Fox wailed in the tree as Screech’s voice, the last part of his magic to depart, rose up from the pile of grit.
‘You will never enter Shadowfall,’ he sneered. ‘The way in looks just like the way out!’ He laughed darkly, then his voice grew fainter. ‘And you will never beat Morg. Her reign is only just beginning…’
The ape’s voice ebbed away until, finally, silence fell.
Fox pocketed the key, scooped up the sloth and, with Heckle fluttering excitedly round her, she scrambled down from the tree. Then she ran towards Deepglint. Her plan hadn’t turned out to be a total disaster! By working together, they had found a way past Morg’s guards.
‘We did it!’ Fox cried. ‘We actually did it!’
Deepglint smiled. ‘But of course we did. Because, when individuals come together, worlds can be shaken.’
Before Fox could stop herself, she’d flung her arms round the panther’s neck and hugged him. The Lofty Husk wrapped a large paw round her waist while the sloth burrowed under her chin and Heckle nestled into her hair. Fox had never been hugged before and now she was being held by a panther, a sloth and a parrot.
Fox had always assumed that hugging meant things moved about on the outside – arms round waists, heads on shoulders – but it also seemed to be about things shifting on the inside. Because hugging was an overlapping of hearts, too, and that, Fox concluded, was what made it so wonderful. Her eyes filled with tears suddenly and she felt very glad that she was still invisible. But, when the camouflage wore off a few seconds later and Fox appeared with blurry eyes, no one said anything about it. And Fox made a mental note that crying during a hug didn’t mean that everyone ran away from you afterwards.
The group eyed the gate between the bone walls. There was a ruined courtyard beyond. A fountain still stood in the middle, but the water had long since run dry and the stonework was covered in algae. There were statues here and there, but most were half crumbled to the ground and tangled in creepers.
‘We’d better get going,’ Heckle said, fluttering up from Fox’s shoulder. ‘Who knows what state Iggy could be in or what Morg’s really up to, but if the Forever Fern is inside Shadowfall we need to break in and find it before she does…’
Fox laid a hand on the gate. She had presumed it would hold fast, another obstacle steeped in curses to stand in their way, but it swung open, creaking eerily as it did so. Fox felt the sloth shudder on her back, then she and Deepglint walked inside.
Fox looked about her. There was something sad about the courtyard. The statues – carvings of swiftwings, boglets, trunklets and all manner of magical creatures – might once have been magnificent, but had now been left to decay. A temple reared up against the moon. Perhaps it had been grand before, but now it was draped in moss and much of the stonework had flaked away.
There were steps leading up to a door that was closed and barred with a mesh of vines so thick they looked like chains. This, it seemed, was the only way into the temple because there were no windows and the bone walls that enclosed Morg’s stronghold ran right up to the sides of the temple itself, so there was no space to creep round.
Fox picked her way between the statues until she was standing in front of the huge stone door. She tried pulling at the vines that criss-crossed it, and Heckle also tried clawing and pecking at them, but they clung on with supernatural strength. Even when Deepglint barged into the door with all his weight, it still didn’t open.
The Lofty Husk looked at Fox. ‘I fear we are going about this the wrong way. What was it Screech said just before he died?’
Fox shivered as she recalled his voice hanging between the trees. ‘The way in looks just like the way out.’
The parrot sighed. ‘Heckle is so confused! Of course a way in looks like a way out! A door is a door – you go in and out of it.’
‘We’re missing something then,’ Fox said. ‘We need to think about this completely differently.’
She turned away from the door, less sure now that the answer lay there, and began walking between the statues. She paused before the one just inside the gate. It was smothered by ivy and moss, but even so she could see that it was a unicorn. She felt the sloth shift position on her back and noticed he was craning his neck towards the statue.
Heckle landed at Fox’s feet, then cocked her head up at the sloth. ‘Fibber is thinking it strange that the whitegrump’s eyes are glowing.’
‘Whitegrump?’ Fox asked.
‘Jungledrop’s version of a unicorn,’ Deepglint explained. ‘Though decidedly worse tempered.’
Fox started to pull the ivy and moss from the head of the whitegrump so that she could get a better look. And, when she did, the group gasped.
‘Its eyes are mirrors,’ Deepglint murmured.
The mirrors were smudged with soil, but when Fox looked into one she could still see her reflection staring back and the gate to the courtyard behind her. ‘The way in looks just like the way out,’ she said quietly. ‘It makes sense now… Clever Fibber for noticing the whitegrump’s eyes.’
The sloth gave a bashful smile.
Deepglint frowned. ‘What are you and Fibber suggesting, Fox?’
‘This mirror reflects the gate – the way out,’ Fox replied excitedly. ‘So, what if the way in is somehow through the whitegrump?’
Hastily, Deepglint brushed the rest of the dirt and moss
