Whisper

Read Whisper for Free Online Page A

Book: Read Whisper for Free Online
Authors: Chris Struyk-Bonn
Tags: JUV031040, JUV059000, JUV015020
hair, preparing it for a braid. “He sits on the council with many other important men like Jeremia’s father, Jun. They make the decisions for our village.”
    Her hands, so gentle in my hair, so different from Rosa’s, almost lulled me to sleep. My head rocked in motion with her fingers.
    â€œSomeday you will meet a man, Whisper. A man you can love because only you know how to reach him. Your father is such a man for me.”
    How could anyone love a man who had tried to drown their first child? My mother’s hands soothed, combed and brushed my tangled hair, making it shine like a raven’s wing. But I knew now what she meant. Jeremia, whose dancing anger whirled and burned, was such a man for me. I understood him. Better than anyone else.
    â€œHe needs me, and sometimes need and love become tangled,” she said.
    At the time, I didn’t know what she meant, but I remembered every word. I remembered her stories about my brothers, Mateo and David, who looked like my father but were as different from each other as the vulture is from the hummingbird. I remembered her descriptions of life in the village where the council decided everything—what work each person did, what rules the town would follow, what food the town would eat. My father was on this council—my father, who had decided that I could not live with them in the village.
    I couldn’t hate my mother, who visited every year and whose gentle hands reminded me that someone cared about me, but I could hate my father.

    Three days before my birthday, as I sat by the fire and coaxed songs out of the violin, and Ranita breathed against my chest, Jeremia’s wolf visited us.
    Jeremia sat beside me, carving a long twisted branch of maple in which I could see raccoons, otters, me with my broken lips, Eva with her webbed feet and Jeremia with his half arm. Jeremia heard the soft snuffling, the coughing bark, and put his knife down on the log beside me. Our legs had been touching just at the knee, but he pulled away and walked beyond the circle of firelight.
    The breathy bark came again, and Jeremia followed the wolf into the woods. Their padding feet left no marks and no sounds. Nathanael sat up in the chair. I put down the violin, and Eva, with Emerald on her shoulder, walked to where Jeremia had disappeared into the trees. None of us spoke. We jumped every time the fire popped. We waited. I fed Ranita more rice milk, which she pushed about with her tongue, half of the mixture coming out again through her nose. Eating the food was enough to tire her, and she soon slept.
    I rocked back and forth on the log and listened so hard, every noise became the wolf. Eva shuffled her feet in the dirt by the trees. The quiet must have been too much for Nathanael, because he stood suddenly, walked into his hut and returned with the radio. When he turned it on, the loud static crackle made Ranita’s eyelids flutter, but she soon went back to sleep. Nathanael adjusted the dial. An eerie shriek came from the machine, and then he found the usual station with the news.
    A woman spoke of things I knew nothing about. Hearing another voice, though, using clean, clear words without the nasal quality that I was so used to in my own voice, was enough to make me listen. I tried to remember the names, but they meant nothing to me and moved through me like air. And then Nathanael turned it up.
    â€œâ€¦and we will now join the opera, El Fuego del Mano , already in progress. Mezzo-soprano Alicia Fabila is singing the part of Barbara…”
    We listened to the opera for a few minutes, the music jarring in the silence of the night, and then Nathanael flicked the switch and the voice stopped. Instead, we heard loud panting and the trudging of feet, as though someone with a heavy load was lumbering through the trees. The goat scurried around the campfire and disappeared into Nathanael’s hut. I stood up from the log and held Ranita against me.

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