Fox and Deepglint hurried down a flight of stone steps to find themselves in a crypt lit by torches fixed to the walls by iron brackets. Shadows flickered on the stonework and a passageway led on ahead of them. Beneath the domed roof of the crypt, though, tucked into the shadows, were hundreds of cages. And from each one came the sound of someone or something sobbing.
Deepglint leapt off the final step and hastened over to the cages. Here, locked behind bars and starved of sunlight, were all those who had been stolen by Morg’s Midnights. There were smaller cages holding featherless birds and emaciated lizards, then bigger ones crammed with limping orangutans and shaking gibbons. Fox’s heart filled with sorrow as she looked upon them.
But it was the last row of cages that sent a jolt of guilt through her. Each one held an Unmapper captive and, at the sight of them, Heckle shot off Fox’s shoulder and pushed through the bars of the furthest cage, flapping round the Unmapper inside and calling his name over and over again. Fox’s breath caught. It was Iggy.
But gone was the boy who had burst out of the understorey on a unicycle, full of talk and life. He was thin now – terribly thin – and his eyes were ringed with dark circles.
‘Oh, Iggy,’ Heckle sobbed. ‘What have they done to you? My poor little Iggy.’
The boy held his parrot close. ‘You came for me,’ he said, his voice cracked and faint.
‘Just as you came for me all those months ago in the Elderwood.’ The parrot placed a claw on Iggy’s hand. ‘Heckle crossed Fool’s Leap and battled through a forest of hunchbacks to find you. She would never, ever abandon you, Iggy.’
With shaking arms, Iggy cradled the bird to him. ‘You’re the best parrot in Jungledrop, Heckle.’
Fox’s eyes moved to the cage alongside Iggy and she saw the old apothecary: bruised and frail, but still somehow hanging onto life.
Deepglint squinted at the cage. ‘Is that you, Doogie Herbalsneeze?’ he whispered. ‘After all these years?’
The apothecary’s eyes brightened a little at the Lofty Husk’s voice. ‘The very same,’ he said. ‘Nudged into making the Constant Whinge visible by the Faraway children.’ Doogie turned to Iggy in the cage next to him. ‘I told you help would come,’ the apothecary croaked. ‘I knew they wouldn’t let us down.’
Fox swallowed. Like Iggy, Doogie was only a prisoner here because he’d helped her and Fibber. And while there had been a moment in the Constant Whinge when Fox had softened a little, and listened to the apothecary’s words, she’d done no such thing with Iggy. So, although it was embarrassing to have to apologise now, when the rest of the prisoners were looking up to her – the hero who had swept in to save the day – Fox knew she owed it to the little Unmapper.
She knelt down before Iggy’s cage. ‘I’m so sorry, Iggy,’ she said. ‘I was awful to you when we first met and it’s my fault you ended up in here.’ She looked down at the ground. ‘I’ve been a terrible hero.’
Iggy smiled weakly. ‘Terrible heroes don’t rescue people, but you’re here, just like Doogie said you would be. And so is Heckle.’ He looked around. ‘Where’s your brother?’
The sloth on Fox’s back reached out a paw and waved.
Heckle cleared her throat. ‘The sloth is, in fact, Fibber. Heckle will explain all that later, Iggy. But, for now, know that Fibber is feeling very pleased to see you and he’s very sorry for acting like an idiot –’ the sloth squeaked and the parrot paused as she listened to the boy’s thoughts – ‘a total idiot back when you first met.’
Iggy smiled.
Then Deepglint voiced something Fox had been thinking as soon as she set eyes on the prisoners. ‘Morg has inflicted terrible evil on you all,’ he growled. ‘I can sense it in the air, but I can also see it in the way you look. There is something almost ghost-like in your appearance.’
Fox glanced at the apothecary. He was still Doogie Herbalsneeze, but he was ever so slightly fainter around the edges as if his very form was only just managing to stay in this world.
Doogie clasped the bars of his cage. ‘Jungledrop’s thunderberries restored Morg’s strength. But, to increase her power still more, Morg started drinking the tears of the animals and the Unmappers.’ He looked down. ‘Each evening Screech comes to the crypt and steals our tears for the harpy. If the giant ape comes again tonight, I fear for many of us that he’ll be draining the last of our magic and, with it, our lives.’
Fox shook her head. ‘Screech won’t be coming here again. We saw to that.’ She felt for the ape’s key inside her pocket and drew it out. Screech had been Morg’s jailer as well as the master of her Midnights, after all.
‘Quickly,’ Deepglint urged. ‘We don’t have a moment to lose. We must free the prisoners and press on to find the Forever Fern and stop Morg!’
Fox set to work on the padlocks dangling from each cage. The locks were all different shapes and sizes, but Screech’s key was imbued with a strange kind of magic so it opened the first few cages easily. Fox knew it would take hours – which they didn’t have – to unlock all the cages in the crypt, though, however fast she worked. But then the key in her hand vanished and with it the dark magic that had kept the cages closed in the first place. One by one the cage doors opened of their own accord
