OH…OOH…OOH!” SAID NEEDLE, standing on her hind paws with her mouth open, unable to say another word.
They had reached Sepia’s song cave, high and arching, shining with spindling waterfalls and the bright stones that glittered in the walls. A hole in the hillside above them let in a little daylight, and the rays of late afternoon sun brought flashes of gold.
They had explored all the other caves, nearer to the shore and the waterfall, and Fingal had found any number of flat stones for skimming. There were some very beautiful translucent pebbles that Sepia liked, and Hope had put the nicest ones in a satchel to take home. If Needle tried to remind them that they were supposed to be looking for the Heartstone, Fingal would say cheerfully, “Yes, in a minute,” and Sepia would calmly say, “Don’t worry, Needle, I am looking for the Heartstone.” Needle was mildly surprised that they hadn’t had a row, but Fingal and Sepia weren’t the sort of animals you could have a row with. Fingal was too easygoing, Sepia was too calm, and you couldn’t have a row in front of Hope.
Needle wished Urchin had been there. She and Urchin always made a good team. Fingal had been a bit disappointed because the rowing boat wasn’t there, and he’d meant to row them around the bay. Needle had muttered that he’d have to find another way to show off, and then wished she hadn’t said it, but Fingal had only laughed and turned somersaults. Hope was trying very industriously to find the Heartstone, but being shortsighted didn’t help.
“I’ve found lots of stones that could be the Heartstone, but when I look more carefully they’re never the right one,” complained Needle, sitting down wearily. “They always stay in my paw. I don’t think we’ll find it in here.”
“There are stones in the walls,” said Sepia. Needle sprang up again.
“That could be it!” she cried. “Run up the walls, Sepia!” There was a splash behind her. “Fingal, now what have you found?”
“Water, of course!” said Fingal. “A slide!”
Near the cave entrance, he had found a spring that gushed down a sloping section of the wall to make a waterfall, ran down into a channel, and disappeared under the ground. Fingal swam straight into it, vanished, and bobbed up again.
“There’s a river under there!” he said, beaming. “It’s snaky at first, then it whooshes down and there’s a lake. It must be the one that joins up with the tunnel network.”
“Can I come too?” piped up Hope.
“Certainly not,” said Needle quickly.
“It might be a bit dangerous for somebody your size,” admitted Fingal. “I’m a natural swimmer, so I’m always falling into rivers.”
“I’m always falling into everything,” said Hope.
“All the same, it’s different for hedgehogs,” said Fingal, sounding almost grown up, for once. “We don’t want you to slip into deep waters. You can go down the slide, and I’ll stand here and catch you so you won’t go underground.”
He sprawled in the channel while Hope clambered up the rock, sniffed the air, and launched himself down the slide on his back with all four paws outstretched. With a cry of “Oof!” he landed in Fingal’s paws, scrambled out, and ran to do it again.
“Have a go, Needle!” he cried. “Sepia! You have to try it!”
Needle decided that the Heartstone could wait. There was a lot of splashing and shrieking before she and Sepia shook themselves dry and reminded each other that they should be searching.
“Just a bit more?” said Hope.
“Go on, then,” said Fingal. “Shout when you’re ready, and I’ll catch you.”
For a while there was nothing to be heard but the clink of pebbles and the scrabbling of paws, and the occasional cry of, “Ready, Fingal?” followed by a splash and a giggle. Outside, the sky clouded and the light dimmed, but Needle had brought flints and lanterns, and they searched on until Sepia climbed down the walls, stretched, rubbed her eyes in tiredness, took a deep breath, and sang.
She sang so that the notes rang and danced from the sparkling walls and hung in the air. Her song made Needle imagine springtime and the breath of primroses on the air, and Fingal thought of enchanted kingdoms under the sea, and Hope…
…nobody knew what Hope thought. Whether he forgot to call for Fingal, or whether he did and Fingal didn’t hear him, never became clear. There was a sudden splash, and when they looked around, he wasn’t there.
“Whoops!” said Fingal, and dived under water. There was a muffled cry of “Don’t worry!” then nothing.
Needle and Sepia dashed to peer down into the darkness, soaking their fur and whiskers. Over the swishing of the water, they strained to listen. They could hear a few squeaks from Hope, then Fingal’s voice—“Got you…hold tight…not that tight…”—then his voice carried farther away until they could hear nothing but the waterfall. They sat and looked at each other, realizing suddenly how dark it had become.
“They’ll be all right, won’t they?” said Sepia anxiously. “I mean, Fingal did have Hope when we last heard him,” said Sepia.
“Fingal seemed pretty certain that the lake linked with the tunnels,” said Needle. “Oh, but Hope can’t swim much!”
“He can ride on Fingal’s shoulders,” suggested Sepia. “All the otters give rides to small animals.”
“Then Fingal will probably carry him to a tunnel and look for the nearest way out,” said Needle. “It would be easier than climbing back up a waterfall with a hedgehog on his back.”
“Yes,” said Sepia, but she still felt uneasy.
“I know,” said Needle. “I’m not happy about this either. But I suppose there’s nothing to be worried about.” She curled up. It was getting colder. “Where would the tunnels take them? D’you think they could get back up here?”
“I’ve no idea,” said Sepia. “I don’t do tunnels much. But I suppose they must be linked with the caves.”
“I thought you knew these caves,” said Needle, trying not to sound grumpy.
“Not under water,” said Sepia reproachfully. “But they can’t be far from dry ground, and when they find a tunnel, somebody will meet them. There are always moles about. We’ll try shouting again.”
They leaned as close to the gap as they could, and called Fingal and Hope’s names into the darkness.
“Ouch!” said Needle. “You yelled right down my ear.”
“Sorry,” said Sepia. “I’ll try not to this time.”
Their cries hung and echoed, clear and loud in the cave. There was no answer.
“They’re sure to be all right,” said Needle. “But I think I should go to the tower. I should let them know what’s happening.”
“I’ll go,” said Sepia. “I’m quicker.”
“No, I’ll go because I’m slower,” said Needle. “They’re almost certain to get back here soon, and then you can run and catch me up and tell me, if you can. Mind, I know all the shortcuts. If I meet anyone around while I’m still near here, I’ll ask if they’ve seen an otter and a small hedgehog. I’m sure they’d look out for them.”
“And if anyone else comes to the caves, I’ll get them to search,” said Sepia. “It should be all right. Animals are always splashing around and exploring caves, and they always come back in one piece.”
“Will you be all right here on your own?” asked Needle.
“Oh, yes,” said Sepia. “I’ve stayed here alone for hours.”
She didn’t add that she’d never stayed there alone at night. It was harder to feel confident without Needle. She went on with a halfhearted search for the Heartstone, not expecting to find it, and the lamp was low. Now and again she called for Fingal and Hope, but there was no reply. She began to wish she’d insisted on going instead of Needle. She told herself not to worry, and worried all the same. In the deepening dark she sang to pass the time and keep her spirits up, and when the lamp became only a pale flicker and then nothing at all, she made herself a nest out of her cloak. If only Hope had a cloak. Finally, she said a prayer for them all and for Urchin, and settled down to sleep.
She tried very hard to fall asleep. If she lay awake, she would imagine all the worst possible things that could happen to Fingal and Hope, and Hope was so little; but after a long time wriggling in the nest, she stopped even trying to sleep. At times like this, her mother used to tell her to “think of something lovely,” because it may not send you to sleep, but it would give you something worth staying awake for. So what was the loveliest thing that could happen? She imagined King Crispin being crowned in the Gathering Chamber with all the animals around him, and Brother Fir in a neat new tunic limping down to the throne to offer him the Heartstone and put the crown on his head. Urchin would be there, groomed and carrying a sword, in a deep-red cloak to match his ears and tail tip, and Fingal and Hope would be with them. Hope would sit at the front so he could see. Her parents would be there, and they’d hear her singing and playing with the musicians, and there’d be a party. She might play there, too, or even dance with the king. A banquet…new Threadings…perhaps, perhaps even a night of riding stars…she slipped into a dream. Stars above her, stars around her, stars at her paws, stars to dance on, she was dancing with stars in the mist….
Something had woken her. Something was moving. She opened her eyes and sat up, shivering, wrapping herself in the cloak and trying to ask who was there, but found she was too frightened to do more than squeak. By the time she could falter a few words, all was silent again. She sat, wide awake, telling herself not to be silly. Hadn’t she been hoping Fingal and Hope would come back, shaking their wet fur and gabbling about all their adventures? She whispered their names in a voice that sounded strangely thin. There was no answer. She lay down in a tight, unhappy huddle, still listening.
Sunlight falling through the hole in the cliffside woke her, and she jumped up and shook herself. Were they back? But the cave was reproachfully silent. Fingal and Hope had not come back. They might have found another way out. They were probably playing by the shore already. They might have emerged into the cave and gone home, not knowing that she was asleep in the corner.
Look for paw prints. She followed the scuffed trails from the previous day, and at the sight of fresh ones her heart lifted with joy, then fell again. She could see hedgehog prints, but these were too big for Hope. That explained what she heard last night. Hedgehogs must have been sheltering in here.
No Fingal, no Hope. I should never had stayed here. I should have gone straight to the tower. They could have drowned, they could be lost underground, they’ll be cold, they’ll be starving, they could be trapped, they could be hurt, they might have become separated. If anything happens to Fingal, little Hope will be all alone in a strange place, he might be crying…
Furious with herself, she left her cloak and sprang through the caves until the sound of the waterfall grew louder. She swung herself onto an ash tree growing out of the rock, and was about to scramble up the rocks, when she saw Sluggen and Crammen of the Hedgehog Host on the shore below.
“Can you come up here, please?” she called down, and waited impatiently while they looked past her and from side to side before catching sight of her. “Will you look out for an otter and a hedgehog? I’ll explain later. Thanks.” Sluggen shouted something about the caves not being a safe place for youngsters, but Sepia was already leaping away.
With weary paws, Needle watched dawn spread through the sky. It should have looked beautiful, touching the wave tips with pink, shedding a soft gray light on the boats as they waited patiently by the mists, their lights pale and steady in the dawning. But Needle was too agitated to care about anything but Hope and Fingal. She had expected Sepia to have caught up with her by now to tell her that they were safe, but it hadn’t happened and, running through the wood alone at night, she had imagined the worst. Drowning, an injury underground…Oh, please, please, Heart keep them, please, and I’m sorry for all the times I’ve been snappy with Fingal, oh, please keep them safe, please look after them…
Would Crispin be awake yet? Clambering onto a rock by the spring that ran down from the castle to the shore, she remembered too late that Padra lived at the Spring Gate. Just as she was thinking of him, Padra glided through the water, saw her, and scrambled up.
“Needle! How’s the treasure hunt going?” And when she hunched her back and turned her face away, he asked in concern, “What’s the matter, Needle?”
She tried to find the right words, but there weren’t any. Finally, she managed a hoarse whisper. “Please, Captain Padra, sir, you’re going to be very angry.”
“I doubt it,” he said, and leaned over to see her face. “Angry with you?”
She nodded miserably.
“But you’re going to tell me what it is anyway?”
She nodded again.
“Then you’re a brave hedgehog,” he said. “And I’ll try not to be angry. What have you done?”
Looking down at her paws, she told him everything, her voice quavering, stopping now and again to dry her eyes when she thought of Fingal and Hope alone in the dark. When she finished, she felt a warm and comforting otter hug.
“Ouch,” said Padra. “I’d forgotten how sharp you are. Needle, you mustn’t blame yourself. You and Sepia did exactly the right thing.”
“It wasn’t Fingal’s fault, sir,” she said. “We were all there, and Hope just jumped or something, and Fingal tried to get to him in time, and went straight in after him.”
“Fingal comes out of most things all right,” said Padra. “And as for Hope, I think the Heart takes special care of that one. I’ll send a search party, and I’m taking you to Crispin. He won’t be angry either, but he should know. Oh,” he added with a frown, “and Docken’s on guard at the Throne Room.”
“Hope’s daddy!” cried Needle in dismay.
“Could be awkward,” admitted Padra. “Leave it to me.” He waved at a passing otter. “Get a search party of moles and otters together and report to me outside the Throne Room, sharpish.”
Needle trotted upstairs and through corridors after him. Normally she enjoyed the sight of the Threadings she had helped to make, but this morning she couldn’t enjoy anything, and after her long journey, she struggled to keep up with Padra. As they turned along the corridor to the Throne Room, she stopped with something between a gasp and a squeak.
Hope was standing on his hind legs, his paws on his father’s knees, his little shortsighted face turned up, his nose twitching as he gabbled his adventures. Docken, bending over him, was occasionally saying, “Did you?” and “That was brave,” as Hope rattled through his story. It was all too much for Needle. She rushed past Padra and hugged Hope so hard that his hind paws were left kicking in the air.
“Hope, you’re all right!” she cried. “Where’s Fingal?”
“Yes, thank you, he’s with the king, thank you, please will you put me down now?” gasped Hope. “Thank you. Have you got the Heartstone?”
Padra had already swept past her to the Throne Room door. It was opened by Fingal, wiping butter from his whiskers with a broad grin on his face.
“Oh, it’s you,” said Fingal brightly, and stood back to let him in. “Hello, Needle, what are you doing here? May as well come in. And you, little Hope. I mean,” he said, looking over his shoulder, “is that all right, Your Majesty?”
“I do apologize for him, Crispin,” sighed Padra.
The Throne Room smelled pleasantly of fresh bread, and Crispin himself buttered a roll for Needle. She bowed as she thanked him, noticing that he looked happy for the first time since Urchin had been taken away.
Padra took Fingal’s shoulders in both paws while he looked him up and down, and finally said, “You seem to be in one piece, and so’s the little one. Before we leave, and if His Majesty permits, I’ll teach you the correct way to answer the door of the Throne Room. Crispin, who’s going to tell the story, you or Fingal?”
“Go on, Fingal,” said Crispin.
“It was like this,” said Fingal, nearly sitting down then standing up again as Padra raised his eyebrows, “we went to look for the Heartstone—didn’t find it, by the way—”
“I know what happened until you and Hope vanished down the waterslide,” said Padra.
“Ah,” said Fingal. “Well, when Hope fell down the waterslide, he curled up, being a hedgehog, and the water swept him all the way down; and by the time I caught up with him he was bobbing about in the underground lake like a chestnut shell. I swam out and got him, but there was no way he could climb back up. Tried it. Too hard. I tried carrying him on my back, but he fell off. I told him to hang on tight, but either he fell off or he knocked me off balance, and we both fell down, and he wasn’t going to let go of his bag of pebbles, so I looked for another way. He rode on my back, or on my chest, depending on which way up I was, and I swam across the lake.”
“Didn’t he fall in?” asked Padra.
“Oh, yes,” said Fingal. “I just scooped him up and told him to hang on a bit tighter.”
Padra turned Fingal around. There were two rows of gashes on his shoulders that made Needle flinch to see them.
“Go on,” said Padra quietly.
“It was a long swim,” said Fingal. “And it brought us to a tight, squeezy place through the rocks and a cave and another squeeze, and then we were so dead tired, we had a sleep. When we woke up we went on, because we knew we’d find tunnels sooner or later, and we did—at least, Hope did. That little hedgehog was off and into that tunnel like a squirrel up a nut tree. I couldn’t keep up.”
“Excuse me?” said Hope.
“Yes, Hope?” said Crispin.
“I slowed down for him,” said Hope. “And I looked after him in the tunnels, Captain Padra, sir.”
“Thank you very much, Hope,” said Padra. “He needs looking after. Go on, Fingal.”
“It was a long, straight tunnel,” said Fingal. “Dead boring. It sloped uphill a long way and widened out, and then we heard voices.”
“Whose voices?” asked Padra. “Saying what?”
“Something about ‘chuck the water out and scrub those pans,’” said Fingal. “We were under the tower scullery! There was a winding stairway farther on so we went up it—we thought it must go halfway to the moon, there must have been miles of it. We could smell breakfast, too, and we were starving, weren’t we, Hope? We thought the stairway must lead to the main kitchens, so we followed it, but after all that, it only led to the door of a tight little chamber with a ladder leading to an opening above it. Not much of an opening, but we squeezed through—an awfully tight squeeze for an otter, just as well I hadn’t had any breakfast, really. And when we got through there, we were in a narrow slit of a gap between the ceiling of the lower room and the floor of the one above. This one, in fact.”
“This one!” Padra looked at Crispin in horror. “The Throne Room!”
“Yes, but I didn’t know that at the time,” said Fingal. “It was dusty and I sneezed and hit my head on the floorboards, and ouched, and then I heard the king ask who was there…”
“…and I got the floorboards up with my sword and got them out,” said Crispin, smiling. “They’ve had a wash and breakfast.”
“Nice breakfast, thanks,” said Fingal.
“But, Crispin,” said Padra, “anybody could have got under the Throne Room!”
“Good thing it was only us,” said Fingal.
“And a good thing they did,” said Crispin. “I’ll tell Gorsen to get it sealed.”
“It might be useful to keep it open, Your Majesty,” said Needle, “in case you ever need an escape route.”
“I’d rather His Majesty jumped out of the window and ran down the walls as usual,” said Padra. “Your Majesty, I think Fingal could do with a swim.”
“Yes, please,” said Fingal.
“Well done, Fingal,” said Crispin. “You’ve looked after Hope commendably.”
“Is that good?” asked Fingal.
“It’s very good,” said Crispin. “You may go.”
“And if the salt water doesn’t ease those gashes,” said Padra, “go and ask Arran to put something on them.”
“What gashes?” Fingal beamed. He bowed and left the Throne Room.
“He seems to have muddled through,” said Padra. “Needle, find someone to get a message to Sepia. Her brother may be about.”
“And go down to the kitchens for something to eat,” said Crispin.
“What’s happened to you?” said Padra to Crispin as Needle hurried away. “You look a lot better than you did. Is that just because of Fingal and Hope?”
“The moles,” said Crispin. “They should reach Whitewings tonight.”
By the time Needle and Sepia had met, exchanged stories, jumped a few streams, and pattered around the north side of the tower, they were ready to stop for a snack. Sepia was nibbling blackberries, and Needle had just swallowed a worm, when a squirrel hurried past.
“Hello, Gleaner!” called Sepia.
Gleaner glanced over her shoulder, hesitated as if she might say something, and ran on. Needle shrugged.
“Let her go,” she said. “She’s dying for us to ask where she’s going.”
Gleaner ran on. They were looking for the Heartstone. Let them look. She knew more about it than they did, but they wouldn’t dream of asking her.
They forgot that she had been an animal of some importance in the tower not so long ago, when she had been Lady Aspen’s maid. Whatever Husk had done, whatever anyone said, none of it had had anything to do with Lady Aspen. You only had to look at lovely Lady Aspen to know that none of it was her fault. She had been so charming and beautiful, she couldn’t have done anything bad. It was all lies.
With any luck, Needle and Sepia would get stuck in a bog looking for the Heartstone. Serve them right.