Smudge and Bartholomew watched, transfixed, as the harpy lifted her wings out of the sea. The feathers spread out like a cloak and they were blacker than midnight and shining like oil, but it was only when Smudge saw the skull fixed in between where the wings parted that she realised the full extent of the evil before her.
The skull was long and narrow with a curved beak, and Smudge recognised it immediately from the sketches in her schoolbooks. She felt suddenly sick to her core. That was the skull of a phoenix and this hideous harpy was now slipping it over her head as casually as one might don a hat. Had the old phoenix died after five hundred years only for this to rise from the ashes to take its place?
‘We need to ambush her before she takes flight,’ Smudge whispered as the harpy threaded her spindly fingers through the hooks at the tips of her wings and the feathers spilled over her arms.
But, just as Bartholomew was drawing breath to reply, the harpy looked up and, though the skull masked her features, from the chill that slipped through her skin Smudge could tell that the harpy was looking right at them.
‘Abort the mission!’ Bartholomew cried, yanking on the sail rope to pull the boat away from the rocks. ‘Retreat!’
But Smudge hadn’t come all this way to flee. And, as the creature scuttled up the tower of rocks like an enormous beetle, the girl tightened her shaking hands round the sunraiding net, then pointed it in the direction of the rocks. Instantly, the net stretched, but the harpy launched into the sky and let out a terrifying screech.
Smudge stumbled into the bench as she tried to follow the harpy’s movements with her net.
‘Now is not the time to be clumsy, Smudge!’ Bartholomew yelled. ‘Catch the harpy in that net, then utter the rope-locking spell – fast!’
The harpy dipped her skull hood and plunged towards the boat. As she drew close, Smudge swiped at her with the net but the harpy was stronger than Smudge had anticipated and she smacked Smudge to the ground, then hurtled on by. Again the harpy rose into the air and again she dived, but Smudge was on her feet now, brandishing the net, her eyes wide with fear. This time when the harpy tore close Smudge ducked just in time, then whirled round to try and snag the creature’s wings. But the harpy shrieked and swerved past the boat at the very last moment.
Bartholomew was surprised to see that although there didn’t seem much of a rhythm to Smudge’s fight or, in fact, much accuracy there was a dogged sort of determination, an outright refusal to give up – and it spurred the monkey to act.
Down the harpy came again, too fast for Smudge to angle her net in the right direction, but that didn’t matter because Bartholomew flung his penknife towards the creature and, on seeing the glint of metal careering towards her, the harpy jerked to the side, batting the knife back into the boat, then flew on past.
Smudge scampered up on to the canopy and, while Bartholomew stood at the bow, screaming all sorts of words a monkey should never repeat, she thrust her net into the harpy’s flight. The creature thundered into it and the force brought both she and Smudge tumbling down into the boat. The harpy screeched and thrashed her wings, but undeterred Smudge began to recite the rope-locking spell:
‘Rope of mine please hold fast
Do not break until I . . . I . . .’
Her mind went blank and before she could remember the final word – ‘ask’ – the harpy burst free, snapping the net in two. Bartholomew hurled his penknife as the harpy launched into the sky but it overshot and landed in the sea.
Smudge’s head spun with panic. The net was in pieces and their only weapon was gone. In a matter of moments, the harpy could kill her and Bartholomew – and then who would stop this creature destroying the Unmapped Kingdoms? Who would be left to fight the dark magic? The truth crowded in on Smudge: this creature was too much for her and Bartholomew. It was madness thinking they could take a harpy on . . .
‘Watch out!’ Bartholomew screamed as the harpy plummeted towards the boat.
Smudge jerked the mast so that the dhow turned, but, just before it did, the harpy’s talons raked through the dragonhide sail, leaving a gash right down the middle. Smudge froze. The Coddiwomple’s sail was torn. And now the one option still open to them – to flee – had gone.
Bartholomew picked up the broken net as the harpy rose to make another dive. But the rope was well and truly torn and the handle had been smashed. ‘Quick!’ he yelled. ‘Open the trapdoor into the hull!’
Smudge jumped over the benches towards the stern. Every dhow had about a metre or two of space in the hull, which you could access through a trapdoor and hide in during stormy weather. So she scrambled towards the square of wood amid the planks which had what looked like a handle indent in the middle and the word ‘LIFT’ engraved onto it. Smudge pulled hard as the harpy shrieked and raced down towards them. But the trapdoor wouldn’t budge.
Bartholomew ditched the net, flung himself towards the trapdoor and then, quite unexpectedly, he began to laugh. Not a nervous chuckle or a little chortle but loud, short bursts of hysterical giggling.
The harpy was only a few metres away now and Smudge braced herself for its grappling claws, but then Bartholomew grabbed her by the arm and yanked her through the trapdoor he had somehow managed to open. Smudge clattered down a flight of steps and looked up to see Bartholomew fastening a chain across the underside of the door. Above deck, the harpy beat its talons against the wood and thrashed with its mighty wings. But the trapdoor held fast. And, after a while, the pummelling stopped and a grating voice slipped through the cracks.
‘Every phoenix, since the beginning of time, has shared its magic with the Unmapped Kingdoms and the Faraway. But I, Morg, rose from the ashes of the last phoenix with one aim: to take every scrap of magic in these kingdoms for my own. The Faraway will perish, but what will I care when I have the Unmapped Kingdoms at my disposal? I will command the sun to blister and scorch, I will call on the rain to unleash mighty storms and I will summon the snow to cast the fiercest blizzards! Under me, a new era will be born and I will fill it with creatures conjured from dark magic.
‘You two may have escaped my Nightdaggers, but know that I will brew deadlier curses in Everdark, curses that will knock the life out of you in seconds when we cross paths again. Then I will fly on to the other kingdoms and, once I have every Unmapper under my curse, I shall begin my rule. And there is no point trying to stop me because you cannot reach Everdark. No one has crossed the Northswirl and lived.’
There was a scuttling sound of claws over wood, followed by a whir of wings and then, finally, silence.
Bartholomew breathed out, then he looked at Smudge with an expression she couldn’t quite put her finger on.
‘You were,’ the monkey reflected, ‘not as disastrous as I thought you’d be out there.’
Smudge hung her head. ‘I forgot the last word of the spell and then Morg snapped the net in half.’
Bartholomew shrugged. ‘True – the incantation was a little sloppy. But you were brave, Smudge. Remarkably brave in fact. Of course, we’d be nowhere without my devilishly quick mind, but still, you surprised me.’
Smudge blushed. She couldn’t remember ever receiving a compliment before and she wasn’t entirely sure what the appropriate response was so she settled for humming. And although she doubted there was much hope of her and Bartholomew becoming close friends on the voyage – she was bound to mess things up for them both soon and their muddling along beside each other was only because the elves had entrusted the monkey with loyalty – it was at least reassuring to know that he thought her brave and that together they had managed to escape the harpy’s clutches.
Smudge glanced up at the trapdoor. ‘How on earth did you manage to open it? It was jammed shut when I tried.’
‘It said LIFT on the handle,’ Bartholomew explained. ‘Laugh Intensely Five Times.’ He pushed past Smudge and walked down the steps. ‘I do wish you were just slightly better at listening in class. Still, it could have been worse. We could have had
a PULL trapdoor – Pirouette Unbelievably Ludicrously Loudly – and then we would have been in all sorts of bother.’
Smudge, however, was no longer listening to the monkey. They weren’t in a tiny space in the hull, as she had expected. Now that she looked around properly, she saw that the trapdoor had opened on to a sweeping staircase that couldn’t possibly exist because everyone knew dhows were only two metres deep, but somehow the staircase was here all the same. It seemed that Nefarious Flood’s boat was imbued with more magic than most.
Smudge made her way down the rest of the stairs and found herself looking at a secret cabin unlike anything she had ever seen before. Glow-worm lanterns dangled from the roof of what appeared to be a study, the walls were covered in plaques displaying the mounted tails of sea monsters that Nefarious had presumably slain and at the far end of the room was a mahogany desk covered with maps. An armchair plumped with cushions and raised on wooden crab legs had been pulled up to the desk and there were towers of leather-bound books surrounding it, as well as a row of shelves above filled with sketches of sea dragons, jars of multicoloured sand and messages rolled up in bottles.
Smudge’s eyes shone as she took in the two little alcoves on either side of the study: a tiny kitchen on the left and a cubbyhole bedroom complete with a circular window looking out on the sea to the right.
‘This is incredible . . .’ she breathed.
Bartholomew straightened the rug on the study floor, then recentred a cutlass hanging from the wall. ‘Yes, this will do very nicely for our journey back to Wildhorn.’
Smudge looked up from studying a boomerang covered in merscales that she had spotted on top of a trunk. ‘Back to Wildhorn?’
The monkey nodded. ‘We’re going into hiding – the caves there will be just the thing.’
‘I don’t think this is something you can hide from, Bartholomew. You heard what Morg said: she’s planning to take every scrap of magic from the Unmapped Kingdoms.’ Smudge drew herself up. ‘Her curses will find us, however far inside a cave we hide, so we have to get to her before she gets to us. Because this is our chance to do something extraordinary – to save not just the Unmapped Kingdoms but the Faraway, too.’
Bartholomew took off his trilby and turned it over in his hands. ‘Most people live ordinary lives, Smudge. And that’s perfectly okay. We should head back to Wildhorn and scour every book in the Warren until we find a way to wake the Lofty Husks. Then we can leave it to them to fix everything.’
Smudge shook her head. ‘By now you should know that I’m not most people. My head is filled with what ifs and just maybes. So, what if the people who end up changing the world aren’t always the ones that shine in class or come first in exams? What if, just maybe, it’s about trying and hoping and never giving up, even when things look impossible?’ She paused. ‘We have to go on, Bartholomew, because the only thing a person needs to do something extraordinary is an opportunity. And this is ours.’
The monkey put his hands on his hips. ‘And how exactly do you plan to stop this unreasonably aggressive harpy?’
‘By being cunning,’ Smudge replied, trying to sound brave, ‘and also a little bit bold.’
‘Says the girl who doesn’t even know how to open an enchanted trapdoor.’ Bartholomew slumped into the armchair. ‘Go on then – what’s your plan?’
Smudge narrowed her eyes. ‘We know something we didn’t know before: Morg’s power lies in her wings. So . . . we’re going to set sail for Everdark and steal them.’
Bartholomew turned an odd shade of green. ‘You mean to say that the next stop on the retirement cruise is –’ he swallowed – ‘the Northswirl?’
Smudge nodded. ‘I’m afraid so.’ She glanced up at the trapdoor. ‘I suggest you bring down Great-aunt Mildred’s tea set. You look like you could do with a cuppa.’
When Bartholomew had poured himself a fourth cup of tea, Smudge figured his nerves would probably have recovered enough for them to start planning their next step, so she began rummaging through the drawers in the mahogany desk. There was still no sign of any watergums, which would’ve settled Bartholomew’s nerves a little at the prospect of stormy seas ahead, but there were other things of note.
‘Found it!’ Smudge held up a reel of purple thread with a needle slotted into it. ‘This I do remember from class: mersilk – perfect for repairing torn sails.’
She hurried up the steps, listening hard beneath the trapdoor for anything untoward, then, when she was satisfied, she climbed up on deck. She flinched as she took in the gashes Morg’s talons had made in the dhow’s wood and for a second she faltered. Could they really steal the wings of such a powerful creature? Then the niggle in her chest burned harder and, pushing down her doubts, she set to work on the sail and tried not to think of all the ogre eels and fire krakens that might be stirring beneath the boat.
Minutes later, the mersilk had worked its magic: the rip had vanished and the sail glinted gold in the midday sun. Smudge picked up the quill, dipped it in the squid ink, then raised her hand to the very corner of the sail, where there was still just enough room left to write.
Destination:
Smudge thought of the lands she’d imagined past the Northswirl. What mysterious beasts swam in those seas? Were there secret caves and hidden waterfalls? Magical reefs and undiscovered bays? And how far across those seas was Everdark? Smudge’s mind wandered to her hero, Nefarious Flood, setting out in this very boat, for the exact same destination, and never coming back. She gripped her quill tighter. If Bartholomew sensed any doubts, he’d try again to persuade her to go back to Wildhorn – and that wasn’t going to happen. She wrote quickly.
Northswurl
Once again, the sail autocorrected her spelling then, quite unexpectedly, there was a loud flap as the dragonhide shook itself against the ropes that bound it and small black scales appeared through the leather.
Bartholomew was up on deck in an instant. ‘What was that noise? What have you broken?’
‘Nothing – all I did was tell the boat where to go . . .’
The sail was now covered in jet-black dragonscales, which glittered darkly in the sunlight. Then there was a clicking sound, like a light being turned on, and a turquoise flame flickered inside the lantern on the bow of the boat. This was no longer a radar for the vanishing sun-chatter, Smudge realised, this was a lamp to guide them through the Northswirl! A clanking sound echoed from the sides of the boat – like gears slotting into place – but strangely there was nothing to show for it afterwards.
Bartholomew raised an eyebrow. ‘Looks like the boat is preparing for the Northswirl . . .’
The dhow swung past Lonecrag, leaving the fire krakens and the ogre eels to their slumbers, and, with a sail full of wind and magic, it headed north through the winking waves. The sky was a deep blue, strewn with wisps of cloud, but the ocean seemed eerily quiet now that there was less sun-chatter buried in its depths.
Smudge hurried back down the steps, with Bartholomew following close behind, then she gobbled down a banana and settled herself in the armchair before the desk. She picked up the map in front of her. ‘The Northswirl is marked,’ she said to Bartholomew, who was grimacing at a bottle on the desk that was filled with green liquid and labelled KRAKEN BLOOD. ‘But there’s nothing beyond that – just blank parchment.’
Bartholomew groaned. ‘So we’re searching for a destination not even a celebrated Sunraider’s map shows?’
‘Let’s focus on the Northswirl first then because it’ll take us most of today to reach it. They say the waves there are as big as houses and I bet the reason Nefarious Flood died is because he hoped that he could outride them. But that plan obviously didn’t work. So, what if the answer is to simply worry about staying afloat rather than riding through the waves?’ She scanned the cabin. ‘Where do you think Nefarious would keep a lifebuoy?’
No sooner had the words popped out of her mouth than the armchair she was sitting in scuttled across the cabin on its crab claws a
nd paused in front of a chest outside the kitchen.
‘Well, I never!’ Bartholomew cried, scampering after the chair. ‘A genuine obligasaurus!’
‘A what?’
Bartholomew ran a hand over the armchair. ‘A distinctly elegant and terribly helpful style of furniture first introduced in the third century.’ He smiled. ‘My great-grandfather used to swear by them for improving posture, too, but I never thought I’d see one in my lifetime.’ He glanced at the chest in front of them. ‘Well, go on then – open up the chest. The obligasaurus didn’t stop in front of it because it likes the view.’
Smudge heaved the chest open and there, inside, was a lifebuoy!
Bartholomew looked at the lifebuoy then up at Smudge. ‘I fear we’ll need a little more than that to keep us afloat in the Northswirl, but I shall leave you to your wayward thoughts while I take a much-needed siesta in the cubbyhole. All this adventuring is playing havoc with my nerves.’
Smudge sat back down in the armchair and tried to gather her thoughts. ‘I need to think about this differently,’ she murmured. ‘With all the what ifs and the just maybes of the situation . . .’
She found the valve on the lifebuoy and undid it. The air hissed out and Smudge felt her pulse quicken. No Sunraider had ever dared tamper with a dhow’s safety equipment and yet she had to come at things from a different angle if there was even the slightest hope of them crossing the Northswirl. She hurried back to the desk and eyed the glass bottles on the shelf above it. She squinted at the first – a bottle containing a navy blue liquid flecked with green glitter.
‘Not siren tears,’ she mumbled. ‘They probably wouldn’t work. But what about this?’ She lifted up a stoppered bottle containing a liquid that looked like marbled gold then read the wording on the little tag tied round the cork. ‘The breath of a sea dragon. That might just do it . . .’
She poured the liquid through the valve of the lifebuoy, then she closed it up, tied the float to the bundle of rope also in the trunk, and sat back down in the obligasaurus, which had very conveniently parked itself before the desk again.
Everdark Page 4
