Fox waited on the path and Heckle waited on her shoulder. Then the parrot said: ‘Fibber can’t help us with a way out of this maze, but he wants you to remember all the people who believe in you, Fox. My dear Iggy, Goldpaw, Doogie Herbalsneeze – not to mention Fibber himself and Jungledrop’s most impressive parrot. So have faith in yourself and choose a path.’
Fox thought back to meeting Iggy, of how full of hope and excitement he’d been when he’d met Fox and Fibber on their arrival in Jungledrop. She thought of Goldpaw’s message through the fireflies saying that she and Brightfur believed in her. She thought of Doogie telling her she’d find the Forever Fern in the end. She thought of the way her brother had shown her he wasn’t going to leave her by putting his paw on her knee in the bramble tunnel and the way the parrot had saved her from the vipers. And she felt just a tiny bit braver than she had done before.
Fox blew out through her lips, then she took the path she hoped would lead north. But the further down it they went, the more the mist thickened and the more her doubts grew.
‘I think we’re going south again!’ Fox cried. ‘It’s impossible to know which way is north!’
She stopped dead in her tracks. There was a noise close by. A frantic, fluttering sound followed by short, sharp clinks. Fox tucked herself behind a tree, then she and Heckle peered out. Fox frowned. Hanging down into the screen of mist, from the branches of a rotten tree, were dozens of cages, each one the size of a shoebox. The bars of these cages were small and incredibly close together. They had to be because the prisoners inside were butterflies. Hundreds of glass-winged creatures who seemed to be desperately trying to break free.
Fox watched them beating their wings against the bars of the cages, again and again, unable to get out.
‘Heckle has seen glasswing butterflies in the past on their migrations through Jungledrop, but never before has she seen them trapped by dark magic.’ She lowered her voice. ‘It is a sin in this kingdom to imprison winged things.’
The butterflies flung themselves again and again at the bars.
‘Perhaps this is what Morg’s Midnights do to creatures who stray into the Bonelands,’ Fox whispered. ‘Trap them before taking them to wherever Morg is hiding so that she can somehow steal their magic…’
Fox knew that she needed to press on with her quest, but something deep inside made her hesitate. Something that wouldn’t have stirred within her at all had the wall around her heart not come crashing down earlier that day.
‘We need to free the butterflies,’ Fox said to Heckle and Fibber.
Despite their fear, the parrot and the sloth nodded.
Fox was terrified, too. All she really wanted to do was find another bramble tunnel and hide. But the butterflies needed her help and being on this quest, Fibber had specifically said, meant working with Jungledrop’s creatures.
She tiptoed out from behind the tree and although it was a fiddly task, and her fingers were shaking with fear, she pushed back the little bolts that secured the doors until one by one the butterflies flitted out into the open. Their glass wings were magnificent, like slivers of moonlight against the gloom, but the creatures didn’t disappear on being released. Instead, they massed round Fox and she felt a gentle ripple of air against her skin as they beat their wings. Then the butterflies flew, all together, in the same direction over one specific path.
At first Fox assumed they must be heading back towards Fool’s Leap, but when they kept stopping and turning, as if they were checking to see whether Fox was following, she wondered if the butterflies were actually showing her a way through this misty maze. Did they know, as the boglet and the swiftwing had done, that Fox and her companions were on a mission and needed all the help they could muster to nudge them closer to the Forever Fern?
She ran, almost giddily, after the butterflies with Heckle, trying not to resent the increasing weight of the sloth and the satchel on her back. After all, it was her fault she was carrying a sloth in the first place… The butterflies turned this way and that, gliding over fallen trees and swooping under hanging creepers, until eventually the mist was all but gone and Fox found herself at the edge of a very large swamp.
The water was grey and mirror-still now the rain had stopped. Fox looked up. The sky above her was shrouded with clouds so that everything seemed to be in black and white even though it could only have been midday. But being in the open once more made her feel as if she could breathe again. She turned her eyes back to the swamp. It was oval in shape and so large Fox couldn’t see where it ended on either side of her, but ahead, on the far bank, the forest seemed to rise up into tree-covered mountains.
‘You led us north,’ Fox whispered to the butterflies. ‘Thank you.’
Again, the situation didn’t seem quite right for high fives, or indeed handshakes and hugs, but saying thank you made Fox feel unexpectedly warm inside, and she hoped the butterflies knew how grateful she was. She never would have found her way out of the mist without them or – she reached up and patted the sloth – without her brother’s quiet faith in her.
There was a sudden sound and Fox watched as a cluster of flamingoes, a burst of pink against the murky scene, launched themselves out of the water to her left, then soared over to the far side of the swamp. The glasswing butterflies melted into the trees, no doubt back towards Fool’s Leap and safety. But Fox knew
