Zoë Klein Poet ~ Storyteller ~ Internationally Published Author

 
OVERVIEW

WHISH is a radical eco-thriller about a handful of people called Elowas who can communicate in Shome'ah, the language of the entire natural world, from the lowliest weeds to the stars and everything in between. They learn that the natural world is at age-old war between the Nextists who believe in the survival of the fittest and for whom humans are the pinnacle of creation and the Extists who have a different understanding of time and spirit, for whom humans are enemy number one. Most of the plant world is Extist, and assaults humankind in insidious ways including opiates and cancers. One Elowa, a 16-year-old known in Shome'ah as Whish, finds herself at the nexus of this war with a bounty on her head and four seasons to save herself and the remaining Elowas by changing humanity’s relationship with the earth.

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EXCERPT

Amalia continued to share a sleeping hut with Whish, and they’d stay up late talking. They told each other stories from books one had read in America that the other had not, although neither of them had been great readers as they had both been distracted by inklings of Elwall or Fairyspeak, or whatever each thought it was. One night when Amalia had fallen asleep, Whish tiptoed out of the sleeping hut. She hadn’t been able to sleep. The beach was iridescent and silver in the moonlight. She walked for half a mile to where the foot of Mount A reached toward the sea creating a little lagoon. There she saw a figure sitting on the rocks, looking down at the water.

“Yahma?” Whish impressed as she walked closer.

Yahma turned around and motioned for Whish to join him. She sat beside him, draping her legs over the rock like him, some five feet above the water. Looking down, Whish suddenly drew her legs back up and gasped. The lagoon was full of sharks, their fins cutting chaotically through the water.

Yahma laughed. “Don’t worry,” he impressed. “They are man-eaters, not Elowa-eaters.”

Whish was shivering. “Didn’t one of them maim Amalia’s leg?”

Yahma chucked a stone at the sharks and impressed, “Aw, it was probably trying to protect her.”

Whish almost impressed, “And did that crocodile mean to protect Ayyah when it bit through his little body?” but she managed to keep it to herself.
She sat quietly beside Yahma and watched as one of the biggest of the sharks lifted its head out of the water. Its mouth seemed permanently molded in a wicked grin. It impressed, “As I was telling you, Sir Elowa Yahma, there have been three Elowa deaths inland in the last seven months since we delivered Whish. None of them lasted more than six minutes. One of them was killed by a pet turtle.”

“What is being done to protect them?” Yahma impressed.

“More Nextist zones are being established. But there is no pattern as to where an Elowa will appear.”

Whish watched as Yahma and the sharks conversed, and kept her knees and legs wrapped tightly in her arms, well away from the ledge.

“And how is the newest Elowa. She is mighty silent,” another shark asked Yahma.

“I think she’s afraid of you,” Yahma impressed, teasingly. He looked over at Whish and asked, “Aren’t you?”

Whish nodded slightly. She saw no reason to lie. But to her horror Yahma leapt up and grabbed her, lifting her like she was a beach ball and making like he was going to throw her over the ledge. “Shall we take a swim?” he said in English with his heavy accent.

Whish was so frightened that she was mute, both in English and Shome’ah. She struggled and thrashed in his arms. He impressed for both her and the sharks to receive, “C’mon, Whish, these are the beasts that helped you to reach this paradise. Show a little gratitude. They didn’t kill you on the way here and they sure aren’t going to kill you now, are you guys?”

Whish couldn’t tell if there were twenty or a hundred of them who responded, “No, no, of course not. Come in.”

Yahma held Whish over the ledge and Whish clutched his neck, suddenly becoming very still for fear that her thrashing would send them both over. She looked into Yahma’s eyes and begged him, “I can’t swim. Really, it’s not the sharks…” Whish was trembling violently. It was half true, she really could not swim. But it was the sharks she was afraid of. “I can’t swim,” she pleaded, finally screaming for help.

Yahma put her down and put a hand over her mouth. She stopped screaming as soon as he let her go. “Alright, alright,” he impressed. “I’m not trying to petrify you. They’re harmless to us, Whish. In fact, they serve us. Watch…”

With that, Yahma dove off the ledge into the shark-infested water. The sharks parted as he dove in and then seemed to clamber around him. Whish was stunned and terrified, but she could not look away. She saw Yahma mount the back of a shark and plow through the water as if he was on a jet-ski, with the rest of them following him around the lagoon. “See, Whish? It’s fun! I was only having fun…”

Whish watched for a few moments more when an awful feeling crept over her. One of the sharks impressed, “She doesn’t even need to know how to swim.” Whish immediately started backing further away from the ledge when Yahma impressed, “Do you agree, Uramu, or no?”

Whish spun around and a large black wolf standing behind her impressed toothily, “I agree.” It lowered its head and came at Whish, bucking up at her chest so that she stumbled backwards.

“All in good fun,” the wolf impressed and bucked at her again. Whish’s arms flailed against the sky as she felt her balance give way. She fell backwards toward the water. She shrieked as she landed in the cold sea water, feeling herself crash against monstrous bodies as she went under. She kicked and beat her arms against the water, feeling the muscular, prickly bodies of the sharks everywhere she turned.

“Open your legs,” one of them impressed, intending to get under her to lift her out of the water, while she tried wildly to grab anything in the dark water that wasn’t a shark, when one of them pressed up underneath her so that she straddled it like a horse, and burst up to the surface where she gasped for breath. All around her was a bedlam of fins, and more horrifying, their faces emerging with glittering cruel eyes and row after row of razor-sharp teeth. Above her the wolf stood, chest out and full of itself, against the moon.

“It’s fun!” Yahma said, riding up beside her on his shark. But what he saw up close was not a person having fun, rather a girl who was thoroughly traumatized, heaving for air, choking on water and tears, trying to scream but unable to find her voice. She kicked and thrashed, tipping into the water this way and that, and the shark beneath her was visibly annoyed, impressing to Yahma, “What’s wrong with this one, why won’t she stay still?”

And another shark, too, “Why doesn’t she impress something? Is she Elowa or not?”

Whish flung herself at Yahma, clutching at his wet shirt. “Let me get her to the ground,” Yahma impressed to the sharks. “I’ve got her.” He put his arm around her chest so that she was leaning back against his shoulder, and he began to swim backwards toward the rocky shore. He commanded the sharks suddenly, “Swim away. Now!” and they obeyed him.

One of them impressed, “She is weak, that one.”