The flickertug map may have stopped working, but Doogie Herbalsneeze had told her it would sense the journey of her heart, not her feet. And now that the wall around Fox’s heart had crumbled, she was learning, at last, to listen to it.
Fox tucked the phoenix tear back into her satchel, before hoisting the bag onto her back and trying, once again, to speak to the panther. ‘We’re on a quest to find the Forever Fern—’
‘—And Iggy,’ Heckle prompted.
‘—So that we can save Jungledrop and the Faraway from Morg,’ Fox continued. She scuffed her boots against the cave floor, suddenly feeling ridiculous telling a panther who had come to their rescue only moments before that she, a parrot and a sloth were in charge of saving two worlds and a kidnapped Unmapper. And yet this was the worrying truth of things.
The panther said nothing and Fox felt a familiar impatience rise up inside her. They didn’t have time for silences and secrets. They had a matter of days before Morg found the Forever Fern! So great was Fox’s frustration that she very nearly threw a tantrum. But then she remembered what Goldpaw had said about manners. She wasn’t altogether sure hurling her hands in the air, kicking the ground and possibly even shoving the panther would get her very far.
She took a deep breath instead and looked at the animal. ‘You saved us down by the swamp and we wondered whether we could ask for your help again. Could you show us the way to Shadowfall where we think the Forever Fern is?’
‘Heckle is really not sure about this…’
But Fox knew that she and her brother were in this together. Fibber thought the panther was Deepglint and that was enough to bolster Fox’s hope that it might be, too. Certainly the panther looked and acted as if it was wild, but Fox looked incompetent and very often acted it, too, and yet enough people had believed in her that she had tried to make a go of this quest. They had made her think she was capable of more than she’d even imagined, just by having faith. So it seemed to make sense that, if she believed enough in the panther that stood before her, she might be able to bring Deepglint back to himself, to make him remember what he was truly capable of doing.
Fox spoke again. ‘We were following a clue from a flickertug map, but I went and tore it because I was going about the quest like a maniac, so now we have no idea how to get to Shadowfall.’
The panther listened quietly, as if it was following what Fox said, but still it didn’t speak.
And this time Fox couldn’t stop her frustration spilling out. ‘Oh, come on,’ she muttered. ‘If there is really more to you than what we can see, then wouldn’t you rather save the world than fester away inside a cave that nobody ever finds?!’
Fox instantly reddened. She hadn’t meant to be quite so blunt, but when the weight of the world is heaped on your shoulders, and you’re used to bossing others about to get what you want, old habits die hard. Fox wedged her fists into the pockets of her tunic, just in case they accidently shot out and punched the panther in the face, and mumbled an apology.
The panther snorted and then – to Fox’s surprise – it turned away from her, walked back down the length of the cave and vanished through the gap it had come in by.
The parrot tutted. ‘Heckle really doesn’t think there’s any point trying to reason with the panther. Even if it was a Lofty Husk, whatever Morg did to it Heckle doesn’t think can be undone. And if it’s gone hunting for food now we’d better hope it catches something otherwise –’ the parrot winced – ‘it’ll turn to us for its dinner. We need to make a run for it while we have the chance and press on to find the Forever Fern and Iggy.’
‘But what if we help Deepglint find his way back to his real self, then he leads us to Shadowfall and helps us beat Morg?’ Fox replied, for she still couldn’t shake the feeling that the panther really was a Lofty Husk.
‘Heckle thinks this panther is wild and it very much looks like it’s going to stay that way.’ The parrot paused and glanced at the sloth.
‘What’s Fibber saying?’ Fox asked because she could tell, from the sloth’s imploring eyes, that her brother was thinking something that he wanted to share and the parrot had cottoned on.
Heckle sighed. ‘Fibber is thinking that if people can change maybe animals can, too.’
They talked for a while longer, desperately trying to agree on a plan, but before they could the panther reappeared.
Fox froze at the sight of it. The fur around its mouth was red and wet. There was dirt clogged between its claws. And, looking at the animal now, it seemed wilder than ever. Had she been wrong about it, after all? Were they about to be its second course?
Heckle shot off to the far end of the cave and rammed herself into a crack in the rocks beside the waterfall, but the sloth stayed
