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  ‘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.

  chapter 25

  domes & destinations

  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 paint
ings—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.’

  chapter 26

  pixies & persuasion

  For the second time in as many days, Charlie found himself in the company of a Giant. Not the same Giant, mind you, but a Giant nonetheless. Only this time he was clearly underground and finding breathing overwhelmingly painful. It was as though every breath he took was being sucked through a wet sponge full of shards of rock. Charlie turned his head to look around. It turned so slowly and stiffly that he thought his neck might break. Everything was dark, grainy, muffled and slow. He felt trapped. He felt panicky. He felt truly scared for the first time during this whole adventure. He tried to move his arm to the pocket of his anorak. It was agony to do so. With every inch of movement he felt as if the hard, cold darkness was tightening about him. Squeezing the air out of him, pinching his skin. But he had to check. Harold was in there, thank Magic, but he was cold and hard and motionless.

  ‘Hello,’ said the Giant. He sounded as if he were underwater. He peered at Charlie closely. Bolgus wasn’t sure what to do. He had smashed the underside of the ice and was just closing the fissure, as instructed, so the children wouldn’t fall through, when Charlie did fall through. The effort of smashing the ice had tired him, but he knew the boy would die if he were to be trapped. So he had instinctively grabbed the boy and Solidified him before he could be crushed.

  ‘I’m Bolgus,’ said the Giant sleepily, ‘and I have Solidified you.’

  Charlie stared at the Giant. ‘You’ve whatified me?’ he asked, his voice echoey and thick, his jaw aching. He tried to stay calm. ‘Am I going to die?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh no,’ said the Giant. ‘You can breath and stuff. It gets easier with time.’ He yawned, wiping his eyes. ‘I think.’

  ‘O-O-Okay,’ Charlie stuttered, his head feeling crushed. He wanted to scream. His stutter made the Giant laugh. Charlie wanted to cry. But he had to stay calm. He had to survive. He had to get to Ella. He tried to take a deep breath, but it made his lungs feel like the air was being sucked out of them. The rocks about him were squeezing him mercilessly. Bolgus looked very much like Thomas. Except Thomas was bald and this Giant had a rich head of red hair and equally red eyebrows. Without this contrast in the darkness, Charlie would have d
oubted the Giant was real.

  Bolgus looked at the freckly boy. The Flitterwig looked terrified, which made him sad. What had he done?

  ‘What the?’ said the Duke, staring into the Waters at Charlie. The Flitterwig was alive. Underground. Had Bolgus Solidified him? Why? He stepped back from the dais and scratched his head.

  Ella moved swiftly. She didn’t know how long she would have before the Duke came back over to her. She regurgitated her Candlefloss (she didn’t know how) and, cowering in a ball around it, laid it on the snowy floor. She began to shiver at once, but her anorak still offered protection.

  ‘Don’t touch the girl,’ the Duke hissed, without turning. The Troggles, moving in on her, froze. One shuffled forward still. The Duke shot a spray of dust at him without even looking, reducing the Troggle to sludge. He turned back to the Waters at once.

  Ella could see the ice melting beneath her. She popped the Candlefloss back in her mouth and swallowed. She peered through her hands into the space she had created in the ice. She couldn’t see anything. A Troggle poked her with a pincer. She swung around and shot the Troggle such a warning look that the creature fairly shrivelled in the green light of her eyes. She reached her hand into the space and felt around. She felt something. It was a leg, or at least she thought it was. It was thinner than a splintered toothpick. She could not feel a spark of heat in what was left of the pixie’s flesh.

  Ella’s heart broke in half then and there. Rushes of energy coursed through her body, guilt and anger and sorrow. Tears streamed down her face, melting the ice with their heat. Ella beat the ground with her fist.

  ‘What in all that is under Earth was that?’ said Bolgus from under the earth. A series of reverberations coming from the vicinity of the Duke’s lair pounded through the ice and the rocks. Bolgus had been just about to take a snooze, but there was something about the reverberations that worried him. They were like the ripples of an earthquake coming, or the rumbles that precede eruptions.