Jungledrop Read online

  Total Shambles cocked his head at Fox and his eyes grew sad.

  ‘If I were you,’ Fox whispered, ‘I’d head back across the bridge over Fool’s Leap to where you belong, and where it’s safer, before Fibber lands you in all sorts of trouble over here.’

  The swiftwing looked from Fox to the sleeping Fibber, then back again at Fox, as if hesitating for a moment, then he picked himself up, his head hung low. He seemed to want to stay. Perhaps he genuinely thought he might be able to protect the twins, despite the risks in it for him and the fact that he was now lame. Fox felt a stab of doubt that she was doing the right thing. But then she imagined what it would feel like to be double-crossed by Fibber and the swiftwing and left alone in the Bonelands.

  ‘Go!’ she hissed. ‘Head home.’

  Total Shambles limped quietly out of the tunnel and Fox watched as he padded away into the dark.

  And so it was that Fox and Fibber lost an ally that night. An ally they were much in need of. Because in the Bonelands Morg’s Midnights were not just monkeys. She had other creatures bound to do her bidding here, too. Like the pit of hog-nosed vipers not so far from the bramble tunnel the twins hid in. They had sensed the arrival of the Faraway children and they were stirring now, their fangs drenched in poison.

  Fox woke at sunrise. At least she assumed it was sunrise. It was lighter than it had been the night before, but dawn in the Bonelands looked very different to how it had been on the other side of Fool’s Leap. Back there, shards of golden light had beamed down through the gaps in the canopy, but here, what light managed to reach the forest floor was a watery grey. Rain pattered beyond the entrance of the bramble tunnel and Fox’s thoughts turned to Total Shambles. Had he limped over the bridge and begun his journey back to Timbernook? Or had Morg’s Midnights found him? Guilt wavered inside her.

  Fibber sat up and rubbed his eyes. ‘Where’s Total Shambles?’

  Fox shrugged and tried to look innocent. ‘Must’ve wandered off.’

  Fibber scrabbled to the tunnel entrance and peered out. ‘Total Shambles?’ he whispered. ‘Are you there?’

  The rain pattered on in the silence.

  Fibber waited and waited until it became clear the swiftwing had gone. Then he rounded on his sister. ‘You said something to him, didn’t you? Something that made him leave!’

  There was an awkward squawk. ‘Heckle is finding the tension inside the bramble tunnel a bit uncomfortable.’

  Fox gripped the map, which had begun tugging her towards the entrance of the tunnel, and pretended not to hear her brother or the parrot.

  Fibber grabbed his sister’s shoulders and shook them. ‘What have you done, Fox? Total Shambles was our friend! He saved us outside the Constant Whinge! He would’ve helped protect us in the Bonelands!’

  Fox shook Fibber off. ‘Helped you, perhaps! But I’m not stupid, Fibber. Both of you would have left me as soon as you found the Forever Fern. You were in it together! So I’m sorry if I spoiled your plans!’

  Fibber threw his hands in the air. ‘What’s it going to take for you to believe me, Fox? I was telling the truth last night, but you’re so stubborn and closed up you don’t want to hear it! I’ve been trying to work with you on this quest, hoping we might get along a little better and save Jungledrop at the same time, but all you seem to want to do is ruin things! It’ll be your fault if Jungledrop and the Faraway are destroyed! Weren’t you listening to Goldpaw when she was talking about the rain scrolls, and all the Unmapped magic bubbling away over here without any of us back home even knowing? This isn’t some stupid race to rescue a family fortune. You’ve got to see the bigger picture: finding the Forever Fern is about saving the world and everyone in it!’

  He yanked the flickertug map from his sister’s hands. ‘I can’t let you get in the way any more. From now on, I’m in charge!’

  Fox’s face flushed with rage. How dare Fibber speak to her like that! She knew she was right not to trust his sudden change of heart. This proved that her brother wasn’t so different from before because here he was – once again – thinking he knew better than her.

  ‘You most certainly are not going to be in charge!’ Fox cried. ‘Goldpaw gave me the map!’ She reached out, grabbed the map and pulled – hard. There was a loud, sharp rip. Fox glanced down. In her hand was one half of the flickertug map. And in Fibber’s was the other.

  ‘You – you ripped it!’ Fibber gasped, his eyes wide with shock.

  Fox’s heart thumped. ‘It wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t snatched it from me in the first place!’

  She looked at the two pieces of parchment. They no longer glistened silver or bore the word Shadowfall or tugged in any sort of direction whatsoever. They were just blank pieces of parchment. Whatever enchantment had fizzed away inside the map before was now gone.

  Heckle hung her head.

  ‘That was our only way to find the Forever Fern!’ Fox cried.

  She glanced at Fibber’s briefcase. Despite what he had said about the quest being about the ‘bigger picture’, and not the family fortune, here he was all smug in the knowledge that he had something of value inside that briefcase should they fail to find the Forever Fern. As always, Fibber had come out on top.

  Tears rose up inside Fox and then she remembered the contents of her satchel. Fibber wasn’t the only one with a backup plan after all… She reached a hand inside and felt for the phoenix tear. Would the little marble tingle or flicker when she brought it out into the open, as it had done back in the Faraway? It was the only option she had left now. Then her fingers brushed against the snoozenut… And so furious was she with Fibber for tearing the flickertug map and ruining its magic that she didn’t think twice about the consequences of what she was about to do. She didn’t stop to think that if her brother fell into an enchanted sleep she’d be alone in the Bonelands. She didn’t stop to think that he might be telling the truth about them needing to save the world and work together. She didn’t stop to think that maybe she was making a colossal mistake. Fox was angry and she simply wanted to eliminate her competitor once and for all.

  She waited for Fibber to look away, lifted out the snoozenut, then began tugging the dusknuts from the shrub next to her. She thrust a handful at her brother, with the snoozenut tucked in amongst them. The nuts were almost identical so there was no way of telling the dangerous one hidden in their midst.

  ‘If we don’t eat,’ she snapped, ‘we’re as good as dead anyway.’

  ‘Fine,’ Fibber grunted. ‘But then we need to make a plan – fast – because it won’t be long before Morg’s Midnights find us.’

  Fibber ate the handful of nuts begrudgingly and Fox watched, her heart quickening. Would the magic of the snoozenut work immediately? Would her brother simply slump over and start snoring, then wake a month later, by which time – hopefully – she would have found the Forever Fern and made it home to claim victory?

  Fox held her breath as Fibber yawned, shook himself and then yawned again.

  ‘It’s the strangest thing,’ he said, blinking to keep his eyes open. ‘I just can’t seem to –’ he yawned again – ‘stay awa—’

  Before he could finish his sentence, a strange blue glitter spilled out of his mouth and danced round him.

  Heckle began clucking. ‘Heckle is suddenly feeling very worried!’

  ‘What’s – what’s happening?’ Fibber cried, clawing at his mouth.

  The glitter thickened and swirled round Fibber. Fox’s pulse drummed. Her brother, who had been so solid and real before, suddenly looked wispy and faint behind the blur of blue, and his voice was nothing more than a muffled cry. And then, in a moment of terrible clarity, Fox remembered that in the tree house she had only read half of the fablespoon’s explanation about the snoozenut. In most cases, sends consumer into an enchanted sleep for one month, it had said. But there had been more words after that: In rare cases… Only she had stopped reading because Fibber had interrupted her. Fox felt her chest tighten as the bl
ue glitter spun round her brother, holding him prisoner in its whirl of magic. Fox bit her lip. What had she done?

  There was a sudden POOF, like a clump of soot tumbling down a chimney and landing in a fireplace, which flung the buckles of Fibber’s briefcase open and sent the flurry of papers inside dancing about the tunnel. Then the swirl of blue seemed to unravel and Fox watched, in horror, as the shape of her brother changed. He grew smaller, much smaller, and decidedly more hairy, until he wasn’t a boy at all.

  He was a little, brown, shaggy-haired sloth.

  And had this sloth not been looking at her with Fibber’s big dark eyes, now ringed with black and surrounded by fur, Fox would have insisted that the snoozenut had done away with her brother altogether.

  Heckle blinked. The sloth blinked. And Fox raised two hands to her mouth.

  The sloth surveyed his tubby belly before turning his clawed paws over as if he, like Fox and Heckle, could scarcely believe what had just happened. Then he looked at the contents of the briefcase scattered about the tunnel. And, when Fox glanced at these papers, her eyes widened in surprise. The pages weren’t filled with numbers and graphs and complicated spreadsheets correlating with some magnificent business plan, as she had expected. They were filled with paintings. And these paintings weren’t just good. They were incredible.

  There were watercolours of places: the view over the River Isar from Fibber’s bedroom back in Bickery Towers; the avenue of trees lining the driveway to their school; the interior of the penthouse suite at the Neverwrinkle Hotel. There were oil paintings of fruit bowls, furniture and sunsets. And there were charcoal sketches of people: an elderly couple walking a dog in the park; the man who ran the bakery near their home kneading bread; and – Fox gulped – there was one of her and Fibber together. They were walking over Wittelsbacher Bridge in Munich and they weren’t wearing matching business suits and scowls. They were in jeans and jumpers and they were smiling, possibly even laughing, together. The wall around Fox’s heart wobbled.

  Fibber tried to speak, but a sound halfway between a squeak and a bleat came out instead. A single tear smudged down his furry cheek.

  And Fox knew, then, that Fibber had been telling the truth the night before, after all. He was tired of fighting with her and trying to be someone he wasn’t. And now it was as if, through his paintings, Fox was able to see her brother properly for the first time. He was an artist-in-the-making! Perhaps Fibber had hoped, one day, that he might make a living out of his art, but he’d followed Fox onto the Here and There Express because he’d known, deep down, that the paintings in his briefcase probably wouldn’t sell for much and he couldn’t return to the Neverwrinkle Hotel without a proper fortune-saving plan in place otherwise he’d be packed off to Antarctica. So, all this time, Fox had been worried that Fibber’s briefcase held a backup plan to trump her at the last minute, but really he’d just been keeping the things he loved close at hand, quietly pursuing his passion and hoping hard that no one discovered his secret.

  Now everything was starting to make sense. Fox thought of the snuggler chair back on the train. A park bench had appeared for Fibber because it was the perfect place to sketch and watch the world and its people drift on by. And then there had been Fibber’s fascination when Goldpaw showed them Doodler’s Haven and his words the night before about wanting to stay in Jungledrop, to ‘do what I’m good at’. Here there were Unmappers who painted for a living – no wonder Fibber had felt there might be a place for him! All the signs had been there, but Fox had been so convinced that her brother was out to get her that she hadn’t seen them.

  She thought back bitterly to all the nights she’d cried herself to sleep because her parents had made her feel that Fibber was better than her, more lovable than her, when really, just down the corridor in the same house, her brother had been worrying about the very same thing. And neither of them had ever known. Until now.

  Fox knelt down in front of the little sloth and picked up the drawing of her and Fibber. Her own eyes blurred with tears and the wall around her heart, which had seemed so indestructible before, trembled again. Fox had cried into her pillow many times back home, alone, but as she wept now she felt the world as she’d known it sway. Fibber’s heart had been filled with longing, just like hers – for the chance to follow his passions, be loved by his parents and laugh with his sister. All the secret things that Fox had yearned for year after year, too, but had been too proud and scared to admit.

  ‘What have I done?’ she sobbed. ‘Oh, what have I done?’

  Fox looked at her brother and her world shifted. Everything she had felt was so important before seemed to unravel and she saw their quest for what it really was, for what Fibber had known it was ever since meeting Goldpaw. Not a petty search to secure a family fortune and somehow win their parents’ love, but an odds-defying mission to save the world. Because, despite what her parents had led her to believe, all those people back home suffering as a result of the terrible droughts mattered. And everyone here at the mercy of Morg mattered, too. At the end of the day, stamping all over other people didn’t get you anywhere except stuck in a bramble tunnel with a brother you’d just turned into a sloth.

  And it was then that the wall around Fox’s heart finally crumbled, piece by jolting piece, until her heart was out in the open, aching and bruised and brimming with regret. She cried and cried, wishing she could take back what she’d done to Fibber, but not knowing how. The sloth cried, too, and Heckle had the good sense not to go trumpeting everyone’s feelings out loud because it was very obvious what the mood in the tunnel was just then.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Fibber,’ Fox sniffed. ‘I was cross with you, so I gave you a magical nut to eat. It was meant to send you into an enchanted sleep while I went off to find the Forever Fern. But there must have been a side effect which turned you into a…’ Her voice trailed off. ‘I should’ve believed you, only – only there was so much standing in the way. And the reason I didn’t tell you that I’m tired and miserable, too, was because I thought you were trying to trick me. I should have trusted you!’

  The words spilled out. It was easier, strangely, talking to a sloth rather than a human. The fur seemed to soften things a little. And the fact that the sloth couldn’t answer back – that helped, too.

  ‘You always seem so confident, so sure of yourself and your plans,’ Fox said with a sob.

  The sloth sighed and Heckle, sensing this might be a good moment to help, hopped onto Fox’s shoulder. ‘Fibber is thinking that he’s far from sure of himself. He wishes you knew how scared and lonely he’s been.’

  Fox swallowed as she looked at the little animal. ‘Mum and Dad have always told me that you are the one who’s going to save the family fortune. But it seems they’ve been telling you it’s going to be me. All along, they’ve been playing us, Fibber.’

  The sloth’s eyes filled with more tears.

  ‘Maybe you’re not as sure of yourself as you seem,’ Fox said to her brother after a while, ‘but you’re talented, Fibber.’ She looked around at his paintings. ‘Really talented. Unlike me. All I’m good at is messing things up.’

  The sloth laid a sad little paw on Fox’s knee. Fox flinched at his touch. It felt unnatural to have her brother, even if he was a sloth, reaching out a comforting hand. And yet there was something kind and hopeful in the way his paw rested on her knee.

  Heckle leant close to Fox’s ear. ‘Fibber is trying to tell you that, despite everything, he’s not going to leave you. He still believes you’re in this together and you need to work with each other to find the Forever Fern.’ The parrot drew herself up and said, in a louder voice: ‘Much as Heckle is rather fond of outbursts of remorse and grand scenes of reconciliation, she really thinks we should be making a move to find the fern, and Iggy, now.’

  Fox thought about the task ahead. They had no map – and Spark and Deepglint weren’t going to come to their aid – but there was still the phoenix tear, a glimmer of hope in the face of the impossi
ble. Fox drew it out of her satchel and the sloth squinted at it in surprise.

  ‘We can use this to find the Forever Fern, Fibber,’ Fox said eagerly. ‘I lied back on the Hustleway. I didn’t lose the phoenix tear. I’ve had it in my satchel all along! And, if the fern is as powerful as everybody says, maybe we can use it to change you back into a boy as well as to save the world and set everything right.’

  Fox held the phoenix tear up. But it didn’t tingle or flicker like it had done back in the Faraway. And it didn’t tug her in a certain direction as the map had done. She waited for a few more moments, just in case, but nothing happened. In fact, the marble simply sat there in her hand, looking distinctly unmagical.

  Fox’s shoulders slumped. How could they save the world when she didn’t have an ounce of talent inside her and they didn’t, it appeared, even have a grain of magic left on their side? She thought of the news coverage she’d seen back home: of stick-thin children in Third World countries gathered round empty wells; of parched savannahs empty of animals; of villages torn apart by war. She’d blanked all that out before. She’d hardened her heart because she’d been stupid enough to assume that she was above it, that being a Petty-Squabble meant you didn’t have to care about those less fortunate than yourself.

  And yet everything and everyone was connected, really. Doogie Herbalsneeze had known it about plants when he told the twins they kept kingdoms and worlds alive. Goldpaw had known it about Jungledrop’s magical creatures when she insisted the twins treat them with respect. Fibber had discovered it on their quest when he had urged Fox to work with him for the sake of everyone suffering at the hands of Morg.

  And now, as Fox realised it, too, fresh tears trickled down her cheeks and splashed onto her satchel. She turned to her companions. The sloth was looking very forlorn indeed and even Heckle seemed nervous about stepping outside the tunnel, despite her words about pressing on. Fox did her best to wipe away her tears. She had always been taught that success came to pushy individuals, not motley crews made up of parrots and sloths, but now, like most other things she’d been told by her parents, she needed to prove that theory wrong.