Three monkeys looked on from the shelter of the understorey. But they had nothing in common with the silvermonkeys Fox and Fibber had seen leaping through the branches the day before. These monkeys were blacker than night and their orange eyes, which moved eerily from Fox to Fibber and back again, gleamed with terrible menace.
‘Fox is wishing Fibber would do the knocking,’ Heckle declared, ‘and Fibber is wishing Fox would do it.’
‘Fox is wishing the parrot would keep other people’s thoughts to itself,’ Fox muttered.
That said, as they halted before the door of the Constant Whinge, Fox was surprised that Fibber – usually so confident – wasn’t striding ahead into the shack to claim the fern for himself. In fact, he looked very much as he had done upon first setting foot in Jungledrop: scared.
‘Fine,’ Fox said. ‘I’ll do it.’ She reached out a shaking hand (for deep down she was frightened, too) and knocked on the door. She waited, heart thudding. Whoever was inside the hut hadn’t sounded pleased to be disturbed.
‘If you’ve come about a runny nose,’ the voice snapped, ‘I’m all out of neverdrip salts.’ It was a male voice and it sounded old and tired. ‘If it’s earache you’re worried about, then you’ll have to wait until November to be cured: I can only make eavesdrops when the eaves plants are in season. And, if you’re here with gout, maybe it’s time you stopped drinking so much junglejuice.’
‘We – we don’t have runny noses or earache or, um, gout,’ Fibber said. ‘We—’
‘We,’ the voice groaned. ‘There’s more than one of you?’
‘Three, if you include the parrot,’ Fibber said nervously.
‘How incredibly tiresome.’
There was a shuffling inside the hut. The twins waited hopefully for the person behind the voice to appear, but instead there came a clank of bottles, a fizzing noise and another short, sharp bang followed by more green glitter bursting out of the window.
‘Bother,’ the voice mumbled. ‘It looks like the Constant Whinge is here to stay for a while…’
There was a pause and then footsteps, slow and shuffling, advanced towards the door.
Fox held her breath. Fibber clutched his briefcase to his chest. Heckle muttered something about universal fear. The door opened.
In its frame stood a very old man. From his feather waistcoat, patchwork-leaf shorts and the raindrop tattoos on his ears, Fox supposed he was an Unmapper. But he looked far wilder, older and grumpier than the others she had seen. For a start, there were short tufts of weeds sprouting out of his ears and his long white beard was intertwined with leaves and twigs. There were even clumps of moss growing between his bare toes.
‘What do you wa—’ he began, but stopped short as he took in the two children who stood before him. ‘So the candletree prophecy has finally come true. The Faraway folk have arrived…’
Heckle cocked her head. ‘The old man had thought, after what happened to Ethel some years ago, that his work as an apothecary was finished, but now—’
‘Careful, parrot,’ the apothecary said. ‘I have a buttonshut potion in here that permanently closes all manners of things: doors, hearts, mouths and beaks.’
Heckle shut hers immediately.
The old man turned to the twins. ‘Eight years ago, I cast a charm on the Constant Whinge to make it invisible. I vowed that this shack should only reappear if the boglets who live along the riverbank felt it absolutely necessary. Over the years, the boglets have summoned it for several distinctly unimportant things. Like when the youngest of their kind got incurable hiccups and then when his grandmother started burping bubbles. And each time I successfully conjured a junglespit explosion to make the Constant Whinge invisible again.’
He eyed the broken glass outside his window. ‘Until today.’ He took a deep breath. ‘You are the Faraway folk the prophecy promised – here, I presume, to rid the kingdom of Morg. So why, may I ask, are you skulking round my shack?’
‘The Forever Fern,’ Fox said eagerly. ‘Do you have it inside?’
‘Goldpaw gave us a flickertug map,’ Fibber explained, ‘and when we asked where the Forever Fern was it led us to you.’
The old man was silent for a moment. ‘There was a time when I collected plants, ferns and berries from across the kingdom to cure almost every imaginable ailment.’ He paused. ‘But I have never come across the Forever Fern.’
Fox felt her hopes clatter down and she scowled at the apothecary. ‘Then the map’s stupid and the fern’s stupid and you’re probably stupi—’
Fibber cut in. ‘The map must have led us here for a reason. Maybe you’ve got something else inside that can help us?’
The man sighed. ‘I don’t dish out potions any more. Not since…’ His voice trailed off. ‘You’re wasting your time here.’
He went to close the door, but Fox stuck out her boot to prevent it shutting. ‘Listen up, moss-foot. We’re on a very important quest here and we’re not leaving until you cough up some leads on this fern.’ She barged past the old man into his shack. ‘So, what can you give us that might help, hmmmmm?’
‘Are all Faraway folk this rude?’ the old man muttered to Fibber. ‘Or just the under-eighteens?’
‘My sister’s not so much rude as –’ Fibber paused – ‘keen. There’s a lot at stake. We have to find the fern, you see.’
The apothecary sighed. ‘Since the fate of the world is hanging in the balance, I suppose you’d better come in. Not that I harbour any sort of hope that I’ll be able to help you.’
As Fibber and Heckle followed the man inside, Fox scoured the shack, looking for anything that might be of use to her. There were shelves and glass-fronted cabinets lining the walls and every single one held row upon row of glass bottles, pots, goblets and jars, all with strange-looking contents and labels:
SIFTED SUNBLOSSOM: CURES BALDNESS (APPLY DAILY)
GOBBLEQUICK RESIN: CURES FUSSY EATERS (CONSUME BEFORE MEALTIMES)
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