‘These twigs have minds of their own,’ grunted Hothbrodd, ‘and a very peculiar sense of humour – but they can understand me!’
Another twig pulled itself out of the basketwork. Right under Ben’s feet.
‘Hothbrodd!’ he cried in alarm. ‘Do you want us to fall to our deaths?’
The troll gave a disapproving grunt, and muttered a few incomprehensible words, whereupon the twigs, if with obvious reluctance, went back to their original places.
‘He’s a jungle demon!’ stammered Winston. ‘Of course! My mother keeps warning me against those demons, but I’ve always laughed at her!’
Hothbrodd would much rather be called a jungle demon than an ape. Trolls love to be thought of as monsters, although in Ben’s experience very few of them lived up to their bad reputation.
‘He’s a fjord troll,’ he called over to Winston. ‘And he’s really nice. If he’s your friend,’ he added, when Hothbrodd cast him a glance of annoyance. It was to be hoped that the griffins were prepared for prisoners of his weight. Once again the basketwork creaked alarmingly as the troll sat down on the floor of the cage.
‘Nice? I hope the lion-birds will feed you all to their young!’ a shrill voice was suddenly heard from a basket on their right. ‘Curses on you! Shrii will die because of you, and they’ll sell us or throw us to their scorpions!’
Ben thought he saw Patah’s face behind the twigs.
‘You’re a thief, Patah!’ he called to him.
‘Are you talking about your locket?’ Patah called back. ‘But it looked so much better around my neck. That thing you were carrying about in it… was it some kind of human magic? Didn’t do you much good, if you ask me.’
‘Was.’ Patah used the past tense. So he no longer had the scale.
‘What have you done with it?’ Ben was glad that Patah wasn’t right in front of him. He would have been sorely tempted to hit the macaque. ‘Have you thrown it away?’
‘No. Lost it along with the locket.’ Patah bared his teeth. ‘When your friends dragged us off.’
Lost. Ben exchanged a glance with Barnabas. He was feeling so many emotions all at once. Anger, pain, disappointment – and relief. Ben saw the same contradictory emotions on Barnabas’s face. Firedrake’s gift was lost, and with it maybe their only chance of rescue. But the griffins wouldn’t find a dragon’s scale on them. Ben wondered whether they would have realised that the scale came from one of their oldest enemies. Beside him, Barnabas lowered his head with a sigh. You didn’t very often see that. Yes, the dragons were safe, but unless some miracle happened there was no chance for the Pegasus foals.
‘Kraa will clip Shrii’s wings and claws!’ Kupo’s plaintive voice came from a basket lower down. ‘And then he’ll let the crocodiles have him! Or the marbled cats!’
‘Nonsense. Kraa will watch as his scorpions tear him apart.’ Patah made a poor pretence of hiding his despair behind mockery. ‘Feather by feather, flesh and hide, and then he’ll eat his heart so that Shrii’s strength and youth will pass into him.’
‘No!’ cried another macaque. ‘Never! Shrii will escape. He’ll set us all free, and then found his own kingdom on this island!’
‘Yes, of course, Tabuhan. Dream on.’ Patah just sounded weary now, and hopeless. ‘Shrii is as good as dead. We all are. Kraa won’t sell us. He’ll eat us, just as he’ll devour Shrii. And line his nest with our skins.’
Kraa.
All was still inside the basketwork cages. His mere name seemed to echo back from the mud walls. Kraa…
He would certainly be more like Tchraee than Shrii. Ben, too, was worried about the young griffin. He’d have liked to see him again.
‘We certainly turned up at the ideal moment,’ growled Hothbrodd. ‘As if those winged brutes weren’t horrible enough anyway. But no, they’re also going to war with each other, and where have we landed? On the loser’s side, of course!’
‘Since when do you give up so quickly, Hothbrodd?’ said Barnabas in a low voice. ‘A griffin who thinks nothing of gold and silver! What an ally Shrii could be! We must save him!’
Hothbrodd groaned.
Even Ben thought his adopted father’s optimism was rather far-fetched this time.
‘We must save Shrii?’ he whispered. ‘Someone will have to save us first! And the only rescuers we can hope for are a rat and a homunculus!’
‘So?’ Barnabas whispered back. ‘Surely you’re not judging the usefulness of our friends by their size? I’m disappointed in you, Ben. You didn’t learn that from me.’
No. Barnabas was right there. Had he forgotten the important part played by Twigleg in the fight against his old master Nettlebrand? And how often had Lola warned them of danger and protected them from it?
‘Hey!’ Winston called to them. ‘How come I can understand what the monkeys are saying? Is it some kind of magic? And what do you people need a griffin’s feather for?’
‘It’s a long story,’ Ben replied.
‘Good,’ said Winston. ‘Tell it. Or have you something better to do?’
The brownie-maki made himself comfortable on Winston’s arm and looked expectantly at Ben.
Right. Where to begin? Ben was about to start with the day when he first met Firedrake, but Barnabas put his hand over his mouth.
‘Don’t mention the dragon,’ he whispered. ‘Remember: the griffins mustn’t find out about him! And jackal scorpions may not be especially clever, but they have very keen hearing.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Magic Time
I’m youth, I’m joy, I’m a little bird
that has broken out of the egg.
J.M. Barrie, Peter and Wendy
Magic time. That was what Guinevere still called it many years later: those two days when the silver eggs for which their father had flown to the other side of the world revealed their secret, and she lost her heart to three tiny winged foals. Guinevere even forgot what she was counting down as she made crosses on the calendar on the stable door. Suddenly only the entries that she wrote in the boxes mattered: Saw a tiny face on the other side of the shell for the first time. The third foal is coppery red like its father. The white foal has a copper blaze on the forehead.
The time when Ànemos avoided the stable was over. The Pegasus visited the nest so often that in the end Vita had a flock of indignant geese and swans standing in the living room. Only when the temperature of the eggs, as taken by Guinevere, was a little lower than usual did Ànemos overcome his longing to watch the tiny figures moving in shells that were becoming more and more translucent.
‘They need names,’ Guinevere told him, when they had been driven from the stable once again by two hissing swans. ‘What will you call them?’
‘Synnefo. Ouranos. And Chara.’
The answer came so fast that Guinevere had to smile.
‘Well, Guinevere Humangirl?’ Ànemos nudged her breast with his soft muzzle. ‘All right, I admit it! I’ve been thinking about their names for a long time. Don’t you like them?’
‘Oh yes, I do, I do! Those are wonderful names.’ And something else was wonderful: the way the Pegasus was suddenly trotting as lightly out of the stable as if he were made of pure joy.
‘Well done, Vitasdaughter!’ Raskervint told Guinevere. ‘He didn’t need a centaur. A Pegasus wants human friends! And what could warm his sad heart better than a human girl who knows all about fabulous creatures, and has inherited her parents’ courage and warmth?’
Guinevere stammered her embarrassed thanks, and felt sure that she would never be paid a greater compliment in her life. She was very glad that Vita had asked Raskervint to stay until Ben, Barnabas and the others came back.
‘Why, of course I’ll stay,’ the centaur had replied. ‘You don’t think I want to miss the birth of three Pegasus foals, do you?’
Yes, it was a magic time. And there were still four days white and empty on the calendar on the stable door.
‘That’s not long, Guinevere,’ wh
ispered a voice inside her. But she didn’t want to listen to it. What was happening was simply too wonderful.
Everything would be all right.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Too Late
Walking with a friend in the dark is
better than walking alone in the light.
Helen Keller
One of the buttons from Ben’s jacket! Trodden deeply into ground that was still damp after the rain. Twigleg wiped tears from his eyes.
‘Pull yourself together, humpelkluss!’ said Lola, inspecting some crushed snail shells. ‘It’s a button, not his dead body!’
Twigleg was very good at reading tracks, as Ben often said, but compared to Lola he felt like a child just starting school, proud of himself if he could so much as stammer out the alphabet.
‘Our feathered friend is right,’ she said, looking up at the trees under which the tracks left by Ben, Barnabas and Hothbrodd abruptly ended. ‘It was monkeys who dragged them away, no doubt about it.’
She bent down and picked a couple of pale brown monkey hairs out of a fern. ‘Macaques, I’d say.’
Me-Rah began squawking angrily in Parrot. Once again, the excitement made her forget her English.
‘What’s she saying?’ Lola pulled a few more hairs off the tree trunk between whose roots she was standing. ‘I’m always afraid she’ll explode before our eyes one of these days, aren’t you? How can anyone get so worked up all the time?’
Me-Rah squawked, complaining that she was afraid Lola, like all rats, was inclined to be arrogant. Twigleg didn’t bother to translate that part of her remarks. But what came next was interesting. Interesting and extremely worrying.
‘Me-Rah says a griffin called Shrii has rebelled against the leader of the pride here. Shrii is also known on this island as the griffin who has bathed in the rainbow. The leader’s names are less poetic.’ Twigleg swallowed as he went on. ‘Kraa the Terrible. The Merciless. The Insatiable. The Eater of Hearts…’
Me-Rah enumerated a few more bloodthirsty epithets, but Twigleg spared himself and Lola those.
‘But anyway,’ he added, making a great effort to sound composed, ‘there are rumours that this Shrii is hiding in the jungle hereabouts, which is why Me-Rah thinks his monkeys took Ben and the others away, maybe because they thought they were…’ – and once again Twigleg’s voice almost failed him – ‘… thought they were poachers!’
‘Poachers? Well, thanks a million.’ Lola looked enquiringly up at Me-Rah. ‘What does this Shrii do to poachers?’
Baffled, Me-Rah shook her head and uttered a coo more like a growl, which seemed to bode no good.
‘Griffins on bad terms with each other.’ Lola nodded thoughtfully. ‘Yes, that makes sense. There’s nothing like jungle gossip! It also explains the skeletons and the wrecked nests. But how do we find these kidnappers?’
She looked doubtfully up at the treetops. ‘A gang of monkeys swinging from branch to branch! Even for me, following a track like that could be a challenge!’
Twigleg stroked Ben’s muddy button with trembling fingers. Suppose they didn’t find their friends? Suppose they never saw them again? How he hated this never-ending jungle, drenched with rain! How he hated this whole island!
‘There, there, humklumpulus!’ said Lola, as he wiped another tear off his pointed nose. ‘We’ll find them, won’t we, Me-Rah?’
Me-Rah’s squawk didn’t sound as confident as Lola’s voice, but she offered her help in following the trail, adding that parrots were more at home than rats in the treetops.
‘Thank you, Me-Rah,’ stammered Twigleg as he put Ben’s button in his backpack.
Lola was already trudging back to her plane. ‘Those rascally kidnapping monkeys haven’t reckoned with an airborne rat!’ she announced. ‘Oh no! They’re going to be very sorry they ever tangled with friends of Lola Greytail!’
So much determination cheered Twigleg a little. But soon the light of day falling through the trees turned to green twilight, making it very difficult for Me-Rah and Lola to find the trail left in the treetops by the monkeys. Me-Rah was just saying that it was about time to look for a place to spend the night in hiding, when Lola, with a shrill cry of triumph, pointed to a tree with only a few green lianas on its bare branches, and a wide gap high up in its trunk.
‘There!’ shouted Lola through the engine noise. ‘If that’s not the gang’s hideout, then my name is Gilbert from now on!’
She opened the cockpit window and raised her pointed nose to the wind. ‘Yes! There’s even a smell of troll still in the air! Hurrah! We’ll find them now, humklupuss!’
And before Twigleg and Lola could protest, she was steering the plane to the gap in the bark of the tree.
‘Lola! Let Me-Rah go ahead to find out what’s waiting for us in that tree!’ cried Twigleg.
The parrot favoured him with a glance that was far from enthusiastic, and Lola just shook her head scornfully.
‘Nonsense!’ she called back. ‘Do you think Me-Rah with her bright scarlet feathers will be less conspicuous than my plane? I’m switching to silent gliding mode!’
Twigleg ducked down in his seat, while Me-Rah flew after them as quietly as a breath of air. And with a very relieved expression on her face.
Silence.
That was all that met them when Lola’s plane glided through the huge opening in the bark of the tree, quiet as a falling leaf.
The hollow space inside was so high and wide that Twigleg could hardly make out its roof and walls in the darkness. But one thing was certain: the hollow tree was empty. Me-Rah came down in the air roots of a liana with a squawk of disappointment, and Lola landed the plane in the dead leaves that lined the hollow like cushions in a nest.
‘Where are they?’ moaned Twigleg. ‘The trail must lead on from here! Let’s go and see, Lola!’
Lola climbed up on one wing and looked around the empty hollow of the tree, frowning. ‘Too dark for that, humpelklumpel,’ she said. ‘We’d better spend the night here. We’ll go on searching as soon as it gets light.’
‘But it may be too late then!’ cried Twigleg. His fears for his master made even the danger of the plane’s crashing into a tree seem unimportant.
Lola jumped down from the wing and searched the dead leaves for tracks. ‘Me-Rah, tell him about all the animals who go hunting by night here.’
Me-Rah obediently began telling him. It was a very long list.
‘Ah, look at this.’ Lola picked something up from the leaves. ‘Yes, we’re on their trail!’
Twigleg groaned when he saw Barnabas’s empty backpack.
‘No need to panic, humklumpus,’ said Lola firmly. ‘No bloodstains. If there was a fight here, it didn’t last long. But there were griffins involved. These,’ she added pointing to deep furrows on the ground, ‘are the same marks as we found in the ruined nests. Made by paws and claws. And the creatures who left them are large. Even Firedrake doesn’t have bigger paws!’
She pulled two feathers out of the leaves on the ground. They were both longer than she was tall. One was grey-brown, but the other was as green as the jungle surrounding them.
‘What’s this, Me-Rah?’ Lola held up the green feather with an enquiring look. ‘I thought griffins were the same sandy colour as the deserts that they come from?’
Rain was beginning to fall again outside. It sounded ghostly in the gathering dusk – like thousands of feet scurrying through the trees.
Me-Rah fluttered to Lola’s side.
‘I knew it! It comes from Shrii!’ she squawked. ‘The griffin who has bathed in the rainbow. Apparently he’s as brightly coloured as the forest itself. He was born on Pulau Bulu! Shrii…’ said Me-Rah, lowering her voice almost reverently, ‘Shrii is said to want to protect the animals on this island from Kraa. That’s why he turned against him! Oh, I do hope he isn‘t in the same difficulties as fully-grown Greenbloom and still-growing Greenbloom!’
‘I’m afraid there’s no doubt about that.’ Lola too
k another green feather out of the leaves. ‘What have we gone and landed ourselves in? No offence meant, Me-Rah, but I really don’t fancy staying on this island for any length of time. This humid heat of yours isn’t good for either my plane or me. Okay, okay, humpelklus!’ she said in response to Twigleg’s reproachful glance. ‘No, we’re not flying home without the rest of the team! What kind of rat do you take me for?’
Lola was right. Twigleg knew she would do everything she could to help the others. And he was very grateful to Me-Rah for standing by them, even though she was fluffed up like a feather pillow with fright. But the fact that a rat and a parrot were the only hope of freeing his master from the griffins’ prison really wasn’t particularly encouraging.
Lola went over to the opening in the tree and looked at the gathering dusk. ‘Right,’ she murmured. ‘I think we ought to try to get some sleep. We’ll set off again at first light.’
‘But there are hours to go until then, Lola!’ cried Twigleg. ‘What if…’
Yes, what if…? He didn’t like even thinking to the end of that sentence.
Lola put an arm around his slumped shoulders. ‘Humklupus,’ she said in an unusually gentle voice, ‘I’m worried about Ben too. And Barnabas. And that dratted troll who thinks he knows more about aircraft than I do! But we won’t be much use to them if we’re feeding our remains to all the maggots in this jungle after crashing.’
A typical rat remark if ever there was one. But unfortunately Lola was right.
Me-Rah couldn’t refrain from enumerating all the beasts of prey that were out and about in the trees, even at this height. As a result, Lola suggested sleeping in the plane, so that they could get away fast if they were attacked. To this, Me-Rah pointed out that to binturongs and masked palm civets (whatever those might be), animals about the size of Lola’s plane were easy pickings, never mind rats and homunculi.
All the same Twigleg climbed into the plane, while Me-Rah perched in the roots of a liana above them. The hollow tree was full of a ghostly green light cast by the fluorescent fungi growing everywhere inside the wooden walls. It reminded Twigleg horribly of a ghost-train ride that Ben had once persuaded him to take. All those soft noises of rustling, scurrying, fluttering, scrabbling… and he thought he saw one of the pit vipers that Me-Rah kept on squawking about in every shadow. He was very glad when she finally tucked one leg under herself and went to sleep.