Fox frowned. ‘The map must’ve stopped here for a reason.’
‘There!’ Fibber cried. ‘In the river!’
Fox squinted into the sunlight to see that Fibber was pointing at something small, blue-skinned and pointy-eared that appeared to be swimming through the water towards them. Fox staggered backwards as the creature emerged onto the banks of the river and then darted, on webbed feet, behind a plant. It looked very much like a trunklet, only it was blue not green.
‘Bash it with your boot!’ Fox hissed at Fibber. ‘Or biff it with your briefcase!’
The creature peeked out from behind the plant it was hiding behind, then scuttled back into its leaves again. It did this three more times.
Heckle flapped down from a branch and squawked, ‘Heckle thinks that the boglet is trying to tell us something.’
‘Well, why doesn’t it just spit it out?’ Fox barked.
‘Remember what Iggy said,’ Fibber told her. ‘Magical creatures can’t speak.’
And, to Fox’s surprise, her brother bent down, almost gently, in front of the boglet. He didn’t say anything to the little creature. He just crouched before it – and watched.
Fox drummed her boot on the ground. ‘We haven’t got all day.’
‘The boglet is feeling terribly overwhelmed by the arrival of the Faraway heroes,’ Heckle explained, ‘so picking out its thoughts is proving quite difficult.’
The boglet stood, looking at Fibber, water dripping from its pointed ears, then it scurried back behind the plant. It popped out seconds later and then hid once more. Again and again it did this. The more it repeated the action, the more Fox wondered whether it was, in fact, trying to communicate with them, as Heckle had said.
‘Do you know something about the Constant Whinge?’ Fibber said quietly, tentatively, in a voice that showed he hadn’t had much practice at being gentle, but was keen to try all the same.
The boglet peeped out from behind the plant and nodded. Then it hid again.
Heckle parked herself on the ground beside Fibber. ‘The boglet’s thoughts are less of a jumble now and Heckle believes it wants you to know that you have arrived at the Constant Whinge.’
Fox threw her hands up in the air. ‘We haven’t arrived at our destination! Look – there’s nothing here!’
Fibber looked around, frowning. But he didn’t raise his voice at the boglet. He spoke calmly, quietly, so as not to frighten it away, in a manner so unlike him that Fox had to rub her own ears to make sure that it really was her brother speaking. Why was he being nice again?
Fibber watched the boglet a while longer, then his eyes lit up. ‘The Constant Whinge is invisible,’ he said slowly. ‘That’s what you were trying to tell us by hiding one minute, then appearing the next, wasn’t it?’
The boglet nodded.
Fox frowned. She had always been told by her parents that being nice was a waste of time and yet here was Fibber being nice and getting the information they needed. She tried to follow his example and threw the boglet a grateful smile, if only to urge it to reveal a little more, but her face wasn’t used to such an expression and she ended up grimacing at the creature instead. The boglet shrieked under Fox’s scowl and she felt embarrassed and cross and jealous all at the same time. Fibber was better than her at everything! Even communicating with magical creatures…
‘How are we meant to find something if it’s invisible?’ she grumbled.
Fibber turned to her. ‘I don’t know, but I think we’ve got to trust the magical creatures here. We won’t survive otherwise.’
Fox snorted. ‘You’re a fine one to be talking about trust. You’re always tricking people and telling lies.’
Fibber seemed about to say something, then he noticed that the boglet was shuffling away towards the river again. ‘Hey!’ he called.
The boglet turned.
‘I just –’ he paused – ‘wanted to… thank you for your help.’
The boglet grinned at Fibber’s words, as if it knew something the twins and Heckle didn’t. Then it hopped back into the river and vanished from sight, but, as it did so, a very strange thing happened. The sunshine streaming down between the branches hanging over the river seemed to shiver and blur. It was almost like watching a mirage, only eventually mirages give way to obvious, predictable things. But there was nothing obvious or predictable about what was left in the wake of this one.
A ramshackle wooden hut appeared out of thin air, balanced on stilts over the water. There were wooden steps leading up from the riverbank towards it and a sign over the closed front door, which read:
THE CONSTANT WHINGE JUNGLE APOTHECARY
Fox gazed at the window beside the door. Behind the glass she could see a row of bottles, all shapes and sizes, filled with berries, leaves and powdered bark. She couldn’t believe that she was moments away from victory! But, just as she was about to rush up the steps to claim the fern, there was a short, sharp bang and something green and glittery exploded out of the window, sending shards of glass flying.
‘I thought I had been quite clear on this, boglets,’ a voice inside the hut muttered. ‘I do not wish to be disturbed.’
Ignoring this outburst, Heckle fluttered onto the doorstep before the door. The twins followed carefully, watchfully, their eyes glued to the window in case the owner of the voice should step into view.
But their eyes were not the only ones fixed on the Constant Whinge. There were others watching from the surrounding trees, too. And, had Heckle and the twins not been so excited by the appearance of the shack, they might have noticed that the jungle had fallen quiet and there was a strange
