Chapter Four - The Voice Box

When waiting for something life-changing, minds tend to imagine every possible possibility of what might happen when that wait is finally over. That’s why moments spent waiting are so much longer than the ones spent having fun. People aren’t in one space, as they are when playing. But living in two, four, fifty scenarios at once, each taking its tug on the nerves. Gai and Mape had imagined many scenarios while waiting for Pappa Stav to walk off that ship. And their nerves were getting rather gnarly.

“What is this crap? We been soggin’ out here for an hour, she says!”

“‘Ey,” Gai pointed at someone poking over the rails of the deck.

It was the first person they’d seen on the ship.

Mape sighed. “Oh, that’s just Tanning’s bald head.”

The mayor waved down to the Hoppers from the top deck of the Lady Merry. He’d been able to find a way into the ship through the wreckage of his home. Everyone, including the hopeful Izz family, yelled up for news. Tanning shrugged his shoulders and shook his head. He yelled something like, “Esa hostess!”

“What’s he goin’ on about?” said Mape.

No one in the crowd seemed to know what he was saying either. He called down as loud as he could into his coned hands, “It’s a ghost ship!”

All of Hop gasped at once.

“Ghost ship?” Gai dropped his jaw.

Where was the crew? The captain, Baald Penn? Stav? The Hoppers all whispered their own wild theories. Some said they must’ve run out of food and jumped overboard. Or ran out of rum and jumped overboard. Maybe the crash knocked them off ? “Quick, check the water!” The crowd grew more and more anxious, ready to burst onto the Merry and have a look for them‐ selves. Someone had to be responsible for wrecking their ugly town.

Mape reached her hand to where her necklace used to be. Shak‐ ing, her empty fingers came back down to her sides. “Don’t tell me . . .”

Gai started to think out loud. “They’re gone . . . like Lynd?” “Speak up, she says.”

“Ma, what do ya think spryts are, again?” Mape stared blankly.

The Hoppers near him heard Gai say the word spryts and imme‐ diately got panicky. “Spryts? Where? Who saw ‘em?” Then the people around them spread the word in a wave of whispering fears. “Spryts are comin’, I heard! The red tide!” The people parted around him and his mother like they were two misplaced drops of oil in water. Gai shrank, having so many eyes on him.

The mayor saw the budding chaos below, saw that it involved the Izz family — per course, it involved the Izz family — and sent word for them to get up on the Merry’s deck with him. When the order reached Mape, she swallowed another heavy lump and gripped her son’s arm. “Spryts might be the best we can pray fer.”

“Why?” he said. “Do ya know what’s goin’ on?”

“Tanning’s starin’ at us. That’s what’s goin’ on.” She pulled him forward. “Stay close.”

They entered the mayor’s front door and into his living room. The salty hull of the Lady Merry was smack in the middle of the room, cutting it in half like a poorly thought-out decoration. A coffin-sized gash in the Merry led right into her cargo hold from the living room. As they squeezed their way through the rough opening, the line of people who had already entered the ship all gawked at them eerily. Eyeball after stinky eyeball rolled across the other Hopper’s faces as the mother and son climbed up to the creaky stairs to the top deck.

Out in fresh air again, they saw Tanning standing with three other men in a circle toward the bow. Each were staring down at the deck boards. As Mape and Gai approached, the mayor turned to them with a dazed leer.

Mape exhaled like she’d been holding her breath for the entire walk up. “Mayor Tanning, we don’t—” But Mamma Mape was stunned when she caught a look at the Lady Merry’s front deck.

A whole side of it looked like it had been blown to bits. It was as if an explosion went off, searing deep into the wood from the planks to the mast. And the damage was too far inward to be caused by the collision with Hop.

“They’re gone, Mape,” Tanning said in an uncharacteristically quiet tone. He seemed like he wanted to be angry, but he wasn’t quite sure what to be angry about yet. “Against all guesses, yer cousin Baald’s ship came back. Too bad no one else did.”

“What’re ya sayin’ about?” she said.

“It’s completely abandoned,” he stressed. “Not a damn scrap of one of ‘em. No lifeboat’s missin’.”

Around the edges of the wrecked deck, the boards were curled up, twisted and gnarled bizarrely, not just snapped. “By Zeea,” Gai said under his breath. “It’s the same destruction as Lynd’s Pier . . .”

The mayor locked his wrinkled lids on the boy. “Not the first unusual thing I’ve heard about yer quirk family.”

Waaahhhhh!

Mape tightened her grip on Gai’s arm even more. Every sight and sound seemed to make her jittery, as if danger could strike from anywhere at any time.

A Hopper yelled from down in the cargo hold, “Mrs. Shakk’s comin’ up, sir!”

“This should be interestin’.” Tanning sighed. “Send her up!” Gai said, “What else have ya heard about my family?”

Clunk. Scrape. Clank. Mrs. Shakk walked her bucket shoes onto the deck, her ear-busting horn in hand. Dangling from her neck was a fresh piece of chalk and a small roof tile, ready for fighting words. She stepped right in front of Tanning and took in a whiff of air. She then began scribbling on the tile.

Mape let go of her son and backed away a bit.

As soon as Mrs. Shakk put the final hard stroke on her roof piece, she turned it around for all to see — STAV IZZ DID THIS!

Gasps. Gasps. Gasps all around. It was like a contest to see who could suck the most air off the Merry deck. But Tanning didn’t appear shocked at all. Instead, he nodded along as if Mrs. Shakk were confirming some deeply held belief of his. “Mrs. Shakk, I know ya have . . . a history, shall we say, with Mr. Izz. But that’s a whale of an accusation. Don’t get me wrong, I’d believe it. But do ya have any proof?”

Entirely unconsciously, Mape had been slowly turning her body away from the situation as they talked. By now, she was almost facing the stairs down.

Mrs. Shakk walked right up to Gai and opened her mouth wide for him to see inside. Off-putting as that was, down her throat was a horrifying, black scar. It had the same jagged tears as the Merry’s deck and Lynd’s Pier. She began furiously dashing that chalk hard on the tile. She turned it around — HE DESTROYED MY VOICE!

Mape pulled Gai to the stairs. “That’s all, she says!”

Gai gave the destroyed deck one last glance on the way out and saw a piece of curved wood. It was a nice piece of wood. It didn’t quite belong on a ship from Hop. He gave it a double-take. “Is that?” he said aloud. As Mape pulled him down the stairs, he looked a third time and swore he saw some twisted fishing wire shredding off it. “Ma, wait. I think I made that—”

“We need to get out before the whole place turns on us,” she said. But it was too late. The line of Hoppers down the stairs had been passing along all the details to the crowd below. They all heard the latest: The Izz family has a history of this destruction crap. As Mape and Gai climbed out of the ship, every one of those stinky eyeballs leered at the boy like he was the spawn of a sea monster. But they saved their worst looks for Mamma Mape, the rumored sea monster herself. “The whole family is cursed!” If the crowd was on edge before, they were falling off their seats now. They chanted, “Justice!” One riled Hopper even spat in Mape’s eye.

Gai grabbed her and used his body to push through them like a ship cutting through the gulf. Mother and son plowed through the crowd and hurried back to Boulie. They were chased by the same Hopper neighbors that protested outside their home already, plus a few new anti-Izzers. Mape huffed and puffed down the planks until she finally collapsed on their graffitied door. Her fingers shook so much that she dropped her keys. Gai had to finish the unlocking. Once inside, Mape slammed the door, shot their fourteen locks in place, and fell into her favorite rocking chair. It collapsed to pieces. The angry cluster gathered right outside and started bang-bang-banging.

“Ma!” Gai said, helping her back up. “It’s a’kay, I’ll fix it.”

Bang! Bang! Bang!

“Ma, why did Pa leave Hop?”

Mape stared upward at the ceiling until her eyes teared up.

Come on out and face justice, ya bunch of quirks!

“Tell me!”

“Sorry at ya, Gaiel . . .”

The boy backed away from her. “It’s true. Isn’t it? What Pa did to her voice?” With the door of their home rattling from banging fists, Mape locked eyes with her son. Her lips shook like she wanted to say something but couldn’t.

“For Zeea’s sake, say somethin’, Ma!”

“Oh, say somethin’? Easy for ya to say. What if I say the wrong thing? It’s all on my shoulders!” Mape stared at her hands, rubbing her ring finger mindlessly, tear droplets raining down. “Yer Pa was sick, she says. I don’t know what happened to him, but he was sick . . . Once ya can destroy a voice, is a ship really all that far?”

Justice! Justice! Justice! The crowd yelled and pounded on their door.

“So . . . Mrs. Shakk?” Gai touched his throat. “Pa really destroyed her voice that night?” Like putting the pieces of a fiddle together, Gai stitched together a frightening idea. Destruction, strangely enough, bonded everything. He remembered all the times Lynd would get angry. Her need to break things. Or things would break around her. “Sick . . . with destruction? If Pa was sick, I think Lynd caught it!”

Gai looked up at his mother, trembling. He wasn’t sure if he should tell her the fiddle he made Lynd might have been on that ship. But what would that even mean? It was too bizarre. It was all too bizarre. His head pulsed with a wave of tension. “But where did all this destroyin’ stuff come from? Why do the spryts make it worse? What are they?”

“It was an awful sickness, Gaiel.” She tapped her palm on her heart. “That’s why Pa left with Baald to get help. That’s the only reason he risked leavin’. He couldn’t stay here and hurt . . . anyone else.”

We’re not lettin’ ya out of this, Izz!

“I remember the night he left. Lynd says she doesn’t remember, but she was outside with him. When she came back in, she wasn’t the same! Ya remember, right? Ya ran out after Pa?” His face went red for a moment, but then water flooded his eyes, too. The memory of little Lynd bursting through the door and crying; she was so afraid. But the boy didn’t know why. “I tried to fix her . . .” Gai remembered frantically searching for something, anything that could help his distressed little sister. The only thing he found that night was a rolled up pile of anchor rope. Somehow, he made it into a blanket to wrap her up in and held her until she cried herself to sleep. “I-I just couldn’t fix her . . . Sogg.”

Mape traced the veins on her shaking hand with her other finger. “When I got outside, a darkness overtook his whole body like his blood was black as ink! Baald thought maybe the Electrians and their big brains could cure him. They had to leave Hop that night.” Mape never spoke about Stav. She would tell herself to wait just one more day, and maybe he’d be back, and she’d never have to speak of it. That’s when her strange self-narrating began. “Every answer was supposed to come back on that damned ship, she says!”

Baang! All fourteen locks finally snapped off the frame, and the door to the Izz home burst off its hinges, crashing to the floor. A wall of clench-fisted Hoppers poured in. “Citizens’ arrest! We charge ya with witchery and the murder of Lyn—”

“Don’t ya dare say it!” Gai roared, turning to them. He held up his hand for them to stop. But they kept coming toward him and his mother. He felt a strange buzz quickly building up in his belly. The buzzing traveled up his chest and down the stiff arm he held out at the invaders. The angry Hoppers came closer. His hand grew hot. Very hot. He yelled, “Don’t ya touch her!”

Mape stood up and put all her weight on his arm to bring it down. And that was almost not enough. “Been enough things destroyed today,” she said, straining. “Let’s not smear the sickness around.”

He shook his head as if momentarily out of his body. “What just happened?”

Mamma Mape stepped between her son and the mob, offering her wrists up, “Ya think I did somethin’? I have a right to a trial, she says.”

“We demand justice now!” shouted a neighbor.

“If Mrs. Izz wants a trial,” Mayor Tanning said, stepping in the house. “She’ll get one. It’s either her or her husband that’s to blame. Or both. I’d like to know which. Arrest her.”

Per course, there was no formal police in Hop like there was in Electri. Anyone could arrest anyone else if they had enough suspi‐ cions and rope. Mape’s own Boulie neighbors held the rope and tied her hands behind her back. Mrs. Shakk nudged someone out of the way so she could personally tie the final knot.

Mape stood, undaunted. “A moment with my son, she says.” Tanning nodded with an air of disgust.

“I never knew what to say,” she said to him. “Maybe rather than just not sayin’ the truth, I could’ve helped ya be strong enough to hear it.”

“Ma, don’t—”

“But here’s what I’ll say, now,” Mape said as the neighbors carried her out the door to her trial. She stopped at the threshold and turned back with the slightest smile, “Give our door a fix, yeah?”

Tanning gave the boy one last dirty look before walking out with his mother. They all left the boy alone in a doorless house, mother‐ less, fatherless, and sisterless, too. And the sun set on another Hop day.