The Whisper (6 page)

A hand grabbed his wrist. It felt like a small hand, but it tugged with such a violent force that it might as well have been the jaws of a sea creature. It pulled him down farther until the murkiness became blackness and the stones thrown by the cavewoman merely tapped Alistair, if they hit him at all.

Down they went. Alistair's lungs were straining, but not much, or not nearly enough considering he'd been underwater for at least a minute. The pressure should have been overwhelming too, but his eardrums felt normal, as if his body was built for this.

The hand let go of his wrist for a moment, but before the panic of abandonment could seize his chest, a foot was in Alistair's face. The rubber of a moon-boot grazed Alistair's cheek. He wrapped both hands around it and let it pull him.

Deeper, deeper, deeper.

 

CHAPTER 4

They fell from the sky. One moment they were in the pond, and the next they were in a cloud, plummeting alongside drops of rain. Alistair held Polly's ankle even tighter, but he wasn't sure how long he could maintain his grip. She had straightened her body into a missile, head pointed downward as gravity piled on the momentum.

“We're gonna die!” Alistair screamed, but with the hiss of the wind and with the space helmet covering Polly's head, it would have been difficult for her to hear him. He had the choice of letting go, of course, but then what was he going to do? Flap his arms like wings to stay aloft?

They had entered a new world. As they escaped the wispy haze of the clouds, they faced an expanse of red. Whether it was earth or liquid was hard to say. Red. That was the only sure thing. Even the rain around them was red, lashing Alistair's face and washing pink lenses over his irises. He closed his eyes and clenched his teeth.

Standing atop the high dive at the high school's pool when he was eight years old, Alistair had done the same thing. Blind, molars grinding, he had stood there enduring the chants of “Do it! Do it! Do it!” coming from Charlie and the chorus of third graders standing shoulder-deep in the shallow end. He had leaned forward and let his body fall and he had hit the water sideways, taking the impact in the ribs. He might as well have been hitting the ground.

What Alistair hit in the world of red wasn't the ground, but it wasn't exactly liquid either. It was like porridge and it swallowed him whole.
Flurrrrrp!
was the sound it made as his body entered it. It didn't hurt, though. The substance hugged Alistair with a chilly quiver and worked its way between his fingers until they finally slipped from Polly's ankle and Alistair was alone.

He didn't dare open his eyes. The stuff was oozing into his nostrils. He tried to swim to the surface, but it was of no use. He couldn't move his body in any direction. The fear of suffocation was even worse than the fear of falling. At least falling had a visceral thrill. Suffocation was torture, pure and simple.

As spasms of panic rippled through Alistair's torso, the sludge started to quake. Then, all at once, it opened up beneath him. There was a slurp and a tug from below, and he couldn't fight it. Like a loosened clog through a drain, he was sucked through some sort of tube. His shoulders rubbed against its edges.

For at least a minute the tube carried him along, twisting back and forth as if it were a digestive tract. And like a digestive tract, it expelled him, shot his body out into a dimly lit chamber. His body fell, landed on a slightly taut net that stretched across the length of the chamber, and bounced twice—once high and once low. When his body settled, its weight was too much to anchor Alistair in place, and he rolled down the net to the valley at its center, where he crashed into Polly.

She patted him on the cheek, as if to say,
Sorry, kid,
then she nudged him away, onto his back.

From below came a cacophony of doors opening and feet shuffling, followed by an eruption of rousing cheers.

“New blood! New blood! New blood!”

Above, torches mounted on walls exploded to life, painting the surroundings in a fresh and fiery light. The walls were made from all shapes and sizes of stone, immaculate masonry, with granite and marble clinging together. The ceiling was covered in giant fleshy tubes, swaying like squid tentacles, a couple dripping red sludge.

“New blood! New blood! New blood!”

Alistair and Polly flipped over onto their stomachs. A fist-pumping crowd of hundreds dressed in tunics and leather surrounded a large pedestal, which stood directly below the net. At first, it seemed like the pedestal was growing or moving up to meet them, but it was soon clear that ropes tied to the corners of the net were spooling out from dark holes in the walls and lowering Alistair and Polly.

“New blood! New blood! New blood!”

They came to rest on the cold, flat surface of the pedestal, which the net, like a woven tablecloth, now draped over. Polly jumped to her feet immediately and began wiping the remaining red sludge from her spacesuit. As he pushed himself up, Alistair could feel the chants, the vibrations from the rowdy crowd. The mob was at least twenty feet below, but that did little to allay his fears. They were a pack of hyenas at the base of a tree. Even if they couldn't find their way up, Alistair would probably, eventually, have to go down.

“New blood! New blood! New blood!”

A curved balcony jutted out from the wall, mounted only a few feet higher than the pedestal. Over the middle of the balcony hung a swing fashioned from rusty chains and a giant tortoiseshell. On the swing sat a boy.

“Silence!” the boy bellowed, the tremor of his voice giving the swing a wee push.

Like that, the crowd cut out. Their roar became whispers and attention settled on the boy.

“Thank you, my lovelies,” he told the people. “I understand your excitement. It has been a while since we've had visitors. And now we have two! Most promising. But we must be gracious hosts. Rabble-rousing is sure to frighten them.”

The boy had tight curls in his hair and a swarthy complexion. He wore scale mail on his chest and steel armor on his legs. Above him hung a curtain of looped ropes that resembled a line of nooses. Each rope was painted a different color—maroon, turquoise, beige, purple with neon green stripes—and they stretched up into the jumble of fleshy tubes above. A small sword with a ruby-encrusted handle rested in the boy's lap. If Alistair had to guess, he would have said the boy was six years old.

Polly pressed the button on the side of her helmet and the mask snapped open. “Good afternoon, your highness,” she said to the boy.

The boy leaned forward, his shoulders pressing against the swing chains. “Is that…?”

“Polly, your highness. In the flesh and”—she wiped her spacesuit off again—“blood.”

A look of amazement cloaked his face. “Of all that is holy, a girl who keeps her word.”

Polly shrugged. “I said I'd be back.”

“And you said you'd bring another swimmer.”

With open hands, Polly motioned to Alistair. “I'm sorry,” Alistair said. “I'm a little confused. Where are we exactly?”

A haggard woman shouted an answer from the crowd. “You're in the realm of Lord Hadrian! And if you know what's good for you, you'll not be acting a fool, you gilled—”

“Hush, figment!” Hadrian commanded from his swing. “The boy is obviously new here. We shall learn about him before we determine the level of his foolishness.” He turned to Alistair. “So who are you, boy?”

“My name is Alistair Cleary.”

“Do you swim?”

“I … guess so.”

“And has Polly told you why you are in this realm?”

“No, sir.” The honorific came out without a thought. Lord Hadrian looked like a six-year-old, but because of his regal demeanor, he quite clearly demanded the respect of someone much older.

“Sir?” Hadrian sniped. “Not ‘your highness'? Not ‘Lord Hadrian'?”

“I'm sorry … your highness, I didn't—”

Hadrian winked and let loose a little giggle. “It's fine,” he said. “It's nice, actually. Reminds me of my days as a knight. I am not immune to nostalgia, young Mr. Cleary.”

“Okay … sir.”

Hadrian scratched his chin. “So Polly did not inform you of your predicament? Most interesting.”

The masses responded in kind. “Oooooooo!”

“It's hardly a
predicament
,” Polly explained. “It's an opportunity. Besides, when did I have time to tell him? No matter how I get here, I always end up in that disgusting sea of coagulated blood. Not the sort of welcome that inspires rational conversation.”

Alistair looked down at the beads of red still dripping off his body. “That was…?”

“It wasn't cherry Jell-O,” Polly answered, and then she turned back to Hadrian. “Simple fact is this: the kid was about to be clobbered by a cavewoman. He owes me his life.”

Hadrian's eyes narrowed. “Is this true, Master Cleary?”

Alistair looked at Polly. Clad in the spacesuit, she still cut the figure of a wise and experienced explorer. “Yes, your highness … sir.”

Hadrian nodded. “Fair enough. So I am the owner of this debt?”

Polly wiped her hands together and then whisked them apart. “Free and clear. All yours.”

In the crowd, devilish grins sprouted, accompanied by guttural, satisfied hums. The reaction was not lost on Alistair. “What exactly … is my …
predicament
?” he asked.

Before Hadrian could answer, Polly pointed up to the hanging ropes and said, “You don't need me around for this. I'd just like to conclude our business and be on my way.”

Hadrian shrugged and said, “A deal is a deal. I'm still unsure why you'd want access to the Ambit of Ciphers, but I've given up trying to figure out people like you. If you survive, come back and regale us with your saga. We'd all be curious to know what sort of madness
He
has unleashed in there.”

From the crowd came nods and hushed proclamations of “She's crazy, she is.”

“Wait a second,” Alistair said. “You're not staying here with me?”

Polly crinkled up her nose, tipped her head, and replied, “No. I'm sorry. You seem like a good kid, but I'm not cut out to be some guide. I'm like you. Looking for someone. I can't let anything get in the way of that. So … so good luck, Alistair Cleary.”

She'd obviously had enough of his pleading eyes. She turned away from Alistair and pointed again at the ropes. Hadrian nodded, reached up, grabbed a silver-and-gold-colored rope, and tugged it. Gears clattered, and one of the tubes hanging from the ceiling shot down like a frog's tongue and enveloped Polly. There was a
voom
and a
slurp
and then bye-bye, Polly, the proverbial fly snatched off the leaf.

Hadrian released the rope, and the tube retracted and took its place among the others, gently swaying in the open air above. The force of the tug had added momentum to Hadrian's swing, and it creakily swept over the chamber, almost reaching as far as Alistair's pedestal. Hadrian pumped his feet to keep it going as the crowd whooped and whistled.

Alistair asked again, “What exactly is my predicament?”

Rather than addressing Alistair, Hadrian shouted his answer to the masses. “The quest this young swimmer has accepted, my lovelies, is the bravest one of all. He is to kill the fearsome Mandrake!”

Cheers. Applause. A thunder of happiness.

 

1988

Winter back home, almost two years before.

Alistair was ten, nearly eleven, and he had begged Charlie to go sledding with him in a state forest that was connected to their neighborhood by tangled strings of trails. He promised an adventure the likes of which no boy had ever known. Charlie wasn't a big fan of physical activity, or cold weather in general, so he scoffed at such a notion, but then agreed anyway, because that's what best friends do.

It was a two-mile hike to the hill Alistair wanted to conquer, a steep and rugged swath of dirt that locals called Wheelbender on account of all the bike tires it had claimed. The boys didn't bother telling their parents, because parents generally advise against such endeavors. Instead, they made up stories about building snow forts and slipped out of their houses dressed in down coats, snow pants, and mittens. They left their hats behind. As Kyle had often told them, hats were for girls.

A brutal winter had left a solid two-foot base of hardpack, and a storm the night before had topped it with a powdery fourteen inches. A lack of snowshoes made the hike difficult, but these were ideal conditions. Their sleds kicked up wings and tails of white, and the ride down Wheelbender was fast and smooth. Even Charlie, usually so hangdog and sluggish, didn't pause after the first run. He simply raced back up the hill and went again, and again, and again. Adrenaline was their lunch, and they had no complaints about the icicles on their sideburns or the biting wind that painted their ears pink. It was a perfect day.

Until Charlie wiped out.

On what was to be one of their last runs, his sled hit a rock and he lost control, started to spin, stuck his leg out to stop, and smashed his ankle into a tree stump.

“Gahhh!” he howled.

Alistair rushed over to find his friend writhing, facedown on the sled, biting at its red plastic edge.

“Can you stand?” Alistair asked.

“I … don't know.”

“Can you at least move it?”

Charlie rolled up the fabric of his snow pants. Blood had yet to answer the call. The skin of his ankle was still pale—no swelling to speak of—but when Alistair poked it with his mitten, Charlie winced.

“I'm pretty sure it's broken,” Charlie said.

The sun was sneaking behind the trees and was halfway down to the horizon. It would be dark in about two hours. Snow wasn't falling, but the wind was picking up and blowing it into drifts. Alistair rolled down Charlie's pant leg and made a promise.