The Land of Roar

by Jenny McLachlan

  ‘Not quite.’ I hear a rustle of wings and see Crowky is closing in on us too. He’s frowning in concentration, and making strange bird-like sounds – harsh caws and clicks – and, as one, the pack of scarecrows crouch into a striking position. I realise that Crowky just made them do that. Last time I was in Roar, he worked alone. Now he’s commanding this army.

  ‘Arthur?’ Win shoves me. ‘Any bright ideas?’

  My eyes flick from Crowky to the scarecrows. ‘Let’s fight the scarecrows. There are loads of them, but if we can get past them at least we stand a chance of getting back to land. Can they stuff things, like Crowky?’

  Win shakes his head. ‘I don’t know, mate, but there’s one way to find out. Ready?’

  ‘Ready.’ My trembling voice gives away my fear.

  He clutches his wand in front of him. ‘Say that thing.’

  ‘What thing?’

  ‘That thing you always used to shout. You know: Hear me roar! ’

  At that moment the scarecrows surge forward and I hear a great flap of wings behind me. ‘Hear me roar!’ I yell. ‘HEAR ME ROAR!’

  Win and I fling ourselves over the gap and on to the next rock.

  The moment we hit the ground we’re tugged apart. Scarecrows pull at me, scratch my face and tear at my clothes. I stagger to my feet and try to smash my way through them. But there are too many, and they press closer and closer, punching and stamping. Then the crows join in too: pecking and jabbing, aiming for my eyes. Keeping an arm over my face, I try to fight back. I thrust the wooden sword in front of me, trying to clear a path, but it’s plucked from my hands and the next thing I know it’s smacking me across my shoulders. I pull a scarecrow’s arm so hard that it comes off in my hands, but the scarecrow just swings round and smashes me with its other fist. Between blows I see Win struggling to hold on to his wand.

  Soon the scarecrows force us together, until we’re cowering at the very edge of the rock. Just when I think we’re going to be shoved into the sea they fall back.

  With a leap Crowky lands on our rock and strides towards us, eyes gleaming.

  ‘Oh dear,’ says Win.

  ‘Oh dear? ’ We clutch each other for support. ‘Win, we’ve been defeated in under three minutes!’

  ‘At least we’re going down in a blaze of glory!’

  I see that at some point one of the scarecrows got Win’s rucksack off my back and is now rummaging through it. It pulls out one of the apples, opens its mouth and swallows it whole.

  I shake my head. ‘This isn’t a blaze of glory . . . It’s pathetic!’

  Crowky stops in front of us. ‘Pathetic,’ he says. ‘I couldn’t have chosen a better word myself.’ Then in one lightning-quick movement he lunges forward and grabs hold of my shoulders. The second his twig fingers dig into my skin, a cold numbness slams into me. I try to struggle and kick out, but already my legs are becoming stiff. ‘Drain . . .’ hisses Crowky – ‘Drain . . .’

  I twist and turn, but Crowky only presses harder, his eyes rolling to the back of his head, as everything warm inside – my life, my breath – seeps away. I see Win grab Crowky’s arm, but one kick sends him flying to the ground.

  ‘Drain . . . drain.’ Crowky’s voice is a hoarse whisper.

  As the chill creeps up my neck towards my throat, Crowky seems to come to life. His head lifts, his eyes focus and his wings start to beat, slowly at first, then faster and faster until they’re a blur and then he’s rising into the air.

  ‘I’m flying!’ he shrieks. ‘I’M FLYING!’ His hands squeeze tighter and he lifts my heavy, icy body up with him.

  My throat is tight, but I manage to cry, ‘Win, HELP!’

  Win staggers to his feet and wraps his arms round my legs; instantly I feel a glow of warmth and I’m able to twist from side to side, but Crowky’s grip is like steel and his wings just beat harder, pulling me higher in the air until I’m being torn in two. Below me waves smash against the rocks and Crowky kicks out at Win who’s clinging on to my legs refusing to let go. Crowky pushes his face close to mine. I see a loose thread dangling from one button eye and breathe in his musty, feathery smell. ‘I really do have you now, don’t I, Arthur Trout?’ Then he throws his head back and cackles.

  At that moment a screech echoes across the valley. It’s followed by a thudding like distant thunder. Crowky’s eyes shift from my face to the sky beyond, then his face scrunches up with rage. ‘NO!’

  I manage to turn my head. Two vast shapes are moving through the sky, beating a path towards us.

  ‘Dragons!’ Win cries, as great wings loom through the mist. There is another spine-tingling screech and a ball of fire explodes in the sky. One of the dragons leads the way, close enough now for me to see light shining through his red wings and the arrowhead tail that droops below him.

  ‘Pickle? ’ I whisper.

  A darker, larger dragon tumbles around Pickle, snapping at his tail.  Vlad. The dragons’ names come back to me as fast as they’re cutting through the sky.

  Pickle soars closer and closer until the flash of fire shooting from his jaws showers us with sparks. Crowky howls, and that’s when I remember that if there’s one thing straw-stuffed Crowky hates, it’s fire.

  Pickle dives and his talons stretch wide as if he’s preparing to strike. Then, through the black smoke billowing from his nostrils, I see a figure sitting on his back. Her eyes are blazing and her hair is flying out behind her. She’s wearing slippers and a leopard-print onesie.

  ‘Rose!’ I yell, and at that moment Crowky loses his grip and I fall backwards, past the rock and towards the sea, dragging Win down with me.

  Down we go, screaming and thrashing our arms. The sea sucks back and just as we’re about to smash head first on to the rocks, talons scrape across my back and I’m swept into the air. I see Win swinging from Pickle’s other clawed hand.

  Pickle’s wings beat hard and we soar higher and higher, away from the Magic Road and Crowky and his army. Relief sweeps through me until I realise that as the Crow’s Nest falls behind us we’re leaving Grandad behind too. But when I see just how high up we are and how loosely Pickle seems to be holding me, all thoughts of anything disappear.

  ‘My hat’s burnt!’ Win laughs, pulling it off his head to show me. He has a big grin on his face, but I can’t even talk. I lied when I told Rose I wasn’t afraid of anything. I’m afraid of loads of things, but most of all I’m afraid of heights, or rather falling. The clouds floating below my feet make my insides feel like liquid and my legs tremble.

  No. It makes all of me tremble.

  ‘Wow!’ cries Win. ‘Look at the Tangled Forest. It’s so pretty!’

  ‘Win,’ I manage to say, ‘we’re dangling in the claws of a dragon . . . about a mile off the ground. It’s not pretty – it makes me want to puke.’ Then I squeeze my eyes shut while Win gives me a running commentary of our journey over Roar.

  ‘I think my cave is over there . . . Oooh, check out the tiny trees!’

  I only risk a quick look down when Win tells me we’re flying over the archipelago.  No, Archie Playgo, I think, remembering the tiny islands drawn on the map. I’m tempted to try to spot more landmarks from the map, to find the Tangled Forest and the On-Off Waterfall, but I can’t quite bring myself to raise my head.

  Win laughs. ‘I haven’t been here for ages. The water looks like silver!’

  Floating below us are the hundreds of islands that make up the Archie Playgo. They’re dotted across water that’s so still I can see Pickle’s and Vlad’s reflections sailing below us, and even me and Win swinging from Pickle’s claws. I feel myself slip ever so slightly, and shut my eyes again. If I can’t see, I can almost pretend this isn’t happening. But I can’t ignore Pickle’s deadly burps; at least I hope they’re burps. Rushes of hot smelly gas keep whipping past my face, making me squeeze my mouth shut as well as my eyes. And Vlad doesn’t make the journey go any smoother. I can hear him circling us, shrieking at Pickle and trying to draw him into p
lay fights.

  ‘Arthur!’ Win has to shout to be heard over the dragon’s beating wings. ‘I think we’re landing!’

  I open one eye. He’s right. We’ve dropped lower and are circling an island. I haven’t been able to speak to Rose since Pickle snatched us to safety, but I guess she knows where she’s going. As we spiral closer to the island I see it has a lagoon in the middle, and off to one side a hut with a jetty. It looks vaguely familiar and so does the dark shape meandering below the surface of the lagoon like a giant goldfish.

  Pickle is gliding now, but we’re not slowing down. If anything, as the ground rushes up to meet us, it feels like we’re going faster.

  ‘Do you reckon Rose has remembered we’re down here?’ shouts Win.

  ‘Definitely!’ I yell, but then Pickle flies so low over a field that we have to pull our legs up to stop them from being dragged along the rocky earth. ‘Maybe . . .’

  Moments before we smack into the ground, Pickle swings left, opens his talons and drops us on to a pile of dry grass. For a moment we just lie there, curled up and stunned, then Win leaps to his feet and cries, ‘That was MIND-BLOWING! Let’s do it again!’

  I simply groan and savour the amazing sensation of lying on solid ground and having a body that might be bruised, but isn’t being squeezed by a scarecrow or held loosely by a dragon.

  Pickle lands with a thump and Vlad crashes down next to him. Rose slides off Pickle’s back and immediately the dragons start licking her face with their black tongues. Then Vlad lifts up a foot and gently knocks her to the ground where they nuzzle her and roll her playfully about on the grass.

  Rose wriggles out from underneath them and issues a stern command, making them slink away, tails curled under their bodies. As they plod over to the pool and start to drink great gulps of water Rose stomps towards us, her slippers crunching over shells and wild flowers. She looks furious. Her normally straightened hair has sprung into curls and she’s covered in grass and dragon spit.

  She stops in front of me, wipes the slimy stuff off her face and puts her hands on her hips. ‘What is going on, Arthur?’

  ‘Rose!’ Win tries and fails to give her a hug. ‘Thanks for saving my life. I definitely owe you one!’

  Rose acts like he’s invisible and continues glaring at me, so Win gives her a final squeeze then goes off to peer into the lagoon.

  ‘You came after me,’ I say.

  She shrugs like it’s no big deal. ‘When I got back from town and discovered you’d gone missing too I decided you were both playing a trick on me. So I watched some TV, then had a bath and went to bed –’

  ‘Seriously, Rose? You watched TV, then had a bath and went to bed? Did you sleep well?’

  She scowls. ‘No I didn’t as a matter of fact. It got later and later, and I was all on my own, and I was scared and I didn’t have a clue what to do. In the morning, when you still hadn’t come back, I decided to call the police. But before I did that, I crawled through the camp bed – even though I knew it was totally ridiculous – just to check it wasn’t some weird portal to another world and –’

  ‘You discovered it was some weird portal to another world?’

  She frowns. ‘Yeah . . . Not what I was expecting.’

  ‘And you just went through the bed, straight into the tunnel and ended up here? It worked the first time?’

  ‘Yep. I came out on the ledge, ducked back to miss the waterfall, then whistled for Pickle. Since then I’ve been looking for you.’

  This is typical of Rose. She has to do everything better than me: running, spelling, entering fantasy worlds. She glances around, taking in the spectacular islands of the Archie Playgo.

  ‘It’s amazing, isn’t it?’ I say.

  ‘I guess . . .’

  ‘You guess? Rose, it’s incredible. Roar is real!’

  She shakes her head stubbornly. ‘I don’t know what this place is, but it’s definitely not real, is it? Not like home or school or Mum and Dad.’

  Under our feet the earth starts to tremble.

  ‘Ground wobble!’ shouts Win, delighted. ‘Don’t worry. They happen all the time. You’ll get used to them.’ After a second or two the shaking fades away.

  ‘This place isn’t safe,’ says Rose firmly, then she starts to walk towards the hut. ‘We’ve got to get out of here, Arthur. Go back home.’

  I catch up with her and grab her arm. ‘But we can’t go home. Not until we’ve got Grandad.’

  She shakes me off. ‘How do you know he’s even here? I’m almost one hundred per cent certain that this is all some freaky dream and any second now I’m going to wake up back in the real world!’

  ‘I know he’s here because Win found this.’ I pull out Grandad’s blue inhaler. Rose stares at the familiar L-shaped plastic tube. ‘And Croaky was wearing Grandad’s T-shirt! We have to rescue Grandad, and if we leave now, maybe we can get back to the Crow’s Nest before it’s dark. Perhaps with Pickle and Vlad we’ll stand a chance of beating Crowky.’

  Rose makes an exasperated sound. ‘Arthur, how can you speak like this is normal and you’re planning a little trip to the Crow’s Nest? None of this is normal.’ She points at Win, who is punching a sunflower. ‘He isn’t normal!’

  ‘What?’ says Win. ‘Who’s not normal?’

  ‘No one,’ I say, then I lower my voice. ‘I’m talking like this because we’ve got no choice. Crowky has stuffed Grandad, Rose. Do you remember what that means? Right now Grandad is dangling somewhere in Crowky’s dungeons and he can’t move or talk. If Win’s right, we have less than seventy-two hours to get to Grandad or he’ll stay like that forever!’

  Rose frowns. ‘That sounds like something Win made up.’

  ‘No it doesn’t. It sounds like something we made up!’ I’m almost shouting now; I have to get Rose to take this seriously.

  She stares into the distance. ‘You’re right,’ she says eventually. ‘We have to go back to the Crow’s Nest and find Grandad, but we can’t go now. There’s nowhere to land the dragons – it’s all turrets and rocks – and there are too many of those things.’

  ‘They’re scarecrows,’ I say. ‘Crowky made them.’

  ‘Well, whatever they are, they would catch us in seconds.’ Win abandons his sunflower and comes over to join us. ‘If we’re going to get into the Crow’s Nest, we need help from someone with brains and good magic.’

  ‘Er, hello ?’ says Win, pointing at himself.

  Rose gives him a withering look.

  ‘Like who?’ I say.

  For the first time Rose smiles. ‘You don’t know where we are, do you?’

  I look around, taking in the path that circles the edge of the lagoon and the huge flat rocks. ‘No . . . although I feel like I’ve been here before.’

  ‘What if I told you that this lagoon is filled with merfolk?’

  As she says this a scaly tail flips out of the water then disappears. A moment later, a face emerges – but only the forehead and eyes – before slipping below the surface of the water again.

  ‘And that,’ says Rose, nodding towards the hut, ‘is where Mitch lives.’

  Win groans. ‘Mitch the merwitch. She’ll mock my magic. She always mocks my magic!’

  ‘She’s so sarcastic,’ I say. ‘Do we really need Mitch’s help?’

  ‘Yes!’ Rose raises her chin. ‘You’re not the only one who gets to have an imaginary friend, Arthur!’

  Win tugs on my sleeve. ‘What’s an imaginary friend?’

  I look at Win’s big eyes. ‘It’s just a word me and Rose use. When we say “imaginary” what we really mean is . . . amazing.’

  A smile spreads across his face. ‘So my magic’s imaginary ! My ninja skills are well imaginary ! Have I got it?’

  ‘Yep. You’ve got it,’ I say, and we follow Rose up the path to the hut.

  ‘Mitch, you’ll never guess who’s back!’ cries Win, hammering on the door. ‘You’ve only got both Masters of Roar on your doorstep!’ When no one answer
s he jumps in the air, cries, ‘Leaping tiger kick!’ and slams his foot into the door. With a loud creak it falls off its hinges and crashes to the ground.

  ‘Mitch is not going to like that,’ says Rose.

  But Win is gazing at his foot, too amazed by his own strength to consider the consequences of what he’s just done. ‘Imaginary! ’ he whispers.

  We know something is wrong the moment we step inside.

  Our feet crunch over sand, thick dust covers every surface and the door at the back of the hut is swinging open. As we walk further in, a yellow crab scuttles out from under a cupboard, crosses to a hole cut in the wooden floor and drops over the side with a plop. I realise that it’s fallen straight into the lagoon.

  I peer into the hole. The water is clear and deep, and full of tangled weed that’s dotted with fluorescent snails and tiny starfish. I have a flashback to Mitch heaving herself out of this hole – her tail hitting the planks with a wet thump – then looking at me and saying, ‘Oh . . . it’s you.’

  Only there is no Mitch here now.

  ‘Mitch?’ calls Rose. ‘Where are you?’

  There’s no response. All we can hear is the sound of water lapping beneath our feet.

  ‘I don’t think she’s here,’ I say.

  Rose sticks her head into Mitch’s store cupboard, then goes into her bedroom. While Win checks the deck outside, I go to investigate the fireplace. A cauldron is sitting over a long-dead fire and a chopping board lies next to it covered with shrivelled-up herbs and flowers. A knife is pressed into a mouldy toadstool. It’s like Mitch has walked out in the middle of making dinner . . . or a spell.

  Rose runs her fingers through the dust on the bottles that line the windowsill. Bright colours start to shine through: jade, crimson and even a pale milky liquid that’s threaded with swirling silver. ‘Where is she?’ she says.

  Win comes back in. ‘I think she’s gone.’

  ‘What? Gone out?’ says Rose. ‘Gone hunting for ingredients?’