Oonie was still feeling her way over the maps for anything that might resemble the Final Curtain, but she was listening, too. And there was a fierce kind of pride in her voice, just as there was in Mrs. Fickletint’s, as she explained how Crackledawn made the Faraway’s sunlight.
“Marvels,” she said, “are droplets of sunlight in its purest form grown over in the kingdom of Rumblestar and carried here by dragons, the only creatures who can cross the divides between the Unmapped Kingdoms. They take the finished sun scrolls on to the Faraway, too, because after phoenixes, dragons are the most powerful of all magical beasts.”
Zeb knew the Unmapped Kingdoms were real—he was in one, after all—but unraveling every single thing he’d ever learned about his world’s weather was extremely confusing. Even if it did involve music. “I’ve never seen a dragon back in the Faraway,” he said curtly.
The little spikes on Mrs. Fickletint’s throat bristled. “Of course you haven’t. Dragons leave the sun scrolls inside the hollows of your trees, under your largest rocks, and between the branches of your most unclimbable trees. Then, soon after they arrive, they vanish, giving you the sunlight your world needs for the day.”
“Well, that was what used to happen,” Oonie sighed. “Before the fire krakens started sniffing out sunchatter and cursing it, and the ogre eels started drowning Sunraiders and their ships. And it all makes sense now,” she said grimly. “These Midnights have no doubt been growing in power as the phoenix magic faded, because they sensed the harpy’s return.”
Mrs. Fickletint nodded. “Of the barrels of sunchatter that do make it back to Wildhorn, many now contain cursed sounds. But it can take weeks before the water surrounding sunchatter turns black, and Sunsmiths must keep sending sun scrolls to the Faraway. The cursed sunchatter that makes it there is what’s affecting your climate, and it’s why the Lofty Husks asked Oonie here to captain a boat well before her time. She might be the youngest Sunraider in the kingdom, but she has a knack for finding pure sunchatter.”
Oonie reddened. “We really should be getting back to—”
Mrs. Fickletint held up an adamant paw. “No matter how deep the ocean, no matter how tall the waves, and no matter how little sunchatter there is left, Oonie will find it. Even when I tell her not to because the voyage looks unforgivably dangerous. She hears little snatches of melodies from the sunchatter, you see. Even if it’s miles off and no one else can hear a thing! And she’s been able to do this ever since she can remember.”
Oonie blew out through her lips. “Finished, Mrs. Fickletint? Can we get back to business now?”
Mrs. Fickletint wrapped her tail around Oonie’s arm and smiled proudly. “I remember hearing about you diving off the Jolly Codger, aged five, because you insisted there was sunchatter some thirty feet below the surface, which there indeed was! And you were the talk of Wildhorn that time you hauled in the biggest catch of the month!”
Oonie shook the chameleon off. “I have to ask for help untangling the nets, though, don’t I? And putting the sunchatter into the barrels for the Sunsmiths…” She fiddled with her braid, and for the first time, Zeb saw a flicker of vulnerability in Oonie. She had the presence of someone completely in control of things, like an undersized dentist or a very young doctor, but beneath all this, he recognized something fragile.
“Accepting help isn’t a crime,” Mrs. Fickletint replied. “If you weren’t always so hard on yourself, you’d realize that.” She paused, and then said, very quietly: “And you’d make a lot more friends.”
Oonie plopped the chameleon back in her jug, then set the crockery down at the other end of the table. “You can come back when you stop nagging.”
Mrs. Fickletint nipped Oonie on the hand, but it was a playful gesture, and she turned to Zeb. “Despite being outrageously stubborn and having a tendency to hurl herself at danger whenever the opportunity arises, Oonie here is the finest Sunraider Crackledawn will ever know. It is an honor to have been chosen by the Lofty Husks to chaperone her aboard the Kerfuffle as—”
“Chaperone?” Oonie said sharply.
Mrs. Fickletint corrected herself. “Accompany her aboard the Kerfuffle as we sail out each morning to find sunchatter to bring back to Wildhorn.” The chameleon rose to her feet as she reached her crescendo. “What I’m saying, boy, is that not all without sight are blind.”
Oonie looked up from her maps. “Crackledawn’s Unmappers are born from the sea—washed ashore on the island of Wildhorn as babies in large shells called conches. We don’t have parents like you do in your world.” Zeb flinched at the assumption, but Oonie carried on. “We’re just one giant family here.”
Mrs. Fickletint wagged a claw. “A family you would do well to lean on from time to time.”
Oonie ignored her and carried on speaking to Zeb. “My shell opened a little earlier than it was meant to, before my sight formed more than blurred shapes and hazy colors, so you’re right: I can’t see. Not with my eyes anyway.” She paused. “What’s your name?”
“It’s Zeb,” he said, sitting down carefully on the edge of a trunk. And before he could stop himself, he added: “And I don’t have parents either. I don’t even have a home.”
He sank a little lower on the trunk as his sadness crept in. What was he doing spilling his story to strangers? He waited for Oonie or Mrs. Fickletint to say something horrid—he was their prisoner, after all. But neither did.
Instead, Mrs. Fickletint climbed out of her jug, and when she was standing at the edge of the table in front of Zeb, she said, in a voice so gentle Zeb thought he might cry: “I’m sorry to hear that, Zeb. And Oonie’s sorry too. Aren’t you, dear?”
“Hmmmm,” the girl replied, feeling her way over another map.
“Oonie!” Mrs. Fickletint snapped. “You’re a captain in charge of a crew here, and showing a little kindness now and again wouldn’t hurt.”
“He’s our prisoner!” Oonie retorted. “Not a member of our crew.”
“I think we might be moving past that now,” Mrs. Fickletint replied sternly. She turned back round. “Though Zeb, if you do try anything funny, please know we will not hesitate to feed you to a fire kraken.” She clasped her paws. “If we’re going to stand a chance against Morg, I’m beginning to realize we need to start working together.”
Zeb picked at his jeans. He was done with others, wasn’t he? And it wasn’t as if Oonie looked enthusiastic about joining forces.
“Don’t mind Oonie,” Mrs. Fickletint whispered to Zeb. “She takes a while to thaw. Took me months to convince her I was sticking around when the Lofty Husks first paired me with her.” And then, in an even quieter voice so that only Zeb could hear: “I’m the only friend she has. She’s pushed away everyone else who’s tried to get to know her: classmates, Sunraiders, even the Lofty Husks don’t exactly get a warm welcome. She’s touchy about having to rely on others, you see. Hates the idea of accepting help because she thinks it makes her look weak.” Mrs. Fickletint rolled her eyes. “But chameleons are brilliant at nagging. And there’s only so much nagging an eleven-year-old can take before they give up and let you in.”
The chameleon smiled at Zeb, and against his better instinct, he found himself smiling shyly back before he quickly wiped his smile away. He appeared to be on a slippery slope—who knew where spilling stories and smiling could lead.…
Oonie lifted up a piece of parchment. “The ripplemaps I use to navigate the seas have bumps instead of markings, and this one here suggests it’ll be a few hours yet to the Blackfangs. We should reach them by midnight.”
Mrs. Fickletint nodded, then sprung from the table onto a lamp via a barrel, before darting onto the stove and flicking it on. The only chameleons Zeb had ever seen on nature documentaries had been slow-moving things, but Mrs. Fickletint rushed about the cabin like an escaped balloon letting out air.
“So much to do, so little time,” she muttered. “We’ll need a four-course meal at the very least to give us strength for the Blackfangs. And we
’ll be wanting multiple cups of tea and the fire turned up a notch to dry out Zeb’s clothes. And I really should ask the hurtle to iron a fresh set of sheets so that bedtime’s not a disaster.” She thrust a pan onto the stove, emptied a can of soup into it, then began frantically stirring while her scales switched from purple to blue to green. “You’ll have to excuse the colors, Zeb. When I get in a fluster, I lose complete control of my scales. It’s mortifying, but there it is.” She glanced at Oonie. “Oonie, darling, do you think I’ll have time to knit us all a quick scarf in case the ocean gets chillier down south?”
Oonie laughed and, to his horror, Zeb felt himself giggle too. It was such a strange feeling, having not had much to laugh about in such a very long time, that Zeb felt as if he’d completely lost control of his mouth. He shoved a hand over it in case any more mistakes slipped out. And yet as he sat in the cabin of the Kerfuffle, safe for a while from Morg and her Midnights, he realized that he was almost glad to have company.
Was this bustling about alongside other people what being in a family felt like? He imagined his new world and the amazing house he’d live in, if all went well. It would be rather quiet without any people—but then he remembered the pianos in every room and pulled himself together. People were, after all, not to be trusted and neither, he suspected, were chameleons.
Chapter 11
Mrs. Fickletint was a very good cook. She whipped up a four-course meal in no time: seaweed crisps and dip, followed by Oonie’s favorite—sizzlebud’s soup (a delicious soup that made everyone’s tongues change a different color with each mouthful). Pasta twirls came next, a dish Mrs. Fickletint revealed was FuSilly, which, upon eating, made your face contort into hilarious expressions. Zeb had to pinch his thighs to stop himself getting completely carried away laughing. Then, finally, came dessert: a chocolate brownie called mudface that was so incredibly gooey, it was impossible to eat it without getting it all over your face.
While the hurtle washed up, Oonie talked through who would be doing what up on deck when they reached the Blackfangs and what their plan was should Morg show up. But as dusk drew in around the Kerfuffle and the ocean fell away beneath the boat to dark and hidden places, Mrs. Fickletint brought the conversation to a close.
“Ships have been sunk and battles have been lost because of sloppy bedtimes.” She began heaping pillows and quilts onto one of the armchairs for Zeb. “You’re guaranteed a good sleep in a threadbear. They only growl through their rips when they’re unsure of you, but these two seem to know that beyond wild talk of building new worlds, you’re probably all right.”
Zeb thought about scowling, but there didn’t seem to be much point. Mrs. Fickletint had treated him a lot better than Morg had. Better even than the Orderly-Queues and Derek Dunce…
The chameleon settled herself at the end of Oonie’s cubbyhole bed and began knitting up a storm. “If you need anything,” she called, “just holler for me. I love to be woken up in the middle of the night. It gives me a sense of purpose.” She glanced at Oonie, who was sitting up in her bed, chiseling at a piece of sunchatter with her knife.
“Almost finished, dear?”
Oonie laid her knife down and held up what she’d carved. “Enough to fool Morg, do you think?”
Both Mrs. Fickletint and Zeb smiled then. Because Oonie had come up with an idea over dinner to hoodwink Morg. She’d carved the sunchatter into an almost exact copy of the Stargold Wings she’d felt when holding the pouch. Now they just had to hope that if they did run into the harpy, they could throw her off their scent with a bit of trickery.
Zeb snuggled down into the threadbear, and within minutes, it sprouted brown fur and started purring. It was quite comfortable, and from where he lay, he could see all sorts of extraordinary creatures drifting past the windows of the boat: a squid that squirted rainbow ink, a shoal of luminous jellyfish with feathered tentacles, a transparent octopus, and—most spectacular of all—an enormous silver whale with a song so low it shook the boat.
But Zeb couldn’t shake the thought of the Blackfangs ahead. He felt sick with nerves, because even if the Kerfuffle made it past those perilous rocks, they then had just three days to find the Final Curtain and avoid being ambushed by Morg and her Midnights.
Zeb glanced toward the cubbyhole. How would Oonie cope if Morg’s dragon found them and she couldn’t see? It was one thing captaining a boat she’d learned her way around but quite another facing down Morg and her followers out in unchartered territory. The harpy would finish her and Mrs. Fickletint off in minutes. Zeb turned back to the hearth. Oonie wasn’t his problem, nor was Mrs. Fickletint, however kind she seemed. They’d have to fend for themselves. Just like he had all his life. With these thoughts fighting one another, Zeb tried his best to go to sleep as the Kerfuffle sailed closer to the Blackfangs.
* * *
Had Zeb known that Fox Petty-Squabble was bent on keeping her promise to him—that she had used the fifth phoenix tear to open the theater’s trapdoor and find her way into Crackledawn—he might have felt a little more inclined to trust the girl and the chameleon. But he fell asleep unaware that at this very moment, Fox was hastening into a candlelit cave as big as a cathedral with an organ that stretched the height of it.
Before Fox had found this cave, she had feared she would be lost in the darkness of Morg’s underground tunnels forever. But after a while, the phoenix magic in her hand had sparked into life. It could sense that it was in the possession of good, not evil, and every time Fox came to a crossroad in Hollowbone, it tugged her one way or the other to show her exactly where to go. Fox had heard waves crashing all the while, as if she was on the brink of an Unmapped Kingdom but couldn’t quite get there. And this was because the phoenix magic wasn’t leading her out into Crackledawn’s open seas after Morg. It was leading her on into the heart of the kingdom through a far more convenient portal. One that led into the biggest cave on Wildhorn.
* * *
The moment Fox left the never-ending tunnels of Hollowbone and crawled through a hole in the rocks into Cathedral Cave, she knew she had crossed over into an Unmapped Kingdom. She could feel the magic hanging in the air—half-afraid, half-hopeful—just as it had been when she’d arrived in Jungledrop all those years ago. There were sounds now, though, too. Sobs and whimpers somewhere up ahead.
Fox ran on through the cave, past a giant organ and alcoves lined with huge cauldrons, for she had encountered a kingdom in the grips of Morg’s dark magic before and she could tell that Crackledawn needed her help urgently.
It wasn’t until she burst into a candlelit chamber filled to the brim with terrified Unmappers and elves so weak they could barely stand, that she realized the scale of Morg’s power. Beyond the cave, the ogre eels surrounding Wildhorn hissed and the skeletons banged their spears, desperate for the elves’ magic to fade so that they could storm into Cathedral Cave and finish the Unmappers off.
But Morg was not among them. She sat astride her bone dragon as it beat on above the sea, following the lead of a fire kraken who was closing in on the Stargold Wings.
Chapter 12
Zeb woke to a loud croaking noise. It was coming from what looked like a crocodile skull on the bedside table next to Oonie’s cubbyhole.
Oonie rolled over, bashed the jaws shut, and sat up. “That’s the Alarm Croc, Mrs. Fickletint. We’re here.”
The chameleon shot out of Oonie’s bed at record speed, flashing a multitude of colors before turning to the Alarm Croc again, which was now coughing up small blue sweets.
“Watergums!” Mrs. Fickletint cried. “I thought Crackledawn had seen the last of these several years ago, what with the phoenix magic running out.”
She placed one in Oonie’s hand, then chucked another to Zeb. “We don’t have time for breakfast now—I’ll sort food out once we’re past the Blackfangs—but you’ll want to eat one of these.”
Oonie chewed hard. “Watergums help you to breathe, talk, sing, laugh, whistle, and, if need be, burp underw
ater.”
“One sweet lasts a lifetime,” Mrs. Fickletint said between nibbles. “So, if I were you, Zeb, I’d stop looking at yours as if it were a pair of dirty underpants and eat it. Because if we’re hurled overboard in the middle of the Blackfangs, you’re going to want that watergum’s magic.”
Zeb placed the sweet in his mouth and sucked nervously. The watergum was chewy, like toffee, but it was salty instead of sweet, and there was a lingering aftertaste of seaweed. There was no time to complain, though, because Oonie was already making her way up the stairs.
They emerged from the trapdoor to find a sky full of stars and the moon beaming down on the silver sea. There was no sign of Morg or her Midnights, but Zeb stiffened as he took in the Blackfangs. He had been expecting a single line of rocks stretching the width of the ocean. But what lay before them was a sprawling maze of daggered shards rising up out of the sea like mountain peaks. The rocks were black, many were studded with barbs, and each one glinted in the moonlight like a warning.
“The Blackfangs are taller than our boat!” Zeb cried. “And spiked! If we hit one, we’ll be smashed to pieces!”
Oonie took a deep breath. “Not if I can help it, we won’t.”
Mrs. Fickletint grabbed the inkpot below the bench and drew out the quill. She handed it to Oonie, who wrote THE FINAL CURTAIN onto the sail.
“But—but you can’t see the rocks,” Zeb whispered to Oonie. “They’re terrifying!”
Oonie clambered over the benches to the stern. “Sometimes it’s easier not to see.”
The sail shimmered in the moonlight, then the boat nosed its way toward the first of the Blackfangs. It knew, as Oonie had hoped it would, where to find the Final Curtain and that it lay somewhere beyond the southern boundary.
The Kerfuffle eased through a corridor of rocks, and Mrs. Fickletint perched herself on the Bother-Ahead Beacon at the bow, as planned. A dragonhide sail, Oonie had explained, could carry a boat for miles and miles over the open sea, but if there were obstacles in its path, which the beacon’s amber glow signaled there were, it might need a little help steering a way through.
Zeb Bolt and the Ember Scroll Page 8