The Humming Room by Ellen Potter
“This way,” Jack whispered, and in a flash he was bounding easily across the rocks.
The shoal was wet and slick, and though she was naturally sure-footed, Roo slipped several times. Up ahead, Jack stopped abruptly. He held out his hand for Roo to stop too. Then he did the oddest thing. Shoving his hands in his pockets, his body seemed to go slack. He cocked one leg and his shoulders slumped. All his muscles seemed to loosen and relax. He stood like this for a moment, just as though he were waiting for a bus, before squatting down and smoothly scooping something up in his hands. When he stood, he was holding a slender, dark brown thing that squirmed in his grip like a fish.
“What is it?” Roo asked.
“Come look.”
As Roo came closer she saw that the creature had already begun to settle down in Jack’s hands. Now she could see that it had damp, sleek fur and a pointed, ferretlike snout. Jack brought the snout close to his face.
“I’m on to you,” he said to the animal.
“Won’t he bite you?” Roo said.
“She,” he corrected. “And she won’t. We’re old friends.”
He loosened his grip, and the lithe animal crawled up Jack’s arm and settled on his shoulder.
“She’s a mink,” Jack said. “And a pig for tern eggs. I keep taking her off the shoal, but she keeps swimming back. I’ll find a smashed shell on the rocks, the insides gone, and there she is, skulking away. Between the gulls and this one, it’s pretty bleak for the tern eggs. I patrol this shoal a few times a day. It’s sort of hopeless. But still, I can’t help myself, you know?”
She did know! Before she could stop herself, Roo blurted out, “I found a garden. It’s been kept a secret for so long that everything in it is dead. I’ve been watering it and watering it, but it’s so big, and it’s so hot in there that the soil doesn’t stay damp for long. I can’t keep up, but how can I stop? It’s like you and the tern eggs.”
Jack nodded. He thought for a moment.
“The garden must have a sprinkler system, though,” he said.
“There’s a panel of switches and timers in the basement. That might be for the sprinklers, but all the wires are cut. I think my uncle must have done it.” And she told him what Phillip had said about the garden and his mother’s death. Jack listened carefully. The mink took the opportunity to scamper down his arm and try to escape, but Jack caught her and held her to his chest.
“If you want,” Jack said when she was finished, “I could help you. The garden might stand a better chance if there were two of us working in it.”
When Roo hesitated, Jack lowered his head and whispered to the mink, “She doesn’t trust me.”
It made Roo smile.
“I do,” she said. “I think I do.”
They took the mink to a wooded island far from the tern’s nesting place. Clearly it was a ride the mink had taken often. She stayed by Jack’s feet in the canoe, occasionally stretching herself out across his shoes. Once she even approached Roo, nuzzling at her ankles. Roo kept perfectly still, delighted, her eyes darting between Jack and the mink. Slowly, very slowly, Roo bent down and with the tip of her forefinger she touched the mink’s silky head. The mink tensed for a second, but when she didn’t dart away, Roo let her finger slide down the mink’s neck and along her back.
“You’re good with animals,” Jack said, surprised.
Roo nodded. “I’m just not good with people.”
As Jack neared the shore, the mink seemed to know when they had arrived at her new home. She leapt onto his seat and then dove off the edge of the canoe. She swam the short distance to the bank and scrambled onto land, her wet coat now inky black, and then disappeared into the woods.
“Do you think she’ll go back to the shoal?” Roo asked.
“I know she will. But so will I.”
They had only been gone for a little over an hour, but when they returned to Cough Rock, a faint rosy light was already simmering in the sky beneath the blue. By dusk it would burn flamingo pink, and then night would shut it down completely and the stars would push through. There had never been skies like this in Limpette. For the first time in her life, Roo felt at home in the bigness of things; in the river that she could not see the end of and the sky that held both stars and herons.
Jack wedged his paddle in the shallow rocks, and Roo leapt out before he could offer her a hand.
“Now she’s jumping off canoes like a mink,” he said.
“Like a rat,” Roo corrected. “Like a River Rat.”
Chapter 15
The screaming started in the middle of the night. The long eventful day had plunged Roo into a deep sleep, and the screaming had wormed its way into her dreams as a shrieking red bird caught in a tremendous, ropy spiderweb. The bird twisted and thrashed, struggling to free itself from the web’s hold without success. When a giant spider began to climb up the web toward the bird, the screaming became unbearable and Roo woke with a gasp.
Standing over her bed was Ms. Valentine, barefoot and dressed in a robe that hung askew. It seemed as if she too had woken suddenly. Her face, scrubbed of makeup, was tinged pink around the rims of her eyes and the wings of her nostrils, and her dark hair was disheveled.
“Get up, Roo,” she said. It was less an order than a plea.
That was when Roo realized the screaming was real and not just in her dreams. It pierced the walls, hysterical and ragged, and was accompanied by a furious thumping.
“What’s he screaming about now?” Roo grumbled.
“This is the worst we’ve ever seen him,” Ms. Valentine said. To Roo’s amazement she actually sounded frightened. “He’s punching the walls, just…wild. Violet can hardly restrain him. Please, can you see what you can do—”
Roo groaned, but she got out of bed and started down the stairs. The screaming pounded through the house, echoing off the walls. It made Roo mad to hear it. She began to run, anxious to make it stop. The shrieks grew more and more hysterical, so that by the time Roo flung open Phillip’s door, her face was flushed with her own fury.
Tangled in sheets and blankets, Phillip was screaming and tossing in his bed while Violet attempted to hold him down. When she lost her grip on one of his hands, it flew to her face and clawed at it.
“Stop it!” Roo screamed at him. “Stop it right now!”
But the attack did not let up—Phillip seemed beyond hearing—and he slapped at Violet as she tried to grab hold of his wrist again. Enraged, Roo ran across the room, grabbed the Gila monster from the shelf and threw it against the wall as hard as she could. It made an awful cracking sound and the bones clattered to the ground.
“That’s one!” Roo called to him. “If you don’t stop screaming, I’ll smash them all!”
“No, Roo!” Violet cried. “You’ll make him worse.” Her face was badly scratched and her lower lip was bleeding.
“I hate you!” Roo shrieked at Phillip.
She picked up another skeleton and smashed it. Then another and another until finally she realized that the screaming had stopped. The only noise left was the cracking of bones and her own cries of rage.
She looked over at the bed. Phillip now lay quietly in Violet’s arms, and they were both watching her, shocked, their faces still damp with perspiration from their struggle.
The door opened and Ms. Valentine stood at the threshold. For a moment she was silent, aghast at the wreckage of bones strewn across the floor, with Roo in the center of it.
“What have you done?” she demanded of Roo.
“She’s stopped him, is what,” Violet said, tipping her head toward Phillip. He was pale and his eyes were glassy but he was calm.
Violet settled Phillip back into bed. He lay as docile as an infant, as she untangled and straightened the sheets and blankets and arranged them neatly over him. It infuriated Roo that Violet could be so kind to him after what he’d done. The scratches on her face were raised and pink now, and blood had dried on her lip, forming a small, dark blotch.
“Roo will stay,” he murmured.
“Of course she will,” Ms. Valentine said stiffly.
“No, I won’t,” Roo said.
Ms. Valentine shot a warning glance at her.
“I don’t care. I won’t,” Roo insisted. “He’s repulsive.”
“He can’t help it when he gets into fits like this,” Violet said gently.
“He can help it!” Roo said. “He’s just used to doing whatever he likes.”
Phillip was watching her from his bed, and now she glared at him.
“You can help it,” she insisted to him, her voice raw. They stared at each other for a moment. Phillip looked away, then back at her.
“Please stay,” he said.
“There,” Violet said, getting up and walking over to Roo to give her shoulder a squeeze. “That’s as nice as anyone could ask.”
She guided Roo over to the bed, and Roo let her, but she would not sit down next to Phillip. Arms crossed against her chest, she stood there as Violet and Ms. Valentine left the room.
“Are you cold?” Phillip asked. “You look cold in that nightgown.”
“I’m fine,” she replied stonily.
“Here.” With some difficulty he peeled back one of the covers. “Put this around you.”
It was the way he struggled to maneuver the blanket—so weak and fumbling. It made her feel a little less furious at him. She reached out and snatched the blanket, wrapping it around her shoulders—she was cold in the thin nightgown.
“Why did you hurt Violet?” she asked him, her voice still harsh.
“Why do you care so much about her?” he said, suddenly peevish.
“Why does she care so much about you?” Roo shot back.
“Because my father feels guilty, so he pays people to care about me,” Phillip said.
“Violet would be nice to you no matter what,” Roo insisted. “That’s just how she is. And anyway, what does your father have to feel guilty about?”
After a moment, he said, “Because he can’t stand to be around me. That’s why he’s never here. He really only wanted my mother, not me, and now that she’s gone, he hires people to be with me since he doesn’t want to.”
Roo would have liked to contradict this. She would have liked to accuse her cousin of feeling sorry for himself. Yet she couldn’t help but admit that it might be true.
“Well, maybe if you didn’t bite him, he’d want to be around you more,” Roo countered.
“He deserved it,” Phillip said, his expression hardening.
“Why?”
“He told me he might send me away to Dr. Oulette’s clinic in Rochester. He said that I would have to live there while they treated me for depression.”
“Maybe it would be a good thing,” Roo said.
“It would be a terrible thing!” Phillip pulled his legs up and wrapped his arms around them like he was already trying to root himself in the room. “She won’t be at some clinic!”
“Who won’t?”
“My mother.”
“Phillip—”
“I know what you think. You think I’m crazy. So does my father. Violet says that I’m dreaming when I hear her, but it’s not a dream and I’m not crazy. I hear her calling for me through the walls. I heard her tonight, clearer than ever.”
Roo opened her mouth to tell him that his mother was gone, just like her father was. But then she remembered when she had first seen her uncle; how he had looked so much like her father, she thought it was him—though it made no sense—and how her whole body had filled with happiness at the sight of him.
“Lie back on your pillow,” she told him, and sat beside him.
“Why?”
“Just do it,” she said.
Once he lay back, Roo started, “There once was a little red-and-yellow boat called Pendragon—”
“I don’t want to hear stories,” he complained.
“Shut up,” Roo said. “And instead of sailing in the water it flew above the treetops in the sky.”
She told him the story about when Vincent landed on the island of Malta, and after some initial squirming Phillip lay still and listened. Before long he closed his eyes. His breathing gradually slowed, and when she stopped talking to check, she saw that her cousin had fallen asleep. She pulled the cover up over his shoulders. He turned toward her in his sleep, and tucked his legs up. For a while she stared at him. Sleep softened his face. It was a solemn face, like her own. She reached out and lightly touched his hair, so dark and thick. Like his mother’s hair, she guessed.
The door opened a crack and Violet peered into the room. She glanced between Phillip and Roo, shaking her head in wonder.
“Well, look at this,” she whispered. “Two waves, smooth as glass. An old Donkey granny could sail across the two of you in a pie pan and never feel a bump.”
Chapter 16
Roo spotted the heron first. He pushed through the pink and blue early-morning sky then circled back and disappeared behind the tall pines of a distant island.
He’s coming, Roo thought. She felt the excitement climbing in her chest but sternly pushed it back down.
Don’t be ridiculous, she told herself. He’s just a boy.
A few moments later Jack’s canoe appeared in the distance. The heron, Sir, flew above it. At one point Sir swooped so low that it seemed as if he were about to fly right into Jack. Roo ducked reflexively as Sir just cleared Jack’s head, and Roo thought she could hear Jack laughing, although it might simply have been the call of a far-off gull.
As the canoe rounded an island and entered the seaway, heading toward Cough Rock, the currents seemed to push against it. Jack paddled and paddled but the going was slow. Roo paced along the rocks that formed a tiny cove, watching as Jack struggled against the river’s mighty shoves. It seemed like he would never reach her. Sir, too, seemed to grow impatient. He flew to the canoe, landing awkwardly on its edge, and rested there while Jack paddled on.
It took nearly a half an hour for the canoe to fight its way to the island. As Jack maneuvered into the little cove, Roo reached out and grabbed the canoe to help pull it in. Jack’s face was pink and damp with exertion as he stepped onto land, but he was laughing too.
“I think she’s jealous,” he said breathlessly.
“Who is?”
“The river,” Jack replied. “Look at her, pretending not to notice us.”
Roo looked at the water, flushed purple beneath the surface. Yes, the waves did hold themselves stiffly now, moving past briskly but occasionally serving Cough Rock with indignant little slaps.
He belongs to the river, Roo thought.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” she asked uncertainly.
“Of course I’m sure. Come on. Let’s see your garden.”
Roo led him over the rocks and around the back of the house to the basement door. At first she felt a rush of excitement at Jack seeing the garden. But as they climbed up the trapdoor stairs, she began to have misgivings. What if he thought the garden was hopeless? What if all he could see was a tumbledown graveyard of brittle, brown plants and dead trees?
At the top of the stairs she paused and looked down at him.
“Close your eyes,” she ordered.
He closed them, and she scrambled up into the garden, and then squatted down beside the trapdoor.
“Okay, take another step up,” she said.
He did. She had him take two more until his head was poking out of the trapdoor.
“Now give me your hand,” she ordered.
He put out his hand and she took it. The skin felt rough and warm. She held his hand loosely, but his hand tightened around hers. She led him up the final stairs until he was standing inside the garden, his eyes still faithfully shut.
“Listen,” she told him, “you have to love this garden. No matter what it looks like. Okay?”
“Okay,” Jack said easily.
“It’s not green like other gardens,” she warned.
“I know. You told me. Can I open my eyes?”
Roo took a deep breath and released his hand. “Go on.”
She watched as his eyes opened and he looked around. He took in the broken branches hanging off the trees, the limp foliage matted on the ground, the tangle of vines drooping from the treetops. After a moment, he began to wander through the garden, stopping to touch the trunk of a tree or reaching up to let his fingers brush against the tips of hanging vines. Roo stayed back and said nothing. She remembered how she had felt when she first saw the garden—the peculiar feeling of sadness and wonder.
“Do you think it has a chance?” she asked finally, her voice sounding rough to her own ears.
“It’s hard to tell with wild things,” Jack said, crouching down by the stump of a tree. “This winter I found a half-starved coyote pup. I took care of him till he started to look good and sturdy. It seemed like he’d be just fine. But then he died suddenly in the night. I don’t know why. Then a week later, on Sawdust Island, I saw something strange hanging from the branch of a tree. Turned out it was a rabbit, all torn up. I figured a hawk had grabbed it and started flying off with it, then dropped it by accident. There wasn’t much rabbit left. His leg was busted and his skin was ripped to shreds. I patched him up the best I could and figured he wouldn’t make it through the day. But he did. And the next day he ate out of my hand and each day he got stronger until finally he was good as new, except he hopped sort of lopsided. It seems like there’s something mysterious about what lives and what dies.” He saw that Roo’s face had gone grim, and he added, “But each time I find an animal that needs help, I help it as though I’m sure it will live.”