Free The Whisper by Aaron Starmer Page B

forgiveness, which Oric would grant them, but only on the condition that they alter their ways. Upon their agreement, he would once again deploy the tentacles and transfer the people back aboveground, where they would regale the others with stories of the horn-faced monster that they soon titled … the Mandrake.
    Yes indeed, yes indeed, and once this fictitious Mandrake was introduced, a curious and fortuitous change occurred. As long as Oric’s creations feared the monster, then their lives strained closer toward virtue, and Oric could safely exercise his dark feelings without anyone surrendering their love for him. The Hutch was more peaceful than it had ever been. I, as you might surmise, was wary of the arrangement, but I had no right to object. “Someday the dark feelings will abate,” Oric assured me, “and we will have no need for the Mandrake.”
    Sadly, the opposite occurred. His feelings became darker and darker still, and soon playing the part of the Mandrake did not suffice for Oric. He had the urge to destroy what he had created, to rain Armageddon down upon everyone and everything.
    â€œI wish I could purge these thoughts from my head,” he cried one night whilst he and I were alone in the fortress. “I wish I could put an end to this evil inside of me.”
    A voice arrived in his head and remarked, “I can give you that.”
    â€œPlease do, please do,” Oric whimpered in reply.
    A creature both featureless and nameless and made entirely of nothingness instantly appeared in the fortress, wielding a pen constructed of bamboo. It placed the pen into Oric’s ear and placed its mouth upon the pen and began to suck.
    That is when my mind went blank. For how long it was blank, I may never know, but when my mind returned, it arrived with the knowledge that while the creature was gone, so too was Oric. Vanished, disappeared, like the stars with the dawn.
    I, of course, mourned the loss of my master, but I knew that I must carry on. I returned to the surface through a small tunnel I burrowed with my beak, and I told the people of the Hutch that Oric was no more.
    â€œWhat about the Mandrake?” they asked.
    Knowing that the Mandrake was the one thing that kept order in the Hutch, I lied. I told them that the Mandrake lived on, but they need not fear him so long as they were good and honest people. And they were good and honest people and remained as such for a long time.
    For reasons I’ve never fully understood, I possess the gift of everlasting life, but nobody else in the Hutch shared this gift, and so generations lived and died, on and on for many years, until Oric was completely forgotten to all but me, and the Mandrake was all that was remembered from the days of old.
    Until one morning, someone we had never seen before, a boy clad in scale mail, arrived in the Hutch. “Who are you?” the villagers asked. “And where do you come from?”
    â€œI am Hadrian,” the boy replied. “I come from a place very different from this. Will you host me as I pass through on my journey?”
    Though they had never had a visitor, they were a kind people and they agreed to help Hadrian, yet they told him that he must act honorably or else he would face the wrath of the Mandrake.
    â€œThis Mandrake frightens you?” Hadrian asked.
    â€œMost thoroughly,” they replied.
    â€œWhat if one were to hunt down and destroy this Mandrake?” Hadrian asked.
    â€œWe would be forever grateful,” they told him. “We would be indebted to you, for you would have saved us.”
    â€œWhere does he dwell?” Hadrian asked.
    â€œBeneath the sea of blood,” they told him, pointing in the distance to the red liquid they so carefully avoided.
    â€œThen I will swim to the bottom and find him,” Hadrian said.
    This thrilled the people, but it worried me, for I knew that Hadrian might gain access to the fortress, where he would