Barnabas leaned over Gilbert’s map, which was lying on the seat beside Ben, and tapped a few tiny long green marks.
‘Per-hi-a-san,’ read Twigleg. ‘That means jewellery in Indonesian!’
‘A good name,’ said Ben. ‘The islands really do look like a pearl necklace.’
For the first time since the bad news from Greece had arrived, Barnabas was looking really happy.
‘Hothbrodd! Lola!’ he cried. ‘Now we know where we’re going!’
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
A Thousand Times One Thousand Islands
I just wish the world was twice as big
and half of it was still unexplored.
Sir David Attenborough
Me-Rah’s native land did indeed deserve to be described as a thousand times one thousand islands. Even for Twigleg, who had seen so much in his long life, the sight of the Indonesian archipelago turning into a mosaic of water and land below them was unforgettable. A thousand times one thousand islands, a thousand times one thousand worlds… some of them were so large that you could hardly call them islands at all, with cities on them that, from a height, looked like algae growing vigorously. But there were also islands with villages where the houses were built of bamboo and palm leaves, and they seemed to come from older, less turbulent times. Others rose from the blue-green water like the humps on a sea serpent’s back, or had huts and tea plantations dotted about on them. Ben was as fascinated as Twigleg by what they saw. Cone-shaped volcanic peaks cast their shadows on bays such as he had dreamed of when he still wanted to be a pirate. Their beaches were covered with the tracks of turtles, and their white sand bordered jungle in which, so Twigleg told him, tigers, rhinoceroses, orang-utans and red pandas lived.
‘So different from the world that we come from, isn’t it?’ said Barnabas. ‘And yet it’s on the same planet. Incredible!’
It was late afternoon when they reached the island group where Barnabas thought that Me-Rah’s home must lie. Hothbrodd flew so low that the fuselage of the plane almost touched the treetops, but Me-Rah only shook her head at the first three islands and uttered a disappointed squawk. The longing glance with which she searched for her home reminded Ben of his own broken heart. What place did he love in the same way? MÍMAMEIĐR, no doubt of that, but it didn’t change his yearning for Firedrake. What an infuriatingly complicated thing the heart was!
‘You look sad. Is there anything you want to talk about?’ Barnabas held out the box of cookies that he brought on every journey: walnut and chocolate.
‘No, I’m okay.’ Ben just couldn’t bring himself to tell Barnabas what he had decided. He felt like a traitor, and Barnabas did not insist, as usual when he sensed that one of his children wasn’t being perfectly straightforward with an answer. Vita and he left them time to work out their own thoughts. Ben couldn’t have said how many times he had been grateful for that.
Lola was standing on the map, ticking off the islands they had already flown over with a pen. Gilbert would probably have bitten off one of her ears for that. Barnabas looked at the part of the map that they would not be exploring.
‘What a pity,’ he murmured. ‘I’m afraid Me-Rah’s home is on an island where there are no orang-utans! They’re such an impressive species. As endangered as dragons and Pegasi, sad to say. And not half as good at hiding!’
Orang-utans, elephants, puffer fish, armadillos, tree-frogs and lemurs – to Ben, by now, every animal was a fabulous creature, and he often wished for magic he could use to protect them all. But for now he had to content himself with taking an abducted chattering lory home and rescuing a few winged horses. Better than nothing.
They flew over another island on which the Singing Flowers opened their deadly blooms, but even from a distance they could see that it was too small to match Me-Rah’s description, and the parrot chattered in disappointment again. Dusk was already coming on, but Hothbrodd assured Barnabas that they could still fly to two more islands before they had to find a place to come down for the night. Me-Rah had flown from her perch to the back of his pilot’s seat and kept chattering into his green ear, which annoyed the troll very much.
‘Rat!’ he called back, shooing Me-Rah over to Lola’s empty seat. ‘Come and take the controls! I can read Gilbert’s map as well as you can. And I certainly know how to bring this plane down better than you! After all, it needs more space than your crow-sized aircraft!’
‘Oh, really?’ Lola called back. ‘You don’t say so! How kind of you to remind me!’
Then, giggling, she bent over Gilbert’s map again. ‘You wait and see!’ she whispered to Barnabas. ‘That troll will bite Me-Rah’s head off before we’ve found the right island! A parrot pilot! Of all your crazy ideas this was certainly the craziest. I admit parrots are very entertaining, and they know a lot about upwinds and downwinds, but they get into such a panic! It’s a wonder all that fluttering and squawking hasn’t ditched us in the sea yet!’
As if to confirm it, such a penetrating whistle came from the cockpit that even Barnabas put his hands over his ears. The whistle was followed by a torrent of shrill parrot language and a very uncivilised troll curse.
‘What’s that dratted bird saying, Twigleg?’ asked Hothbrodd crossly, as Ben and the homunculus ran to the cabin.
‘She says she can see her island!’ Twigleg could barely make his thin manikin-voice heard above the noise that Me-Rah was making.
‘Which one is it?’ roared Hothbrodd. ‘Which one, bird?’
Me-Rah settled on the troll’s head and went on screeching. The plane swerved alarmingly as Hothbrodd tried to take the parrot out of his hair, and in return Me-Rah dug her beak into his bark-like fingers.
‘Hvilken øy? Which one? Stille tie, latterlig fugl!’ he shouted as he steered the plane with one hand and held on to the screeching parrot with the other. Exhausted, Me-Rah fell silent, and took her beak out of the troll’s hard skin. Then she chattered something that sounded as if she were both insulted and very excited.
‘She says it’s the island to the east of us,’ Twigleg quickly translated.
Hothbrodd let Me-Rah fly to her perch – after he had wiped white droppings off his instruments, with another curse – and turned the plane to the east.
Me-Rah cooed and croaked like clockwork gone wrong, and craned her neck as if she wanted to fly through the windscreen of the cockpit. Ben offered her a piece of mango. He had found that mango calmed her down.
‘What’s she saying now, Twigleg?’ Barnabas asked. In all the excitement, Me-Rah seemed to have forgotten her English.
‘She says she’s quite sure,’ translated Twigleg, as Me-Rah went on chattering breathlessly. ‘And she suggests landing in a bay on the southern shore. Although its name doesn’t sound very inviting!’
‘Why? What’s it called?’ asked Ben.
‘The Bay of Skulls.’
Hothbrodd muttered something about Odin’s ravens and his own opinion of the advice of birds in general. But when the island lay beneath them, he steered towards its southern shore as Me-Rah had advised.
Pulau Bulu was considerably larger than Ben had expected. Beyond hills covered with dense jungle, the outline of high mountains stood out against the sunset sky. As Me-Rah had said, there was no sign of any human settlements.
Ben exchanged a glance with Barnabas. ‘Let’s just hope that Me-Rah’s lion-birds really are griffins!’ he whispered.
And that they didn’t get eaten before they’d even had a chance to ask about the feather, Ben thought.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Pulau Bulu
The important thing about having lots of things to
remember is that you’ve got to go somewhere afterwards
where you can remember them, you see? You’ve got to stop.
You haven’t really been anywhere until you’ve got back home.
Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic
Even in the gathering twilight, the ripples on the surface of the sea where Hothbrod
d landed shone like dull green glass.
Lola examined the wide bay ahead of them through her binoculars. Twigleg envied her very much for possessing those. Lola’s youngest sister, Vera Mae Greytail, had made them. Vera Mae’s optical instruments could compete with any made by human hands, and yet fitted easily into a rat’s paw (or the hand of a homunculus). There was hardly any craft or trade that wasn’t practised by one of Lola’s countless relations. Barnabas thought that was because Lola’s ancestors included fabulous beings such as the Singing Rat of Holstein, the Ship’s Compass Rat and the Ratbird.
‘Nothing alarming to be seen, humpelcuss,’ she announced. ‘Only a few crabs and turtles. Noticeably large turtles,’ she added, handing Twigleg the binoculars.
What the homunculus saw through them reminded him strongly of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, one of his and Ben’s favourite books. (Not that Twigleg had ever felt any wish to experience the adventures described in it for himself!) The beach, which had large rocks scattered over it, was on the outskirts of a jungle so wild and impenetrable that it seemed to Twigleg the perfect hideout for a few savage cannibal tribes. Maybe Me-Rah had forgotten to mention those because she didn’t consider them human beings?
At the sight of the deserted beach Ben, of course, also thought of Treasure Island and buried pirate treasure. Unlike Twigleg, however, he could hardly wait to set foot on the untouched sand. Even Hothbrodd, who had carved several reindeer and wolves since they set out because he missed MÍMAMEIĐR, grunted with delight when he saw the huge trees casting their shade over the beach.
Lola had already gone off on her first reconnaissance flight in her tiny propeller-driven plane (which had survived the flight from Norway intact in a baggage compartment), while Hothbrodd was still anchoring his own aircraft among the rocks. Before taking off, of course, the rat had been unable to refrain from telling Twigleg that the inhabitants of nearby Papua New Guinea were notorious headhunters.
‘My dear Twigleg,’ said Barnabas, as the homunculus hid behind Ben’s legs in alarm, ‘I don’t think we need feel worried about our heads. You heard what Me-Rah said: the only hunters who venture to come to this island are after birds and monkeys. Although, of course, we should still be on our guard.’
The sun was sinking behind the mountains that Ben had already admired from the air, casting a shade of pink mother-of-pearl over the beach. The outline of the island became black, like a silhouette, against the sunset sky, and from the trees a chorus of nocturnal voices such as Ben had never heard before echoed over the beach. He couldn’t have said whether the cries were those of birds, toads or mammals.
Ben had expected Me-Rah to set off at once in search of her own flock of parrots, but when he was helping Hothbrodd to unload their provisions he saw her sitting on one of the crates on the beach.
‘You can fly home now, Me-Rah!’ he told her. ‘You’ve been a wonderful guide. Thank you very much.’
But Me-Rah only shook her head in astonishment, and explained that no parrot in full possession of its wits would fly in the dark. ‘There are many robbers on my island, still-growing Greenbloom,’ she squawked. ‘And I warn you, some of them would like to eat you too. Only that wooden-skinned person is safe,’ she added, glancing at Hothbrodd’s bark-like skin. ‘Presumably.’
‘That’s nice to know,’ Hothbrodd grunted. He seemed to take Me-Rah’s remark as a compliment.
‘How about rats?’ Lola landed her plane on a rock so that no sand would get into the propeller. ‘I bet a lot of the inhabitants of this island would like the taste of rat. But,’ she said, taking off her leather flying helmet, ‘they’d all better steer clear of this one!’
Ben had never met any other creature as fond of adventures as Lola Greytail. Every patch on her well-worn flying suit bore witness to one of those adventures, and Lola did not, like Me-Rah, feel at home in only one place. There were many places that she liked, and she was really at home only in her plane.
‘I’m afraid that on this island we must assume we’re all on the menu of some beast of prey or another,’ commented Barnabas as he dug a seashell out of the moist sand. His face cleared, and he smiled happily as he pressed the shell, with its red and white pattern, to his ear. ‘My word! This actually is the shell of a balungan snail – and it really does sound as if a mermaid were singing inside it!’ He put the shell in the box that he carried around with him for such purposes, and looked along the beach. ‘Shall we camp here overnight? What do you say?’
‘Not before I’ve shown you something else,’ said Lola. ‘Maybe Me-Rah can tell us more about what it means.’
The two of them flew ahead, side by side. It wasn’t easy for Ben to follow them on foot without treading on a dozen crabs or other shellfish. He could have ridden comfortably on the giant turtle that crossed their path, but in spite of its impressive size it drew in its head and legs hastily as soon as it saw them – proof that the human beings it had encountered so far had not left it with pleasant memories.
The four poles in front of which Lola finally landed seemed, at first sight, to be man-made too. They stood like warning signals barely a step away from the trees, and they were so tall that even Hothbrodd had to look up at them. The troll didn’t spare so much as a glance for the skulls lying in the fine sand in front of them, but the carvings that covered the poles made him exclaim in admiration.
‘Not bad,’ he growled as he looked up at the beaked heads on top of the poles. ‘You need hands for that sort of thing, and as far as I know griffins have only claws and paws. Or am I missing something?’
Me-Rah examined the poles with obvious discomfort.
‘The monkeys did it,’ she squawked. ‘The monkeys who serve the lion-birds.’
‘Monkeys who can carve like this?’ Ben incredulously ran his fingers over the artistically formed creepers winding their way up the poles.
‘As you know, fabulous creatures often cause unusual behaviour,’ said Barnabas. ‘In men and animals alike.’
‘Anyway, we’re on the right island.’ Twigleg pointed to the ears of the carved heads of birds of prey above them.
Yes. Without a shadow of doubt, Me-Rah’s lion-birds were griffins.
Ben was investigating one of the skulls at his feet. ‘Human skulls,’ he stated.
Barnabas looked at the trees. Night was falling under them. ‘Me-Rah, are you sure this bay is a good place to spend the night?’
‘Oh yes,’ said the parrot. ‘There are poles like this in all the bays on the island. They’re a warning to poachers that it’s better not to go hunting here before they’ve paid the lion-birds.’
‘Paid them with what?’ asked Ben.
‘Jewellery, coins, gold, precious stones,’ said Me-Rah, rattling off a list. ‘And shells.’
‘Shells?’ asked Ben, surprised.
‘The calcium in shells strengthens beaks, still-growing Greenbloom,’ replied Me-Rah. ‘And there is a shell in these waters that makes beaks as hard and sharp-edged as metal.’
Ben exchanged a glance with Barnabas. A crab scuttled out of the eye socket of one of the skulls at his feet.
‘Well, I hope Bağdagül’s bangle will be accepted as adequate payment,’ said Barnabas. ‘After all, we want to keep our skulls. But now let’s put up the tents.’
At first sight what Barnabas threw on the beach not far from Hothbrodd’s plane was a handful of apple pips. Until the pips unrolled like woodlice, and within seconds formed round tents. Only the tiny head above the entrance of each showed that they were really living creatures. On their travels, the Greenblooms kept meeting fabulous beings who proved to be very helpful members of their expeditions. Barnabas had evacuated the tent-lice to MÍMAMEIĐR when it looked as if they would fall victim to a ski run. They had quickly settled in, and were now an invaluable part of the FREEFAB team. Tent-lice are not only warm and spacious, but also very safe, because they announce the approach of any suspect creature with a shrill whistle that could easily compete with M
e-Rah’s squawking.
There was room for Ben and Barnabas to fit into their tents easily; only Hothbrodd was too large for one, but no one was worried about the troll’s safety. Ben had already seen Hothbrodd dispose of Prickly Sludge-Eaters and a Giant Salamander. The troll simply stationed himself on the sand to sleep with one eye closed, the other open and watching his plane. Fjord trolls are of the diurnal troll genus, and spend all their nights like that, only half asleep, unlike nocturnal trolls who sleep with both eyes tightly closed so that sunlight won’t turn them to stone.
Hothbrodd’s snoring soon drowned out the sound of the waves, but Ben and Barnabas sat outside their tents for some time longer, looking at the dark jungle and the mountains rising beyond it. Yes, Me-Rah’s island was very much larger than they had hoped, and in six days’ time at the latest they must set off on the homeward journey. There wasn’t much time, even though Lola was a brilliant scout, and Barnabas had decades of experience in finding the most cleverly hidden creatures in this world.
When Ben crawled into his tent, it looked as if Twigleg was already asleep. But the homunculus was only pretending, because he knew how quickly his master could get worried if he lay awake at night. Ben knew it was often because of the memories that filled Twigleg with fear and sadness. He felt like that particularly quickly in places that were new and strange, and tonight it seemed as if the ghosts of his lost brothers lived on Me-Rah’s island. Twigleg saw their faces in his mind’s eye as clearly as if they were all still alive. It had been so wonderful when they had each other. Even the cruelty of their creator and the tyranny of his golden monster had been easier to bear when they were all together, and it had felt so much less peculiar to have been born in a bottle. After all, there had been eleven others who came into the world in the same way. How they used to laugh together! And weep together. It had done them so much good to have an affectionate hug when the alchemist had performed one of his experiments on them, or Nettlebrand had been in a particularly bad mood. And they had slept side by side every night, and Twigleg had heard the breathing of eleven brothers, whereas now only the sound of Ben breathing protected him from the darkness of the world.
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