Little did he know that the phoenix magic locked inside the Stargold Wings had a plan too, a plan that was already whirring into life all the way back in the Faraway as Fox Petty-Squabble made her way into Crackledawn. Morg had been right about some things. Whoever gave the Ember Scroll an ending really would have the power to restore hope to the world or destroy it forever. And the parchment for this scroll really was lost. But it wasn’t anywhere near the sun. It was somewhere else entirely. And though the Stargold Wings were small, they knew that Zeb, and Fox Petty-Squabble, needed help.
And so it came as a nasty shock to Zeb when the Stargold Wings inside the pouch around his neck began to move. It was more than the tiny flutters he’d felt before. Now the wings were pushing down so hard Zeb had to struggle to keep his head up. The dragon flew on, unaware of the Stargold Wings’ mischief, and it was only when Zeb cried out that the dragon took notice.
“I—I can’t keep my balance!” Zeb yelled.
But by the time the dragon had swung its head round, it was too late. The Stargold Wings yanked Zeb’s neck—hard—and the force wrenched him from the dragon’s back and sent him tumbling through the sky.
Chapter 8
Zeb would have screamed if he could. But he was falling too fast to make a sound. Down, down, down he plunged, sure that this was the end. He was going to die—alone and unloved—as soon as he hit the sea. And the dragon knew this too. The Faraway boy was Morg’s only hope for the journey to the sun, and he had the Stargold Wings, so they couldn’t let him die. The dragon was diving as fast as it could, but it didn’t have phoenix magic on its side, and Zeb was falling faster.
He hit the sea like a bullet, and though the impact should have killed him, it didn’t, and while the dragon circled the sea for a trace of the boy or the precious pouch he had worn, the Stargold Wings hid Zeb underwater in a cocoon of magic.
The dragon circled and circled, but neither the boy nor the pouch came to the surface. It shook its horned head, let out a furious blast of fire, and then, because it knew it now needed the help of others to sort things out, it sped back toward Darktongue, growling uneasily at the thought of facing Morg’s rage. But it knew that fire krakens were used to sniffing out magic, so they might be able to find the Stargold Wings, and Morg would just have to come up with another plan to seize the Ember Scroll.
Zeb wasn’t entirely sure what had happened in the minutes after he hit the sea. He’d been gearing up for Certain Doom, but he was, surprisingly, very much alive. He wasn’t in pain, his limbs were still moving—in fact they were thrashing about in a tightly-woven net, bound some way above him in a knot—and, miraculously, his lungs had a little air left inside them. He had the feeling that he had been carried quite some way underwater—in a strange sort of bubble—before he had ended up in this net.
The net wasn’t filled with fish but with gold jewels the size of pebbles that seemed to be making all sorts of faint but unmistakably peculiar noises: hiccups, sneezes, giggles, and hums. No matter how much Zeb wriggled, he couldn’t seem to escape, and now, someone, or something, was dragging the net up to the surface.
Zeb’s thoughts whirred. The Stargold Wings had most definitely thrown him off the dragon. But why? Had they sensed they were about to be used for evil? Whatever the reason, they had somehow kept him safe underwater, and Zeb found himself thinking of something Morg had said: Phoenixes have a sentimental fondness for humans, so anything imbued with their magic will help you. If the phoenix magic was, ultimately, pitted against Morg, perhaps this net that he was in wouldn’t be manned by some dreadful ogre eel.
There was a short, sharp tug and Zeb burst out of the water to find himself face-to-face with a girl. She had brown skin and dark hair, bound into a long braid, and there was a purple chameleon perched on her shoulder.
The chameleon yelped and then, to Zeb’s amazement, it spoke. “I thought you said you were hauling in one last net of sunchatter, Oonie?! But you’ve gone and caught a boy!”
The girl blinked as she heaved the net over the edge of the boat and Zeb—together with a handful of whispering gold jewels—spilled out onto the deck. The vessel was much smaller than Darktongue, and thankfully, it didn’t look as if it had been carved from shadows. A wooden sunshade had been erected over the stern, the sail seemed to have been made of gold leather littered with black ink that spelled out various words—GOLDSHELL COVE, THE SIGHING CAVES, WILDHORN, THE GAPING GULF—and the girl and the talking chameleon on board looked confused rather than up to their necks in evil.
Zeb waited for the Stargold Wings to do something miraculous, like untangle him from the net, chuck the girl and the chameleon overboard, and help him sail on toward the Ember Scroll uninterrupted while looking fabulously important. But that didn’t happen. The wings were no longer tugging or glowing, and it is hard to look important when you have seaweed wrapped round your ear and gold jewels burping at your feet.
Oonie wiped her hands on her tunic, then cocked her head toward the chameleon on her shoulder. “Do I untie the No-Go Knot? What do you think, Mrs. Fickletint?”
The chameleon’s scales flashed red, then blue, then yellow, before settling purple again. “Oh, I’m all flustered, Oonie. First thing this morning we hear an alarm bell from the north ring out over the ocean, then there’s a message from the Lofty Husks saying the worst has happened: Morg is here in Crackledawn, and we should sail back to Wildhorn immediately. Then, we hear that an army of skeletons and ogre eels are holding everyone on Wildhorn captive, the Lofty Husks are being stripped of their magic, and as the only ones still out at sea, we should gather in as much sunchatter as possible before fleeing for our lives. And then he turns up all covered in seaweed!” She drew a big breath. “It has been quite the morning!”
Oonie looked Zeb up and down. Her eyes were the shining brown of conkers, and yet they never fixed on Zeb’s own eyes. They roamed over him, as if the girl was looking into him and rummaging through his secrets.
“He’s not one of us, is he?” Oonie said after a while.
“No,” the chameleon—who must have been called Mrs. Fickletint—replied, her large eyes fixed on Zeb. “I—I think he’s the Faraway boy spotted riding Morg’s dragon over Wildhorn. How on earth he found his way into the Unmapped Kingdoms, I’ve no idea.… But if he’s on the harpy’s side, he’s probably terribly dangerous, so we should hurl him overboard immediately.”
Zeb’s eyes widened.
“Boys are usually pretty straightforward,” Oonie mused. “Pin them down, refuse to feed them, and in the end, they tend to do what you want them to.”
Zeb gulped. He’d come across girls his age back home but none as forthright as this one. She looked like the sort of child who could run a country, steer a boat, and wrestle a giant squid all at the same time. He would have to be on his guard.
“How dreadful are you, boy?” The spikes lining Mrs. Fickletint’s chin quivered. “Full to the brim with evil or just gently simmering with wicked thoughts? Because if you lay one finger on Oonie, or me for that matter, I will—I will”—the chameleon flashed pink, then orange—“I will send you to bed with no lunch!”
Zeb was inwardly relieved by the chameleon’s threat. Missing a meal was small fry compared to being set on fire by a dragon. Perhaps he could handle these two after all. He glared at the pouch around his neck in case the phoenix magic needed a little nudge to get going, but still the Stargold Wings ignored him. So, he unhooked the seaweed from his ear and tried to push his way out of the No-Go Knot instead. That, also, got him nowhere. He scowled up at the girl and the chameleon. “I’m not working for Morg, if that’s what you mean.”
Oonie put her hands on her hips. “Then why did we get a message from the Lofty Husks—rulers of this kingdom and the wisest magical beings in Crackledawn—reporting a Faraway boy had been seen on Morg’s ship and on the back of her dragon?”
“I was riding her dragon, but I”—Zeb paused—“hopped off. Turns out making a pact with a harpy isn�
�t a good idea.”
“YOU MADE A PACT WITH MORG?!” Mrs. Fickletint spluttered. “The most dangerous creature in the Unmapped Kingdoms?! The one who has been sending ogre eels and fire krakens to sink our ships and curse our sunchatter for the past decade?! Do you have any idea how many of Crackledawn’s Unmappers have died at the hands of that harpy? HUNDREDS!”
Zeb thought of the ship he’d seen the dragon sink, then looked at his feet. “If you had nothing and nobody back home, then you found yourself dragged into a harpy’s underground lair, you might have done the same. I gave her a phoenix tear or two, and she promised me a new start. But it was all lies.” He glanced up. “Do you think I want to be mixed up in what she’s doing here? I didn’t even know about Unmapped Kingdoms until yesterday!”
For a moment, Mrs. Fickletint’s face softened a touch and Oonie grew quiet, as if weighing Zeb up.
“Not that it matters now,” Zeb mumbled, ringing water from his T-shirt. “Because I’m finding the Ember Scroll for myself, not the harpy.”
Oonie stiffened. “If Morg is here and she’s after the Ember Scroll, then the end really is closing in, Mrs. Fickletint. The Unmapped Kingdoms have been fending her off for thousands of years, but if she gets hold of that scroll, she only needs to write her own reign into life to finish us all off.” She narrowed her eyes in Zeb’s direction. “And you think you’re going to find this scroll when not even the Lofty Husks or the legendary explorers like Nefarious Flood could find it?”
Zeb squared his shoulders. “Yes. Because when I’m not chitchatting inside fishing nets, I’m very hard-core. It’ll only be a matter of time before I’m finding the Ember Scroll, writing my own ending onto it, and conjuring up a brand-new world.”
“And do away with the Unmapped Kingdoms and the Faraway?” Mrs. Fickletint clutched her tail in horror. “Oh, you are a wicked, wicked boy after all. I should wash your mouth out with soap!”
“There won’t be time for that,” Zeb replied. “Once the magic in the Stargold Wings gets going again in a few minutes, I’ll be gone.” Zeb didn’t dare admit that he had no idea how the wings worked or whether they would actually help him again, but the Tank often stressed the importance of buying time when planning an escape, so he blustered on regardless. “The wings and I usually travel by underwater bubble, you see”—he patted the pouch around his neck—“and considering Morg’s bone dragon couldn’t find us, I very much doubt you’ll stand a chance of catching me.”
The chameleon was now staring at him with her mouth wide open. And when Oonie spoke, her voice was altogether different.
“You have the Stargold Wings?” she breathed. “I thought they were lost forever.”
Zeb shifted. In trying to be hard-core, he’d gone and blown the fact that he was in possession of something extremely valuable.
Mrs. Fickletint leaned forward on Oonie’s shoulder. “If the wings have been found, then maybe there’s hope left after all.…”
Oonie nodded excitedly. “Crackledawn was on its last legs even before Morg showed up. The Lofty Husks said we only had a matter of weeks before the Unmapped magic disappeared completely. It’ll be days now the harpy’s here, but if the Stargold Wings can lead you and me to the Ember Scroll, then maybe we could write a future for the world.” She was pacing up and down now. “We could bring back a phoenix and save the Unmapped Kingdoms and the Faraway before Morg wipes it all out!”
“Hang on a minute!” Zeb cried.
Mrs. Fickletint ignored him. “Oonie, dear, just because you learned about the Ember Scroll waiting for an ending in A Brief History of Phoenix Magic by Percival Yesteryear, doesn’t mean we’re the ones to finish it off. We should take the Stargold Wings to the Lofty Husks immediately. They’ll know how to find the scroll and sort things out, especially if it really is, as rumors claim, as far away as the sun.”
Oonie threw her hands in the air. “The Lofty Husks are prisoners back at Wildhorn, remember, and they’re being stripped of their magic as we speak! You heard what Greyhobble said: We’re the only Unmappers still out at sea! All the other Sunraiders made it back to Wildhorn… so we must be Crackledawn’s last hope!”
Zeb tried to butt in, but Mrs. Fickletint jumped down off Oonie’s shoulder onto a bench and raised her voice over his. “This is about you proving yourself again, isn’t it, Oonie?”
Oonie said nothing, but her jaw was tense.
Mrs. Fickletint sighed. “When will you learn that being a captain isn’t about sailing the farthest or the fastest or signing up to the biggest adventure? There’s more to it than that. You don’t need to spend your whole life trying to be tough just because of the way you were born.”
Zeb looked Oonie up and down. He was missing something, clearly, but he couldn’t work out what.
“You don’t think I can manage an adventure this big, do you?” Oonie snapped.
“That’s not what I meant,” Mrs. Fickletint replied. “And you know it.”
Oonie looked out over the sea. “This is different from everything that’s happened before. If we don’t grab the Stargold Wings off the Faraway boy and use them to find the Ember Scroll, there will be no more Crackledawn. No more Faraway. The world as we know it will vanish!”
Zeb gave a defensive huff from inside the net. “You can’t just grab the Stargold Wings off me.”
Mrs. Fickletint spun round to face Zeb. “How do we even know you’ve actually got the Stargold Wings? You could be a spy… on Morg’s side all along!”
Zeb shuddered at the thought. “I don’t want anything to do with Morg ever again. She let me down, same as everyone in my old life let me down. I’m not on her side. I’ve never had anyone on my side, and that’s the way it’s going to stay.”
Oonie sized Zeb up once more. “He’s scared, Mrs. Fickletint. You can tell that as well as I can. So, we’ve got to trust he has the wings, because finding the Ember Scroll and bringing back a phoenix is our only hope against Morg.”
Oonie cracked her knuckles, and Zeb cursed himself for not doing more work on his biceps back in the theater. But before Oonie could do anything too disastrous, a sharp cry loaded with fury rang out across the ocean, making them all jump.
“M-Morg’s dragon…,” Zeb stammered.
Oonie’s and Mrs. Fickletint’s eyes widened.
“It must have told the harpy that it lost the Stargold Wings!” Zeb cried. “Now it’s probably roaming the ocean with her in search of them!” He shook the net frantically. “Quick! Get me out of this!”
Mrs. Fickletint’s scales lost all color. “This is what happens when you take on saving the world, Oonie! You wind up with a dragon on your heels!” She glanced at Zeb. “If he wasn’t sitting there looking so feeble and frightened, I’d say we chuck him overboard and sail away.…”
“And lose the Stargold Wings?” Oonie cried. “Not likely.”
Mrs. Fickletint threw up her paws in despair, then leapt from the bench and wrenched open a little trunk beneath it. “Ignore the boy for now, then, and all the sunchatter we pulled up in the net with him, until we’ve told the ship where to go, at least! The dragon’s cry came from the north, so we must go south—as fast as we can!”
The chameleon took out a quill from a pot labeled SQUID INK and wedged it in Oonie’s hand. And had Zeb not been quite so scared, he might have wondered why Oonie hadn’t reached for the quill herself.
The girl bent over the sail and wrote two words in the messiest handwriting Zeb had ever seen: The BLACkfANgS.
Mrs. Fickletint’s eyes widened. “We can’t go there, Oonie! It’s out-of-bounds and terribly dangerous and—and—you haven’t had nearly a big enough breakfast to take on the razor-sharp rocks that line the southern boundary!”
“I know that only the legendary Nefarious Flood has sailed beyond the Blackfangs and survived to tell the tale,” Oonie said, “but we can’t go back to Wildhorn, and out here in the open we’ll be seen. We have to go that far south because, past the Blackfangs, Nefarious’s m
aps mention hidden islands. We can lie low on one of them while we come up with a plan to find the Ember Scroll!”
“I promised the Lofty Husks I’d look after you!” Mrs. Fickletint shrieked. “Not put you center stage in a battle against Morg!”
The dragon called out again, and Zeb clutched his knees up to his chin. The screech was a little closer this time, and the lantern fixed at the prow of the boat began flashing.
“Now the Bother-Ahead Beacon is red!” Mrs. Fickletint wailed. “That means the fire krakens are on their way too! Oh, to be aboard the Kerfuffle on a day like today!”
Zeb’s heart pounded. He’d glimpsed a fire kraken while on Darktongue and he did not want to see one again. He began tearing at the net with his hands and teeth, but the No-Go Knot held fast. Oonie, on the other hand, moved with unflappable calm. She placed two hands on either side of the gold sail, and before Mrs. Fickletint could argue again about the destination, the Kerfuffle was off.
It charged through the waves as it made its way south, away from the cries of the bone dragon and the fire krakens racing through the sea beneath it. Zeb let out a yelp inside the net, because Oonie was now advancing toward him, and she was wielding a knife.
“You said you’d be grabbing the Stargold Wings off me!” Zeb cried. “You never said anything about a knife!”
Oonie sliced through the net as if it had been made of thread, and the sunchatter clattered to the ground, a cluster of muffled whistles, chuckles, and snorts. Ignoring them, Oonie jabbed her weapon in the direction of the stern behind her.
Zeb Bolt and the Ember Scroll Page 6