by Edrei Cullen
Charlie felt them too, and he knew it was Ella. He knew it in every fibre of his body. She must have found Dixon, and it had to be bad for her vibes to be so strong. He had to protect Ella! What was he to do? He had to pull it together. He was a Flitterwig Protector, after all. He had magical powers, didn’t he? The boy tried to shut out the trapped feeling he had, the same feeling he imagined being locked in a horrible, dark, cramped box would give him. He was going to have to see if he could make this Giant trust him.
‘Mr Booolgus,’ he said, struggling to move his mouth and fighting the pain. ‘Thaaat’s Ella. Sheee’s the Cleeearheart.’ The effort of talking was crushing his jaw and he sounded like some sort of zombie.
‘The Clearheart is dead!’ Bolgus roared. ‘How dare you mention her name to me.’
‘The laaast one iiis,’ said Charlie with a whimper as rock pressed against his face. ‘But thaaat was yeeears ago. Ella is theee next one. She’s ooonly eleven. She liiived all alooone with her graaandparents after her mother and brothers were kiiilled in an aaaccident and her faaather refuuused to have aaanything to dooo with her beeecause of iiit.’
Bolgus, who wasn’t a bad Giant at heart, felt a stab of pity. He knew only too well how horrible it felt to be held unfairly responsible by a loved one, and he could see that the effort of talking was murderously painful for the boy. Magic knows the Giant hated being above ground for too long. Made him feel so ill. It must be like that for the boy, but the other way around.
Charlie struggled on. ‘A liiittle while agooo the Magicals aaasked her to help get the Deeewdrops baaack after the Duuuke stooole them. Which she diiid. And now her best frieeend, a pixie called Diiixon, has been kidnaaapped by the Duuuke. Don Posiiiblemeeente said that the Giiiants would help us find him, and Thooomas diiid. And nooow sheee’s in daaanger. Yooou can dooo whatever you liiike with meee once we heeelp her, but dooo you thiiink you cooould trust meee for now and help us tooo?’
Charlie’s eyes rolled back in his head and his eyeballs scraped against his eyelids like knives. Tears coursed down Bolgus’s cheeks. The boy was being so brave. Bolgus was confused. What had he done? The Duke hadn’t told him any of this. The Giant berated himself for being too dim to even ask. What was he to do? Perhaps if he helped the little children, his brother would see that he was a good Giant. He leaned forward and, with the tip of his fat finger, tried to clear a little of the grit and earth and rock from the boy’s mouth.
Ella prised Dixon from his icy prison and gathered him in her hands. Still curled up around him in a ball, she did what her instincts bid her do. She blew the heat from inside her onto his broken body. A Troggle, spotting the pixie, snarled and dribbled and grunted, jumping up and down and pointing at the child.
The Duke, without so much as turning again, pointed his finger at the Troggle and zapped him to sludge too. While he watched Bolgus in one bowl of Water, he spoke to Saul in the other. ‘I have the Clearheart. She is suitably distraught. She can smell the pixie. That should be enough to stir the emotions. Get me some tears to strengthen me. We will begin Shrinkification of munitions tomorrow. We will Shrinkify you and the child after that.’ The Duke let out a low, guttural laugh. ‘We’ve done it, Saul. We have her at last.’
At the other end of the Waterway, the bound and gagged Saul tried desperately to send the Duke a message with his eyes. All was not well at the Ulnus estate. Indeed, a long, spiky branch was pointed directly at Saul’s skull. A long, spiky branch growing straight out of Mrs Ulnus’s fingertip, to be precise. Gloria’s parents had been suspicious ever since the Duke had Possessified their daughter, and they weren’t taking any chances. They intended to hold Saul prisoner until the Duke returned to Magus and changed the Magical Hierarchy. Saul would not be freed until dryads were given their official place in the Royal Court, and the Dryad Flitterwigs their rightful seat in the Rooniun.
Ella blew on the pixie with all her might. But he was lifeless—she had arrived too late. She blew and blew anyway, her breath heating his body, frail as frozen matchsticks. Ella held the pixie to her chest, her hair swirling about her wildly, her eyes burning with a fury that sent each emerald beneath the Earth’s surface into a blazing frenzy.
Such loss had been inconceivable to the Clearheart until now. Her grandparents, her mother, her brothers—all those losses had been out of her control. But Charlie. And Dixon. Dixon had come to her, unbound by any ties of blood. Only a clear, true love for life. An obedience to a Queen who asked only for the Natural Balance to be restored.
The pixie in her hand remained motionless.
She opened her palm one more time, to look at the mere speck that was once her dearest friend. Tears fell from her eyes. She tried to dry the pixie, to wipe away the tears that fell like dewdrops on his tiny frame. Unaware of the ice cracking beneath her, Ella paused.
Her hair wrapped around her like a cloak and she leaned in close to her hand. Was it possible? There it was again. She was sure she had seen the pixie’s chest heave. She leaned in even closer. Closer still. She could hear a sound. She put her ear up to the pixie’s mouth.
‘Oh, oh,’ quieter than a whisper. She thought she heard it, and it made her cry all the more. He was alive!
‘Oh, oh.’ Now she was almost sure.
‘He’s breathing!’ Ella whispered. And then the pixie said something else. Ella leaned in closer. She couldn’t quite hear him. Was he saying ‘groove’? What did that mean? And then she got it.
‘Move,’ the tiny man was whispering. ‘Move.’
Samantha and Humphrey stood in the poppy field at Hedgeberry, calling out to they knew not what or who.
‘Yoohoo, Spirit Tree,’ Samantha called. ‘Are you here?’
‘Spirit Tree,’ Humphrey humphed, squinting, for he hated the daylight. It was nearly time for class. The Moglin Flitterwig hoped no-one had missed them yet. It wouldn’t do to get hauled up in front of Wheelbarrow again.
Thomas Brackenrack, Lord of Gommoronahl, made his way through the Earth towards Antarctica. His pinkie had tingled when Ella fell into the ravine. She had flown up out of it, satisfying the Giant that she primarily used her emotions, not her learned skills, to access her magic, just as Sarafina always had. She also had wings much larger than a Flitterwig should, just like her ancestor. She was a Clearheart all right.
But it was not this that compelled the giant to shift across the continents. He had seen the Duke in his hideaway lying to Bolgus. He had seen his brother being fed sap delivered by the Dryad Flitterwigs. And the whole thing had got him thinking.
It was time to take action.
chapter 27
giants & grudges
From beneath the Antarctic, right up through the Duke’s hideaway, a head appeared, followed by shoulders and arms of such enormity that the foundations of the Duke’s fine new home began to crumble.
Everyone within, Ella and Dixon included, was thrown up into the air with such force that many Troggles were completely knocked out. A giant hand, with Charlie clinging to it for dear life, snatched at the pixie and Ella, missing them by inches. Charlie’s spectacles flew across the room and smashed against the wall.
The Duke yelled, flying up around Bolgus’s face, as the hulking man pulled his feet out of the ground.
‘Stop this at once!’ the Duke screamed, puncturing Bolgus’s leathery skin with his dust. The Giant fell back, holding his arm, which had been pierced through by the Duke’s attack. And then he lost his footing altogether.
For Thomas’s great hand was wrapped around Bolgus’s ankle! The Lord of Gommoronahl was heaving his huge body out of the same crater from whence Bolgus had appeared, using his brother’s ankle to steady himself. ‘I’m here, Bolgus!’ he roared. ‘I’m sorry!’
But Bolgus didn’t hear him. Bolgus hit the ground with an almighty smash, crushing every Troggle in his way. Smashing through the wall, he flattened the two fighter jets he had delivered earlier, missing Ella and Dixon by a millimetre. The Duke, caught in the fall, tried
to prise his leg from under the Giant’s forearm, but he was stuck. Thomas heaved himself out of the ground. Bolgus looked up at him, crushing the Duke’s other leg as he turned, his face a picture of confusion. And then he kicked his brother in the leg so hard that the Lord of Gommoronahl fell over too.
Across the world, seismologists were shaken in their posts. Never before had such sudden and extreme earth tremors been measured. Stockholm called Zákupy. Zákupy alerted Bogatá. Bogatá could only contact Nairobi. And so on and so forth across the world.
Ella pulled herself up in time to see Charlie flipping out of Bolgus’s hand towards them, like a doll. Dixon clung tightly to her hair as she ran to her Protector, pulling him to his feet with her one good arm.
‘Ow,’ said Charlie, spitting dirt from his mouth and stretching in the fine, fresh air. As it refilled his body, Charlie swore to be grateful for every day he spent not being crushed. Ella threw her arms about him.
‘I have just had the worst time ever. Ever!’ he told her. ‘Hi Dixon,’ he added, his face breaking into a cheeky grin. Dixon was looking out from the folds of Ella’s thick hair.
‘Hey, how come you can see me without your specs. Pecks?’ said Dixon. Charlie looked about him and whooped. He could see magic without his spectacles! True, Dixon was a bit blurry—but so was everything else.
Then Dixon looked up. Charlie followed his gaze. A giant foot loomed above them. It was coming down, fast.
Ella looked at Charlie. Charlie looked at Ella. He noticed that her anorak hung off her shoulders. ‘You found your wings!’ he said as they thrust out of her back, slapping him in the face. ‘Gosh they’re big!’
Her shoulderblades, already burning, pulled and tugged. Not a minute too soon, for as Ella flew up past the Giant’s leg, dragging Charlie with her, Dixon wrapped tightly in her hand, the ginormous foot came down with a crash on the very spot where they had been standing.
Out across the Antarctic Ella flew, surprised at her own strength, bathed in the cool blue of the sky reflecting off the snow, her darling pixie tucked under her ear. Charlie clung tightly to her waist, yelling up to her about the ordeal he had just been through.
‘It was the scariest thing ever,’ he called. ‘I thought I was going to die. I thought I was being suffocated. It was agony.’
Behind them, the Giants fought. Or at least Bolgus did, while Thomas tried to stop him. Despite their exhaustion, they tumbled across the snow, flattening the craggy landscape forever. The Duke and Ragwald were nowhere to be seen. Nor was the strange man in the fine overcoat with the big Adam’s apple.
And then Ella hit an invisible barricade with such force that her wings retracted at once. The three friends fell out of the sky like hacky sacks.
‘The Dome of Inconspicuous Impenetration,’ Dixon whispered weakly in her ear.
‘Oh no,’ said Ella, her body so battered all she wanted to do was curl up and cry. ‘I’ve gone the wrong way. Don Posiblemente and Samuel aren’t here.’
Checking that his froggy friend was okay (he seemed to be breathing, if still rather stiffly), Charlie opened up the huge hanky Thomas had given them. Thank Magic he had tied it fast around his waist.
There was a thud on the ground. Dixon had fallen off Ella’s shoulder. He lay prostrate and emaciated in the snow. Ella gathered him up onto her lap, and wrapped him up in a corner of her anorak.
‘He needs food, Charlie,’ Ella said. ‘Quick, feed him. I think he is starving to death.’
Charlie lifted the sap into his palm and, with his pinkie, dabbed a little at the pixie’s mouth. ‘Think of something you’d like to eat, Dixon,’ he urged gently.
‘Cookies with milk. Rhymes with silk,’ whispered Dixon, sitting up shakily. He stuck his tongue into the globule of sap. ‘Euck!’ he said, spitting the taste out of his mouth.
‘Well silk can’t be very tasty, you silly thing,’ said Ella gently, relief flooding her voice. She stroked the rip in his cap. She broke off a little bark and held it against the damage. Broke off a little more and placed it on her arm.
‘Aaah,’ said Dixon. ‘Feels nice. Sugar and spice.’ Then ‘Aaaaaaaargh,’ he cried, in not quite the same way at all. Ella and Charlie looked at him. His eyes were bulging out of his head. They turned to what he was staring at. Troggles. Lots of them, approaching at speed!
‘We need to get out of here,’ yelled Charlie, looking at Ella for an answer as to how. But Ella’s eyes were closed as she tried to find the wisdom inside her.
Ella smelt the lime and spice of the Spirit Tree at Hedgeberry and the eucalyptus and sage of the Great Gum in the Nullarbor. ‘Let’s plant the root Thomas gave us,’ she said.
It was really getting very late indeed for Samantha and Humphrey to still be out in the Hedgeberry grounds trying to communicate with a tree they couldn’t see and weren’t even sure was there anyway. They had already missed Animumble and Gardening.
‘I think we should get to class,’ said Humphrey. He had been trying to Bongle them both for a while now, but his powers were exhausted. He was only eleven, after all, and he hadn’t had breakfast.
Samantha looked out across the poppy field, its magical blooms rich with colour. Scarlets, clarets, cherry reds. She sighed and nodded.
Charlie shoved the root into the snow. Ella passed her hand across it. She felt her shoulderblades tingle. She held her ear and closed her eyes. The Troggles were closing in. The root began to grow and grow and grow, spreading itself up and out into the sky. As it grew, it began to disappear, to Charlie at least. But Ella could still see it. It was majestic. It spread its branches out and elegant leaves appeared here and there on its boughs. Upon each leaf was a solitary dewdrop, as large as a beach ball, shivering and still all at the same time.
‘Asquemi,’ the tree whispered, just as the Gum of Gommoronahl had. Just as the oak tree at Hedgeberry had. ‘Asquemi.’
‘It’s a Spirit Tree,’ Ella said gently to Dixon, who had tucked himself into the pocket at the front of her dungarees. ‘Can you see it?’ Dixon peered out and nodded. His little mouth hung open in awe. He disappeared back inside her pocket, warm and snug against her heart.
The Queen hovered before the Dome of Inconspicuous Impenetration. Wrinkles stood on the snow beneath her. They had come as soon as they had been contacted. She glittered, golden and perfect, so tiny and yet so incandescently potent. Samuel and Don Posiblemente stood beside Wrinkles. They knew that the Queen was risking her life gravely by coming to Earth, a planet too polluted for a pure Royal elf to visit lightly. But this was Antarctica, and probably cleaner than anywhere else she could visit. And she did not seem to mind the cold. After all, Magus was known to be rather fresh.
She pointed her finger elegantly at the Dome and closed her eyes. When she opened them, a shot of fine, luminescent elf dust flew from her finger and struck the Dome with a force that belied her fragile figure. It shattered at once. Turning her exquisite face to the Flitterwigs below, the Queen tipped her head and sighed.
‘We are supposed to be friends again,’ she said, and her voice twinkled through the air. ‘The Ban forbidding us to have contact was lifted when the Clearheart bridged the divide between us.’ She sighed and both Flitterwigs’ hearts lurched to hear its defeated timbre. ‘Look at the lengths Ella has gone to for her friend,’ said the Queen. ‘And yet your human pride stopped you from reaching out to me. It will be the undoing of you, you know.’ The Queen pointed her finger at the snow and melted a patch. She nodded to Wrinkles, who tapped his fingers upon the liquid surface. White elves appeared one by one out of the Waters. Hundreds marched into the shattered Dome, while hundreds more flew above them, their quivers of arrows shining across the dying day.
‘It is time for us to go and arrest my husband,’ said the Queen.
Ella, Charlie and Dixon felt the walls of the Dome crumble. The Troggles were almost upon them. Holding her hand out to Charlie, Ella shrugged her shoulders and tweaked her ear. Her wings unfolded over the top of her anorak, makin
g her shiver in the cold. The trio flew up to a huge leaf that only Ella and Dixon could see. Settling upon it, Ella bade Charlie step into an invisible dewdrop glistening there. Trusting Ella, however weird it felt to step into something he couldn’t see or feel, Charlie obeyed. Ella could hear a gentle wind whistling through the tree’s branches. She set Dixon upon the dewdrop too and, closing her eyes, thought of Hedgeberry.
It was time for Samantha and Humphrey to give up. How long could they keep popping out to the poppy field to search for something they couldn’t see or smell or hear?
‘I hope you’re okay, Ella and Charlie,’ said Samantha into the air. ‘I hope you’re safe. I wish you’d come home.’
Humphrey put his hand on Samantha’s shoulder and ruffled her curly hair reassuringly. ‘Let’s go,’ he said. And then he stopped. He looked up into the sky.
‘Did you just see the moon?’ he said.
‘No, I didn’t,’ said Samantha matter-of-factly. ‘I’m a Sprite Flitterwig, remember? I have nothing to do with the moon.’
‘But I do,’ said Humphrey, ‘and the moon just appeared in the middle of the day.’
‘I’m sure it did, Humph, but what has that got to do with anything?’
‘My mum always told me that a visit from the moon during the day is a sign of great Magic in the air,’ he said, looking about expectantly. Samantha turned, startled. She could hear a whisper and a rustling in the open field. A sharp wind whipped up. The children shivered. And then there was a sound of gurgling water. The air filled with the smell of cinnamon and rain. Something watery began to appear above them. It was like a big bubble. It quivered and swelled.