Heckle squawked in terror.
‘What do we do?’ Fibber cried.
But, at the very moment the first of the monkeys should have set its claws and teeth into Fox, there was a swooshing sound. Suddenly the twins were swept from the jetty, hoisted onto the back of something large and brown and very unstable, and whisked up into the sky.
The monkeys hissed and screeched below, but the twins were out of their grasp now. Fox clung on to a feathered neck while two large brown wings beat either side of her. It was a swiftwing. It had stayed behind to help them while all the rest of its herd had rushed off. And from the way it flew – clumsily and with a great deal of panting – Fox was in no doubt about which swiftwing this was.
Total Shambles.
She gulped as she remembered his faulty take-off the day before and yet here he was, risking his life to save them. With the map still urging them onwards, following the river just beneath the overhanging trees, it was as if the enchanted parchment had known that a swiftwing was the only way the twins would escape from the Constant Whinge alive.
Heckle settled herself in Fox’s lap and the girl was too preoccupied with what was happening below to nudge the parrot off. The monkeys were dragging Doogie Herbalsneeze away from the shack. Were they taking him to the Bonelands to face Morg, all because he’d tried to protect Fox and Fibber? Or did Morg want Unmappers like Doogie and Iggy for other reasons?
Fox glanced over her shoulder at Fibber. He was terrified of heights so, without thinking, he had wrapped his arms round his sister’s waist. And, though Fox would never have admitted it, there was something solid and comforting about the way her brother clung to her. But, as the twins locked eyes, Fibber seemed to realise how unnatural and awkward it was for the two of them to be in such close contact. He hastily moved his hands to the swiftwing’s back and curled his legs tighter round its sides.
Fox made a point of shuddering dramatically to show her brother that she hadn’t liked the clinging on any more than he had. Then, quite unexpectedly, she found herself asking: ‘Do you think Doogie will be all right?’
‘If we find the Forever Fern, he might be,’ Fibber replied.
And Fox wondered then if maybe Fibber was actually hoping to find the fern to save Jungledrop and their own world rather than himself. Back on the Here and There Express, he had said that, like her, he saw the plant as his chance to secure his place as a Petty-Squabble. However, given his odd behaviour since their arrival here, Fox wondered if he might now have other motives. Something had been changing inside her brother for some time and that something had been awakened even more in Jungledrop. Fox looked again at Fibber’s briefcase. What, really, had her brother been pouring his heart and soul into back home? Because the longer this quest went on, the surer Fox felt that it wasn’t being a ruthless businessman that fired him up. It was something else entirely.
Panting hard, Total Shambles flew on over tumbling waterfalls and remote lagoons, then he ramped up the heavy breathing and, with a triumphant squawk, charged up through the branches that arched over the river. The twins bent down over him to avoid a mouthful of leaves and then they were soaring – or, more accurately, flapping strenuously but still airborne – above the canopy.
‘Jungledrop – it’s – it’s huge!’ Fox stammered.
She had felt small down on the jungle floor, but up here, where the treetops spread out into the distance for as far as the eye could see, Fox felt absolutely tiny. And only now did she realise just how much of the kingdom had been drained of magic. Now and again there were patches of greenery in the canopy, but for the most part the jungle had been sucked of colour and life. Fox spotted a more ordered ring of trees, still alive and standing, some way south of them, and she supposed that must be Timbernook. But, now that the Midnights had broken through the phoenix magic that protected the Unmappers’ homes, who knew how long it would be before Timbernook fell into Morg’s hands, too?
Fox cast her eyes over the destruction. Somewhere, in all this chaos, she had to find the Forever Fern. She clutched the flickertug map tighter. It was still urging them on, towards wherever Shadowfall was, and Total Shambles seemed to follow its course as if he could sense the magic bound up in the parchment. And Fox knew that, whatever happened, she mustn’t lose this map. Finding the fern without it would be impossible.
The afternoon sun was low in the sky now, catching the clouds that hung above the canopy and wrapping them in gold. Fox ducked as Total Shambles flew through a low-hanging cloud, ruffled his feathers to shake off the moisture, then carried on flying above the sprawl of trees.
Fox had never ridden a horse before or, in fact, a bike. Bernard and Gertrude Petty-Squabble had said that activities outside school should be focused solely on formulating plans to make money and there wasn’t, as far as they could see, anything profitable about galloping around on a horse or charging about on a bicycle. Hobbies were a waste of time in their eyes.
Fox wondered if her parents would have changed their minds if it had been a swiftwing or a unicycle powered by junglespit in question. For, although Fox knew she mustn’t lose sight of the important business implications of this quest,
