced Charlie in the ankle, and as he reached to swat it, yet another one skewered the back of Charlie’s neck.
“Run!”
Charlie’s brother, Kyle, now twelve, had a clubhouse at the edge of the yard, near a swamp. The boys headed toward the clubhouse because that’s the way they were facing. Kyle was inside with his friends, yakking loud enough that Alistair could hear them through the wooden door.
Charlie tried the handle. Locked. “Let us in!” he howled, batting the air around him.
“Password!” Kyle hollered.
“Abracadabra! Open Sesame!” Charlie responded.
“Bzzzzz! Wrong! Try again!”
The wasps were relentless, zeroing in on every untouched patch of skin. Targeted attacks. Bam. Bam. Bam.
“We’re dying out here!” Charlie screamed.
“Nice knowing ya, then!” The harmony of laughter made it clear that all the boys inside found this very amusing.
“Water! Keri says they hate water!” Alistair yelled as he abandoned hope of the clubhouse and sprinted past it and into the swamp.
It was muck and puddles—nothing more than half a foot deep—but it would have to do. Alistair’s sneaker sank, and the ground held on to it. He stumbled forward, and his foot came out droopy-socked and snagged a branch. There was no controlling his momentum now, and he flopped into the mud. Charlie followed. He launched his body in the air and landed next to Alistair.
* * *
Ten minutes later, stretched out on the picnic table next to each other, they endured the chill as Charlie’s father sprayed them with a garden hose. Charlie’s mother stood by with calamine lotion as muddy water spilled onto the patio. Their skin still throbbed from the stings.
“Don’t worry,” Charlie whispered. “I’ll keep you safe. I’m It, you know.”
“You’re what?” Alistair asked.
“It.”
“Like tag?”
“Sorta. I’m the one who gets to decide when things end.”
Charlie’s whisper was strong. It was reassuring. He reached over and grabbed Alistair’s hand. They wrapped their fingers together and held them like that for a while.
CHAPTER 3
Alistair tried to focus on Polly’s eyes as he fought off the onslaught of memory. “Yes,” he said. “I’ve heard of the Whisper. I’ve heard of the Riverman.”
“I always preferred the name the Riverman,” Polly said. “I mean, he leaves a river behind after he sucks out someone’s soul, right? It’s his mark, his signature. Very classy.”
“You said he sucked … did that … to whoever created this world?”
“Yes.”
“But there’s no river. It ended way back there.” Alistair pointed in the direction of the field where he had first met Roha and the others. “There’s no ash either. I thought that when he took someone’s soul, their world became ash.”
“Yes and no,” Polly said as she collected small stones from the ground. “How long’s it been since you came through Fiona’s portal?”
Alistair shrugged. The transition between day and night had been undeniably odd, but time seemed no different here than it did back home. He could feel his heartbeat counting off the seconds, could see the crawl of a millipede doling out the minutes. “I guess it’s been a few hours,” he said.
“And yet you’ve kept your cool.” She laid the stones on a bare patch of dirt carefully, methodically. “Most doggie-paddlers are cuckoo-crazy for at least a day or two. Where am I? How’d I get here? Why is that raccoon talking to me? Stuff like that. Then there’s you. You’re here for a few hours and you see some lions made out of stars and a pack of Neanderthals and you hardly blink.”
Alistair wouldn’t have put it that way. He was on the edge of insanity. The reason he was hardly blinking was that he needed to keep his eyes wide open. He knew this was an unpredictable place. “I came here with some knowledge,” Alistair told her.
“That’s right,” Polly said. “Fiona Looloo filled you in. And you’re here to bring her home. Blah, blah, blah.”
Alistair scowled. “Hey. Watch it. She’s important. She’s a … friend.”
“They all are,” Polly said, looking down at her handiwork. She had arr
anged the stones in a circle.
“What’s that?” Alistair asked.
“That,” Polly said, “is the answer to your question. About why the river dried up back there in the field.”
“It’s a circle.”
“Okay, but it represents this … part of the universe. Aquavania, as you call it. And Aquavania is made up of a bunch of worlds filled with figments, right? Dreamed up by a bunch of kids who traveled through their own special portals, right? Well, those kids are the daydreamers. Now let’s pretend that each of these stones is one of their worlds. And let’s pretend my finger is the Riverman.”
Polly bent down and put an index finger on the biggest of the stones and proceeded to drag it to the center of the circle. It left a line in the dirt.
“When the Riverman takes a daydreamer’s soul, their world drains into a river,” she went on, pointing to the line in the dirt. “Sure, there’s a pile of ash that’s left behind, but that’s like a footprint. Because the world doesn’t actually disappear. The river takes it and deposits it here, in the center, where the Riverman has control over it.”
She started dragging more stones to the center, leaving lines in the dirt like spokes on a wheel. She stacked each stone on top of the one before it. “So the Riverman takes the Neanderthal’s soul. And he takes little Oric’s soul and little Nusrat’s. He takes your friend Fiona’s soul. Whatever souls he can get. Then there’s all this ash where their worlds once were, and all these rivers leading to where the worlds ended up, piled in the center. That’s where the swimmers come in. Every swimmer is a kid who sneaks through someone else’s portal.”
“And on the other side of that portal is ash, where a daydreamer’s world once was?” Alistair asked.
“Bingo!” Polly said as she put her finger in a dusty spot where one of the stones used to be. “So here you are in the ash, and like every other swimmer, you have no choice but to swim a rainbow river. Every rainbow river leads to the same place, this first captured world, this entryway, as you called it. The figments call it Mahaloo.” She moved her finger along the line of dirt and stopped at the bottom stone in the tower.
The Whisper Page 3
