The giant was not exactly pleasant to look at: he had a bulging nose, several missing teeth and so many scars it was a wonder his face still hung together. But there was something wise about him. You could see it in his ears – which were big and raggedy where the mist unravelled from the tips and drifted into the night – the kind of ears that had listened to the very first moonrise and held the whisperings of a thousand secrets inside them.
Slumbergrot blinked and Casper jumped.
‘I’m . . . I’m sorry we woke you up,’ Casper stuttered.
The giant said nothing. He simply stood silently before them, ribbons of mist trailing from his sides.
‘Say you’re sorry, too,’ Casper said, elbowing Utterly. ‘Then maybe he won’t eat us.’
‘Giants don’t talk,’ Utterly hissed. ‘Everyone knows that. They just sleep and throw stuff and—’
‘And what?’ the giant asked.
Utterly froze. The giant’s voice was even lower than his yawn and his growl, and both Utterly and Casper felt the ground beneath them shudder. Arlo clung to Utterly’s hair as Slumbergrot spoke again.
‘I am the first of my kind to speak for many, many years, but speak I must, for the kingdom is in grave danger and you are about to embark upon an adventure to save it.’
Utterly’s eyes shone in amazement while Casper’s glazed over with fear. He stuck his hand in the air, as if asking for permission to speak in class. ‘I . . . I’m not ready for an adventure.’
Slumbergrot’s ears wiggled. ‘My boy, one is almost never ready for an adventure.’
‘But I like to be prepared,’ Casper went on. ‘For everything. I need to know whether to pack sun cream and how many vests I’ll need and where on earth I’ll find toilet roll and—’
The giant cut in. ‘There is only one thing you need to pack for an adventure.’
Casper wished that he had a notepad and a pen to hand. ‘Yes?’
‘Courage.’
‘Oh,’ Casper said gloomily. ‘That doesn’t bode well . . .’
‘And if, perchance, you have a little more room for one extra item, a sense of humour helps. Because adventures are unpredictable and often terribly badly behaved – a bit like pickled onions if you have ever tried to fork one on a plate – but they have a way of unlocking people and turning them upside down so that all the astonishing things fizzing around inside them start to tumble out.’
‘I really think you’ve got the wrong person for this,’ Casper replied. ‘I’m not even wearing shoes!’
‘And yet, Casper, your name appeared on the note from the Neverlate Tree, did it not?’
‘How do you know about that?’ Utterly asked.
‘My dear Utterly, giants know just about everything.’ Slumbergrot adjusted his breastplate. ‘But we can only stay awake for a limited amount of time – which has been inconvenient of late because there have been things I’ve heard that I’ve wanted to share – and no doubt you will have questions about what lies ahead. So, ask away, children, before I fall back asleep.’
‘I really love your armour!’ Utterly blurted. ‘Where did you get it from?’
Casper spun round. ‘He might go to sleep at any moment and you ask about armour?’
Utterly clapped a hand over her mouth but Slumbergrot only smiled. ‘Frozen lightning,’ he said. ‘Forged in a sky cauldron by my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmother. There is not a blade that can cut through this breastplate. Even fire does not stand a chance.’
Slumbergrot sat down in the moat, sending water flying over the nearby towers, then he yawned and Casper hastily reached for another question. He wanted to ask if the giant knew a way for him to get home right away, but something about the way Slumbergrot looked at him – as if, possibly, Casper was a little more than just a small, unpopular boy who was afraid of almost everything – made him ask about the quest before them instead.
‘Is Frostbite working for Morg?’ he asked.
Slumbergrot nodded and wisps of cloud twirled from his hair into the dark. ‘Giant ears pick up on things that are not meant to be heard, and last night, because Frostbite, or at least the creature pretending to be Frostbite, was impatient and careless, I heard him –’ he yawned again ‘– heard him –’ and then to Casper and Utterly’s horror the giant, whilst sitting bolt upright, began to snore.
‘Heard him what?’ Casper threw his hands in the air. ‘You can’t just fall asleep mid-sentence! Only grandparents are allowed to do that!’
Utterly pulled Arlo out from her hair. ‘Please can you wake Slumbergrot up?’
Arlo curled into a ball – it was, after all, way past his bedtime – but when Utterly reached into her pocket and drew out a toffee, Arlo lifted his head and sniffed. Then he swallowed the toffee whole, fluttered over to Slumbergrot and landed, with a burp, on the giant’s nose.
Slumbergrot grunted and his large eyes opened. And then, as if he hadn’t been asleep at all, he carried right on with his sentence. ‘– heard him talking to Morg. The Lofty Husks may use their mirror rings wisely but the being imitating Frostbite is no Lofty Husk; he is a follower of Morg and he calls himself a Midnight. Morg is still trapped in Everdark but somehow she has found a way to send these Midnights under her power into Rumblestar. Indeed earlier today, the Lofty Husks were sent word from the magical creatures in The Beyond, reporting sightings of unfamiliar winged beasts. The Midnight posing as Frostbite somehow found a way past the castle’s protection charms and took on his disguise, but now I would wager that the creature has gone to join the rest of his kind and returned to his true form. I hope his departure will lift the curse placed on the real Frostbite to keep him away, though where in Rumblestar the true Lofty Husk is I have no idea.’
Slumbergrot stretched out his arms and Utterly could see that he was getting ready to sleep. ‘Have the Midnights been damaging the marvels?’ she asked the giant.
Again, Slumbergrot nodded. ‘Somehow they have got their hands on a wind called shatterblast. When it blows, chaos follows – its bite is worse than fire and its breath lays waste to all in its path. The Bottlers here at the castle assume only the benevolent winds – cometwhirl, starwisp and moonbreeze – are funnelling down the Mixing Tower chimneys, but really the Midnights are slipping shatterblast down there, too, which is tainting the marvels and ruining the other kingdoms’ weather scrolls. So that is why the winds in the Faraway are spiralling out of control.’
Utterly huffed. ‘Nothing to do with me messing around in the Mixing Tower, as Frostbite will have told the Lofty Husks.’ She looked up at Slumbergrot. ‘So, how do we sort all this out?’
‘To protect the marvels, you must destroy the Midnights, and to destroy the Midnights –’ Slumbergrot looked up at the night sky, as if searching for something, then Casper felt a breeze rustle over the moat and saw it flit through the hairs hanging from the giant’s ears ‘– you – Casper – must find a familiar face.’
Casper squinted. ‘But . . . but that can’t be right. It doesn’t make any sense. I only just got here! I don’t know anyone in Rumblestar!’
Slumbergrot waved his hand dismissively. ‘I am only passing on what the cometwhirl whispered to me a moment ago. And the winds are never wrong, my child.’
Even Utterly was looking confused now. ‘Why am I the one helping Casper find a familiar face? I don’t know who he knows!’ She squinted. ‘Do you think that maybe the Neverlate Tree has made a mistake?’
Casper nodded. ‘I’m definitely here by mistake! It’s not like I want to be in charge of saving all sorts of worlds!’
‘Adventures happen to people who need them.’ Slumbergrot looked from Casper to Utterly. ‘Whether they want them or not is entirely beside the point.’
‘But . . . but that still doesn’t answer how on earth I’m going to find a familiar face!’ Casper stammered.
The giant yawned. ‘Seek out the drizzle hags who live along the Witch’s Fingers
; they have a way of unravelling the wind’s secrets so they might be able to tell you more.’ Slumbergrot laid his head down on his arms and made himself comfortable amongst the remains of the bridge. ‘The Lofty Husks will not believe you if you try to explain what has happened with Frostbite – even the wisest minds overlook children in a crisis, especially when they are being led to believe that the very problem lies with a child in the first place –’ Utterly balled her fists ‘– and when I finally awaken again it will be too late, so you must take matters into your own hands. Immediately. Because if the Midnights are not stopped and the link between Rumblestar and the other kingdoms is severed, the Unmapped world and the Faraway will be in a great deal of trouble.’ Slumbergrot yawned again and closed his eyes. ‘And . . . on that sobering thought . . . I fear I am . . . falling . . . asleep.’
‘But how do we reach the drizzle hags?’ Utterly cried. ‘The Witch’s Fingers is a very long river!’
And possibly because he could still just hear the children in his sleep and was worried that the fate of the world lay in the hands of a shoeless boy and a girl in a dressing gown, Slumbergrot stretched in such a way that his hand fell, very conveniently, over the lock on the door of the tower next to him. Seconds later, a wooden canoe bobbed out into the moat and Slumbergrot stretched one final time so that his hand once again brushed, very conveniently, against the door until it shut.
Utterly watched, riveted, as the canoe drifted towards them. ‘Ready for this, Casper? Because these things go seriously fast.’
Utterly leapt from the dungeon walkway into the canoe and landed with a thump between the two seats, which, to Casper’s surprise, weren’t small and wooden like the ones in the canoe his dad had once been asked to mend for the sports department at Little Wallops, but full-blown armchairs.
Casper wrung his hands as Utterly manoeuvred herself into the first one by the bow, settled Arlo on top of an old suitcase at her feet, then seized a paddle and glared at Casper.
‘Coming?’
Casper stood, rooted to the ground. Where was the health and safety briefing? Where was the instruction manual? And where on earth was the map to find the drizzle hags?
‘What are you waiting for?’ Utterly hissed. ‘We need the night to get away unseen because who knows where that Midnight pretending to be Frostbite is, and if the Lofty Husks find me and lock me up there’ll be no one left to save your world and mine! We need to get going now.’
‘I’m not sure about this at all. Is this canoe even safe to travel in? And I’m worried about the drizzle hags,’ Casper added. ‘Are they very, very dangerous?’
Utterly shrugged. ‘If I worried about every single thing I wasn’t sure of I’d never do anything at all.’ She paddled the canoe up to the dungeon. ‘Sometimes it’s best just to get on with things and hope for the best.’
‘But what if the best turns out to be a total disaster? I really think that maybe we should be a bit more organised about—’
‘Will you just get in the canoe?’
Wincing, Casper stretched out a leg, hooked it over the side of the boat then slid into the armchair behind Utterly. It was more comfortable than sitting on the dungeon floor but more alarming, too – what kind of canoe had armchairs in? He glanced about him to find that there were racks of books lining the sides of the boat: How to Fly Through Lightning (A Ballooner’s Manual) by Ethelred Frazzle, The Big Decision: Bottler or Ballooner? by Whoopsy Ditherlot, Handling Magical Winds by Delilah Slippergrip.
Utterly chucked a paddle to Casper. ‘The fact that you’re from the Faraway is a bit of a worry, I must admit; it means you don’t have the slightest grasp on magical things.’ She pushed the canoe off from the dungeon. ‘You haven’t got any secret skills, by any chance? You can’t turn invisible? Conjure up ice? Fly?’
Casper dug a shaking oar into the water. ‘No. Can you?’
‘No. But I’m outrageously good at engineering, as you saw earlier when you were stuck in the dungeons. I can pick locks, take stuff apart, fix things and build almost anything. What are you good at?’
Casper thought about it. ‘I . . . am never, ever late.’
‘Well, let’s hope the drizzle hags are sticklers for timekeeping then,’ Utterly muttered.
They drifted between the towers in the moat, then the wall came into view. Casper tried to rack his brain for what he’d seen out west beyond the arches but all he could think about was the sky-tumbling waterfalls.
‘As you may remember when you were posing as a criminal,’ Utterly said matter-of-factly, ‘most of the water sails through the arches and just carries on falling. I suppose it lands in the Boundless Seas eventually, but some of it flows on into a river known as the Witch’s Fingers. And that’s where we’re heading.’
‘So, you’ve done this before?’ Casper asked hopefully.
‘Well, no.’ Utterly paused. ‘Under-sixteens aren’t strictly allowed out into The Beyond without a grown-up, but we don’t have time to worry about rules and chaperones.’ Utterly lifted her paddle out of the water and frowned. ‘Do you think we’re meant to be moving quite so fast?’
Casper clutched the paddle to his chest as the current picked up even more speed and they charged towards the wall. ‘I thought you were in control?’
Utterly raised an eyebrow. ‘I am never in control, Casper. That’s what makes me so exciting to be around.’
‘But you do know which arch we need to go through to avoid the sky-tumbling waterfalls, right?’
Utterly glanced from one arch to the next. The canoe was just metres away from them now and at the realization, Arlo started wheezing in panic. Then, just as they were about to glide through one of the larger arches, Utterly stuck her paddle into the water and the canoe swerved course.
‘Hold on to the sides!’ she yelled as the boat shot through a smaller arch.
For a second the canoe seemed to hang in the air, then it plunged down, down, down. Casper’s heart thumped and his stomach swung to his throat but they didn’t keep on falling, as Casper feared they might. The canoe smacked to a halt, water gushed over the sides and mist sprayed around them. Casper’s ears filled with the thunderous roar of the waterfall they’d just careered off and, digging their paddles into the water, he and Utterly pushed away from the churn.
‘That was amazing!’ Utterly shrieked, wiping the water from her face.
‘We could’ve drowned!’ Casper panted.
Utterly sighed. ‘Having secret gills like the Unmappers in Crackledawn do when they eat a watergum would certainly be an advantage when attempting that kind of a manoeuvre – in fact, I bet Smudge ate a ton of watergums before she set out across the seas after Morg – but I thought we did pretty well, considering.’
Casper tried to console himself with the fact that, other than the starlight on her cheeks and her unforgivable temper, Utterly wasn’t so different from the people in his world. Gills and watergums, on the other hand, sounded altogether terrifying, so he tried his best not to dwell on them. ‘You said the moat flows on into a river,’ Casper snapped as he wrung out his blazer. ‘That was hardly flowing on . . .’
Utterly waved her hand. ‘It’s hard to get your bearings when you’re travelling so brilliantly fast.’ She patted Arlo on the back; he choked up a puddle of water, then was offered three toffees from Utterly’s dressing gown pocket – which he accepted – to make up for the ordeal. ‘Still, I picked the right arch, in the end. Now we’re properly on our way!’
Casper looked around him for any sign of a Midnight as they drifted downstream, but without knowing exactly what these Midnights were, other than that they might have wings, Casper wasn’t really sure quite what he was looking for. There didn’t seem anything untoward in their surroundings. Weeping willows lined the riverbanks, their leaves silver-blue in the moonlight, and past them there seemed to be more trees, large twisting trunks that might have been the start of a forest.
In the distance, Casper saw a collection of peaks, dark poin
ted shapes against the starlit sky. He shuddered. The Beyond looked vast and unorganised and dangerous; there were no doors or walls or grown-ups to hold it all together. Out here anything could happen. And, though currently Casper couldn’t see any terrifying beasts crashing through the undergrowth, he could feel a sense of unease hovering in the air, as if Rumblestar itself knew that the link between it and the other kingdoms was hanging by a thread.
It was only when Casper looked up at the moon that he realised it was raining. The droplets were so fine it was almost like watching dust fall, but because of the moonlight, the rain was diamond-bright. Casper made it a rule to stay clear of rain back home; what with the skidding and the slipping and the umbrella spokes in people’s eyes, the risks surrounding rain were hideously high. And as he looked at it now, he grimaced. Everything felt dangerous enough already – The Edge was probably beyond the forest and Certain Death was undoubtedly beyond that – but rain made things worse because it brought with it the risk of flash floods and impromptu drowning. Casper shivered inside his blazer.
Utterly, though, turned her head up to the rain and let the drops land on her tongue. ‘Every place in Rumblestar is responsible for a different type of marvel. In Shiverbark Forest it snows all year round, at Dapplemere it’s non-stop sunshine, at the Smoking Chimneys there are tons of storms (though we don’t bother collecting marvels there, as not much good comes from gale-force winds and sheet lightning) and along the Witch’s Fingers, it rains.’ Utterly stuck out a hand to catch the droplets. ‘Isn’t it glorious?’
Casper flicked the water off his blazer. ‘No. I wish it would stop.’
‘It’s ungrateful to complain about the rain when the drizzle hags spend hours conjuring it,’ Utterly replied sharply. ‘And that’s only the start of the process. Ballooners then catch the rain marvels in spidersilk nets, Bottlers blend them with benevolent winds before packaging them up in bottles for the dragons to carry to Jungledrop. Then the Unmappers there make ink with the marvels so that they can paint the rain scrolls, which the dragons take on to the Faraway.’ She paused. ‘Same thing happens before you get your sunlight and snow, only the Unmappers in Crackledawn use their ink to write musical symphonies onto the sun scrolls and the Unmappers in Silvercrag write stories. But the paintings, symphonies and stories are all weather scrolls for your world, so you could try being a bit more grateful for the rain and everything else that falls from the sky!’
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