Chapter Eleven

‘Fox is wishing Fibber would do the knocking,’ Heckle declared, ‘and Fibber is wishing Fox would do it.’

‘Fox is wishing the parrot would keep other people’s thoughts to itself,’ Fox muttered.

That said, as they halted before the door of the Constant Whinge, Fox was surprised that Fibber – usually so confident – wasn’t striding ahead into the shack to claim the fern for himself. In fact, he looked very much as he had done upon first setting foot in Jungledrop: scared.

‘Fine,’ Fox said. ‘I’ll do it.’ She reached out a shaking hand (for deep down she was frightened, too) and knocked on the door. She waited, heart thudding. Whoever was inside the hut hadn’t sounded pleased to be disturbed.

‘If you’ve come about a runny nose,’ the voice snapped, ‘I’m all out of neverdrip salts.’ It was a male voice and it sounded old and tired. ‘If it’s earache you’re worried about, then you’ll have to wait until November to be cured: I can only make eavesdrops when the eaves plants are in season. And, if you’re here with gout, maybe it’s time you stopped drinking so much junglejuice.’

‘We – we don’t have runny noses or earache or, um, gout,’ Fibber said. ‘We—’

‘We,’ the voice groaned. ‘There’s more than one of you?’

‘Three, if you include the parrot,’ Fibber said nervously.

‘How incredibly tiresome.’

There was a shuffling inside the hut. The twins waited hopefully for the person behind the voice to appear, but instead there came a clank of bottles, a fizzing noise and another short, sharp bang followed by more green glitter bursting out of the window.

‘Bother,’ the voice mumbled. ‘It looks like the Constant Whinge is here to stay for a while…’

There was a pause and then footsteps, slow and shuffling, advanced towards the door.

Fox held her breath. Fibber clutched his briefcase to his chest. Heckle muttered something about universal fear. The door opened.

In its frame stood a very old man. From his feather waistcoat, patchwork-leaf shorts and the raindrop tattoos on his ears, Fox supposed he was an Unmapper. But he looked far wilder, older and grumpier than the others she had seen. For a start, there were short tufts of weeds sprouting out of his ears and his long white beard was intertwined with leaves and twigs. There were even clumps of moss growing between his bare toes.

‘What do you wa—’ he began, but stopped short as he took in the two children who stood before him. ‘So the candletree prophecy has finally come true. The Faraway folk have arrived…’

Heckle cocked her head. ‘The old man had thought, after what happened to Ethel some years ago, that his work as an apothecary was finished, but now—’

‘Careful, parrot,’ the apothecary said. ‘I have a buttonshut potion in here that permanently closes all manners of things: doors, hearts, mouths and beaks.’

Heckle shut hers immediately.

The old man turned to the twins. ‘Eight years ago, I cast a charm on the Constant Whinge to make it invisible. I vowed that this shack should only reappear if the boglets who live along the riverbank felt it absolutely necessary. Over the years, the boglets have summoned it for several distinctly unimportant things. Like when the youngest of their kind got incurable hiccups and then when his grandmother started burping bubbles. And each time I successfully conjured a junglespit explosion to make the Constant Whinge invisible again.’

He eyed the broken glass outside his window. ‘Until today.’ He took a deep breath. ‘You are the Faraway folk the prophecy promised – here, I presume, to rid the kingdom of Morg. So why, may I ask, are you skulking round my shack?’

‘The Forever Fern,’ Fox said eagerly. ‘Do you have it inside?’

‘Goldpaw gave us a flickertug map,’ Fibber explained, ‘and when we asked where the Forever Fern was it led us to you.’

The old man was silent for a moment. ‘There was a time when I collected plants, ferns and berries from across the kingdom to cure almost every imaginable ailment.’ He paused. ‘But I have never come across the Forever Fern.’

Fox felt her hopes clatter down and she scowled at the apothecary. ‘Then the map’s stupid and the fern’s stupid and you’re probably stupi—’

Fibber cut in. ‘The map must have led us here for a reason. Maybe you’ve got something else inside that can help us?’

The man sighed. ‘I don’t dish out potions any more. Not since…’ His voice trailed off. ‘You’re wasting your time here.’

He went to close the door, but Fox stuck out her boot to prevent it shutting. ‘Listen up, moss-foot. We’re on a very important quest here and we’re not leaving until you cough up some leads on this fern.’ She barged past the old man into his shack. ‘So, what can you give us that might help, hmmmmm?’

‘Are all Faraway folk this rude?’ the old man muttered to Fibber. ‘Or just the under-eighteens?’

‘My sister’s not so much rude as –’ Fibber paused – ‘keen. There’s a lot at stake. We have to find the fern, you see.’

The apothecary sighed. ‘Since the fate of the world is hanging in the balance, I suppose you’d better come in. Not that I harbour any sort of hope that I’ll be able to help you.’

As Fibber and Heckle followed the man inside, Fox scoured the shack, looking for anything that might be of use to her. There were shelves and glass-fronted cabinets lining the walls and every single one held row upon row of glass bottles, pots, goblets and jars, all with strange-looking contents and labels:

‘Got anything to summon up lost things?’ Fox asked.

The apothecary closed the door, then sat down at the table in the middle of the shack. And it was only then that Fox noticed the state of the objects strewn across the table’s surface: crusty test tubes, a broken magnifying glass, weighing scales clogged with cobwebs. It was as if the apothecary had started an experiment years ago, then abandoned it halfway through and left it to rot.

Fibber looked around. ‘Or maybe you have something in here to kill a harpy?’

‘Even if I did, I couldn’t promise it would work,’ the old man said gloomily. ‘I used to be legendary. Unmappers and magical creatures would come from across the kingdom for cures from the Constant Whinge. “Doogie Herbalsneeze will sort you out,” they’d say. “He’s the best there is.” But what’s the use of helping everybody else when you can’t help the one you love?’

The old man held two wrinkled hands over his face and, to Fox’s horror, she realised that he was crying. She watched, aghast. She’d never seen a grown-up cry before and she found it deeply unnerving, like watching the edges of the universe break apart.

‘Make him stop,’ she hissed to Fibber. ‘Immediately.’

But, when Fibber reached out a hand towards the apothecary, he only sobbed louder.

At which point, Heckle took it upon herself to reveal some innermost thoughts. ‘The old man is feeling both pain and relief in crying and—’

The apothecary wailed even louder.

‘Thank you, Heckle,’ Fibber said firmly. ‘That’s enough for now.’

When Doogie Herbalsneeze’s words did come, they tumbled out in a rush of tears. ‘I searched the kingdom for the most powerful plants and mixed thousands of potions when my dear wife, Ethel, fell ill eight years ago after trying to protect a thunderberry bush from Morg’s Midnights.’

The old man wiped his nose with a handkerchief. ‘But the dark magic of those monkeys had already seeped into her and nothing made any difference in the end.’ He looked up at the twins. ‘I couldn’t save her, so there’s no way I can help you rescue the whole kingdom.’

Fox drew out the flickertug map from her satchel and looked at the silver words, The Constant Whinge, glumly. It had brought them all the way here. For nothing. She held the map out now in case it wanted to tug her on again, but it lay limp in her hands.

She turned to Fibber. ‘Now what?’

Fibber sat down at the table; it seemed he wasn’t ready to give up quite yet. ‘I’m sorry about your wife,’ he said to the apothecary. And then, after a pause: ‘Sometimes, no matter how hard you try at something, it just doesn’t work out. But I don’t think that makes you a failure. Maybe it means that all the trying is leading towards something else.’

Fox stared at her brother. She could just about cope with Fibber being nice to the boglet. That behaviour had, after all, made the Constant Whinge appear. But apologising for another person’s pain was a step too far. What on earth was he up to?

‘You may have closed yourself off from the rest of the kingdom,’ Fibber went on, ‘but if the map led us to you it has to be for a reason. It must think that somehow something here can help us in our quest for the Forever Fern. Jungledrop needs you, Doogie Herbalsneeze. You have a part to play in defeating Morg.’

The apothecary was silent for a while and then he let out a loud sniff. ‘This is the problem with letting children into your workplace: they start teaching you to hope all over again.’

Fox looked around at the shelves. ‘But how can a bunch of useless plants help?’

Doogie wiped his eyes. ‘Plants are never useless,’ he told Fox firmly. ‘They can regrow even after they’ve been eaten. They can sprout up in pockets of the jungle where it’s too dark to see. They can live off air and mist. They can reproduce without moving. They possess more than twenty senses. They absorb carbon dioxide and release oxygen from their leaves, which people and animals need to breathe.’ There was an energy to the old man’s voice now that hadn’t been there before. ‘Plants are not just decorative furniture; they keep your world and mine alive.’

‘But there won’t be a Jungledrop or a Faraway if we don’t find the Forever Fern,’ Fibber said quietly. ‘You said you were a legendary apothecary, so you must know of something that can help us. Please?’

Fox slumped down into a chair opposite Fibber. He seemed to be getting very good at being nice. And it was starting to make Fox wonder whether maybe her brother wasn’t just trying to outwit her on this quest, that he actually meant what he was saying. But this would be going against everything their parents had taught them…

‘I suppose there is something,’ Doogie said after a while. ‘When I was trying to save Ethel, I realised that the puckleberries should be seedless before being added to the crushed smidgeroot for them to be fully effective. My Ethel was too ill by the time I made the discovery. I – I was too late… But, if consumed early on after an onslaught of dark magic, I think this cure could just be powerful enough to save a life.’

He hobbled over to a shelf, pulled off a few dusty books, an egg cup full of moss and several silver fir cones, then picked up a small, cork-stoppered bottle filled with purple liquid. Its label read: PUCKLESMIDGE SYRUP: RESTORES HEALTH IF CONSUMED ASAP AFTER EXPOSURE TO DARK MAGIC.

The flickertug map tingled suddenly in Fox’s hands, as if acknowledging that this was the reason it had led them to the Constant Whinge.

‘Pucklesmidge will be your best bet against the Midnights and indeed Morg,’ Doogie said. ‘If anything can save you from dark magic, it’ll be this syrup.’

Fox reached out a hand to grab the bottle from Doogie, but the apothecary held it back from her and gave it to Fibber instead. ‘Thank you, boy, for awakening something inside me that I had thought was long dead.’

Fox started. Fibber was even being rewarded with life-saving potions because of his niceness now. She straightened her tie and tried to make herself look as likeable as possible. But the apothecary didn’t thank her or hand over an extra bottle of the life-saving cure.

Instead, he glanced down at the map in her hands, then fixed his wise old eyes upon her. ‘A flickertug map senses the journey the heart needs to make to reach a destination, not the feet. It will eventually lead you to the Forever Fern, of that I have no doubt, but remember: the things you search for are often much closer than you think.’

Fox nodded stiffly. She had no idea what the Unmapper was talking about, but there was something in the way he spoke, and in the way that he looked at her, that made the wall around her heart quiver. The apothecary might have entrusted her brother with the cure, but he was telling Fox that she would be the one to find the Forever Fern. And that confidence in her – that blind faith – reached out into the most hidden and precious parts of Fox.

She smiled shyly, a real smile this time, and when she looked up at Fibber she saw that he was smiling, too, as if – just possibly – the years of loathing that had passed between them didn’t matter quite as much as they’d thought. Fox blushed and looked away. It was a rare thing to find herself exchanging a real smile with a family member and she wasn’t altogether sure what it meant.

Heckle cooed from her perch on the back of an empty chair. ‘Fox is feeling a little less cross than she was before, Fibber is feeling a little less scared, Doogie Herbalsneeze is feeling a little less sad and Heckle is feeling a little more confident about finding Iggy. Oh, Heckle does so love it when a quest lifts people’s spirits like this.’ She paused. ‘Perhaps a spot of food would cement the positive atmosphere?’

The apothecary smiled, then reached inside a store cupboard and rustled up two vegetable wraps that the twins – and Heckle – ate quickly. When she’d finished, Fox looked up at the front door and noticed that it was open. Just a crack. And yet she had distinctly remembered Doogie Herbalsneeze closing it after Fibber walked in. Fox watched the door with narrowed eyes. Perhaps it had been pushed open by the breeze?

But when a fist wrapped itself round the edge of the door – a fist fringed with black, jagged claws – Fox knew that there was no breeze outside the Constant Whinge.