A cry from Fibber startled Fox awake.

There was a trunklet in the tree house. Or the arm of one, at least. And it was wriggling closer and closer to Fibber’s briefcase.

‘Oh, no you don’t!’ Fibber cried, seizing his briefcase and leaping up from his bunk.

The trunklet snatched back its arm, stuck out its tongue, then scampered away down the tree. Which is when the twins noticed what Heckle was up to. The parrot must have risen earlier than the children because she was now perched on the table, placing an omnifruit before each chair.

‘Heckle is still very cross with Fox and Fibber because of Iggy’s kidnap, but she is hoping tempers might improve if Faraway folk are fed first thing.’

Fibber sat down at the table. ‘Er – thanks, Heckle,’ he said, biting into one of the fruits.

Fox blinked. Had she misheard or had she just witnessed a Petty-Squabble saying thank you? Fox studied her brother. He seemed to be turning into a completely different person out here in Jungledrop! He’d been terrified on the Hustleway with Iggy, he’d very nearly fainted upon meeting Goldpaw, he wasn’t snapping at Fox half as much as usual and he’d taken to saying excuse me to trees and thank you to parrots. What had happened to the ruthlessly composed brother she’d known her whole life?

Fox wondered whether she was missing something important in how she was going about her mission and that maybe Fibber had found a better way of doing things. But Fibber’s strategy seemed to involve being kind, and that meant being weak, and being weak meant letting the wall around her heart down. Fox was far from ready to start dismantling walls. She thought of the snoozenut in her bag. She had a plan and she needed to pursue it with a clear head.

So she sat down at the table and ate the omnifruit – pancakes with maple syrup followed by a few scrummy mouthfuls of blueberry porridge – in stony silence, refusing to thank Heckle for her efforts in providing it.

A short while later, Fox opened the door of the tree house and peeked outside. Down on the ground, the rainforest was a wasteland of dead thunderberry bushes and shrivelled undergrowth. Nowhere, it seemed, was safe from Morg’s Midnights. But the understorey around the Hustleway here was stubbornly refusing to die: lining the branches were blue orchids, monkeybrush vines with flaming orange flowers and red-spotted rafflesias. And, in amongst this burst of colour, bees buzzed, hornbills squawked, snakes (wearing sun hats) hissed and a gibbon (holding a walking stick) barked.

Fox stepped out of the tree house, followed closely by her brother. In an instant, everything seemed to freeze. Leaves stiffened, ears flicked, eyes darted. Even the noise subsided. This was a rainforest living in fear. And it was only when the twins mounted their unicycles and sped off along the Hustleway that the animals and plants realised they meant no harm and came back to life.

With the map guiding Fox, the twins cycled on and on through the trees until eventually they came to a river that had not yet been drained of magic by the Midnights. It snaked through the jungle below, blue-green from the plants and trees lining it. For a while, the map spurred Fox further along the Hustleway above the water and she gasped as a pod of pink dolphins broke the surface, one after the other, before disappearing from sight. Then the Hustleway veered away from the river and the map slowed its tugging as they made their way down towards the banks of the water. And Fox knew what that meant: it was time to return to the jungle floor.

She and Fibber dismounted their unicycles and climbed down the tantrum tree the map had paused at, muttering ‘excuse me’ all the way. Then they resumed their quest for the Forever Fern on foot. They hurried along by the river, now and again catching sight of some strange fish or eel gliding through the water. But, when they came to a purple plant on the riverbank in the shape of an umbrella with dozens of newspapers hanging down from inside it, Fox slowed a fraction. These seemed to be newspapers recalling events in her own world!

She read the headline of the newspaper closest to her aloud: ‘DROUGHTS, DEATH AND DOOM!’ Then beneath this: ‘No hope for the Faraway unless rain falls imminently.’

Fox’s stomach twisted as she let the map pull her on. This time she couldn’t seem to shake the guilt off. Her world was in chaos, Jungledrop was dying, and she might be able to do something about it… But her chances of being loved by her parents depended on finding the Forever Fern and she couldn’t, no matter how guilty she felt, let go of that hope.

Burying her doubts as best she could, Fox ran on and on. She’d had no idea that being a successful businesswoman would involve so much rushing about. Perhaps she’d need to factor in hiring a secretary when she got home.

The river widened into a little pool, surrounded by trees, so that the sunlight that fell through the gaps in the branches dappled the water – a pocket of the rainforest not yet claimed by the Midnights. And here the map stopped pulling. Fox looked around for a person or a building, but there was just the river, drifting aimlessly on, and the crowded trees bordering it.

Fox frowned. ‘The map must’ve stopped here for a reason.’

‘There!’ Fibber cried. ‘In the river!’

Fox squinted into the sunlight to see that Fibber was pointing at something small, blue-skinned and pointy-eared that appeared to be swimming through the water towards them. Fox staggered backwards as the creature emerged onto the banks of the river and then darted, on webbed feet, behind a plant. It looked very much like a trunklet, only it was blue not green.

‘Bash it with your boot!’ Fox hissed at Fibber. ‘Or biff it with your briefcase!’

The creature peeked out from behind the plant it was hiding behind, then scuttled back into its leaves again. It did this three more times.

Heckle flapped down from a branch and squawked, ‘Heckle thinks that the boglet is trying to tell us something.’

‘Well, why doesn’t it just spit it out?’ Fox barked.

‘Remember what Iggy said,’ Fibber told her. ‘Magical creatures can’t speak.’

And, to Fox’s surprise, her brother bent down, almost gently, in front of the boglet. He didn’t say anything to the little creature. He just crouched before it – and watched.

Fox drummed her boot on the ground. ‘We haven’t got all day.’

‘The boglet is feeling terribly overwhelmed by the arrival of the Faraway heroes,’ Heckle explained, ‘so picking out its thoughts is proving quite difficult.’

The boglet stood, looking at Fibber, water dripping from its pointed ears, then it scurried back behind the plant. It popped out seconds later and then hid once more. Again and again it did this. The more it repeated the action, the more Fox wondered whether it was, in fact, trying to communicate with them, as Heckle had said.

‘Do you know something about the Constant Whinge?’ Fibber said quietly, tentatively, in a voice that showed he hadn’t had much practice at being gentle, but was keen to try all the same.

The boglet peeped out from behind the plant and nodded. Then it hid again.

Heckle parked herself on the ground beside Fibber. ‘The boglet’s thoughts are less of a jumble now and Heckle believes it wants you to know that you have arrived at the Constant Whinge.’

Fox threw her hands up in the air. ‘We haven’t arrived at our destination! Look – there’s nothing here!’

Fibber looked around, frowning. But he didn’t raise his voice at the boglet. He spoke calmly, quietly, so as not to frighten it away, in a manner so unlike him that Fox had to rub her own ears to make sure that it really was her brother speaking. Why was he being nice again?

Fibber watched the boglet a while longer, then his eyes lit up. ‘The Constant Whinge is invisible,’ he said slowly. ‘That’s what you were trying to tell us by hiding one minute, then appearing the next, wasn’t it?’

The boglet nodded.

Fox frowned. She had always been told by her parents that being nice was a waste of time and yet here was Fibber being nice and getting the information they needed. She tried to follow his example and threw the boglet a grateful smile, if only to urge it to reveal a little more, but her face wasn’t used to such an expression and she ended up grimacing at the creature instead. The boglet shrieked under Fox’s scowl and she felt embarrassed and cross and jealous all at the same time. Fibber was better than her at everything! Even communicating with magical creatures…

‘How are we meant to find something if it’s invisible?’ she grumbled.

Fibber turned to her. ‘I don’t know, but I think we’ve got to trust the magical creatures here. We won’t survive otherwise.’

Fox snorted. ‘You’re a fine one to be talking about trust. You’re always tricking people and telling lies.’

Fibber seemed about to say something, then he noticed that the boglet was shuffling away towards the river again. ‘Hey!’ he called.

The boglet turned.

‘I just –’ he paused – ‘wanted to… thank you for your help.’

The boglet grinned at Fibber’s words, as if it knew something the twins and Heckle didn’t. Then it hopped back into the river and vanished from sight, but, as it did so, a very strange thing happened. The sunshine streaming down between the branches hanging over the river seemed to shiver and blur. It was almost like watching a mirage, only eventually mirages give way to obvious, predictable things. But there was nothing obvious or predictable about what was left in the wake of this one.

A ramshackle wooden hut appeared out of thin air, balanced on stilts over the water. There were wooden steps leading up from the riverbank towards it and a sign over the closed front door, which read:

THE CONSTANT WHINGE JUNGLE APOTHECARY

Fox gazed at the window beside the door. Behind the glass she could see a row of bottles, all shapes and sizes, filled with berries, leaves and powdered bark. She couldn’t believe that she was moments away from victory! But, just as she was about to rush up the steps to claim the fern, there was a short, sharp bang and something green and glittery exploded out of the window, sending shards of glass flying.

‘I thought I had been quite clear on this, boglets,’ a voice inside the hut muttered. ‘I do not wish to be disturbed.’

Ignoring this outburst, Heckle fluttered onto the doorstep before the door. The twins followed carefully, watchfully, their eyes glued to the window in case the owner of the voice should step into view.

But their eyes were not the only ones fixed on the Constant Whinge. There were others watching from the surrounding trees, too. And, had Heckle and the twins not been so excited by the appearance of the shack, they might have noticed that the jungle had fallen quiet and there was a strange ticking noise eating into the hush.

Three monkeys looked on from the shelter of the understorey. But they had nothing in common with the silvermonkeys Fox and Fibber had seen leaping through the branches the day before. These monkeys were blacker than night and their orange eyes, which moved eerily from Fox to Fibber and back again, gleamed with terrible menace.