Fox steadied herself. ‘You really think we should try and break into Morg’s stronghold, knowing what happened last time you went there, to search for something that Morg may, if she has enough dark magic on her side now, stumble across before us?’
Deepglint nodded and, beside Fox, the parrot ruffled her feathers. ‘Heckle doesn’t like the plan one bit, but she also doesn’t like missing Iggy one bit either, and he’ll be at Shadowfall, so we must go on even though everyone is terrified.’
‘If we leave now, we will be there by nightfall,’ Deepglint said.
Fox hoisted her satchel over her shoulder. It felt heavier than she remembered.
‘I’ve got a doubleskin mirror in here,’ she said, ‘although Goldpaw said it can only be used once. I’ve also got a phoenix tear, a flask of water, the rest of the nuts you brought us and my brother’s paintings, which I’m not leaving behind, even if you and Heckle think that’s silly. Because they’re important. As important as the phoenix tear.’ She picked the sloth up and wound his arms round her neck.
Deepglint looked from the sloth to the satchel. ‘Keep the phoenix tear safe; it called me to you and you restored my magic, so perhaps it can help your brother, too, though its magic will happen of its own accord.’
The Lofty Husk leapt down from the shelf of rock and walked alongside Fox, as Heckle fluttered ahead, back through the cave towards the entrance. Fox’s heart was thumping at the thought of the journey ahead, but, as she looked at Heckle and Deepglint and felt the warmth of the sloth on her back, she couldn’t help feeling that heading out into the unknown, knowing you had people on your side, might be a little like what it felt to be part of a loving family. And the thought made her heart feel a tiny bit fuller.
She tiptoed outside the cave after the panther, her skin tingling with fear. It was mid-morning, but the sky was grey and close. There were no tree frogs croaking or birds squawking. The place was quiet, as if holding its breath, and all about them the trees crowded in like crooked giants. Dead creepers hung from branches and moss crawled over everything.
Deepglint turned to Fox. ‘I will carry you only if it is an emergency. It drains my magic to carry another and I fear I may need every ounce of it for when we get to Shadowfall. So, for now, I want you to follow me because I will teach you how to run.’
Fox frowned. ‘But I know how to run.’
The Lofty Husk grunted. ‘Not in the wild, you don’t.’
He slunk beneath a vine dripping with spiders, each one the size of a plate, before skirting round a boulder. Then he quickened his pace up the slope, leaping onto upturned logs and slinking past shrubs fringed with fangs. The panther moved as if he was made of silk and though Fox felt self-conscious at first, as she followed him through the trees, she found that if she moved like him – carefully and watchfully, pouring every ounce of concentration she had into the ground before her – she moved faster. And more quietly, too.
Fox had never been particularly sporty back home, but then again she’d never had anyone to play sport with. She’d never kicked a football around with classmates or tried to throw a basketball through a hoop after school with friends. She’d never been on a bike ride with her dad or a jog with her mum. And yet here she was, forging a way through the Bonelands with surprising speed and agility because a panther had taken the time to show her how. She ran on, mirroring his moves, until they climbed to the top of a steep hill where the trees were small enough to peer over.
The Bonelands spread out around them while behind, to the south, Fox could see Jungledrop proper and in the far, far distance a single speck of greenery. Timbernook was still standing against Morg’s magic. But only just…
Deepglint shook his head. ‘If we don’t save Jungledrop tonight, Morg’s dark magic will swallow the whole kingdom.’
To the north of where they stood there were jungled mountains rising far higher than the foothills they were amongst now. And cascading down from the largest mountain, a few miles away, there was an enormous waterfall whose water was entirely black.
‘Shadowfall,’ Fox murmured. ‘Morg’s temple is somewhere in there, by the waterfall, isn’t it?’
Deepglint nodded. He pressed on through the trees that, once again, grew taller and more mysterious. Fox followed like a shadow, every creaking branch or snapped twig sending shivers down her spine, but she didn’t stop. She kept moving through the forest, her footfall soft but sure, as she, the sloth and Heckle followed Deepglint ever north towards Shadowfall.
They only stopped when a message from the fireflies, which now reached Deepglint because his magic had returned to him, appeared before them. They read Goldpaw’s words about Morg’s Midnights kidnapping still more Unmappers, despite the protection charms she and Brightfur had cast, about Jungledrop being in mourning for Spark and her plea for Deepglint to answer if he could.
They sent word back to Goldpaw
