And in learning to care – for Fibber, Heckle, Deepglint, Iggy, Goldpaw and all the others she had met on her journey – the wall around Fox’s heart had come crashing down. So this quest hadn’t been doomed from the start, whatever Morg might say. Not when so many here in Jungledrop believed in Fox and had shown her kindness along the way that had kept the search for the Forever Fern alive.
Fox felt a tingling sensation tiptoe over her skin. And that’s when the faintest sound began, only just audible beneath Morg’s cackling and the throb of the fern’s dark magic. It was a tinkling sort of sound – the kind of noise starlight might make if you bottled a constellation – and with it came a familiar glow. One that Fox had last seen in Casper Tock’s antiques shop, but which had been quietly growing in the shadows of her satchel from the moment she had turned Fibber into a sloth and vowed to work with her brother to find the Forever Fern for the sake of the world and everyone in it.
Fox was bound too tightly by the fern to lift the satchel from her shoulder and peer inside, but she could tell with every fibre of her being that the ancient magic of the phoenix tear was stirring. And it seemed Fibber could tell this, too, because he was now twitching with excitement around her neck. The glow brightened until Fox was no longer shrouded in gloom, but bathed in a magnificent blue light. Seeing that light, so bold against the dark, filled Fox with renewed strength.
‘There is a magic stronger than yours!’ she shouted to Morg. Fox didn’t know if her voice would travel beyond the fern’s fronds, but she flung her words out anyway because they were all she had left to fight with. ‘You say that this quest was doomed from the start and that worlds are built by people of power, not by insignificant little girls like me? Well, you’re wrong, Morg!’
The glow was now so bright inside the fern that Fox was blinking into its light and the sloth was squeezing her hands tight, as if willing her on.
‘I used to think like you!’ Fox shouted. ‘I used to believe that to be kind was to be weak and that stamping all over other people meant you got what you wanted. I was wrong. To be kind is to be strong. And, if you’re strong enough to pull down a wall around your heart, you can fight with the strength of a warrior because then you will have learnt to love!’
The sloth rubbed his head against Fox’s neck.
‘My brother and my friends in Jungledrop taught me that worlds are not built by people of power!’ she cried. ‘Worlds are built by people who care! Kingdoms go on because kindness goes on.’ She took a deep breath. ‘You don’t know my heart, Morg – whatever you might say – because I care. About our world and about all the people in it. I carried on with this quest even when I lost my brother and I wanted to give up. I set the glasswing butterflies free even though it could have cost me my life. I believed in Deepglint even though I risked everything doing it. And I went back for him even though the hunchbacks were closing in because that’s what friends do.’
And, though she was still held in the grip of dark magic, Fox’s heart stumbled across something else half buried in the gloom then. Something sitting alongside the flicker of hope and burning with just as much strength: grace.
She threw her last words out as loudly as she could with the power of the phoenix magic on her side. ‘I will not let you undo what others have taught me, Morg! I will not let you force a wall back up round my heart! So…’ She bit her lip – she could hardly believe what she was about to say. ‘I forgive you for what you did to Iggy Blether and Doogie Herbalsneeze and all the other Unmappers and animals you locked away. I forgive you for what you are doing to me and my brother and Heckle and Deepglint right now. I forgive you for everything because kindness is stronger than hate and I will win this quest even if every single odd is stacked against me!’
Fox could feel her satchel shaking now. And bulging. As if something inside it was struggling to get out. Then suddenly the satchel flung itself open, flooding the fern with light and burning through the fronds as if they were paper-thin. Fox and the sloth tumbled to the ground and Deepglint and Heckle did the same either side of them as the fern shrivelled before their eyes until it was nothing more than a heap of black grit.
The satchel lay beside it, at the foot of the throne where Morg sat.
The harpy looked on in horror. ‘No,’ she murmured, leaping up so that she was standing on the throne. ‘What is this?!’
Fox gasped in disbelief. Creeping out of the satchel that she had carried for the whole quest was a silver fern that glittered and shone as if it had been dusted in frost. And suddenly Fox realised why the satchel had grown heavier and heavier during the course of their journey, and why there had been soil and leaves inside it when she’d opened it up back in Cragheart. All along there had been a fern growing inside it!
Fox watched, awestruck. The fern was growing fast now that it was out in the open. It set down roots that sprawled the length of the garden and then it grew taller than the throne Morg stood on, taller than the biggest plant in the Night Garden, taller even than the walls that surrounded the antechamber. It stood before them, a tower of shimmering silver. And Fox knew, without a shred of doubt,
