Arlo launched from the basket, slipped through the bars covering the cave and flung himself at Utterly. She held him tight and kissed his wings.
“You came for me! Both of you! And in a SkySoar9000! But how? Only Lofty Husks have access to those!”
Her voice was only a whisper, but it sounded different somehow—less sharp, perhaps, less cross.
“We can talk about all that later,” Casper said. “Right now we need to create a diversion for the Midnights so that we can get you out of this cave and into the hot air balloon—because I think you’re the familiar face I’m meant to find, Utterly. If I rescue you, then the Midnights will be stopped!”
Before Utterly could reply, he yanked on the lever for hatch six and several black cylindrical shapes, about the size of rolling pins, shot up into the air and soared over Dapplemere before exploding over the next-door valley in a blaze of color.
“Fireworks!” Utterly gasped.
The griffins shrieked and launched into the sky toward the commotion while Arlo blew hard at the bars across the cave.
Utterly blinked in surprise at the flames the dragon conjured. “You’ve learned to blow fire, Arlo!”
Arlo nodded, then blushed—he could tell Utterly was proud of him—but no matter how many flames shot out from his nostrils, he couldn’t melt the bars.
Utterly bit her lip. “They must be cursed somehow! When the Midnights carried me here yesterday, it was just a battered-up restaurant, but then they scratched at the rock with their talons and bars appeared over the entrance.” She turned panic-stricken eyes toward Casper. “What if… what if the bars are unbreakable and I’m trapped in this cave forever!”
Casper instructed Zip to move right up to the cave now that the Midnights were tearing through the next-door valley as more and more fireworks were exploding around them. Then he held up Bristlebeard’s axe and looked at Utterly. “Just as well I made friends with the snow trolls, then.”
He clambered over the edge of the basket, then jumped down onto the hillside before the cave and raised the axe. It sliced through the first bar as if cutting paper, and the metal crumbled to dust. Utterly’s eyes lit up and Casper set to work on the remaining bars until soon there was an opening large enough to crawl through. Utterly shot through it. But in her haste to escape, and in Casper’s excitement to see her, neither of them noticed that the fireworks had stopped and an ill wind was blowing.
They looked out across the valley. The Midnights had massed together in the sky and were heading back toward Dapplemere. And now the air thundered with the sound of their cries as their eyes locked on to what was happening at Topplecave.
“I… I thought you were the familiar face,” Casper stammered at Utterly. “I thought finding you would stop the Midnights!”
Utterly glanced at the swarm of griffins beating toward Dapplemere. “I don’t think so.…”
Casper shook himself. “Quick! Grab my hand!”
But Utterly grabbed the axe from him instead. “It’s not just me who needs freeing!” she blurted.
It was then Casper noticed a faint glow from farther inside the cave. It grew brighter and brighter until two creatures—a boy and a girl who looked about Casper’s age but who could only have come up to Casper’s knees—limped into view. They had gold skin, tunics made of bracken, and moth-like wings.
“The only two sun scamps not imprisoned by the Midnights. They’re the reason this kingdom still has any light at all! The Midnights have been burning whole mills full of sun marvels and any other marvels they’ve managed to steal from the drizzle hags and the snow trolls. These two sun scamps have been sneaking down to the caves at night to collect the ingredients for sunlight, but making marvels without a mill is wearing down their strength.”
The griffins called out again as they poured over the far side of the valley and the air trembled with heat.
Utterly gripped the axe. “I need to free the rest of the sun scamps. Apparently they’ve been locked up without food or water for two days now. Then maybe I can use my ideas”—she pointed to the diagrams she’d scratched with a stone onto the cave walls: complicated sketches of cogs and wheels, pulleys and weighting systems—“to mend the mills and get the marvels up and running again!”
“You did all those?” Casper gasped.
Utterly clambered down the hillside with the sun scamps, one of whom was lugging a very large, impractical bag with him. “I want to be a bottler, Casper—engineering is what I do! Now get back into the balloon with Arlo and see if you can stall those Midnights! It’s you they’re really after, so if I can just get down to the Burping Eagle—the pub by the lake that the sun scamps are trapped in—then at least we’re in with a chance of saving the marvels!”
Arlo clutched Casper’s sleeve as he made a wild jump for Zip’s basket, then as the valley darkened with outstretched wings and turned suddenly very hot indeed, Casper tightened Bristlebeard’s cape around him, pulled down his goggles, and seized the microphone.
“Duck and weave time, Zip! Move like you’ve never moved before and don’t give the Midnights any reason to dive down after Utterly!”
The hot air balloon slid away from the cave, then skirted across the hillside, skimming the tops of the wishing trees as it passed, and like moths to a flame, the Midnights and their shatterblast careered toward Casper. But Zip was a SkySoar9000 and she was faster than them, and Casper could see when the spirals of shatterblast drew close, so together they darted right, then left, then right again.
Then, just as the first of the griffins made a beeline for Zip’s basket, the shatterblast pouring out from its beak, Casper yelled, “Loop the loop!”
Zip did just that, tangling the Midnight’s talons in her ropes while Casper hung on for dear life. The balloon righted itself, then Casper grabbed Bristlebeard’s crossbow and sent the bolt slamming into the Midnight’s chest. True to the snow troll’s word, the griffin crashed down the hillside, stunned by the deadly nightshade’s magic.
Another Midnight drew close before Casper had time to reel the bolt back in. But Arlo was ready for the fight this time and he managed to conjure a spark of fire, which he spat into the griffin’s eye. The Midnight whirled backward and slunk away but more appeared in its place, all swarming around Zip with beaks open and shatterblast swirling. Casper reloaded and, as the hot air balloon darted this way and that, he fired the crossbow again and again.
The griffins screeched together and Casper watched with dread as enormous spirals of scorching-hot wind poured into the sky, wrenching trees from the ground and sending boulders tumbling down slopes. The shatterblast beat against Casper’s face and clamored in his ears, but still the cape kept him safe.
“Keep moving, Zip!” Casper screamed.
The air was too thick with feathers and talons for Casper to see how Utterly was doing, but however fast Zip moved or however quick Casper was to reload, the griffins and their shatterblast seemed to be one step ahead. And when Casper’s ears snagged on the sound of a talon splitting silk, he felt his insides churn.
“Mayday! Mayday!” Zip wheezed. “Balloon torn!”
She began to sink toward the lake—at speed—and the griffins screeched with delight. Casper and Arlo huddled in the corner of the basket in the snow troll’s armor, then every single griffin shrieked at once. Casper thought that the end was coming, that finally the griffins had outdone them, but there was something about this shriek that was different from the last. It was sharper, angrier.
Casper looked up as something like rope, only not quite it, slid beneath the griffins at the very moment their beaks and talons reached into the basket. It was a net of sorts—spun from glittering gold thread—and as the balloon plunged downward, the net held the flock of raging griffins exactly where they were in the sky.
Dumbfounded, Casper clung onto Arlo as the hot air balloon splashed down into the lake and then was shunted, by the last few gusts of shatterblast tearing through the valley, against the mills before the village. Casper and Arlo scrambled out of the basket to see Utterly racing round the side of the lake toward them while thousands of sun scamps held the flock of hissing griffins inside a golden net.
Casper watched, open-mouthed, as the freed sun scamps flew the net toward one of the giant heads at the bottom of the valley. Whatever this net was made of, it was not only holding the griffins captive but it was preventing them from breathing shatterblast too. Then Casper remembered the oversized bag one of the sun scamps hiding in the cave had been carrying—had the net been bundled up in there all along?
One or two sun scamps fluttered up to the enormous ear of the stone head while the rest of their kind hauled the griffins into the gaping mouth. Then the mouth snapped shut with a deafening boom and the sun scamps flew out through the gaps in the giant teeth, but the griffins—though they thrashed and screeched inside the net—couldn’t escape the clamped mouth. And as if Dapplemere itself knew the threat was now contained, every single one of the caves scattered about the hillsides began to glow. A gurgling noise, which seemed to come from within the hills themselves, echoed through the valley, followed by a rushing sound that soon became a roar.
Casper watched as slowly but surely the entire lake turned gold. “The ingredients for sunlight are being released!” He gasped.
Utterly rushed round the lake until she stood, panting, before Casper and Arlo and the ruined mill the balloon was slumped against. “I was wrong,” she said.
Casper wiped the sweat from his forehead. “About what?”
Utterly took a deep breath. “About you, Casper. Because never, ever being late is a skill. It’s the same thing as being loyal. And you’re the most loyal person I’ve ever met.” There was a squeak from Casper’s shoulder. “Joint with Arlo.”
Casper blinked. He felt a strange tingling in his chest, and though he knew he had very little experience in these things, he wondered whether perhaps this was his heart stretching. Bristlebeard had warned him that that was par for the course with friendship.
Casper blushed. “Maybe—possibly—we could upgrade from acquaintances to friends?”
Utterly was silent for a moment, and Casper wondered whether he’d got things wrong all over again, but then she took a small step forward and, for the first time in his life, Casper was hugged by a friend.