by Edrei Cullen
Flames leapt up above the building with extra ferocity now, flaring wildly with the increasingly forceful winds outside. Max fended them off bravely but it was clear from their growing might that they had to keep moving.
‘You guys have to get out of here,’ Samantha yelled, with all the generosity of spirit that was hers already.
And Ella knew she was right. She called out to her friends. ‘Let’s go. We have to get to wherever it is those coordinates are going to take us. I sure as Magic hope you know where we’re going, Charlie,’ she cried as she flew out of the office window and up above the flames.
Four Flitterwigs wearing four glowing Keys followed Ella, the Clearheart.
Samantha watched them go and her heart swelled sadly. She closed her eyes and willed her lovely friends to be safe.
‘Oh blow it,’ she said, as she unfurled her wings and set off after them. ‘Key or no Key, I’m coming too.’
She didn’t notice the tiniest flicker of buttercup yellow begin to glow inside the Key around her neck.
chapter 25
destruction & divisions
‘You are destroying everything you stand for, Your Highness,’ said Saul removing his gasmask as the Duke regained consciousness back at the Ulnus Estate. ‘You are chasing the Clearheart with no thought for her survival, no thought for Nature. That is NOT our way!’
‘No thought for your own safety, Majesty, or your own ends,’ said his Goblin Protector, Ragwald, looking up at him sadly. The Duke looked down and struck his poor Goblin Protector at once with a particularly harsh spray of Black Dust by way of punishment, ignoring Saul altogether. The poor Protector turned to ice.
The Duke’s eyes were wild with desire. What was going on? Where had those keys come from? And where in Magic’s name had all that power come from in those pesky children? He really hadn’t expected that. His rage made him barely capable of seeing Saul, never mind listening to him. He brought his forefinger up and pointed it at Saul’s head.
‘Your Majesty,’ the Gnome Flitterwig entreated, ‘I want to go to Magus more than anything in the world, but you have to understand that even I cannot live with my conscience if it means wiping out the entire British Flitterwig race in order to do so. We have spread so much of the gas now, I have no idea how anyone will recover.’
The Duke wavered. Ragwald, who had Unfreezified, although his spiky white hair was still icy at the tips, begged him to consider his heritage as a protector of Nature, as a protector of the planet Earth. ‘Destroying trees and grass and every other bit of vegetation in the Scatterbungle’s wake will set off a chain reaction, a panic amongst plantlife from which the human race might never recover,’ he said.
The Duke screwed up his rotting face.
Ulnus spoke. ‘I have a daughter, Your Highness, you told me she wouldn’t be harmed. Surely you must be able to understand a father’s concern for his child?’
The Duke let out a moan and covered his ears and jumped up and down on the spot like a spoilt brat.
Oh, the Duke understood.
He turned and, flinging his cloak about him, left the drawing room, slamming the door. He understood all too well. What none of these fools (apart from Ragwald of course) probably remembered, was that the Duke had forsaken his own daughter to a human being centuries ago. His only child, the Elf Princess, had fallen in love with a human. That was how Flitterwigs had come into being in the first place.
His heart had been broken that day.
He stormed out across the Ulnus Estate gardens.
Finding himself at a creek at the bottom of the garden, the Duke tip-tapped its surface to summon up Arnold the Giant through the Waterways. Nothing but a bleary image showed up.
Crystal tears fell over his cheeks. Yes, the Duke wanted to take machinery to Magus. Yes, he wanted progress in the Magical Kingdom and didn’t care a wink about the consequences to its environment. But only because he had given up on the future of his Kingdom after all these years without his daughter by his side to take it forward as Magic intended.
Ragwald appeared, his head hanging apologetically. ‘I’m sorry, Your Majesty,’ said his Protector.
The Duke turned on him. He crouched down so he could look at the Goblin more closely. Ragwald could feel spittle spatter his face as the Duke spoke. His breath was rancid.
‘My life is as good as over if this poison will not make the Clearheart obey me. I would rather expire here on Earth along with the entire Flitterwig race than fail this time. Ella WILL do as I say and Shrinkify the machinery I need to overtake the Magical Kingdom. And then, Magus will move forward. Yes. This is what will happen. This is what MUST happen. If you cannot stand by me in this, then leave.’
Arnold appeared as a blur in the Waters.
‘Arnold, I am on my way to you now,’ said the Duke, turning his back on Ragwald. ‘My allies here have deserted me. It’s just you and I now. We will lure the Clearheart there. If she is not already a step ahead of us.’
chapter 26
toes & tumbles
The children Portalised up out of a spring in the Highlands of Scotland. A cold, but natural, wind blew across the moors. It was a refreshing wind compared to the stifling, restrictive magical winds hurlyburlying about Hedgeberry.
Charlie looked at Gloria and narrowed his eyes. She looked back at him and narrowed hers too. She hadn’t said a word since she had stood before the door to protect these people. Partly because she felt utterly speechless about the inexplicable unfoldings of the adventure she’d been caught up in, and partly because everything was happening too quickly for her to even get a word in. What was she doing here in the middle of nowhere with her least favourite people ever? With her worst enemy, in fact? And why didn’t Ella feel like her enemy anymore?
Were her mum and dad safe? Did she even care since she’d discovered that they were in cahoots with someone who wanted to destroy trees?
Looking through a waterbowl at the Ulnus estate, Saul searched for Ella and her friends. The Waterways were still not working very well on account of the poison, so he couldn’t find them anywhere.
Ulnus stood behind him, looking over his shoulder. He bit at a twiggy fingernail, nervously. His daughter was with those very Flitterwigs, wherever they were. But at least the Duke was away from her. He asked Saul to find Hedgeberry for him in the Waters.
Saul looked at Unlus and shook his head. ‘You don’t want to see,’ he said.
‘I do,’ said Ulnus.
Saul managed to find a blurry reflection of the school in the Waters. It was like a nightmare. Flitterwigs wailed and wandered and coughed and wept in the hallways. Outside, the fires had reached new heights, forcing every Flitterwig to take refuge, trapped in their own sickness and impotence. Hedgeberry’s foundations from the inside out, seemed to crumble and fall in the wake of the wild, magical winds.
‘What have we done, Saul?’ he asked his partner in crime. ‘What have we done?’
‘Hey, would you mind Bongling us?’ Ella asked Humphrey, shivering. It was chilly, even if it was June. ‘So I can fly up and have a look around?’
‘It would be my pleasure,’ he said, simply.
Up she flew, her and Dixon, invisible. There was Charlie, racing across the hills ahead of her, his feet spinning. She landed next to him, Debongling as she did so.
‘Look,’ said Charlie, pointing down below from their vantage point. ‘Those are the coordinates.’
Dixon scrambled up onto Ella’s shoulder to have a look. ‘Can I have my compass back? Tack. Hack. Rhymes with slack,’ he asked Charlie.
‘Sure,’ said Charlie. Ella looked at her two best friends in the world as Charlie handed a teeny-weeny device back to the pixie.
Ella looked down and a lump caught in her throat. Dixon planted a little kiss on her ear, sensing her shock and sadness at the sight before them.
It all came back to her. Even though she was only three when it happened, it all came back to her. She could remember the great, grey mass th
at had blocked their path as they were driving across the old stone bridge on that tragic day, years ago. She recalled the cracking of its aged stones and how they had soared above the deep green valley, their car turning head over heels. She could feel the pain of being thrown about. Ella remembered her mother pushing her out of the window of the car with Manna, turning to her brothers as she wept, sorrowfully.
‘Are you okay, Ella?’ asked Charlie. Dixon sniffed back a tear even though he had no idea what it was that was making his darling Ella so sad.
Ella nodded uncertainly. ‘You go back and get the others,’ she said. Charlie ruffled her hair kindly, turned on his heel and sped back across the moors.
Ella sat looking across the hill and into the valley. She scooped Dixon off her shoulder and held him close to her cheek. He sprinkled kisses all along her eyelashes. There was something ominous about the valley, something dark and heavy—as though a grey cloud still hung over the place—and Ella’s heart filled with dread.
But when they all climbed down into the valley together, there was nothing suspicious there. Nothing at all. Not so much as a hint of the debris of the old Jaguar that Rosemary Montgomery crashed there ten years ago. And certainly no well to speak of. There was just an eerie silence, and strangely, the faintest, faintest whiff of something familiar.
It was shadowy in the valley and the grass was a deeper green down here. It felt like they were walking about in a big bowl. But there was nothing, absolutely nothing, that suggested there was anything out of the ordinary to be found.
Then Ella pointed.
‘Spirit Trees,’ said Ella, under her breath. ‘Look.’ Spirit Trees meant that Giants lived nearby.
‘You can see them?’ asked Gloria, noticing them too when she followed Ella’s gaze. She looked a little peeved.
Ella nodded.
Ella shrugged and smiled humbly over at Gloria in the hope that she might smile back. But she didn’t.
Dixon poked his tongue out at Gloria. She poked hers out back at him. And then he winked at her, which made him feel all confused.
‘RUUUUUUUUN!’ yelled Charlie suddenly.
There was a groan and a cracking sound behind them.
Gloria and Ella launched their wings into the air. With the haste of her flight, Dixon tipped out of Ella’s pocket and fell to the ground. Samantha, following orders, forgot she could fly and set off up the valley as fast as she could on foot. Humphrey and Max ran after her.
‘Don’t stooooop!’ Charlie yelled at them. Where was Ella? He turned back to look for her, but tripped. And he couldn’t get back up—his leg was trapped! He wriggled to free it. ‘Don’t STOOOOOP,’ he yelled again, after Sam, Humphrey and Max, with such urgency the Flitterwigs didn’t even dare look back. Every part of Charlie’s Protector instincts sensed danger.
Sam and Humph launched themselves up the steeper part of the valley, concentrating on not falling backwards. Max followed.
Charlie gulped. Whatever had fallen on his leg was warm. He touched it. It felt like the cracked bits on an old person’s heel. A shiver ran up his spine. He looked behind him. The ground was splitting open.
A pair of ennnnnnoooormous eyes looked up at him through the split. They had black nests for eyebrows (with actual crows living in them) and there was a scar across the right one. They blinked calmly.
It was a Giant! One that Charlie had never met before, but he’d bet his life on the fact that he wore a kilt! He struggled to pull his leg free.
Whatever was crushing it, crushed tighter. And then it all made sense. He was being pinned down by a massive finger! ‘GET AWAY FROM HERE!’ he screamed to his friends.
But as the valley opened its mouth wider, stretching at the bridge up above until stones fell in to the crevasse, Charlie’s friends stopped running and turned to see if he was okay. And then the split cracked open completely. Charlie, Samantha and Max fell into it. Backwards the three of them spun into a dark abyss.
Only Humphrey managed to grab hold of a large slice of rock and haul himself to safety. He closed his eyes, grabbed his ear and squeezed for all he was worth. He Bongled himself in a fraction of a second and disappeared.
Gloria and Ella watched, horrified, from the other side of the valley, as the children fell into a black hole. They were the size of ants compared to the massive, gigantic, acne-covered head with its forest of black hair that poked itself up out of the ground and looked about. It was the Giant in Ella’s dreams. There was no doubt about it.
The Giant’s head disappeared back into the crevasse, pulling it shut behind him. Humphrey tumbled down the hill as it folded in. He sat up and blew his fringe out of his eyes.
It was as if nothing had ever happened. There was hardly even a seam left to suggest that the earth had just swallowed everyone up in one almighty gulp.
Had it actually happened? Humphrey let out a sombre sigh from his mouth. This wasn’t good.
‘Help. Yelp. Kelp.’
Humphrey turned to the sound. There was a tiny red-and-white stripy thing with green pants lying in the grass next to him. He crawled over to it. It was Dixon! And he was burning up! There was Scatterbungle here!
Humphrey scooped Dixon up at once and tucked him down the front of his polo neck jumper, to get him as close to his Key as he could.
The pixie blinked up at him, clinging to the string around Humphrey’s neck. ‘Phew, hugh,’ he whispered. ‘That was close, gross.’
Humphrey nodded, giving his fringe a flick… and then a stray rock from the bridge above bounced down into the valley and knocked the poor Moglin clean out!
Charlie, Samantha and Max fell like dead flies through a dark, black world. The only light to be seen was that shining from two Keys—one green and one purple.
Bump bump, bump, they landed. Charlie sat up. Luckily they had landed in something relatively soft.
A hand as big as a car, holding a burning coal approached the three small bodies. They hurled themselves behind a small wall. As the coal lit up the space around them, the truth dawned. They were hiding behind a callous at the end of a finger in the palm of the car-sized hand’s car-sized partner!
Max pulled his skateboard off his back, set it down and pushed off, jumping up and over the dunes of the finger, preparing to launch himself off the end of it. But another finger appeared and knocked him, like a cue on a pool ball, backwards. He flipped up his skateboard as he pulled himself blearily on to his feet and headed back across the palm. ‘What is it you want from us?’ he called out. There was something new in his voice, a presence about him that quite made Samantha swoon.
‘Oh for… the love of… oh my… oh for . . ,’ Charlie babbled, running around the palm in a most agitated state. Right now was the most terrible time to be separated from his Protectee! At the most dangerous time of all! ‘Ellaaaa!’ he called out.
‘Calm down,’ Samantha said to him, trying to sound as in control as she possibly could. Which wasn’t easy, because she was feeling pretty blinking freaked out herself, actually. But Sam was always thinking of others before herself. She unfurled her wings and flew up into the air, light as a butterfly, only to be squished back into the hand like a mosquito.
The air was crushed out of her. She coughed herself back to life and set her hands upon her back to heal a crack there. She didn’t see the pale buttercup hue of the Key around her neck shine with a little more colour beneath her shirt.
And then the three of them were tumbling through the thick air again, tossed like rubbish. It grew colder the further they fell. And this time when they landed on the rocky floor, Charlie felt his shoulder pop. Samantha was with him in an instant, her soothing hands guiding the bone back into place.
They looked upwards. From the light of the flickering coal above, it was clear the Giant wore a kilt.
‘You don’t understand, Sam,’ Charlie babbled. ‘I’m Ella’s Protector and I’m not with her and that Giant is the one from her dream and…’
Samantha took his face in
her hands. ‘It’ll be fine,’ she said. ‘We’ll find her together. We have to.’
Her Key shone brighter.
‘We will,’ said Max, hobbling towards them from where he had fallen. He closed his eyes and tweaked his ear. His hair lit up like a fire in a hearth, casting a striking shadow across his alabaster face. He really was beginning to look like a different person altogether. Even bruised and battered he was ever so composed.
But if he hadn’t been lucky enough to have Charlie nearby he probably would have been squashed to death. For in the light of his burning curls, Charlie saw a big, hairy foot covered in boils, rise up and come down over Max’s head. Charlie zoomed over just in time to push Humphrey out of the way and fling himself away before the foot hit the ground with a CRASSSSSH!
He hadn’t even caught his breath when he realised he was standing right next to a toe, the size of a barrel. The nail upon it was so cracked and festering with fungus that Charlie heaved at the sight of it. Never mind the smell! The foot raised up above them again. He pulled Samantha and Max out of the way, into the shadows, quick as a flash.
‘What are you doing opening up before nightfall, Arnold, dear?’ boomed a high-pitched, scratching, grating Scottish accent from another room, distracting Arnold and causing him to smash his foot to the ground upon nothing.
‘We have visitors,’ thundered the owner of the festering toenail, his tone equally broad Scots, but with a deep, nasty belly rumble to it. ‘Although, they won’t be around for long.’
Arnold tried again to snuff out the children by squashing them against the wall with his toe.
‘Can we eat them?’ asked the high-pitched Giant (who, believe it or not, was female), letting out a horrible guffaw.
The children were momentarily relieved from the giant toe, dodging it when Arnold paused to listen to an almighty roaring and bashing in the distance. Charlie was off, along the edge of the rocks. Max and Sam followed.