Zeb Bolt and the Ember Scroll

by Abi Elphinstone

  Mrs. Fickletint tugged on her hat. “That, my dears, is a flock of nightswans. And as you’ll recall, Oonie, Wilbur Shivermitten was far from positive about them. Apparently they—and Silvercrag’s winterwolves—are drawn to dark magic, if given the chance. Morg laid a curse on this kingdom to stop it fighting back, but maybe she can sense our presence here because we’re not bound by her curse.” The chameleon gulped. “She’ll have filled those nightswans with enough magic to scale the peaks and come after us and the Stargold Wings.”

  But Snaggle didn’t turn around at this. He knew the Ember Scroll was beyond the birds, and he needed to press on to find it.

  “What’s a nightswan?” Zeb asked warily.

  “I think they look a bit like swans,” Oonie replied, “but they’re black, and they can breathe webs made from shadows.”

  Oonie leaned down to pat Snaggle. “We’ll find somewhere to rest soon, but do you think you can fend off the nightswans until then? The sun’s up now, so maybe its warmth will mean you can blast them with fire, then we can—”

  Her words were cut short by an almighty crash. The kind of sound a mountain might make if someone split it in two and left it to fall. The air juddered; the Impossible Peaks swayed. And then the sky flashed black.

  Zeb cowered into Snaggle’s neck as the crash rang out through all of Silvercrag. Then the din stopped and the sunlight returned. But its echo sent a chill through the crew.

  “ ‘The skies will shake with fear and the sun will hide.’… It’s happened, hasn’t it?” Zeb whispered. “Morg has found the Ember Scroll!”

  Oonie nodded. Mrs. Fickletint nodded. Even Snaggle dipped his head.

  Then the advancing nightswans screeched in celebration as they sensed Morg’s dark magic growing in strength. The harpy was just moments away from victory, because if the nightswans imprisoned them, it would not be long, at all, before Morg came by to claim the Stargold Wings. Then it would all be over. No phoenix would rise up to save things. The Unmapped Kingdoms would vanish, his world would go too, and he would never see his crew or Fox Petty-Squabble ever again.

  Oonie, though, was gripping Snaggle’s spikes with a new determination. “We must not lose hope. Morg might have won the race, but she hasn’t won the battle. We’re still alive. We’ve still got the Stargold Wings and a Crackledawn dragon. So, there’s a chance—a very small one—that we can still catch Morg before she writes her ending and somehow save the world.”

  Spurred on by Oonie’s courage, Snaggle narrowed his eyes and ground his teeth as he flew on toward the nightswans. Despite his exhaustion, he threw open his jaws and let out a roar. And this time, he breathed fire, not ice. Great bursts of flames that sent the nightswans reeling in all directions. Snaggle kept flying, drawing breath again and again to keep the fire coming and the nightswans away. But Zeb and Mrs. Fickletint could see that the flames were petering out. Snaggle couldn’t fly and wield flames after everything he’d been through. They had to help him out.

  Full of panic, Zeb yanked the whistle out of the Unopenable Purse and blew it hard. But the nightswans only screeched louder as they spread out in a line across the sky, blocking the way through. Summoning the last of his strength, Snaggle prepared to make a charge through the nightswans.

  Sensing something ominous ahead, Oonie’s buried her head in her coat. Then Zeb closed his eyes, and Mrs. Fickletint screamed a last-minute instruction: “HOLD ON!”

  Surging faster and faster toward the line of nightswans, Zeb thought for a moment they were going to make it, but in the nick of time, the nightswans reared up. And from their beaks came dark webs that hung in the air briefly before joining together to form one large black net. It flashed in the sunlight. And then it plunged, as if it had a mind of its own, wrapping its sticky shadow-string all around the Crackledawn dragon.

  The crew bit and tore and punched at the web. And Snaggle roared. But he didn’t have the strength for fire now. Nothing, it seemed, could break the web. And now the nightswans were closing in. Snaggle tried, in vain, to beat his wings, but they were plummeting through the sky toward the peaks. And hot on their heels, squealing with delight, came the nightswans.

  “We’re done for now!” Mrs. Fickletint yelled.

  “Not if we can pull all our thoughts together and work out how the whistle and scissors can help us,” Zeb shouted. “Come on! The phoenix magic must have sent them for a reason—we’ve got about ten seconds to figure them out!”

  Oonie chewed her lip. “Magic is unpredictable. And mischievous.”

  Zeb nodded. “Magic plays with words and messes with ideas, it jumbles sense upside down.…”

  “People—people usually blow whistles hard,” Mrs. Fickletint stammered. “Like you did a moment ago. But nothing happened.” Her eyes lit up. “So, what about blowing it gently?”

  Zeb could barely move for the panic and the web and the fact that Snaggle was falling blisteringly fast. But he inched his hand up through the net to his mouth, wiggled the whistle between his lips, and blew so softly it was as if he hardly used any breath at all.

  Snaggle, Oonie, and Mrs. Fickletint were suddenly absolutely still. They were no longer hurtling down through the sky, and the nightswans that had been careering toward them seemed stuck in the air too. Still screeching, they were completely unable to beat their wings or breathe their webs. Whatever spell the whistle had conjured, it held them and everyone but Zeb—whose hands were shaking around the whistle—in its grip.

  Mrs. Fickletint managed a few squeaked words, though she couldn’t move the rest of her body. “A whistleslower! I thought the last one sunk to the bottom of the sea in Crackledawn during an ogre eel attack, but we had one all along! And it has slowed the whole ghastly situation down!”

  “Well done, Mrs. Fickletint!” Oonie cried.

  Even Snaggle managed a quick sigh of relief.

  “But we’re still trapped inside the web.” Zeb gulped. “And you guys can’t move! It won’t be long before Morg comes along.”

  “Unless…” Oonie gasped. “The scissors!”

  “They won’t be able to cut a web like this!” Mrs. Fickletint spluttered. “They’re miniature, remember?”

  “But what if it’s just like Zeb said: ‘Magic plays with words and messes with ideas.’ Could the miniature scissors be a shortcut?”

  “You mean they could literally cut us out of the problem?” Zeb asked.

  The nightswans screeched.

  “There’s only one way to find out,” Oonie cried.

  Zeb wriggled his hands into the purse and set the scissors to the web. Then, hoping hard, he made one small cut, which sliced straight through the shadow web. It fell away, and though the whistleslower’s spell kept the nightswans bound, the phoenix magic in these objects was on Zeb’s side, and it released the crew. Snaggle shot up into the sky again, revived by the short rest, and rocketed past the shrieking nightswans.

  “It worked!” Oonie exclaimed as the squawks of the nightswans petered out. “We’re almost overflowing with miracles now!”

  Mrs. Fickletint whooped, Zeb cheered, and Snaggle bent his head round and nuzzled Zeb’s leg.

  Zeb went to tuck the scissors and the whistle back into the purse, but the scissors vanished into thin air and only the whistle remained. Zeb stashed it away carefully in case he needed it again. Then he looked out over the Impossible Peaks, shining in the midday sun. His eyes widened, because the mountains were, at long last, coming to an end. And where they stopped—still many miles in the distance—the sea began. There was no sign of Morg yet. She had the Ember Scroll, but it seemed she was lying low. Perhaps she could sense the nightswans had been beaten and was waiting for the Stargold Wings to come to her.

  An hour passed, and then the sea came into view, a dazzling blue that held icebergs as big and as bright as fallen pieces of moon. This was a place untouched by Morg’s curse. A pebbled beach crusted with ice stretched for as far as the eye could see in both directions, but jutting out into the
sea in front of them was the last of the mountains—a vast and craggy peak gleaming with ice. As Snaggle beat on toward this mountain, Zeb’s knees shook. Even from the height they were, Zeb could see a great yawning opening in this mountain. It loomed like a giant mouth and was fringed with icicles the size of spears, lit blue inside, and ringing with the sound of the harpy’s laughter.

  Zeb swallowed. Mrs. Fickletint swayed in Oonie’s pocket. And even Oonie’s courage wavered here.

  “It’s the cave, isn’t it?” she whispered. “Only it’s no longer the cave that has never been found. It’s the cave Morg found.”

  Zeb nodded. “A place so remote Morg hasn’t even needed to lay her curse here. There are no Unmappers or magical beasts now. It’s just the harpy.…”

  Snaggle soared closer, and Mrs. Fickletint shook with fear. “I—I thought I’d be brave enough for this, but we don’t even have a plan. How are we going to steal the Ember Scroll from under the nose of the most evil creature in the Unmapped Kingdoms?”

  Morg’s laugh rang out again.

  It was then that the Stargold Wings inched out of Zeb’s pouch and hung before the crew. They only had a drop of phoenix magic left inside them now, but what they had, they gave to the crew that had risked everything to get here. Gold sparks danced in the air, and though the odds were against them and time was running out, sometimes all you need to save the world is a dusting of courage.

  Chapter 26

  Snaggle swung round the last mountain, past the sinking sun, and down toward the entrance of the cave. The wind buffeted Zeb’s and Oonie’s furs, and the salt air stung their cheeks, but Snaggle kept going, his talons raking the icy sea, his wings smashing through the icicles as he charged into the cavern.

  It was vast inside the cave, as if the entire mountain had been scooped out to make room for ice. It glittered from the walls, rose up in places like frozen waves, and from the roof hundreds of meters above, it glowed blue.

  Zeb’s face drained of color, because there, on a jutting ice ledge snaking into the middle of the cave, was Morg. Her wings were outstretched, and in her hands she held a piece of parchment so intensely gold it made Zeb squint. This was the Ember Scroll, and though the magic inside the Stargold Wings had vanished, the scroll seemed to be straining toward them, as if it could tell that a part of it was nearby.

  Morg clutched the scroll tighter. “You have come!” she cried. Her wings rippled with pleasure, and the bone dragon skulking on the ground below her screeched. “I did not come after you when I found the Ember Scroll because I could sense the nightswans had been beaten and knew that you would be foolish enough to think that you could come after me and steal the scroll. But that is not how this works.” She raised her skull mask. “Give me the Stargold Wings.”

  Zeb, Oonie, and Mrs. Fickletint said nothing, though their hearts were pounding. But the fourth member of their crew was readying himself for a fight. Snaggle lowered his head and growled.

  The harpy smirked, then she glanced at her bone dragon. “Kill the Crackledawn dragon. I’ll deal with the rest.”

  Snaggle shook his crew off, ushering them behind him. Then he sent a flash of fire toward Morg and her dragon. But they dodged the blast and then the bone dragon was roaring back at Snaggle, and Morg was laughing from the ledge.

  Zeb grabbed Oonie, and they scampered behind an ice boulder. Mrs. Fickletint wailed from Oonie’s pocket because Snaggle and the bone dragon were locked in fight now—talons tore, tails smashed, and fire raged—and the crew knew that if they didn’t come up with a plan fast, they’d lose their most powerful ally.

  Oonie gripped Zeb’s hand and whispered, “When the time’s right, use the whistleslower. Then move fast, because Morg is much stronger than the nightswans.…”

  Before Zeb could reply, she was off—running blindly across the ice toward Morg, with Mrs. Fickletint screaming directions in her pocket.

  “Oonie!” Zeb yelled. “Mrs. Fickletint!”

  But Oonie kept moving, stumbling on toward Morg while the dragons fought on. The harpy cackled as Oonie tripped over a ledge of ice, and Zeb started forward. But Oonie picked herself up again and carried on. The harpy tucked the Ember Scroll under her wings so that she could use both hands to sculpt the air into a ball of black, fizzing sparks. Then, as she raised the ball in both hands, ready to hurl at Oonie, Zeb realized what Oonie wanted him to do.

  He snatched the whistleslower out of the purse, then blew gently. And at the very moment the ball of dark magic should have shot out from Morg’s hand and snuffed the life out of Oonie and Mrs. Fickletint, everything stopped. The ball hung in the air at Morg’s fingertips, the dragons froze, and Oonie and Mrs. Fickletint came to a grinding halt.

  But Zeb moved. Faster than he had ever done before. Morg was stronger than the nightswans, and she and her ball of terrible magic were already edging out of the whistleslower’s hold. Zeb raced across the cave and clambered up to the ledge Morg stood on. The ball fizzed and gathered momentum toward Oonie and Mrs. Fickletint, and the harpy inched a hand toward the Ember Scroll tucked beneath her wing. But in the nick of time, Zeb darted in and grabbed the scroll.

  It was warm to touch and the words on the parchment—the story of how the world began—rippled gold. Zeb flung himself off the ledge, yanked Oonie and Mrs. Fickletint out of the line of fire, then the whistleslower and its powers vanished completely, and the cave burst into life once again.

  The dragons fought, the ball of dark magic shot out and exploded against a tower of ice where Oonie and Mrs. Fickletint should have been, and before Zeb had even a second to grab the omniscribble to write an ending onto the Ember Scroll, Morg screeched. The cave trembled and then the ice began to creak and giant cracks split down the walls.

  The crew screamed as shards of ice rained down, then boulders broke away, smashing all around them. And in the commotion, the bone dragon changed tack. It tore away from Snaggle and charged through the falling ice toward Zeb, Oonie, and Mrs. Fickletint.

  “Burn them all!” Morg yelled. “The Ember Scroll will outlive fire!”

  Zeb, Oonie, and Mrs. Fickletint clung to one another as the bone dragon raised its horned skull and opened its mighty jaws. And then Snaggle blasted through the falling ice. He charged toward the bone dragon, and the jet of fire that stormed from his mouth tore Morg’s dragon apart until it was nothing more than a heap of bones.

  Snaggle drew back, panting amidst the crumbling cave, as he and the rest of the crew saw what he’d done. He’d broken the one rule dragons kept: Never kill another dragon.

  “You fool!” Morg roared. “Now even if you win, you will be banished from the Unmapped Kingdoms forever!”

  But there wasn’t a moment to think about consequences, because the cave was tumbling down, and even Snaggle couldn’t fight a falling mountain. He scrambled toward his crew and threw himself over them and the Ember Scroll.

  Zeb’s ears rung with the sound of shattering ice. Then there was silence for a second before the howling began. Snaggle drew back his wings, and Zeb’s whole body shook with fear. The cave was gone; it was a rubble of smashed ice now. But Morg was still there, her wings outstretched on the ledge, the only part of the cave still standing, and spreading out across the beach came a pack of wolves the color of ink.

  “Winterwolves!” Mrs. Fickletint gasped.

  Zeb raised a shaking finger to the sky as a dozen dark shapes flew through the sunset toward them. “And the nightswans are back!”

  Then the sea before the rubble of ice burst open and an ogre eel rose up. Zeb’s heart thumped. They were outnumbered and outsized and utterly surrounded by Morg’s dark magic. He fumbled inside his rucksack for the omniscribble while Snaggle roared flames to keep Morg away.

  Zeb glanced at the words on the scroll. It talked of the egg the very first phoenix had hatched from and of the feathers and tears this phoenix shed to create the Faraway and the Unmapped Kingdoms. Zeb scanned the story to where it stopped. To the blank space waiting for a
n ending. He put the omniscribble to the scroll, but no matter how many times he tried to write a new phoenix into life to save the Unmapped Kingdoms and the Faraway, he couldn’t. The pen wouldn’t write a single word.

  He looked up. “I thought Dollop said the omniscribble could write on any surface!”

  “Keep trying!” Oonie yelled as the winterwolves stalked closer and the nightswans swarmed above them.

  It was then Zeb noticed the small print etched into the side of the pen: GUARANTEED TO WORK ON ALL SURFACES WITH NO INK—UNLESS TEMPERATURES ARE BELOW FREEZING, IN WHICH CASE IT WON’T WORK AT ALL. He let the quill slip between his fingers as despair crept in.

  Snaggle roared again and again, but his flames were no match for Morg’s dark magic now that it was closing in on all sides. With one swipe of her wings, she turned each blast of fire to ice, which shattered and fell to the ground. The winterwolves howled in anticipation.

  “This is it,” Zeb cried. “This is the end, isn’t it?”

  He clung to Oonie and Mrs. Fickletint, knowing that he’d never see Fox Petty-Squabble again, that her promise hadn’t been strong enough to beat the dark magic lying in its way. Not even their Crackledawn dragon could crush it. Because Morg was brewing more magic between her palms now, and this was bigger and darker than anything she’d conjured before. The winterwolves broke into a gallop, the ogre eel hissed, the nightswans dived—and then Oonie stood up.

  She cocked her head to one side, as if listening for something. Zeb strained his ears, but he could hear nothing beyond the sound of the Midnights closing in. Oonie could hear something, though, and she threw her voice out over the ice.

  “One cold winter day,” she shouted, “a boy, a girl, and a chameleon rode a Crackledawn dragon across Silvercrag to try to save the world!”

  Mrs. Fickletint was weeping from Oonie’s pocket, and even Snaggle was bracing himself for what Morg was about to unleash.

  Oonie went on, despite the dark magic rushing in and Morg raising her arm high. “Their crew was small,” she shouted, “but it never gave up hope. And so, when the end of the world reared up before them, they called upon those keeping the last of the Unmapped magic going!”