Jungledrop

by Abi Elphinstone

  Fox cleared her throat and spoke to the panther. ‘Thank you for rescuing us.’

  The animal’s head was turned away from Fox, so that it was facing the waterfall, and, when it didn’t react, Fox wondered whether it had heard her over the roar of the water.

  She tried again, a little louder this time. ‘It was very kind.’ Once more, it didn’t seem to be the right moment for high fives, handshakes or hugs, so instead Fox added: ‘We’d definitely be dead if you hadn’t shown up so… thank you.’

  The panther swung its large head round and fixed Fox with deep dark eyes. But it didn’t get up. And it didn’t speak. Instead, it looked at Fox silently for a very long time and, worrying this was some sort of test, Fox brushed the hair back from her face, straightened up and tried to look as likeable as possible. Failing tests at this stage of the quest would not do at all.

  The panther kept staring, its gaze cool and distant.

  ‘Are you Deepglint?’ Fox asked. ‘One of Jungledrop’s mighty Lofty Husks?’

  At the name, there was a slight but noticeable shift in the panther’s expression. Its whiskers twitched and its ears, which had been pinned back before, swivelled forward. But it didn’t speak or nod.

  And then Fox felt Heckle’s grip on her shoulder tighten and the parrot’s voice, when it came, was a whisper in her ear: ‘Heckle told you once that she can read almost everyone’s thoughts, but not those minds filled with dark magic or beasts who are fully wild.’ She paused. ‘This panther saved us from dark magic, so it must mean it’s not one of Morg’s followers, but Heckle still can’t read its thoughts which means it could be—’

  ‘—Fully wild.’ Fox swallowed.

  The panther’s ears were still pricked and it was watching its visitors intently. Fox’s glance slid to the pile of bones in the corner of the cave and she felt a rush of panic. If this was a wild panther and not a Lofty Husk, had it whisked her off solely for its dinner? Although it wasn’t drooling, which seemed like a good sign to Fox. And, when it did open its mouth, which sent Fox edging back a few steps, it only did so to lick the patch on its leg where there wasn’t any fur.

  Even so, the parrot’s guard was now up. ‘Heckle thinks we should leave,’ the bird hissed, ‘at the first chance we get. It’s not safe here.’

  But there was something about this panther, something Fox couldn’t quite explain, that made her want to stay. She thought back to what Morg had said to it by the swamp. She’d only caught the first part – you were bitten by Screech and stripped of your… – but the words echoed in her head now.

  Heckle, who was clearly not getting very far rummaging through the panther’s thoughts, was now rummaging through Fox’s instead.

  ‘Heckle is confused as to why Fox is still trying to understand the panther. We should be making plans to leave. To find the Forever Fern and Iggy. Perhaps when the beast falls asleep?’

  ‘But what if me and Fibber are right, Heckle?’ Fox murmured. ‘What if this panther is a Lofty Husk? What if this is Deepglint himself, only stripped of the magic that makes him a ruler: his voice, his responsibilities, his memories, his reason for being in the Bonelands at all? Maybe that’s why he’s hiding out here in Cragheart.’

  The panther stood up suddenly and sloped down the rocks until it was standing before Fox. It was huge, and solid, and Fox felt as if she was in the presence of a golden boulder, but she tried her best not to move or shake or reveal the fact that she was totally talentless and unqualified for this quest. The panther circled the girl and when it came to her satchel it paused and sniffed it. A look – half recognition, half wonder – seemed to flick across its eyes as if it was remembering something… The expression vanished as swiftly as it had appeared, but it made Fox think.

  ‘The phoenix magic inside the satchel,’ she said to Heckle and her brother. ‘I think the panther can sense it. Maybe that’s why it came to our rescue with Morg. It felt the call of the ancient magic that it was once bound to.’

  Heckle hopped to the ground and Fox tugged the satchel over the sloth and off her shoulder, glad to be free of its weight. She dug around inside. There was a surprising amount of debris within the satchel following the chase through the forest – soil, leaves, torn paper – but Fox pushed it all aside and found the phoenix tear. She drew it out and, though it didn’t glow as it had done back in the antiques shop, something in the panther’s expression changed as it locked eyes on it. A moment later, it growled and its face hardened once more. But Fox made a decision deep inside Cragheart then. She knew now that the only reason her world existed was because of phoenix magic. The only reason she had found a way through to Jungledrop was because of phoenix magic. And the reaction of the panther to the tear made her sure that the only reason he had rushed down to the swamp was because he had felt the pull of the phoenix magic inside Fox’s satchel. Since arriving in Jungledrop, she’d made mistake after mistake because she had failed to trust and so now, whatever Heckle said, Fox decided that she would trust in this panther and in the magic of the phoenix tear.

  The flickertug map may have stopped working, but Doogie Herbalsneeze had told her it would sense the journey of her heart, not her feet. And now that the wall around Fox’s heart had crumbled, she was learning, at last, to listen to it.

  Fox tucked the phoenix tear back into her satchel, before hoisting the bag onto her back and trying, once again, to speak to the panther. ‘We’re on a quest to find the Forever Fern—’

  ‘—And Iggy,’ Heckle prompted.

  ‘—So that we can save Jungledrop and the Faraway from Morg,’ Fox continued. She scuffed her boots against the cave floor, suddenly feeling ridiculous telling a panther who had come to their rescue only moments before that she, a parrot and a sloth were in charge of saving two worlds and a kidnapped Unmapper. And yet this was the worrying truth of things.

  The panther said nothing and Fox felt a familiar impatience rise up inside her. They didn’t have time for silences and secrets. They had a matter of days before Morg found the Forever Fern! So great was Fox’s frustration that she very nearly threw a tantrum. But then she remembered what Goldpaw had said about manners. She wasn’t altogether sure hurling her hands in the air, kicking the ground and possibly even shoving the panther would get her very far.

  She took a deep breath instead and looked at the animal. ‘You saved us down by the swamp and we wondered whether we could ask for your help again. Could you show us the way to Shadowfall where we think the Forever Fern is?’

  ‘Heckle is really not sure about this…’

  But Fox knew that she and her brother were in this together. Fibber thought the panther was Deepglint and that was enough to bolster Fox’s hope that it might be, too. Certainly the panther looked and acted as if it was wild, but Fox looked incompetent and very often acted it, too, and yet enough people had believed in her that she had tried to make a go of this quest. They had made her think she was capable of more than she’d even imagined, just by having faith. So it seemed to make sense that, if she believed enough in the panther that stood before her, she might be able to bring Deepglint back to himself, to make him remember what he was truly capable of doing.

  Fox spoke again. ‘We were following a clue from a flickertug map, but I went and tore it because I was going about the quest like a maniac, so now we have no idea how to get to Shadowfall.’

  The panther listened quietly, as if it was following what Fox said, but still it didn’t speak.

  And this time Fox couldn’t stop her frustration spilling out. ‘Oh, come on,’ she muttered. ‘If there is really more to you than what we can see, then wouldn’t you rather save the world than fester away inside a cave that nobody ever finds?!’

  Fox instantly reddened. She hadn’t meant to be quite so blunt, but when the weight of the world is heaped on your shoulders, and you’re used to bossing others about to get what you want, old habits die hard. Fox wedged her fists into the pockets of her tunic, just in case they accidently shot out an
d punched the panther in the face, and mumbled an apology.

  The panther snorted and then – to Fox’s surprise – it turned away from her, walked back down the length of the cave and vanished through the gap it had come in by.

  The parrot tutted. ‘Heckle really doesn’t think there’s any point trying to reason with the panther. Even if it was a Lofty Husk, whatever Morg did to it Heckle doesn’t think can be undone. And if it’s gone hunting for food now we’d better hope it catches something otherwise –’ the parrot winced – ‘it’ll turn to us for its dinner. We need to make a run for it while we have the chance and press on to find the Forever Fern and Iggy.’

  ‘But what if we help Deepglint find his way back to his real self, then he leads us to Shadowfall and helps us beat Morg?’ Fox replied, for she still couldn’t shake the feeling that the panther really was a Lofty Husk.

  ‘Heckle thinks this panther is wild and it very much looks like it’s going to stay that way.’ The parrot paused and glanced at the sloth.

  ‘What’s Fibber saying?’ Fox asked because she could tell, from the sloth’s imploring eyes, that her brother was thinking something that he wanted to share and the parrot had cottoned on.

  Heckle sighed. ‘Fibber is thinking that if people can change maybe animals can, too.’

  They talked for a while longer, desperately trying to agree on a plan, but before they could the panther reappeared.

  Fox froze at the sight of it. The fur around its mouth was red and wet. There was dirt clogged between its claws. And, looking at the animal now, it seemed wilder than ever. Had she been wrong about it, after all? Were they about to be its second course?

  Heckle shot off to the far end of the cave and rammed herself into a crack in the rocks beside the waterfall, but the sloth stayed curled round Fox’s neck, trembling slightly, and Fox herself didn’t move a muscle. She watched as the panther walked past her and her brother, back towards the lagoon. It lay down by the water’s edge and Fox, gulping down her fear as she tried her best to trust her heart, followed it.

  The panther grunted as Fox approached and, from up in the crags, the parrot whimpered: ‘Heckle is almost certain that Fox and Fibber are the panther’s pudding.’

  Fox gulped but she didn’t turn away. She knelt down by the lagoon, close enough to the panther for it to know that she was interested, but at a safe enough distance so as not to be mauled with a single stroke of its claws. She wondered whether all friendships, when they first got going, were this tricky to negotiate. Fox looked at the animal and realised it wasn’t just resting by the water. It was watching something, its ears pricked forward, whiskers tense, as it looked down into the lagoon.

  Fox risked a little peek in the water herself and saw silver-scaled fish darting this way and that. The next thing she knew the panther had dashed a paw into the water, flipped one of the fish out, then slammed a paw down on top of it until it was limp on the rock in front of Fox.

  ‘For – for me?’ she asked cautiously.

  Fox felt that being offered a dead fish probably wasn’t how most friendships began, but it was the way this one was heading, so she tried to look as grateful as possible.

  The parrot cleared her throat. ‘Heckle recommends you use the fablespoon. The panther could be trying to poison you before it eats you for pudding.’

  Fox reached for the fablespoon inside her satchel, her eyes still fixed on the panther, but then she noticed it sigh. Her hand hovered over the magical item. If this really was Deepglint and she was going to try and help him find his magic again, she needed him to know that she trusted him.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said instead, and went to pick up the fish, holding the panther’s gaze.

  The beast took a deep breath and, for a moment, something like doubt seemed to linger in its eyes, then its gaze softened and the panther breathed out over the fish. Fox’s mouth fell open.

  The panther’s breath was gold, as Goldpaw’s had been when she breathed over the candletree back in Doodler’s Haven and the satchel filled with magical objects appeared. Fox watched, entranced, as flames burned round the fish, cooking it through, and shadows danced on the cave walls. And she knew then for sure: this panther was a Lofty Husk. This was Deepglint all right. Even if he no longer knew it.

  The fire crackled on even when the panther nudged the fish out of the flames towards Fox and turned over a stone to reveal dozens of juicy insects beneath for Heckle and the sloth. Heckle didn’t fuss and worry about being eaten then. She squawked with delight and flew down to Fox’s side because she knew, too, that Fox and Fibber’s hunch had been right. They were in the presence of a Lofty Husk and if they could help him find a way back to his magic they wouldn’t be facing Morg alone.

  They’d have a golden panther on their side.

  Fox rose early the next morning, but not, it seemed, as early as the panther. By the time Fox had rubbed her eyes and sat up, it was clear that Deepglint had already been out on a morning hunt to satisfy his own appetite and brought back berries and nuts for the rest of them. Fox, Heckle and the sloth ate with no mention of the fablespoon and also no mention of the drool coating the food, which had been carried inside the cave in the panther’s mouth.

  A little part of Fox had hoped that, on waking, the panther might have remembered, somehow, who he really was. That he would start speaking and lead them on to Shadowfall. But, when Fox raised the idea of his coming with them again, the panther stayed where he was, still and silent by the lagoon, as if his golden breath the night before had never happened at all. And Fox had to bury her head in her satchel and breathe deeply for several minutes to stop herself from venting her frustration once more.

  ‘Maybe it’s too much to ask you to come,’ she said, after she had regained her composure. ‘But we have to go on. The Unmapped Kingdoms and the Faraway are counting on us. So I want you to know, before we go, that I don’t believe that what Morg did to you has changed you for ever. I think you’re still Deepglint inside.’

  The panther flicked a piece of dirt from between his claws and Fox watched as the dirt dropped into the lagoon and sank to the bottom. Then she noticed something glistening amongst the rocks in the deepest part of the lagoon. She peered closer. It wasn’t a shoal of fish. They were silver and darting and what she was looking at was gold and still. Fox blinked. It looked like a heap of sunken treasure and she was surprised that she hadn’t noticed it the night before.

  The panther stared at it curiously as if, perhaps, this was the first time he had set eyes on it, too.

  Heckle and the sloth crept a few steps closer and Fox shifted so that she was at the very edge of the lagoon. Something about the heap of gold seemed to flicker with magic. Then Fox squinted at the treasure and she saw it for what it really was.

  A jumble of letters, each one carved out of solid gold. There was an E and a G and – Fox adjusted her position – was that a T and an L? She forced her eyes to find a pattern. There was another E, a P and an I. And then Fox knew, without a flicker of a doubt, what she was looking at, even though she couldn’t see the final two letters. She only knew that she had to dive down and get them before they vanished because so much – finding Shadowfall, beating Morg and saving the world – depended on it.

  Fox kicked off her boots, then, without thinking twice or listening to Heckle’s reservations, she jumped into the lagoon. The panther leapt up, alarmed, and the sloth let out a little squeak. But Fox was already kicking down beneath the surface of the water.

  She shovelled the letters into her hands, then kicked upwards, spluttering water, before bundling herself out onto the rocks that lined the lagoon. She laid the letters out in front of the panther, her heart quickening as they formed the word she knew they would:

  DEEPGLINT

  The letters sparkled in the cave, but the panther simply grunted and Fox had to fight the urge not to kick him in the shin for being so ungrateful. She had no idea why there were golden letters spelling out the Lofty Husk’s name at the
bottom of the lagoon, but she felt as if they might be important and the least the panther could do was acknowledge that she’d got soaking wet collecting them.

  Then the panther looked at the letters more closely, a look that seemed to pass beyond the golden shapes and move to memories of long-forgotten things. And suddenly a golden mist rose up from the Lofty Husk’s name, reminding Fox of the panther’s breath the night before, and it dried her tunic right through.

  Then the mist danced about the panther, a shower of golden light, and he shook himself hard as if waking from a very long sleep. Fox gasped. He looked bigger suddenly, and stronger, but that was not all. He opened his mouth and at long last he spoke – in a voice that was low and rumbling and shuddering with strength.

  ‘You – you found my magic,’ Deepglint said. ‘Without our names, we Lofty Husks are but wild beasts. And when Morg’s curse stole my name, and with it my magic, I all but forgot who I was. But a Lofty Husk’s name will never stray far from him, even if it has been stripped away by evil.’

  Deepglint looked at Fox and his eyes shone with gratitude. ‘You saw my name in the lagoon where I did not because you believed in me when I no longer could.’ He dipped his head. ‘A heart full of faith and kindness is a rare and powerful thing.’

  Fox faltered. She had always assumed her heart was filled with dreadful stamping things, but here was a ruler of Jungledrop telling her the opposite.

  Deepglint drew himself up, tall and proud. ‘Kindness has a way of digging what we lose back up, even if what we lost was half buried at the bottom of a lagoon. My voice, my memories, my magic only appeared because of you. Because you were bold enough to trust in me and kind enough to believe that it would make a difference.’

  Fox glanced at her brother. ‘The sloth – he believed in you, too.’

  Deepglint smiled. ‘Then he is a very wise sloth.’

  ‘I’m Fox and the sloth is called Fibber.’ She paused. ‘And, though he doesn’t look like it right now, he’s my brother. Only I turned him into a sloth because I was being awful.’ She sighed. ‘I’m hoping the magic of the Forever Fern, if we find it, might turn him back into a boy again.’