Cordelia plummeted towards the jungle floor. She didn’t have time to scream. She’d left her voice behind, along with her wits, and she was falling, falling to certain death.
Then all of a sudden she was swooping up, sailing high into the air again, defying gravity, with a strong arm clasped round her middle.
Not an arm. A thick green vine, rippling like a muscle.
As she burst through the green canopy of the jungle, the vine unclenched from her waist and flung her over the treetops.
This seemed a perfectly reasonable time to scream.
‘AAAAARGH!’ Cordelia screamed.
The world was a hurtling green blur –
– and she was falling – tumbling beneath the leaves – crashing through thin air – down, down towards the bone-breaking ground …
With a soul-jangling jolt, another vine snapped tight round her leg and dragged her upwards through the branches. She kicked helplessly as she was whirled back into the wide-sky world above the treetops. The crow’s nest, sticking out of the jungle canopy, spun past.
‘Put me DOWN!’ she shouted desperately. ‘Please!’
The vine stiffened and slowed, loosening its grip.
Her leg slipped.
‘No!’ Cordelia yelped – now dangling upside down above a hundred-foot drop, held only by one ankle. ‘Put me down on the crow’s nest!’ she corrected quickly. ‘Please!’
The vine obeyed.
Cordelia’s entire body trembled as she pressed her cheek to the reassuringly solid wooden planks. She raised her eyes, muttered a shaky ‘Thank you’ to the vine and gasped: she recognized those green leaves bristling with mischief!
It was the same kind of vine that had come curling out of the king’s crown in Parliament.
‘Turbidus turbida!’ she whispered fearfully.
A vine like that had dragged her into this wretched mess in the first place.
She wrapped her fingers round the rough planks of the crow’s nest, hoping the vine wouldn’t suddenly come lashing back to fling her off her perch.
‘Please don’t hurt me,’ she murmured, and she watched with wide eyes as the vine retreated into the green canopy.
When she felt it was safe, she sat up, and her breath was taken away for the third time that morning. From up above the stirring canopy of the jungle, she could see the entire island, surrounded by sparkling waves, laid out around her like a living map.
The skull they had sailed through at sunset had a jumble of white rocks humped up to form shoulder-like hills behind it. A ridge of green jungle rose above the boulders. Cordelia was perched on the crow’s nest halfway along this ridge. Higher up, the crest of the island hunched against the blue sky before tailing off into a curving breakwater of rocks that reached across the sea to meet the dripping fangs of the skull.
In the turquoise bay encircled by the rocks, the Trouble floated at anchor. The sea beyond was dark and choppy. A shape on the horizon, caught between the blues of sky and sea, drew Cordelia’s eye.
‘St Freerest!’
From up here, the island didn’t look very far away – she felt she could have reached out to pick it up in her fingers. But she knew it was five nautical miles in the distance. Definitely not close enough to reach. Definitely not close enough to swim.
She searched the ocean. There was no sign of Little Bear; no white sails could be seen between this island and that one. Had her father somehow managed to steer his ship to safety and return to port at St Freerest as Never had said? She stared at the fathomless water stretching to every horizon and dared not think about the other place Little Bear could have gone: the ocean-deep place.
Cordelia clambered to her feet, turning full circle to scour the open waters, and nearly fell off the crow’s nest in surprise. Floating silently in the air just behind her was a hole-ridden rowing boat with a barnacled bottom and sails made of colourful silk, moored to the very top of the mast. She touched the old weather-worn hull. It seemed to be made of Ebullient Oak, and the bright patchwork sails appeared to be stitched-together kites that changed colour as they rippled in the breeze.
Kites like these were for sale in the marketplace at St Freerest.
Then Cordelia noticed the heavy iron ring that the boat was tied to, and the brass lantern right beside it. She had seen an identical brass lantern beside an iron mooring ring on the platform perched atop the Kingless, where the Duchess had her telescope trained on the Island of Lost Souls.
It couldn’t be a coincidence.
Was the platform on the Kingless roof a landing jetty for this airborne boat?
It would be pure insanity to sail this contraption across the air. Though if anyone was mad enough to do it, it would be the Troublemakers.
Cordelia stared across the waters to St Freerest.
‘This could be my escape route!’ she whispered.
She felt slightly seasick at the thought of sailing this tiny floating boat across the sky. The Troublemakers might be crazy enough to do it – but was she?
She pulled the mooring rope experimentally, wishing that Goose was with her. He knew all about sailing – and it couldn’t be so different sailing a boat in the sky from sailing it in the sea. Either way, you had to catch the right wind and hope you didn’t sink. But Goose wasn’t here. And the only way she would see him again – and Sam and her father – was if she somehow escaped the wicked Troublemakers and their island filled with violent magic.
This thought was enough to make Cordelia climb halfway into the boat. She had one leg over the gunwale before she remembered that if she was ever to see the other people she loved again – the Hatmakers at Hatmaker House, and her friends at the Guildhall – she couldn’t just escape by herself. She would have to rescue Prudence too, and bring her back to safety.
She slipped down the ladder into the green world beneath the canopy. She moved quickly and quietly through the Troublemakers’ treehouse, through lace veils of tree ferns and curtains of vines, peering into cabins that had been turned into bedrooms with mossy blankets on the hammocks. There was no sign of Prudence anywhere, and eventually she reached the ship’s prow, which stuck out of the treetops above the sandy beach.
From her vantage point, she spied Never peering into the jungle with a concerned frown on his face. He loped towards Cordelia, calling, ‘There you are!’ and beckoning her down to the ground.
Cordelia glanced at a vine rippling towards her from a nearby tree.
‘Please will you put me on the beach?’ she asked. ‘If you would be so kind.’
The vine flicked out a tendril, tripping Cordelia. It caught her neatly as she stumbled and – after a swooping nosedive moment – set her gently on the sand.
‘Terribly sorry I pushed you out of the window,’ said Never as he dusted her down. ‘Thorn’s very private about her cabin, so it was a choice between going out of the window or into the Sea Dragon. But I knew the vines would catch you – and they’d put you down as soon as you asked them politely.’
‘My father told me they’re Turbidus Vines,’ Cordelia said. ‘They cause nothing but trouble. You could have killed me!’
‘Oh, is that what they’re called?’ Never asked airily, apparently choosing to ignore Cordelia’s anger. ‘We don’t know the official names of anything here, all except – look! Here comes one now!’
Never pointed at a creature waddling on to the beach, out of the jungle. It was a shaggy grey bird that came up to Cordelia’s waist. It had little wings, a big round body and splayed orange feet that shuffled across the soft sand towards her. It tilted its bulbous beak sideways, then turned small, inquisitive eyes on the Hatmaker and uttered a soft honk.
Cordelia had never seen a bird like it. It seemed so polite, poised curiously on the shore, that she felt as though she had just stumbled into its drawing room. She had an absurd urge to curtsey.
‘Who are you?’ she asked.
She half expected the bird to answer. But it was Never who spoke.
‘This is a dodo,’ he said.
Cordelia’s mouth fell open.
‘But dodos – aren’t dodos all – all gone?’ she spluttered. ‘Extinct?’
Never shook his head. ‘No, though most of the world believes they are. They’ve all disappeared from their natural habitat. We think maybe the last dodos in the world live here.’
Cordelia stretched her hand out towards the bird. She could feel its specific magic in the air, like nothing else she had ever encountered. It was a bright power, but she felt a tinge of melancholy within it. The bird nudged her hand gently, the feathers on its head flashing like a butterfly’s wings in the sunlight.
‘Such a magical creature,’ she murmured.
‘Their dropped tail feathers have powerful forgetting properties,’ Never told her. ‘And we found out their eyelashes are good ingredients for obscuring things. But we mostly leave them be. They have a colony on Shoulder Beach.’
The dodo waddled off, taking its magic with it but leaving its spell behind. Cordelia gazed after it in wonder.
‘Come on,’ Never said, interrupting her spellbound moment. ‘We should make ourselves scarce for a little while. Give Thorn a bit of time to – uh – lose a few prickles.’
The dodo’s forgetting magic had hazed the morning air. As it cleared, Cordelia remembered her plan: she had to find Prudence and then take the first chance they could, to escape across the sky. She would have to search the island.
She narrowed her eyes at Never, deciding to try a direct approach.
‘Where’s Prudence?’ she asked. ‘I know she’s here somewhere; I heard her voice earlier. I just want to talk to her.’
Never’s face closed like a door.
‘If Thorn hears you asking for Prudence, there’s no telling what she’ll do,’ he muttered. ‘We like you. We want to keep you as our teacher –’
‘You mean you want to keep me as your prisoner!’ Cordelia snapped, clenching her fists.
‘Invited guest!’ Never insisted, a pained look on his face. ‘Don’t go looking for Prudence – I’m dead serious. And Thorn’ll be deadlier serious. So don’t.’
He strode away along the beach, calling over his shoulder, ‘Whether you’re our guest or our prisoner, I must insist you come with me.’
Reluctantly, Cordelia followed him.
The first person they found was Shelly. On a rocky promontory splaying into the shallows of the bay, she was crouched beside a rockpool.
‘She loves listening to the seahorses,’ Never said quietly as they approached. ‘We think she’s trying to learn their songs.’
The rockpools were alive with creatures Cordelia had never seen before. Peering into one was like opening a watery treasure chest bursting with jewels. Silver-scroll shells winked beneath the surface and a dozen tiny seahorses, with tails like curved fiddleheads, rollicked among the dancing seaweed. Their song rippled the water. Shelly was, very quietly, humming along.
Carefully, Shelly reached into the rockpool and plucked a silver-scroll shell no bigger than her little finger. She held it out to Cordelia, eyes wide and meaningful.
‘She wants you to have it,’ Never said, translating the meaningful look. ‘We call them Secret-Keepers. They’re very special. If you put a secret into it, it’ll only come out when you want it to.’
Shelly tipped the Secret-Keeper into Cordelia’s hand and nodded solemnly.
The Secret-Keeper hummed. It had a shining mystery to it.
‘Thank you,’ Cordelia murmured. ‘It’s a very special gift.’
She tucked the silver shell safely inside her shirt pocket.
‘You escaped Thorn’s rage!’ came a yell. ‘We hoped you would!’
Bad Tabitha and Annie Stoneheart were clambering across the rocks towards them.
‘We’re so glad we kidnapped you.’ Annie grinned. ‘We’re going to learn so much Making!’
‘Remember we don’t say kidnapped, Annie,’ said Never, gently admonishing her.
‘There’s magic in my fingertips!’ Tabitha wiggled her hands as Shelly thrust her fingers confidently into the air.
‘You’re a brilliant teacher, miss!’ Annie confirmed.
‘Hear, hear!’ Never added.
‘I think you have more to teach me than I can teach you,’ Cordelia said. ‘I’ve never been anywhere as magical as this – can you show me more of the island? I want to see everything.’
The pirates positively glowed with pride and Cordelia felt momentarily terrible. She was only flattering them to make sure they showed her every secret place on the island – so she could find Prudence and escape.
‘Let’s show her Tablecloth Glade!’ Tabitha burst out.
The Troublemakers surged away up the rocks, beckoning her towards the jungle. As Cordelia followed, Never fell into step beside her.
‘I can teach you about this island if you like,’ he offered gruffly.
Cordelia looked sideways at him. His craggy face, with lines so deep they looked like ravines in a rock, had taken on a bashful kind of enthusiasm. There was something beneath his frightening facade, beyond his fierce appearance, that she couldn’t put her finger on.
Her fingers tingled as the powerful magic of the island swirled around them.
‘We believe that every living thing on this island is endangered,’ Never began. ‘Some – like the dodo – are even thought to be extinct. The tiniest insects, the trees and the flowers and the fish swimming in the bay are all refugees. Since we arrived here a few months ago, we haven’t found a single thing that any of us recognize, except the dodo because Billy saw one in a book once. Soulhaven is the last refuge of hundreds of species that human beings have hunted almost off the face of the earth.’
‘But my father told me this place is called the Island of Lost Souls – not Soulhaven – and it’s full of dangerous Menacing Magic,’ Cordelia said slowly. ‘It’s hidden to protect people from it.’
Even as she spoke, she realized that the Mapmakers’ cleverness had outsmarted even Prospero Hatmaker. The dark rumours of Menacing Magic her father had told her about must have been Mapmakers from centuries past creating a clever web of protection around the island, designed to frighten greedy people away.
‘You are endangered, Cordelia,’ Never said. ‘Or you’d never have been able to see this island on that map, or spot us from St Freerest. Only a hunted creature can find this place. We think it’s something to do with the Lost Star. Not everyone can see its light, but those who can, follow it over the ocean to safety. We think this island has been a haven for endangered creatures for thousands of years, called here by the same star that called us.’
‘That purpleish star that hangs right above the ridge, you mean?’ Cordelia asked. ‘I’ve seen it! I climbed out to the figurehead every night to watch it from Little Bear. I felt like it was – was calling me.’
Never nodded. ‘That’s because you’re being hunted. By the same people who are after us. The Sensible Party.’
‘The Sensible Party are only after you because you attacked them first,’ Cordelia pointed out. ‘Those crazy boots and hats at the Winter Ball, the attack in St James’s Park –’
‘It’s a bit more complicated than that, actually,’ Never interrupted.
Cordelia expected him to explain, but he maintained a glowering silence as they approached the bottom of an enormous sweeping staircase made of huge knobbly white boulders.
‘These rocks are strange,’ she said, frowning.
‘They’re vertebrae,’ Never told her.
Cordelia stopped to stare.
‘This entire island is made of the skeleton of a prehistoric Sea Dragon,’ continued Never. ‘We think it might be an ancient ancestor of our own Sea Dragon.’
Never turned to point back the way they had come, and Cordelia saw that the rocks they’d just clambered up were not a random jumble of boulders. In fact, they made the shape of an enormous reptilian foot, half buried in the white sand. Rockpools glistened between the long ridges of foot bones, and the toes were shaggy with seaweed, claws crusted with barnacles. A creature with a foot this huge must have been enormous – probably as long as the City of London from end to end. It could have swallowed the Tower and drunk the Thames.
Cordelia gaped dizzily, until Never pulled her onwards. ‘Up the tail!’
The white rocks became narrower as they went further into the jungle. An arch of green leaves closed over them and soon they were scaling large boulders that led steadily uphill in a smooth sweeping curve. A rushing river splashed and tumbled beside them in a deep green gully. Each boulder was as tall as Cordelia, so the pirates had to haul her up, helped by vines.
Cordelia had to whisper the words that echoed through her mind, because they seemed too incredible to speak aloud: ‘We’re climbing up a spine!’