Jungledrop Read online

  Heckle, on Iggy’s shoulder, ruffled her feathers. ‘Iggy is wondering whether all heroes have bad tempers at the start of their quests or if it’s just the ones who arrive in business suits.’

  Iggy rapped the parrot on the beak, then sensibly moved the conversation on. ‘It’s a shame the swiftwings couldn’t tell you themselves that they’re on our side, but none of the magical creatures or the animals in this kingdom can speak. Except, I suppose, the Lofty Husks. The swiftwings are incredibly fast at running and flying, though, so we Unmappers named them to suit their personalities.’

  Fox chanced a look behind her. There was just one swiftwing left on the jungle floor and, after a few false starts and a considerable amount of puffing and panting, it launched itself into the air. It wasn’t graceful as the others had been – more winged donkey than flying stallion – but it wobbled this way and that until eventually it disappeared through the canopy.

  ‘We call that one Total Shambles,’ Iggy explained.

  Back within the boundary, there were dozens of unicycles flooding in across the Hustleway. Adult Unmappers, dressed in similar clothes to Iggy, hastened in from all directions. They were heading towards the same cluster of trees that the children’s unicycles seemed to be aiming for. These trees weren’t as tall as the ones Fox had seen beyond the boundary, but they were wider. Much wider. They had to be, to allow room for their beautifully carved doors, shuttered windows, winding staircases and jutting verandas. For these fifty hollow trees were home to the two hundred Unmappers who lived in Jungledrop.

  ‘Welcome to Timbernook,’ Iggy said. ‘I—’

  He was interrupted by a growl so loud and close that both Fox and Fibber tumbled backwards off their unicycles and plunged towards the forest floor. They fell, screaming, only to find themselves landing upon a plant built entirely of feathers, which made falling onto it feel rather like sinking into a mattress.

  The twins stood up shakily and came face to face with something large and fur-covered and incredibly sharp-toothed. It looked like a panther only its fur was gold.

  Fibber grabbed his briefcase, which had also toppled out of the unicycle, then his sister and pushed her in front of him. ‘Eat her first!’

  The golden panther had paws the size of dinner plates, each one fringed with giant claws, and eyes that were as dark and deep as a well. It narrowed those eyes at Fox.

  Panicking, Fox pointed up at Iggy. ‘Or you could start with him?’

  The golden panther opened its cavernous mouth and the twins shook with fear, but to their surprise and relief the animal didn’t eat anyone. Instead, it spoke, a female voice that was low and coated in a growl.

  ‘Children from the Faraway?’ The panther blinked. ‘Can it be?’

  The twins edged backwards until they were pressed up against a large tree. The panther took another step closer to them. Fox could feel the creature’s breath – hot and heavy – on her cheeks. But the animal didn’t growl or flash her teeth. In fact, she didn’t look hungry at all. Her large dark eyes seemed surprised and curious and perhaps a little bit hopeful.

  The panther dipped her head. ‘I am Goldpaw, one of the four Lofty Husks that rule the kingdom of Jungledrop. The rest of my kind are patrolling the rainforest to ward off Morg’s Midnights – Brightfur to the west in the Blazing Ridges, Spark to the east in the Elderwood and Deepglint up north in the Bonelands, but I know I speak for all of them when I say that you are a most welcome sight.’

  ‘So, just to confirm,’ Fibber said, clutching his briefcase to his chest, ‘you like growling, but you’re not going to eat us because you’re in charge here?’

  ‘It is never a good idea to eat heroes at the start of their quest,’ Goldpaw said. ‘That sort of behaviour gets everyone into a dreadful muddle.’

  The panther watched the twins carefully as if weighing up what sort of children they might be. Fox was used to being weighed up by her parents – their eyes were always judging and looking disappointed – but somehow it wasn’t the same with Goldpaw. Her eyes blazed with belief and it made Fox feel, for the very first time in her life, ever so slightly less useless than usual. And, once again, she found herself imagining what it would be like to be the hero who saved the world. But, once again, she found herself remembering Casper Tock and his poky little shop, so she managed to blot the thought out before she got carried away.

  Goldpaw frowned. ‘I did not hear a dragon roar to fulfil the candletree prophecy that help was, at last, on its way.’

  ‘I did!’ Iggy cried from the Hustleway. ‘The Snaggletooth Cave roared because the Here and There Express charged out of it, puffing steam and carrying these two heroes from the Faraway, and the whole thing looked just like a dragon roaring!’ He paused and then bit his lip. ‘I know I was out of bounds after curfew and I shouldn’t have been, but Heckle flew off again… and really it all worked out for the best.’

  Goldpaw drew back from the twins and turned her attention to Iggy. Fox was surprised to see that she listened as if she actually cared – as if small, irritating children like Iggy might in fact matter, after all. ‘The parrot that follows you around, repeating everyone’s feelings? You strayed beyond the boundary to find her?’ she asked.

  Heckle, who had been taking a nap inside Iggy’s hair, shuffled out onto his shoulder again. She preened her feathers and looked around but, before she had time to pluck out Goldpaw’s innermost thoughts, Iggy cut in.

  ‘Yes. I couldn’t leave Heckle out there alone. But… what I was really trying to say was that, well, maybe if I hadn’t found the heroes and got them up onto the Hustleway, they’d be over in the Bonelands by now – with Morg…’

  ‘You risked your own life looking after our guests, Iggy,’ Goldpaw said. ‘You have done the kingdom a great service – at a time when it needs it most – and so, under the circumstances, you are forgiven for trespassing outside the Boundary for Safe Keeping.’

  ‘Looking after us?’ Fox scoffed. ‘I’d hardly call a frantic dash through the jungle being looked after!’

  Fox glanced at Fibber, expecting him to say something equally unpleasant about their escapade. But he didn’t. He just stood there in his suit, looking small and afraid and decidedly less impressive than usual. Something about the panther, it seemed, was making him behave almost politely.

  Goldpaw’s whiskers twitched and when she spoke to Fox there was an unmistakable edge to her growled words. ‘I imagine what you are trying, very unsuccessfully, to say is: Thank you, Iggy.’

  Fox, who had never thanked another person in her life, looked blankly up at Goldpaw and then at Iggy.

  Heckle shifted on Iggy’s shoulder. ‘The one with the red hair is wishing Iggy and his annoying parrot – Oh! What rudeness! – would just clear off.’

  Goldpaw tilted her head at Fox, then she looked back up at Iggy. ‘Hurry home now – your parents will be worried about your whereabouts. I will take things from here with our guests.’

  ‘Heroes,’ Fox prompted. She had grown rather fond of the term after hearing Iggy use it.

  ‘We’ll see,’ Goldpaw said quietly.

  Fox felt an uneasiness slide under her skin. The Lofty Husk wasn’t throwing her weight around or being rude and yet it still very much felt as if the panther was in control of this conversation. There was a wild kind of power that seemed to ripple beneath Goldpaw’s fur.

  ‘Good luck,’ Iggy said to the twins as he turned to leave. ‘It was… quite nice to meet you both.’

  Fox made it a rule not to care what other people thought of her, but she could tell that Iggy’s faith in her and Fibber had dimmed in just the short time they had known each other. And she was a little miffed because it had felt pretty good having someone believe in her for once. As she watched Iggy dismount his unicycle, swing down between the branches and scamper through the glowing undergrowth, she felt disappointed that being adored had only lasted such a short while.

  Fox turned back to Goldpaw and was met by two dark, disapproving ey
es.

  ‘I will say this once and once only: manners matter, especially out here in the jungle. Should you forget to say excuse me when passing a tantrum tree you may well get walloped to death. Should you forget to say please to a whitegrump when asking for a favour you may well get gorged through the heart. And, should you forget to say thank you to an Unmapper who helps you, you may well find that the next time you are in a pickle they do not help at all.’

  Fox turned to Fibber, hoping he would say something, but her brother was listening obediently. Fox guessed he was still rattled by their fall from the Hustleway, but she wasn’t going to let a little tumble get in the way of her businesslike approach.

  She channelled her most purposeful posture and followed it up with a glare in Goldpaw’s direction that she instantly regretted because it made her eyeballs wobble.

  ‘You are very much not what I was expecting,’ the panther said. And then, after a pause, she added: ‘But, then again, apparently Casper Tock did not look like much and he went on to save the Unmapped Kingdoms and the Faraway from doom. So let us hope, for everyone’s sake, that you improve beyond first impressions.’

  Goldpaw began to walk, her enormous paws soft and silent as they picked their way through luminous blue plants with bells for flowers and shimmering purple ones dusted with glitter. The twins followed, bickering away to themselves as they left Timbernook behind.

  ‘Names if you please,’ Goldpaw said. ‘We don’t have much time.’

  Fibber muscled past Fox to draw level with the Lofty Husk and Fox could sense a renewed sense of purpose to him now that the quest seemed to be about to start in earnest.

  ‘I’m Fibber Petty-Squabble,’ he said. ‘The clever, organised one who’s going to find the Forever Fern.’ He jabbed a thumb in Fox’s direction. ‘And that’s my sister, Fox. I have no idea why she’s here.’

  Fox edged past a prickly red plant and scowled at her brother. ‘Shut it, Fibber. I’m far more likely to find the fern. All you’ll do is—’

  ‘You will find it together,’ Goldpaw said sternly. ‘Your chances against Morg and her Midnights will be greater if there are two of you.’

  The twins exchanged an appalled look.

  ‘What are these Midnights?’ Fox asked. ‘What are we up against, really?’

  The clanking of the tree frogs rattled through the jungle as Goldpaw led them on into a tunnel of shrubs that folded over them and were dotted with glow-in-the-dark flowers.

  ‘Monkeys,’ Goldpaw said.

  Fibber blinked. ‘Monkeys? Is that all?’

  Goldpaw growled and the flowers in the tunnel trembled. ‘Morg’s monkeys are creatures filled with such terrible darkness that the whole jungle falls silent with terror when they approach.’

  Fox frowned. ‘So you’ve seen these monkeys then?’

  The panther nodded. ‘Seen and injured them. But we cannot seem to kill them. They find their way back to the Bonelands after every raid and, when they return here, they are just as strong as before. There is something unnatural about these monkeys, mark my words; the very darkest magic is keeping them alive.’

  Fox raised an eyebrow as she followed Goldpaw through the tunnel. How dangerous could a monkey really be?

  But had Fox seen what was unfolding back in Timbernook at that very moment, had she seen the troop of dark shapes edging – for the very first time – into the heart of Jungledrop because Morg’s power had, finally, grown to the point of breaking the phoenix protection charms, had she seen the Midnights snatch Iggy before he made it to his home, had she seen them gag him and bundle him away towards the Bonelands, Fox would not have spoken so lightly of monkeys carved from dark magic.

  Goldpaw pressed on through the shimmering tunnel until it opened out and a large turquoise lagoon sparkled before them. Trees surrounded the water, their branches lined with flickering candles and dripping with wax, and Fox wondered whether these were the trees that spelt out prophecies to the Unmappers.

  There was a bridge, made of vines, that led over the lagoon to a beautiful temple fronted by a flight of paint-splashed steps and guarded on either side by what looked like two stone unicorns. A waterfall rumbled into the night on the far side of the lagoon and beside that was an enormous tree with windows of all shapes and sizes, large pipes leading out into the waterfall itself and a sign above the door carved into its trunk which read: The Bustling Giant.

  ‘Doodler’s Haven,’ Goldpaw told them. ‘This lagoon was once the busiest place in the kingdom. It was where we made the ink for the rain scrolls. Dashers would return from the jungle with satchels crammed full of thunderberries and they would be mixed with marvels – droplets of rain in its purest form collected in Rumblestar and carried here by dragons – by Dunkers to make ink. Finally, the ink would rush through those pipes into the waterfall and down into this lagoon. Then Doodlers would scoop it up into jars and use it to paint the rain scrolls on the steps leading up to the temple.’

  Goldpaw smiled sadly. ‘I wish you could have seen a rain scroll on a Doodler’s easel. The hidden magic behind your rain. They were paintings so majestic they made you gasp in wonder.’

  ‘Paintings can be that powerful?’ Fibber murmured, more to himself than to anyone else.

  Goldpaw nodded. ‘The rain scrolls are carried with the sun scrolls from Crackledawn and the snow scrolls from Silvercrag into your world every sunrise by our dragons so that you have your weather.’ She paused. ‘Or at least they were before Morg came to Jungledrop.’

  Fox glanced at Fibber. He was listening to the panther with a look of awe on his face. The hardness that had been buried inside him had begun to thaw, as Fox had noticed, and although it still came out now and again (when he was scared or worried or when Fox wound him up because a lifetime of regarding someone as a rival is hard to shake), Fibber had been softening nonetheless. And this was because he had a secret.

  It had all begun when his teacher, Mrs Scribble, noticed something in him last term that everybody else had missed. And, when a child who has been overlooked by their parents and almost everyone else in the world is finally noticed, they often turn out to be a very different person. Prior to his sessions with Mrs Scribble, Fibber would have scoffed at Goldpaw’s words, but, in discovering Fibber’s hidden talent and nurturing it, Mrs Scribble had also taught him to look at the world in a different way. And gradually Fibber’s tongue had become less sharp and his heart less thorny. But then he had heard about the Forever Fern on the train and seen the determination in his sister’s face and a familiar panic had set in. If Fox presented his parents with an immortalising fern, which was guaranteed to make millions, he’d be the one sent away. So, just like his sister, Fibber had concluded that finding it was the only option open to him.

  And yet now, as he stood before a place like Doodler’s Haven in the presence of a mighty Lofty Husk, he was overwhelmed by wonder. Suddenly he realised that the quest for the Forever Fern was about something far bigger than beating Fox and impressing his parents. It was about saving Jungledrop and the Faraway and all the people who lived there. And somewhere, deep down, he thought that perhaps it was about saving a sibling, too – about trying to patch up a relationship that, until now, Fibber had pretty much given up on. Maybe this was a chance to work with his sister, as Goldpaw had told them, rather than against her, and to come out the other end as friends rather than rivals.

  Fox, meanwhile, was experiencing no such revelations. She was simply feeling impatient with the Lofty Husk. ‘I’ve never seen any of these magical rain scrolls back home, or a sun or snow scroll for that matter,’ she said curtly. ‘Talking isn’t going to make the Forever Fern appear. I need weapons and a map.’ Her tummy rumbled. ‘And dinner.’

  She huffed. Being a businesswoman with a proper plan in place was proving exhausting work and she would have to remind herself to eat more on this quest. Her lunch back in the Neverwrinkle Hotel seemed a long time ago.

  Fox thought of her parents again and the look on the
ir faces when she came bounding back to the hotel with an immortalising fern that would save the family fortune! She tried to imagine the scene. Perhaps a little podium would be nice for when she announced her news. And maybe there could be an orchestra playing some sort of triumphant music in the background – Fox figured musicians were probably quite easy to hire when you were a billionaire-in-the-making. And then there would be the way her parents treated her. Maybe they’d hold her hand when walking down the street or offer to read her a story before bedtime or even remember her birthday. Fox’s heart swelled at the possibilities.

  But Goldpaw’s voice, which was level and strong and said nothing at all about dinner, brought Fox back to reality with a bump. ‘You have never seen a rain scroll because magic does not bang a gong when it arrives. It comes secretly and silently, without fuss or pomp. Dragons leave the scrolls in the overlooked parts of your world – deep inside caves, tucked into mountain crags, high up in trees – and within moments they vanish and you are none the wiser, though you have the weather your world needs to survive.’

  The Lofty Husk strode over to a nearby tree, stopped before it, then opened her mouth. Fox flinched at the rows of bone-bright teeth, but the panther simply breathed upon the bark and golden dust poured from her mouth.

  A satchel appeared at the foot of the tree. Fox blinked. Had it been there all along, camouflaged, or had the Lofty Husk conjured it out of thin air?

  ‘The greatest explorers in this kingdom have tried to find the Forever Fern – and failed,’ Goldpaw said. ‘I tried and so did the other three Lofty Husks. But we failed, too. Then the prophecy told us that only those from far-off shores can unearth the fern’s whereabouts and your arrival here leads me to believe that it is speaking of you two. But you will only survive if you listen to me.’

  The panther sat back on her hind legs, her large tail curled round her, and looked the twins square in the eye. ‘Don’t get lost, don’t get tricked and be careful what you eat.’