“I dunno, I’ve never been here before.”
“Well, how much farther then?”
Yoji looked up the mountain. “Like a quarter mile?”
“So how long should that take us?”
“I dunno — twenty minutes?”
Max-Ernest kept checking his watch.
“OK, it’s twenty minutes, and we’re not at the top,” he announced twenty minutes later.
“No kidding. I guess I was wrong.”
“Well, how long do you think now?”
“I don’t know. It’s hard to tell ’cause of all the false peaks. Ten minutes maybe.”
“It’s ten minutes,” announced Max-Ernest ten minutes later, to Yo-Yoji’s extreme annoyance. “I thought you were the backpacking exp —”
“Hey, Max-Ernest — you want my pedometer?” Cass interrupted before he could finish his sentence.
Max-Ernest shrugged unpleasantly but he took the device out of her hand.
“You put it on your shoe and it says how far you’ve gone.”
“I know,” said Max-Ernest, attaching the pedometer to his shoelaces. He pushed ahead, dragging his second backpack behind him.
Cass watched anxiously. Should she say something more? She decided to leave him alone. Besides, she was breathing so hard, she couldn’t really talk.
As it turned out, it took another thirty minutes — and another “point eight miles,” according to Max-Ernest, who’d checked the pedometer at every step — to get to the top of the switchbacks.
It took three more hours — and “two point six miles” — to get to Whisper Lake.
They reached the graveyard first. It was to the right of the trail sloping up behind the remains of a stone gate. Slabs of broken rock — once tombstones — dotted the hillside. A few crumbling statues stood under the spindly pine trees.
“Who’d get buried all the way up here?” Grandpa Wayne asked. “Miners?”
Grandpa Larry shook his head. “This cemetery is hundreds of years old — there was no mining community here then. Very curious. We’ll have to come back tomorrow —”
Cass stopped by the gate as her grandfathers and Yo-Yoji forged ahead. Max-Ernest lingered with her.
“Is this it?”
She nodded, picking up a handful of pine needles, as if to confirm that they were real. “It’s just like in my dream. We must be in the right place.”
She waited for Max-Ernest’s rebuttal, but he just shivered, evidently as spooked as she was. Nobody had been buried in the graveyard for a very long time. But the sense of death still lived.
“C’mon,” said Cass.
Yo-Yoji was looking at them curiously from down the trail, and she didn’t want to arouse his suspicions.
When the hikers first caught sight of the lake through the trees, the sun was setting, the lake a sparkling gold. But as they walked closer, the sun disappeared, and the lake turned lead gray and ominous — as if the gold had been some kind of alchemy at work and now they were seeing the lake’s true colors.
Across the lake, mountains climbed steeply, treeless and bare save for a few luminous patches of snow. At the top: the jagged, toothlike peaks Cass remembered from her nightmares.
They chose a campsite that backed up against a small cliff with roots dangling out of it.
“How about over here by this tree stump?” Cass asked.
Yo-Yojji shook his head. “Too many rocks. Look at that one, right in the middle —” He pointed to a piece of granite sticking up out of the ground. In his other hand, he held his parents’ bright yellow backpacking tent — still rolled up.
“Max-Ernest, what do you think?” Cass asked.
“Whatever you guys think.” He continued looking at the boulder-strewn lakeshore about ten yards below.
“Well, I think this is perfect because we can say whatever we want without them hearing us.” Cass nodded toward the opposite end of the campsite where her grandfathers were erecting their tent — a patchy contraption in fading camouflage fabric that billowed dust whenever they touched it.
“OK, but don’t blame me if you can’t sleep ’cause there’s a rock in your back,” said Yo-Yoji.
After they put up their tent and pulled their sleeping bags out of their stuff-sacs to air, Grandpa Larry handed Cass a length of rope and a pillowcase, and he asked the kids to collect all the food they wouldn’t be eating for dinner.
“We have to tie the other end of the rope to a rock, so we can throw it over a tree branch and pull it up,” Cass explained to Max-Ernest, checking for Yo-Yoji’s reaction.
He nodded. “Like a piñata.”
“You guys do it — I’m not very good at throwing,” said Max-Ernest, stepping out of the way, still refusing to let himself participate, or even smile.
As Cass and Yo-Yoji took turns trying to toss the rope over a tree limb, a ranger reined his horse next to their campsite and saluted them. “Make sure you get that bag good and high. I suppose you heard some bear’s really been having at it lately.”
Cass’s grandfathers joined them, and the ranger asked to see their wilderness permit — which, I’m surprised and delighted to report, Larry and Wayne were able to supply.
“Alrighty, then, be safe, y’all! It’s a bit nippy because it’s late in the season — but on the bright side you’ve got the place to yourselves. . . . Hey, before I go, anyone know why they call it Whisper Lake?” The ranger smiled at the kids. “If you’ve ever been fishing early in the morning, then you can probably guess. It’s because of the way sounds — even the softest little whispers — carry across the water. Most lakes it only happens at dawn — but happens here in the evenings, too. So be careful what you say, if you don’t want anyone to hear your secrets!”*
He waved and gave his horse a kick.
Yo-Yoji looked at Cass and Max-Ernest. “Well . . . ?”
“Well, what?” asked Cass.
“Are you going to tell me what we’re doing here, or you still keeping everything secret?”
“We’re just going camping — that’s all,” said Max-Ernest.
“Yeah, right. I thought we were friends. . . .”
“We are,” said Cass.
“But not enough to tell me. . . .”
Visibly disappointed, Yo-Yoji headed down to the lakeshore and started skipping rocks.
Cass and Max-Ernest watched, not moving.
“I feel bad — I wish we could tell him,” said Cass.
“Well, we can’t!”
As the ripple rings spread across the water, the plunking of the rocks echoed in the twilight.
Yo-Yoji had a mummy-style sleeping bag with a pull cord that closed up the top. He liked to burrow inside and pull the cord as tight as possible, leaving only a quarter-sized circle of light to spy out of.
Tonight, though, he found himself tossing and turning because he was too hot; he loosened the cord and unzipped the side of the bag to let a little air in.
Half asleep, he stuck his head out and looked around the tent. It was hard to see in the dim light but — was it possible the other sleeping bags were empty?
“Cass? Max-Ernest?” he whispered.
Getting nervous, he patted their sleeping bags.
Where were they?
He forced himself to sit up and think.
He knew there was something they weren’t telling him, and whatever it was, he suspected that it might be dangerous.
Had something happened? Could they have been kidnapped? Or worse?
Then he remembered that they’d insisted that he sleep in the back of the tent so they could both be nearer the entrance.
Max-Ernest: “I have claustrophobia!” Cass: “I pee ten times a night!”
He’d accepted their arguments at the time, but now he realized the real reason they wanted him in the back: they’d been planning to sneak out while he was sleeping.
The moon had not yet risen, but the stars were bright enough to see by, and Cass and Max-Ernest had no trouble findin
g the boulder they’d picked out earlier in the evening. It was the size of a truck and had the advantage of being visible from all sides of the lake.
When they climbed to the top, they found themselves on a natural platform, roomy enough for two kids — and, if all went according to plan, one homunculus — to stand comfortably.
Down below, they could see their campsite, and beyond the campsite the graveyard, shrouded in darkness.
To the other side of their campsite was the lake, ink black save for the occasional twinkle of a reflected star. The lake was ringed by pine trees, the front row in a natural outdoor amphitheater. Above the trees, the silvery mountains rose on all sides. It was as if Cass and Max-Ernest were onstage in front of an audience of giants.
Cass pulled the Sound Prism out of her jacket pocket. “I feel like we’re trying to summon a ghost,” she said.
“They usually do that with crystal balls, not sound balls,” Max-Ernest pointed out. “Not that I believe in them — I mean, in ghosts. Crystal balls are real, obviously. They just don’t necessarily —”
“Yeah, I get it. You ready?”
He was.
“OK, here goes nothing.”
Cass stood on the edge of the boulder and tossed the Sound Prism into the air. But she was so nervous that she let go too early; it was like trying to serve a tennis ball, right when the PE teacher is watching you.
The Sound Prism emitted only a short whistle before she had to lurch forward and catch it.
Taking a breath, she tried again, this time releasing the ball directly upward. It climber higher than it ever had before, playing its haunting tune under the night sky.
When the ball crested, it seemed for a moment to hover, singing, before falling back into Cass’s hand.
Cass tossed again — even higher this time. And the music grew more forceful, echoing across the lake, from mountain to mountain, until it sounded like an entire celestial chorus was singing in harmony.
They listened in wonder.
“If he’s here, he’ll definitely hear that — he won’t even need to see us,” said Max-Ernest. “He’ll find us by echolocation — you know, like bats.”
“I just hope my grandfathers don’t hear us first,” said Cass.
She peered down at the campsite: no movement — so far.
The last echoes of the Sound Prism died away.
Then:
“Shh — what’s that?” whispered Cass.
There was a scrabbling sound, as if something were trying to climb up the boulder. They waited, tense —
Until Yo-Yoji pulled himself up onto the boulder and joined them.
“Wow!” he said, catching his breath. “That Cabbage Face song sounded so trippy — and kinda beautiful!”
They exhaled — relieved and at the same time chagrined to see him.
“So let me guess — this is a secret meeting.”
Silence. Cass and Max-Ernest looked at each other.
“C’mon, dudes. I hiked all the way up here, same as you. And now you’re not gonna let me in on the fun part?!”
“Well . . .” Cass hesitated. “You know how before you were joking about a secret society?”
“Cass, we can’t! What about the oath?!”
“Well, we never took it, did we? Besides, I’m sure Pietro would understand if it was the only way we could catch the homunculus.”
Max-Ernest held his head in his hands. It was too late now.
Yo-Yoji looked from Cass to Max-Ernest and back. “What’s a homunculus?”
Cass calmly explained to Yo-Yoji that they were looking for a five-hundred-year-old creature made in a bottle.
“Ha, good one! You should write some songs for my band.”
“No, I’m serious,” said Cass.
Yo-Yoji stared. “Whoa. You’re even crazier than I thought.”
Max-Ernest, previously the naysayer, defended their sanity:
“Just because nobody knows about something, doesn’t it mean it can’t happen. If you’d seen the Midnight Sun — well, some of them are almost that old!”
“If you say so. . . .” Yo-Yoji clearly didn’t believe them, but he seemed ready to be proved wrong. Or up for a thrill, anyway. “So, then, what happens now?”
“We wait,” said Cass.
As she spoke, a sudden breeze whipped across the lake.
For a second, all their senses were on alert.
But nothing happened. Nobody arrived.
Except a chipmunk who scurried under their feet and then dove under the boulder.
After that, a profound silence fell over the lake.
If you’ve ever spent the night camping in the mountains or out in the desert, you know this kind of silence.
A silence so total it makes you think you’ve never experienced silence before.
A silence that makes certain kinds of people feel like they have to talk in order to fill it.
People like Max-Ernest.
After about three or four or five (or was it only two?) unbearable minutes of quiet, he pointed at the sky. “Look at all the stars — I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many. There’s Venus — not that it’s a star, it’s a planet. And the Milky Way — which is a galaxy, so it’s a bunch of stars. And the Big Dipper — which is a constellation. And the Little Dipper. And Orion’s Belt. And . . .” He trailed off, overwhelmed by the sheer scope of the exercise.
“Hey,” he picked up after a moment, “did you ever think about the fact that you’re just a speck on a planet that’s just a speck in a galaxy that’s just a speck in a universe that’s probably just a speck in the fingernail of some giant alien being that’s too big to even imagine? How ’bout that?”
“Can’t we just concentrate on the little alien being we’re waiting for?” Cass asked.
“You know, technically, he’s not an alien, he’s — yeah, okay, fine.”
And they waited.
And waited.
Jumping every time the wind picked up or one or the other of them made the slightest movement.
An hour passed.
“OK, that was fun and all. But maybe it’s time to face it, your little homunkey isn’t coming,” said Yo-Yoji.
“Or else he came and he got scared. Because there are so many of us,” said Max-Ernest, eyeing Yo Yoji meaningfully.
“That’s a good point,” said Cass. “You guys go into the tent. I’ll stay out here and keep waiting.”
“All right,” said Max-Ernest, already looking for the best way down. “Maybe that’s a good —”
“No, it’s not!” said Yo-Yoji. “We can’t leave her out here alone.”
“Why — OK, you’re right.” Max-Ernest turned back, shooting an annoyed glance at Yo-Yoji. “We can’t leave you, Cass. It’s not safe. Anything could happen.”
“You mean like a homunculus could come?”
“Exactly.”
“Isn’t that why we’re here?”
“Yeah, but they’re some real-life scary creatures out here, too,” said Yo-Yoji. “Remember the bear?”
They waited another twenty minutes or so. Their teeth started to chatter.
“C’mon, let’s go,” said Cass.
Something inside her had just given up.
What had made her think they’d find the homunculus at Whisper Lake, anyway? Her dream, that was all. A dream she’d probably had only because she’d read the article on her wall.
The bear was just a bear, after all.
Bleak with disappointment, she took a last look around, then followed the others off the boulder —
Unaware that every sound they made was being heard all across the lake.
Cass awoke to find the interior of their tent filled with a soft yellow glow.
Was it daylight already?
She propped her head up and looked around. Yo-Yoji and Max-Ernest were both fast asleep in their sleeping bags.
Max-Ernest still wore his watch: three a.m.
Craning her neck, Cass peered out thro
ugh the tiny space left at the top of the tent’s zipper.
A full moon hung above the mountains. It shone like a searchlight across the lake.
Snap!
Cass’s ears tingled. Her hairs stood on end.
Snap! Snap!
Twigs breaking — that was the sound.
Was it . . . ? Could it be . . . ?
Afraid to move, Cass crouched on top of her sleeping bag.
She knew she was being silly; she should go look outside. This was why she had come. To meet the homunculus — if it really was he.
And if it wasn’t — well, what was there to be afraid of?
Unless it was the bear.
Probably, Larry or Wayne had gotten up to go pee. It was one of them stepping on the twigs — it had to be.
But it would be comforting to know for certain.
Snap! Snap! Snap!
Crack!
Now she could hear actual footsteps. On top of the twigs. And they were coming closer.
It didn’t sound like a bear. Not that she’d ever heard a bear’s footsteps before.
It didn’t sound like a grandfather, either.
Cass looked over at Max-Ernest and Yo-Yoji, ready to shake them awake. But they were already sitting up. Eyes wide with fear.
They didn’t have a plan, Cass realized in a flash. All this time, all this effort had gone into getting to this moment — and they hadn’t planned on what to do next.
After reading “The Legend of Cabbage Face,” Cass had simply assumed the homunculus would be friendly. But what if Mr. Wallace was right and the legend was wrong? What were they supposed to do then?
Fight the homunculus? They had no weapons.
Trap him? They had no chains. No net.
Follow him? But why? To where?
None of them moved a muscle. They didn’t dare. They only waited.
Then, suddenly, silhouetted against the side of the tent:
Hands — huge hands. And ears — huge ears.
And, for a second, in profile:
A nose — a really huge nose.
It was not a bear. It was not a grandfather.