Zeb Bolt and the Ember Scroll

by Abi Elphinstone

  “Left a bit, Oonie!” the chameleon shouted. “Now a swift right before we’re knocked unconscious by a spike!”

  Zeb watched, amazed, as Oonie steered the boat without seeing a thing. She guided it past the upturned remains of another boat jammed between two rocks, which, Zeb realized with a grimace, must have tried, and failed, to cross the Blackfangs. But Oonie’s expression was calm, and her eyes, though unseeing, seemed to fix at a point ahead—as if she could see an invisible finish line, rather than the rocks themselves, and had all her hopes pinned on it. Not only this, but the bond between Oonie and the chameleon was watertight. They seemed to trust each other in a way Zeb had never really seen before, and he wasn’t altogether sure what to make of it.

  “Keep going here, Oonie—straight ahead!” Mrs. Fickletint called. “Now take us left—sharp—to avoid a quick gorge through the heart! Excellent, my dear! You’ll see us through in no time!”

  Zeb buried his head in the bucket he’d been instructed to use to bail out water if things got rough and let out a few whimpers.

  But though the boat veered to the side and swerved round corners, with Oonie at the helm and Mrs. Fickletint at the prow, it slid on through the Blackfangs without any bother. Then a cloud closed over the moon, and out of nowhere, a wind picked up. Zeb heard it in the sail first, a few flaps against the dragonhide. Then the gusts began, whumping at the leather and tugging the rigging.

  “Not a storm,” Mrs. Fickletint squeaked. “Oh, please not a storm…”

  The sky darkened further, a roll of thunder sounded, and the Blackfangs suddenly looked even more frightening, a forest of splinters every which way Zeb turned.

  “This is Morg’s dark magic!” Oonie yelled as the first of the rain began to fall. “Her fire kraken must have caught the scent of the Stargold Wings! She can’t be far away now, and she’ll be doing everything she can to stop us in our tracks. So, keep those instructions coming, Mrs. Fickletint! We have to clear the Blackfangs and get going!”

  But storms care little for instructions. Especially storms conjured from dark magic. When Mrs. Fickletint yelled “right,” the wind buffeted the boat left, and when Mrs. Fickletint screamed “straight ahead,” the rain came crashing down, grinding the Kerfuffle to a halt.

  “We have to keep going!” Oonie roared. “If Morg finds us in the Blackfangs, there’s no way we’ll escape!”

  Zeb threw bucket after bucket of rainwater back into the sea while Mrs. Fickletint clung on to the beacon for all she was worth. The boat inched onward again while the thunder pealed and lightning split the sky.

  “Where next, Mrs. Fickletint?” Oonie shouted. “We can make it if we hold our nerve!”

  The chameleon steadied herself against the wind. “Hard right!”

  But as the boat turned, a fork of lightning split a shard of rock, sending splinters of stone toward the boat.

  “DUCK!” Mrs. Fickletint screamed.

  Oonie and Zeb ducked, and the rocks sailed past. Then the channel between the rocks widened and the Bother-Ahead Beacon began flashing green.

  Zeb blinked into the rain. “What does green mean?!”

  Oonie tensed, and Mrs. Fickletint flashed several colors at once. Then the chameleon shrieked: “WHIRLGHOUL! Keep right at all costs, Oonie!”

  Zeb watched in horror as the Kerfuffle approached a spinning vortex with two watery arms reaching up out of the middle. The arms reached through the storm toward the boat, trying to drag the vessel into its hold.

  “Keep her steady, Oonie!” Mrs. Fickletint cried. “You can do this!”

  The storm raged on, slamming into the boat and shunting it closer to the whirlghoul. Everyone screamed, but then Mrs. Fickletint was shouting commands again, Oonie was gripping the rudder, and Zeb was bailing water out of the boat as fast as he could. The Kerfuffle wobbled, swerved, then careered on past the whirlghoul and burst out into open sea.

  “We—we did it!” Zeb cried. “We sailed through the Blackfangs!”

  Mrs. Fickletint cheered and Oonie smiled. The Kerfuffle had several large dents in her side and everyone was drenched, but they were alive. And not even the storm could dampen their spirits. Zeb couldn’t stop grinning. He had doubted the crew aboard the Kerfuffle, and yet by working together they had survived the Blackfangs, a feat only the legendary Nefarious Flood had done before them!

  “To the Final Curtain!” Zeb found himself yelling as he punched the air in triumph. “Wherever that may be!”

  He blushed suddenly, because this sort of optimism was most unlike him, but there had been something unexpectedly enjoyable about being part of a crew. The joy vanished as soon as he saw that the Bother-Ahead Beacon was flashing red. Before anyone on board the Kerfuffle could react, the Blackfangs behind them exploded. Shards of rock flew into the storm, water sprayed everywhere, and heaving its mighty body out of the sea was a beast with pulsing suckers and red skin that shone with slime.

  Chapter 13

  Fire kraken!” Mrs. Fickletint yelled.

  Zeb swayed. The kraken was vast, and it was advancing through the ocean at terrifying speed. Tentacle after tentacle slammed down onto the sea as it propelled itself forward—and soaring through the lightning above it came the bone dragon. Morg sat astride it, her own wings juddering in the wind, her skull-mask fixed on Zeb.

  “To the trapdoor!” Oonie shouted. “We’ve got to trust the Kerfuffle to take it from here!”

  Zeb and Mrs. Fickletint scrambled over the benches toward Oonie, who was yodeling and nodding as she yanked the trapdoor open. But the kraken was faster still, and Zeb screamed as it drew up alongside the Kerfuffle like a raging fire. Its bulging head loomed close, and a swarm of red tentacles wrapped themselves around the boat, squeezing the wood so hard it creaked. Then the whole deck tilted, and Zeb, Oonie, and Mrs. Fickletint tumbled down its length, slamming against the prow.

  From up above, the harpy laughed. “Zebedee Bolt!” she screeched. “You dared to steal my Stargold Wings!”

  The kraken held the Kerfuffle upturned, and the slime from its suckers spattered down into the boat. Zeb, Oonie, and Mrs. Fickletint huddled together as the dragon circled above.

  “Plan B!” Oonie panted. “Because it doesn’t feel like hiding’s an option!”

  Morg unfurled her wings, and Zeb felt her dark magic throbbing with the storm.

  “W-what if it doesn’t work?” Zeb stammered.

  “It’s got to work!” Mrs. Fickletint cowered into Oonie’s side. “It’s our only chance!”

  The dragon cried out, and Zeb’s throat tightened. Would Morg realize that what she wanted more than anything wasn’t in the pouch around Zeb’s neck? Would she see through their trickery? Or was there a chance that a runaway boy, a blind girl, and a talking chameleon could defy the odds and hoodwink the harpy?

  Black sparks fizzed around Morg, and she cackled as a pair of gold wings slid out of the pouch around Zeb’s neck. Zeb thought of the real Stargold Wings, hidden inside the cabin. He hoped that the copy would fool Morg. They didn’t flutter as they rose into the sky, drawn to the harpy by the pull of her dark magic, but the rain was lashing down and the storm was swirling, so Morg couldn’t have seen that.

  “The Ember Scroll will be mine!” the harpy roared as the sunchatter drew closer still.

  The kraken sniffed the air and, sensing something was amiss about the object rising toward the harpy, loosened its grip on the boat for a second. The Kerfuffle crashed back onto the sea. Mrs. Fickletint raced over the deck toward the trapdoor, Oonie fumbled after her, and Zeb, hardly daring to believe his eyes that their plan might have worked, scrambled behind. But as Morg closed her fist around the sunchatter, the fire kraken changed tack.

  It swung a tentacle toward the deck and seized Zeb, yanking him off the boat and holding him up in the air. Zeb screamed as the kraken’s suckers curled around him, but no matter how hard he thrashed, he couldn’t escape. Morg screeched with rage as she realized that what she was holding was not what she w
anted. And Zeb felt his limbs go slack. Oonie and Mrs. Fickletint were safe inside the cabin. They’d even shut the trapdoor. And though they had talked of backup plans and being a crew, that was before an encounter with Morg. Now they had the Stargold Wings and a chance to flee if the harpy and the kraken were distracted with Zeb. He felt tears rise inside him. They had been so close. But it was over now. The Kerfuffle would race away, and when Morg realized Zeb didn’t have the Stargold Wings, the kraken would finish him off.

  The beast raised Zeb up toward Morg and her dragon, and though Zeb had wrestled his arms free, he couldn’t force his body out of the kraken’s grasp.

  “Give me the Stargold Wings, boy!”

  The harpy’s mask swam before him as the dragon beat its boned wings against the rain. Zeb’s heart hammered against his ribs. This was it: the moment the Kerfuffle shot away, leaving him alone in the storm with Morg’s dark magic.

  Only that didn’t happen.

  There was a thump down on deck as the trapdoor of the Kerfuffle burst open. Then, there, wielding a lasso, was Oonie.

  She spun the lasso round and round in the air to the cries of Mrs. Fickletint on her shoulder. “Left a bit, Oonie! Right a touch! That’s it! Now THROW!”

  Zeb blinked in disbelief. They’d come back for him! They hadn’t abandoned him, as he’d thought. They’d been mustering up a plan C!

  The lasso shot out and fixed around the kraken’s tentacle, drawing it and Zeb back toward the boat. And Zeb knew then that this was no ordinary lasso. This was an object filled with magic. It couldn’t free Zeb—the fire kraken’s hold was unflinching—but little by little it was pulling the giant tentacle back on deck.

  “No!” Morg screeched, hurtling down. “You will not escape this time!”

  But Zeb was in the boat now, his legs scrabbling beneath the kraken’s hold.

  “Give me your hand!” Oonie shouted.

  “You’ll never manage to pull me out!” Zeb cried as he bucked and twisted. “Go on to the Final Curtain without me and find the cave that has never been found!”

  “Just hold out your hand!” Mrs. Fickletint screamed as Morg swooped closer still.

  “NOW!” Oonie yelled. “Trust me!”

  Morg was just meters away from Zeb now, so he flung out a shaking hand toward Oonie, and when their palms met, all hell broke loose.

  There was a loud clank and dozens of portholes appeared in the sides of the Kerfuffle. The cannon, which had been innocently blowing bubbles below deck before, suddenly emerged from a new trapdoor. And then, the boat’s hidden phoenix magic began to pour out, red-hot fireballs exploding from the portholes and cannon into the night. They tore through the kraken’s tentacles and blasted Morg and her dragon backward. Zeb, Oonie, and Mrs. Fickletint huddled together as the sky around them blazed red, and Mrs. Fickletint shrieked a running commentary so Oonie could navigate what was going on.

  Fireballs pummeled against the kraken again and again, and the creature writhed and roared, its skin sizzling until eventually it sunk, lifeless, into the sea. Morg was steering her dragon back toward the Kerfuffle, and now that the kraken was no more, the cannon swung round to face her. It hurled a lobby of fireballs out, shattering a part of the dragon’s tail and sending it, and Morg, plunging into the sea. They rose up at once, but the fireballs kept coming, pinning them down among the waves.

  “What next?” Zeb cried. “The Kerfuffle can’t hold Morg here forever!”

  As if in reply, the Kerfuffle unleashed the last of its phoenix magic. The Bother-Ahead Beacon shattered, and in its place stood the carved head of a dragon. Next came the sound of wood splitting, and Zeb and Mrs. Fickletint watched, open-mouthed, as two enormous red wings burst out from each side of the boat.

  “Wings, Oonie!” Zeb cried. “Your boat has wings!”

  They were leathery, like the sail, and in one whumping motion, they carried the Kerfuffle up into the sky. Still the fireballs fell from the portholes, raining down on Morg and her dragon, so that no matter how hard they tried, they couldn’t approach the boat.

  “I know where you’re going”—Morg shrieked after them—“thanks to you, Zebedee Bolt, when you told your pathetic friends to go on to the Final Curtain without you!”

  Zeb winced. In his panic, he’d given away a part of the message from the Stargold Wings.

  “And there I was thinking the Ember Scroll was up by the sun, when all along it was a cave that has never been found that I needed to reach!” She cackled. “I will get there before any of you, and the Ember Scroll will be mine!” The harpy and her dragon thrashed against the fiery sea. “The Stargold Wings won’t come willingly to me now that they’ve clearly sided with you, but it will be a different story when I bring the Ember Scroll to them. My Midnights will find you, and I will write my ending and begin my rule!”

  The Kerfuffle flew on through the storm, away from the harpy and her dragon. Zeb, Oonie, and Mrs. Fickletint were too exhausted to say a word, but one thing had been proven that night: They were a small but mighty crew. Against the odds, they had sailed past the Blackfangs, they had outwitted Morg, and they still had a chance of finding the Ember Scroll.

  Chapter 14

  The Kerfuffle sped through the night over the glistening sea. The storm had fizzled out, the cannon had slid back below deck, and Morg’s cries were now long gone. Only the whrum of beating wings could be heard as the Kerfuffle flew through a star-filled sky toward the Final Curtain.

  Zeb sat on a bench beside Oonie and Mrs. Fickletint. “How on earth did we pull that off?” he said eventually.

  Oonie turned what was left of the lasso over in her hands. “Luck mostly, but also this Hope-Rope. The hurtle found it in a trunk last week, and because it’s woven with a hidden strand of sunlight, the person wielding it can bring down almost anything if he or she hopes hard enough.” She paused. “And, well—”

  “Go on, Oonie,” Mrs. Fickletint urged. “You know as well as I do that Zeb played a key part in that escape.”

  Zeb frowned. “Me?”

  Oonie pretended to be fascinated by the Hope-Rope all of a sudden.

  “Oonie…” Mrs. Fickletint poked a claw into her side. “You can’t just pretend it didn’t happen.”

  Oonie chewed her lip, and then she took a deep breath and said: “I think, maybe, possibly, somehow you activated the Kerfuffle’s hidden magic, Zeb.”

  Zeb shook his head. “Oh no, I definitely didn’t do that. During the lasso episode, I was almost certainly crying.”

  Mrs. Fickletint smiled up at him from the bench. “I beg to differ, Zeb. Crackledawn’s dhow boats are enchanted, but only a handful of them have ever released magic on this scale. It’s said only the deepest trust can work such a miracle. And you stretched out your hand. You trusted Oonie and me.” She laughed wearily. “Portholes! Explosions! WINGS! What a kerfuffle indeed!”

  Zeb considered this as the boat flew on through the night. He had vowed not to trust other people, and yet it had sort of happened without warning. One minute he had been getting ready to meet his doom at the hands of Morg, the next minute he was holding Oonie’s hand and things were looking infinitely less depressing.

  He shrugged. “Probably just a coincidence that the Kerfuffle’s magic kicked off when I stretched out my hand.”

  “Yeah,” Oonie said hastily, “could well have been.”

  Mrs. Fickletint rapped her knuckles. “You and I were helped by Zeb, and you might as well admit it, young lady, or this is going to be a very tedious voyage indeed.”

  Oonie was still for a moment, and silent, as if she was struggling with something Zeb couldn’t see. Then she turned to Zeb and nodded. “You did good.” There was a pause. “For a Faraway boy.”

  Zeb blinked. It wasn’t much of a speech—only seven words, actually—but those words landed close to Zeb’s heart. He suddenly found himself thinking of Fox’s promise back in the Faraway. He had blocked it out, especially since the harpy had told him she had betrayed her own brot
her. But he had trusted Oonie and Mrs. Fickletint just now—so perhaps he’d been too quick to write Fox off. What if she’d kept her word after all?

  Mrs. Fickletint cleared her throat and turned to Oonie.

  “That was a terribly moving speech, darling, even if it was on the short side. And I was just wondering whether—after eleven long years of you pushing everyone around you away—you might be able to extend your trust beyond me for a while, to include Zeb, too.”

  Zeb hardly dared breathe, because he couldn’t help feeling he and Oonie were on the cusp of something important and, in a heartbeat, either one of them might blow it completely.

  Mrs. Fickletint leaned a little closer to Oonie. “You know this boat like the back of your hand, but this voyage is going to be bigger than anything we’ve taken on before. What if the Kerfuffle goes under and we have to find another way to the Final Curtain, a way you’re not used to at all? What if you and I get separated and you find yourself alone in unfamiliar territory? What then?”

  Oonie scooped the chameleon up and clutched her to her chest. “Don’t you ever say anything like that again, Mrs. Fickletint. We’ll always be together.”

  But Oonie’s brow was furrowed and her nose was scrunched up tight. She was thinking hard, Zeb could tell.

  “It’s time, Oonie,” Mrs. Fickletint whispered. “If you’re serious about saving the Unmapped Kingdoms and the Faraway, you need to start acting like a real captain. You need to take the one risk you’re afraid of taking.”

  Oonie didn’t move for a little while longer, then she raised her head. “I’ll trust you, Zeb.” She paused. “But only because Crackledawn needs me to.”

  Mrs. Fickletint kissed Oonie’s cheek, then she hopped down onto the bench again. “So, Zeb? Can you trust us?”

  Zeb picked at his jeans. “I tried that back home. Again and again I trusted grown-ups to find a foster home for me. And every time they let me down.” He paused. “There was one person I met just before I came here, but then Morg—” He broke off, confused.