The Key to Rondo

by Emily Rodda

  No. That couldn’t be. The swirling greyness was clearly visible. Conker must have seen it.

  And Conker had pushed Leo and Mimi into the mist, and slammed the door behind them. There was no doubt. No doubt. The memory of Conker’s strong, determined grip flashed into Leo’s mind. The memory of Conker’s suddenly rough voice rang in his ears. It was such a different voice from the one he had used before, as he had bustled around preparing his new acquaintances for …

  For this? The thought hit Leo like a splash of cold water. He gasped, and suddenly his mind was working properly again. Suddenly he saw that everything Conker had said and done in the tavern could be understood in a different way.

  Conker had warned them to keep out of sight, and to hide their clothes. Conker didn’t want anyone to know they were there – or ever had been there. Because he was trying to protect them? Or because it wouldn’t do for anyone to suspect that Conker had disposed of them?

  No, Leo thought desperately. It can’t be. But he forced himself to go on, to face the suspicion, and deal with it, as his heart grew cold in his chest.

  What if Conker wasn’t the Blue Queen’s enemy? What if he was her ally, like Spoiler? If so, he had succeeded where Spoiler had failed, because he was clever. He’d disarmed Leo and Mimi completely with all his funny stories about mice who wouldn’t wear caps, and pigs called Bertha. He’d made them think he was harmless – just an eccentric little dot-catcher and part-time hero with a duck for a partner.

  Then he’d led them to this – this nowhere place. He’d pushed them in and slammed the door.

  And now they were drifting, helpless. There was nothing they could do to save themselves. Nothing …

  Leo’s whole body tingled as if an electric shock had run through him.

  ‘Mimi!’ he yelled. ‘The ring! Use the ring! Wish us –’

  His feet hit solid ground. He felt himself pitch forward. Then he was rolling on something soft, something that crackled beneath him.

  He came to rest flat on his back. His nose was filled with the sharp, sour smell of sap.

  He opened his eyes. Above him stretched the branches of a vast tree through which gleamed tiny patches of sky.

  I’m home, he told himself dazedly. This must be the tree that grows outside my window.

  He desperately wanted to believe it. But as he turned his head a wave of bitter disappointment rose in him, burning in his throat.

  He was lying on a thick bed of ferns. A few blue butterflies danced in the air above him. Fragile, lacy fern fronds, palest green, tickled his hands, face and neck. The light was green and dim. More giant trees, their roots hidden beneath drifts of ferns, their trunks dotted with red and yellow fungus, stood silently around like guards.

  A memory stirred at the back of Leo’s mind – a picture of a forest, exquisitely detailed, covering the side of the music box. Tall trees rising from a sea of lacy ferns. Shadows flickering like the stripes of tigers…

  A shiver ran down his spine. He made himself sit up. With a start, he saw Mimi kneeling nearby, almost hidden in a deep bank of ferns. She was so still, and her green and gold jacket so perfectly blended with her surroundings, that at first he hadn’t noticed her. Small, pale green moths fluttered around her. They were exactly the same colour as the ferns, and had the same lacy appearance. It was almost as if tiny pieces of fern had grown wings.

  Then Leo saw Mimi’s face. She was smiling – a dreamy, delighted smile.

  Leo’s skin prickled. ‘Mimi!’ he shouted.

  His voice seemed shockingly loud in the forest stillness. The moths fluttered upward in a lacy green cloud.

  Mimi turned her head. ‘Shh! You’re frightening them,’ she whispered.

  Leo scrambled up. Green fronds bent and cracked under his feet as he began to wade through the ferns towards the place where Mimi was kneeling. His legs were trembling. Rage was boiling up inside him.

  ‘Leo, be careful!’ Mimi called in distress. ‘You’re crushing the ferns.’

  ‘Who cares?’ Leo shouted. ‘Why did you wish us here? Why didn’t you wish us home, like I told you? What crazy thing have you done to us now?’

  Mimi’s face froze. She lifted her chin. ‘I haven’t done anything,’ she said coldly. ‘I didn’t hear you tell me anything. I didn’t wish anything.’

  ‘Why not?’ Leo shouted, stamping his feet, beside himself with anger.

  Mimi raised her eyebrows and looked him up and down. ‘Actually,’ she drawled, ‘it was because I was so scared that my mind was a complete blank.’

  Leo stared at her, trying to take this in. Slowly his anger drained away, leaving a cold, empty feeling in its place.

  ‘So – we just landed here without you doing anything,’ he said, getting it straight in his mind. ‘So – either we ended up here by accident, or this is where Conker meant to send us all along.’

  Mimi shrugged and looked bored.

  Leo wet his lips. ‘This is the forest on the side of the music box,’ he went on.

  Mimi looked even more bored than before, making it clear that Leo was telling her something she already knew. She turned to look at the green moths, which had begun fluttering cautiously back.

  ‘It’s all right,’ she said to them. ‘He’s harmless. Stupid, but harmless.’

  Anger flared in Leo again. ‘There are tigers in this forest, Mimi,’ he shouted. ‘And wolves, however ridiculous it is for wolves and tigers to live in the same place! Are you just going to sit there and wait until one of them comes to get you?’

  ‘The way you’re yelling it’s a wonder one hasn’t come already,’ Mimi said, looking down her nose at him. ‘Why don’t you just shut up?’

  ‘Why don’t you?’ Leo retorted childishly.

  Mimi gave one of her humourless snorts of laughter. ‘I’m going to stand up now,’ she said to the moths.

  Slowly she got to her feet. She held out her hands and, to Leo’s amazement, dozens of the moths settled on her fingers.

  Leo stared at the little creatures, and suddenly gasped in shock. They weren’t moths at all! They were perfectly formed little people, with green skin, green wings as delicate as lace, and top-knots that curled like the tips of new fern fronds.

  ‘What are they?’ he burst out. ‘Mimi, be careful!’

  Mimi’s mouth tightened at one corner. ‘They’re not going to bite me,’ she said scornfully. ‘They’re some kind of fairy, can’t you see that? They’re called Flitters.’

  Something tickled Leo at the edge of his mind. He knew that name ought to mean something to him, but he couldn’t think why. Had he read it somewhere? Had he heard it? Or even dreamed it? He clenched his fists in frustration.

  ‘How do you know what they’re called?’ he demanded, still shocked at the sight of the little green beings balanced on Mimi’s fingertips and fluttering in the air around her. ‘Are you saying they’re talking to you? I can’t hear anything.’

  ‘They don’t talk aloud,’ Mimi said, as if this were the most natural thing in the world. ‘They make you hear things – know things – in your mind. Can’t you hear them?’

  ‘No!’ Leo snapped.

  ‘Well, maybe you would if you stopped shouting and jumping up and down for a single minute,’ Mimi snapped back. ‘Your mind has to be quiet before you can hear. And even then it’s not like ordinary talking. It’s more like … like music, really. All I know so far is what they’re called, and that they’re friendly.’

  ‘Conker seemed friendly, too,’ Leo pointed out heatedly. ‘And look how that turned out!’

  A shadow crossed Mimi’s face. ‘I really liked Conker,’ she said. ‘I trusted him the minute I saw him. It just shows …’

  Her voice trailed off. Her head drooped. Leo knew what she was thinking.

  It just shows you shouldn’t let down your guard. It just shows you shouldn’t trust anyone. How often do you have to be hurt before you learn?

  The Flitters on Mimi’s fingers looked up at her with slanting em
erald eyes, opening and closing their wings anxiously as if they could feel her pain.

  Leo felt a pang of shame. ‘I’m sorry I shouted at you, before,’ he muttered. ‘I was scared, that’s all. Really scared.’ It was amazing how difficult it was to say.

  Mimi gave a small shrug. He couldn’t tell if what he’d said had made her feel better or not.

  He’d opened his mouth to speak again when suddenly all the Flitters rose into the air. Leo hadn’t heard a sound, but clearly something had startled them.

  He thought of tigers, and his heart gave a great thud. He looked quickly around, but could see nothing – nothing but trees, and ferns, and shadows.

  Mimi was looking around too. She jumped nervously as five or six Flitters flew close to her face, their fragile wings brushing her cheeks.

  The fluttering green cloud of Flitters had thinned and lengthened. Now it looked like a long trail of green smoke. The little creatures were streaming away into the trees. It was impossible to see their faces, and they made no sound at all, but fear was in the air. Even Leo could feel it.

  The movements of the Flitters still hovering around Mimi became more jerky and frantic. One landed on her hair and tugged with tiny fingers.

  ‘Something terrible’s coming,’ Mimi whispered. ‘Some terrible danger. They want us to go with them.’ She glanced at Leo.

  He nodded. ‘We’d better do it then,’ he said grimly. ‘Whatever’s scaring them probably won’t be too good for us, either.’

  They stumbled through the ferns, following the fleeing green cloud as it snaked rapidly through the trees. The few Flitters who had stayed with them fluttered anxiously around their heads, urging them on.

  In moments Leo and Mimi had lost sight of the place where they had landed. In another minute they were hopelessly lost.

  ‘We could have dropped a trail of breadcrumbs,’ said Mimi. ‘If we had any bread.’

  ‘Or unwound a spool of thread,’ said Leo. ‘If we had a spool of thread. Not that it matters. We didn’t know where we were to start with.’

  And then they stopped, awestruck. Ahead of them was a giant tree – the biggest Leo had ever seen, or even imagined. It stood alone in the centre of a clearing thick with ferns. Ferns of a different kind hung from its branches, which spread over the clearing like a high, shaggy roof.

  The Flitters were streaming towards the tree. Leo’s eyes followed them as far as a clump of ferns just above the lowest branch. After that, they were impossible to see. The great tree’s shade swallowed them completely.

  For a moment, Leo and Mimi simply stared. Then, not far behind them, they distinctly heard a low, menacing growl.

  They ran to the foot of the tree and looked up. The smooth silver trunk rose high, impossibly high. They had to tilt their heads far back to see the lowest branch.

  ‘There’s no way we can get up there,’ Leo said, putting what they both knew into words. ‘The trunk’s too straight. There’s nothing to hold onto.’

  Almost all of the Flitters had disappeared now, but a few still hung back, tugging urgently at Mimi’s hands and hair.

  ‘We can’t do it,’ she said to them, patting the great tree’s trunk, miming trying to climb, and shaking her head. ‘You go. Be safe. We’ll hide somewhere else.’

  The Flitters hovered. They seemed not to understand.

  ‘Go!’ Mimi whispered. ‘Don’t you see? We can’t climb this tree. We need a ladder.’

  The low growl came again. It was closer now, and Leo thought he could hear the soft cracking of fern stems. He pictured a huge striped shape padding relentlessly towards them.

  ‘Come on!’ he urged. He darted to the edge of the clearing, realised that Mimi was still standing by the tree with the Flitters, and ran back to her again.

  ‘Mimi, come on,’ he whispered urgently, tugging at her arm. ‘Leave them. They’ll be okay. We’ve got to find a tree we can climb.’

  ‘If we can climb it, a tiger can too,’ Mimi said grimly. ‘Oh, if only –’

  She jumped back with a muffled shriek.

  A broad, thick tongue of scarlet fungus had suddenly erupted from the tree’s smooth bark. It was about level with Mimi’s knees, and as she and Leo stared in amazement, another appeared above it, and another.

  In seconds a ladder of fungus tongues stretched up the tree’s trunk, all the way to the lowest branch.

  ‘Fungus can’t possibly bear our weight,’ Leo said in a dazed voice.

  But Mimi had leaped forward. She stood on the lowest step of the fungus ladder, and it didn’t snap. As the Flitters dipped and whirled around her, clapping their tiny hands, she reached up, grabbed the edges of a higher step and began to climb.

  ‘Come on!’ she called back to Leo in a low voice.

  And Leo followed. All the time he was telling himself that fungus couldn’t possibly hold him. But the fungus steps were broad and strong. Their edges were smooth and steady under his hands. Beneath his feet they felt firm, but at the same time springy, so that they seemed to push him gently upward with every step.

  Never had Leo climbed so high, yet never had a climb seemed so easy or so fast. It reminded him of walking up a moving escalator, though he knew that the only movement was his own.

  In no time at all he was joining Mimi on the lowest branch of the great tree. The branch was so broad that they were easily able to stand side by side with the clump of ferns between them.

  Feathery fronds tickled Leo’s ear as, holding tightly to the tree trunk, he turned his head and looked down at the clearing below. His stomach turned over as he saw how far away it seemed. If he and Mimi had fallen, they’d have been killed for sure. If just one of the fungus steps had crumbled …

  He glanced at the tree trunk below him, and blinked. The trunk was bare, silvery-grey again. The red fungus had completely disappeared. A cold weight seemed to settle on Leo’s chest. Had he and Mimi made yet another mistake?

  ‘Mimi, the ladder’s gone!’ he whispered. ‘We’re stranded up here.’

  There was no answer. And when he turned his head, he saw that Mimi was no longer beside him. She, and the last of the Flitters, had vanished.

  Chapter 14

  The Nesting Tree

  Leo had a moment of blind panic. High above the ground, alone in the green dimness, he felt his knees begin to tremble. The silence of the forest seemed to press in on him. He went on clinging to the trunk of the great tree only by instinct, and when he heard a whispering voice close to his ear he was so shocked that he almost let go.

  He gasped and steadied himself, sick and dizzy at the thought of how nearly he had fallen.

  ‘Leo!’ the voice whispered again.

  The sound was coming from the clump of feathery ferns growing on the tree trunk. Leo leaned cautiously towards the clump, and peered into it. He saw Mimi’s face, just her face, floating deep among the ferns.

  It was a weird, unsettling sight. Like something you’d see in a dream, Leo thought, and for an instant he wondered wildly if he was dreaming.

  Then Mimi’s hands appeared, pushing the fern fronds further apart, and Leo saw her neck, shoulders and arms. The ferns masked a large hole in the tree’s trunk. The tree was hollow here, and Mimi was standing inside the hollow, looking out at him.

  ‘Quickly, Leo!’ Mimi whispered impatiently. ‘Don’t just stand there! Come in!’

  Before Leo could snap back at her she disappeared inside the hole again. Swallowing his irritation, Leo considered how best to follow her.

  He edged a little sideways, so that the hole was directly in front of him. Then he took a deep breath, shut his eyes, forced his aching hands to relax their grip on the tree trunk, and launched himself forward.

  For one, awful moment he thought he wouldn’t make it. The hole was smaller than he’d imagined and while his head went through easily, his shoulders stuck.

  It was so dark inside the tree hollow that he couldn’t see a thing. The air was warm and heavy with the scents of wood and cru
shed leaves. He felt Mimi pulling on the collar of his jacket, heard her shouting at him. He stretched his neck forward and wriggled desperately, his toes drumming on the tree branch behind him. And suddenly his shoulders slipped through the gap, and he was through.

  The fall was short, and the base of the hollow was thickly padded with dry ferns, so he came to no harm. He sat up, panting and blinking in the dimness, as Mimi crouched beside him.

  ‘The fungus ladder’s gone,’ he gasped.

  ‘Oh, it’ll come back when it’s safe for us to leave,’ she said confidently. ‘The Flitters can obviously make it appear whenever they want to.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Leo said grimly. ‘But what if they don’t want to? What if they want to keep us here?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ hissed Mimi, glancing quickly around as if she was afraid they’d be overheard.

  As Leo’s eyes slowly adjusted to the dim light, he saw that the hollow was far bigger than he’d realised. It was like a round room with a very high ceiling – like a room in a lighthouse, or a castle tower.

  The walls were thickly covered with what looked like little green cocoons. Then Leo saw that the cocoons were actually tiny, woven hammocks.

  Many of the Flitters were already sitting on their hammocks in pairs, swinging their legs and picking seeds and specks of dirt from one another’s top-knots. Some were still fluttering around, making circles in the air or zooming up to the top of the hollow and down again, apparently just for fun.

  ‘Isn’t it – fantastic?’ Mimi whispered.

  Leo moved restlessly, the dry ferns crackling beneath him. There was a strange ringing in his ears. He felt stunned – as if he’d been hit on the head and couldn’t quite get his senses back. He disliked the feeling intensely.

  ‘Listen, Mimi,’ he said abruptly, ‘you might be able to just accept this stuff that’s been happening to us, but I can’t. I’m going to go crazy if I can’t get at least some idea of the reasons behind all this.’

  The smile disappeared from Mimi’s face as instantly as if it had been wiped away with a wet cloth.

  ‘You know why we’re here, Leo,’ she said tightly. ‘I wound the music box too many times. It’s all my fault. Simple.’