Fox looked down at the parchment in her hand. It flopped uselessly, any spark of magic seemingly gone.
‘How are we going to get to Shadowfall?’ she cried. ‘The map didn’t want us to come down here. It wanted us to stay above the canopy and now it’s not doing anything at all! Crash-landing in the Bonelands was not part of its plan!’
‘Maybe not,’ Fibber said, ‘but Total Shambles is injured. What if the map is pausing, like it did yesterday when we had to stop for food and shelter, because it knows we need to help the swiftwing?’
‘Help him?’ Fox spluttered. ‘But – but we could be ambushed by the Midnights! Or attacked by Morg herself!’
She glanced at the injured swiftwing and tried to steel herself against feeling sorry for him, which was hard because Total Shambles was now whimpering and shivering, and it took everything in Fox not to rush to his side and give him a pat. Fox braced herself against such drastic action. Businesswomen didn’t do patting when the going got tough; they did stamping. ‘We haven’t got time for this. We need to get going.’ Fox shuddered at the plants around them. ‘Now!’
Ignoring his sister, Fibber reached inside the pocket of his shorts and drew out the little bottle of pucklesmidge syrup.
Fox shook her head. ‘No. Absolutely not, Fibber. We went all the way to the Constant Whinge to get that and it’s the only thing that will keep us alive if Morg’s Midnights close in!’
‘We’d be dead already if Total Shambles hadn’t saved us,’ Fibber said quietly. ‘Now we need to save him.’
Heckle, who was lying face down on the ground with her head under her wing, said in a muffled voice, ‘Heckle is feeling very afraid of the nightcreaks.’
Fox spun round. ‘N-nightcreaks? What are they?’
And then her pulse quickened as it became very clear what Heckle was referring to. Now that the twins were quiet, and Total Shambles’ whimpering had dropped to a shaky breath, Fox heard another noise in the silence. A creaking sound, like the bones of someone very old cricking into life.
Fox glanced at the trees around them and her eyes widened. The branches were dead and yet they were, unmistakably, moving. They weren’t thrashing about like the boughs of the tantrum tree had done, but the very tips, which ended in clusters of straggled twigs, were moving nonetheless with tiny, creaking actions. Fox gasped as she realised that these twigs looked uncannily like thin, bone-like fingers waking up and reaching out to the twins.
‘We need to find Spark – if he or she is even still alive!’ Fox cried. ‘We don’t stand a chance here without a Lofty Husk’s protection!’
Fibber shook his head stubbornly. ‘I’m not going anywhere until Total Shambles is healed.’
And, though the nightcreaks were reaching ever nearer and the flickertug map definitely hadn’t advised they hurtle down into the Bonelands, Fibber pulled the cork off the bottle anyway. He ducked as a nightcreak reached out its clawed hands for him, and poured the syrup over the swiftwing’s wounds. Total Shambles winced in pain.
Fox yelped and scuttled backwards as another nightcreak swiped at her, its twig fingers bristling excitedly at the prospect of a new catch. Fox rolled out of its reach, scurried a little distance away and then glanced over the edge of Fool’s Leap. Her stomach lurched. The drop was vast, a sheer face of rock plunging down into the shadows, but there was something else down in that ravine, too. Something that made Fox’s blood chill.
Sprawled on a ledge of rock jutting out a few metres down was a panther. And, in the moonlight, Fox could see that its once golden fur was blotched with red. She swallowed. This had to be a Lofty Husk and she could tell by the way it lay – its neck twisted, its eyes open and empty – that it was no longer alive.
Shaking with fear, Fox hurried back to Fibber. The nightcreaks were swiping left, right and centre with their straggled claws, but Fibber was keeping ahead of them, twisting this way and that every time they dipped close so that he could pour the last of the precious cure over the swiftwing’s leg.
‘The Midnights – they – they killed the Lofty Husk patrolling Fool’s Leap,’ Fox stammered. ‘Spark. He’s down in the ravine, I’m sure of it! And, if Goldpaw hasn’t heard from the other Lofty Husk who’s been patrolling the Bonelands, I think we can safely say that one has been killed, too!’ She jumped to the side to avoid a nightcreak’s grasp, then glanced at the empty bottle in Fibber’s hands. ‘We don’t even have any pucklesmidge syrup to save us when things go wrong now! We’re on our own in the Bonelands!’
Total Shambles struggled to his feet.
‘Not quite alone,’ Fibber said, leaping back to avoid a branch. ‘The syrup has closed Total Shambles’ wounds. I doubt he’ll be able to fly tonight, but he may be stronger tomorrow.’ He looked ahead, into the Bonelands. ‘We should keep moving. Get away from the nightcreaks.’
And, as if the flickertug map could tell that Fibber’s work here was done, it sparked into life, pulling Fox between two grasping branches. Fibber followed with Total Shambles limping on behind and Heckle fluttering nervously overhead. Then the map, despite a few close shaves, led them out of the nightcreaks and into a part of the forest where the undergrowth had risen up so high it was almost impossible to see the trees.
Strangler vines wrapped themselves round hollowed trunks, cobwebs hung like veils, fungi spread out like a rotten carpet and everywhere there were brambles. The thorns were larger than any Fox had seen back home, and their whiteness made them look more like fangs than thorns. But the map was tugging her on towards what looked like an opening in the brambles. A tunnel of sorts.
‘There.’ Fox pointed. ‘We should be safe inside that tunnel.