Jungledrop Read online

  ‘Heckle!’ the boy cried. ‘I hope you haven’t been rude to our guests.’

  The parrot cocked its head innocently.

  ‘Sorry about Heckle,’ the boy said to the twins as he dismounted his unicycle and propped it up against the trunk of a tree.

  He scampered down the branches as quickly and easily as if he had been scampering down a staircase until he landed with a thump in front of Fox. Close up, Fox noticed the boy had a blue raindrop tattooed onto each earlobe. But, other than that, he looked reassuringly like an ordinary boy.

  He chattered on excitedly. ‘Heckle repeats what other people and animals think rather than what they say – which isn’t usually a good thing. Last week she told a chimpanzee that his wife thought he was a—’

  ‘—Pig-headed know-it-all who never did his fair share of the washing-up,’ Heckle cut in matter-of-factly.

  The little boy giggled. ‘And for that you very nearly got yourself eaten!’

  Heckle pecked innocently at a leaf.

  ‘I’m Iggy Blether,’ the boy said to the twins, ‘and I can’t believe that I’m the one welcoming the Faraway heroes to Jungledrop!’

  Fox couldn’t recall anyone, ever, being excited to see her, let alone someone assuming she was a hero. It was quite a nice sensation and she very nearly smiled, until she remembered that smiling and being nice never got you anywhere, so she adopted her familiar scowl instead.

  ‘They say you get the best view of the jungle from up on the Hustleway,’ Iggy continued. ‘But who knew I’d see the candletree’s prophecy come true from up there, too!’

  Fox glanced up at the turquoise creepers and saw that there was, in fact, a strange sort of order to them. They zigzagged through the trees, connecting each one to the next to form a vast network and, in the far distance, silhouetted against the glow of the rainforest, Fox could make out dozens of unicycles nipping back and forth between the trees.

  ‘There I was, out beyond the Boundary for Safe Keeping, way past curfew because Heckle had flown off – again – and I saw the dragon roar!’ Iggy pointed to the cave the Here and There Express had come through and grinned. ‘I can’t believe you’re finally here to save us!’

  Fibber took one look at the cave behind him and bolted through the undergrowth towards his sister. ‘Dragon?!’

  Heckle coughed. ‘The one with the black handbag—’

  ‘BRIEFCASE!’ Fibber snarled before tripping over a log and falling flat on his face.

  ‘—Is worried he might throw up if the jungle starts roaring. The one with the red hair is secretly rather excited about the idea of being a hero, but is pretending not to show it.’

  Fox glared at Heckle, then turned back to Iggy. ‘What’s this about a prophecy?’

  The little boy’s eyes glittered. ‘Eight years ago, a few weeks after I was born, the Lofty Husks read a prophecy in the wax of the candletrees and now everyone here knows it by heart because it’s our last hope to be safe from Morg.’ Iggy took a deep breath.

  ‘When trees fall dark and start to groan,

  Morg has come to make her home.

  Her power will grow until it seems

  Hope is but a lost-long dream.

  Then listen for the dragon’s roar:

  Help will come from far-off shores.’

  Iggy paused for effect, but the twins looked blankly back at him.

  ‘The dark, groaning trees are the forest in the far north of Jungledrop which we call the Bonelands,’ Iggy explained. ‘This forest has been dying my whole life and we Unmappers believe it’s because Morg travelled from her old home in Everdark – a hidden land halfway between your world and mine – to Jungledrop and now she lives in the Bonelands.’

  Fox considered this. If the harpy was on the loose in this kingdom already, perhaps it was worth finding out a little more about her in case they came up against each other when they were looking for the Forever Fern. ‘So you’ve seen Morg in Jungledrop then?’ she asked.

  Iggy shook his head. ‘No. But we’ve seen her spies. The Midnights, we call them. It’s thought Morg is in the Bonelands because she hasn’t got enough strength to get any further. But her Midnights come snooping through Jungledrop most days after the sun has set.’

  Fibber stole a glance up at the night sky poking through the trees, then edged a fraction closer to the others. ‘So these… Midnights could be close now?’

  ‘No one’s sounded the alarm,’ Iggy replied, ‘so we should be all right, but it’s not like in the olden times when apparently the Unmapped Kingdoms were safe places.’

  He took in Fox and Fibber’s blank faces.

  ‘I forgot that you wouldn’t know anything about our worlds!’ he exclaimed. ‘You see, before Morg invaded the Unmapped Kingdoms, a phoenix ruled from a place called Everdark – so my parents tell me. They said the bird would watch over the four kingdoms, granting them their magic, then every five hundred years the reigning phoenix would die and a new bird would rise from its ashes to renew the Unmapped magic.’ Iggy sighed.

  ‘But all that changed when the last phoenix died and Morg sprang up from its ashes instead. Now every Unmapper lives in fear. She tried to attack Rumblestar first, and now she’s come here to Jungledrop. Her Midnights have been raiding the rainforest for as long as I can remember…’

  Fox looked around at the trees, plants and shrubs. ‘What are they raiding? Flowers?!’

  ‘For the first few years, it was our thunderberry bushes,’ Iggy replied. ‘The Lofty Husks said that leaving Everdark to come here would have taken nearly all of Morg’s strength. So she used the last drops of her magic to conjure her Midnights, then she sent them out to steal our thunderberries to restore her power.’

  Fibber scoffed. ‘You’re saying Morg got her strength back all because of a diet of berries?!’

  From her perch on the branch above, Heckle cleared her throat. ‘The one with the briefcase, and indeed the one with the red hair, are doing an awful lot of doubting when we really should be getting back to—’

  ‘—Shut it, parrot.’ Fox turned back to Iggy. ‘Finish telling us about these berries then, in case it’s stuff we need to know for our quest.’

  Fox wasn’t sure how exactly heroes were meant to behave, but she assumed being bossy, rather than being pushed around by a gobby parrot, was probably a safe place to start. Stamp or be stamped on and all that.

  Heckle ruffled her feathers, then muttered, ‘The one with the red hair has some very strange ideas about being a hero.’

  Sensing that Heckle was veering into trouble again, Iggy carried on. ‘Thunderberries aren’t like ordinary berries. They’ve always been sacred because thunderberry bushes are the most magical plant in all of Jungledrop.’

  He took a few steps into the undergrowth and pulled back the foliage to reveal a shrivelled blue plant.

  ‘We used to have thousands of them – blue bushes bursting with berries – before Morg sent her Midnights out across the kingdom to steal as many as they could so that she could take their magic. Thunderberries are so wild that our usual magic spells couldn’t protect them, and now all the thunderberry bushes are –’ Iggy swallowed – ‘dead.’

  ‘But what does it matter if a bunch of stupid berries get eaten?’ Fibber snapped.

  Fox was relieved to see that, now Fibber was well and truly out of his comfort zone, his churlish nature was slipping back out again.

  ‘Because these berries give us dye that we mix with rain from Rumblestar to make ink,’ Iggy replied. ‘And that ink is used to paint rain scrolls – the very ones we send to your world to give you water – and we haven’t had enough berries to make ink for eight years. I can’t even remember seeing a thunderberry in real life!’

  Fox thought back to the timekeeper plants on the train. If one year in her world was almost thirty years in the Unmapped Kingdoms, then eight years here would mean… She racked her brain, but she was hopeless at maths.

  Conveniently, though, Heckle had been reading her t
houghts again. ‘The one with the red hair is struggling with its arithmetic and would probably like to know that eight years in the Unmapped Kingdoms is just over three months in the Faraway.’

  Fox shifted. If the parrot was right, those timings tallied, exactly, with when the last of the rain fell in her world…

  Iggy sighed. ‘We thought the raids would stop after the thunderberries vanished. But then Morg turned her attention to our animals. Hundreds of them have gone missing over the last few years. It’s as if the jungle is slowly being emptied of life! And we think somehow Morg has been using these animals to increase her power. Every day, a little more of Jungledrop is lost because, when the Midnights come for the animals, their dark magic causes a chunk of our rainforest to die. Omnifruit trees are now nearly extinct and many of our rivers have dried up – our main sources of food and water are vanishing before our eyes as the jungle shrinks around us! Beyond these parts, the rainforest is a wasteland and the Lofty Husks have said we’ve only got a few weeks left before the magic here fades away, too. Your world and ours are doomed if you don’t find the Forever Fern fast because the Unmapped Kingdoms only stand if we pass on our magic to the Faraway!’

  Fox felt a niggle twist inside her. This kingdom really did seem to be in charge of sending rain to her world, so if she found the Forever Fern she could be the one to put an end to the water crisis back home. She’d be crowned a hero! She’d be valued and noticed at long last – possibly even loved! Her heart wobbled at the idea. And yet… She thought of Casper Tock. He had saved the world and what had become of him? Absolutely nothing. He’d ended up in a musty old antiques shop in the back end of nowhere. So, if Fox gave up her plan and planted the pearl from the Forever Fern in Jungledrop, no one would know that their lives had been saved because of her. And what good was that?

  Fibber, meanwhile, was eyeing Iggy distrustfully. ‘If you’ve had eight years of Morg causing chaos here, why hasn’t anyone stepped up to sort things out?’

  ‘We’re doing all we can,’ Iggy replied. ‘The Lofty Husks are patrolling the kingdom for Morg’s stronghold so that they can find a way to stop the Midnights. Everyone else is searching for another method of making ink for the rain scrolls. And the dragons are scattering moondust from their wings to keep what’s left of the phoenix magic in each of the four kingdoms turning. But the candletree prophecy says only someone from the Faraway can find the Forever Fern and stop Morg.’

  Fibber smoothed his tie. ‘I’d like to speak with these Lofty Husks.’

  Fox elbowed Fibber out of the way. ‘Forget the Husks. And all this talk about thunderberries and Midnights. I want to know more about this Forever Fern: how big is it supposed to be? What colour do people reckon it is? Does it bite? There’ll be no need to face Morg and her followers at all if this fern is found first.’

  Iggy reddened. ‘Sorry, I talk a lot when I’m nervous. Or excited. Or happy. Or sad. Or overwhelmed. Or underwhelmed. Or…’ He bit his lip. ‘I talk a lot.’

  ‘We hadn’t noticed,’ Fox muttered.

  Iggy’s face crumpled and for a second Fox felt a little bad for upsetting him. But her parents had got to the top by being horrid to other people, and not caring about the consequences, and so Fox assumed, as a businesswoman-in-the-making, that she would have to do the same. She wondered briefly whether most businesswomen had training in being horrid to others to guarantee their success, because there were so many things to consider when stamping on people’s feelings: tone of voice, the words themselves and what on earth you were supposed to do with your hands. Fox settled for balling them up into fists and wedging them, aggressively, on her hips.

  Heckle glided down from her branch and nuzzled into Iggy’s shoulder.

  ‘I should have known that heroes like to get cracking right away,’ Iggy mumbled. Then he drew himself up. ‘It’s definitely best if you speak to the Lofty Husks first. They’ll be able to arm you with whatever you need should things get out of control on your quest and—’

  He stopped suddenly and his eyes grew large and afraid. Had Fox and Fibber known the rainforest better, they would have realised, along with Iggy, that the tree frogs were no longer croaking, the insects were no longer whirring and the silver monkeys had fallen silent.

  An eerie hush had fallen over the jungle.

  ‘Climb!’ Iggy yelled. ‘Up the tree after me – now!’

  The twins, used to being chauffeured out of situations when the going got tough, stared at Iggy as he pulled himself up through the branches.

  ‘COME ON!’ Iggy cried. ‘If the jungle goes quiet, it means danger’s close!’

  ‘What kind of danger?’ Fox called up the tree. ‘Because I really need to get on with finding this Forever Fern and heading back home and—’

  A thunder of hooves sounded. The kind of noise you feel in the ground as a tremble before it fills your ears and rocks through your bones. The stampeding grew louder and the leaves on the trees shook.

  Both the twins flung themselves at the tree Iggy had climbed.

  ‘Get out of my way!’ Fox cried as she barged past Fibber and scrambled onto the first branch.

  Her tie caught on the next branch and by the third she’d torn her blazer. She was doing better than Fibber, though, who was yelling about being terrified of heights and – in his attempt to climb a tree at speed while still holding a briefcase – had lost a shoe. But they hurried on up the tree anyway, as fast as their inexperienced legs could take them, because the jungle was on the move and it seemed to be coming for them from every direction.

  ‘Climb faster!’ Iggy yelled. ‘There are spare unicycles parked up in the trees!’

  ‘UNICYCLES?’ Fibber cried. ‘I can’t even ride a bike!’

  But Iggy had already mounted his unicycle on a creeper and disappeared inside the foliage. Fox and Fibber froze on the tree they were climbing as the stampede of hooves grew louder, and left, right and centre plants tucked themselves away and animals hid. Was this a herd of Midnights rampaging towards them? And had Iggy abandoned the twins to be eaten by these creatures?!

  Seconds later, the little Unmapper zoomed back into view with Heckle on his shoulder. He was still riding his unicycle and behind him, following obediently, were two more unicycles.

  ‘Hurry!’ he called. ‘There’s dark magic nearby and, though the Midnights have only stolen berries and animals before, the Lofty Husks warned that they may start snatching people away, too. We’re outside the Boundary for Safe Keeping so the protection charms don’t work here!’

  The twins edged onto the bough where Iggy was waiting. ‘Just sit in the saddle and say Timbernook, then the unicycle will take you to my village where it’s safe.’

  Fibber gulped as he took in the drop below. ‘But what’s to stop us falling off and – and dying?’

  ‘Magic,’ Iggy replied firmly. ‘The unicycles are powered by junglespit, so you only need to say the name of the place you want to get to and they’ll take you there by the fastest route! You don’t even need to peddle!’

  The stampeding hooves advanced and the leaves on the tree they had climbed trembled. Fibber, wild-eyed with terror, barged past Fox and Iggy. ‘Out of my way! Stampeding things always eat the stragglers first!’

  Iggy shook his head. ‘Wait! You don’t understand! The stampeding things are on—’

  ‘—A mission to devour the whole jungle!’ Fibber wedged his briefcase into the basket on the front of his unicycle, climbed on, then shrieked, ‘Timbernook!’ and hurtled over the creepers into the understorey.

  Fox shoved Iggy aside, mounted the second unicycle, yelled her destination, then took off after her brother. Her unicycle darted along the turquoise creepers and zigzagged further into the trees.

  ‘The stampede has got nothing to do with the Midnights!’ Iggy shouted at the twins. ‘What you can hear are the swiftwings! They’re on our side and the whole herd is running because they’re just as scared as we are by the jungle going quiet!’

  ‘Imp
ossible!’ Fibber howled from the Hustleway ahead. ‘No one could be as scared as me!’

  Fox glanced down to see a herd of extraordinary creatures bounding through the rainforest: they looked like stallions, except these stallions had wings tucked either side of their bodies and eagle heads.

  ‘Once we’re back inside the Boundary for Safe Keeping, the canopy opens a little and the swiftwings will have room to fly off up to the clouds where they sleep!’ Iggy cried. ‘See – look ahead! There goes Sprinter, followed by Lightning, and I think that’s Flash with the silver wings.’

  The unicycles hurried along the creepers beneath the moonlight where the canopy opened and Fox gasped, in fear and awe, as the swiftwings rose up all around them – a rush of swishing tails, gleaming bodies, feathered wings and sharp, proud beaks. Then the trees folded over the sky again as the unicycles hurried on.

  ‘The protection charms will keep us safe now,’ Iggy panted. ‘Morg knows there are several phoenix tears in the Faraway. She must have Midnights on the lookout to drag any newcomers in Jungledrop to the Bonelands and that’s why the jungle fell quiet earlier.’ His voice brightened the further into the trees they went. ‘Dark magic can’t cross over into the heart of the kingdom where we live because these parts are still steeped in the oldest kind of magic.’ Iggy’s eyes glittered. ‘Phoenix magic.’

  Fibber twisted round in his seat as far as he dared and looked at his sister. ‘Have you still got that phoenix tear?’

  Fox thought fast. She wasn’t about to lose her only advantage in this quest. ‘I –’ she paused – ‘left it on the train.’

  ‘Typical,’ Fibber muttered.

  The unicycles kept moving, wiggling their way over the creepers, as the rest of the swiftwings soared up through the canopy behind them.

  ‘You might have told us at the start that the stampede wasn’t anything to worry about,’ Fox called over her shoulder to Iggy.

  ‘I did try,’ Iggy replied. ‘But it was quite hard to be heard over all the yelling and pushing.’