Epilogue

Months later, after Cordelia, Goose and Sam had waved off Little Bear as she sailed down the Thames carrying all the admiral’s stolen treasure, squawking and fluttering and on its way home at last, Cordelia received a small package. It was wrapped in a hessian sack that smelled faintly of cocoa beans.

She undid the string and a silvery-white lace shawl slipped out of the sack, pooling on her bedroom floor.

‘Lacemaker silk!’

As she picked it up, it hummed with words. It was as though the yarn itself had stories twisted into it that she could feel through her fingers. Cordelia wrapped the beautiful shawl round her shoulders, and suddenly saw, in her mind’s eye, Thorn and Flash on the deck of Little Bear, approaching the familiar craggy outline of Soulhaven Island.

Cordelia saw Smokestack on the beach, walking with a limp, his arm in a spiderweb sling, his old face cracking into a delighted smile. She saw the wounds in the jungle where rocks had been torn away; she saw the scars from ripped-up plants and the severed trunk of the Soulhope Tree. But she also saw new shoots growing where the earth had been disturbed, the dodo waddling back to his colony, Lacemakers diligently repairing the gashes in their intricate webs, and the young Sea Dragon slipping curiously into the cosmic depths of the Belly Cave.

Cordelia laughed, whirling on the spot, feeling all the joy and beauty and stories of the island carried in the threads of the shawl.

She saw the ocean, the sky and the Guiding Star twinkling above.

She saw Thorn, her eyes shining with a bright, merry fire, before she disappeared into the wink of the sunset.