Clearheart Page 11

  ‘I’m not sure,’ said Ella, rather wishing now that she could get a message to her grandmothers to let them know she was okay. But even if she could, what would she say? Particularly to her fully human grandmother. ‘Hi Granny, just want to let you know I’m fine. In Antarctica with Charlie and his frog and no food. Sent here by a Giant called Thomas. Looking for a pixie. Nothing to worry about.’ Ella laughed. She had to laugh. Or she’d cry. She looked around her. East, south, north and west, all she could see was a bluey-white expanse of ice and snow that met the azure sky and stretched the world out forever. The breeze whipped snow up into their faces. It stung.

  Ella wanted to set off at once in search of Dixon, but her instincts told her that this breeze was not about to abate. She was tired too, having missed a night’s sleep, and while the majesty of their surroundings filled her with something she would have called joy if she were in a better state of mind, her bones felt battered from journeying through Water so fast and so much in one day. And she was hungry. She hadn’t had more than a milkshake to keep her going for hours. ‘Are you hungry, Charlie?’ she asked.

  ‘Absolutely starving,’ said Charlie, who was crouched down on the ground unpacking the bits of tree Thomas had given them. It was hard to hold them still in the bluster of the breeze. He nibbled at a bit of bark and then spat it out. That wasn’t going to do the trick. He tried a little bit of root, but that just tasted of bitter rubber. What he wouldn’t give for a bowl of hot macaroni cheese right now. And a mug of hot chocolate… He was about to have a chew on the leaf, but as soon as he picked it up, it flew up into the air above him, as if caught by the breeze, and unfolded at once.

  Ella’s eyes followed its trajectory. Her hair began to billow and her shoulders itched like mad. She rubbed them and then touched her ears. They were boiling. She looked away from the leaf to Charlie, sucking on a lump of snow. Her ears cooled immediately. She looked back at the leaf. They warmed up again.

  Was her body, were her instincts, trying to tell her something? Something about the leaf?

  Ella tried to remember the spell that Miss Patchouli wrote on the board at the beginning of every Transmogrification lesson. Maybe she could Personify the leaf and send it off to find Dixon. That didn’t seem right, and anyway, she couldn’t Personify anything yet. But the Giant had said the bits of the tree he had given them would help them out. As Ella thought these thoughts, her hair fell loosely about her shoulders. Didn’t he? she thought. No, she realised. He hadn’t said ‘help’. He had said that the bits would ‘protect’ them. Ella’s hair billowed under her hood again, and not in the same direction that the building breeze was blowing. Charlie peered at her suspiciously.

  ‘What’s going on with your hair?’ he asked.

  ‘Not really sure,’ said Ella. ‘Seems it’s responding to my thoughts.’

  Charlie tried to remember any lesson that had mentioned anything about this. He couldn’t, and he’d been concentrating hard for the last few months. Then he remembered something from Essentials of Magic.

  ‘Hey, remember how we’ve been learning to listen to ourselves in order to tap in to our magic?’ he said, forgetting his hunger for the moment.

  ‘Of course I do,’ said Ella. ‘Don’t you think I’ve been trying to do that every time I try to fly!’ She looked at the leaf again. Her hair flared up around her in a trice and her ears tingled.

  ‘So what’s your body telling you?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know!’ said Ella gruffly. ‘If I did, I’d be doing something.’

  ‘Well what do we need right now?’ asked Charlie, trying to be sensible.

  ‘Something to eat and somewhere to shelter, I suppose.’ As Ella said the word ‘shelter,’ her ears blazed. ‘Shelter,’ she repeated. Ouch! Her ears were veritably burning! She grabbed some snow to cool them, her long sleeves protecting her hands from the cold. The breeze was building to a wind now.

  Charlie, noticing what she was doing, thought hard. ‘Shelter,’ he said to himself. ‘Hmmm.’ He scratched his snubby nose. ‘Maybe the leaf’s supposed to provide us with shelter!’ he declared, looking at Ella hopefully.

  Ella looked at the leaf. Her ears burned. She looked at Charlie. They kept burning. He was onto something. But how on Earth was the leaf, however large, supposed to shelter them?

  ‘Perhaps we need to Personify it so we can sleep underneath it,’ said Charlie, racking his brain for the spell for Personification. Harold tapped him on the cheek.

  ‘What?’ said Charlie impatiently. ‘I’m thinking.’

  ‘Remember I took the liberty of putting your spell chart in your back pocket before we left, old chap?’ said Harold, sounding rather pleased with himself. Charlie beamed.

  ‘So you did,’ he said, patting the frog on the back. Pulling it out, he scanned the parchment for the spell they might need. Finding it, he tweaked his ear and mouthed the words, staring hard at the leaf. The leaf froze, startled, and stretched itself full length upon the snow. It was soon covered in a white film as the building breeze blew snow across it. Its stem wagged a little, like a tail. Charlie was delighted. He knew he was getting ahead in Transmogrification classes, but here he was, out in the wilderness, Transmogrifying something without a single teacher to help him!

  Ella looked at him kindly. ‘Not bad,’ she said, ‘but what are we supposed to do? Tuck ourselves up underneath it?’

  Charlie chewed on his lower lip and scratched his head.

  Ella decided to give it a try. Taking the parchment from Charlie, she recited the spell, stared hard at the leaf, tweaked her ear and pointed her forefinger with as much determination as she could muster. The leaf’s veins bulged.

  ‘Cool,’ said Ella, impressed. The breeze that had been nipping at the children’s noses and stinging their eyes was becoming rather determined, to say the least. They needed to do better than this if they were to turn the leaf into anything that might provide them with shelter. A sharp gust caught in Ella’s throat, stinging her face under its hood and making her eyes water. Her shoulders tingled wildly all of a sudden and her ears, she was almost sure, were about to burst into flames.

  ‘Let’s use my tears!’ said Ella at once, remembering. They had learnt in Essentials of Magic that almost anything was easier for a Flitterwig to produce than powerful tears. But that rule did not seem to apply to Ella. For her tears got her into all sorts of trouble. Visions of a Stretchified pencil sped through her mind. Stretchification. Impossible for Flitterwigs. But not for Ella. She wiped her eyes and spread a little of the salty liquid on the leaf. Together the children repeated the spell for Personification, tweaking their ears together. Ella closed her eyes and asked the leaf to do her bidding and shelter them for the night.

  In an instant, the leaf blew up to twice its size and the veins inside it began to stretch and poke their ends out into arms and legs. Wide eyes blinked on its shiny green back. The stem down its middle started to bend and then the leaf lay itself back down on the ground, pulling this way and that. Its limbs embedded themselves in the ice, transforming the leaf into a great, verdant, rubbery tent.

  Ella and Charlie high-fived one another and leapt about in the billowing snow. This was brilliant!

  chapter 18

  tears & tingles

  Thomas the Giant opened an eye deep inside his earthbound shelter, many miles under the ground. He had set a Tingle Alert in his pinkie to rouse him should the children do anything out of the ordinary out there in Antarctica. He spat into his hand and conjured an image of the children.

  ‘Yes indeed, the child’s tears really are remarkable,’ he said to himself. ‘Well that is a sign, if ever there was one, of Clearheartedness.’ The Giant yawned. Perhaps she is the Clearheart, he thought. He hoped to himself that he would not have to hold the Flitterwig to her word, not have to keep her with him, beholden until she proved the truth. For there is nothing pleasant about living underground unless one is a giant, or a mole! Thomas sighed as sleep overtook him again and he be
gan to snore.

  It smelt lovely inside their tent of green. A little like eucalyptus and a little like grass and a bit lemony. The sounds of a storm whipping up outside made them grateful for their shelter.

  ‘Cool!’ said Charlie, sliding about on the floor.

  ‘Don Posiblemente,’ cried Ella, remembering the scholar and her promise to keep in touch. ‘He will be so worried,’ she said. ‘We’d better let him know we’re okay.’

  ‘You get thinking then,’ said Charlie. ‘I’ll get some ice from outside and put it in the bark to make a Waterway.’

  Don Posiblemente was grateful indeed for the child’s thoughts. He settled back in his armchair once he had seen a murky reflection of them both in the Waters. The children were sheltered for the night. That was a hopeful sign, for the weather sounded treacherous out there.

  Ella sat down. She was starving. She scooped up the globule of sap Thomas had given them, a thought forming in her mind. A useful thought, it would seem, for her hair flared and her shoulders itched again. The tent filled with the familiar smell of cinnamon and rain.

  ‘If you’re going to try to eat that, I wouldn’t bother,’ said Charlie. ‘I tried the other bits and they’re disgusting.’

  ‘But don’t the Giants live off sap?’ said Ella.

  ‘I suppose they do,’ said Charlie, impressed at the girl’s thoughtfulness. ‘I suppose you might as well try.’ He slid into a sitting position next to her. Ella giggled at the ridiculousness of it but, Magic above, what she would give for a bowl of Granny’s pumpkin soup right now. She poked her tongue delicately into the sap.

  ‘Wooow,’ she said as the heat of warm, sweet soup poured down her throat, accented with a hint of freshly dipped bread and butter. ‘This sticky goo tastes like pumpkin soup!’

  Charlie grabbed it out of her hand and had a little lick.

  ‘No it does not!’ he said. ‘It tastes like macaroni cheese and hot chocolate.’ Ella looked at Charlie and Charlie looked at her.

  ‘Is that what you’d eat if you could eat anything?’ she asked him.

  ‘Yup,’ said Charlie, taking another lick. Catching her drift, this time he thought of hot apple pie with custard. What do you know! That was exactly what the sap tasted of.

  ‘I fancy chocolate cake and vanilla ice-cream,’ Ella said out loud, snatching the sap from Charlie’s hand. It was delicious. Chocolate mud cake, just what she’d hoped for. And the ice-cream had just a hint of cinnamon to it. Perfect.

  ‘Beans on toast,’ yelled Charlie, grabbing the sap and dipping his tongue in it. The taste was just right.

  ‘Scrambled eggs and bacon,’ Ella contested, taking the sap from her friend and supping greedily.

  ‘Children!’ croaked Harold, feeling very at home on the leafy floor. Only Charlie understood him. ‘It would be only polite to offer me a little taste, don’t you think? And I wouldn’t be demolishing the whole globule in one go if I were you. Who knows how long we are going to be here in this Magicforsaken place.’

  Charlie translated for Ella, who apologised and, looking a little abashed, passed the sap to Harold.

  ‘You are quite right,’ she said to the frog. He winked at her. Lucky for her he understood English.

  ‘One mosquito and one fly,’ he croaked. Delicious.

  Satiated and nearly asleep on their knees, the children cuddled up together in their emerald tent to get some rest.

  As she drifted off, Ella silently thanked the Giant and Don Posiblemente for protecting them. She hadn’t stopped to think about the practicalities of their mission for a moment. She had just acted with absolute trust in everyone and everything about her. Was that a bad thing, she wondered, as sleep took her.

  Thomas’s pinkie tingled again. He opened one eye. It was going to be tiring keeping an eye on this child, he could tell. He spat into his palm and looked sleepily into the waters. ‘Hmmm,’ he said to himself.

  ‘The child is insightful, mindful of others and naïve. Able to think on her feet, trusting and unafraid—all good signs.’ He rolled over and rubbed his eyes. ‘I like her,’ he said to himself, nodding off again almost before he had finished his thoughts.

  In Spain, Don Posiblemente sat quietly by his water bowl. He rubbed his eyes, heavy with sleep, and took a sip from a tumbler of golden elixir to keep himself awake.

  ‘I hope I have done the right thing,’ he said to Carmen as she placed a cheese sandwich on the table by his tumbler. She tucked her arm up into his and settled beside him to keep him company during his vigil.

  ‘Don’t ju worry, my deeear,’ she said to him in her thick Spanish accent. ‘All weell bee as eet should bee.’

  chapter 19

  lies & lethargy

  ‘Bolgus, you oversized oaf, do try to appear through the same section in the ice each time you visit, rather than popping your head up out of the ground wherever you feel like it. Look at the craters you have made all over the place. You are making a horrible mess of the view from my bedroom. Not to mention the fact that it can’t be terribly good for the natural balance of things.’

  The Duke of Magus stood outside the magnificent hideaway he had built for himself in Antarctica, addressing the ginormous red head of Lord Thomas of Gommoronahl’s brother, Bolgus Brackenrack. The walls of his new home sliced up out of the snow like finely sharpened sculptures, casting reflections across the ice with the gleam of their polished sides. It was as though someone had placed a series of slim, crystal pyramids in the middle of nowhere. High up in the sky, and much further than the eye could see in any direction, an invisible Dome of Inconspicuous Impenetration kept the Duke’s whereabouts secret.

  The Giant, who had rather hurt his head coming up through the ground this time, calmed his breathing against the shock of so much fresh air and tried to stay awake. ‘Uh, okay,’ he said dopily, his voice carrying like a gong across the polar landscape and rebounding off the walls of the Dome, miles away. His full head of wild red hair was in stark contrast to the bluey-white of the snowy floor. He was feeling so tired. Which was rather depressing, for he had only woken up a few minutes ago. He looked about for the Duke’s Goblin Protector. That tiny Ragwald fellow. Perhaps he would give Bolgus a little more of the sap he had been given yesterday.

  Bolgus had been raised fully from sleep for the first time in many, many years yesterday, when Ella had raised his brother. He wondered if any other Giants had been roused by the vibration of the Great Gum. Probably not. Bolgus and Thomas had always been the only ones particularly attuned to that tree.

  Bolgus had at once sought his brother in the Waters, an instinctive act of care. For the pulse came from the very part of the world where he and his brother used to live. Where his brother still lived underneath Australia. He had watched Thomas meeting with a young girl and a little boy. He had cried when his brother cried. Hollered when his brother hollered. Frowned when his brother frowned, even though he couldn’t hear what was being said. Salivated as his brother took a sip of what was clearly sap. Then he had had an idea.

  He had followed the children’s trajectory to Antarctica, intending to confront the girl who had woken his brother and himself. While he would not condescend to contact his distrusting brother, he was curious to know what was going on. He would demand that she tell him who she was and how, or even if it was she who had sent the pulse through the Spirit Tree. If she was important, he might hold her hostage until Magus acknowledged his innocence and his brother apologised for doubting him that day, so long ago, when the Clearheart had been killed in the whipwailing wind. He would insist that the little boy travelling with the girl tell him where he got that bottle of sap from so that he could go and get some more and life could go back to the way it was, before the terrible day of the wind. But just as was he was preparing to thrust himself up through the surface of the ice to snatch the girl in his hand, he had been distracted by the delicious, mouth-watering smell of sap coming through the ice floor some miles away. He had approached the smell and surfaced whe
re the scent was most powerful, only to come face to face with the Elf Duke of Magus himself.

  And now Bolgus was feeling really rather confused, not to mention more than a little annoyed and ever so nauseous from being above ground.

  The last time he had been properly awake, he had turned his back on his brother and sworn never to talk to him again, setting off to another continent to sleep beneath the Earth’s crust for as long as he possibly could. For he had seen mistrust in his brother’s eyes when the Magicals had accused the Giants of being responsible for the Clearheart’s death and the attempted kidnapping of the Queen, even though Bolgus had sworn to his brother that he had had nothing to do with any of it. Bolgus had sworn that he truly had got his foot trapped in a root coming out of the ground and that he truly hadn’t been able to tear himself free of it, despite his strength. Otherwise he would have been keeping an eye on the Clearheart and the Queen as they worked. But Thomas had questioned him over and over until Bolgus could bear it no longer and had fled. For if his brother didn’t trust him, how was anybody else going to? Bolgus knew his huff would wear off eventually. Or that Thomas would finally come to his senses, find him and apologise. He hadn’t intended to never talk to his brother again. Not really. But with sap in such short supply, sleeping had taken over everything else in life. Until now.

  However, in the short time since he had been reawakened and fed some of the Duke’s special supply of sap, the Duke had told Bolgus stuff that was making him feel steadily less sure that never talking to his brother again was such a bad idea after all.