Clearheart (10 page)

The Duke stood staring into the Waters in his hideaway. The ceilings of his new abode rose in spiked majesty above him. He clapped his clawed hands together as he watched the collection of concerned individuals gathered in the headmistress's office at Hedgeberry. As he had suspected, no-one had contacted the Magicals. Ha! Humans were so arrogant. So foolish. So proud.

He had not been able to locate Ella in the Waters as yet, but she was certainly missing. And that was what he had wanted all along. The child had surely gone in search of the pixie. The Duke turned and watched with glee as Ragwald struggled to tie the stupid little mite up and lower him into his prison. He had to give it to the pixie, he was a feisty little blighter. Tiptapping his finger upon the Waters on another dais, the Duke waited until Saul appeared.

‘I would like to extend an invitation to our new allies to visit me here,' he said to the hairy Flitterwig. ‘I think it is time to bond.'

Don Posiblemente felt a sting of anxiety as he and Carmen ushered Ella and Charlie out of his drawing room to find some heavy-duty clothing. He intended to enchant the clothes, to ensure that they were prepared for all climates. For who knew where they might be off to in the next few days. He had also given the children a Candlefloss each, to keep their temperatures stable. For where he was sending them they would need serious cooling. He tucked a pair of sunglasses into Ella's pocket and cast a spell over Charlie's lenses to make them change according to the light. He handed Charlie a bag holding a large red glass bottle, full of some sort of liquid. For Thomas, he explained. Sap. Brewed by Don Posiblemente himself. It would help the Giant stay awake for a while.

Yet the good philosopher still felt somewhat uncertain. To be secretive was very much in character for him, for he lived a solitary life studying the Flitterwig Files, protecting them from the hands of those who would abuse the secrets they held. The idea of sending two young Flitterwigs into the unknown, however,
rested uneasily on his conscience. But he believed the second part of the Prophecy was unfolding, and to let anyone stand in its way—as they surely would were they to discover that he had sent the Clearheart directly to find the Lord of Gommoronahl—would be to stand in the way of protecting the future of Earth itself. Surely there were moments when dissemblance was in order for a greater cause? He would tell the powers that be soon. Of course he would. He simply wanted to give the Prophecy a chance by giving the children a head start.

Don Posiblemente met Ella and Charlie at the base of his staircase. They both looked up into the watery sky, wrapped up in stripy anoraks and wellington boots. They looked comical, Ella with her dishevelled hair and Charlie with his white hair sticking up above his startled, freckled face like a baby porcupine's prickles.

‘Magic's speed be with you,' he said, his delivery sure and steady. ‘Remember, Nature is your greatest ally. Trust yourselves and all will be well. And the clothes you wear, they may feel silly, but they will protect you, I assure you. DO NOT TAKE THEM OFF. If the Prophecy unfolds as it should, the Lord of Gommoronahl will provide you with all you need.'

With that, he pushed the children up the staircase, towards the rippling liquid sky above them. ‘Don't forget to think of
me, Ella, if you need me at any moment. I will be watching for you.'

Charlie instinctively took Ella's hand in his and marched up ahead. The moment his head touched the sky they were pulled up into its mysterious watery midst and then vanished.

Don Posiblemente shut the staircase behind them. ‘Do not let me sleep, woman, whatever you do,' he said to Carmen. ‘I will be waiting by my Waterway constantly and will make contact with Samuel the moment I sense true danger.'

For the second time that day, Ella found herself travelling at a speed that made her cheeks wobble and her mouth pull back in an exaggerated smile that would scare the ghouliest of ghouls. Only this time when she stopped twirling through water she didn't land at the top of a staircase in a warm house in Spain.

No. This time, she and Charlie found themselves bursting headfirst out of a huge dewdrop on the leaf of a tree. Though only Ella knew that was what they had sprung out of, for Charlie couldn't see anything at all. They landed smack wallop onto hard ground in the middle of a plain, goodness only knows where, with the sun beating upon them like a million desperate hands on a pair of bongos. A vast wilderness speckled with
spinifex bushes spread out before them.

The first thing Ella had to do was get all these clothes off! She began to unzip the red and white striped anorak Don Posiblemente had lent her. Charlie yelled at her to stop.

‘We can't take the clothes off, remember? Don Posiblemente told us we mustn't.'

As he said this, both anoraks blew up as though their puffy bits had been filled with cool air. Charlie pulled the hood of his blue and white striped anorak over his head and immediately felt as if he had stepped into a cool room. He pulled the hood of Ella's anorak over her head too, grateful now to Don Posiblemente for doing whatever he had done to his glasses to combat the glare of an unforgiving sun, for they turned darker at once. It was hot as all jiggery-pokery out here. He pulled Ella's sunglasses out of the pocket of her anorak and handed them to her. He popped a Candlefloss into Ella's mouth and another in his own. The Candleflosses became cool at once, regulating the children's temperatures so that they were chilled from the inside against the overwhelming heat.

‘Thanks,' said Ella, grateful to have a shield for her eyes from the glare of the sun.

Charlie felt about for Harold, who he found in one of the big pockets of his anorak. Pulling the frog up in front of his
face, he appealed to the amphibian to make some sense of his situation.

‘Have I done the right thing agreeing to let Ella come here, Harry?' he whispered to the frog as Ella looked up dreamily at nothing, her mouth agog. ‘I know I'm her Protector and everything, but it's one thing trying to do my best to protect her from Gloria at school. Now we've been flung out the end of a staircase into the middle of a plain, dressed up in two bouffy anoraks like a couple of striped Michelin men, who knows what I'm meant to do.'

Harold hopped out of Charlie's hand and up into his hood so he was resting in the cool next to his ear. ‘It is clearly all part of your destiny, young man,' he said philosophically. ‘Just listen to your heart the way Ella does and you will be fine. Where are we, I wonder?' he added, surveying the vast expanse of wilderness that reached out in every direction from where he was perched. ‘I have to say this is a lot more interesting than living in a pond,' he said with an adventuresome
rrrribbit
. Charlie paused to think for a moment. It was true. Being stuck on a plain, wearing a stripy soft fridge on his back, was certainly a lot more fun than detention or algebra. He looked over at Ella, who was sniffing for all she was worth.

‘What
are
you doing?' he asked. ‘Weirdo,' he added, for no
good reason at all. For if she was a weirdo, he was surely one too.

‘Can you smell that magical cinnamon and rain smell mixed with the eucalyptus coming from that massive gum tree?' she asked, somehow not as perplexed by the oddity of their situation as she should be. For at least now she was on her way to finding Dixon, and that seemed to overrule all strangeness right now.

‘What massive gum tree?' said Charlie, rubbing his forehead.

‘This one,' she said matter-of-factly, pointing at the enormous tree beside them. ‘The one whose dewdrop we just popped out of.' She pointed up at a dewdrop the size of a football that Charlie couldn't see either. The breeze passing through its leaves made the same noise as the oak at school.

‘Asquemi, asquemi,'
it whispered. Its silver-white trunk rose up out of the sandy plains like the prehistoric digit of a giant ape. Branches sprouted from its girth, ancient and gnarled. The stunted branches bore the odd leaf here and there, each the size of a single-bed sheet, of such brilliant green that they shone like emeralds against the skin of a pale, aged queen. Not that Charlie or the frog could see it, of course. The fact that Ella could was, in itself, extraordinary. But Ella was extraordinary, after all.

‘What one?' said Charlie. ‘There isn't anything there.' Ella cast him a look that suggested she thought he was being a bit dense and continued to admire the ancient growth.

‘She is rather wonderful, don't you think?' Harold whispered in Charlie's ear, staring at Ella with undisguised admiration. Charlie just shook his head in disbelief. What chance did they have of finding Dixon if Ella was having hallucinations already?

Imagine the sight of two children, eleven years old, both standing in stripy anoraks on the Nullarbor Plain, a plain as huge and unending as an ocean, under the unforgiving Australian sun.

As she inspected the tree more closely, Ella noticed that each leaf (and there were no more than ten of them) sparkled with the sheen of a single dewdrop. Each dewdrop sat alone, shimmering and alive against the dry heat beating mercilessly from an arid sky. Each leaf was perfectly still, despite the wind that whistled up through its branches from nowhere at all.

There was nothing Ella could do but stare. Which is exactly what she did.

Slowly, Ella edged closer to the mammoth gum. She would have touched its grand, prehistoric sides, had they not seemed to shimmer with energy like antique silver. Instead, she just
looked up and up and marvelled at the pure fecundity of its few massive leaves, heaving in wetness, hanging down towards her. It occurred to her then that she couldn't for the life of her remember the rhyme Don Posiblemente had told her to recite to rouse the Giant who slept beneath it.

‘What are you doing, Ella?' asked Charlie.

‘Looking at the Spirit Tree Don Posiblemente told us is the Great Gum of Gommoronahl,' said Ella softly.

‘You what?' said Charlie. ‘But I can't see a tree.'

‘Well it's there,' said Ella. ‘Trust me. And it keeps whispering to me.'

Charlie looked at Ella and scrunched up his forehead. ‘Huh?'

‘It sounds like it's saying
asquemi
,
asquemi
, or something like that,' said Ella. ‘Just like the oak tree at school.'

‘Whatever,' said Charlie, scratching his head.

‘Have you forgotten, children,' hissed Harold in a half-whisper and half-yell, ‘that you only have ten minutes from reaching the tree to summon the Giant before Don Posiblemente will consider us being here a wasted mission and come to take us back?'

As if pulled from a dream by Harold's croak, Ella shook herself from her awestruck surveillance of the tree and looked at
Charlie uncomprehendingly. Charlie translated.

It was true! She only had ten minutes from the moment she reached the tree to rouse the Giant. And they must have wasted seven just standing around and staring at it. But how was she going to tell her companions that the rhyme Don Posiblemente had made her commit to memory had escaped her completely? Ella looked back at Charlie and hunched up her shoulders inanely.

‘You can't remember the rhyme, can you?' he said.

‘Nope,' said Ella.

Harold covered his eyes with his webbed feet in an act of froggy horror. Charlie wished to Magic and goodness and Earth and all that he could wish to that he had been paying more attention when Don Posiblemente had told Ella what the rhyme was.

And then, out of nowhere, a tiny, wee alarm clock appeared. It flung itself at Ella's neck, swerving around the folds of her big puffy anorak, and tried to throttle her. It flung her back and forth with such force that her hood fell off, exposing her to the heat from the sun.

‘RRRRREMEMBER ME?'
the alarm clock trilled, its voice ringing in Ella's ears.

‘This means we don't have much time!'
yelled Ella, as the alarm clock strangled her. ‘Rhymes with lime,' she said, echoing Dixon's words to her months ago, when he had been throttled by just such an alarm clock for not getting on with things as quickly as he should.

The memory spun through Ella's body like a charm, reminding her of love and togetherness and connectedness and laughter. Dixon's silly rhyme passing so simply through her lips tapped some source within her. Her hair flared up, her shoulderblades began to itch, and suddenly the blankness in her head was gone. The words Don Posiblemente had given her rose up in her mind like a wave of hope. Without a moment's hesitation she let them out.

Ella reached out her hand and passed it softly, as Don Posiblemente had instructed her, across the silver-grey of the Great Gum's bark, wondering at the brilliance of her own memory. An energy, powerful as a shot of electricity, passed from her hand into the trunk of the tree, causing it to shudder perceptibly.

‘Wake up, ‘ she whispered, and held her breath.

Charlie looked at the tiny, wee alarm clock and watched as it ticked, bomb-like, dramatically throwing itself about in the sand, through an interminable minute.

Ella looked at Charlie, Charlie looked at Ella. They both shrugged. What else could they do?

Harold lost it. The tension was too much. He began to croak like a wild frog. Charlie covered Harold's mouth and took a deep breath.

The sand began to shudder beneath them, and then went still.

Ella and Charlie hardly dared breathe.

And then the earth erupted. The dusty plain began to whirl and swirl and fill the children's mouths and noses with sand. They closed their eyes against the spitting and flying and spinning of pulverised stones. They hid their heads deep inside their hoods and crouched down as the ground underneath them heaved and moved and flung them up into the air and back down again.

What had Ella done?

It went on forever. The swell of sand in the air turned the hot, dry sky black, and if she had been able to open her eyes she would have seen the Great Gum sway and tilt. But while she
couldn't open her eyes, she could hear the groan and the roar and the wild
shhhhhhhhhhhhh
of the ground moving beneath her. She could smell peat and metal and fire through the eucalyptus tang of the gum tree and the minty wetness of the dewdrops and the chalky incense of the sand.

And then the earth was still while the elements still swirled above it. But from her cocoon, curled up inside her cool anorak, she felt the sand fall and the beating pulse of the heat settle back into the land around her. Once she had cleared most of the sand from her eyes, Ella opened them carefully. She almost wished she hadn't, for what she saw could not possibly have been real, and if it was, she didn't want to know about it.

But Charlie saw it too. And so did Harold, as he spat sand from his mouth and unfurled his long froggy tongue to try to unclog his throat.

The sight was little short of spectacular. What they saw were five toes, the size of barrels,
wriggling up out of the earth, finding feeling in the air, enjoying the light and the warmth of freedom. And attached to those five great toes was a foot, and a mammoth leg, bending and stretching, grey and white, shining silver at the knee, spraying soil and sand in every direction as it emerged. Then a hand the size of a car reached up out of the ground, its enormous fingers pounding on the dusty plain to get the tingles of inactivity out. The hand was followed by a shoulder, attached to a body so big it beggared belief. It was as solid as an island. And upon that body a head, a massive boulder, bald as an eagle, covered by a worn, old beanie, with great, round, sleepy, sad eyes and a behemoth of a squished nose and fat, full, round lips.

‘Woooooooooow,' said Charlie.

Ella was about to second that opinion when the hand scooped her and Charlie up and, like a scary ride at a fairground, swept them high into the air. Charlie couldn't believe it. He was being swept into the air by a blinking enormous hand! Ella's tummy did a loop-the-loop and she shut her eyes against the crunch that would surely come when the giant mouth she was approaching
ingested her like a peanut.