‘Fliss is helping the Mirk?’ said Billy, horrified. ‘She – she can’t be. It’s not true is it, Fliss? I know you’ve been a bit cranky lately but …’ His voice dried up in his throat.

Fliss looked back at them with that cold look in her eyes that had so worried Archie.

‘Think about it, Billy,’ said Archie. ‘You said so yourself, how did someone know we were going to the McBudge vault? It was Fliss’s idea to go there in the first place – we were meant to go there. Then she shut us in with the coffins!’

‘I can’t believe she would do this to us!’ said Billy, shaking.

‘It’s not her,’ said Archie, grasping him by the shoulder. ‘It’s not our Fliss. She’s being used, like the rest of Dundoodle. They’re all bewitched.’

‘Where’s the Treeheart, Archie?’ said Fliss, her voice mechanical and distant. ‘I know you’re hiding it somewhere. Where is it?’

Archie and Billy edged away. Sherbet growled.

‘Where’s the Treeheart?’ Fliss repeated. ‘Give me the Treeheart.’ She reached out her hand to grab Archie’s throat. Blossom, alarmed at the change in her friend’s behaviour, let out a burst of flame. It swept dangerously close to the girl’s fingers. Fliss screamed, instinctively withdrawing her hand from the heat. At that moment, Billy snatched a broken Gingerbread Dragon from the bag he had brought from Clootie’s, hurling a piece of biscuit squarely into Fliss’s open mouth.

‘Careful!’ said Archie. ‘She could choke!’

‘It’s worth the risk,’ said Billy. ‘We have to save her!’

Fliss couldn’t help but bite down on the gingerbread. As she did so her eyes warmed, and a spark of life appeared in them. She started chewing, slowly first then faster, the Fliss they recognised gradually returning. The spell was breaking! She looked around her, confused, as if she didn’t remember where she was or how she’d got there.

‘What’s going on?’ she said. ‘I feel like I’ve been outside my body watching myself.’

She was furious when they told her what they had guessed about the wafers.

‘It should have been Billy who was bewitched, not me,’ she said. ‘If anyone is pathetic enough to be mind-controlled, it’s him.’

‘That’s really rude,’ said Billy, ‘but a fair point. Though I’d make a lousy henchman.’ He didn’t mind Fliss’s insults, he was just glad to have her back to normal.

‘I remembered how different I felt after I’d eaten a Gingerbread Dragon that day Preen came to school,’ said Archie. ‘Like I was suddenly shaking off my fear of the Mirk. That’s the same time you began acting strangely, just after you’d eaten the Safer Wafer.’

‘Cursed Confectionery,’ said Billy. ‘Macabre Creepy Scale rating of five point seven!’

‘But who knows what else I’ve done?’ said Fliss. ‘My memory is really hazy. The Mirk could have made me do terrible things!’

‘We can’t worry about that now,’ said Archie. ‘Just keep away from the Safer Wafers. We’ll have to ration the Dragons, too. There aren’t many left.’

At that moment, a voice called up from the factory floor below.

‘Archie, are you up there?’ It was Mum. Fliss bundled Blossom into her bag and the children clambered out of the mess of pipework on to the gangway and saw Archie’s mum looking up at them with a grim face.

‘Archie, children – I’ve got some bad news,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid the festival isn’t going ahead. Unquiet Night has been cancelled.’

They looked at each other, horrified. Mum explained as they hurried back to the Hall.

‘The committee for organising the festival has resigned,’ she said with a heavy sigh. ‘No one is interested in doing anything, apart from complaining about sweets and talking about wholesomeness, as if they’d know what that is. Mean Preen has got to them somehow.’

‘This is a disaster!’ said Billy bitterly. ‘Unquiet Night is the most important day of the year! This has never happened before. Dundoodle without Unquiet Night is like chips without curry sauce – unthinkable.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Mum. ‘It does sound like you’ll be missing out on a lot of fun.’

‘Fun?’ said Billy, his eyes welling up. ‘It’s a day for serious study of supernatural and paranormal phenomena. Without the festival, the emotionally-generated psychokinetic energy field will be substantially suboptimal for any wyrdological events to manifest themselves.’

‘Yes … that too,’ said Mum, gently patting him on the back.

She left them in the library, each with a reassuring ice cream sundae with McBudge Fudge sauce, Tablet’s summer alternative to hot chocolate.

‘We need to work out what the rest of the rhyme means and find the Treeheart,’ said Archie. ‘We can do it, I know we can!’ He was trying to sound positive, but the situation was urgent. Regardless of whether the festival took place or not, the Wyrdie Tree must renew itself. Its power would be at its weakest, and the Mirk was ready to attack. They got to work.

‘Look where my mournful gaze alights, one heart broken, one renewed,’ Archie recited, scratching his head. Billy was sat scouring Belle’s journal, desperately searching the elegant handwriting for any clues he might have missed. Meanwhile, Fliss was looking through a pile of books on the history of the old forest, to see if she could find any mention of the Treeheart. She couldn’t help yawning: it wasn’t exactly riveting stuff. Blossom yawned in sympathy.

‘You’re not helping, Blossom,’ Fliss said, smiling for the first time in a while. ‘I wonder if Corignis helped Belle. Maybe he was the dragon that baked the first Gingerbread Dragons? I wonder why Belle didn’t use a normal oven.’

Archie looked up from an old scroll he was reading, about the McBudge family jewels.

‘Honeystone!’ he said, his eyes lit up. ‘Dragon-fire turns nectar from flowers into honeystone. Nectar’s a type of sugar, isn’t it? So perhaps dragon-fire turned the sugar in the biscuits into tiny little crystals of honeystone too!’

‘So as well as making the gingerbread tastier,’ added Billy, ‘its magical properties might enhance the protective effects of the ginger.’

In spite of the urgency of the situation, Archie grinned. ‘I’ve had another idea,’ he said.

There was no time to lose. Archie ran back to the factory, followed by the others and refusing to answer their questions. They found the manager’s office. Mr Fairbairn looked a lot like Fliss and had the same logical mind.

‘Hello, you lot,’ he said, ushering them into the office with a welcoming smile. ‘Your mum said you might be popping in, Archie. Looking to do some kind of project, she said.’

‘Yes,’ said Archie, thinking quickly. ‘I’d like to make a new sweet for Unquiet Night. The McBudge factory doesn’t make anything especially for the festival, does it?’

‘No – it’s an interesting notion, all right, Archie. But haven’t you heard? Unquiet Night has been cancelled.’

‘I only want to make a small amount of sweets. Just enough to … to test out something.’

Archie was going to take on the responsibility of being Guardian, but on his own terms. He was going to create something new. The Gingerbread Dragon was going to get an Archie McBudge upgrade …