‘Fr-free,’ Iggy stammered. ‘Free at last!’
Heckle, now perched on the little Unmapper’s shoulder, snuggled against his chin. ‘And we will right what Morg has done to you,’ she said. ‘You’ll see.’ The parrot fluttered from Iggy’s shoulder onto Fox’s.
‘You’re – you’re leaving me?’ Iggy cried. ‘But we’ve only just found each other again!’
‘Heckle didn’t imagine she’d be one for perilous quests,’ the parrot sighed, ‘and yet here she is, firm in the knowledge that she has not finished saving Iggy Blether or Jungledrop yet.’ She cocked her head at the young Unmapper. ‘Heckle won’t rest until she’s helped undo what Morg did to you and the rest of the prisoners.’
Iggy’s face filled with pride as he looked at Heckle.
‘Make your way up these stairs, across the courtyard and out of the gate,’ Deepglint said to the Unmappers. ‘Wait for us under the avenue of trees – it is too risky for you to navigate the hunchbacks and the nightcreaks and all the other creatures lurking in the Bonelands on your own.’
‘But the Midnights!’ one of the Unmappers, a young girl, whispered. ‘We hear them screeching – they’ll only drag us back here!’
Deepglint shook his head. ‘There are no Midnights any more, so there is nothing to fear. Fox saw to that. Now go. We will come for you as soon as we can.’
The Unmappers traipsed up the steps out of the crypt and the animals, sensing the chance to escape, followed.
And then it was just Fox, Deepglint, Heckle and the sloth in the crypt. They hurried down the passageway, Fox’s heart pounding at the thought of facing Morg at every turn, until they came to a dead end.
They skidded to a halt, then Fox pushed hard against the wall of stone, but it didn’t move. ‘The crypt can’t just stop! This was the way into Shadowfall – the only way in!’
‘Shhhh,’ Heckle hissed. ‘Your thoughts are buzzing about Heckle’s head so loudly she can’t hear the trunklets properly.’
At the mention of trunklets, the sloth tightened his grip round Fox’s neck.
‘The trunklets?’ Fox whispered.
They were silent for a while as Heckle listened. And then the parrot nodded firmly. ‘There’s a trunklet on the other side of this dead end, Heckle thinks. Seems he made a pact with Morg to pull off the biggest prank in trunklet history – to bar the way into the temple with an Impassable Wall – only now that he’s sensed the presence of a Lofty Husk on the other side he’s wondering whether he might have taken things a bit far.’
Deepglint stalked right up to the stones. ‘Listen here, you little wretch.’
There was a squeak from the other side.
‘You had better bite your way through these stones and open up a way for us or –’ he took a deep breath – ‘when I do come face to face with you, I shall eat you.’ He turned to Fox and said, in a whisper, ‘I never eat magical creatures, but threatening disobedient ones is another matter entirely.’
There were a few more squeaks from beyond the wall, then the sound of jaws working furiously and stone crumbling away. A little green head appeared. It stuck out its tongue at Fox, then, on seeing the Lofty Husk, carried on biting away at the stones until eventually a space big enough for Fox and her friends to step through opened up.
They rushed through it, leaving the trunklet grumbling behind them, and ran on down the passageway until, eventually, they came to another stone staircase. Fox took a deep breath, then she climbed on up it with Deepglint by her side.
She didn’t know quite what to expect at the top of the steps, but it certainly wasn’t what lay before her. They were standing in the corner of what might once have been an antechamber. There was a crumbling throne in the middle and stone walls that towered up on all sides. But there was no roof. Only the night sky, peppered with stars. And because a full moon shone down Fox could see quite clearly what had taken over this space.
A garden.
Only this was a garden like none Fox had ever seen before because every single plant was black. Vines as thick as snakes and as dark as coal twisted up the walls. Bushes laden with black fruits dripped juice the colour of ink. And shrubs with black-stained teeth snapped open and shut. But what made Fox shiver most was the enormous plant in the middle of the hall, the one that grew at the foot of the throne.
It was a fern. Fox recognised its distinctive fronds because she’d been keeping an eye out for them after seeing the fingerferns in Cragheart. But Fox could tell that it wasn’t filled with phoenix magic. Instead, the plant before her seemed to ooze darkness. It was black, like all the other shrubs around it, but its fronds moved – up and down, up and down – as if, just possibly, it might be breathing.
There was no sign of Morg. Only this garden built from curses.
Fox looked on in horror, then, in a tiny whisper, she said: ‘Could Morg have conjured her own Forever Fern?’
From Fox’s shoulder, the parrot narrowed her eyes. ‘Heckle can see the harpy has conjured something, but this is no Forever Fern.’ The plant pulsed away at the foot of the throne and Heckle glanced at the sloth just behind her. ‘Fibber agrees. He thinks this thing looks like it’s drenched in dark magic.’
Deepglint growled. ‘We must destroy it because with Morg growing evermore in power who knows what this fern could be capable of?’
Fox eyed the plant nervously. If it was filled with curses, she would need all of her strength to wrench it out of the ground. She raised a hand to lift her satchel over the sloth and off her back. It had been feeling heavier and heavier as the journey went on, which now struck
