Arlo zipped between the first few trees, ears pricked, eyes peeled, then Utterly and Casper hurried on after him. But they whispered as they ran because the forest felt unnaturally quiet: no birds sang, no animals stirred – it was as if the forest itself knew that there were Midnights nearby.
‘What kind of creatures conjure snow?’ Casper asked Utterly, anything to keep himself from thinking of the griffins.
‘Trolls, apparently. Though only the legendary Ballooner, Gilbert Gatherpace, has ever caught a glimpse of one so almost nothing at all is known about them. But you never know, we might get lucky.’
Casper raised an eyebrow. ‘I hope we don’t . . .’
Utterly stopped abruptly and hoisted herself up into a tree. ‘If in doubt, keep climbing . . . we should be heading up the trees, not through them!’
‘But how do you know the drizzle hags meant for you to climb that particular tree?’ Casper hissed. ‘There are hundreds of trees in this forest! What if you climb all the way to the top and it’s the wrong one?’
‘Climbing trees is never a waste of time, Casper.’ Utterly pointed to a spruce a few metres from hers. ‘Try that one.’
Casper placed a tentative foot on the first branch, then swung for a handhold and missed.
Utterly rolled her eyes. ‘You’ve never climbed a tree before, have you?’
Casper swiped for another branch and pulled himself up off the ground. ‘Course I have.’
But the truth was, he hadn’t, and as he climbed now he couldn’t help wishing he had a helmet and a safety harness, but this was a kingdom in the sky, and the more time Casper spent in it the more he realised that health and safety wasn’t just taking a day off in this strange land – it was permanently on holiday.
He tried his best to keep up with Utterly but she seemed to know instinctively which branches would hold her weight and which to avoid, and she scrambled upward in the manner she did most things: quickly and crossly.
‘Can’t you go any faster?’ she called down.
Casper steadied himself on an icy branch. His hands were numb and the tree seemed to go on for ever. ‘Are you just expecting me to find someone I know sitting conveniently on a branch?’
‘There’s no point expecting anything – especially when you’re dealing with magic. I’m just hoping.’ Utterly paused. ‘Only you’re so slow that even hoping seems a bit optimistic.’
They climbed higher and higher. The forest was so tightly packed with trees their branches criss-crossed like a frozen web. If you were feeling brave you could probably leap from one tree to the next, but Casper wasn’t, so he carried on climbing at a sensible, if perhaps slightly cautious, speed.
‘Come on, Casper!’ Utterly yelled. ‘Even Arlo is climbing quicker than you!’
‘Arlo’s got wings! I’m going as fast as I can!’
‘It’s not fast enough!’
Casper tried to think of something reasonable to say, but he was tired and cold. ‘Why are you always so impatient and angry?’
‘Why are you always so scared?’ Utterly shot back. ‘And slow! And boring!’
Casper slumped against a branch – he’d had enough – and the words that had been bubbling inside him for a while now tumbled out. ‘You’re being mean, Utterly. It’s no wonder all your classmates stay clear of you! You’re foul-tempered and forever in a grump!’
‘If you weren’t such terrible company I wouldn’t need to be in a grump!’ Utterly snapped.
‘I’m not the reason you’re always in a mood!’ Casper cried. ‘It’s all this business with whatever happened to you in the past, only you’re too closed up and stubborn to talk about it!’
There was silence for a few moments and tiny flakes of snow began to fall. Utterly scowled down through the branches. ‘You don’t know anything about me, Casper. And all this trying to make friends with me and Arlo is pathetic.’ From the branch below Arlo gave an indignant squeak, then began tugging at Utterly’s boot with his claws. But she shook him off and ploughed on. ‘Is it because you don’t have any pals back in the Faraway? Too much of a coward for anyone to like you?’
‘That’s not fair!’ Casper cried. ‘I saved Arlo from the mudgrapple and I stood up for him in the Damp Squib!’ He could feel his temper rising again, and though back in Little Wallops he would have let people walk all over him, out here in the forest he felt suddenly bold. ‘I’m a million miles from home, Utterly, but I’m giving this quest everything I’ve got even if you make me want to pack it all in every few minutes. I may be scared at times but at least I admit it! Unlike you! It seems to me that the thing you’re most scared of is losing people, but you’re so horrible to everyone that it’s not surprising people can’t wait to be rid of you! Is that what happened with Mannerly Thankless that you won’t talk about? Did Mannerly run off and leave you because you’re so mean? It’s probably why no one has bothered to come and help us from the castle, too, because you’re always so horrid!’
There was a pause from above, then Utterly’s reply came, cold and stony. ‘I’m going on without you.’
Casper snorted. ‘How will you know whether a face is familiar to me or not? You need me whether you like it or not.’
But Utterly was done listening and thinking sensibly now. ‘I’ll find another way to beat the Midnights. A way that doesn’t involve spending time with someone as useless as you.’ She reached down a branch and snatched Arlo into her pocket. ‘And just so you know, Casper: never ever being late isn’t a skill. Find something else to be good at.’
Utterly stormed off up the tree and Casper blinked after her, fighting back the tears that were threatening to fall. He hadn’t meant to say all of that, but then again, he hadn’t expected Utterly to be so quite so cruel. He sighed. Even having an acquaintance was turning out to be extremely stressful. He dreaded to think what dramas a real friendship might involve and felt glad that he didn’t have plans to embrace one.
Casper carried on climbing through the maze of branches, and he was surprised to see that the tree was less icy now. There wasn’t so much snow up here either and, strangely, the air felt ever so slightly warmer. He paused to try and make sense of it all and to see if he could make out Utterly chattering away to Arlo. But what he heard instead was something else entirely.
The steady whrum of wings.
The hairs on Casper’s neck bristled as the whrum of wings grew louder. It was too great a noise for a solitary forest bird, like a pigeon or a pheasant. These wings beat in chorus, a throbbing din of feathers that shook the air and rustled the trees. This was a flock of something very large indeed, and it was coming closer and closer to where Casper crouched.
‘Utterly!’ Casper whispered. ‘Can you hear that?’
No reply, save the moan of a gathering wind.
‘Utterly?’ Casper hissed.
The wings beat faster, the wind began to howl and Casper scuttled on up the tree, grabbing at the branches in the hope of catching sight of Utterly or Arlo. But neither of them were anywhere to be seen now. Utterly’s anger must have propelled her up the tree even faster than normal, and he had no idea how far she and Arlo had climbed.
Until he heard Utterly scream.
Casper froze. That scream hadn’t been filled with Utterly’s usual fury; it had been loaded with fear. He scanned the branches above him – which shook and creaked as the wind roared – to see black shapes zipping through the trees, and every now and again a flash of yellow eyes.
Casper’s blood pounded. Midnights!
A griffin hurtled through the trees, ducking and weaving to avoid the branches, and in its scaled talons it held a screaming girl with wild blonde hair. Utterly locked eyes with Casper for a split second, and Casper saw her terror and felt a punch of guilt. It was his fault that Utterly had stormed off and been captured. But Utterly didn’t cry out for him; instead she kicked and bit and struggled to wriggle free. He realised that she was determined not to give him away, because she knew – even if she had bee
n too angry to admit it earlier – that they had to find the familiar face, and it would never happen if they were both carried off by the Midnights.
The griffin swerved and a tiny blue scaled thing dropped from Utterly’s pocket and landed on the branch next to Casper. It was Arlo. And he was whimpering.
Casper scooped the dragon into his palm. ‘We’ll get her back,’ he whispered. ‘I promise.’
He pinned himself to the tree trunk as the forest around them quaked with wind and the sound of screeching griffins. He could hear Utterly shouting, too, as she was dragged further and further into the forest. Knowing that he couldn’t possibly take on a flock of Midnights on his own and also that he couldn’t possibly let his acquaintance or his work colleague or whatever Utterly was be snatched away by the Midnights, he took a deep breath. Because Casper was beginning to learn a little more about adventures and that, like laughter, they were better when shared.
Casper tucked Arlo into his coat pocket, braced himself against the wind, then scuttled out along the branch he was hiding on. Not daring to look at the drop below, he leapt into the next-door tree. He landed with a thud, steadying himself against a gust of wind. From somewhere deeper in the forest, the griffins called to one another with grating shrieks. Casper hurried on towards the next tree, then the one after that, jumping the gulfs between them as he charged through the forest after Utterly. He wouldn’t let the Midnights take her. Even if she was the most unreasonable person he had ever met.
He flung himself on, slipping and stumbling against the wind, right up to the moment a griffin burst out from a tree in front of him and settled on the end of the branch Casper was careering down.
He skidded to a halt as the griffin opened its wings. They were dagger-sharp at the edges and blacker than soot, and as the creature hissed through its hooked beak, Casper felt a terrible heat pulse inside him, and all at once the melted ice and snow made sense and he knew that he hadn’t imagined the heat back in the canoe when the Midnight appeared. Somehow the air really did turn hot when the griffins came close.
The Midnight narrowed its yellow eyes and Casper realised they were the same eyes he and Utterly had encountered on the Witch’s Fingers. This was the Midnight the jailbird had held. It must have been lying in wait for Casper, while the rest of its flock flew on, because it knew that there had been two children riding in the canoe!
Casper clung to the branch as the Midnight opened its mouth and screeched. And though the sound rocked the marrow in Casper’s bones, it was the stiflingly hot breath now burning against his cheeks and spreading out inside him that frightened Casper more. Something was pouring from the griffin’s beak – something invisible but hot and fierce all the same, and it made Casper’s limbs feel horribly weak.
He found his thoughts reaching back to Slumbergrot’s words about shatterblast: its bite is worse than fire. Then he gasped. Did the griffins breathe out shatterblast? And was that what was whirling through the forest and sucking the strength from Casper now?
He scrambled backward but a talon clamped down on his shoulder and ground him still. Casper twisted and turned, bit and tore, but he was weaker now and the Midnight’s hold was steel-strong and Casper knew he had little chance of escaping. The griffin continued to let the shatterblast pour from its beak and Casper felt his limbs grow even more drowsy. Then, gripping Casper in its talons, the griffin surged upward, its formidable body snapping every branch it struck. Casper tried to break free with what strength he had left, and even Arlo did his best to help, but the griffin was answering the call of its flock now and smashing its way deeper into the forest – towards Everdark and Morg.
Then the unexpected happened.
Something long and wooden and tipped with silver shot through the air and went thwunk into the griffin’s side. The Midnight reeled, one of its talons raking against Casper’s leg, then its grip loosened and it clattered down, down, down through the trees. Casper and Arlo fell, too, but they reached out and grabbed at the branches until one held and they swung themselves into its trunk. But the griffin kept falling, a tangle of feathers and claws, until, after several minutes, Casper heard a distant thud as it hit the forest floor.
There was a grunt from somewhere close by and, clutching his leg, Casper clambered upright to see two hairy feet disappearing up the tree.
‘Hey, wait!’ Casper gasped. ‘Who are you? You saved us!’
But the feet pattered on until they vanished from sight. Then the calls of the griffins and the moan of the shatterblast ceased, too, and once more it began to snow. Casper felt his strength return to his body, but as the silence of the forest took over again, broken only by Arlo’s little sobs, one thing became horribly clear: Utterly was well and truly gone.
Arlo padded down the length of the branch and looked out into the falling snow.
‘Can you see her?’ Casper asked as he slumped against the trunk.
He knew the answer even before Arlo shook his head. The Midnights had taken her, but did that mean they would put an end to Utterly here in Rumblestar, or would they take her back to the harpy in Everdark? Casper winced at the pain in his leg where a talon had cut his skin, but it was nothing compared to the pain of knowing that if he’d climbed just a little bit faster and kept up with Utterly, perhaps none of this would’ve happened. Casper felt almost dizzy with guilt as Arlo traipsed back towards him, a tear smudging down his snout.
They were alone now. Completely alone. And it didn’t seem like anyone at the castle even cared. Arlo climbed into Casper’s lap and Casper hung his head. Things were spiralling out of control and there didn’t seem to be any way to fix it all. He thought about composing another to-do list in his head, but then he realised that he didn’t want to. All he wanted, really, was to see Utterly again. Things had felt a lot more hopeful with her around. And even though they’d both said some truly awful things earlier and Casper had tried to convince himself that he didn’t need Utterly, or indeed anyone else, as a friend, he knew he did. Because it wasn’t enough to go through life just with acquaintances and work colleagues. It was important to have real friends, too. People to open up to and laugh with and to make you feel less lonely. And little by little those things had been happening with Utterly – until he’d blown it . . .
Tears rolled down Casper’s cheeks, and as he held Arlo close, he thought of home. He missed his parents so much the pain in his chest was almost unbearable. And suddenly his mum’s forgetfulness and his dad’s inability to wear a watch didn’t seem quite as irritating as they had done back in Little Wallops. Because at the end of the day – when you were alone in the forest and down on one knee – those things didn’t matter. His parents had been right all along: what counted, really, was love and friendship. Casper hadn’t wanted to make friends in case Candida and Leopold ruined it again, but it turned out that he was capable of mucking up friendship all by himself. And now he was he coming to terms with the truth: making friends was painful and messy and frightening, but it was worth the trouble because life was a whole lot better when you lived it alongside a friend.
Casper took a deep breath and tried to think like Utterly. If she was the one left behind, she wouldn’t stand for the Midnights getting in her way. She’d keep going after the familiar face. And so that’s what Casper would do, hoping hard that there was a chance Utterly could be here in Rumblestar still, especially if the Midnights were keeping her as bait to catch him.
Casper wiped away his tears and looked down at Arlo in his palm. If in doubt, keep climbing. Arlo brushed his own tears from his snout and tried to look brave, which Casper took as a sign that the tiny dragon agreed they needed to keep searching, whatever might have happened to Utterly.
Casper grimaced as he hauled himself up. A dark red patch had seeped through his dungarees, but he pushed on up the tree, with Arlo flopped miserably on his shoulder. Casper tried not to think about how high up they were now. The trees back home stopped eventually, but these trees seemed to keep going for ever.
And it wasn’t just the height that made the trees seem odd: the further Casper climbed, the smoother the trunks became, and the branches grew less frequent so that Casper had to stretch further between each one.
He paused for a moment and stared at the trunk more closely. The wood looked as if it had been smoothed and buffed and chiselled into shape rather than growing this way naturally. Casper blinked. The tree seemed just like the fancy table and chair legs back in the dining room at school. He climbed further and saw that above him now was a rectangular platform made from slats of wood positioned through the trees . . .
He turned to Arlo. ‘I think we might have been climbing up a gigantic table leg.’
Utterly had said that snow trolls lived in Shiverbark Forest. What if this sky-high furniture belonged to them? The trolls Casper had come across in fairy tales back in England didn’t seem the sort of creatures who would busy themselves with carpentry, but here in Rumblestar he was learning to expect the unexpected.
He continued to climb until finally he reached the wooden platform and heaved himself over the top. As Casper had guessed, he found himself on a giant tabletop. There were numerous board games open on its surface, including a Scrabble board which Casper had accidentally blundered into the middle of, scattering the letters in all directions. He looked up to see that the branches had been completely cut away above the table for a good few metres, creating a pocket of space right up to where the forest canopy started.
Suddenly, his head began to spin and the pain in his leg made it feel close to buckling, and though Casper tried to focus, the more he concentrated the more his vision blurred. And the last thing Casper saw before he blacked out completely were ten very hairy, and very surprised, faces staring down at him.
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