The Whisper (2 page)

“There's no way I can take you home with me?” she asked.

“None,” Banar replied. “
This
is my home.”

“Will you wait here for me?” she asked.

“That's all I will do.”

Una believed him and she wished herself back to the waterfall, where she decided to return to the Hotiki and tell them about what she had discovered. She had killed Banar but she had resurrected him as well. All could be forgiven.

However, during the journey back she began to question her plan. Did the Hotiki really need to know about this place? Yes, they all loved Banar, but the sad fact was that they loved him much more than they loved her. If she shared the place with them, would their wishes come true as well? Would those wishes make Una even less significant than she already was?

Selfishness, reassuring and warm, settled into her body, and when she arrived back at the caves, her parents embraced her.
They would have embraced Banar twice as tightly,
she told herself. Then she lied for a second time.

“I chased the chaos spirits into the forest,” she said. “They captured me for seven sunsets. They told me that if I don't visit them again, then they will take us all.”

As before, the tribe had no reason to doubt her, and they encouraged Una to do as the chaos spirits commanded. Not long after that, Una set off and followed the creek upstream for three sunsets until she reached the waterfall. She dove into the water and touched the glow. It transported her back to the world of Banar, to the world of fulfilled wishes. Una started to build.

She created landscapes of fields and forests, of valleys lined with caves. She created plants and creatures as wondrous as her imagination would allow. She spent many days summoning a world of her own, and the only person she shared it with was Banar. And when she was happy with her creations, when she felt that Banar had a suitable place in which to live, she wished herself to the waterfall again.

Three sunsets later, she was back at the caves, apologizing for being gone for so long, but the Hotiki didn't understand. “You have only been gone for six sunsets,” her mother explained.

This was more than a surprise to Una. It was a revelation. It meant that no matter how long she spent in the other world, she would return to the waterfall at the exact moment after she had touched the glow.

Over the next ninety sunsets that she lived with the Hotiki, she spent ten times as many in the other world, a place she dubbed Mahaloo. In Mahaloo, her body didn't age and she had absolute power, so it was a preferable life in every way but one. Banar wasn't really Banar.

She began noticing it almost immediately, but she was good at denying it.
Death has changed him,
she thought.
He'll act like himself soon enough.

Soon enough never came. Banar looked exactly like Banar. He sounded like him, could do all the animal calls and could taunt Una endlessly. And yet, he was different. He was an impression of Banar, not the real thing.

Eventually, Una lost count of the sunsets in Mahaloo, and she accepted that he would never act like her true brother. So she decided to try again. She brought forth another Banar. And then another. She resurrected him again, and again, and again, until she had a tribe that consisted of herself and 142,858 Banars. No matter how many times she tried, none of them were like the real Banar.

While Una didn't age in Mahaloo, all of her creations did, including the many Banars. The Banars started out exactly the same, but even after a short while, their personalities became distinct. They took on the traits of animals. They moved like animals, had eyes like animals. Their voices growled, or whinnied, or cooed. There was Banar the Wolf. Banar the Snake. Banar the Beetle. They acted as faithful servants to Una, and she loved them all, for they were her creations. She was also ashamed of them, though, for they were living reminders of her failures.

I wish to give these Banars everlasting life. But I want to let them start over, to give them somewhere else to live, someone else to love.

All at once, 142,857 Banars disappeared, never to be seen again. One Banar remained, the first Banar she had created. The original impression.

Una started over too. She created a new tribe that consisted of people with names like Vinda and Hoo and Meck. She brought forth fifty-seven companions—every one of them a great hunter, cook, or magician—and she lorded over the new tribe. Life was pleasant, and Una had no reason to return to the Hotiki.

Time rumbled by in Mahaloo. There were births and deaths. Meck passed on, so did Hoo, then Vinda. But with two generations of descendants, the tribe had grown much larger. Banar still looked the same as the day she had given him everlasting life, and he still had pluck and vigor. Una, however, had grown weary. Sure, she had the body of a girl, but her mind was restless. She knew she couldn't go back to the Hotiki, because she wasn't sure she would even recognize that world anymore. And yet, she was tiring of the world she had created. It held no surprises, and though it could grant her so much, it could never take away her shame.

One night, she was alone in her cave and she whispered into the darkness. “I wish I knew the point of this. I need to know why someone so guilty and sad has been given so much power.”

An answer didn't arrive, but Banar did. He showed up in her cave not long after that. “Una,” he said, his body dripping wet, “are you all right? Can I help you?”

He
could
help her. She realized that now. He could be whatever she needed him to be. “You love me, don't you, Banar?” she asked.

“More than anything.”

“So if I asked you to do something for me, if I commanded you to do something, you would do it, right? No matter what it was?”

“You created me,” he said. “You gave me everlasting life. I am here to serve you. Always.”

Una placed a hand on Banar's shoulder and felt the dampness on his skin. “I don't need always anymore. I need you to end it.”

Then Una lay down in her bed, and Banar, who was kind and sweet and loyal, but who could never be her real brother, shed a few tears. Because whenever Una asked him to do something, he was obliged to do it. Tucked behind his ear was a hollow bamboo reed. He pinched the reed between his fingers, and as he brought it to his mouth, he said, “I am sorry for not being what you wanted. I am sorry for doing all that you have asked.”

Those would be the last words that Una would hear. The reed entered her ear and there was a slurping sound, like a mouth to cupped hands full of broth. Una tried to respond to Banar, to tell him it was okay, to say that she loved him for what he was, but no words came. She couldn't move a muscle. The only parts of her body that still worked were her eyes and her brain, and she watched helplessly as her creations left her.

All the color in Mahaloo began to drain away as liquid. The blue of the sky, the yellow of the fields, the green of the leaves. The liquid poured over the ground and merged into a river that sparkled and swirled with every shade of a prism. When all of Mahaloo's color had slipped into the river, the only things that remained were piles of ashes in the shapes of trees, rocks, animals, even in the shapes of the children and grandchildren of Vinda, Hoo, and Meck.

Am I just a pile of ash too?
Una wondered.

An answer entered her head. She couldn't say where it originated. She could only say it was clear and true.

No. I am the water.

 

MUCH LATER

 

CHAPTER 1

Water, luminous and gaudy, slapped against land, and the boy named Alistair Cleary lay on the edge of the liquid and the dirt where a river had coughed him out. He ached—head and body. An oaky film of ash coated the roof of his mouth. The sun pummeled his bare skin.

Alistair was twelve years old, a slight, bony kid with a round nose and a birthmark on his chin and a curiosity that sometimes lapsed into foolishness. Groaning, he stood, and water licked his calves. He rolled his head, and his neck crackled like a campfire. Behind him, a river churned with color—it was sherbet and gumballs, sunlight on an oil slick, and it cut across a lifeless landscape of black and gray. Yet in front of him it met an abrupt end. Weird.

There was no lake or ocean for the water to empty into, but the river was disappearing, merging into the land like wet paint becoming dry paint. It was transforming into a wide field where waves of yellow grass billowed and flattened in conversation with the wind. Someone had even flipped a switch on the sky. Behind him, it was putrid and smoky. In front of him, it was bright, tinged with a healthy green. Water becoming earth, a sharp border between death and life—Alistair had never seen anything like it.

What is this place?

It was part of Aquavania, he knew at least that much. In fact, he knew more than he cared to know. He knew that he had touched some kind of liquid portal in his friend's basement and he had ended up in a windstorm of ash. He knew that to escape the storm, he had jumped into a brightly colored river and the river had carried him to this place. He knew there was no clear path home from here.

Send me home. Bring me home. There's no place like …

He wished over and over again to be transported back to his friend's basement. That's how it worked in Aquavania. At least that's how he
thought
it worked. You wished and your wish was granted. But it wasn't working, and the more he wished, the more he began to wonder if that was a blessing, if home was actually the best place for him to be at the moment. Because he also knew that back home they might call him something terrible.

Killer.

He started to cry. He took two steps into the field, but that was all his body could manage. He collapsed to his knees and surrendered to the tears. The guilt, the terror—they were invading his body, pirates looting his blood and oxygen. His hands were sore, bruised by the recoil of a gun, and he brought them to his face, drove their heels into the bony upper rims of his eye sockets.

This isn't real. I didn't do those things. I didn't shoot Kyle. Fiona isn't gone. Aquavania doesn't exist. I've been dreaming since that snowy night on the road two weeks ago, when I last saw Fiona. Two weeks of dreaming. Two weeks of fiction.

He slapped himself in the face. Hard. That's what people do in dreams to rouse reality. But he didn't wake up, because this was his reality now.

In the distance, movement. A band of men cut through the waves of grass. As they got closer, Alistair could make out their numbers. Six, walking shoulder to shoulder, spears held tight to the chests of the inner four, leather slings dangling from the hands of the outer two. Straggly-looking guys. They appeared to wear animal fur, but it was darker than any fur Alistair was aware of and it was flecked with sparkling white dots. Their hair was tied in long ponytails, and their skin was covered in streaks of mud and clay. War paint? They stopped about twenty yards from where the river ended, but they didn't poise their weapons. Water dripped off of Alistair's body. He was smart enough to stay quiet and still.

They're here to punish me for what I've done.

The tallest of the men took one step forward and leaned on his spear as if it were a staff. His bright blue eyes were ambiguous beacons. They were alive with curiosity. Or was it rage?

“Stand,” the tall man said.

Alistair was in no position to object. He did as ordered.

“You swim?” the tall man asked.

Alistair was astounded that such an odd-looking person would speak English, or what seemed like English. Alistair could understand it, in any case.

“I … can swim,” Alistair replied cautiously.

The tall man nodded. The other five remained stoic.

“This is your quest?” he asked. “Or you come to take our land?”

“I … I … am … not taking anything,” Alistair stuttered. “I'm lost. I'm looking for someone. A girl.”

The tall man nodded again and said, “She is here.” Then he pounded his spear on the ground twice.

One of the others, a wrinkly and oafish character with scars on his cheeks, stepped forward and took a deep breath. His throat ballooned, all supple and bullfrogish. It was beyond strange. It was impossible.

“I don't know what—” Alistair started to say, but he shut his mouth as soon as the frog-throated man opened his. Because what filled that throat wasn't air. It was dragonflies.

Elegant insects, with wings veined in neon, streamed out from the man's gullet and toward Alistair's face. He struggled with two conflicting instincts. Swat? Or swoon? He couldn't choose either, though. Because once the dragonflies had swarmed around his head, his free will was gone.

Alistair was their captive.

*   *   *

To lose control of your body seems a horrible fate, but to Alistair it felt like a relief. His anxiety wafted away, and whatever fear he had of the men was replaced by a deep reverence. He stepped forward, marched, in fact—one, two, three—right into the band of strangers. They clustered around him, their weapons held casually but confidently. They showed no signs of fear, but they kept their distance as they ushered him in the direction of the high-hanging sun.

All logic told Alistair he should try to escape, but his brain was not beholden to logic. He walked with the men. He didn't question them. He didn't fight. The dragonflies, which orbited his head, had rendered him a lamb.

“We will not harm you, swimmer,” the tall man said with a grave but respectful tone.

Perhaps it was the influence of the dragonflies, but Alistair believed this. Or perhaps it was something else that inspired his trust. Alistair wanted—or more accurately, he
needed
—to believe the other thing the man had said.

She is here.