Whispering in the Wind

by Alan Marshall

  They walked back to the hut side by side.

  ‘Would you like me to help you sweep the moon tonight?’ asked Peter.

  ‘I would like that,’ said the witch.

  Greyfur was amazed at the change in them when they entered the hut. The witch let her out of the cage and told her to make herself at home.

  Peter described to her all that had happened, and then said, ‘We will leave tomorrow, but tonight I am going to help the witch sweep the moon. I want to show her that we are now friends.’

  ‘I think that’s a good idea,’ said Greyfur, then asked him in a whisper, ‘Did you get your velvet jacket back?’

  ‘No, it had disappeared.’

  ‘I thought that would happen,’ said Greyfur.

  7

  Peter and the Witch Fly to the Moon

  There was a full moon sailing in the sky when Peter and the witch prepared to leave. They stood in front of the hut looking up at the bright world they would soon be visiting.

  ‘It looks clean from here,’ said the witch. ‘Well, you’ll be surprised when you get there. The rubbish being tossed up there lately is really disgraceful.’

  ‘Men have already landed on the moon,’ said Peter.

  ‘I know, I know,’ said the witch. ‘I was a week cleaning up the mess they left. Did you see that Armstrong fellow take his first step. Laugh! I nearly died!’

  She sat astride the broom and Peter clung on behind her. He clutched her black cloak and shut his eyes. Her thin bony fingers tightened on the broomstick and they shot up into the sky like a rocket. The earth dropped away beneath them but they were not conscious of speed. Soon they were weightless and sitting on the broom became easy.

  ‘The broom is flying well tonight,’ said the witch. ‘I think it goes better with two people aboard. We’ve already passed the escape velocity of seven miles a second but I’ll put her up to two hundred and forty thousand miles an hour. That means we’ll reach the moon in about fifty-five minutes. Hold tight!’

  The broom was really moving now. Ahead of them the moon grew larger.

  Suddenly the witch twisted the broom into a violent swerve, almost unseating Peter. An object with lighted windows flashed past.

  ‘Watch where you’re going!’ she screamed. She turned her head and said to Peter, ‘Did you see that! Some fool in a satellite nearly hit me. I’ll tell him off.’

  She jerked the broom round with an angry heave and chased the satellite which was on its way around the world. The witch manoeuvred the broom till they were flying just beside its window. Behind the thick glass they could see the startled face of a man looking out at them.

  ‘Where’s your licence, mug?’ yelled the witch, who was enjoying being rude again. ‘You tried to run us down. The only vehicle you’re fit to ride in is a pram.’

  The astronaut’s eyes were wide open with astonishment as he looked at them. He was trying to speak into the mouthpiece of a radio but he was so shocked he couldn’t form the words. He suddenly began to speak rapidly as if what he wanted to say was extremely urgent.

  ‘Come in, Earth. Over.’

  ‘What’s wrong?’ asked a voice from the radio.

  ‘There’s a witch and a boy looking at me through the window. They’re both riding on a broom. Over.’

  ‘You are not well. I repeat: You are not well. You are overtired. Release oxygen. Pull lever B then push it back again. Drink coffee from flask 3A. Take a photo of the witch and mail it to us immediately. I repeat: You are not well. Take the bottle of tablets from the shelf on the left of the cabinet. Take two of the tablets immediately. They will make you sleep. I repeat: You are not well.’

  The witch banged on the glass with her hand. ‘Don’t take any notice of them,’ she yelled. ‘You’re quite well.’

  But the pilot had swallowed the two tablets and had fallen asleep.

  ‘Well, he’s out to it,’ said the witch. ‘He’ll sleep for hours.’ She peered through the window. ‘Is that a flask of coffee on the shelf in front of him?’

  ‘I think it is,’ said Peter. ‘Do you think he’d miss it if we had a drink? There’s a hatchway on the top. We could easily get it.’

  ‘I’d like a drink of coffee myself.’

  The witch guided the broom to the top of the satellite where they alighted and opened the hatch. They dropped quickly inside, taking the broom with them. Peter closed the hatch behind him.

  The witch poured out two cups of coffee from the flask on the shelf and handed one to Peter. They sat down and sipped it.

  ‘They make very good coffee in America,’ said the witch. ‘But drink it quickly. We have a lot of work to do on the moon.’

  ‘I feel worried about this man,’ said Peter. ‘When he returns to earth, do you think they will believe him when he tells them he saw a witch and a boy riding a broomstick near his window?’

  ‘No, they’ll never believe him. They will tell him it was all a dream or that he just imagined he saw us. When you see strange things and you tell people about them no one believes you. If this man wants to be believed he’ll have to tell lies. He’ll have to say, “I had an uneventful trip”; then they’ll believe him.’

  ‘Could we leave a note pinned to his coat and signed by both of us?’

  ‘Yes, we can do that, but we must hurry. Have you paper and a pen?’

  ‘We’ll tear a page out of his notebook,’ said Peter. There was a notebook and a pen beside the astronaut.

  Peter took the paper and wrote, ‘This is to certify that a witch and a boy visited this satellite and drank the astronaut’s coffee.’

  He handed the paper to the witch. ‘Now sign it.’

  The witch scribbled her signature beneath the writing and Peter also signed his name. They pinned the piece of paper to the astronaut’s coat, then left through the hatchway.

  ‘I’d like to see that man’s face when he wakes up and reads the note,’ said the witch.

  They mounted the broom. ‘Push the satellite with your foot when I give the word,’ said the witch. ‘It’ll give us a start.’ She made herself comfortable on the broomstick and called, ‘Right.’ Peter kicked back with his foot and they took off.

  For a short distance the broom wobbled, then it sped on towards the moon as steady as a car. The witch drove it harder than ever. They travelled so fast that the moon seemed to be hurtling towards them. Soon they could see its high sharp mountains and its wide dry seas. They shot down from a cloudless sky and swooped into a huge crater, the floor of which was littered with boulders.

  Here they came to rest. The witch alighted and began sweeping furiously. She moved with such speed that she became almost a blur. Peter realised he could be of no help at all. He wandered around, leaping over rocks and jumping across chasms. He found it easy to do this on the moon where his weight was only a few pounds.

  He heard the witch calling him from a flat space below. She had discovered a camera that kept turning in a half circle and turning back again.

  ‘We will have our photo taken together,’ she said to Peter as soon as he reached her. ‘Stand beside me and say “Cheese” as soon as the camera faces us. It will make us look as if we are smiling.’

  The camera turned slowly. ‘Now,’ said the witch.

  ‘Cheese!’ they both shouted.

  ‘That will stagger them back on earth,’ said the witch. ‘It will be headline news in all the papers. We’ll leave the camera here. I can hear the box beneath it going, “Beep, beep, beep,” so it must be sending the pictures back. I’ve really got far too many cameras already.’

  She took her broom to sweep round the camera and shifted a few rocks to give a tidy appearance to the area. She sat down and made a few repairs on her broom in preparation for their return.

  ‘We’re running late tonight,’ she explained to Peter, ‘and I’d like to make a record-breaking flight back to earth. If you get cold wrap the folds of my cloak around you. I think we’ll take off from that crag over there.’ She pointed to
a pinnacle of rock that towered above them.

  It was not very hard to climb, since they weighed so little on the moon, and they reached the top in a few minutes. Peter kept thinking of the rocks brought back by the astronauts. He grabbed a handful of stones at his feet and put them in his pocket. I’ll give these to all my friends, he thought. ‘Hey,’ he said to the witch, ‘why couldn’t Armstrong and Aldrin walk properly on the moon?’

  ‘All they needed to do was to carry lead in their pockets. Come on!’

  As they took off from the crag the broom dropped and they went into a dive that carried them down into a valley and out over one of the moon’s dry seas. Peter could see great cracks in the flat surface. In one of these he noticed a bright red glow deep down beneath the surface. Volcanic fires were burning down there.

  The broom gained speed and shot away from the moon. They soon reached one and a half miles a second, the escape velocity from the moon, and settled down to some real speed. The witch had a speedometer screwed on to the end of the broomstick and she consulted this frequently.

  ‘We’re now doing two hundred and fifty thousand miles an hour,’ she said, ‘take or leave half a mile.’

  Peter was feeling cold. He snuggled into the witch’s cloak and closed his eyes.

  Suddenly she let out a yell, ‘Hold tight!’

  The broom began to leap like a bucking horse. It was just as well Peter was a good rider or he would have been tossed.

  ‘We’re entering the earth’s atmosphere,’ the witch called out. ‘We’re going too fast for re-entry. Now we’re bouncing off it like a stone skidding on the surface of a pond. I’ll have to slow her down or we’ll burn up.’

  A streak of blue flame was enveloping the head of the broom. Fire scorched the witch’s eyebrows. Peter could feel the heat around him but he was crouched close to the witch and the flames passed him. The broom was leaping like a dolphin.

  ‘I’ll have to shoot around the earth a few times to slow her down,’ cried the witch.

  They hurtled round the world three times before they could reduce speed, then the witch unfastened the button of her cloak and it billowed out behind them like a parachute.

  ‘Here is the corridor. We’re going down.’

  The broom shot down through the atmosphere like a meteor. A long fiery tail streaked out behind them. They sped over the hut, did a magnificent loop, and landed at the door.

  ‘That’s what comes from speeding,’ said the witch as she alighted. ‘I’ve never believed in it and I never will. Through showing off, I’ve burnt the top of my hat and scorched my eyebrows. You were lucky to be sitting at the back.’

  ‘It was hot sitting there,’ said Peter. ‘One of my fingers feels a bit burnt.’

  Greyfur had bounded out of the hut to meet them. ‘I thought you were a comet coming down,’ she said. ‘What happened?’

  ‘The brakes failed,’ said the witch.

  ‘That broom’s not skyworthy,’ said Greyfur. ‘You should trade it in on a new one.’

  ‘Rubbish!’ said the witch. She strode into the hut where Greyfur had tea waiting for them. Dawn was just breaking. The sky in the east was a glowing pink.

  ‘We must leave as soon as we’ve drunk this,’ said Peter.

  ‘Where are you going?’ asked the witch. ‘You can stay with me as long as you like, you know.’

  ‘I’m searching for a Beautiful Princess,’ Peter explained. ‘It is a long, long journey and we must be on our way. Some day I hope we’ll meet you again.’

  ‘I hope so, too,’ said the witch who looked like a kindly old lady, so greatly had the Magic Leaf transformed her.

  ‘Have you ever heard of the Beautiful Princess?’ asked Peter.

  ‘No,’ said the witch. ‘I’ve only met one princess in my life and she tried to push me off her windowsill, so I snatched the crown off her head and threw it into a lake. Now she can’t marry till she finds it.’

  ‘What a wicked thing to do,’ said Peter.

  ‘I was a bad witch then. I did terrible things. It wasn’t so long ago but now I’m different. I will never do things like that again. But if ever I hear of your Beautiful Princess, I’ll let you know.’

  Peter kissed her on the cheek before he left and suddenly he felt the velvet coat on his back. Greyfur, too, noticed it and she smiled. ‘Moonlight is tethered outside, waiting,’ she said.

  When Peter was mounted and riding away Greyfur delayed following him so that she could bid the witch goodbye.

  ‘Some day we might need your help,’ she said. ‘Will you help us when that time comes?’

  ‘Of course I will. You are my friends.’

  Greyfur shook her hand and bounded after Peter.

  8

  The Willy Willy Man

  They camped that night on the banks of a creek. Gnarled red gums looked at themselves in the water and platypuses broke the surface of the still pool with their curved backs. Greyfur supplied a meal of steak and kidney pie and plum pudding from her pouch. Next morning they set out through rugged, broken country. Wombats waddled along pads between the rocks and crimson parrots flew from tree to tree.

  At the foot of a stony hill the bush thinned out and the hot sun shone down on them unhindered. Moonlight was sweating. He had froth on his neck where the reins had rubbed against it. The creeks and rivers flowed the other way behind the hill and now a grassless plain stretched ahead of them, shimmering under the heat.

  ‘This is the Lonely Desert,’ said Greyfur. ‘My father used to tell me that people who find themselves wandering across it often die from lack of water. You never meet anybody here. It is a lonely place and the only way to cross it is to walk the journey in the midst of friends. When groups of people walk across it they talk to each other and laugh together, and they forget how far it is and that water is so hard to get. Strangely enough they often find water when they cross it with friends. When they go out alone they never find it.’

  While Greyfur was talking a tall column of dust appeared over the horizon. It moved towards them writhing and twisting in the air. When it got closer they could see the leaves and twigs that had been sucked into its centre and, as it passed, the stems of dry grass lying on the ground leapt into the air in a frenzy, gyrated and spun, then plunged into the moving column and were carried upwards where they fluttered in agitation. They formed a cap of dried grass and leaves on the mad, dancing dust which had its hands in the sky and its feet on the earth.

  ‘It’s the Willy Willy Man!’ said Greyfur, who knew everything. ‘He is an uncle of the Four Winds and is always bustling about. He likes to be seen so he lives on the Lonely Desert where there is plenty of dust and dry grass to collect and toss into the air. When he dances on green grass you never see him, but the grass waves to him and you know he is passing.’

  The Willy Willy circled them and they had to shield their eyes from the dust which stung their faces, making them step back quickly. The whirling column shuddered and stopped. From deep within it a little man suddenly jumped out, staggered, then stood upright.

  ‘Good afternoon,’ he said. ‘Forgive me for being a little dazed. I’ve been travelling fast to reach here.’

  The column had collapsed. Released from the Willy Willy Man’s grip, it drifted away, no longer a pillar of dust but a mist. Soon it disappeared.

  The Willy Willy Man had a sunburnt, smiling face and wore a jacket and trousers the colour of desert sand—earth-red, like the paint of the Aborigines. He raised himself upon the toes of his elastic-sided boots and revolved slowly a few times with arms outstretched.

  ‘I like to ease off gradually,’ he explained. ‘Spinning at the pace I do demands great concentration.’ He brushed his hands together to free them of dust, then went on, ‘As I was saying, spinning is happiness in motion. The question is: Do I dance because I am happy or am I happy because I dance?’

  ‘Who were you saying that to?’ asked Peter.

  ‘I said it to a She-Oak tree,’ said the Willy Willy
Man. ‘They are always sighing. They sigh when there’s no wind. I thought this tree needed to dance and wave her arms. You are sadder standing still than when you are doing something, you know.’

  ‘I’ve never heard of a tree dancing,’ said Peter.

  ‘Oh, dear me!’ exclaimed Greyfur, concerned at such ignorance. ‘What do you think trees do when you are sleeping? A third of your life is spent sleeping. Trees dance when you sleep.’

  ‘I’ve never thought of that,’ said Peter.

  ‘Trees dance with their arms,’ said the Willy Willy Man. ‘They swing with their shadows; they glide with the moon. It was a tree that told me you were coming.’ And the little man smiled at Peter. ‘It said to me, “When he reaches the Lonely Desert he will need a friend. Will you meet him there and carry him over?” So here I am.’

  ‘Is it so far that we can’t walk across? You see I ride Moonlight and Greyfur bounds beside me,’ explained Peter.

  ‘It’s not as far to the other side as it looks,’ said the Willy Willy man, ‘but to children without a friend it seems a long way and they can easily get lost. I’ll carry you all over. I’ll make a big Willy Willy, a whopper. This is going to be good!’

  ‘I get giddy when I spin,’ said Peter.

  ‘So do I,’ said Greyfur. ‘I can’t stand more than seven spins. After that I fall over.’

  ‘Ah!’ said the little man, ‘but when I make a big Willy Willy it is quite calm in the centre. You don’t really spin at all. The dust and the leaves spin around you and you are carried on a cushion of air.’ He looked around him. ‘I’ll start here and dance out on to the desert for a couple of miles till I have grown twenty yards wide, then I’ll come back and pick you up.’

  ‘I feel rather nervous,’ said Greyfur. ‘I know you have to have friends, but not friends that make you giddy.’

  ‘The Willy Willy Man told us we won’t be giddy,’ said Peter. ‘He is our friend and friends never do anything to hurt you or make you afraid.’

  ‘All right,’ said Greyfur. ‘I’ll chance it. When do we start?’

  ‘Wait till we’ve arranged you,’ said the Willy Willy Man. ‘You sit on Moonlight, Peter, and you,’ he turned to Greyfur, ‘stand beside them and hold a stirrup leather.’