It would be so difficult to leave her alone. He felt terrible about his heart, torn between loving in two places.
‘Right. I’ll set off this evening,’ said Firedrake. ‘And I’ll ask Tattoo if he’ll come with me. I just hope this ache in my breast will be a reliable guide.’
By now the pain did indeed feel as if it were tugging at him. It was like having a fish hook in his heart.
‘The stone-dwarves say that dragons used to be able to find their riders over distances of thousands of miles,’ said Maia. ‘The scale will be like a magnet attracting you. After all, it’s a part of you.’
‘Attract you? Where to?’
Sorrel had found good pickings. She sat down between Firedrake’s paws and sniffed at a whitish mushroom hardly any bigger than a cherry. ‘Stone,’ she muttered to herself. ‘They all smell of stone. We need rain!’
‘And when you had rain, you said it made the mushrooms watery.’ Firedrake sat up. ‘Maybe you’ll like the mushrooms in Vietnam better. You can soon find out.’
Barnabas was searching for the phoenix in Vietnam, wasn’t he? Well, wherever he was, the scale would tell him the way.
‘Vietnam? Oh no! Wait a moment!’
Of course, Sorrel came after him when he made for the mouth of the cave.
‘It’s the boy, isn’t it?’
She jumped into his way, and pointed accusingly at the dark patch where his scale was missing. ‘I knew it was a daft idea! Daft, daft, daft! We’ve only just arrived back here. After flying halfway around the world twice!’
‘You’re welcome to stay here. Maia thought I might take Tattoo with me.’
‘Tattoo?’
That deprived Sorrel of her powers of speech, something as unusual as if she had lost her appetite.
Outside the cave, the sun was very low in the sky over the mountains. It would soon be dark. The best time to start flying.
‘Wait, Firedrake! You don’t mean that seriously, do you?’ Sorrel could talk again after all. ‘He doesn’t even have a brownie!’ she stammered as she hurried to Firedrake’s side. ‘And he doesn’t know anything about the world! He doesn’t know a single thing! He’s been inside a stone coat for ever!’
‘Well, what did we know about the world before we made our way here? A misty valley and the walls of a cave! It will do him good to see a few other places.’
Tattoo was standing on a rocky ledge, looking at the distant mountains as they disappeared into the evening haze. Oh yes, he had certainly heard Maia’s suggestion.
‘Okay, okay, I’m coming with you!’ Sorrel clung to one of Firedrake’s legs to make sure he was listening to her. ‘But Tattoo stays here! He’ll only get in our way. And I’m not looking after him! My paws are more than full enough being your brownie!’
‘Yes, I always forget how much work I make for you,’ replied Firedrake as he walked towards Tattoo. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll explain that you’re not going to search his scales or sing him lullabies.’
Tattoo turned to them.
He was trying as hard as he could to look nonchalant, but Firedrake was sure his heart was racing with expectation. He remembered the feeling so well: a wish to fly away, towards the horizon that he had stared at so often, until his eyes hurt and his wings longed to fly on and on, not just in a few circles above familiar valleys and mountains. No, he’d wanted to cross strange seas, landscapes he had never seen before, carried by winds that smelled of unknown flowers and fruits…
Firedrake stopped in front of the young dragon.
‘I have to go in search of a friend,’ he said, ignoring Sorrel’s sigh of disapproval. ‘I’m afraid he needs help. The others here are needed to guard the nests, but…’
He got no further.
‘Yes,’ cried Tattoo. ‘Yes, of course I’ll go with you. I’ll go wherever you’re flying.’
Sorrel heaved an even deeper sigh.
‘Good. I’m setting off tonight,’ said Firedrake. ‘As soon as I’ve told the others. But I must warn you, it may be dangerous!’
‘As if that would be anything new!’ murmured Sorrel, but neither of the dragons took any notice of her.
‘I’ll go wherever you’re flying,’ Tattoo repeated.
Yes, Firedrake liked him a lot.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Gone!
Gone – flitted away,
Taken the stars from the night,
and the sun From the day!
Gone, and a cloud in my heart.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, ‘Gone’
They’d gone! However low Lola flew through the dense jungle – there was no sign of Barnabas, Ben or Hothbrodd. And it would be really difficult to overlook Hothbrodd.
Twigleg heard his own heart sighing and lamenting, as if the alchemist who made him had implanted a living thing in his narrow chest. He imagined his master torn apart by wildcats, or all of them snatched away by the venom of a snake. But then they’d have found them dead, wouldn’t they? Oh, his mind was useless when he was worried about Ben! And in addition Lola was flying so low again that he was in constant fear of crashing into a tree trunk! They scared a lesser mouse-deer, and almost ended up between the fangs hidden in its deceptively harmless-looking mouth. A marbled cat tried to fish them out of the air with its paw. And then there was the green pit viper that almost got its venomous teeth into the wing of Lola’s plane!
Twigleg would have put up with all that uncomplainingly, if only Lola’s hair-raising flying manoeuvres had succeeded in finding Ben and the others. He was staring out of the plane window so hard that it wouldn’t have surprised him if his eyes had popped out of his head. But all he saw was greenery! He never wanted to set eyes on anything green again!
They were gone. Gone! Swallowed up. Eaten. Digested and disappeared without trace. How he cursed the Pegasus and those eggs! Who needed flying horses? Or griffins… monkeys and apes… snakes… trees? His master was all he needed. He clutched his breast. Had his heart already broken? No, it was still beating. That meant the boy wasn’t dead! Yes. Yes, he just had to stay alive himself, and then so would Ben. Did it work that way around?
Even Lola was looking anxious by now – or at least that was how Twigleg interpreted her twitching whiskers. And then it began to rain again! If the torrents falling on the dense layers of leaves could be called rain. The water dropped and dripped, lashed the fuselage, and ran down the panes so fast that Lola, cursing, had to keep her nose pressed to the Plexiglas if she was to see anything at all. Suddenly she let out a shrill whistle (an expression of great alarm in rat language), and wrenched the plane over to the left. Twigleg saw red feathers and felt a dull impact. The aircraft dipped forward, but Lola pulled it up before it could reach the ground. Then she steered a lurching course through some dripping wet fern fronds, and crash-landed on a cushion of moss. The plane sank into it up to its windows.
Red feathers. At first Twigleg was so dazed by the near-crash that he thought they had collided with some kind of feathered jungle traffic light! Only when a parrot landed beside them, drenched through, did it dawn on Twigleg who this was. By the test tube that had borne him – it was Me-Rah! The rain gave her plumage the deceptive camouflage colouring of a half-ripe blackberry.
‘Oh, I’m so, so sorry!’ she squawked, spreading her wings in agitation. ‘I only wanted to stop you, but you were going so fast!’
Twigleg gave Lola a reproachful glance, but she had eyes only for her plane, which looked the worse for wear. Luckily the moss had saved it from major damage. While the rat cleaned leaves and bits of chopped liana off her propeller, Twigleg tried to understand Me-Rah’s excited chattering. What she was saying didn’t sound quite as terrible as the scenarios that he had been envisaging, but it was still bad enough. Me-Rah had found her flock, only to hear from the other parrots of two humans and a green giant who, apparently, had been dragged away by a gang of monkeys. Monkeys working for the lion-birds.
‘Kidnapper monkeys?’ said Lola in annoyance, when Me-R
ah had finished her story. ‘What sort of island is this? Full of traps that snap shut and rat poison? Do the monkeys around here by any chance also eat human flesh? If so, you might have mentioned it before!’
Twigleg almost swallowed his own tongue in horror. But Me-Rah energetically denied that the monkeys of Pulau Bulu showed any interest in human flesh. She added, sharply, that unfortunately the same couldn’t be said of the situation the other way around.
‘Well, at least that’s something,’ said Lola. ‘So now we can only hope that they haven’t already fed our friends to the lion-birds. I’m afraid those lion-birds would enjoy any kind of meat.’
The idea made Twigleg so weak at the knees that he had to hold on to the wings of Lola’s plane.
When he asked Me-Rah whether she could show them where their friends had been taken, the parrot looked almost as scared as she had in the temple of Garuda. Then, resigned to her fate, she rolled her eyes and nodded.
Lola’s plane spluttered and groaned as she started the engine. But it finally rose into the air and followed Me-Rah through the jungle that was still dripping wet with rain.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Captured
Hoping for the best, prepared for the worst,
and unsurprised by anything in between.
Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Wherever they were, it seemed that they had reached their destination. The monkeys untied Ben and threw him into something that swayed back and forth so menacingly that he felt around for something to hold on to. He got his fingers into twigs woven together, and when he took the blindfold off he saw that he was kneeling in a round cage like a basket. Beside him, Barnabas was polishing his glasses as if he wanted as clear a view of their unfortunate situation as possible, and Hothbrodd, cursing, bumped his head when he tried to sit up. As far as Ben could make out through the woven twigs that surrounded him, their basket prison was hanging from the roof of an enormous nest made of mud. He counted over twenty such baskets of various sizes. One of the monkeys who had brought them here pushed two lorises into a basket not much larger than a calabash, and then, like his companions, he swung himself up to the wide opening leading to the outside air on a liana. The basketwork of the cages consisted of twigs only loosely interwoven, even under his feet, and far below Ben saw three dog-sized creatures with scorpion bodies and the heads of jackals. They were passing the time by attacking one another with their pincers.
‘Damn it all, Greenbloom! Dammit dammit dammit!’ cursed Hothbrodd, looking at the twigs that imprisoned them. ‘Why did I let myself be persuaded to come to this island with you? May the frost giants carry you off!’ He flung himself against the interwoven twigs so angrily that the cage creaked dangerously, and Ben glanced in alarm at the scorpion creatures beneath them. ‘A troll doesn’t belong in a cage! Certainly not a cage hanging in the air!’
‘I’m really sorry, Hothbrodd,’ replied Barnabas, but he wasn’t looking at the troll as he spoke, he was staring, like Ben, at the scorpions down below.
‘Jackal scorpions! Fascinating! They’re even larger than I imagined them. And the armoured exoskeleton and sting really are made of gold! The griffins must have brought them from Mesopotamia with them! They served the kings there as guards and hounds for hunting. These specimens may well be over two thousand years old!’
‘Oh yes? And what’s their favourite food? Let me guess,’ growled Hothbrodd. ‘Troll and human flesh?’
‘I’m afraid you’re right about human flesh,’ said Barnabas, without taking his eyes off the scorpions. ‘But I think they’ve probably never tasted troll. And their liking for human flesh is presumably because the Mesopotamian kings fed their enemies to the scorpions. I assume that by now these creatures will have adapted their diet to this island.’
‘Unless this Kraa throws poachers who don’t pay up to them,’ murmured Ben. He was probably not alone in adding in his thoughts: ‘Or his prisoners.’ He looked at the other cages. In the twilight that filled the nest, you couldn’t tell whether they were all occupied.
‘I’m sure they’d like troll too,’ muttered Hothbrodd. ‘They remind me of the crabs that used to bite me as a child when I was gathering driftwood on the beach. Although those didn’t have golden stings.’ He hit the woven network of twigs so hard with his fist that the basket cage swung back and forth like a pendulum. ‘What do those monkeys think I am? A dratted bird?’ he bellowed. ‘Maybe I ought to have a word with these twigs!’
‘I don’t think that’s a very good idea,’ said Barnabas. ‘If the twigs let us go a little too suddenly, you’ll probably survive the fall, but Ben and I are rather more breakable. And then there are those jackal scorpions. They love to tear their victims to pieces with their pincers. After paralysing them with their stings first.’
Ben looked down at the shining scorpions again. Barnabas was right. Even if those guards hadn‘t been there, escape seemed impossible. The baskets were hanging so high that they’d be sure to break their necks. Of course, with wings it would have looked different…
No. No! He’d forbidden himself even to think of Firedrake. Ever since Ben had seen the griffins at close quarters, he was grateful for every mile that lay between them and the dragon. Even though he was sure that Shrii and Firedrake would have got on well with each other, in spite of all those griffin-versus-dragon stories! But where was Shrii? None of the basket cages that Ben could see was large enough for a griffin.
Barnabas came to stand beside him and looked through the twigs.
‘I’m rather disappointed by this nest,’ he said. ‘Look at its walls. I’ve read that griffin nests are adorned with fantastic reliefs that can compete with the reliefs of Persepolis.’
‘This is only the prison nest. Kraa’s nest is covered with pictures.’ The voice came from a basket hanging only a few metres away from theirs. ‘They shine as if they were set with jewels, but it’s only dead beetles and butterflies. The monkeys catch them.’
The boy Ben could see behind the twigs looked younger than he was. His English was very good, although he spoke it with an Indonesian accent. A tiny creature with smooth, brown fur sat on his shoulder. The face pressed to the twigs consisted almost entirely of two huge eyes, and a tail without any fur was wound around them.
‘Who’s your furry friend?’ asked Ben.
The boy tickled the tiny creature behind the ears. ‘This is Berulu. He’s a kind of brownie-maki, and a very talented spy.’
Berulu twittered, sounding pleased by the flattery. His delicate, fur-less fingers clinging to the twigs that formed the bars of the cage reminded Ben of Twigleg. He hoped that Lola and the homunculus had done better than he and Barnabas. If so, they would probably be looking for them. But did they want to be found? He heard the cry of a griffin from outside. No. Tchraee wouldn’t even notice if he swallowed up Lola’s plane, along with everyone in it.
Berulu was staring down at the scorpions. What did the world look like, seen through such enormous eyes? His master stroked his head soothingly.
‘At least we know now how my mother’s parrots feel,’ he said. ‘If we get out of here alive I’ll set them all free! That’s a promise, and you’re my witness!’ He pressed his face to the network of twigs forming his cage. ‘Are you birdcatchers?’ he called to Ben. ‘Monkey-dealers? Rich hunters who’ve lost your way and come to this island? No, wait… it’s said that the Kucing-Burungs sometimes pluck fishermen out of their boats to feed them to their young! But you don’t look like fishermen. More like the white-faced tourists who go from island to island on enormous ships.’
‘Kucing-Burungs?’ asked Ben. ‘What’s that?’
The other boy laughed. ‘You’re their prisoner. Did their monkeys catch you?’
‘Yes – I admit the urgency of our mission made us rather careless,’ said Barnabas. ‘May I introduce myself? My name is Barnabas Greenbloom, and this is my son Ben. The green person you can see through the bars is our friend Hothbrodd.’
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The troll turned his back to them. He was still investigating the network of twigs woven into a cage. The maki’s big eyes were turned on him with interest and anxiety. The expression on his human master’s face was more one of curiosity.
‘What kind of monkey is that? Or is it an ape?’ he asked. ‘I’ve never seen such a large one! Even orang-utans are small by comparison!’
‘Tell him I’ll shrink him to the size of his furry animal if he calls me an ape again,’ barked Hothbrodd.
‘What are you doing with the Kucing-Burungs?’ Barnabas asked the boy, trying to change the subject. ‘We came here to buy one of their feathers, but we seem to have met the wrong griffin. May I ask what you did to annoy them? Excuse me, but will you tell us your name?’
‘Winston.’ The boy couldn’t take his eyes off Hothbrodd, although he certainly couldn’t see much of him. ‘Winston Setiawan. I come from one of the neighbouring islands, and I’m here because I followed a fairy tale. In our village they say there’s a ruined temple brim-full of treasure on this island. I wouldn’t say no to a chest full of gold, but there’s supposed to be something even more exciting there: one of the cast skins of Nyai Loro Kidul.’
‘A famous queen of the sea,’ said Barnabas, in response to Ben’s enquiring glance. ‘She is sometimes a fish and sometimes a snake.’
‘Yes, and when you put on her skin,’ Winston went on, ‘you change shape. You turn into a pit viper! Imagine that. There are two boys in my village who make life hell for me. How surprised they’d be if I suddenly had black scales and venomous fangs!’ He heaved a wistful sigh. ‘Of course I didn’t find the temple. Instead I found myself in the clearing where the Kucing-Burungs leave their prisoners for poachers and animal-catchers to pick them up. I know I never should have touched the cages, but all the same…’
Winston fell silent, and stared at the basket where Ben and Barnabas were imprisoned. One of the twigs was slowly coming away from the woven structure, and beginning to wind its way through the air like a dancing cobra.