by Sam Gayton
That was over.
14
With a cluck, Artifax emerged from the mist and stepped back onto dry land, feet thudding on soft sand. They had crossed the lake to the far shore. Avalon was behind them. Up ahead were endless hills and forests.
The kingdom of Petrossia.
Artifax slowed to a stop, his sides heaving, and began preening his feathers. Hercufleas lay in Greta’s hand, miserable.
In the dark stillness, she leaned into her palm, so close that he felt the warm wind of her breath.
‘Are you alive?’
‘Unfortunately, yes,’ said Hercufleas. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Sorry? What for?’
‘It was only supposed to be a little adventure, I promise… But it ended up a huge disaster, didn’t it? Now you won’t get your Happily Ever After, and my fleamily will be homeless, and I never, ever should have left the house-hat…’
He trailed off. Greta’s eyes shone. Her shoulders shook. She was giggling.
‘What’s so funny?’
She threw back her head and howled with laughter so hard she fell off Artifax and onto the sand.
‘Oh, Hercufleas!’ she cried, tears streaming from her odd-coloured eyes. ‘You’re not a disaster, you’re incredible! You’re unbefleavable! You’re parasiticulous! The best pest in all the world! You’re perfect! What a hero I’m bringing back to Tumber!’
Hercufleas hopped to his feet. ‘Did you just call me a hero?’
Greta grinned, jumping up and dancing around Artifax, who cocked his head and squawked. ‘Not just a hero, but exactly the right type of hero too.’
Hercufleas gawped. ‘I am?’
‘Of course!’ laughed Greta. ‘You’re a giant-slayer! You saved me from Prince Xin, and from Ugor. Compared to you, those two are colossal!’
And she gave him an enormous slobbery kiss.
‘Eurgh!’ he spluttered. ‘Yuck!’
Greta froze. ‘Yuk!’ she cried. ‘Of course! We have to get you to Tumber, so you can fight Yuk! Don’t worry, you won’t have to do it on your own – you can teach the Tumberfolk about giant-slaying, and they’ll help!’
Hercufleas blinked. What could he teach the Tumberfolk? All he’d done was bite someone’s finger, then hide in a pig’s nostril and cause a small explosion. And yet the thought made him puff with pride. He was a giant-slayer! A heroic giant-slayer!
‘We’ve got to leave right now,’ Greta said. ‘We’ll have to go through the forests – my boat is back in Avalon. And so is my other clog. But we’ve got Artifax.’ She looked at the great bird’s tiny wings and sighed. ‘I wish Prince Xin had bred your wings a bit bigger – then we could fly over the trees instead of stumbling through them.’ She turned to Hercufleas. ‘No time to lose! Are you ready?’
It was all happening so fast. Greta was asking him to join her on another adventure. She wanted him to save her again. His destiny was unfolding, right in front of him. So why was he hesitating?
‘Shouldn’t we go back to Avalon first?’ he said. ‘We have to explain what happened, or—’
Greta scowled. ‘You saw what Ugor tried to do. He’ll be watching. If I so much as set foot on that island… And then there’s Stickler…’ Her face went dark with rage. ‘He tried to have me killed.’
‘Maybe he made a mistake, maybe it was an administrative error…’ Hercufleas trailed off. He knew Greta was right. Stickler was just as villainous as Prince Xin and Ugor. He only cared about his business, his reputation and his gold. Greta knew his dark secret, and if they returned to Avalon, Stickler would try to get rid of her. And maybe Hercufleas too.
‘This isn’t about Stickler any more,’ Greta said, pulling him from his thoughts. ‘This is about Tumber.’ She pointed up at the last sliver of moon. ‘Tomorrow, when the moon is new, Yuk will come to guzzle everyone I’ve ever known. Won’t you help?’
Hercufleas hopped back and forth across her palm, trying to make the right choice. He could return to Avalon and bring Stickler to justice, or go to Tumber and rescue the people there from Yuk.
‘I’ll come with you, Greta,’ he said at last. ‘But first I have to go back to Happily Ever Afters.’
She stared at him. ‘But—’
‘I have to warn my fleamily,’ said Hercufleas firmly. ‘They might be in danger. What if Stickler tries to hurt them too?’
‘But—’
‘I’m small. I can sneak back to Avalon without being spotted. I’ll go straight to the owners of BestQuest, or Heroes for Hire, and tell them the truth.
‘But—’
‘Stop saying “but”! I have to do this. I don’t have a choice.’
Greta scowled. ‘Neither do I.’
Her hand closed into a fist, squeezing him like the coils of a python.
‘Greta! What are you doing? Let me go!’
He bit and kicked and tried to jump, but she only tightened her grip.
‘Ride, Artifax!’ she called, leaping onto the bird’s back. They hurtled forward into the trees and entered the land of Petrossia.
15
On they rode through the forest. It was just like an adventure in an Avalonian fairy tale: a brave hero, a noble steed, a fair maiden. Except the brave hero was the size of a raisin, the fair maiden was a scowling kidnapper and the noble steed was some sort of gigantic albino chicken.
It was not an adventure Hercufleas wanted to be a part of.
He had fought in Greta’s grip, biting and struggling and yelling until he was exhausted. Eventually his rage cooled to a dull anger and his anger froze into icy terror. There was nothing he could do. Greta was taking him off to fight a giant that had crushed Avalon’s strongest hero into little pieces.
What terrified Hercufleas even more than Yuk was what might be happening to his fleamily right now. They had no idea that their host was a greedy attempted-murderer who hired out villains as well as heroes.
He imagined Stickler taking his hat from his head and shaking it up and down on the porch, yelling, ‘I told you to keep your little hatchling under control! I gave you a formal warning!’ He imagined Min, Pin and the others huddling together in the mist, shivering, hungry, homeless. He imagined Stickler deciding the fleamily needed to be silenced to protect his reputation…
He had to make Greta let him go. Whatever it took.
He started off with lies.
‘Greta, I think I’ve sprained my ankle.’
‘Greta, I’ve just remembered – I left my sword back in Avalon!’
‘Greta, I’m allergic to giants. They give me a rash.’
When lies didn’t work, he tried threats.
‘Greta, you have until the count of three to let me out, otherwise I’ll bite you, suck out all your blood and leave you here like a shrivelled-up prune! One… Two… Two and a half… Two and almost very nearly three…’
He tried curses. (‘I hope Yuk eats you right after he eats me!’) He tried begging. (‘Please, please, please, please, please let me go.’) Nothing worked.
After hours of stumbling between trees, Hercufleas felt Greta’s fingers start to loosen their grip, until finally she let him go completely.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said curtly. ‘I shouldn’t have snatched you like that. Come on, you can hop on my shoulder if you want.’
Hercufleas ignored her. He stood in her palm, stretching his stiff legs. Now it was his turn to scowl. ‘What makes you think I’m coming with you?’ he said. ‘I’m hopping back to Avalon to save my fleamily—’
‘Your fleamily will be fine,’ Greta interrupted. ‘For now. We can deal with Stickler later.’
‘What if he gets rid of them, like he tried to get rid of you?’
‘Why would he? He needs them. They’re his employfleas.’
‘But if he thinks that I…’ Hercufleas couldn’t bring himself to say murdered. ‘If he realises that Prince Xin… If he finds out that was me—’
‘He won’t. Think about it. Ugor didn’t even see you. And you didn’t tell a
nyone where you were going, did you?’
Hercufleas shook his head. Greta had a point. ‘But it still feels wrong to leave them,’ he said.
Greta gave a huff and plonked him on Artifax’s head. Then she slid onto the ground, plucked some brambleberries from a bush and fed them to the bird, one by one.
‘Also,’ she added quietly while Artifax pecked, ‘if you did try and escape, I doubt you’d make it very far. You might be a good giant-slayer, but that won’t help you in here.’
Hercufleas looked around. Trees in every direction. The whole place silent and somehow lifeless… He shook his jitters away. What was there to be scared of? It was just a wood.
Greta seemed to sense his thoughts. ‘We’re not in Avalon any more. This is Petrossia, and Petrossia doesn’t have woods. It has woodn’ts instead.’
Artifax finished his meal, clucking with pleasure, and Greta stroked his neck before whispering, ‘Know how the woodn’t got its name, Hercufleas? Because you wouldn’t want to go through it. Not if you had a choice.’
Hercufleas sighed. He didn’t believe her. She was just trying to make him stay. ‘What should I be scared of then?’ he asked. ‘Is the Bögenmann coming to get us?’
Greta shook her head. ‘No, the Bögenmann lives miles away to the west,’ she said. ‘Here it’s mainly wolves and black bears and grizzly squirrels.’
Hercufleas chuckled. ‘Grizzly squirrels?’
‘Give me a wolf or a black bear over a grizzly squirrel any day,’ she said. ‘At least they can’t climb trees. Although you shouldn’t ever climb trees in a woodn’t. They’re the most dangerous things of all.’
Greta’s words made Hercufleas’s insides cold and squirmy, as if he’d drunk slug blood. ‘Trees? What’s dangerous about trees?’
‘Nothing.’ Greta shrugged. ‘Unless you’re in a woodn’t. Here, they’re big. And hungry.’
Hercufleas shivered.
Trees?
Hungry?
‘The woodn’t is so thick,’ Greta said, ‘sunlight gets blotted out before it reaches the floor. The trees that grow beneath the canopy have to find something other than sunbeams to feed on. Pine-needlers feed on birds. Bramble-strangle feeds on other trees. Rattlesnoaks are the worst. They camouflage themselves to look just like normal oaks, but their roots move, and each rattleroot has a snake’s head at the end. A bite from one of them will paralyse you in seconds. Then they drag you towards the trunk, and the rattlesnoak gobbles you up.’
A branch creaked behind Hercufleas. He jumped up, hitting his head on a leaf, which made him scream, which made Greta laugh.
‘It’s autumn now,’ she said. ‘So all the rattleroots will be settling down to hibernate. And right now they have seed pods on their branches that shake when anyone gets too close. Over there: listen…’
Hercufleas strained his ears. Far to his left, above the rustle of the woodn’t, he heard a harsh rattling, like a dozen maracas shaking, and then, far off, a wolf’s howl. He trembled. Beneath his feet, so did Artifax.
‘You know a lot about this woodn’t, Greta.’
‘I have to. I’m a woodcutter.’ She tapped the axe on her back and smiled sadly. ‘Just like my parents were.’
In the distance, the rattlesnoak shook again, and Greta’s eyes got a faraway look in them.
‘Once,’ she told him, ‘before the guzzlings, Papa crept up on a rattlesnoak and carved Mama’s name into its trunk. Then he chopped off one of its roots, to prove he’d done it, and made her this axe.’
She showed Hercufleas the gnarled handle of her axe, which ended in the varnished head of a snake. It looked as if it was carved into the wood, but Hercufleas knew now that it wasn’t.
A tree, with serpent roots.
‘Mama always used to tell me that story.’ Greta fell quiet. ‘Are you hungry?’
Hercufleas realised suddenly that yes, he was. Hungry and scared.
‘Lion blood, if you have any?’ he said, then seeing her glare, added, ‘Cougar or panther blood will do.’
Greta held out her thumb. ‘Drink,’ she said.
Hercufleas winced at the memory of Greta’s bitter-tasting blood. He’d prefer to drink from Artifax, but that might be rude. So he nipped her and took a quick sip. Just like last time, it puckered his mouth and made him shudder as it slid down his throat – but then the aftertaste carried a hint of something sweet that hadn’t been there before. It was hope. Greta believed in Hercufleas. She truly thought he was the one to save her town. Now there was no longer only bitterness inside her.
The woodn’t grew lighter, and suddenly they found themselves in a clearing where all the trees were overturned or jagged stumps. In the starlight, the valley was a colour both black and emerald. The moon was a white sliver.
‘Did… Did Yuk do this?’ Hercufleas looked out across the jumble of broken trees and churned earth.
Greta shrugged. ‘Maybe. Don’t worry though – he won’t wake until the new moon. And we’re almost through now. Tumber’s beyond this valley…’ She looked up, frowning. ‘Did you hear that?’
Hercufleas strained his ears, catching the snap of twigs, the dry rustle of dead leaves.
‘The wind?’ he said hopefully.
Greta shook her head. ‘There is no wind,’ she said, turning round and edging Artifax into the clearing. ‘Something’s in the trees.’
‘Is it wolves?’ he whimpered, cowering up her sleeve. ‘A black bear? Or a grizzly squirrel?’
‘Quiet,’ she hissed, pulling on the reins. Artifax reared up. Suddenly Greta’s axe was in her hands.
‘Who’s there?’ she called.
16
The shuffle-snap-swish grew louder. Hercufleas began muttering The Plea of the Flea over and over, very fast.
Greta peered into the darkness around them. The trees were so thick and the light so faint she could barely see.
‘What is it, Greta? A rattlesnoak? Don’t let it get us! Fight it, chop it into matchsticks, do something!’
‘Can’t fight what you can’t see,’ she murmured.
From her bag she pulled out a long white stick and a small silver tinderbox with a pair of tweezers hanging from the lid on a chain. Hercufleas felt heat coming from it. Around it, the air hummed.
With the tweezers, Greta opened the box a crack, drawing out a living flicker of flame.
A tinderfly! It crackled and popped like a tiny ember.
Before it burned her fingers, Greta pressed the bug down on the sugarstick. With the wick, she tied the fly in place. It buzzed there, an angry blue, until it melted the sugar below. All at once, it settled down to eat. Its wings began to burn a warm, contented orange. A smell of caramel filled the air. Greta shut the tinderbox and held the flame up to the dark.
She called out again. ‘Whatever you are, come out!’
Suddenly something enormous burst out of the undergrowth towards them. Greta’s skin goosebumped with terror. Hercufleas screamed. He wasn’t ready to fight Yuk yet! He wasn’t ready to die! He’d only just started to live! He was so terrified, he pooed a tiny rust-red scab onto Greta’s wrist (since fleas drink only blood, scabs are what they poo).
But the dark shape wasn’t the giant.
In a way, it was worse.
Greta swung the tinderfly around to illuminate Onk-Onk skidding to a stop, his snout snuffling their scent on the ground.
Ugor stepped off his pig, holding his Bazuka, a rifle from the Orient that fired tiny sticks of dynamite. ‘Move and you die,’ he growled, pointing the gun at them. ‘Good sniffing, Onk-Onk.’ Keeping his eyes on Greta, he called over his shoulder through the trees, ‘She is here, Mr Stickler. With the flea too.’
Mr Stickler appeared behind Ugor, the house-hat on his head like a lantern. Every window was dazzlingly lit – Hercufleas threw his arm across his eyes. When at last he could look, his fleamily were all crowded on the brim holding candles, waving at Hercufleas.
Suddenly they were all yelling:
‘Don’t wor
ry!’
‘You’re safe now!’
‘Ugor told us what happened!’
‘Mr Stickler said you’d probably been kidnapped!’
‘We took a boat to cut her off!’
‘Min says you can pick two bottles from the pantry for dinner!’
Seeing them, Hercufleas sighed in relief. Despite everything, his fleamily were all right. Everything was going to be OK.
Then he remembered that Stickler and Ugor were there too and he realised that wasn’t true at all.
‘Don’t worry, little one!’ Min called to Hercufleas. ‘We won’t let her steal you to sell to some flea circus!’
‘That’s not what she’s doing,’ Hercufleas called. ‘That isn’t what happened!’
But Stickler was speaking too, and his loud voice drowned out Hercufleas. ‘You tried to blackmail me,’ he said to Greta. ‘Then you murdered Prince Xin. Stole Artifax. Kidnapped one of my employfleas. Now you will face justice.’
Greta urged Artifax back to the edge of the clearing, swinging her light from Stickler to Ugor.
‘Yes, I’m a thief,’ she said. ‘A kidnapper too. But I didn’t murder Prince Xin. He tried to murder me! And you told him to do it!’
‘Kill her, Ugor,’ Stickler said with a sigh, picking dirt from under his fingernails. ‘Kill her now. We don’t need to listen to any of her lies.’
‘Wait!’ Min cried. ‘What about my hatchling?’
Under the hat’s brim, the lenses of Stickler’s scopical glasses glinted as he thought. ‘Hercufleas,’ he said at last, ‘jump away from that murdering villain now. Ugor needs to dynamite her.’
Greta looked down at Hercufleas. ‘He’ll tell you the truth!’
Stickler hesitated. On the brim of his hat, the fleamily were looking at each other with puzzled faces.
‘What’s she talking about, Hercufleas?’ asked Pin.
Hercufleas opened his mouth, about to explain everything: the flyte, Prince Xin’s fall, Onk-Onk’s sneeze, the escape across the lake.
But then, behind Stickler’s back, Ugor swung his gun away from Greta.