The Slightly Alarming Tale of the Whispering Wars

by Jaclyn Moriarty

  A Whisperer could never make me hurt another person.

  I’d just say no. Wouldn’t do it. Even if my head felt like it was splitting in two.

  But otherwise, okay.

  A truce is fine with me. Honey Bee’s not evil. I mean, she’s not even always annoying!

  When she’s fast asleep and can’t talk, she’s probably perfectly fine.

  Ha ha.

  No. She’s all right awake sometimes, I guess. In little bits. So let’s get on with the story.

  Where are we up to, anyway? It’s got muddled.

  Life is a muddle. I don’t understand how people write history books about wartime. Things happen in overlapping ways, and you don’t know which bits count.

  I think we might be up to that first Tuesday.

  Honey Bee

  Yes.

  The first Tuesday of volunteer duty we were almost late because there was a Fire Siren attack at dawn.

  A group of Sirens is called a blast, and several blasts had joined the Whispering side. Now, a regular Siren will attack by howling and shrieking so that your mind gets jumbled and it seems as if someone is plunging a dagger into your ear.

  Both ears, I mean. Two daggers.

  If you are exposed to a Siren attack for more than a few minutes, the jumbling is permanent. From then on, you will always feel as if your mind is a toybox being shaken about by a toddler. In addition, you will go deaf.

  Fire Sirens, meanwhile, can use their howls and shrieks to ignite flames. What this means is, you want to run inside to climb into a wardrobe and press pillows to your ears, but you can’t! Because you need to be outside with hoses and buckets putting out the fires! Impossible situation!

  They are terribly haughty about their superior talents, Fire Sirens. Regular Sirens find them exasperating.

  Brathelthwaite Boarding School had been well insulated against Siren attacks, but even that only took the edge off the noise. I was dreaming about Aunt Rebecca that night, I remember. She is a science teacher and I think I already mentioned that she lives in the Kingdom of Vanquishing Cove? Before I came to Brathelthwaite, I used to visit her every summer. Her cottage sits on a hill overlooking the sea.

  In this dream, I saw again the golden candle on her sideboard, a pot of tea and a plate of mango-coconut cakes on the table. My aunt stood in the open doorway, her hands on her hips. She turned to me, smiling her sweet, mischievous smile, and said, ‘Look, Honey Bee, there’s a sun shower outside. Shall we take a walk in the rain?’

  But the moment I looked out at the rain, the droplets turned themselves into arrow points. Each point was streaking towards us with a high-pitched whistling sound. Into the cottage they spun, through its open windows and door. Aunt Rebecca and I fell backwards, staring wild-eyed at one another.

  ‘Aunt Rebecca!’ I shouted. ‘Aunt Rebecca! Help us! Help us, Aunt Rebecca!’

  Hands shook my shoulders.

  I opened my eyes to the shadow of Rosalind in her dressing gown.

  ‘Oh, do hush up, Honey Bee,’ she scolded. ‘There’s enough racket outside without another of your nightmares about Aunt Rebecca. It’s a Fire Siren attack.’

  I fumbled in my bedside drawer for the knitted earmuffs we had all been issued and joined Rosalind and the other girls at the windows. Our blackout curtains had been pushed aside and we stood in the dim light, listening to the eerie wails and watching flames ripple across the lawn. Bushes erupted suddenly, and sparks rained like autumn leaves from trees. Our security guards scurried about in their soundproof helmets, dousing each fire as it appeared. Once, I saw a security guard stop suddenly and fall to her knees, arms clutched around her helmet.

  ‘Helmets can only do so much against Fire Sirens,’ Rosalind muttered beside me. It was strange to hear her sounding so subdued.

  There was a shout from another guard, and he ran towards the fallen woman, dragging her into the vestibule. I heard later that she permanently lost the hearing in her right ear after the attack.

  At 7am, the attack still continued—the guards must have been exhausted but still they sprang from fire to fire, stamping out each in turn—and I thought we would have to miss our first volunteer session.

  ‘Oh dear,’ Rosalind sighed, ‘you’re right.’ But her lips twitched into a smile. She didn’t want to go along at all. ‘On a team with orphans!’ she said, over and over. ‘Why, it’s my worst nightmare!’

  Neither did Victor but, of course, Sir Brathelthwaite had made such a fuss of how proud he was of his students for catching the Queen’s attention that there was no way out of it. (Hamish and I admitted to each other that we were curious to see the ‘future children’ again, and just as curious to find out how we had come to volunteer without our own knowledge! Hamish thought he must have accidentally hypnotised himself and done it in a daze.)

  Anyhow, just as Rosalind was smiling to herself, there was one of those strange, abrupt silences that feel like noise themselves, they are so startling.

  Tick, tick, tick said the clock on the wall. Footsteps ran quickly down the corridor outside our room. Voices called to each other.

  ‘Is it done?’ I whispered.

  In the grounds, the security guards had all stopped still. They were looking up and around, glancing at each other.

  A moment later, the all-clear bells rang out.

  Beside me, Rosalind gave a little sigh.

  Victor asked permission to take a picnic breakfast to our first volunteer session. He is very fond of treats, is Victor. ‘My friends here,’ he said—indicating Hamish, Rosalind and me—‘are terribly shook up by the Fire Siren attack this morning. I think some treats will do them good, don’t you, Sir Brathelthwaite?’

  ‘Remarkable,’ Sir Brathelthwaite murmured. ‘Always thinking of others. That will be your noble blood. Very well, tell the kitchen to put together a feast. I hope you others realise how fortunate you are to have a friend like Victor here?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Rosalind agreed, and we sped off.

  We were supposed to report to the Mayor’s office in the Town Hall. The orphans were already loitering outside her door when we arrived, and all four swung around to glower at us. Before we’d finished glowering back, Bronte and Alejandro strode up, smiling. The tear in Bronte’s coat had been neatly sewn, I noticed, and Alejandro’s hair was shorter and tidier, but their smiles were unsteady. As unsteady as a rowboat that’s just been boarded by an elephant.

  They were nervous.

  ‘Was it you who wrote the—?’ Victor began, rounding on them, but the door swung open. Mayor Franny stepped out, exclaiming about what fantastic children we were to have joined forces like this! What crackerjack diamonds!

  Most of us sighed quietly. It was becoming tiresome, you see, playing along with all the congratulations.

  Mayor Franny told us that our first assignment would be to take a pony and cart to the Spindrift Junkyard and collect any metal or true-magic trinkets we could find.

  ‘Now, I know most of you,’ she added, ‘but I haven’t yet met Bronte and Alejandro. You’re Bronte? And you must be Alejandro? Greetings! Welcome to Spindrift! Where are you from? Your parents just moved to town, did they?’

  ‘Ever so pleased to meet you, Franny,’ Bronte said, grinning a little madly. ‘I hope the others will show us the way to the Junkyard? I’m afraid I have no idea where it is. Shall we set off at once?’

  ‘Yes,’ Alejandro agreed, ‘before this sun gets any warmer. You say there are gloves with the cart? And sacks?’

  Moments later, we were riding through the streets of Spindrift together—Eli driving, the rest of us crowded in the back—and I was thinking how cleverly the pair had avoided Mayor Franny’s questions.

  ‘Before anybody says another word,’ Bronte pronounced, ‘I have written a letter that explains everything.’

  ‘Well,’ Alejandro put in thoughtfully, ‘it explains a teeny piece of the everything, Bronte, but everything is—how do you say?—big! A very big concept. It is an immense,
epistemol—’

  ‘Hush up, Alejandro. He can be very philosophical, you know, but we’d like you to read this letter so it’s not really the time, sorry, Alejandro.’ She drew an envelope from her coat pocket, and Alejandro shrugged (very philosophically).

  ‘And why,’ Victor sneered, ‘should we bother reading this?’

  ‘Oh well, I’ll throw it away if you prefer.’ Bronte made to fling the envelope over the side of the cart, but Finlay laughed and grabbed it from her hand.

  We all gathered around to read over his shoulder, bumped by the cart now and then. From the driver’s seat, Eli threatened to break us all into 7,356 pieces if we didn’t read it aloud to him. We ignored him and carried on reading in silence.

  It was a long letter, which makes sense, as it set out to explain everything. Or a teeny piece of everything, anyway. One curious thing was that the letter seemed to have been got at by the censors—people who black out bits of soldiers’ messages home, to make sure they don’t give away military secrets. Only, instead of blocks of black, this letter had gaps where sentences simply faded. Pale smudges remained, as if somebody had spilled milk and then brushed it away;

  Dear Children of Spindrift,

  I expect you are extremely cross with us for sending your names to the Queen as a volunteer team. I would be cross too, if I were you.

  I do apologise.

  To explain why we did this, I need to tell you our story. Please be patient.

  As we mentioned, we are from the future. About fifteen years in the future.

  My name is Bronte Mettlestone and I live in Gainsleigh in the Kingdom of Rosehip with my parents, my Aunt Isabelle, and the Butler. Two years ago, while on an extensive journey around the Kingdoms and Empires, I met Alejandro. He was a boy with no shoes across a river and, to make a long story short (or to make a 109-chapter story into five words), he and I became friends. He now lives with my family too.

  Another important thing also occurred on my extensive journey (well, many important things occurred but this is the one that counts here): I purchased a genie’s bottle from the Markets in the village of Lasawftk. (Don’t bother visiting, they’re pretty standard markets.)

  The bottle no longer contained the genie, but it was a bargain at only a few copper coins, and I will tell you why.

  It has the power to direct you to the dreams you ought to dream. The genie herself appeared for a moment while I was paying, all got up in lipstick-red shawls—she was terribly mysterious and quiet, left a basket of fruit, and was off again.

  The bottle only works the one time per person, and I’ve already used up my turn, but I still have it. Not long ago, I suggested to Alejandro that he sleep with it by his bed, in order to dream the dream he ought to dream.

  He thought that was a fine idea and off he went to sleep.

  Well, the next day he came to breakfast looking very pale, and also very interested.

  ‘My dream,’ he said, ‘told me I must visit my parents.’

  We all blinked. Alejandro was raised on a pirate ship and never knew his biological parents.

  ‘My dream,’ he added, ‘said I must find my parents, for they are sad.’

  ‘Well then,’ Aunt Isabelle said. ‘You must. But how do you know who they are?’

  ‘That’s what I asked my dream,’ Alejandro replied.

  ‘Sensible,’ my father and mother said in unison, nodding.

  ‘The dream said that I should seek out the letters J.A. in the town of Spindrift, in the Kingdom of Storms.’

  ‘Long journey,’ my mother pointed out, ‘from here to Spindrift.’

  ‘Spindrift!’ I exclaimed. ‘That’s where the Children of Spindrift are from!’

  ‘Stands to reason, Bronte,’ the Butler put in. ‘That the Children of Spindrift would be from Spindrift.’

  (By the way, YOU are the Children of Spindrift. You are very in the and we had just learned about and I must say, I know that the seven of you however, I didn’t think )

  ‘The dream,’ Alejandro continued, ‘said I must return to the Spindrift of fifteen years ago.’

  ‘An even longer journey then,’ my mother joked.

  ‘Did you ask how exactly you were supposed to do that?’ I checked.

  ‘Of course, Bronte. And the dream told me that it would invite the Time Travel Hedge to our garden, and that the hedge would remain there until I found the truth of who my parents are.’

  ‘Good gracious!’ the Butler and Aunt Isabelle exclaimed. ‘The Time Travel Hedge is in our garden?’

  We all hurried to the windows to peer down into the grounds. My father spotted it first. A tidy new hedge, the width of your outstretched arms, just beyond the rhododendrons.

  Interestingly, back when I used the genie bottle it gave me a nonsensical dream that I had to puzzle out. Yet Alejandro’s dream was so straightforward and polite! I never got to have a question-and-answer session with my dream!

  Still, I recovered from this unfairness quite quickly because I was excited at the idea of an adventure. Time travel struck me as adventurous. Also, I saw that it was important for Alejandro to find his parents if they were sad.

  The hedge turned out to be marvellous. You just squeeze through a narrow gap in its middle, and it knows where and when to take you. Each time we use it, we find ourselves in the Town Square at Spindrift. After a few hours here, we fade back to our own time and there we are, standing in the garden again.

  So Alejandro and I have been wandering the streets of Spindrift trying to meet people whose names begin with ‘J’ and ‘A’ as we suppose they are going to be Alejandro’s parents. At first, it seemed very easy: we met a Joseph, a Jasmine, a Jacqueline, an Arnold, an Ahmed, and an Abhidi. But we don’t know what to do once we meet them. Alejandro won’t be born for another few years, and ‘J’ and ‘A’ might not have even met each other yet! And they can’t possibly know that they will one day be Alejandro’s parents.

  Then we thought, ‘hang on, J-A doesn’t have to be the names of the parents. It could be some other clue. The street name where the parents live! (Juniper Alley? Jeronimo Avenue?) The restaurant where they will have their first date. (The Jumping Alligator?)

  So we became frustrated. We wandered the streets of Spindrift each visit, hoping that the answer would spring at us.

  Then one day we happened to overhear the Matron at the Orphanage calling, ‘Finlay! Glim!’ and we recognised the names.

  ‘The Spindrift Children! It must be!’ we cried. Or I did, anyway, and Alejandro agreed.

  After that, we got a bit distracted from our search for J-A-, and began searching out you Spindrift Children instead. We did stare at you rather when we found you.

  I apologise. I know it was rude. But you can’t really blame us! You are and we were keen to tell our classmates and teachers all about you.

  We never guessed it would lead to you chasing us down! The day when you all tried to capture us in the beach hut, Alejandro and I were a little frightened but also very excited to be speaking directly to the Children of Spindrift.

  However, when we got back to our garden, the genie herself was there, waiting for us by the hedge. All got up in her lipstick-red shawls, just as when I’d seen her the last time, but this time she was not the least bit mysterious or quiet! She was direct, and very chatty (like Alejandro’s dream).

  ‘Whatever have you done?’ she said. ‘What happened back in time just now?’

  We told her how you had chased us.

  ‘There,’ she said. ‘That’s why I’ve been summonsed by the Board of Time Keepers. You’ve messed with history.’

  I became very defensive and said, ‘We most CERTAINLY have NOT,’ but Alejandro placed a calming hand on my shoulder and asked the genie, ‘In what way?’

  ‘Why, the Children of Spindrift have been trying to capture YOU two, thinking you are Whisperers! But history says they SHOULD have been and in order that they will which of course will lead to and .’

  ‘Oh dear,’ I s
aid. ‘If we have messed up history, does that mean time itself will collapse now and Alejandro and I won’t even exist?’ I’d read about such things in stories.

  ‘Of course you will exist, Bronte!’ the genie cried. ‘Look at you! Existing! Do not be foolish. No, it will be far worse than that. The horizon will tip, becoming awful to see, like a crooked painting. Weather patterns will turn inside out, and stars will clatter to the ground like so many marbles. Unless you repair this glitch in history, the Kingdoms and Empires will be flipped like so many pancakes. Many, many lives will be lost before the Kingdoms and Empires settle down and right themselves again.’

  ‘So!’ said Alejandro, who is an optimist. ‘‘We will fix it. How do we do this?’

  ‘You don’t have long,’ the genie retorted, and she turned to frown at the hedge. ‘You had better forget all about finding your parents, Alejandro, and focus on fixing history. You must make sure that the seven Children of Spindrift

  and that they so that they All right?’

  ‘Very well,’ I agreed. ‘We’ll go straight back to old Spindrift now and tell them that they must and that they .’

  ‘Yes,’ Alejandro nodded. ‘Easy.’

  ‘What are you forgetting?’ the genie asked, rather drily. ‘Come on. Don’t look at me blankly like that. What have you forgotten?’

  Really, she was entirely unlike her mysterious self. I think she must have joined an exercise class in the meantime and it had brisked her up. ‘Come on!’

  We remembered both at the same time.

  The Detection Magic.

  You see, whenever you go through the gap in the hedge, you get coated in a sort of froth of Detection Magic. We found out about this from a book on the Time Travel Hedge that my former governess, Dee, gave me when she heard we’d the hedge in our garden. The Detection Magic keeps an eye on you to make sure you don’t give away anything about the future. If you even hint that you’re about to do so, you get whisked back to your own time. This is how we vanished from the roof of your beach hut that day—we simply said, ‘In the future…’ and the Detection Magic jumped.