The Whisper (10 page)

He threw the sword to the side, and it clanged against the platform and slid off the edge. “No no no no no…” he mumbled, balling up his fists and pressing them against his eyes.

His blood couldn't keep up with his heart. His hands went numb. He tried to pull in a deep breath, but instead of air, something solid entered his mouth.

Good God!

It squirmed and wiggled, tickling his uvula. Rather than hack or gag, Alistair gulped, and that something became lodged in his windpipe. It cut off all of his oxygen. Choking, he fell to his back, and his eyes turned to the sky long enough to see a tentacle descending to scoop him up and suck him away.

*   *   *

“New blood! New blood! New blood!”

The chant built into a crescendo as the tentacle spat Alistair onto the net, back in the underground fortress where Hadrian reigned. The trip through the fleshy tube took about a minute, but Alistair still hadn't dislodged the blockage in his throat. As the net lowered him onto the pedestal, he pounded his own back, trying to knock loose the clog.

“Don't go so hard on yourself,” Hadrian said, chuckling as he rocked on his swing. “You surrendered faster than most, but that doesn't make you a coward.”

The crowd snickered as Alistair—now on his knees, doubled over—winced and continued to strike himself between the shoulder blades. It was useless. With his arm twisted the way it was, he couldn't produce adequate force.

“So you'd like an arrangement similar to the one I made with Polly?” Hadrian went on. “I suspect you have no idea what that entails?”

Alistair couldn't have responded if he wanted to. His eyes watered; his head was a squeezed lemon. He placed his hands down and arched his back, tried to turn himself into a cat coughing out a hairball.

“I exercised trust and compassion with Polly,” Hadrian continued. “You must understand that I am the only known swimmer who controls a gateway to the Ambit of Ciphers, and Polly desperately wanted to travel there. So she paid her passage by delivering us ten swimmers to fight the Mandrake. The first nine were unsuccessful. You, young sir, are number ten. Would you like to agree to the same bargain?”

His chest heaving, Alistair tried to cough, but all that came out was a throaty rattle. The crowd responded with a fresh chant of “New blood! New blood! New blood!”

“What ails you, boy?” Hadrian said, planting his feet and stopping the swing. “Did you eat something foul up there in the Hutch? Please do not regurgitate on our pedestal. We've only just had it cleaned.”

This is it,
Alistair thought.
I'm going to die right here, choke to death without ever fighting back, without ever knowing squat about Fiona's fate.
It felt like more than a punishment. It felt like being ridiculed. With his last bit of strength, Alistair rose to his feet and, instead of coughing, he tried to swallow. He tipped his head back.

“Here's the difference between you and Polly,” Hadrian remarked. “She had wit and spark. She knew that making a deal means jousting with words. You, on the other hand, are a complete and absolute bore. Better suited to the froth of the sea.”

Hadrian reached up to grab the red rope, the one that dispatched the toothed tentacle.

“New blood! New blood! New blood!” went the crowd.

And Alistair, head still tipped back, neck straight, opened his mouth. Out flew a bird.

Potoweet shot up from the boy's throat like a cork from a champagne bottle. As soon as he reached the height of Hadrian's eyes, Potoweet stopped midair and hovered, wings blurring. Alistair gasped for breath as his body finally surfaced from the depths of suffocation.

“Greetings, Hadrian,” Potoweet said.

“Oh. Sweet. Merciful. Heavens,” Hadrian replied.

“And so it is that we find ourselves entangled once again,” Potoweet said.

The crowd fell silent. The only sound was Alistair's thick breaths.
Haw, huh. Haw, huh. Hawwww, huhhhh.
Until Hadrian screamed.

“Mandrake!”

That's when Potoweet unfolded and expanded. His wings fanned. His feathers flared. His body ballooned, and his legs sprouted. His beak twisted until it wasn't a beak anymore. It was a horn, and floating in the air there was now a creature both beautiful and terrible, a monster with a face like a bird's face, but with that horn instead of a beak, and with a mouth like a serpent's mouth that curled up around the sides of his head. He had wings like a peacock's wings, a body like a man's body, but with two muscular and furry legs that were part equine, part lupine. This was the Mandrake, and he advertised his delight with a mad shriek.

Panic. The crowd began to scream and push and trample and clog the exit with their flailing bodies. The Mandrake wasted no time. He lunged through the air at Hadrian, and Hadrian tried to dodge but wasn't fast enough. The Mandrake's twisted horn pierced the scale mail that protected Hadrian's body and sank into the boy's chest.

“You … worthless … bucket … of pus,” Hadrian coughed, and Alistair couldn't tell if he was talking to him or to the Mandrake, for Hadrian's eyes fell closed and his body started to convulse.

The Mandrake roared again and kicked at the balcony with his powerful legs. The balcony crumbled, raining stones on the raging crowd, and with a still-writhing Hadrian skewered to his horn, the Mandrake flew up and across the room, over the pedestal and then down toward the teeming masses below. A blast of arctic air erupted from the Mandrake's mouth, freezing and leveling each and every body it hit.

“Stop!” Alistair screamed. “Please stop! You shouldn't be doing this!”

The Mandrake responded with a cackle. “I was designed to do this!”

The room flashed from sweltering to frigid in an instant. The exit was still clogged with people and would remain clogged, because the Mandrake released another blast of cold air from his mouth and it froze the bodies in place.

“The red rope!” came a terrified scream from below. “Pull the red one! It'll pulverize the beast!”

Hadrian's empty swing rocked back and forth in the open air, its tortoiseshell seat coming close to the pedestal. In Alistair's sixth-grade gym class, there had been a track and field day when he had registered a long jump of eight feet, which was considered not bad for a twelve-year-old. The shell appeared to reach within eight feet of the pedestal at the apex of its sway, and since it was only going to lose momentum, it was now or never. Alistair took a few steps back. He started to run.

As he reached the end of the pedestal, his foot snagged a bunched-up section of net. He stumbled, and what was a planned leap became an impromptu fall.

“Waaaaa!” Alistair screamed, his voice joining the chorus of cries from the frenzied villagers below. Down he went into clouds of frosty air. Whatever broke his fall was likely to be person or stone, so when he struck a meaty and feathery wing, he was relieved, but only for a split second.

The wing flapped up and Alistair slid down onto the Mandrake's back. It was an enormous back, rife with rib and muscle, and Alistair was astounded that this was the same beast as Potoweet. Balancing would be impossible without a firm grip, so Alistair reached forward and grabbed at the feathers on the Mandrake's head.

The Mandrake roared again, tipped its head back, and flew upward, out of the billows of cold air and toward the hanging garden of tentacles. Alistair held on like it was a bucking bronco, but his sweaty hand was already slipping, and when the Mandrake took a sharp turn, Hadrian's impaled body spun like a propeller and his foot hit Alistair in the face. Alistair lost his grip.

He grabbed at the air as he fell again, and the first thing his hands found were the dangling colored ropes.

Yank, yank, yank, yank.

He snatched and swung from rope to rope like he was on a jungle gym. Tentacles came rocketing down from the ceiling, snapping at the air, striking the pedestal, striking one another, becoming intertwined.

Yank, yank, yank, yank.

More tentacles, ricocheting off one another—the hollow ones pilfering the frozen bodies of figments, the ones equipped with blades chopping things to bits, all of them zipping past the Mandrake, who dipped and dodged as he flew.

Yank, yank, yank, yank.

The walls took a pounding, the screams got even louder, and the ceiling began to crack and let in the chunky, viscous sea. Red liquid began to rain down on them.

Through a torrent of blood and a tangle of tentacles came the awful visage of the Mandrake. The beast was tilted sideways, weaving through the air past the many obstacles, his eyes locked on Alistair. As the blood doused the Mandrake's body, the creature howled in pain but kept moving.

Alistair was holding on to one rope, and there was one final rope in front of him. Since everything was drenched in blood, everything looked red. He had no idea what pulling this final rope would do, but pulling this final rope was all he could do.

Yank.

As a blast of cold air struck Alistair's legs, a tentacle grabbed at his head, and with the ceiling caving in and blood pouring down, Alistair slipped away into the dark.

Up and over and around he went as the bays of agony faded and the only noise was the sluice of his body through the tube. It reminded him of a babbling brook, but it was the opposite of relaxing. Because next came a jolt and a crash as the tube busted through a flimsy layer of ice and spat Alistair out onto cold ground.

He was now in a dark cavern where the air was frosty but ripe, and standing in front of him was a penguin.

“Greetings and salutations,” the penguin said.

 

November 19, 1989

His shirt was wet from the rain. Also the blood. Kyle Dwyer, Charlie's older brother, lay in the grass, bleeding from the stomach. The autumn sky cursed and spat.

Charlie crouched down and waved his bare hands in the air above Kyle's wound. They were mangled hands, casualties of a fireworks accident. The left one had a thumb, pinkie, and ring finger; the right one had only a thumb and pinkie. Yet Charlie moved them with grace—slowly, confidently. The movements seemed practiced, a ritual of sorts. Charlie had done this before. To Alistair, that much was clear.

But what was he doing exactly? Kyle writhed and the blood kept coming, while Charlie swept his hands over and under each other like he was casting a spell. It didn't appear to be helping.

Alistair couldn't bear to witness this anymore. Yes, Alistair had shot the gun. Yes, he had caused Kyle's wound. But rather than help, he chose to run away. He said that it was to call 911, but that wasn't the only motive. That moment—that image—had potential. To stick. To stay. To never leave. Like the final page of a tragic book.

Because this appeared to be the end of Kyle's tale.

 

SO LET'S START ANOTHER

 

IN ANOTHER YEAR BEFORE YEARS

This tale concerns a boy and his stories.

Stories, fictional ones at least, were unknown to those people who lived at the foot of those snowy mountains, in those caves next to that creek. There were no storytellers in that tribe called the Hotiki—that is, until the one named Cabal was born.

Cabal was born during a rainy season, and when the next rainy season arrived, he was already speaking. Six rainy seasons later, he was telling long and complex yarns that kept the Hotiki enthralled well into the night. He told them about how the stars were enchanted beings. He spoke of faraway places where the forests and fields were awash with flowers and the snows never came.

“Where do you learn such wondrous things?” the elders asked, for they only knew of things they had witnessed with their own eyes and ears. They observed. They shared knowledge. They didn't invent like Cabal.

“I am not sure,” Cabal admitted. “Like the rain, sometimes stories fall on me.”

It was as acceptable an explanation as any, and the elders actually didn't care where his stories came from, so long as Cabal kept telling them.

One night, Cabal told the story of a girl and her brother. The girl had long arms and big round eyes and a scar on her cheek. Her brother was a mischievous boy who happened to be a shape-shifter, a person who could transform into any creature alive. While playing near a pond one day, the girl dared her brother to take on the form of a frog and to hop across the water on the tops of lily pads. Never one to resist a dare, the boy dove into the water and emerged transformed, entirely slick and green. But before he had a chance to even hop once, a turtle surfaced and gobbled the frog-boy up.

The girl was terrified and filled with sadness. Also guilt, plenty of guilt. She feared that her tribe would accuse her of murder, so she devised another solution to her predicament. She journeyed into the woods and rounded up animals.

“You must pretend to be my brother,” she told the animals. “And I will let you live among us and eat our food. But only one of you at a time. If the tribe becomes suspicious, then I will replace you.”

Because humans always had the best food, the animals agreed. A wolf was the first one to accompany the girl back to her tribe. Since the girl's brother was a known shape-shifter and spent most of his time in the form of animals, the tribe had no reason to doubt that the wolf was the child they all knew. And they all lived in harmony for quite a while. Until one morning the wolf could not control himself and he stole a baby from a bed of hay and ate the baby in the woods.

“You wicked beast,” the girl told the wolf as he slinked away into the brush. “You are no longer my brother.”

The tribe never suspected the wolf. They thought he was simply the precocious, but peaceful, shape-shifting boy. Instead they blamed the missing baby on the wrath of their creators.

“The creators give and so they must take,” the elders pronounced.

The girl, determined to continue with her charade, replaced the wolf with a bear. Life with the bear was nice. Good. He was part of the tribe and all was well. Until, as anyone could guess, the bear gave in to temptation, his insatiable hunger for old ladies. One foggy night, the bear stole the girl's grandmother from her slumber and devoured her in the woods.