The Island of Whispers

The Island

–
of –

Whispers

A Novel by

Brendan
Gisby

Published by
The Black Leaf Publishing Group, Smashwords edition

Copyright 2009,
Brendan Gisby

ISBN
978-1-4523-6007-2

No part of this
publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or
transmitted, in any form, or by any means, without prior permission
in writing from the publishers or, in the case of reprographic
production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the
Copyright Licensing Agency.

All characters
are fictional, and any resemblance to anyone living or dead is
accidental.

For more
information, please contact The Black Leaf Publishing Group:
www.blackleafpublishing.com

For all good
rats everywhere.

Part One:

The Threat

–
Chapter One –

It was near
the end of his watch. For the last time that night, Twisted Foot
sniffed the air, slowly scanned the terrain below him and listened
intently. As his narrow eyes moved gradually from left to right,
his sleek black body quivered and bristled in the early autumn
breeze. Far out into the estuary, a faint ribbon of yellow was
spreading along the horizon, creating a thin wedge between the dark
night sky and the even darker waters of the River Forth.

Nothing
stirred on the island. There were no sounds save for the gentle
slap of water on rocks and the wind that whispered through the
slitted windows of the crumbling monastery. Soon, though, the
stillness would be shattered by the first northbound express as it
thundered over the giant steel bridge which loomed high above.

Twisted Foot
smelled a sharpness in the air. It would not be long, he thought,
until the Cold Cycle began: the time when the winds grew into
shrieking, biting monsters which swept over the outside world; when
the waters round the world boiled and frothed, sending up huge
white creatures to batter and shake the rocks; and when hard white
water clung to the high ground on which he now squatted. The
hunting packs would stop then, and there would be little work for
the Watchers, only the occasional solitary vigil to guard over the
secret world deep below.

He would spend
much more time in the underworld during the Cold Cycle, content in
the warmth and security of the Watchers’ lair. Yes, it was a time
for relaxation. There would be long mating sessions with the lair’s
she-rats. Later, there would be games and frolics with the newly
arrived offspring. There would also be those enthralling periods in
the Common lair when Long Snout and the other elders of the Inner
Circle recounted stirring and often harrowing tales from the
history of their hidden world, a history which spanned many, many
Cycles from the early struggle to colonise the island through to
the stability and comfort of the present society.

Yet, despite
his anticipation of the pleasures brought about by the coming Cold
Cycle, a sense of foreboding had crept into Twisted Foot’s
thoughts, causing him to shiver more pronouncedly in the pre-dawn
chill. As well as the mating, the games and the stories, that time,
he knew, heralded the Selection, when the less robust and less
purely formed young from each lair were sought out and imprisoned
by the Protectors to await slaughter for the hungry mouths of the
Inner Circle. It was true that many of the youngsters selected
would be the weaker she-rats, who were regarded as unsuitable for
future breeding, and the more deformed of the he-rats, who were not
fit for training as Protectors or Hunters or even Watchers.
Nevertheless, the Selection was a time of immense sadness in the
lairs, a time of sacrifice for the greater good of the society –
and for the continued wellbeing of the ruling Circle.

Twisted Foot
recalled the trauma of the Selection during his own first Cold
Cycle when, as a trembling youngster, he had observed Broken Tail,
the Chief Protector, scurry through the Watchers’ lair, sniffing
out the weak and the handicapped, and marking each across the snout
with a swipe of his sharp claws. He remembered vividly the great
fear that had pervaded the lair, the squeals and shrieks of his
young playmates, and the enticing tang of blood from their freshly
inflicted wounds. He remembered, too, a feeling of profound relief
when the deformity from which his name was derived had gone
undetected by the Chief Protector.

A faint scrape
from among the rocks below him brought Twisted Foot’s thoughts
jolting back to the present. The hunting pack was returning!
Raising his snout to the night sky, he uttered a shrill warning
call. The answering call came almost immediately from out of the
darkness. Moments later, silently and as if from nowhere, Torn
Coat, a scarred veteran from the Hunter’s lair, appeared beside
him.

‘
Look sharp, dung-head!’ snarled Torn Coat as he brushed past,
his bared fangs showing traces of a recent kill.

Twisted Foot
watched closely as the rest of the hunting pack moved stealthily
towards him. First came the small slave-rats: there were six of
them in all, but only three were fully employed. Each of the latter
slaves dragged behind him one of the night’s kills, jaws clamped
over the limp and bleeding neck of a young gull. Moving noiselessly
behind the slaves, four more Hunters slid past Twisted Foot, this
time without acknowledgement. Finally, the familiar shape of Fat
One, a fellow Watcher, lumbered into view.

‘
Another fine feast for White Muzzle and his lot,’ he grumbled
to Twisted Foot.

The new day’s
light crept tentatively up the estuary as the two Watchers followed
the hunting pack in the direction of the old monastery. Unlike the
quiet, efficient pace of the Hunters, their progress was clumsy and
almost comical, reflecting the awkward bulk of one and the
grotesquely twisted hind foot of the other.

–
o –

–
Chapter Two –

The small
monastery had been abandoned more than six hundred years before,
when its last occupants had slipped quietly and sadly away from the
island, only a handful of survivors from the ravages of the vile
pestilence that had spread through their devout community, wreaking
its black, contorted death. For centuries afterwards, the rocky,
whale-shaped islet was known to people on both sides of the Forth
as Plague Island: a place to be avoided, a place of ghosts and
demons and eerie, whispering winds.

In time,
though, the notion of a haunted island receded, as did the memory
of the fearful, rat-borne disease that had laid waste to the former
inhabitants. Gradually, the island regained its formal name of
Inchgarvie. Gradually, too, men returned to Inchgarvie: grey-haired
historians to pick over relics of the deserted monastery; bearded,
top-hatted engineers to supervise construction of the nearby Forth
Railway Bridge; local fishermen and seal-catchers; occasional
naturalists; and others attracted to the mysterious island out of
plain curiosity. Their visits had been brief, lasting a few hours
usually and a day or two at most. Only once more during its history
was Inchgarvie occupied by humans for any period of length: they
came at the outset of World War Two to build – and later to man –
the anti-aircraft gun emplacement that was sited on the east-facing
point of the island to help thwart Germany’s long-range bombing
sorties in the area.

Now, in the
last decade of the twentieth century, visitors to the island were
few and irregular. Even the multiplicity of craft that plied the
Forth steered clear of Inchgarvie, deterred more by swirling,
unpredictable tides than by fear of lingering ghosts. After more
than fifty years, the concrete gun emplacement remained virtually
intact, but centuries of neglect and exposure to the elements had
exacted a more telling price from the low-built monastery which
occupied the western half of the island; its roof had collapsed
long ago, little remained of its internal walls and several ragged
holes punctured its thicker external walls.

The returning
hunting pack re-entered the dank, rubble-strewn interior of the
monastery through one such narrow aperture near the base of the
east wall. Their re-entry was greeted instantly with a short
screech from a point among the rubble a few yards ahead of them.
Uttering his own sharp call in response, Torn Coat moved swiftly
towards the Watcher, whose small, pointed snout poked out
cautiously from a gap below some broken masonry.

‘
Pass, warrior,’ croaked Small Face.

Without
further response, Torn Coat also slid under the masonry and
abruptly disappeared down a deep cleft between two ancient
flagstones. One by one, the others followed Torn Coat. As Fat One
squeezed his unwieldy rump through the cleft, Small Face, easily
the tiniest and most timid of the Watchers, called out to Twisted
Foot.

‘
Think of me when you’re curled up snugly in the lair,’ he
wailed.

‘
Never mind, comrade,’ Twisted Foot retorted, ‘we’ll keep your
nest warm for your return.’

Then he, too,
vanished down the tunnel that led to the underworld, leaving Small
Face to maintain his lone daylight vigil.

The tunnel was
long, narrow and very steep. Its roof had been rounded and smoothed
by the passage of bodies over many years. By contrast, its floor
was bedrock: hard and sharp, and constantly wet from seeping
rainwater. Like those in front of him, Twisted Foot slithered
rather than crawled down the tunnel.

Eventually,
the ground levelled out and broadened, marking the entrance to the
underworld. Here, as usual, crouched two surly Protectors, who
observed the return of the hunting pack menacingly, but without
comment or movement. Behind the Protectors and to their left was a
shallow pool of murky rainwater, where the Hunters stopped briefly
to lap while Fat One and Twisted Foot guarded over the slaves.
Resuming their formation, Hunters and slaves moved off at speed
along the wider, higher tunnel leading to the Common lair. Their
work now over, the two Watchers also drank from the pool and then
proceeded leisurely in the same direction.

As always, the
utter blackness of the underworld and its familiar scents and
sounds brought reassurance to Twisted Foot. On the world above, he
felt exposed, vulnerable. There was that continual sense of
anxiety, that fear of imminent intrusion by the Two-Legs. Around
the outside world, the strange creatures controlled by the Two-Legs
caterwauled through the air and sea and boomed across the giant
bridge, threatening and unnerving him. Here in the welcoming
blackness those fears were quickly forgotten. Here there was
concealment from the Two-Legs, and the promise of warmth,
sustenance and companionship.

The Watchers
emerged from the tunnel into the Common lair. Unlike the rest of
the underworld, this place was spacious, almost cavernous, easily
accommodating the normal Assembly of some three hundred he-rats
from the Inner and Outer Circles. The floor of the lair was
oval-shaped and level for the most part. The centre of the oval was
dominated by an outcrop of rock, flattened at its top to create a
broad, circular platform. The walls of the lair sloped gently
inwards to form a dome-like ceiling, the pinnacle of which was
located directly above the platform. Along the walls, a series of
low, narrow tunnels led off to the other lairs. To the right lay
the abodes of the Watchers and Hunters. To the left, a gang of
Protectors kept constant guard over the entrance to the Scavengers’
lair, ensuring that the bedlam and violence within did not spill
out. The tunnel at the farthest end of the Common lair gave access
to the home of the Protectors. From here, another tunnel led to the
sanctity of the Inner Circle’s lair, a place that was also guarded
continually, but for entirely different motives. A final tunnel led
from the Protectors’ lair to the outside world, emerging at a point
not far from the western wall of the monastery. Barely known to the
other members of the underworld, this tunnel provided the Inner
Circle and their Protectors with an escape route in the event of
flooding, insurrection or other such calamities.