Clearheart (16 page)

The Duke watched Ella and Charlie in the Waters. Across the plains of Antarctica they rolled upon a yellow skateboard, clinging for dear life to a long green length of twine. He clapped his hands with glee and marched outside.

He looked down into a large hole in the ice. The Duke could see the top of Bolgus's hairy orange head within it. His red eyebrows stretching wildly across his forehead. He snored loudly. A gaggle of Troggles threw sweeties at his head and fell about laughing. Others ran across his head. The Duke shooed them away.

‘Wake up!' he called down to the Giant. Nothing. The Duke stamped his foot. Time was of the essence. ‘Wake up,' he shouted again, aiming a spear of dust at the Giant's wall of a forehead.

‘OWWWWW,' roared the giant. His humongous eyes flew open and he heaved himself up out of the crevice until he was sitting, waist deep, underground, his arms resting on the ice floor above. He squeezed his eyes shut against the wooziness that came with all this fresh air.

‘Sorry, old chap,' said the Duke, not sounding a bit sorry at all. ‘It's time,' he said. ‘Hop to it.' The Giant frowned, and began to sink slowly down into the depths of the Earth's crust. He wasn't sure why he was about to do what he was about to do, but if his name was to be cleared, blind obedience seemed to be required. Particularly if he wanted more of that sap. Although, it was making his tummy feel a bit funny. But maybe that was just the effect of being above ground again.

‘I snatched a couple more bombers for you,' the Giant bellowed as he sank, shaking his head to wake himself fully (and sending packs of snow flying off his grit-sodden hair for miles in the process). The Duke ducked as gracefully as he could in his overextended body to avoid the spray.

There was a great rip in the snowy surface of the Antarctic plain as Bolgus tore his arm through the frozen ground and deposited two fighter jets on the ice.

‘Marvellous,' said the Duke, rubbing his hands together. So far Bolgus had brought him two tanks, two fighter jets, a helicopter and a Rolls Royce (the latter a prize the Duke coveted for himself). Coupled with the guns stored in the grounds of the Ulnus estate, this final delivery should give the Duke more than enough to overthrow his wife and terrify the Magicals of Magus into submission.

‘Bolgus, you have done me proud!' the Duke called after the Giant's disappearing mane. The Duke turned back to his lair, his eyes burning red with ambition. ‘It is time to beef up the Troggles,' the Duke said to Ragwald as he entered his hideaway and strode toward the daises. Upon two rested bowls of water; upon the other, a translucent bubble of electric pulses sparkled.

‘I want the Troggles fed double rations of sugar. Let's make those creatures
mean
,' said the Duke. Ragwald shuddered. It was all very well keeping the Duke's minions comfortably Trogglified so that they were stupid and obedient and in thrall to their addiction to sugar. It was quite another to increase their dose. ‘They need enough sugar to induce swelling and aggression, with a touch of Antidote, so that they are still able to follow orders. Have you got that, Ragwald?'

The Duke's Goblin Protector nodded obediently, but his hands shook with trepidation. If he was not careful with his doses, the Troggles might disintegrate altogether.

Pulling his tail about him, the Duke stared hard into the Waters of the first bowl, so as not to miss the action. Looking into the second bowl, the Duke tiptapped on the silvery surface. One of Bolgus's eyes appeared within it.

Staring into the spit in his hand, Bolgus stood beneath the ground as instructed, and waited for the Duke to give him the
signal. At precisely the moment the Duke told him, Bolgus cracked the ice with one fierce punch of his fist.

The children did not have a chance. Over the edge of the crack in the ice they flew. Down and down into the depths of the freezer below.

The Duke turned back to the ball of electric pulses and thrust his hands at it. Two lasers of elf dust flew from his pointing fingers, sending the pulses into a frenzy of increased activity.

Over the vast expanses of Antarctica, the Dome of Inconspicuous Impenetration spread its mercurial boundaries until it covered the crack Bolgus had created. Making contact with the ice, the Dome sealed itself, molten silver solidifying on a bed of bluey white.

By the time Samuel and Don Posiblemente reached the newly hewn crack in the ice, Ella was not only falling into the void, she was also imprisoned beneath an Inconspicuously Impenetrable Dome.

Samuel, tweaking both ears, cast his fingers at the transparent wall, for his magic could sense its presence as clearly as if he could see it with his own eyes. His elf dust speared the surface, singeing its exterior but not even coming close to cracking the barrier before them. Don Posiblemente held his own ear and, looking up, thrust from his mouth an enchantment that rumbled through the air like an avalanche. The Dome shook, but its foundations stood firm. Samuel covered his eyes to summon up the most powerful magic within him. His clothes flew out about him and froze as the Antarctic air touched their delicate fabrics. He conjured up two Candleflosses.

‘Swallow this,' he instructed Don Posiblemente, his long grey hair sculpted in ice down his back. The scholar, who was freezing more and more solid with every pound of his hand against
the wall, opened his mouth. The warmth that welled at once inside him brought the Flitterwig to his senses.

‘We need to penetrate the Dome,' he said, unable to meet Samuel's eyes.

Samuel raised an eyebrow. ‘You don't say,' he muttered to himself.

After almost a day without contact from Ella, Don Posiblemente had been beside himself with worry. And then she had appeared to him in the Waters, for barely thirty seconds, as though he had flickered through her mind. But it was long enough for him to see her falling, and it was long enough for him to establish her co-ordinates. It was time to call the chairman of the Rooniun.

‘Oh, Filosofico,' Samuel had said, even as he gathered his wits about him and headed for the barrel of water in the corridor of the Rooniun headquarters. ‘Why did you not come to me sooner? Meet me in Antarctica at once.'

Ella fell through the air like a stone, her skateboard in her arms. She grabbed for the sides of the crevice, but the ice was too slippery. Her hair billowed out above her and slowed her fall. Charlie, however, had no such protection.

‘Elllllaaaaaaaaa,' he called out as he disappeared into the void.

Ella thrust her skateboard into the side of the ice, willing it to hold. Catching a protruding icicle, it did. But Charlie was gone.

The possibility that her Protector had fallen to his death on her account was, well, impossible for Ella to believe. It
could
not be and, if she could help it, it
would
not be. Her eyes flashed brightly, her ears burned. The back of her T-shirt bulged brutally. Hanging by one arm, Ella pulled her anorak off her shoulders, the freezing cold searing through her like a quiver of arrows. But her Candlefloss protected her still.

There was nothing for it. Ella tugged on her skateboard and let it and herself fall, willing the magic inside her to help her now. Down she spiralled, her mind ablaze with memories of Charlie. Of when she fell face-first in the pond in front of him the day they met. Of the moment when he saved her from getting mauled by Troggles on the boundary of Snoppit and Willow Farms. Of the day they had laughed together at Dixon in the lollipop factory until her sides hurt. She mouthed the spell for flight and held her ears as she fell like a stone. Dixon. Charlie. Her friends.

RRRRRRRRRRip.

Something burst through Ella's T-shirt with a force that flung her head back. A second thrust. It hurt like crazy. And then there was an almighty flapping and Ella wasn't falling anymore. She was banging against the walls of the chasm, unable to control the powerful appendages on her back. She imagined Samantha soaring above her, and balanced in the air. She pulled her shoulderblades back as she had seen Samantha do. She moved up. She stopped. She stayed still, her wings slapping against the ice. Yes. Wings. She'd found them!

Ella looked down and, without considering the danger, dove headfirst into the abyss. But Charlie wasn't there. As she flew into the darkness, the glacial chasm seemed to close beneath her. She searched the shadows. Called Charlie's name. But there was nothing. No sound save
for the beating of her wings and the sound of her own voice. Ella hovered in the darkness, horror spreading over her. Dixon and Charlie. Both lost because of her. She felt a swell of indignation spread through her. This was not right. Not right at all. Setting her face in as fierce an expression of determination as she could, the Flitterwig soared up out of the gully. She was going to give that horrible old Duke a piece of her mind when she found him. Oh yes she was!

How Humphrey managed to Bongle himself and Samantha before Gloria stepped back into the barrel of water with the butler is anyone's guess. What was for sure was that once they got back to Hedgeberry their minds were reeling with questions. They followed Gloria to her room and, as soon as they debongled, accosted her.

Humphrey sat on Gloria's stomach, holding her hands down while Samantha held her feet. It was not an easy task, for Gloria sprouted branches from all extremities and fought the two Flitterwigs for all she was worth.

‘Just tell us what you know about Ella's disappearance and we'll let you go,' said Samantha, squealing as a skinny twig protruding from Gloria's big toe pulled at the tight curls on her
head. Humphrey closed his eyes and tried to conjure the night-time that was the power of his people. A swathe of darkness engulfed Gloria's arms, making them flail about for a moment.

‘I've already told you, I don't know anything else,' Gloria screeched, slapping Samantha about the head with her wooden limbs. Samantha tried to check if she was bleeding but it was hopeless while she fought the sneaky little Dryad Flitterwig.

‘Your parents know something,' said Humphrey, his voice slow and dark despite the twigs poking into his sides.

‘All I know is that she can see the Spirit Tree in the poppy field. And she shouldn't be able to, because she isn't of dryad blood. And my mum called me the day Ella disappeared and asked if anything out of the ordinary had happened. If anyone had gone missing.'

Gloria had been repeating the same thing for half an hour now.

‘This is hopeless,' said Humphrey dully.

‘I agree,' said Samantha, squeezing her eyes shut against the twigs that poked at her face.

‘Let's go,' said Humphrey.

‘Let's,' said Samantha. They tore themselves away from the arboreal battler beneath them and made for the gardens.

Ella flew up out of the canyon far higher than she had intended to. As she burst out of the opening in the ice, swollen and red-eyed Troggles scattered wildly. They ran about on the ice floor, black smudges in a sea of ice-blue, looking up at the child as she tried to control her wings. Ella hovered for a moment, looking down. Her heart beat against her chest, fit to burst. Without Dixon or Charlie, Ella was frightened. But this was no time for fear. She was alone, yes. But only as alone as she had been for the first ten-and-three-quarter years of her life.

Samuel, spotting the child coming out of the chasm, cast his fingers at the wall. Elf dust rebounded off its carapace, exploding like fireworks. Try as he might, his power was nothing compared to that of the second-most powerful pure Magical alive, the Duke. They needed the most-powerful Magical: the Queen herself.

‘You have to get a message to the Queen of Magus, Posiblemente,' Samuel commanded.

Ella turned to the light and saw Samuel and Don Posiblemente there. She wasn't alone! She lifted her arm to wave to them, but was stopped mid-raise by a blast of elf dust. It hit her in the back of the head. Ella fell out of the sky. She felt her left arm crack as she hit the ice with such force that the wind was knocked out of her.

The Troggles pulled her across the frosty ground and tied her onto their sled. Ella kept her eyes on Don Posiblemente and Samuel all the while. She could see their anger, their might, their determination, but she couldn't hear a sound beyond the slipping and sliding of the Troggles, with their grunts and grizzles. Nor could she smell them. Not a trace of the amber and mahogany spiciness of Don Posiblemente, nor the fresh lavender and sage of Samuel. Not even the cinnamon and rain smell of good magic. Hadn't Don Posiblemente said he would watch them closely, and that he would be there in an instant if he sensed danger?

What had gone wrong?

As the Duke approached the Clearheart on the sled, Ella felt her hair flare. She tried to move, but her arm was too sore and her body too beaten and bruised from the fall.

‘Finally we meet, Ella Montgomery,' the Duke hissed down at her, his face a myriad of pulsing veins. Ella kept staring at Don Posiblemente, who called to her through the invisible barricade, casting his magic against the side of the Dome. But she couldn't hear a word. Why couldn't they break through the barrier? At least Dixon was close now, she thought as she lost consciousness.

As the sled drew up before the Duke's majestic icy hideaway, Ella awoke. She looked up at the sparkling, spiked turrets and the finely polished outer walls. Like sheets of mirrors, they cast dazzling reflections across the ice in every directions. She had to shield her eyes from the glare. Her body was sore, her arm was agony, but she was not afraid. In a way she was relieved to have reached a point in her journey that would bring her closer to Dixon, closer to her best friend. Her heart ached at the thought of her friends, at the thought of Charlie possibly dead at the bottom of the chasm. Oh how she hoped the Duke had him somehow.

Ella was carried into a vast room. Inside it was warm, and the smell of sugar made her mouth water. Ella loved sweeties. She was a Flitterwig, after all. She rolled over on the Persian rug she had been flung upon and looked around. There was
little furniture, but the walls of the room were lined with paintings—masterpieces so exquisite that Ella caught her breath. But so brutal too. Depictions of war, massacres, dying bodies, lolling tongues. The images made the hairs on her body stand on end. Troggles eyed her hungrily from every angle. In the corner, she saw a very, very tall man watching her from under hooded lids. He had dark brown skin and a long neck. He kept his face low and his sharp nose tucked into the collar of a fine overcoat. There was something about him Ella recognised, as if she had met someone very like him before.

‘Where is Dixon?' she asked a ragged little creature as he placed a bowl of Turkish delight next to her. He looked a lot like a Troggle, but he still bore some resemblance to a goblin. His face was freckled and his hair was as white and spiky as Charlie's. ‘Where is Charlie?' Ella asked, her mouth watering impulsively at the sight of her favourite sweet—but she would not succumb. ‘Do you have them? Are they here?' She blinked, trying to keep the pain in her arm at bay.

Ragwald, for this is who it was, pointed to three daises at one end of the room. He held his hands out to stop the Troggles approaching the child. Ella pulled her sore body up to standing and approached the first dais. She peered into the bowl and let
out a sob. For there was Charlie, underground, turned, as far as she could see, to rock. She looked in the next bowl and her legs buckled.

There he was, her beloved friend, her stripy pixie pal, the little dude who encouraged her when she was scared—Dixon Delightly, his head hanging, his arms and legs tied together and his hat, so much a part of him, nailed brutally to the frozen escarpment. He was trapped in a tiny cavern carved out of the ice. His little green extremities had turned red from having to touch its sides. Less robust than a baby, a pixie is so delicate that to see such tiny fingers and toes so sore with cold is like watching a kitten caught in a rat-trap.

Ella swung around. ‘WHERE IS HE?' she screamed. The Troggles, primed now, bore in on her, their red eyes flashing and their pincers snapping.

‘Shhhhhh,' they told her. ‘Hush now.'

Ella flung her hands out. ‘Don't you dare come near me!' There was a ferocity in her voice, a certainty, that stopped them in their tracks.

‘Stay back,' Ragwald ordered them.

Ella put her nose in the air. Trusting her olfactory senses, she breathed in, her hair a whirligig of golden strands.

Ella smelt longing, like a green, reedy grass caught in the breath of a sleeping dragon. She smelt flesh, tight twine, sweet blood—the smell of her pixie's wrists burning as they twisted and failed to break the cords that bound them. There was the barest trace of the pixie-scent she had once known, the peaty heat from rocks baked in sunshine. But it was overwhelmed by the smell of a pixie in pain, the smell of rotting dolphins. The smell tore into the Clearhearted parts of her. The parts that were young and alive and full of adventure. It was the smell of rain turned sour and roses injected with bad eggs. It was all wrong. So wrong. And her horror at this must have echoed the pixie's, for she could smell his warm tears, like the soft scent of cotton and cashmere, falling from his watery eyes. She could almost taste them as they fell, salty and delicate as ocean spray. And then she smelt his socks, a little cheesy from the days of tiny toes, tiny ankles, tied up in rope. The rope smelt like daisies locked in a coffin—like hope bound and gagged. That smell was like a chime in her heart, releasing every bit of consternation that she had bound up inside her during the past few days of worrying about Dixon and where he might be.

Dixon was alone and frightened. And, if the abundance of
smells were to be trusted, very near. Ella sniffed up and around and then over and down. He was underneath her! Over in the far corner of the room, under the ice. She ran across the room and, smelling him there, knelt down. She scraped at the floor with her good hand. The man in the shadows stepped forward and then stopped, surprised at the heated energy emanating from the pale child with the spinning hair. He had the most enormous Adam's apple! The Troggles bore in on her again tentatively, in spite of Ragwald's orders. But she didn't care. She kept digging, getting nowhere, slapping at the Troggles with her big wings and her long, wild hair.

And then, out of nowhere, Ella felt herself thrown across the room. Her side burned the way her head had when she had been struck before. Elf dust trickled out of the Duke's finger as he stood at the entrance to the room, feasting on the view of his long-awaited prisoner. He looked at his finger, confused, and then struck her again, in the leg. This time the burn was not so potent. With each strike, the Duke's dust was growing weaker, as though it didn't want to hurt her.

The Duke clenched his fists and roared up into the ceiling. This child was impossible.

Ella dragged herself across the floor, ignoring the Duke, ignoring her eye-watering pain, to the
spot where she could smell Dixon best. The Duke strode across the room until he was just behind her, eyeing her tears hungrily. The perfect antidote to pollution. His velvet cloak and claws cast a long shadow across the wall. The Troggles shuffled away, cowering from the Duke, licking their lips at the thought of feasting on the child's blood, such a restorative for a Troggle. Better still, her tears. Ella scraped at the hard surface with her nails, willing it to give way to her.

‘Be cautious, Your Highness,' said the Flitterwig with the giant Adam's apple. ‘A number of my ancestors were felled just by looking the Clearheart of old in the eyes when their intentions were truly bad.'

The Duke looked at the man scathingly. ‘But not all of them,' he spat. Although he had to concede that he had had his own issues trying to approach this child in the past. He was well aware that the Clearheart had some sort of inbuilt power over evil intent.

‘Your Highness,' called Ragwald from over by the daises. The Duke turned. ‘Your Highness, I think you should come and take a look at this.'