But Morg was on the move now, so any answers would have to wait. The harpy leapt up into the Forever Fern’s fronds, which were as sturdy as if they belonged to a tree, and began searching frantically.
‘The pearl!’ Deepglint cried to Fox. ‘She’s after the pearl!’
He swiped at Morg’s talon, trying to stop her pursuit, but the harpy leapt away just in time and carried on tearing through the fern, plucking at its fronds and muttering wildly.
‘It must be here!’ Morg cried. ‘I’m so close to claiming all the Unmapped magic!’
The harpy’s words suddenly brought something back to Fox, something that Doogie Herbalsneeze had said in the Constant Whinge: ‘The things you search for are often much closer than you think.’
Fox dug her hand into the satchel. There was nothing left of the fern inside it now. Its roots were lodged in Shadowfall’s soil. But the phoenix tear was still there, flickering quietly, along with Fibber’s paintings. Fox had no idea how long the Forever Fern had been in her satchel, but she wondered whether somehow its growing had sparked the phoenix tear’s magic into life. So could it be, then, that the phoenix tear was the pearl? That she had been carrying it all along… ?
Heckle was now hissing at Morg’s heels and Deepglint was leaping up the fronds after her. Quickly, Fox raked away at the plants in front of her until she’d uncovered a small patch of soil. Morg glanced down just at that moment as she realised what was happening.
But, unbeknown to the harpy and to Fox and her friends, the little sloth had been making his way up the Forever Fern as soon as it had sprung up because he sensed that Morg would want to search it for the pearl. So, despite his fear of heights, Fibber had climbed into the fronds before the harpy had leapt into them and before even Deepglint had raced up after Morg. And, as the harpy made to leap from the fern now and hurtle down towards Fox to ruin her chances of saving Jungledrop, the sloth had the chance to do something magnificent.
Clinging to the frond directly below Morg, he swung out his paw at the same time as the harpy launched herself from the fern. He was a little sloth, but his claws were sharp and they ripped a hole in one of Morg’s precious wings, which sent her crashing off course into the plants beyond Fox. And, because of her brother’s quick-thinking, Fox was able to plunge the phoenix tear into the ground and heap the soil back on top of it.
There was a tangle of claws and wings as Deepglint finally caught Morg and pulled her back. Then the magic of the phoenix began to blaze in all its glory, the Night Garden transforming before their eyes as every single black plant withered and thousands of glow-in-the-dark flowers and shrubs sprouted up in their place.
‘No!’ Morg shrieked. ‘No!’
The harpy wrestled free from Deepglint and rose, stumblingly, up into the air on wings that were now torn and ragged from her tangle with the sloth and the panther. But it was too late. She couldn’t undo what Fox and Fibber had started. She could only watch as the garden flooded with colour and a ring of blue bushes laden with berries surrounded the Forever Fern.
‘Thunderberry bushes!’ Heckle squawked.
Morg screeched with fury as her plan fell about her in ruins and she realised that her only option now was to flee. Her wings carried her up to the wall, but the harpy knew they would not take her any further. She looked out, desperately, over the rest of the Bonelands.
There came a rumble as the walls surrounding the hall began to crumble, then the bone walls around Shadowfall fell as if everything was bowing to the ancient magic of the phoenix. Morg clattered to the ground, then gathered herself up to flee through the rubble on foot. But she hadn’t anticipated what would be standing in her way.
The animals and Unmappers that had been Morg’s prisoners in the crypt hadn’t hidden inside the avenue of trees as they’d been told to do by Deepglint. They had surrounded the bone walls so that, when they crumbled, the prisoners formed a ring round Shadowfall. They were bruised and weak from being locked up, but they were no longer wispy and faint, as they had been in the crypt. The Forever Fern had restored their magic! And flying above them, albeit rather haphazardly, was Total Shambles who had come back to fight on behalf of Fox and Fibber, after all.
Morg darted towards her former prisoners, hoping that she could barge a way through them. Orang-utans shrieked, gibbons beat their fists on their chests and Unmappers roared. But Morg knew, despite the noise, that they were weak and drained from their time in her cages while she still had the power left to destroy enough of them to forge a path through their midst. She rushed towards them in one last bid to escape.
And that’s when Total Shambles, who hadn’t been locked in a crypt and no longer had an injured leg, dived down.
He slammed into the harpy, battering her with his hooves and pecking at her wings with his beak. Fox had never really understood why the flickertug map had led her to the Constant Whinge if the pucklesmidge syrup had then been used by Fibber on the swiftwing so shortly afterwards. But, as Total Shambles fought Morg now, Fox wondered whether the map had known, all along, the path that needed to be taken to lead them all here.
Doogie had said the flickertug map showed a journey of the heart not the feet, so maybe the twins needed to lose Total Shambles for the wall around Fox’s
