by Will Mabbitt
It took the best part of a day for Pelf to construct a winch from ropes foraged from the hold of the BROWN TROUT. From a nearby tree, he hoisted Mabel into the upper canopy.
Once level with the wicker basket, she grabbed the rim and pulled herself in. The basket lurched under her added weight. Mabel looked up at the ropes nervously. The basket had been hanging for some time and the ropes had started to fray.
Carruthers’s voice called from below. “Is he still in there?”
Mabel grimaced and shouted back, “Yes! He’s here all right.”
For opposite her, still safely strapped in its seat belt, was the immaculately dressed body of a fox.
It was
Sir Gideon
Scapegrace!
In his hand he held a tightly rolled piece of paper. Gritting her teeth, Mabel Jones slowly peeled back the death-stiffened paw from its treasure.
It was a note.
Chapter 21
The Last Words of Gideon Scapegrace
Please forward to my publishers.
This is the last chapter in the autobiography of me, the great Gideon Scapegrace, celebrated balloonist, acclaimed daredevil, beloved explorer, etc., etc. [Fill in the usual details here, please, Susan.]
It was a dark and stormy night, but I was sure that, with the help of my trusty hot-air balloon, the Narcissus, I could find the Forbidden City. It was to be my finest hour since the liberation of the Duchess of Kataslavia. [Has she dropped her court case, Susan? Awful shrieking creature. How was I to know she WANTED to get married to that squinty-eyed archduke?]
My journey had been spiced with the usual peppering of danger. The balloon, punctured by the arrows of the savage jungle egret, swooped low over the trees. My biceps bulged as I unloaded the ballast of my precious bicycle [and Wellbeck, my copilot—please inform his mother, Susan, and remove any mention of him from previous chapters]. Fate was on my side as the Narcissus gained enough height to keep from snagging on the branches of the jungle canopy.
At times it seemed as though the jungle was infinite, a never-ending sprawl of mysterious tropical vegetation, but then, finally, I sighted it: the Forbidden City. It was barely a mile away! I could see the shape of a looming tower shrouded in mist. A tower so tall it touched the blackening clouds that swirled portentously [Is this the right word, Susan?] overhead.
But just as my prize seemed to be within my grasp, a sudden tornado burst from the city. In an instant, it took hold of the Narcissus, blowing us back into the jungle. The balloon, already damaged by the arrows of the jungle egrets, crash-landed in the upper branches of this infernal tree, where I sit and write this final chapter.
And here I remain, dangling high above the forest floor, my only hope of rescue the tribe of rabbits that live in these parts. Unfortunately they seem unable either to reach me or understand my instructions. They just repeat my requests for help.
So ends the thrilling life of Gideon Scapegrace. And I leave it with this final warning to those who would seek the Forbidden City:
Turn back! Stay away from this accursed place! For if it is inaccessible to the great Scapegrace, then it is inaccessible to all!
Mabel Jones looked up from the note.
The FORBIDDEN CITY was close!
She peered into the distance. Through the hazy mist she could see something. A gray shape rising above the treetops.
A TOWER?!
She looked at Scapegrace’s remains.
We have to succeed!
We have to rescue Maggie!
Oh, what’s that?
Mabel squinted at a small gray moth that crawled from beneath Scapegrace’s top hat.
Pelf called across from a nearby tree. “Careful, Mabel. That looks like the tropical vine moth! Many a sailing vessel has been left ropeless by the ravenous creature after laying anchor in a jungle bay. Its caterpillar eats through the toughest of ropes. My old crewmate Claude Surepaws, a rigger, fell from a snapped rope eaten away by the worm of the vine moth!” He clapped his hooves together to indicate the flattening effect of such a fall.
“SPLAT! Flatter than flatfish pancake!”
Mabel Jones shuddered at the imagined end of Claude Surepaws.
Then another moth flew past.
Then another.
She suddenly felt very nervous indeed.
Then . . .
One of the three ropes suspending the basket from the canopy snapped. Mabel was flung to one side and out of the basket. Desperately she scrabbled for a grip on something, anything!
Until her hand grabbed the arm of Gideon Scapegrace.
He jerked forward, his seat belt holding fast.
MABEL JONES WAS HANGING TWO HUNDRED FEET ABOVE THE JUNGLE FLOOR, HER FINGERS GRIPPING THE WRIST OF A RECENTLY DECEASED HOT-AIR-BALLOONING FOX!
“I say, Mabel,” cried Speke. “That looks awfully dangerous!”
Mabel stared.
Her arm was starting to ache.
I . . .
can feel . . .
my fingers . . .
And, with a shriek of purest fright, Mabel Jones let go.
Chapter 22
Plummet to the Death
Poor plummeting, tumbling-to-her-death Mabel Jones.
Falling . . .
Falling . . .
Falling . . .
THWACK!
The impact from the rare blue buzzard felt like being struck by a car.
It took the wind from Mabel Jones’s lungs and shook her eyeballs nearly clear of their sockets. But however much it hurt, it was infinitely better than the impact from the ground that would have certainly killed her if she had reached it.
Sharp talons gripped Mabel’s shoulders. She stretched up and felt soft feathers and scaly legs, and she held on tightly. The buzzard had enough strength in its wings to hover for a few seconds.
Then
they
began
to
fall
again.
Tumbling through the air in a mass of flapping feathers and struggling snuglet, they came to the ground in a crash of twigs and leaves.
Mabel Jones blinked.
She was alive.
Shaking her hair free of leaves, she turned to face her rescuer. The buzzard looked at her with expressionless beady eyes. It was the same blue buzzard that Mabel had saved from roasting all those days ago in the squalid shack of Mr. Habib!
Pelf drew his pistol. “Careful, Mabel, stay still—ye be not safe yet! That overgrown herring gull probably thinks ye be its dinner.”
“Wait!” cried Mabel. “Don’t hurt him!”
She smiled and scratched the buzzard’s head.
“Squawk?” she said.
The buzzard looked at her and smiled back. “You’re welcome, Mabel Jones,” it said. Then, stretching its wings, it took a lolloping run and, with a few loud flaps, soared into the sky.
Mabel watched the majestic creature disappear into the jungle mist.
“Well, it was certainly worth rescuing you!” she said to herself. “And talking of rescuing . . .”
There was somewhere she had to be.
Chapter 23
The Forbidden City
Let me tell you a story. The story of a city—maybe the greatest city ever.
A city built on an island, where a broad river made its way to the mighty ocean. A city built by giant machines. Huge towers of brick, glass, steel, and concrete rose from the ground, winched together, piece by piece, until the city was almost as high as it was wide. Bridges spanned the river and the city grew bigger still, stretching as far as the eye could see. Hoomans filled the streets, all “How’s it goin’?” and “Have a nice day!” and
Toot toot toot!
Un
til one day the city fell silent.
The echoes of their great machines, the hubbub of the busy streets, and the growling of their cars settled like dust upon the ground. Not a honking horn was heard, nor a policeman’s whistle, nor the laughter of a snuglet. Just the sound of the wind blowing off the water, rattling through the empty avenues and blowing the litter of the last day of hoomanity along the gutters, where it gathered in drifts of filth.
Yes, dear reader, all things come to an end . . .
Even the hooman race.
The city became an empty and lifeless wreck, like the shell of a giant African land snail eaten from the inside out by the larval stages of a parasitic wasp. And for years it remained that way, while the plants reclaimed their places. Creeping vines climbed the walls, their hairy tendrils crumbling the buildings brick by brick. Trees broke through the roads, their roots causing the sidewalks to undulate and crack. Moss covered the old abandoned machines and lichen hung from the streetlights like the beards of sun-wizened castaways.
The land beneath the city changed too. Springs sprang up (as is their habit) and turned streets to streams. The rivers that flowed on either side of the city dried up and, as the vast continents of which the world is made shifted and groaned, the sea retreated, until a thick tropical jungle enveloped the city entirely.
Just one creature remained—a relic from the city’s past.
A creature of unspeakable evil. A creature who enslaved the animals of the jungle and brought them to the city and set them to work.
Cutting,
hacking,
burning.
Lifting,
patching,
repairing.
Rebuilding a great tower on the orders of the Witch Queen herself.
Look! A movement in the undergrowth: beneath the ferns, in the broken remains of an ancient building. Mabel Jones and her brave expedition of adventurers. The first creatures from the OLD WORLD ever to set foot in the FORBIDDEN CITY. Picking their way through the undergrowth and scrambling over the rubble.
Follow Mabel’s gaze. For before her she sees the tower, rising tall among the ruins. A building half of brick and steel, half of wood and vines: a ramshackle collection of the ancient and the new. Into the sky it climbs, from a patch of scorched earth where the jungle has been burned away, leaving only the blackened skeletons of the trees that once grew lushly around its feet.
Look closely at Mabel now. Silently she mouths the words she heard all those days ago from the lips of Mr. Habib:
“l see an ancient tower that grows from the black and burned earth . . .”
Mabel has reached the FORBIDDEN CITY.
Mabel has reached New York.
The sound of grunting startled her from her thoughts. Through the undergrowth Mabel caught sight of an unhappy group of egret slaves approaching, pulling wooden carts of rock and stone.
One of the egrets looked at her blankly. It was different from the ones in the jungle village—thinner, with bald patches where feathers had fallen from its coat. Mabel started as she looked into its cold dead eyes. It blinked and, for a moment, a sparkle of life returned to its face. A look of fear.
Pure fear.
“Witch Queen . . . sees all,” it said. “You must . . . escape!”
And then the sparkle dimmed and the blankness returned.
Mabel felt Jarvis’s hand creep into hers.
“I don’t like this, Mabel. I don’t like this one bit!”
Chapter 24
Tiffany’s
Crawl with me now into this leafy tunnel that forces a path beneath the thick, thorny undergrowth. We come to an ancient wall, once solid concrete, now crumbled rubble. Scramble over its remains and sit in the shade of this large flower that emits an overpowering, choking smell of rotten meat. Hopefully it will hide your scent from the many wild predators that hunt near these ruins. For we now sit on the only remaining floor of a once-colossal building. A square archway survives where a grand doorway stood. And through that doorway now steps a ragtag bunch of tired and weary adventurers.
Carruthers fumbled in his briefcase, then held aloft a scrap of paper.
“Scholars of ancient civilizations at the UNIVERSITY OF CRUMBRIDGE believe that this map is a plan of the FORBIDDEN CITY at the height of its success.”
The others gathered around his tatty and aged document.
“If we triangulate the position of that tower over there”—he motioned to the great tower—“with the same tower on the map, then we should be able to locate the place known as Tiffany’s. We need the compass to work out which way is north. Speke?”
Speke held up the wrong kind of compass. “What sort of circle would you like me to draw?”
Mabel coughed politely. “I know where Tiffany’s is.”
Carruthers squinted at the map. “I think we need to head down this avenue. It seems to be a raging torrent now, though. Maybe it’s actually that way . . .”
Jarvis frowned. “I think it might be that way!”
He pointed to a broken road leading into dark, overgrown jungle.
Mabel coughed again, a bit less politely. “I know where Tiffany’s is.”
Carruthers looked up crossly.
Then they all gasped.
For Mabel was holding something in her hand. Something that streamed from her fingers like a tiny waterfall frozen in time: the sparkliest, shiniest, necklace any of them had ever seen.
Pelf sighed and toxic pipe smoke curled out from his nose holes.
“All those years spent sailing the seven seas in search of treasure, and what have I got for it? Nothing but a warrant for my arrest, a sea-mite-infested fleece, and a handful of shattered dreams. But now . . .” Pelf slapped Carruthers on the back. “Why, there be enough sparklers in this here necklace for me to buy a ship . . . A proper ship! A PIRATE SHIP.”
Speke looked at him, boggle-eyed. “Do you mean to say that you are a pirate!? I’d never have guessed!”
“Well, I can’t say that the ROYAL INSTITUTE OF EXPLORERS will approve of the treasure being used for piratical purposes,” said Carruthers, “but they might turn a blind eye once I present them with a diamond for their museum.”
Jarvis had wandered off a little. “I think you’ll be buying more than one pirate ship, Pelf!”
The others turned to look at him.
Mabel laughed, for she had never seen such a sight. Jarvis stood there, arms outstretched, swathed in diamonds. Diamond bracelets, diamond necklaces, and a diamond tiara. Handfuls of diamond rings dripped through his fingers. His eyes were wide open in delight.
“They’re all over the place!” he said, giggling, and picked up another necklace.
Pelf took out a large sack and began filling it with the diamonds.
Carruthers paused and frowned. “Where is it? The big ring! The one in the picture.” He pulled out the old scrap of magazine and read aloud. “For her. Cut from the finest of diamonds. A symbol of your undying love. How could she resist?”
Mabel pointed to a sign that hung crooked on a wall above some steps leading downward to darkness.
“Maybe in the vault?”
Pelf nodded. “Aye, the greatest treasures are always kept underground. Them’s the rules!”
Lighting a torch, the explorers slowly descended the stairs, which opened out onto a small room with a large circular metal door at one end.
Pelf sucked on his pipe. “A safe!” he exclaimed. “And a big one at that. Oh, for a brass cannon and some armor-piercing cannonballs.”
Mabel popped a gummy candy into her mouth. Her second-to-last one.
Somewhere in the darkness of the shadowy vault, a silent assassin twisted his doorknob in excitement.
Mabel swallowed the gummy candy and . . .
and . . .
and . . .
Nothing happened.
Somewhere in the darkness of the shadowy vault, the silent assassin rolled his saucery eyes.
Meanwhile, Carruthers had been inspecting the safe door.
“A door this thick would require a tremendous amount of pressure to break. I’m not even sure a cannonball would do it . . . I wonder if there’s some way to override the locking mechanism.”
Mabel coughed. “Maybe it isn’t—”
“Science won’t help us now,” interrupted Pelf. “I say we come back with a hundred sticks of dynamite.”
Mabel coughed again. “We haven’t even tried—”
“Sir, the careful application of scientific methodology always triumphs over brute force,” snapped Carruthers. “What we need to do is . . .”
Mabel didn’t bother interrupting again. She just pulled the safe door and it swung silently and smoothly open.
She smiled. “It wasn’t even locked,” she said.
Then she stopped smiling.
A hooman skeleton sat on a chair in the corner of the safe. An ancient security guard’s hat balanced on its skull.
In the middle of the room was a plinth.
And on the plinth was a glass box.
And in the glass box was a ring.
And on the ring was the . . .
LARGEST,
EVER.
AND I MEAN EVER!
Carruthers held aloft the ancient advert. “It’s THE ring!”
Carruthers looked at Speke.
Speke looked at Carruthers.
Their eyes narrowed.
“For Veronica!” they cried in unison, racing into the safe.
Oh, !
Many a pirate or a similar land-based varmint has succumbed to the glittering stones known as diamonds. Once you have seen one—once you have held one, spinning it around in your fingertips so its many facets catch and turn the sunlight to rainbow—once you’ve seen it sparkle like a star plucked from the night sky, then . . .