Free The Whispers by Daryl Banner

whispers. “No sister.”
    “The other one … is your sister?” I ask, putting it together. “The one with no hair and one eye? The one who threatened to eat us from across the river?”
    His eyes scan down my neck, then my body, then return to my face appearing thrice as hungry as before. I guess the word “eat” inspired a thought in his Dead brain. I ought to be more choosy with my words.
    Realizing, however, that he has refrained from eating me thus far, I find myself curious. “What do you want?”
    He puckers his lips, considering my question. For a moment, he doesn’t seem to know the answer. I see the conflict in his face. Maybe I’m still not so safe from being eaten after all.
    “Is it my friend?” I ask with fleeting hope. “Marianne? Have you come to tell me you have her and you want to propose some sort of bargain for us to get her back? Is that it? Have you come to strike some sort of Undeadly deal?”
    The pale boy studies me long and hard. Maybe it’s the emotion John stirred within me before we fell asleep the night before, but I find myself surprised by my reaction to this … person. He has oddly pretty, soft eyes, even with their pale coloring. Though I know what he might intend to do, I find myself trusting that, in truth, he doesn’t want to harm me. I hope it isn’t foolish to believe that.
    “No deal,” he whispers.
    “Please,” I beg him, unable to be strong right now. “Please, if you have her, if you have my friend, please return her to me. She wasn’t even supposed to come with me. She doesn’t deserve to die.”
    “You all deserve to die.”
    “No, no, no.” I feel my insides lurching. I can already picture my friend brutally murdered in a million different ways. Eviscerated. Sliced in half. Bitten upon every inch of her body. The sound of her last screams. “Please,” I beg him again. “Return Marianne to me. I beg you! That’s why you’ve come, isn’t it? Have you brought her with you? Oh, please, please tell me you—”
    “I’ve come alone.”
    I stare at him with hurt in my eyes, breathing heavily. “Will you … tell me at least if she’s … alive?”
    He stares at me for too long. In this moment, his pale eyes nearly turn human, touched by a strand of feelings that seem to run through him. Then, in a whisper that I almost doubt I hear, he says: “Yes.”
    Oh, thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you. But that means they have her, or else she got away and is on the run. That means … “How’d you get over the water?”
    “There is a place down the river where the trees reach for one another,” he says, his full, chapped lips never quite closing as he speaks, “and I am braver than the others. I am agile. I am light.”
    “The others didn’t follow?”
    “The others don’t know the path,” he says, “and if they do, they don’t risk it. One slip, and you drop.”
    “What happens when you touch the water?” The little researcher in me has come out of her office. “I didn’t read anything about water in my studies.”
    “Your … studies?” The boy’s eyes narrow, suspicious of the word.
    “I’m from the land of the … um, the alive ,” I explain, unsure what to call it. “It’s across the ocean. That way.” I point, though in truth, I’m so turned around that I have no idea which way I’m pointing. “I’m just a student at the school there.”
    “School?”
    “Part of my studies,” I go on, “include people like … well, people like you . And I—”
    “Like me,” he echoes, his face turning dark.
    I worry I’m not making my situation any better. “See, the people over there, the alive-people, they don’t think people like you exist. They don’t believe in the Beautiful Dead. That’s what I call you,” I add, feeling suddenly self-conscious about the term. “Sorry. I just—”
    “ Beautiful ,” he hisses, shutting me right up. His lips contort into a snarl. Then, too close to my face, he says, “There is