The Hidden Sound
By Han Adcock
Human beings, as you know, sir, are deaf.
Incredibly deaf.
This is ironic because, for creatures who are so advanced, top of the food chain (or so they like to think) and technological wizards, able to “speak,” etcetera; they can’t hear what the rest of us can hear, at least to varying degrees.
Maybe that is why they are so different from us. They have lost the main rhythm, and had to develop a music of their own.
But then, what do you expect, with those ears? Ears contained mostly inside their heads, can you imagine? All the better to hear their own thoughts, I hear you say, but really that’s all they do hear half the time.
However, take me for instance. I’m an Elephant. I’m proud of my ears. In fact I hear more than the entire Universe put together, if I do say so myself.
The native Humans of this continent have a special name for me. Tjolot. So you may call me by that, sir. I am the Ten Millionth Keeper of the Secret. The Mammoth did it before me, though he had hairy legs, which gave him the advantage of feeling the Secret; like a spider on its web. I rely on my ears.
There’s a reason why the Secret has been lost to Humankind for eons--we keep it that way, my colleagues and I. The reason is a small subsection of the Secret and we have forgotten that part, but we stick to tradition, sir. No Human should know, no Human should Hear. Oh and snakes, snakes have been excluded since the Eden fiasco.
However there was one hairy instant--hairier than the Mammoth’s legs--where a Human was born with a disfigurement, and almost did Hear.
It took place last month, and I am now ready to make a full report.
What’s that you say? No, report not retort, sir.
Where was I? Oh, yes.
As you know, once every fifteen thousand years, delegates from the Secret Keepers all over the world have a general meeting. We confer using the Ancestral Memory (A.M.) neural network, swapping information on stopping outbreaks and safeguarding the Secret from Humans. (Snakes and lizards and fish pose little to no threat to us, whereas Humans do, overall. Sometimes I question why you designed them.)
The A.M. network is efficient enough to prevent hazardous and unnecessary travel. I remember when my great-great-great-great-great- however many more times - great grandmother attended one of the early meetings, back when there wasn’t enough memory to facilitate a virtual chat network. She had to journey to the most remote ice-bound regions in order to meet the other Keepers snout to snout, only to make the perilous return journey the following day, risking hypothermia and death.
All we have to do these days is to hibernate for a couple of days, and our dreams automatically connect to the A.M. Amazing. I wonder how it works. Did you do it deliberately or was it down to Charlie Darwin?
I apologize for mentioning him. It’s not often that I have to make reports like these and my nerves have gotten the better of me. My brain’s in my trunk.
It was during the last A.M.G.M. that the intruding Human became apparent, because it infiltrated the system.
There I was, my body snoring away in a dim crevice of the wildlife reserve, my thinking-self awaiting the arrival of the others in a dream I was having of the Limpopo River and a particularly crafty crocodile, when I noticed it, him. It was a male of the species, sitting in a tree, looking as wide-eyed as a Slow Loris.
I think he was shocked to find himself there. As if he had stumbled into my dream by accident, you know? Or as if the tree had produced him, a pale, freckled fruit and a rather unappetizing one at that. He had the kind of pallor common to organisms that live sheltered from the sun, such as a worm under a stone. The freckles made it seem as if dirt had been flicked in his face or perhaps something much worse. He had a small turned-up trunk--hardly a trunk at all--and a thin, unassuming mouth. Big head, long skinny body. All knees and elbows. Big hands and feet. Narrow neck. At first glance I ascertained the male had barely stopped being a calf but was not yet a bull.
The other oddity I noticed was the size of his ears.
They were huge, sir. Almost as big as mine and they stood to attention like a gecko’s ruff. I wondered what kind of mistake had led to a Human infant being born with ears that size. Large ears are meant for Keepers of the Secret only, so that we can Hear it, as you probably know. It’s in our DNA--you’ll have to forgive me for paraphrasing Human science, I hear the Humans who run this place talking about it-- just like it’s in our DNA to remember our predecessors and the journeys they took, the things they witnessed.
But for a Human to have ears that large, something was amiss.
“Excuse me,” I said. “Do you speak Pachyderm?”
He jumped and fell out of the tree. I caught him in time, and set him on the ground. Somewhere in the course of the process he wet himself, which was embarrassing for both of us.
“Well?” I pressed.
Judging from the blank stare I received, I interpreted the answer to be negative. I tried again.
“You speak African?”
No reply.
I tried several tongues, until we settled on English as the language we were both fluent enough in to converse. I asked him what he was doing there, but he seemed to think that I would know the answer to that. I didn’t.
“What am I doing here?” he said to me.
“What are you doing here?” I said.
“I don’t understand how I got here. What am I supposed to be doing here?”
“That’s what I want to know,” I said, as patiently as I could. “Which is why I asked in the first place.”
“Is this a dream? I’m asleep, or I was… it must be. But it feels different. Normally when I dream, things just happen and random words crop up. That’s not what this is like. Everything makes sense--except you’re a talking elephant and I don’t know where I am. Is this the Congo?”
He was jabbering too much. I put some mud on his head.
He coughed and spat. “What did you do that for?” he demanded.
“The sun is going to your head,” I explained. “That will help. No, don’t wipe it off! Good grief.”
I applied some more--I rather enjoyed his reaction by then actually--and made him sit in the shade. Dreams in the A.M. network have physical effects, sometimes.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“I’m Nathan,” he said. “I come from Portsmouth.”
“Never heard of it. How did you hack into the network? You’re barely old enough to leave your herd.”
“Hack? Network? What?”
“You really don’t know?” I said. “Well--” and then I stopped. I was forgetting myself. The less a Human knew about the Secret, and about us, the better. So, I tried to make the scenario as close to a normal dream as I could, for reassurance’s sake.
“Hello,” I said, feeling foolish. “Don’t forget there’s a blue moon on the thirty-second. Nib nab nob. Balooga.”
It was then that the others started to arrive. Koala from Australia walked out from behind a rock and looked at me strangely.
“What’s going on?” he asked. “Who’s this fellah? What’s a balooga? You feelin’ all right?”
“What’s a balooga?” someone as yet unseen said. “I want one!”
“Fine,” I said to Koala. “That is called Nathan.” I thought quickly. “He’s an example.”
Koala nodded, satisfied.
Then Rabbit climbed out of the river--the crocodile now long gone, what with the A.M. network becoming active--and said:
“You’re using this Nathan for demonstrative purposes? Isn’t that a bit risky?”
“No,” I said.
“But we’ve never done it before. You’re not supposed to bring Humans in. The Nathan will find out!”
“Relax, would you?” I said. “He can’t Hear it. He can barely understand us.” And I prayed that he couldn’t. But you must have been too preoccupied to grant that one, sir. Or perhaps you found the situation amusing.
At first the Nathan remained silent, good as gold while the others arrived. There was Donkey, and Lynx, and Zebra. Rabbit and Koala I’ve already mentioned, and me. Who else? I think Spaniel was there. Oh and Siamese Cat was also present.
“If I could have your attention please?” I called over the chatter. In the end I had to resort to using my trunk as a loudspeaker, which is never comfortable. Plays havoc with the sinuses. “If I can call this meeting to order? Thank you.”
Kangaroo raised her paw.
“Yes?” I sighed.
“Why is there a Human joey in this meeting? Isn’t that a breach of protocol?”
“That is the Nathan. I brought him along for a practical demonstration.” I hadn’t, but forgive me for wanting to save face in front of the others. I didn’t want them realizing my dreams had been hacked, albeit inadvertently, by one of Earth’s most dangerous creatures.
“Won’t that risk the Secret being leaked?” Koala pointed out, and a good point it was, too. If the Nathan had ears large enough to pick up the Hidden Sound, the leftover vibrations from the Big Bang when you spoke the First Word, sir, then he’d know the Secret and spread it to other Humans. But I planned to deal with that later. I was thinking on my toenails.
“He can’t Hear,” I said, though in truth I did not know whether he could or not. No time to question him, you see. “The Secret is safe.”
“But he has proper ears!” Rabbit jumped up and down, pointing. “How can he not Hear? His are huge! They’re bigger than his front paws!”
The Nathan’s face went red and blotchy. I threw some more mud at him. “The heat affects him,” I explained. “He comes from Paws’ Mouth.”
“I don’t!” the Nathan spluttered. “It’s Portsmouth. Stop chucking mud at me!”
Silence descended. The other Keepers looked at me.
“If it can’t Hear,” Siamese Cat said slowly, “how then can it understand us? He must be able to Hear the Hidden Sound.”
Rabbit trembled. Spaniel crossed her ears over her eyes. Zebra fainted. But then, Zebra faints at anything.
“This is a disaster!” Kangaroo cried. “We’ll have to kill it.”
“What!” the Nathan scrambled upright. “You can’t do that to me!”
“I could,” Kangaroo said, not looking at him. “I could box it.”
“You can’t just murder me ’cause I’ve got big ears! That’s…that’s stupid!”
Donkey stamped. “At least give him a proper hearing first. Erm, no pun intended.”
“That’s always what you say when it is intended,” somebody grumbled, and the circle erupted into separate arguments.
“QUIET!” Spaniel roared. Everyone stopped and looked at her in surprise, myself included. “We should ask it. We should ask the Nathan what it knows.”
Lynx nudged the Human into the center of the ring. I had to give it to him, that young bull didn’t show fear or protest, and I imagine there are not too many Lynxes in Paws-Mouth.
“Do you promise to say the truth, all of the truth, and nothing but?” I said.
“Yeah.”
“Good. What do you know?”
“About what?”
“I’ll ask the questions. I mean about this situation. About us.”
“Well,” he said. “I think I’m dreaming of a place in Africa, but I’ve never been here before. And I know you can talk to each other, but then if this is a dream I suppose that’s OK. In real life, you don’t.”
“Oh,” I said, and had to stop myself from correcting him. Like I said earlier, Humans are deaf. And birds; birds lost the Secret when some of them spoke Human words outside of the A.M. network. Not all of them know words, so I think it unfair to tar them all with the same pit, but there you have it.
“I mean,” Nathan carried on, “I thought you’d all at least be eating each other by now.”
“Ugh!” Siamese Cat spat. “Human beings are simply disgusting.”
My trunk wrinkled in distaste.
“Preposterous,” Lynx said. “I’d never eat a Donkey. Or an Elephant. Never crossed my mind. I’d never spoken to a Spaniel before up until now, but that doesn’t mean I want to gnaw on her spine and gulp down her entrails. Dear me, no.”
Spaniel shifted uncomfortably.
“We’re not barbarians,” I said. “Do you know why we’re here?”
The Nathan scrunched his over-eye hairs together. “Do you mean, what are we doing here here, or, like, what are we doing here existentially?”
“Just answer the damn Steak--er--Elephant,” Lynx growled. “Before I chew your head off.”
“Lynx, please,” I said. “I mean, Human, do you realize what all these animals are meeting here for?”
“No. Something about a secret, but I never heard what it was.”
Everyone began to relax. We were safe; he was still stupid. Relatively speaking. But I had to make sure, didn’t I?
“Everybody be silent,” I said. “Can you Hear anything unusual, Nathan-Human?”
We waited. If I were able to cross my tusks, I believe I would have. In the quiet that followed I could hear the steady hum of the First Word, the identity of which we aren’t permitted to speak. But the question was, could the Nathan pick up the signal?
“Um.” He bit his lip, though it wasn’t a snarl. To snarl in circumstances like that would have been suicide. “Er…there’s a sort of pulse, in the air. But I’ve always been hearing that. It might be the heat?”
Several of the others groaned. He was receiving it after all.
“You always Hear it?” Lynx asked. Normally I would remonstrate with him for simply assuming my interrogative role, but somehow my heart wasn’t in it.
“Yeah,” the Human said. “Since before I can remember. It sounds like --”
“DON’T SING IT!” we all yelled.
“Sorry!” the Nathan snapped, and glowered at the ground.
I wondered what to do. If the Nathan was allowed to return to waking Life after this, he could spread the Hidden Sound amongst the Humans. And then what would result from it? Uncontrolled Creations? Or perhaps that was part of your plan. Maybe you meant for him to be born with proper ears, the First Human Keeper. I dithered.
“It’s decided then,” Lynx said. “We should end him.”
“But that would make us killers,” Rabbit said.
“Erm. Ye…es…” Lynx said, glancing from left to right, and back again. “Killers.”
“You are making me uncomfortable,” Kangaroo said. “Please stop it.”
The Human’s eyes were leaking. “I don’t want to die. I’m only seventeen. I haven’t been to University yet. I want to write music. I want to go to --”
“Look, I’m sure we all want to go to Univer City,” I said patiently, “but the point is that you know something you shouldn’t. And if you’re going to sing it, it makes it all worse.”
“Animals don’t go to University.”
“Well, whoop-de-doo,” Lynx growled under his breath, and Donkey flashed his teeth at him. I chose to ignore them.
I was thinking, sir. Dare I tamper with your designs? Because at that point a thought had just occurred to me; a memory. The memory was of a third cousin twice removed, whom I recollected as being born with an unfortunate disadvantage. The thought was an idea stemming from that.
“I think you should leave the Human being to me,” I said.
Kangaroo flared her nostrils in annoyance. “I still think I should be the one to do the job,” she insisted. “I could even box its ears, and then the rest of it would still be alive.”
“I’m not going to kill him,” I said. “I have a use for him.”
“What use would that be?” Koala said. “I think I should report you to the Creator, just in case. I don’t like the way you’re thinking.”
“I assure you, I’m not betraying the Secret and I will make a report once it is finished. You can make your own separate report, if you feel I am untrustworthy, but I am not. I simply am not comfortable with dealing out death.”
“Then you should leave him to me,” Lynx said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Rabbit said.
“Nothing.”
I thought for a moment. “I shall need a witness. Kangaroo?”
“I’m not going with you unless Lynx comes too. In case your ‘use for him’ doesn’t work.”
“Very well.”
We left, Kangaroo, Lynx and I, with the Nathan held tightly in my trunk. He did not struggle much. Perhaps curiosity outweighs fear in his kind. In fact I believe you mentioned something like that to me previously, though I had forgotten until that instance.
At last we traveled into the dreaming of my unfortunate third cousin. To get there, we passed through many others. I recognized one as belonging to my aunt; it was full of cheetahs. She is deathly afraid of cheetahs.
I recognized my third cousin’s dream even before we met his thinking-self. It was eerily silent. Not even a stir of wind or the call of a bird.
Then we met him.
“Who’s this?” Lynx demanded. “How did he come to be so hideously mutilated?”
“Shush,” Kangaroo said, and thumped his rump.
My third cousin, meanwhile, continued smiling at us and waving his tail and trunk in his own gesture of friendship.
We shook trunks. He is significantly younger than me. The last time I saw him was at birth, and after that I always thought of him with pity and admiration, for having to learn to cope with so much. And I always wanted to find a way of helping him. It was fortunate indeed that I received the Nathan when I did.
“Lynx, this is Noah. He hasn’t been mutilated. He was born without ears. He’s completely deaf.”
The nut dropped. “Ahhh…” Lynx said. “So we’re going to give him the Human’s oversized auditory organs? I understand. But…how are you going to do it?”
“I will create a Magic,” I explained. “This was taught to me by my first matriarch. Please stand back.”
Lynx and Kangaroo moved a short distance away. Noah remained where he was, studying the proceedings with keen interest but little understanding--yet.
“W-what are you gonna do to m-me?” The Nathan was shaking in the coils of my trunk, but I kept a tight hold of him. I did not want him running away, not now. “Y - you’re g-going to chop my ears off?”
“Nothing so brutal.”
Lynx sighed. “Spoilsport.”
I weaved a somnolence between my tusks and cast it over the Nathan-Human’s head. It rendered him unconscious within the Dreamwork, doubly asleep, resistant to pain or awareness. I laid his sleeping thinking-self on the earth and wondered how to begin.
“If you need knives,” Lynx called, flexing a paw, “I have eight at the front, and eight spare at the back.”
“I am not sure,” I said. “I’m thinking about blood, you see, not to mention gashes.”
“I like thinking about those too.”
Kangaroo walloped Lynx in the background whilst I meditated on the problem. At last, when I was ready, I grasped one of the Nathan’s ears with the end of my trunk and tugged gently, willing it to come off.
It came free with no wound. Pleased, I repeated the exercise with the other ear, and affixed them to the bare sides of Noah’s head. My matriarch had taught me well.
Then I manipulated the buds that remained on the sides of the Nathan’s head, until he had a nice new set of small ears.
Now I had to test my theory.
“Hello Noah,” I said. “Can you Hear me?”
My third cousin’s eyes widened in surprise, then puzzlement. “Nodrap?”
This was a confusing new development, but I refused to give in. “Sorry?”
“Gnikaeps I ma egaugnal tahw?” Noah frowned and flapped his new, bald ears in something like distress, and I worried I had done something unethical.
“Oh come here!” Lynx snarled with impatience. “You’ve only got them on the wrong way!” He reached up and swapped the ears over.
Noah blinked.
“Better?” I asked.
“Oh! Much,” he said. “Wow. I can actually hear myself. It’s very strange…how loud. Do I normally speak like this?”
I was about to disturb the Nathan from his double-slumber when Kangaroo made an excellent point.
“Just a minute,” she said. “He’s already Heard the Hidden Sound, so he’ll remember what it sounds like. We have to keep the Sound contained. He’ll still be able to speak of it.”
“Of course,” I sighed. “How could I forget?”
I opened the Nathan’s mouth, suppressing a shudder, and reached into his throat with my trunk. It felt quite unpleasant, wet and squishy. I found myself being glad that prey was often dead by the time it slithered into a gut. Knowing that otherwise, this was the sort of thing they’d experience made the sensation much worse. I half-expected to be bitten, but thankfully I wasn’t, and I removed my trunk with the Nathan’s voice box wrapped in the end of it.
“And what will you be doing with that?” said Lynx. “Could I have it, do you think?”
I never answered him. I played the voice box loudly in the ear of the sleeping Human, who sat up sharply and mouthed strange silences at us.
“You can go back to Paw’s Marsh now,” I instructed him, and was relieved to see the Nathan’s thinking-self disappear from the A.M. network, hopefully for the last time.
After that there was little to discuss. We went our separate ways back to solid dreams and our bodies. If you really must know what I did with the voice box, I still have it. It’s in my trunk. Very useful for trumpeting. May I keep it?
I’ve forgotten something? What about writing?
Are you meaning to tell me…the Nathan will write the Secret in his music, sir?
Ah. Well. Do you mind?
Incredibly deaf.
This is ironic because, for creatures who are so advanced, top of the food chain (or so they like to think) and technological wizards, able to “speak,” etcetera; they can’t hear what the rest of us can hear, at least to varying degrees.
Maybe that is why they are so different from us. They have lost the main rhythm, and had to develop a music of their own.
But then, what do you expect, with those ears? Ears contained mostly inside their heads, can you imagine? All the better to hear their own thoughts, I hear you say, but really that’s all they do hear half the time.
However, take me for instance. I’m an Elephant. I’m proud of my ears. In fact I hear more than the entire Universe put together, if I do say so myself.
The native Humans of this continent have a special name for me. Tjolot. So you may call me by that, sir. I am the Ten Millionth Keeper of the Secret. The Mammoth did it before me, though he had hairy legs, which gave him the advantage of feeling the Secret; like a spider on its web. I rely on my ears.
There’s a reason why the Secret has been lost to Humankind for eons--we keep it that way, my colleagues and I. The reason is a small subsection of the Secret and we have forgotten that part, but we stick to tradition, sir. No Human should know, no Human should Hear. Oh and snakes, snakes have been excluded since the Eden fiasco.
However there was one hairy instant--hairier than the Mammoth’s legs--where a Human was born with a disfigurement, and almost did Hear.
It took place last month, and I am now ready to make a full report.
What’s that you say? No, report not retort, sir.
Where was I? Oh, yes.
As you know, once every fifteen thousand years, delegates from the Secret Keepers all over the world have a general meeting. We confer using the Ancestral Memory (A.M.) neural network, swapping information on stopping outbreaks and safeguarding the Secret from Humans. (Snakes and lizards and fish pose little to no threat to us, whereas Humans do, overall. Sometimes I question why you designed them.)
The A.M. network is efficient enough to prevent hazardous and unnecessary travel. I remember when my great-great-great-great-great- however many more times - great grandmother attended one of the early meetings, back when there wasn’t enough memory to facilitate a virtual chat network. She had to journey to the most remote ice-bound regions in order to meet the other Keepers snout to snout, only to make the perilous return journey the following day, risking hypothermia and death.
All we have to do these days is to hibernate for a couple of days, and our dreams automatically connect to the A.M. Amazing. I wonder how it works. Did you do it deliberately or was it down to Charlie Darwin?
I apologize for mentioning him. It’s not often that I have to make reports like these and my nerves have gotten the better of me. My brain’s in my trunk.
It was during the last A.M.G.M. that the intruding Human became apparent, because it infiltrated the system.
There I was, my body snoring away in a dim crevice of the wildlife reserve, my thinking-self awaiting the arrival of the others in a dream I was having of the Limpopo River and a particularly crafty crocodile, when I noticed it, him. It was a male of the species, sitting in a tree, looking as wide-eyed as a Slow Loris.
I think he was shocked to find himself there. As if he had stumbled into my dream by accident, you know? Or as if the tree had produced him, a pale, freckled fruit and a rather unappetizing one at that. He had the kind of pallor common to organisms that live sheltered from the sun, such as a worm under a stone. The freckles made it seem as if dirt had been flicked in his face or perhaps something much worse. He had a small turned-up trunk--hardly a trunk at all--and a thin, unassuming mouth. Big head, long skinny body. All knees and elbows. Big hands and feet. Narrow neck. At first glance I ascertained the male had barely stopped being a calf but was not yet a bull.
The other oddity I noticed was the size of his ears.
They were huge, sir. Almost as big as mine and they stood to attention like a gecko’s ruff. I wondered what kind of mistake had led to a Human infant being born with ears that size. Large ears are meant for Keepers of the Secret only, so that we can Hear it, as you probably know. It’s in our DNA--you’ll have to forgive me for paraphrasing Human science, I hear the Humans who run this place talking about it-- just like it’s in our DNA to remember our predecessors and the journeys they took, the things they witnessed.
But for a Human to have ears that large, something was amiss.
“Excuse me,” I said. “Do you speak Pachyderm?”
He jumped and fell out of the tree. I caught him in time, and set him on the ground. Somewhere in the course of the process he wet himself, which was embarrassing for both of us.
“Well?” I pressed.
Judging from the blank stare I received, I interpreted the answer to be negative. I tried again.
“You speak African?”
No reply.
I tried several tongues, until we settled on English as the language we were both fluent enough in to converse. I asked him what he was doing there, but he seemed to think that I would know the answer to that. I didn’t.
“What am I doing here?” he said to me.
“What are you doing here?” I said.
“I don’t understand how I got here. What am I supposed to be doing here?”
“That’s what I want to know,” I said, as patiently as I could. “Which is why I asked in the first place.”
“Is this a dream? I’m asleep, or I was… it must be. But it feels different. Normally when I dream, things just happen and random words crop up. That’s not what this is like. Everything makes sense--except you’re a talking elephant and I don’t know where I am. Is this the Congo?”
He was jabbering too much. I put some mud on his head.
He coughed and spat. “What did you do that for?” he demanded.
“The sun is going to your head,” I explained. “That will help. No, don’t wipe it off! Good grief.”
I applied some more--I rather enjoyed his reaction by then actually--and made him sit in the shade. Dreams in the A.M. network have physical effects, sometimes.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“I’m Nathan,” he said. “I come from Portsmouth.”
“Never heard of it. How did you hack into the network? You’re barely old enough to leave your herd.”
“Hack? Network? What?”
“You really don’t know?” I said. “Well--” and then I stopped. I was forgetting myself. The less a Human knew about the Secret, and about us, the better. So, I tried to make the scenario as close to a normal dream as I could, for reassurance’s sake.
“Hello,” I said, feeling foolish. “Don’t forget there’s a blue moon on the thirty-second. Nib nab nob. Balooga.”
It was then that the others started to arrive. Koala from Australia walked out from behind a rock and looked at me strangely.
“What’s going on?” he asked. “Who’s this fellah? What’s a balooga? You feelin’ all right?”
“What’s a balooga?” someone as yet unseen said. “I want one!”
“Fine,” I said to Koala. “That is called Nathan.” I thought quickly. “He’s an example.”
Koala nodded, satisfied.
Then Rabbit climbed out of the river--the crocodile now long gone, what with the A.M. network becoming active--and said:
“You’re using this Nathan for demonstrative purposes? Isn’t that a bit risky?”
“No,” I said.
“But we’ve never done it before. You’re not supposed to bring Humans in. The Nathan will find out!”
“Relax, would you?” I said. “He can’t Hear it. He can barely understand us.” And I prayed that he couldn’t. But you must have been too preoccupied to grant that one, sir. Or perhaps you found the situation amusing.
At first the Nathan remained silent, good as gold while the others arrived. There was Donkey, and Lynx, and Zebra. Rabbit and Koala I’ve already mentioned, and me. Who else? I think Spaniel was there. Oh and Siamese Cat was also present.
“If I could have your attention please?” I called over the chatter. In the end I had to resort to using my trunk as a loudspeaker, which is never comfortable. Plays havoc with the sinuses. “If I can call this meeting to order? Thank you.”
Kangaroo raised her paw.
“Yes?” I sighed.
“Why is there a Human joey in this meeting? Isn’t that a breach of protocol?”
“That is the Nathan. I brought him along for a practical demonstration.” I hadn’t, but forgive me for wanting to save face in front of the others. I didn’t want them realizing my dreams had been hacked, albeit inadvertently, by one of Earth’s most dangerous creatures.
“Won’t that risk the Secret being leaked?” Koala pointed out, and a good point it was, too. If the Nathan had ears large enough to pick up the Hidden Sound, the leftover vibrations from the Big Bang when you spoke the First Word, sir, then he’d know the Secret and spread it to other Humans. But I planned to deal with that later. I was thinking on my toenails.
“He can’t Hear,” I said, though in truth I did not know whether he could or not. No time to question him, you see. “The Secret is safe.”
“But he has proper ears!” Rabbit jumped up and down, pointing. “How can he not Hear? His are huge! They’re bigger than his front paws!”
The Nathan’s face went red and blotchy. I threw some more mud at him. “The heat affects him,” I explained. “He comes from Paws’ Mouth.”
“I don’t!” the Nathan spluttered. “It’s Portsmouth. Stop chucking mud at me!”
Silence descended. The other Keepers looked at me.
“If it can’t Hear,” Siamese Cat said slowly, “how then can it understand us? He must be able to Hear the Hidden Sound.”
Rabbit trembled. Spaniel crossed her ears over her eyes. Zebra fainted. But then, Zebra faints at anything.
“This is a disaster!” Kangaroo cried. “We’ll have to kill it.”
“What!” the Nathan scrambled upright. “You can’t do that to me!”
“I could,” Kangaroo said, not looking at him. “I could box it.”
“You can’t just murder me ’cause I’ve got big ears! That’s…that’s stupid!”
Donkey stamped. “At least give him a proper hearing first. Erm, no pun intended.”
“That’s always what you say when it is intended,” somebody grumbled, and the circle erupted into separate arguments.
“QUIET!” Spaniel roared. Everyone stopped and looked at her in surprise, myself included. “We should ask it. We should ask the Nathan what it knows.”
Lynx nudged the Human into the center of the ring. I had to give it to him, that young bull didn’t show fear or protest, and I imagine there are not too many Lynxes in Paws-Mouth.
“Do you promise to say the truth, all of the truth, and nothing but?” I said.
“Yeah.”
“Good. What do you know?”
“About what?”
“I’ll ask the questions. I mean about this situation. About us.”
“Well,” he said. “I think I’m dreaming of a place in Africa, but I’ve never been here before. And I know you can talk to each other, but then if this is a dream I suppose that’s OK. In real life, you don’t.”
“Oh,” I said, and had to stop myself from correcting him. Like I said earlier, Humans are deaf. And birds; birds lost the Secret when some of them spoke Human words outside of the A.M. network. Not all of them know words, so I think it unfair to tar them all with the same pit, but there you have it.
“I mean,” Nathan carried on, “I thought you’d all at least be eating each other by now.”
“Ugh!” Siamese Cat spat. “Human beings are simply disgusting.”
My trunk wrinkled in distaste.
“Preposterous,” Lynx said. “I’d never eat a Donkey. Or an Elephant. Never crossed my mind. I’d never spoken to a Spaniel before up until now, but that doesn’t mean I want to gnaw on her spine and gulp down her entrails. Dear me, no.”
Spaniel shifted uncomfortably.
“We’re not barbarians,” I said. “Do you know why we’re here?”
The Nathan scrunched his over-eye hairs together. “Do you mean, what are we doing here here, or, like, what are we doing here existentially?”
“Just answer the damn Steak--er--Elephant,” Lynx growled. “Before I chew your head off.”
“Lynx, please,” I said. “I mean, Human, do you realize what all these animals are meeting here for?”
“No. Something about a secret, but I never heard what it was.”
Everyone began to relax. We were safe; he was still stupid. Relatively speaking. But I had to make sure, didn’t I?
“Everybody be silent,” I said. “Can you Hear anything unusual, Nathan-Human?”
We waited. If I were able to cross my tusks, I believe I would have. In the quiet that followed I could hear the steady hum of the First Word, the identity of which we aren’t permitted to speak. But the question was, could the Nathan pick up the signal?
“Um.” He bit his lip, though it wasn’t a snarl. To snarl in circumstances like that would have been suicide. “Er…there’s a sort of pulse, in the air. But I’ve always been hearing that. It might be the heat?”
Several of the others groaned. He was receiving it after all.
“You always Hear it?” Lynx asked. Normally I would remonstrate with him for simply assuming my interrogative role, but somehow my heart wasn’t in it.
“Yeah,” the Human said. “Since before I can remember. It sounds like --”
“DON’T SING IT!” we all yelled.
“Sorry!” the Nathan snapped, and glowered at the ground.
I wondered what to do. If the Nathan was allowed to return to waking Life after this, he could spread the Hidden Sound amongst the Humans. And then what would result from it? Uncontrolled Creations? Or perhaps that was part of your plan. Maybe you meant for him to be born with proper ears, the First Human Keeper. I dithered.
“It’s decided then,” Lynx said. “We should end him.”
“But that would make us killers,” Rabbit said.
“Erm. Ye…es…” Lynx said, glancing from left to right, and back again. “Killers.”
“You are making me uncomfortable,” Kangaroo said. “Please stop it.”
The Human’s eyes were leaking. “I don’t want to die. I’m only seventeen. I haven’t been to University yet. I want to write music. I want to go to --”
“Look, I’m sure we all want to go to Univer City,” I said patiently, “but the point is that you know something you shouldn’t. And if you’re going to sing it, it makes it all worse.”
“Animals don’t go to University.”
“Well, whoop-de-doo,” Lynx growled under his breath, and Donkey flashed his teeth at him. I chose to ignore them.
I was thinking, sir. Dare I tamper with your designs? Because at that point a thought had just occurred to me; a memory. The memory was of a third cousin twice removed, whom I recollected as being born with an unfortunate disadvantage. The thought was an idea stemming from that.
“I think you should leave the Human being to me,” I said.
Kangaroo flared her nostrils in annoyance. “I still think I should be the one to do the job,” she insisted. “I could even box its ears, and then the rest of it would still be alive.”
“I’m not going to kill him,” I said. “I have a use for him.”
“What use would that be?” Koala said. “I think I should report you to the Creator, just in case. I don’t like the way you’re thinking.”
“I assure you, I’m not betraying the Secret and I will make a report once it is finished. You can make your own separate report, if you feel I am untrustworthy, but I am not. I simply am not comfortable with dealing out death.”
“Then you should leave him to me,” Lynx said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Rabbit said.
“Nothing.”
I thought for a moment. “I shall need a witness. Kangaroo?”
“I’m not going with you unless Lynx comes too. In case your ‘use for him’ doesn’t work.”
“Very well.”
We left, Kangaroo, Lynx and I, with the Nathan held tightly in my trunk. He did not struggle much. Perhaps curiosity outweighs fear in his kind. In fact I believe you mentioned something like that to me previously, though I had forgotten until that instance.
At last we traveled into the dreaming of my unfortunate third cousin. To get there, we passed through many others. I recognized one as belonging to my aunt; it was full of cheetahs. She is deathly afraid of cheetahs.
I recognized my third cousin’s dream even before we met his thinking-self. It was eerily silent. Not even a stir of wind or the call of a bird.
Then we met him.
“Who’s this?” Lynx demanded. “How did he come to be so hideously mutilated?”
“Shush,” Kangaroo said, and thumped his rump.
My third cousin, meanwhile, continued smiling at us and waving his tail and trunk in his own gesture of friendship.
We shook trunks. He is significantly younger than me. The last time I saw him was at birth, and after that I always thought of him with pity and admiration, for having to learn to cope with so much. And I always wanted to find a way of helping him. It was fortunate indeed that I received the Nathan when I did.
“Lynx, this is Noah. He hasn’t been mutilated. He was born without ears. He’s completely deaf.”
The nut dropped. “Ahhh…” Lynx said. “So we’re going to give him the Human’s oversized auditory organs? I understand. But…how are you going to do it?”
“I will create a Magic,” I explained. “This was taught to me by my first matriarch. Please stand back.”
Lynx and Kangaroo moved a short distance away. Noah remained where he was, studying the proceedings with keen interest but little understanding--yet.
“W-what are you gonna do to m-me?” The Nathan was shaking in the coils of my trunk, but I kept a tight hold of him. I did not want him running away, not now. “Y - you’re g-going to chop my ears off?”
“Nothing so brutal.”
Lynx sighed. “Spoilsport.”
I weaved a somnolence between my tusks and cast it over the Nathan-Human’s head. It rendered him unconscious within the Dreamwork, doubly asleep, resistant to pain or awareness. I laid his sleeping thinking-self on the earth and wondered how to begin.
“If you need knives,” Lynx called, flexing a paw, “I have eight at the front, and eight spare at the back.”
“I am not sure,” I said. “I’m thinking about blood, you see, not to mention gashes.”
“I like thinking about those too.”
Kangaroo walloped Lynx in the background whilst I meditated on the problem. At last, when I was ready, I grasped one of the Nathan’s ears with the end of my trunk and tugged gently, willing it to come off.
It came free with no wound. Pleased, I repeated the exercise with the other ear, and affixed them to the bare sides of Noah’s head. My matriarch had taught me well.
Then I manipulated the buds that remained on the sides of the Nathan’s head, until he had a nice new set of small ears.
Now I had to test my theory.
“Hello Noah,” I said. “Can you Hear me?”
My third cousin’s eyes widened in surprise, then puzzlement. “Nodrap?”
This was a confusing new development, but I refused to give in. “Sorry?”
“Gnikaeps I ma egaugnal tahw?” Noah frowned and flapped his new, bald ears in something like distress, and I worried I had done something unethical.
“Oh come here!” Lynx snarled with impatience. “You’ve only got them on the wrong way!” He reached up and swapped the ears over.
Noah blinked.
“Better?” I asked.
“Oh! Much,” he said. “Wow. I can actually hear myself. It’s very strange…how loud. Do I normally speak like this?”
I was about to disturb the Nathan from his double-slumber when Kangaroo made an excellent point.
“Just a minute,” she said. “He’s already Heard the Hidden Sound, so he’ll remember what it sounds like. We have to keep the Sound contained. He’ll still be able to speak of it.”
“Of course,” I sighed. “How could I forget?”
I opened the Nathan’s mouth, suppressing a shudder, and reached into his throat with my trunk. It felt quite unpleasant, wet and squishy. I found myself being glad that prey was often dead by the time it slithered into a gut. Knowing that otherwise, this was the sort of thing they’d experience made the sensation much worse. I half-expected to be bitten, but thankfully I wasn’t, and I removed my trunk with the Nathan’s voice box wrapped in the end of it.
“And what will you be doing with that?” said Lynx. “Could I have it, do you think?”
I never answered him. I played the voice box loudly in the ear of the sleeping Human, who sat up sharply and mouthed strange silences at us.
“You can go back to Paw’s Marsh now,” I instructed him, and was relieved to see the Nathan’s thinking-self disappear from the A.M. network, hopefully for the last time.
After that there was little to discuss. We went our separate ways back to solid dreams and our bodies. If you really must know what I did with the voice box, I still have it. It’s in my trunk. Very useful for trumpeting. May I keep it?
I’ve forgotten something? What about writing?
Are you meaning to tell me…the Nathan will write the Secret in his music, sir?
Ah. Well. Do you mind?