The Whisper (27 page)

“And you must be…?” Carter asked as she pulled a flattened cowboy hat from her shoulder bag, flicked it to life, and deposited it on her head.

“Delia,” the woman said. “Your driver. Your cook. Your mama, if you need one.”

“Already got one too many mamas, thank you very much,” Polly said, and it made Carter frown and Delia squint, but it made the little girl in overalls laugh.

“The gigglebox here is Henrietta Bowerbird Monroe,” Delia said as she helped the helicopter pilot load bags onto the jeep. “My youngest. Don't believe a word she says. A scatterbrain and a stargazer, that one.”

Henrietta flashed Polly a crooked smile, and Polly liked her immediately. Polly could do with some scatterbrained stargazing.

The camp was about a mile away, set in the shade next to a creek. It was basically the most fabulous tree house Polly had ever seen, with platforms adhered to the thick trunks of willow trees, with spiral staircases and rope ladders and hatches and slides and pulleys and thatched roofs. It had been built in the 1950s by some ornithologists who had come to study the unique birdlife, but had only recently been restored to its former glory.

“Now do you want Disneyland?” Carter asked.

“No stinkin' way!” Polly hollered. “Why didn't you tell me about this?”

“Your old mom still has a few surprises up her sleeve for you.”

Polly hugged Carter around the shoulders, vaulted from the jeep, and bulldozed toward the camp. And Henrietta, legs no bigger than a pair of drumsticks, scurried after her.

*   *   *

All the kids back home in Tucson asked Polly if her mom was Indiana Jones. Carter did little to dispel this notion, what with the cowboy hat and all, but Polly always said, “Archaeologists sit in the dirt with a brush for hours on end. Or in a dingy office with a microscope. Bore! Ing!”

And yet, her mom's newest project wasn't boring at all. A few months before, a villager had uncovered some interesting stones while digging a well. They turned out to be fragments of boulders that had been shattered and buried. Which wouldn't be of much interest, except for the fact that they were covered in faded pigment, in ancient drawings. They depicted animals like frogs and turtles, as well as people who looked like hunters and shamans. The drawings told stories, at least they seemed to.

Carter knew a fair bit about geology and cave paintings, so they called her in to assist with the dig. It was the opportunity of a lifetime, and she figured it was worth pulling Polly out of seventh grade for at least a year.

“You get the best education from traveling,” Carter told her. “From experiencing other people and their lives.”

As much as she enjoyed contradicting her mother, Polly couldn't argue with this. Henrietta Bowerbird Monroe alone was worth a year of schooling. She was a wonderfully strange girl who skittered through life fueled on chatter. She was tiny, but her voice was raspy and rumbly, like some jazz singer. She and Polly became fast friends.

Delia wasn't exaggerating. Henrietta's brain was all over the place. She'd go from reciting random trivia about polar bears to doing birdcalls to giving names to constellations to asking Polly what it was like to be from America where everybody drinks whiskey and owns a gun.

“You've seen too many Westerns,” Polly said.

“I haven't seen nearly enough!” Henrietta replied.

Every Friday, the archaeologists would host movie night at the camp and invite the villagers to come sit around a TV and VCR that they plugged into a generator and set on a tree stump. The movies were mostly Westerns, because that's what made up the majority of lead archaeologist Fred Tsonga's collection, but no one ever objected. Henrietta, in particular, adored them. Sitting as close to the screen as possible, she'd cheer both the heroes and the villains, because, as she always told Polly, “There wouldn't be much of a story without both of them.”

And there wouldn't be much of
this
story without Polly and Henrietta, though their relationship was hardly antagonistic. They were, in fact, inseparable. Whenever her mom was off at the dig, a few miles from the camp, Polly was with Henrietta. They were either studying together with the camp's tutor, an often-frazzled Scottish woman named Sophie Campbell, or they were exploring the village and eating meals cooked by Delia in Henrietta's cozy stone hut.

Polly had friends back home in Tucson, but none like Henrietta. The girl's imagination was astounding—she spoke of ideas, landscapes, and creatures the types of which not even novelists could conceive. And yet, there was nothing selfish about her constant yammering. She focused on things that would fascinate Polly—dastardly boy-kings, giant cockroaches who excelled at poetry—and Polly was never homesick because Henrietta was tireless in her effort to entertain and comfort her.

Henrietta had other friends as well, a few kids from the village, but none like Polly. That's because Polly never underestimated or patronized Henrietta, who was twelve years old but not much bigger than a kindergartner. In fact, Polly looked up to her, metaphorically at least. There was wisdom behind the motormouth, and Polly was the only one who seemed to notice.

In quieter moments, they confided in each other.

“I have icky thoughts sometimes,” Henrietta often said.

“We all do,” Polly always assured her, petting her hair.

And every evening, before Polly returned to the camp and Henrietta to her stone hut, they'd hug and whisper the same thing in each other's ears.

“Forever or until. Forever or until.”

The
forever
probably wasn't possible. They weren't naïve. They knew that. The
until
was more likely. What it meant was, they were there for each other, at least until Polly stepped back into that helicopter in a year or so.

Or until one fateful evening.

*   *   *

It was an evening like any other. They were hugging good night, as they always did, but Henrietta hugged longer than normal this time. And she didn't say what they always said. Instead, she whispered, “Can I tell you a story?”

“Can you!” Polly yelped, because she always wanted to hear a story from Henrietta. Sure, Henrietta was frequently off on some wild tangent or another, but she rarely possessed the attention span to stay on one narrative for very long, to get to the end of anything.

“It's a sad story,” Henrietta said.

“That's okay,” Polly said. “The world needs tearjerkers too. Write it down and sell it to Hollywood. It'll be better than those Westerns, I bet.”

“No, no, no.” Henrietta wagged a finger. “This is a secret story. One that only best friends should share. You are my best friend, aren't you?”

Polly put out a pinkie and Henrietta did the same and they hooked them together, which was as good as a handshake. “This place would suck eggs without you,” Polly said.

Suck eggs
was enough to make Henrietta smile, and the pinkie lock was enough to give her the courage to finally say something she had been keeping to herself.

“There once was a girl named Henrietta,” she said. “And she lived in a little village that wasn't like the big city at all. A small, small place, not too far from the sea or the mountains, but far away from anywhere else.”

“Henrietta like you?” Polly asked. “A place like this place?”

With a coy twist in her mouth, not quite a smile, she kept on with the story. “When Henrietta was very little, her papa passed away. An icy thing fell from the sky, knocked him on the head, and ended his life as fast as can be. People said the thing was a chunk of hail, but Henrietta's mama was convinced it was from outer space. The family burned her papa's body and put his ashes in the creek.”

“Oh, Henrietta, I knew he wasn't with you anymore—” Polly started to say, but Henrietta wasn't going to be interrupted.

“She was supposed to let the ashes stay in the creek, but Henrietta loved her papa so much that when no one was watching, she scooped up some of the water in a jar and she ran upstream. She hid the jar in a red bush, and at night she would visit it and talk to the water. ‘I miss you,' she would say to the water. ‘I love you.'”

“Oh Henrietta,” Polly said again, because she could relate. Polly's father wasn't dead, but he was gone. He had left when Polly was barely six, divorced Carter, and remarried a hairdresser who had little interest in raising a rambunctious young girl.

Henrietta's voice inched a few octaves lower as she said, “But this is not the saddest part of the story. You see, one day the water talked back. ‘Come and meet me,' it said. Then the glass of the jar disappeared. Poof. There was only water now. Magic water. Floating in the air. Henrietta touched it.”

Polly wanted to say something like,
Disappearing glass? As if!
but Henrietta seemed so invested in her tale, so confident in her telling, so doggone serious, that Polly knew better than to interrupt. She owed her friend many things, most of all her attention.

“When Henrietta touched the water, her body felt like there were little fishies swimming in it,” she went on. “And with a body full of little fishies, she made a journey. The creek went poof now too, and Henrietta magically arrived in a round room with stone walls, high up in a tower, where it was so chilly that there were icicles on the ceiling. She'd never seen icicles before. And she'd never seen anything like the monster that was standing before her. That's right, a monster. It had no face and no color, but it had arms, legs, and a body. And it had a voice. ‘You heard my call,' the monster whispered.

“Henrietta said, ‘Papa, is that you?' even though it didn't sound like her papa's voice.

“And the monster said, ‘Many years ago, I was standing where you are standing. And I was afraid. But I had no reason to be. I was meant to be here
then
as you are meant to be here
now
.'

“Henrietta took a step back and said, ‘You don't know where I'm meant to be!'

“The monster held out a pen. It was a fountain pen, like the one the doctor who sometimes visited Henrietta's village used. ‘Place this in my ear,' the monster said. ‘Suck on the other end.'

“And Henrietta said, ‘No thank you, sir. That's disgusting.'

“The monster chuckled and whispered, ‘The pen will fill up, and all you have to do is pour the ink on yourself. Then everything will be clear.'

“Henrietta said, ‘I will do nothing of the sort. I came here to see my papa, and what's clear is that you
are not
my papa.'

“The monster whispered, ‘Please. I need this.'

“Henrietta crossed her arms and turned away and said, ‘I don't care what you need.'

“And the monster didn't say anything else. When Henrietta looked for a way to escape, she heard a whimper, then she heard something crash to the ground. When she turned, the monster was lying down with the pen in its ear. The pen was filling up with the shiniest ink she'd ever seen.

“Every little fear Henrietta had was suddenly gone. All she wanted was that beautiful pen. She grabbed it from the ground. You must understand, Henrietta wasn't the type of kid who did whatever people told her to do, especially nasty monsters. She did what she wanted to do. But what she wanted to do, what she wanted more than anything, was to pour that ink on her body.

“So she held the pen up high and dripped the ink on her head. And she changed. Her mind filled up like a cup. With memories and thoughts and visions of magical places. Henrietta was still Henrietta, but now she was also the monster.”

Polly couldn't resist interrupting at this point. “Wait! What? Hold up. She became a monster?”

Henrietta wagged a finger. “She looked like a monster—no face, no color—but she wasn't a monster. She was an angel. Doing what all the other angels before her did. Doing what she was supposed to do, what she wanted to do.”

“And what's that?” Polly asked.

“Helping people who needed help. Folks who called out for her to end things. And that's what she did. Until she made a mistake.”

“A mistake?”

“She helped a girl who didn't need her help. A girl who lived in a space station deep in the stars. A scientist.”

“I don't understand,” Polly said.

Henrietta's voice sped up, each word becoming more hurried than the one before it. “Henrietta took this girl away when this girl didn't ask to be taken away. She poured this girl's soul on her body because she wanted to know all the things the girl knew, outer space things, things that might explain why her papa died. This was wrong, wrong, wrong, and Henrietta knew it. What she should have done was pour the girl's soul in the waterfall and set her free. Because now she was Henrietta, she was the monster, but she was also the girl!”

“Took her away?” Polly asked. “A waterfall? The girl's soul? A space station? What are you talking about?”

Henrietta didn't explain. She simply started to cry. Polly had never seen Henrietta cry, and she froze. She didn't reach out to touch her friend. She didn't offer condolences. She was so confused.

Without another word, Henrietta sprinted away into the darkness. When Polly finally broke out of her daze, she followed, but wasn't sure where Henrietta had gone. Polly headed to the village and the hut, but didn't find her. She went back to the camp, but she wasn't there either.

That's when Polly recalled something from Henrietta's story: the red bush where she hid the jar. There was a small red bush about a mile upstream from the camp. Polly had always thought it strange, but she never looked at it close-up. She figured it was full of thorns like so many bushes in this scrubby wilderness.

Polly jogged upstream as fast as she could. She reached the bush within ten minutes, and sure enough, there was Henrietta. She was sitting cross-legged on the banks of the creek. She had a jar of water resting in her lap.