The Whisper

by Aaron Starmer

  Things haven’t turned out as great as I might have hoped, but they’ve happened naturally. Most of them, at least. Part of me can be thankful for that. I’ve created a place where people live, love, and scream at one another sometimes. It’s not all about me anymore.

  As for them, a few deserve better. The ones like Derek and Maria, who decided that they didn’t want to live in this Thessaly, for instance. I guess I gave them a nice place to live, but they still deserve better. My parents. They deserve better too. I never understood them, but maybe that’s because I never wanted to.

  Most of all, Alistair deserves better. I’ve been given certain powers, and for so long I used them for selfish things. There has to be a bigger reason for my abilities. If there’s something I can do to ease someone’s suffering, I should do it. Forget the silly rules I made for myself about not meddling with their lives.

  So when I come back from the Solid World, if I come back, I’m going to turn Alistair into someone else. I know the easy thing would be to get rid of him, to box him away like my brother and sister and the others who wanted to get out. But that would be too painful. What I should do is change him, just enough so that I don’t mean anything to him anymore, so that he cares about someone else. Enough that he’ll still have a life, but he won’t remind me of the original Alistair.

  All the other originals are important too, but the original Alistair means so much more than he realizes. Not because I love him. Because I could have loved him, if I had chosen a different path. If I had opted not to spend my entire childhood here. If I had decided the Solid World was the world worth giving myself to. If. If. If.

  It wouldn’t feel right to be with the original now, not after all the life I’ve lived. Maybe someday I can tell him that and he’ll understand. Maybe not. For now, I’m going to bury these tapes in the only place they should be buried. The tapes will tell the story of my mistakes.

  Then I’ll be going to the Solid World, to give it one last try. Maybe I’ll come back to Aquavania soon. I kinda think I have to come back. I don’t know if I understand how to live in the Solid World anymore.

  CHAPTER 21

  Morning arrived with Alistair lying on Maria’s bed, the covers kicked down, the tape player on his stomach. He popped open the deck, pulled the tape out, and yanked at the ribbon. Wincing, he yanked, tore, and kept going until there was a nest of black plastic on the bed.

  He did the same thing to the other tapes, his actions more violent with each one. Fiona’s voice kept playing in his head.

  Not because I love him. Because I could have loved him.

  Dot’s voice was there too.

  There’s something terribly wrong with you. There’s evil in you.

  He didn’t know which one to believe, or if to believe both of them. He balled up the ribbon in his fist and hurried from the room, through the hall, and outside. He threw the ribbon in the air and wind caught it and it littered the street like ticker tape.

  He jogged the short distance to his house—that is, to the older Alistair’s house—and he rang the bell.

  “You’re still here,” the older Alistair said when he opened the door.

  “I’m sorry,” the younger said.

  The older shuffled his feet. “You listened?”

  “How did you know where to dig up those tapes?” the younger asked.

  The older shrugged. “A memory. A childhood promise. I don’t know if Fiona meant for me to find them, or didn’t realize what was planted in my brain.”

  “Did she have a chance to do it? To change you? To make things … easier … for the both of you?”

  The older shrugged again. “I don’t know. I still have my memories. I still feel like me. Why don’t you ask her? You’re the one she could have loved. Did you figure out where she is yet?”

  The younger shook his head. “Is there any way I can get a message to everyone? The entire town, I mean.”

  “Boaz runs the Sutton Bulletin. Most everyone reads it. It’s a newspaper.”

  “I know what it is.”

  * * *

  The office and printing press for the Sutton Bulletin were down a long, lonely road bordered by nothing, by an endless void. From the tapes, Alistair had learned that Fiona had recreated the things she could remember from home, but not much else. Sutton was the next town over from Thessaly, and she didn’t know it well. She knew the road and the building, because their class had taken a field trip there when she was in third grade.

  The older Alistair drove, and the younger Alistair looked out at the void as they pulled into the lot.

  “Anyone ever go out there?” the younger asked.

  “When we were kids, Boaz, Rodrigo, and Trevor rode their bikes as far as they could get in a day. They didn’t find anything. Sometimes nothing is nothing. That’s why they call it Nothingland.”

  The parking lot was half-full, and the two walked past a variety of rusty and beat-up cars. Inside, the younger Alistair recognized a receptionist who greeted them. She was a thirtysomething version of Kelly Dubois, who was generally considered the prettiest girl in Alistair’s class. She was still pretty, but now she looked tired. She barely glanced up when she said, “Morning.”

  “We’re here to see Boaz,” the older replied.

  Kelly waved them on as she huddled over a mug of fragrant tea. “In the back.”

  The back was a room of low-walled cubicles with a handful of reporters lazing at cluttered desks, nibbling muffins, chatting quietly. A man, dark-skinned and muscular, stood in the corner, surveying it all like it was his kingdom. This was Boaz, and he looked intimidating, but also a bit silly. He wore a plaid newsboy cap that was barely big enough to cover his shaven head. Spotting the two Alistairs from across the room, he mouthed, What the hell?

  The younger didn’t bother with an introduction. “I’ve got a story for you,” he said.

  * * *

  The story on the front page of the next morning’s Sutton Bulletin read:

  DOPPELGÄNGER HAS A MISSION

  Two days ago, a boy who resembles a younger version of our very own Alistair Cleary (and happens to share the same name) arrived in town. He claims to be a friend of Fiona Loomis, the strange girl who never aged and disappeared from our town thirteen years ago. He is searching for her. Any information about Fiona should be brought to Dorian Loomis’s home, where this young doppelgänger now resides. He is also willing to answer questions you may have for him about his appearance or his mission. “I have nothing to hide. My sole purpose is to find Fiona,” he says.

  By the afternoon, the street outside of Dorian’s house was clogged with onlookers, but no one bothered to approach the door. So the younger Alistair came out into the yard. The only thing he could think to say was, “I come in peace.”

  The crowd huddled up and consulted, then sent the mayor as their envoy. The mayor was Werner Schroeder, a handsome German man with an accented voice and a perfectly tailored suit.

  “You are welcome in our fair town,” he said, and he handed Alistair an oversize novelty key. “We, however, have no information to assist in your search. Best of luck to you.”

  With that, the crowd dispersed, except for a woman with frizzy brown hair, denim head to toe, and brown tasseled boots. She ambled over and shook Alistair’s hand. Her hand was covered in small warts. “The mayor was being too kind,” she said. “My name is Kendra Tolliver. I was a friend of Fiona’s, at least for a bit.”

  “Nice to meet you,” Alistair said, though he’d met her before, or at least a younger version of her, back home at school.

  Kendra ran a finger across her lower lip, which was caked in a thick pink gloss, and she eyed Alistair up and down as she said, “Fiona and I had a chat when we were both kids. She told me a secret. She said that the only reason she’d ever leave town would be if she didn’t ever want to come back. Respect her wishes. Let her be.”

  “But—”

  “And she said if anyone suspicious ever showed up in town cla
iming to be looking for her, then we shouldn’t trust that person. You, kid, fit the bill.”

  Having said her piece, Kendra walked away too, and Dorian came into the yard and placed a hand on Alistair’s shoulder. “Prospects aren’t looking good,” Dorian said.

  Staring at the now-empty road, Alistair asked, “Do you have any more of those planes? I’d like to try something.”

  * * *

  Using a Sharpie, Alistair wrote a message on a piece of ribbon: Is Fiona there?

  Dorian then tied the ribbon to the tail of a yellow model airplane. The ribbon fluttered as the airplane hopped down the runway, took off into the damp evening air, flew into the tiny cloud, and disappeared.

  They waited. Quietly. Sitting in the grass, looking at the cloud as the sun began to dip. Darkness seeped in, but not so much that they couldn’t see when something finally fell from the cloud and landed in the weeds that edged the runway.

  They ran over and got down on their hands and knees to search. Dorian was the one who found it: a helmet. A space helmet.

  Written across the visor in what might have been red marker, in what might have been blood, was a short but clear message.

  You’re still It.

  NOVEMBER 19, 1989

  Sitting cross-legged on the floor, Alistair held a controller up. As the hero moved across the TV screen, Alistair moved his arms in the same direction, but it didn’t make a difference. This game wasn’t motion-activated. All he was supposed to do was push buttons.

  “Pathetically amateur” is what Charlie often called Alistair’s distracting technique, but he wasn’t about to call it that now. Alistair was on the last level, with nothing but the final boss left to defeat, and Charlie didn’t want to mess with his head. This was Charlie’s best shot at winning a game he couldn’t play himself. It had been a month since he’d blown off five of his fingers while messing with bottle rockets. His mangled hands could still press buttons, but not at the speed they once did. Not fast enough to win any video games.

  “What do you think happens when we win?” Alistair asked.

  “What always happens to winners,” Charlie said. “They have to win again. Until they lose.”

  “Do you have another game to play after this one?” Alistair asked.

  “Sure. And we can always get another one after that.”

  “Not really,” Alistair said. “There are only so many video games in the world. A few thousand maybe? What if a person won them all?”

  Charlie had been lazing on the sofa, but the idea brought him to his feet. He stood in the middle of the room, smacking his lips, considering such a delicious question. “Then I guess you hang up your hat and call it a day. Let someone else have a turn.”

  “Like you’re doing right now?” Alistair asked, wielding the controller that for the last few years had rested firmly in Charlie’s hands. Until, of course, those fireworks put an end to that.

  “Maybe,” Charlie said. Though this was hardly the end of Charlie’s turn.

  BUT PERHAPS THIS WAS THE BEGINNING

  IN THE YEAR 1983

  This tale features two friends and a jar.

  It started on a day hissing with heat. A helicopter carrying Polly Dobson hovered over a dusty expanse, preparing to land.

  “This was all forest once,” the pilot explained. “But that was hundreds of years back. Farmers cleared the trees. Worked the soil. Then let it go fallow after too many droughts. Now, it’s hardly good enough for goats.”

  But there were goats there just the same, pulling at the weeds and brush with their brown teeth and scattering when the helicopter finally touched down. Polly and her mom hopped out as soon as the helicopter’s blades stopped spinning.

  “We’re really going to live in this dump?” Polly asked.

  “I’ve heard the camp is very nice,” said her mom, a broad-shouldered woman with a streak of white in her blond hair and a masculine name: Carter. “And there’s a village nearby with a market and beautiful stone huts. See those mountains in the distance? With snow icing the top? Those are pretty, right?”

  “Woo-hoo. Stone huts. Mountains you won’t ever let me climb. Better than Disneyland.”

  Her mom harrumphed, but she couldn’t be surprised. Even when she was a baby, Polly was an eye-roller. Now, at twelve, she was a fountain of sarcasm.

  A jeep pulled up, coughing like it had tuberculosis. “You two must be the Dobsons, then,” said the woman who was driving. Her body was heavy, to match her accent, and she wore a floral-print dress. A tiny girl in overalls sat next to her.

  “And you must be…?” Carter asked as she pulled a flattened cowboy hat from her shoulder bag, flicked it to life, and deposited it on her head.

  “Delia,” the woman said. “Your driver. Your cook. Your mama, if you need one.”

  “Already got one too many mamas, thank you very much,” Polly said, and it made Carter frown and Delia squint, but it made the little girl in overalls laugh.

  “The gigglebox here is Henrietta Bowerbird Monroe,” Delia said as she helped the helicopter pilot load bags onto the jeep. “My youngest. Don’t believe a word she says. A scatterbrain and a stargazer, that one.”

  Henrietta flashed Polly a crooked smile, and Polly liked her immediately. Polly could do with some scatterbrained stargazing.

  The camp was about a mile away, set in the shade next to a creek. It was basically the most fabulous tree house Polly had ever seen, with platforms adhered to the thick trunks of willow trees, with spiral staircases and rope ladders and hatches and slides and pulleys and thatched roofs. It had been built in the 1950s by some ornithologists who had come to study the unique birdlife, but had only recently been restored to its former glory.

  “Now do you want Disneyland?” Carter asked.

  “No stinkin’ way!” Polly hollered. “Why didn’t you tell me about this?”

  “Your old mom still has a few surprises up her sleeve for you.”

  Polly hugged Carter around the shoulders, vaulted from the jeep, and bulldozed toward the camp. And Henrietta, legs no bigger than a pair of drumsticks, scurried after her.

  * * *

  All the kids back home in Tucson asked Polly if her mom was Indiana Jones. Carter did little to dispel this notion, what with the cowboy hat and all, but Polly always said, “Archaeologists sit in the dirt with a brush for hours on end. Or in a dingy office with a microscope. Bore! Ing!”

  And yet, her mom’s newest project wasn’t boring at all. A few months before, a villager had uncovered some interesting stones while digging a well. They turned out to be fragments of boulders that had been shattered and buried. Which wouldn’t be of much interest, except for the fact that they were covered in faded pigment, in ancient drawings. They depicted animals like frogs and turtles, as well as people who looked like hunters and shamans. The drawings told stories, at least they seemed to.

  Carter knew a fair bit about geology and cave paintings, so they called her in to assist with the dig. It was the opportunity of a lifetime, and she figured it was worth pulling Polly out of seventh grade for at least a year.

  “You get the best education from traveling,” Carter told her. “From experiencing other people and their lives.”

  As much as she enjoyed contradicting her mother, Polly couldn’t argue with this. Henrietta Bowerbird Monroe alone was worth a year of schooling. She was a wonderfully strange girl who skittered through life fueled on chatter. She was tiny, but her voice was raspy and rumbly, like some jazz singer. She and Polly became fast friends.

  Delia wasn’t exaggerating. Henrietta’s brain was all over the place. She’d go from reciting random trivia about polar bears to doing birdcalls to giving names to constellations to asking Polly what it was like to be from America where everybody drinks whiskey and owns a gun.

  “You’ve seen too many Westerns,” Polly said.

  “I haven’t seen nearly enough!” Henrietta replied.

  Every Friday, the archaeologists would host movie
night at the camp and invite the villagers to come sit around a TV and VCR that they plugged into a generator and set on a tree stump. The movies were mostly Westerns, because that’s what made up the majority of lead archaeologist Fred Tsonga’s collection, but no one ever objected. Henrietta, in particular, adored them. Sitting as close to the screen as possible, she’d cheer both the heroes and the villains, because, as she always told Polly, “There wouldn’t be much of a story without both of them.”

  And there wouldn’t be much of this story without Polly and Henrietta, though their relationship was hardly antagonistic. They were, in fact, inseparable. Whenever her mom was off at the dig, a few miles from the camp, Polly was with Henrietta. They were either studying together with the camp’s tutor, an often-frazzled Scottish woman named Sophie Campbell, or they were exploring the village and eating meals cooked by Delia in Henrietta’s cozy stone hut.

  Polly had friends back home in Tucson, but none like Henrietta. The girl’s imagination was astounding—she spoke of ideas, landscapes, and creatures the types of which not even novelists could conceive. And yet, there was nothing selfish about her constant yammering. She focused on things that would fascinate Polly—dastardly boy-kings, giant cockroaches who excelled at poetry—and Polly was never homesick because Henrietta was tireless in her effort to entertain and comfort her.

  Henrietta had other friends as well, a few kids from the village, but none like Polly. That’s because Polly never underestimated or patronized Henrietta, who was twelve years old but not much bigger than a kindergartner. In fact, Polly looked up to her, metaphorically at least. There was wisdom behind the motormouth, and Polly was the only one who seemed to notice.

  In quieter moments, they confided in each other.

  “I have icky thoughts sometimes,” Henrietta often said.