Whispered Magics (11 page)

“So, what shall we trade you for your sand?” Teer asked. “We
must get it loaded and converted.”

“Your flight tech,” AyYesha said quickly.

“This computer,” Kenji said almost as fast.

Thisko and Teer said to the rest of us in our Universal Trade
Language, “Remember Class Five!”

We weren’t even supposed to be talking to these beings, much
less trading for technology they didn’t have.

“Don’t tell me,” Adam said. “You got these rules, right?”

“How did you know?” I asked. “Have you heard of the
Interplanetary Trade School?”

The two biggest, AyYesha and Adam, looked at each other.

Behind, I heard the Vmmm humming.

Kikinee whistled his ‘I hear trouble’ whistle.

“No,” AyYesha said at last. “We haven’t. We didn’t even know
that other life exists. Some of our scientists don’t believe it.”

“And won’t, even if we try to tell them,” Adam added. “Who
believes kids? They’ll just turn us over to a counselor.”

“Or tell us to stop eating so much junk food,” Kenji added in
a sour voice.

“Junk? Food?” Smelch’s mournful voice interrupted. “Do you
consume recyclables? Sounds very efficient.”

“Nope,” NaTasha said, giggling. “Food that tastes good, but
doesn’t make you grow or anything. Parents hate it. Except for the kinds they
like to eat.”

“Ah, like nid-nuts,” Teer said, and I clacked our mandibles in
agreement.

“But if we show them some cool kind of new technology, like
how this ship works,” Mick said, waving his arms, “then they have to believe
us! And we can get to space sooner!”

“Who says the government won’t just sit on it?” Adam said.

“Capture this ship on your phone, and post on YouTube,” Kenji
said, turning to face him. “If we trade for their tech, then everyone can make
a space ship.”

“And what then? Take our wars into space? Gangs staking claim
on the moon?” AyYesha said. “Look, guys, we got enough problems on our planet.
I think we’re going to have to solve them before we get into space, or we’ll
just have bigger problems and drag all these others into them.” She waved at
us. “I’m not sure I even want to put this on YouTube. I’m glad I don’t have my
phone.” She touched her brightly colored clothing that covered parts of her
skin, and left the rest bare.

“Since we left our phones in our backpacks, it’s a waste of
time talking about it,” Adam said, waving his digits behind them at a square
domicile a distance away, as the rest of his friends bobbed their heads up and
down. Then he said, “The question is, what should we trade? Teer said they have
to trade.”

“The sand is free for everyone,” AyYesha said. “We can’t
really trade something that doesn’t belong to us anyway, that belongs to the
whole world. So it’s a gift. ”

Laurie shrugged. “At least we got to see them. And we know
that they exist. That’s pretty cool.”

Behind us, the Vmmm’s hum had stopped.

“Here, let’s all help them load sand,” Kenji said.

We all worked together scooping sand into our energy converter.
It stripped out the silicon and spat out the sand again, which landed back on
the shore, slightly lighter in color but otherwise unharmed.

As we worked, Mick gave a quick glance inside our ship then
said to me in a soft voice, “What happens if that Vmmm thing gets mad?”

“Zir emits sulfur instead of oxygen.”

“Sulfur farts?” Mick said, making his eyes go round and his
mouth squeeze up like a molting plip-bug. “Whew! Let’s keep this guy happy,
definitely.”

Behind us, Thisko gave a muffled laugh.

“Done,” Teer called, reading her belt console. “The energy
compartment is sealed, and we have plenty of energy.”

“We had better go,” Kikinee said.

“Cloaking on,” Thisko added.

Now only our ramp was visible. The rest of the ship was a
blur, reflecting the surroundings. We retreated up the ramp, leaving the boys
and girls standing on the sand, watching.

“Good-bye,” Adam said.

The little ones all waved. AyYesha now had her arms folded.
Her black eyes did not blink as she watched.

“Farewell,” I called, and closed the ramp.

Thisko’s tentacles worked at the navigation console, and Teer
and I sat at the piloting controls. As our ship quietly lifted to a height at
which it was safe to fire the thrusters without burning anything below, we all
watched the beings dwindling in size until they were invisible against the
sand.

Then I cut in the thrusters, and we zoomed upward over the
great blue expanse of water. As we rose, the Vmmm’s voice came, “A job well
done.”

Then a sweet infusion of oxygen came wafting through the ship,
and as we raced into the darkness of space, the stars clear and sharp, the Vmmm
added, “AyYesha, the Gift-Giver. We must remember that name. I believe we will
see her again.”

Though Kate was all the way upstairs in her bedroom on
her bed, she could hear her mother’s angry voice.

“Jen! Have you been messing with your sister’s dolls?”

Kate just barely heard Jen’s voice. “No! I dunno how it got
there! But I’ll put it back.”

Tromp, tromp, tromp, click-click. That was the door handle. The
door opened, then came the scrunch scrunch of cautious feet on the new carpet.

Kate opened her eye. Jen reached up to put the Princess Polly
doll back on the shelf next to the row of others. Jen wore a Disney Princesses
t-shirt. Shorts. Brown hair in three braids today. The middle braid reached her
waistband in back.

Then she whirled around so fast that all three braids whizzed
out, kind of like a kid helicopter. There was Jen’s face, round, brown eyes.
Who was she being today? Kate didn’t care.

Jen grinned. “Your dolls been walking around the house?” Her
mouth pruned up in fake disgust. “Think Princess Polly was looking for the
bathroom? Princess Poopy,” Jen added, snickering.

Kate wondered if she’d thought bathroom jokes were that funny
when she was in fourth grade. Yeah, probably. Right now she couldn’t remember,
but she was used to that, too.

What she did remember—just now, she realized—were little
voices during the night. It hadn’t been a dream. She’d heard them. Hadn’t she?
Dreams and real used to get mixed up, but she was learning which was which.

“Want anything?” Jen asked, putting her hands on her hips. “TV
on?” She pointed up at the corner, where Uncle Tad had put a TV, just like in
her hospital room. “Can I get you anything?” She fingered the book lying on the
little table beside Kate’s big hospital bed. “Read you another chapter? I can
read that book. I read it when you were, um, gone.” Jen talked quickly. “It’s
kinda old-fashioned, but I liked the part when Anne smacked her slate over
Gilbert Blythe’s head.”

Kate wiggled her fingers sideways. Everyone knew that meant
No.

“Okay.” Jen shrugged, chewed her lip, then she ran out, thump
thump thump, forgetting to close the door.

The thumps went all the way down the stairs, then turned to
slaps on the tile by the front door, where you turned to go into the kitchen.

Jen’s voice floated up the stairs again. “Kate still won’t
talk to me. She won’t even let me read.”

“It’s all right. We’re to expect that.” Mom’s voice went
high—almost as high as Jen’s.

It was strange how sounds were different from each room. Kate
had never noticed that Before. She thought of her life as Now, and Before.
Before, she hadn’t heard things like she did Now. How everyone’s voices were
different for each room. How Jen’s voice was so light, and easy to listen
to—like sunlight. Like water and sunlight. But when Mom’s voice was high, it
reminded Kate of crying.

Kate didn’t want to think about crying, so she thought about
words instead, how to make all the sounds she heard into words. Kitchen noises
and somewhere, maybe in the den, the rumbly noises of the TV. She wished she
could have a window open so she could hear birds, and kids playing, and even
cars going by, hiss, hiss, but she couldn’t because Mom didn’t want to risk
germs coming in.

She closed her eyes and slept away the day, until Mom came in
at night. This was the best part of every day, when Mom read to her.

Mom bent and picked up Kate’s favorite book. She sat just out
of Kate’s view. Kate listened to the rustle of pages.

“October was a beautiful month at Green
Gables . . .” Mom read. Her voice was still high, and thin.
“. . . when the birches in the hollow turned as golden as the
sunshine and the maples behind the orchard were royal crimson . . .”

Kate closed her eye, seeing vivid autumn images in her mind.

“‘Oh, Marilla . . . I’m so glad I live in a
world where there are Octobers. It would be terrible if we just skipped from
September to November, wouldn’t it?’” As Mom read Anne’s words, her voice
slowed down, and the icky highness went out, making her voice young again, and
Kate felt the story fold around her mind.

She was no longer Kate, lying in this bed, with only one
working eye, and nothing to do but look. Listen. She was Anne of Green Gables,
at least until the end of the chapter, when Mom laid the book back down, kissed
Kate very softly, and went out to let her sleep.

o0o

“I don’t care. I want to run away.”

“Like where are you going to go? Talk about being a total
geek.”

Little voices came through the ripped fragments of dreams.

“I wish to find my castle. You ought to obey, because I’m a
princess.”

“Talk to the hand!”

Who were those little voices? Kate opened her eye. Her room
was half lit with faint blue light from the streetlamp two houses down. There
wasn’t anything in her room anymore, besides the bed, table, TV, and below it
the shelf containing her favorite dolls. Kate looked at the shelf. It was
empty.

Where were the dolls?

“There aren’t any princesses in this land, so you can’t boss
me.”

“She’s right.”

“Yeah!”

“Eeee-he-he-hee!” Who was that? Could that be her porcelain
horse, Midnight? How was that possible?

“Then I must find my land,” stated the squeaky voice with the
snobby accent.

Princess Polly.

“What-EV-er.”

That had to be Fashion Franci.

The dolls were talking! A cold feeling poured through Kate’s
middle, just like someone had put ice water there.

“Dolls,” she said. Her voice came out crackly, because she
didn’t talk much anymore.

The voices stilled.

Kate waited, and finally closed her eye.

o0o

In the morning the dolls were back in their places on
their shelf. Kate saw that, and then her mother came and all the nasty stuff
happened—tubes and bandages got changed. Air no longer hurt so much, but it all
felt awful. In the hospital the nurses used to talk to Kate, a stream of baby
talk mostly, while they did the jobs. Mom didn’t talk. Her breathing was loud,
like your breathing gets if you’re smacked in the guts by a basketball, and
once, on one of her first days home, when Kate opened her eye she saw Mom’s
lips were white and her eyes looked like crying eyes.

Kate hated to see those eyes, because it made her want to cry,
but crying hurt too much, so she always kept her eye closed in the mornings.
She listened to her mom’s breathing, and when at last the nasty stuff was done
she felt the soft touch of Mom’s hand on her cheek, the brush of her lips on
her forehead.

This time it wasn’t so bad because Kate had something to think
about besides how much everything on her left side hurt, and Mom’s breathing,
and her sad eyes.

She licked her lips. “Mom.”

“Sweetie?” That high voice again, like,
Is something wrong?

Kate said, “My dolls were talking. In the night.”

Kate had thought her mom would find it interesting, too. But
instead she gasped, like the basketball had just smacked her again. Kate opened
her eye, and saw her mom’s eyes wide, her brow all wrinkly with worry.

“Honey?” Now her mom’s voice was really high. “Is the
medicine—making you think funny?”

Funny wasn’t funny, like laughing. Mom was scared.

Kate said, “In my dreams.”

“Oh.” The lines in Mom’s face smoothed away, and Mom said,
“Oh,” again, an easy breath, not one that hurt.

All right, so she couldn’t tell Mom about it. How about Jen? A
little squirt of hot lava inside Kate’s chest came with the thought: no, not Jen.

Kate could heard Jen slamming around downstairs as she got
ready for school. When Mom went back down, their voices zapped back and forth,
like a tennis game with words, Mom saying
hurry up
stuff, and Jen saying
I’m
hurrying
things back.

Kate thought about the dolls, and what she’d said to Mom.
Maybe it really had been a dream? No. Kate was sure now what was dreams and
what wasn’t. In her Before dreams she was still taking ballet and nothing hurt,
and Dad was sometimes there, too.

Dad. Kate opened her eye to look at the dolls sitting silently
on her shelf, rather than think about Dad. Did the dolls really talk in the
night? There was Princess Polly, with her long silvery hair and her satin and
lace ball gown. The most beautiful doll in the world, that’s what Mom and Dad
had said when they gave her to Kate on her fifth birthday.

Kate thought about all the long story-games she’d played with
those dolls Before. She’d missed the dolls because of the stories, she knew
that now, but she hadn’t been able to say it in the hospital—talking had hurt
too much then—and all she’d said was
Dolls
and so they’d brought Princess Polly to sit there where she could see.

It had been nice to look at that pretty hair and the ball
dress, and to try to remember some of the old story-games. But Kate didn’t
think about the old stories now. She stared across the room at Princess Polly
in her place on the shelf, and wondered how it was that she could be alive.
Well, why not? Nothing else in the world made sense anymore, not according to
the old rules, so why couldn’t her dolls suddenly talk?