Fox bit her lip. There was so much to remember when saving the world: staying alive, running fast, thanking others for saving you.
‘Thank you, Heckle,’ Fox panted. ‘You really were magnificent in that pit. Iggy would have been so proud.’
Fox wasn’t familiar with expressing gratitude, but surprisingly saying thank you had actually felt quite nice and not at all like a weakness as she’d thought it might. And, had she not been running for her life, she wondered whether this might have been an opportunity for a high five or perhaps a handshake or even a hug? She’d have to remember that next time someone charged in and saved her life.
Heckle seemed thrilled at the praise, though, and she twirled in delight before flying on ahead. Fox hurried through the undergrowth, deeper into the Bonelands, and, though it was a bit cumbersome running with a sloth and a satchel on her back, she was glad of her brother’s presence. It made the quest a little less lonely and frightening.
The snakes didn’t follow them, as Fox had feared, but she heard them send their hiss out into the mist. It coiled round her before moving on and she realised that there were words in the sound and they were intended for someone else entirely:
‘We send this hiss out to our queen
To tell her just what we have seen.
A Faraway girl is in our home:
It’s time now, Morg; time to roam.’
Fox put her hands over her ears and ran on through the trees. ‘They’re telling Morg to come after me, aren’t they?’
Heckle fluttered level with her, but didn’t say anything, and Fox didn’t bat her away. Both the girl and the parrot knew that Morg would be after them soon and they had to stick together at all costs.
Fox kept running, but the doubts were spinning inside her now. She didn’t have a plan – not a proper one anyway – so what hope did she and her companions have of finding the Forever Fern? She remembered Goldpaw’s words back in Doodler’s Haven with dismay: ‘Don’t get lost, don’t get tricked and be careful what you eat.’ She’d already been careless about what she’d given Fibber to eat and now it was becoming dreadfully clear that she was getting very lost indeed. The mist curled through the trees in great bands of white, masking the way ahead and behind and around her. Fox felt almost dizzy. How long had she been running and had she made any progress at all?
‘We could be going in circles for all I know!’ Fox cried out to Heckle.
The sloth nuzzled into her neck, as if to urge his sister on, and Fox kept running because the alternative – waiting for Morg and her Midnights to come and finish them off – didn’t bear thinking about. The mist thinned a little and Fox found that she could see the lie of the land a bit better now. She was on a path of sorts, which led through an avenue of bare-branched trees that loomed over her like the bars of a cage. And nailed to the trunks of these trees were gilt-framed mirrors.
Fox jumped at the reflection she saw in the one she was hastening past. It showed her face, her fear unable to hide itself, only Fox was older in the mirror. Much older. Her skin was grey and sagging, her back hunched and her hair straggly and grey. Fox grabbed her plait and pulled it forward. She breathed a sigh of relief to see that it was still thick and red. The mirrors were lying, obviously goading passers-by into thinking they’d been lost in the mist for years and years. Fox shuddered and hurried on past the last of the mirrors.
There were stones around the trunks of the trees now and they rose up out of the soil in rigid grey blocks. Fox peered closer. The stones were rectangular with words carved upon them.
‘Gravestones,’ she murmured.
Heckle swooped down onto Fox’s shoulder and shivered. ‘Heckle does not think it wise to read the inscriptions on the unhappy ending plants.’
But Fox couldn’t tear her eyes away because there, in front of her, was a gravestone that bore her name:
In unloving memory of
Fox Petty-Squabble.
Who died, on this day
– chewed apart by gloombeetles –
utterly unloved and alone and useless.
Fox whimpered. ‘Even the plants know I’m good for nothing and are predicting I’ll die rather than find the Forever Fern.’ Then she gasped, and the sloth around her neck stiffened, as they spotted the gravestone next to hers:
RIP,
Fibber Petty-Squabble.
Who died, on this day
– munched by a Midnight –
and stuck, in the underworld, as a sloth for all eternity.
Fox reached up a hand to clutch the sloth’s paw. ‘They think I’ve no hope of changing you back into a boy!’ she cried.
Heckle tutted. ‘Heckle knows never to trust dark magic or to take it personally.’
But when they passed the next gravestone –
Unlovingly remembered
parrot called Heckle.
Who died, on this day
– savaged by a witchcroc –
having failed his best friend, Iggy, who remained lost for ever.
– the parrot dissolved into a gibbering wreck. ‘Dying without finding Iggy?!’ she wailed. ‘Oh, just the thought of it breaks my feathery heart!’
Fox quickened her pace, despite her own anxiety, to prevent Heckle losing it altogether. They carried on through the trees, and Fox tried not to dwell on the fact that instead of buds or leaves dangling from the branches there were now tiny, clinking skulls. She looked down at her feet, to steady her nerves, which was when she noticed that the path was about to fork. She craned her neck to see that a little way ahead the path split again, then doubled back on itself. She scoured the trees and saw that there were dozens of paths all leading off in different directions. This was a maze of options and she no longer had any idea which path was the right one.
Heckle, still perched on Fox’s shoulder,
