Hushed Read online

  Hushed

  A modern romance inspired by the tale of the Little Mermaid

  Joanne Macgregor

  Other Young Adult books by this author

  Scarred

  Recoil

  Refuse

  Rebel

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  First published in 2017 by KDP

  ISBN: 978-0-620-74569-7 (print)

  ISBN: 978-0-620-74570-3 (eBook)

  Copyright 2017 Joanne Macgregor

  The right of Joanne Macgregor to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  All rights reserved. No parts of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form of by any means, mechanical or electronic, including photocopying and recording, or be stored in any information storage or retrieval system, without the prior written permission from the author.

  Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. All the characters, institutions and events described in it are fictional and the products of the author’s imagination.

  A quick note

  This book uses UK English spelling, so words like colour, centre, metre, cosy, prise and realise are not spelling mistakes.

  For some of the more exotic South African words, there is a glossary at the end of the book.

  For all the girls who have been silenced, and for the girls who speak up.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1 - Hunting

  Chapter 2 - Sun, moon and stars

  Chapter 3 - Off and away

  Chapter 4 - Losing shoes

  Chapter 5 - Chased

  Chapter 6 - Hot pursuit

  Chapter 7 - Angels and demons

  Chapter 8 - Hogs and bunnies

  Chapter 9 - Wish I could be

  Chapter 10 - Surface and settle

  Chapter 11 - There be dragons

  Chapter 12 - Zip your lip

  Chapter 13 - Bloody heels

  Chapter 14 - Floundering

  Chapter 15 - Rush hour

  Chapter 16 - Up and running

  Chapter 17 - Rules of the game

  Chapter 18 - Speechless

  Chapter 19 - Steel cage

  Chapter 20 - Beauties and other sharks

  Chapter 21 - Silence and secrets

  Chapter 22 - One man’s trash …

  Chapter 23 - Circling predators

  Chapter 24 - Need to talk

  Chapter 25 - Two letters

  Chapter 26 - Hiding in plain sight

  Chapter 27 - Endangered species

  Chapter 28 - Keeping quiet

  Chapter 29 - Losing voice

  Chapter 30 - Intentions

  Chapter 31 - A wedding

  Chapter 32 - Headlines

  Chapter 33 - Appetites

  Chapter 34 - Sharks, whales and other tales

  Chapter 35 - Hushed

  Chapter 36 - Temptation

  Chapter 37 - New world

  Chapter 38 - Christmas presents

  Chapter 39 - Finding voice

  Chapter 40 - Contact

  Chapter 41 - Gifts

  Chapter 42 - Foul

  Chapter 43 - The right voice

  Glossary of South African terms

  Acknowledgements

  Other young adult books by Joanne Macgregor

  “But if you take my voice,” said the little mermaid, “what will be left to me?”

  “Your lovely form,” the witch told her, “your gliding movements and your eloquent eyes. With these you can easily enchant a human heart. Well, have you lost your courage? Stick out your little tongue and I shall cut it off. I’ll have my price and you shall have the potent draught.”

  —Hans Christian Andersen, The Little Mermaid

  Chapter 1

  Hunting

  The trick in life, I think, is to figure out what you truly want and then go all out to get it. And what I want, more than anything else, is the Beast.

  That’s why I’m out here on my surfboard, rising and falling on the gentle ocean swell of the frigid waters of False Bay, just off the southern tip of Africa. I glance around, keeping an eye out for sharks. Surfing at sunset, when great whites make their dinner run, is not wise — but I’m hunting, too.

  My prey is on the luxury yacht that lies directly ahead of me, anchored in silhouette against the coral blush of the wide October sky. It’s a high-speed, top-of-the-range model, at least twenty metres long, with twin decks, and a jet-ski and inflatable dinghy tethered behind. Two small flags, the South African and the American, hang on a pole projecting out from the back, flapping idly in the light breeze.

  It’ll be dark in twenty minutes. Back on shore, the sun is setting behind the rugged mountain ridge of the Cape Peninsula, casting the hillside village of Simon’s Town into shadow. Out here on the ocean, the last of the day’s summer sun shines down through a hole in the clouds, bathing the yacht in rose-gold light. If I squint and crick my head sideways, then the gap in the clouds looks heart shaped. That has to be a good omen for a heartthrob-hunter.

  I don’t dare approach until night falls — the last thing I need is the Beast’s security to spot me. Being an eighteen-year-old girl would make them regard me with more, not less, suspicion. Here, in my black wetsuit, floating among the surface tangle of dark kelp closer to shore, I’m camouflaged. And a little safer from the predators of the deep who might be circling me, even as I hunt him.

  The sky surrenders its last blush, the clouds smudge charcoal against the deepening wash of indigo, and the first star emerges from its infinity of darkness. On the yacht, the lights come on. A necklace of jewel-coloured lanterns strung around the deck rails, sways gently, while up on the bow of the deck, a string quartet strikes up a theme from one of the soundtracks I know so well. The sounds of music and laughter pulse in disconnected waves across the water.

  I paddle nearer, keeping to the shadowed, shoreward side of the yacht. When I’m near enough to hear voices and the clink of glasses, I push myself up and sit astride my board, with my legs dangling in the water. Despite my wetsuit, it’s cold. But it’ll be worth any discomfort if I just catch a glimpse of him.

  I lift my binoculars, pop the lens-caps off, and adjust the magnification. The knot in the bow tie around some man’s neck comes into sharp focus. Quickly, I tilt the lenses up to check the face.

  Not him.

  The famous and the fabulous — in a glittering display of sequined gowns, overflowing cleavages, tuxedos, diamonds and painted talons — crowd both the upper and lower levels of the yacht. I admire the balance of the beautiful young women who totter about in stiletto heels on the unsteady surface of the deck. I don’t think I could stay upright, let alone walk, in such killer heels, even on firm land.

  They all look ecstatically happy as they nibble their snacks and sip from their slender flutes of champagne. Their faces are animated, and their laughs free — it’s like a sparkly fragment from a different world. What wouldn’t I give to be up there, to be a part of all that? To be wearing a designer dress, exotic perfume and gorgeous jewellery, trading funny stories while I waited, like they do, for him?

  It’s easy to tell the actors from the others. Their bodies are perfectly tanned and toned, their teeth flawlessly white and straight, their hair immaculately coloured and cut. I scan the faces — many of them are familiar to me — but I can’t find his.

  Is my information wrong?

  Zeb, my best friend and fellow final-year student at Table Mountain High School, is usually
an excellent and reliable source of gossip. But what he’d told me earlier today when we’d chatted on the phone had seemed too good to be true.

  “Did you know that the gods and goddesses are descending tonight?” Zeb had said. “But they won’t be mingling with mere mortals, Romy, so don’t get your hopes up.”

  “English, please,” I sighed, scowling at the stacks of notes and textbooks piled up on the desk in my bedroom. The last two exams of my finals — biology and chemistry — were creeping closer, and I needed to do some serious studying.

  “Well, you know what crew is currently in town — making the most of the local currency, filming our magnificent mountain, our rugged coastline, our deadly critters?”

  “Zeb! Spit it out.” Suddenly I was paying close attention.

  “Patience, woman, I’m getting to it. I heard from Lebo, who works down at Luxury Charters, that they’ve hired a yacht — one of those massive, sleek, pointy-nosed jobs. And they’re taking it out tonight, for a party. For him — your Beast.”

  I gasped and clutched the phone tighter.

  “Hello? Romy? You still there?”

  “I’m here.” I swallowed. “You reckon it’s true?”

  “I trust my sources. Lebo said they were chartering a sunset and evening cruise — for a ‘private celebration.’”

  That fit. It was the thirty-first of October.

  “It’s his birthday,” I said. “He’s turning twenty today. He’s a Scorpio.”

  “Trust you to know that.”

  “I’m going. I’ll tell my parents that I’m at your house, and that we’re studying meiosis and mitosis together.”

  “I don’t know what that is, but it sounds disgusting.”

  “Just cover for me if they call, okay? But I’ve got to go.”

  “Go? How? They have security to keep people like you away. Are you planning to stow away on board in a crate of champagne?”

  “Don’t be silly. They probably won’t go out far. If they anchor just offshore, then I could swim out —”

  “Like that’s not silly.”

  “— or go out on my board. Did your source say where they were going?”

  “I shouldn’t have told you — pretend I didn’t! I only mentioned it because I knew you’d be interested. I never thought you’d try to stalk him.”

  “Where?” I demanded.

  “No good will come of this. You need to get over this obsession, focus on your exams.”

  “Don’t make me come down there and beat it out of you! Tell me. Now.”

  “You are such a violent creature, Romy Morgan. Honestly, you scare me sometimes. Off Simon’s Town. There, happy now? A party among the penguins, apparently.” He gave a bark of laughter. “That would make a good one: Beast: Black and White. He could use method acting to master the waddle.”

  “Thanks, I owe you one. What time is sunset, do you know?”

  “Don’t you have to study?”

  “I need a break.”

  “Then come over and hang out with me. Or go out and party the night away.”

  “Yeah, because my social life is that exciting.”

  “Don’t do it, friend. You’ll only make yourself feel wretched with what you can’t have.”

  “I just want to look, to see how the other half lives.”

  “Pfft! What do they have that we don’t? I mean,” he qualified, “apart from fame and fortune and genetic giftedness?”

  “They have a life,” I said. “Unlike us, they have a life filled with fun and excitement and travel and magic-making. And freedom!”

  Above all, freedom.

  “You really think?”

  “I really think.”

  “Well, do what you must then, but don’t get arrested for stalking or trespassing. And don’t completely lose your head, or your heart. Or,” he added thoughtfully, “a chunk of flesh to the sharks.”

  Easier said than done, I think now, as I bob out on the open ocean, circling the yacht, waiting for him to appear.

  Someone clinks a glass three times, and the musicians bring their tune to a rapid end.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” a voice, strong and female, cuts through the hubbub.

  I train my binoculars on the speaker, who stands near the bar on the upper deck. She’s older, tall and striking in a flowing black dress. I suspect she’s not an actor — her nose is too long and her jaw too firm for Hollywood’s idea of female beauty — but I can tell from her aura of power and confidence that she’s somebody important. When she turns her head to glance behind her, I see that a bold slash of white streaks her black hair above her right temple.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” she repeats over the quieting voices. “I give you — the Beast!”

  A loud chorus of cheers and applause greets her announcement, and the musicians strike up the Beast theme music. Craning my neck and straining to see the tall figure who’s just appeared on deck, I curse the people who crowd around him, greeting and back-slapping and blocking my view. Then the throng parts, and he steps forward. And speaks.

  “Please, just call me Logan.”

  Chapter 2

  Sun, moon and stars

  Logan Rush stands on the upper deck of the yacht, his head crooked under a low-hanging red lantern. A wry smile curves his mouth.

  Eager party-goers cluster around him — lesser planets orbiting a dazzling sun — singing “Happy Birthday” and cheering. A series of booms, cracks and whizzes sounds overhead, and every eye looks up at the ruby rocket flares, emerald spirals and cascades of topaz lighting up the night sky. But I keep my binoculars trained on the star below.

  One Saturday night four years ago, Logan Rush was discovered playing bass guitar in an unknown band in a grungy nightclub in downtown Atlanta. At the time, the search was on for a teen actor to play the Beast in the film version of the international best-selling books. The rest of the cast, including Britney Vaux who would play the female lead, had already been selected, the locations scouted, and the script written. Thousands of handsome hopefuls auditioned in the countrywide castings that were part talent-search and part publicity stunt, but the lead actor who could bring the beloved character from printed page to silver screen had not yet been found.

  And then Logan was spotted and brought in for an audition.

  “Instant chemistry!” cooed Britney Vaux on Facebook, Twitter and on E! News.

  “He is the Beast,” enthused Mary E.E. Stephen, author of the bestselling Beast Trilogy of novels.

  “Thank God,” breathed the relieved producers and the L.A. moneymen.

  But the fans of the books had a different opinion.

  “No way!” they screeched. “Logan Rush — who’s he? He’s nothing like we pictured. He’s not even handsome!”

  One of the rabid objectors, a teen from Ketchum, Idaho, started a blog — NoRush.com — and a petition calling for Logan Rush to be ditched and the lead role to be recast. She got tens of thousands of signatures, too, but then the movie studio craftily released several publicity shots of Logan — all bronze-skinned, tousle-haired, and electric-eyed — and the fans changed their screams.

  “Gimme! He’s awesome, perfect, epic! Just how we always pictured him, just what we wanted. And he’s so handsome!”

  Fickle.

  For the record, I liked him from the get-go. My fourteen-year-old heart knew a good thing when my eyes saw it. And I’ve remained constant — I still subscribe to seven fan sites and five newsfeeds about him.

  In the trilogy of Beast books, the hero — a teenage boy called Chase Falconer — takes the natural world for granted, exploiting and polluting until the day he makes the mistake of insulting a shaman, who is a direct descendent of a line of shamans stretching back to the Incas.

  The mystical medicine man says, “To learn respect, you must learn compassion. To learn compassion, you must master empathy. To master empathy, you must walk in the feet of the other.”

  Then he bops the young man on the head with a ceremoni
al gourd, and from then on, Chase is cursed to wander through nature as a shape-shifter, taking the form of fierce, endangered creatures in the battle against poachers, hunters, land-grabbing industrialists and other greedy humans. Along the way he meets a pretty activist, Fern Lightly, who rescues him from a hunter’s trap, and their cross-species love story begins.

  It sounds weird, but it’s brilliant! And Logan plays the role of Chase Falconer like he was born to do it. Gah! I can’t wait for the next movie to come out.

  In the movie adaptation of the first book, Beast: Sun, which was set in India, Logan’s character shape-shifted into the stripes and fangs of a hypnotic-eyed tiger. In the second, Beast: Moon, he fursploded into a dagger-toothed wolf in the woodsy, snowy mountains of Alaska. Now he’s in my corner of the world, Cape Town, South Africa, filming the last in the trilogy — Beast: Stars, in which he morphs into a great white shark, tackling the scourges of long-line fishing and shark-finning under the starlit oceans of the South.

  I can hardly believe that he’s right here, working the party just in front of me — less than twenty metres away. And more than a million miles out of reach.

  He accepts a glass of champagne from a passing waiter, downs it in one, and takes another. Britney Vaux moves in close and chats to him, moving her hands expressively in the air and tossing her blonde hair. She’s sheathed in a glittering red dress with a plummeting neckline and a back cut low enough to play peekabooty. I’d be tempted to toss some peanuts down the back of it, if I were up there with them. Which I’m not, of course.

  The stripe-haired, tall woman from earlier and a couple of Logan’s co-stars join the pair and talk excitedly to Logan. They touch him constantly — squeezing an arm, perhaps to emphasize a point, or patting a shoulder, shaking his hand, or slinging an arm around him while posing for photographs. Britney Vaux picks something off his lapel, then cuddles up close to him to take a selfie on her phone.