Jungledrop

by Abi Elphinstone

  ‘You led us north,’ Fox whispered to the butterflies. ‘Thank you.’

  Again, the situation didn’t seem quite right for high fives, or indeed handshakes and hugs, but saying thank you made Fox feel unexpectedly warm inside, and she hoped the butterflies knew how grateful she was. She never would have found her way out of the mist without them or – she reached up and patted the sloth – without her brother’s quiet faith in her.

  There was a sudden sound and Fox watched as a cluster of flamingoes, a burst of pink against the murky scene, launched themselves out of the water to her left, then soared over to the far side of the swamp. The glasswing butterflies melted into the trees, no doubt back towards Fool’s Leap and safety. But Fox knew she had to stay and cross the swamp and then make her way towards where the land grew steeper. Because that direction, clearly, was north and if she trusted what her brother had said, through Heckle, about the flickertug map trying to lead her there, then that was where she’d go.

  ‘How do we cross this swamp?’ Fox said to Heckle who was waddling towards the bank of the river. ‘Because if there are pits of snakes beneath the soil of the jungle in the Bonelands I dread to think what’s lurking under the surface of that water.’

  The parrot cocked her head, then scuttled backwards a few steps. ‘Heckle is wondering what that shape gliding towards us is.’

  The sloth craned his furry head round Fox’s neck to get a better view and Fox peered into the distance. Her eyes widened because there, skimming over the surface of the water towards them – as if the departing flamingoes had summoned it – was a boat.

  It was a small vessel, about the size of a rowing boat, but it was scooped up at the front as if it had been carved into a specific shape. There was a cloaked figure sitting in the boat who, every now and again, dipped a wooden staff into the water to ease the vessel across the swamp.

  Fox didn’t cower away. And neither did Heckle or the sloth. The glasswing butterflies had led them here, which meant that the Forever Fern was probably somewhere beyond this swamp, and now it seemed there might be a way to cross the water, after all.

  The boat was halfway across now and Fox saw that it was painted white and the prow was actually carved into the elegant neck and head of a flamingo.

  ‘I come in peace,’ the cloaked figure said. It was a woman’s voice, lilting and strong, though Fox couldn’t tell whether it belonged to someone young or old. ‘I am the last Unmapper left in these parts,’ the woman called. ‘I have been hiding out over here and waiting for you.’

  Fox took a very small step backwards and Heckle fluttered up onto her shoulder. Goldpaw hadn’t mentioned any Unmappers living in the Bonelands.

  ‘I am here to help you cross the swamp and continue your search for the Forever Fern,’ the woman went on.

  The boat was a stone’s throw away now, but still the figure didn’t lift her hood back from her face. She kept her body completely hidden.

  Fox couldn’t help wondering how the woman had known that she would come this way. Even Fox herself hadn’t known she’d end up at the swamp until a few moments ago. The sloth tightened his grip round Fox’s neck, which made Fox take another tiny step backwards.

  Heckle stiffened on her shoulder. ‘Heckle is feeling worried because she can’t read the Unmapper’s thoughts…’

  The boat was approaching the shore now and overhead Fox noticed that the flamingoes were flying back towards them, too. She could hear that their wings were beating with an unusual sound: a clattering rather than a whrum. With one final push, the cloaked figure let the vessel glide right up to the wooden jetty in front of Fox. The Unmapper stretched out a hand to pull herself up onto the pontoon and the air turned suddenly cold.

  The Unmapper had fingers, but where skin should have been at her wrist there were feathers. Black ones that shone like oil.

  She stood on the pontoon and though the hood of her cloak was still draped over her head, Fox caught a glimpse of a yellow eye that burned with malice. And, as soon as Fox locked eyes with the figure, the magic that had been holding the whole scene together – the magic that had made Fox feel like the boat had come to help her – vanished.

  This boat had come for Fox, but not in the way she had hoped.

  The boat’s planks transformed into bones. And when Fox looked up she saw that the flamingoes soaring towards them were now vultures that looked also to be made entirely of bones. Creatures stirred in the swamp around the boat, too, and Fox’s eyes widened as the heads of several large black crocodiles broke the surface of the water.

  But most terrifying of all was the figure on the pontoon. No longer feeling the need to hide, it threw back its cloak and Fox screamed at what she saw: the body of a woman, but a woman covered in black feathers, with talons for feet, a long pointed skull over her face and two shining black wings tucked in at her sides. Heckle hadn’t been able to read the Unmapper’s thoughts because this was no Unmapper. This was a creature filled with dark magic.

  This – Fox realised – was the harpy, Morg.

  ‘And so, girl from the Faraway, we meet at last,’ Morg sneered.

  Fox didn’t wait to hear any more. She turned and ran, legs pounding, arms pumping, with the terrified sloth bouncing on her back and Heckle flapping in front as together they rounded the swamp. It was too late for the doubleskin mirror: Morg’s eyes were pinned on Fox so she couldn’t melt into the forest unseen. She fled, the crocodiles following her every move, skulking through the water with teeth bared, while up above the vultures trailed her on skeleton wings.

  And down on the forest floor, scuttling round the bank of the swamp like a large, deformed beetle, came Morg. Her wings were bristling with dark magic now, which she had put to use by disguising the flamingoes and the boat, and which she planned to use again as soon as she closed in on the troublesome girl. But those wings were not yet strong enough to grant the harpy flight. Instead she scuttled over the ground because she’d let a Faraway child escape once before and she wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice.

  ‘Give up, little wretch,’ the harpy crooned. ‘There is no one left in the Bonelands to help you now!’

  Fox threw a look over her shoulder to see Morg churning up the reeds with her talons and tearing round the swamp after her. She was gaining on Fox, no matter how fast she ran, and though the weight of the sloth and the satchel were slowing Fox down she refused to part with either.

  So frightened was Fox by the harpy on her tail that she didn’t see the vulture that was dive-bombing towards her. The first she knew of the attack was a punch to her shoulder as the bird rammed its weight into her. Fox stumbled backwards, then tripped over a log, but forced herself up and carried on running. Another vulture was making a beeline for her now and, though Heckle tried her best to ward it off, the bigger bird batted the parrot aside, charged on towards Fox and pinned the girl to the ground.

  The harpy laughed. ‘You see? There is no escaping my dark magic in the end!’

  Fox pushed and shoved, Heckle pulled and tore, but the vulture’s hold was firm and Morg was drawing closer and closer. Then the sloth, still clinging to Fox’s neck, bit the vulture, attacking the joint that held its wing to its body. The bird’s hold slackened for a second and Fox seized her chance to wriggle free. She sprang up, blundering on, ducking and sidestepping when the next vulture hurtled down towards her.

  The swamp seemed to go on forever and Fox could feel tears burning behind her eyes. She was tired now. She couldn’t outrun the harpy and she knew it. Morg had dark magic on her side and sooner or later she’d close in.

  Heckle flapped on, puffing hard. ‘Heckle wants the girl to know she won’t leave her. And nor will Fibber.’

  The sloth leant against Fox’s cheek, then squeezed her hard, and Fox tried not to let her tears fall. She made one last attempt to focus on escaping, despite knowing that this was where her quest ended. Where everything ended. With no one to stop her, Morg would find the Forever Fern, and then the Unm
apped Kingdoms and the Faraway would crumble. And yet still Fox kept running because sometimes the very last thing to leave you is hope.

  Then Fox felt a cold and leathery hand thump down on her neck and she felt even that tiny kernel of hope shrivel.

  ‘Silly girl.’ The harpy’s breath was a rasp. ‘You really thought that someone as pitiful as you could find the Forever Fern and save the world? You actually believed that you could make a difference?’

  Morg stood upright now, towering over Fox like a giant bat, while Heckle twisted away from the vultures massing round her in the sky.

  Fox stopped struggling and sobbed in fear.

  ‘Look at you,’ Morg spat. ‘Worlds are built by people of power, not by insignificant little girls.’

  The words may have been spoken by a harpy, but they made Fox think of her parents and the things she had been told her whole life: that stamping on others and being more powerful than everyone else was the only way to get to the top. And, now that all seemed lost, Fox wondered whether they’d been right. Perhaps being kind and helping others only ever led to being trampled on. Maybe hearts were safest if shut behind very high walls.

  Then the sloth on her back nuzzled his head against Fox. And the warmth of that gesture, the affection bound up in it, made her realise that, despite how everything had panned out, her parents and Morg were wrong. Fox would have traded all the money in the world, and all the power that came with it, to have even the smallest of chances to save the Unmapped Kingdoms and the Faraway – and to love and be loved by her brother.

  The harpy kept her hold on Fox, opening her wings wide to perform a curse that would snuff the light out of the Faraway child in an instant. Fox quivered as Morg threw back her head and laughed. Then black smoke hissed out from her wings.

  But, at the very moment the smoke was about to seep inside Fox’s mouth and snatch her life clean away, something large and strong barrelled into the harpy and knocked her to the ground.

  For a second, Fox wondered whether Total Shambles had come back. But what she saw on twisting round was not a swiftwing.

  It was a panther, with a roar that rattled the leaves on the trees and fur that was unmistakably gold.

  Fox’s first thought was that Goldpaw had come to their rescue, but this panther was bigger and the fur on one of its legs had been ripped away. Was this Brightfur then, sent by Goldpaw to help?

  The panther moved fast, kneeling in front of Fox and nudging the girl and the sloth onto its back, before the harpy had even had time to stagger to her feet.

  ‘You?’ Morg spat. ‘But you were bitten by Screech and stripped of your—’

  Fox didn’t hear any more. She grabbed a fistful of fur at the panther’s neck as Heckle shot down into her lap beside the sloth. And then they were off, bounding round the swamp at breakneck speed, as the panther tore away from Morg.

  ‘After them!’ the harpy shrieked. ‘After them!’

  The vultures clattered ahead and the crocodiles patrolled the water should the golden panther make the slightest mistake and slip. But the creature’s footing was perfect, each stride landing with precision and power as it pounded on. And though Fox was like a jumble of sticks on its back, not yet attuned to its rhythms and its ways, she held on for all she was worth.

  Morg was hot on their heels, scrabbling over the bank of the swamp as fast as her talons would go. But the panther was stronger and seemed to know the lie of the land in a way that suggested it had been here for quite some time – and that made Fox question whether this was Brightfur, after all. This panther knew when to jump over sinkholes, when to swerve inland when the ground became marshy and when to run, flat out, because there were no obstacles in its way.

  And little by little it broke away from the harpy. It left the swamp behind, too, as it surged on north. Into the part of the Bonelands Fox had seen across the water, where the land rose up into foothills covered by dark, brooding trees.

  Fox, Heckle and the sloth clung on, hardly daring to believe what was happening. They’d made it past the swamp and, as the trees closed in around them, they lost sight of the vultures, and Fox was sure that even Morg couldn’t find a way through the forest like this panther could. It charged on, leaping over fallen trunks as if they were twigs and swerving left then right round jutting branches as if it could sense a way on with just its whiskers, as if it knew – in this wild nightmare of a forest – exactly where it wanted to go.

  From far behind them, Fox heard an anguished screech. Morg realised that she had lost them now and Fox knew it, too, because this panther was bristling with strength and speed. It moved like water through the forest, deeper and deeper as the land rose and fell and they entered the heart of the Bonelands.

  At the point where the land climbed upwards again, Fox expected the creature to shoot on up through the trees, but instead it ran, fast, towards the rock face in front of them. Fox held her breath. Surely the panther was going to swerve? Couldn’t it see that the route ahead was a dead end? But the panther carried on towards the rock and, just when Fox felt sure they’d career straight into it, she noticed a small gap. A gap that she imagined anybody else who came this way would have missed.

  The panther slid inside and then, finally, it stopped running.

  It shook Fox, Heckle and the sloth off its back with a grunt and Fox’s mouth fell open as she took in her surroundings. They were in a cave, but not some poky space dimmed by shadows. This was a vast atrium that spread out before them like an entirely different world from the rest of the Bonelands. One untouched by Morg’s dark magic…

  Glow-worms lit the cavern, clinging to the roof like thousands of crystals. Greenery sprouted between the slabs of rock that formed the cave floor, a burst of life amidst a forest of death. And right at the back of the cave, so far away Fox had to squint to see it, there was a waterfall pouring down into a lagoon and slipping away as a stream through some hidden crack.

  ‘All this,’ Fox murmured, ‘lying hidden in the Bonelands.’

  The panther grunted again, then it stalked off deeper into the cave. It moved with less precision now it knew they were safe, dragging its paws and with its tail swinging low. It was tired, Fox realised, and she watched as it slumped down on a shelf of rock that jutted out over the lagoon.

  Fox scooped up the sloth, hoisting him onto her back once more, then looked at Heckle, who was cocking her head at a green plant with thousands of intricate swirls on each frond.

  ‘Heckle is, for once, almost speechless.’ And yet the parrot went on and spoke anyway because she just couldn’t help herself. ‘Heckle thinks we are in Cragheart, the cave that legend says holds every Unmapper’s fingerfern.’ Her eyes brightened. ‘Maybe Iggy’s fern is somewhere in here.’

  At the mention of the word ‘fern’, Fox stooped to look at the green plant beside Heckle. Each frond was coated in silver markings that looked exactly like fingerprints.

  ‘Heckle has heard the stories,’ the parrot went on. ‘When an Unmapper is born, a fingerfern sprouts in Cragheart, but no one has ever reported finding this cave except the legendary explorer, Mildred Amblefar.’

  Mildred Amblefar… Fox remembered the book she’d read on the Here and There Express. It was only three days ago and yet so much had happened since then. She looked about the cave and saw that, though at a glance the ferns all looked the same, on closer inspection each one had a distinct pattern. Might the Forever Fern be here, too? Fox wondered. But then surely the Forever Fern would look slightly different from all these fingerferns. Surely its magic would single it out?

  She glanced at the panther resting on the rock. This was a Lofty Husk, she was sure of it, because ordinary panthers were black not gold. And yet it hadn’t spoken as Goldpaw had. It hadn’t carried itself with the same authority either. This panther seemed bound by its own rules.

  ‘That can’t be Spark,’ Fox whispered over her shoulder to her brother. ‘Goldpaw said she was at Fool’s Leap and I definitely saw a Lofty Husk down i
n the ravine. But what about the other one, the Lofty Husk sent to patrol the Bonelands to find Morg’s stronghold? Maybe that one isn’t dead, as Goldpaw feared?’

  Heckle hopped closer to Fox and the sloth. ‘Heckle assumes you are referring to Deepglint. He’s Jungledrop’s only male Lofty Husk left now that Spark has fallen.’

  Fox turned to the sloth again. ‘Do you reckon this is Deepglint?’

  The sloth watched the panther for a few moments and then he nodded.

  ‘I think so, too,’ Fox said. She placed a hand on the strap of her satchel to steady her nerves, then glanced at Heckle. ‘Should I just go up to him and start talking? Only he doesn’t seem very interested in us now that we’re away from Morg…’

  Fox hadn’t had much experience in making new friends and she wasn’t altogether sure what the protocol was. But it mattered. Greatly. Because the stakes in this particular situation could turn out to be rather high: become friends or get eaten if the panther wasn’t, in fact, a Lofty Husk, after all.

  ‘Heckle thinks sharing thoughts is always a good way to begin a friendship.’

  ‘Yes, well, you would say that, wouldn’t you?’ Fox murmured.

  She walked further into the cave, glad of both the sloth and the parrot’s company. The glow-worm light fell on the three of them, bright and blue and glittering with promise, and the waterfall was so brilliant close up – a shower of water that fell into a crystal-clear lagoon before winding out of the cave – that Fox almost forgot to speak to the panther at all as she looked about in awe.

  Heckle settled on her shoulder, then hissed in her ear: ‘Heckle is just double-checking Fox will do thanking first and ordering about second.’

  Fox nodded. She was, despite the trauma of the last few hours, gradually learning the importance of manners on world-saving quests. But it was useful having Heckle onside to remind her all the same.