Alvaro whistled low to get Ollin and Lilly’s attention. Ollin stopped walking so abruptly that Lilly ran into the back of him, and Leeuie almost fell off her.
‘What’s going on?’ Leeuie said, eyes darting about, hand on the hilt of his knife.
‘I figured out what the missing element is,’ said Alex.
‘You did?’ said Leeuie.
‘Well …?’ Ollin tapped his foot impatiently. ‘What is it?’
‘Moraika’s blood,’ Alex said.
They all gaped at her.
‘You’re going to kill Moraika?’ Ollin exclaimed.
‘No!’ Alex cried. ‘Of course not.’
‘Oh.’ He looked relieved. ‘How do you figure it’s her blood?’
‘It was the location of the last element that was really confusing us,’ said Alex. ‘The bowl pointed to the entry path but there was nothing there. Nothing except us, going in and out.’
‘It’s telling us to look at ourselves?’ Ollin scratched his leg against a tree. ‘I don’t get it.’
‘Moraika’s part of the rhyme is: An elixir of life that only the hero can bring forth.’
‘Yes!’ Leeuie’s eyes lit up. ‘Blood’s made from plasma and cells, but also contains other things, like clotting agents and hormones and …’
Alex cleared her throat.
‘Right. Sorry. I saw something on the Discovery Channel. But you’re right! Blood is a mixture of things. An elixir! And it’s the elixir of life because without it, well, we’d be dead.’
Alex nodded. ‘But it can’t just be the blood of anyone. It’s the blood of the hero.’ She turned to Alvaro. ‘And you just said that Moraika was a hero.’
‘She is!’ Leeuie agreed, excitedly. ‘Mr Ortiz said it too, remember? That his ancestor, Moraika, was the bravest and most heroic warrior of the Chodzanar tribe.’
‘Hero is such a subjective measure,’ Ollin said. ‘I mean, one person’s heroics are another person’s —’ A sideways kick from Lilly shut him up.
Alex grinned. ‘An elixir of life that only the hero can bring forth. It’s Moraika’s blood. It has to be.’
Lilly nodded her head slowly. ‘You know, that actually makes sense.’
‘Indeed it does,’ Alvaro agreed.
‘And back by the lake you said you knew the final line of the binding incantation, too?’ Leeuie pressed.
Alex explained the vision she had at the bottom of the lake, where Mum was singing the familiar song. ‘When you first said the lines of the binding incantation to me, I thought they sounded familiar,’ she explained, ‘but I wasn’t sure. But they’re the lines of a song that Mum used to sing me when I was a little kid.’
Lilly’s woolly brow crinkled. ‘Your mum used to sing you a song about an ancient spirit who liked killing people?’
‘I don’t think she knew that’s what it was about,’ Alex said. ‘She probably heard it from her dad. Or her grandfather. It would have been one of those things that gets passed down through the family and no one knows why.’
Leeuie’s face was alight with nervous excitement. ‘So … we just need to find Moraika, then get to Kiala, and you’ll be able to do the binding ritual?’
Alex hesitated. Theoretically, Leeuie was right. They as good as had all four elements — the volcanic rock, the white feather, the black sand and Moraika’s blood — and she knew the fifth line of the binding incantation. How Alex was supposed to actually do the ritual, she had no idea. But, everything else had come to her, so she just had to believe that this would too. ‘Yes,’ she said, squaring her shoulders. ‘I can do the ritual.’
‘If you’re sure,’ Alvaro said, ‘that’s enough for me.’
A branch rustled. They all froze. Leeuie put a finger to his lips. ‘Don’t make a sound,’ he whispered, his voice barely audible.
A second later, Moraika crashed through the foliage, her coat wet with sweat. She had a streak of blood across one thigh.
Alex threw her arms around the alpaca. ‘You’re okay!’
‘I told you she would be,’ Alvaro said, but the relief on his face was obvious.
‘How did you get away?’ Alex asked, eyeing the injuries, which she was relieved to see were mostly surface wounds.
‘Their bark was a lot worse than their bite,’ Moraika panted. ‘Once I’d kicked a few of them away, the others ran off. But that doesn’t mean we should be standing around here waiting for them to come back with reinforcements. Why aren’t you heading back to the farm?’
Using his compass as a guide, Leeuie led the group deeper into the centre of the forest. As they walked, Moraika listened with increasing surprise as Alex told her that her blood was a key part of the binding spell. ‘Guess it’s lucky I’ve got some handy,’ she said.
Alex eyed the slash on the alpaca’s leg. ‘Does it hurt?’
‘Not even a little,’ Moraika said, but she was limping ever so slightly as they walked.
Despite Moraika’s insistence that the tigers looked more dangerous than they were, it didn’t sound like the beasts had given up trying to find the group. Scowls and roars and scuffles travelled through the forest, coming from one direction, then another. Each time, Leeuie shifted course, so they were always heading away from the noises.
Alex’s pulse increased steadily with every step she took. As they got closer to the middle of the forest, trees and shrubs became hideous entanglements of bark and leaves and branches. She had little concept of how long they’d been walking when Leeuie leaned over and whispered, ‘We’re pretty much in the centre. How will we recognise Kiala’s prison?’
‘We just will,’ Alex said. Evil like that left a scar. All they had to do was find it.
And then, the dense wilderness fell away, and they were on the edge of a large clearing, in the middle of which a huge sprawling tree twisted up from the ground.
The tree’s roots spread in all directions, poking through the earth in undulating wooden waves. The trunk was gnarled and ragged, and knotted branches stretched to the sky.
This was it. This tree was Kiala’s prison.
Alex stepped into the clearing. She expected the ground to collapse beneath her, or lightning to rain down. But it didn’t. Nothing happened.
She slowly picked her way over the exposed roots and freshly fallen leaves that littered the ground.
Up close, she could see the trunk of the tree was smooth and grey, the leaves muted green. So familiar. So much like … ‘It’s an olive tree,’ Alex said in a low voice. It was the biggest, ugliest one she had ever seen but, without a doubt, an olive tree.
Alex recalled what Grandpa Jacob had said about the olives. That they could live for thousands of years. That they represented resilience, peace and harmony.
When you put it like that, they were the perfect prison for a spirit of destruction. And Kiala knew it. That’s why she destroyed the olive grove. She was trying to get rid of them all.
‘Look at this.’ Leeuie pointed to the bottom of the trunk, which had been clawed and scratched and bitten so it was a mess of lacerated, splintered wood. A black, viscous substance oozed out, bubbling to the surface like beads of oily sweat.
Leeuie reached out to touch it.
‘Don’t!’ Alex hit his hand away. That was the same substance that had been dripping from the jaws of the tiger that had bitten Mum. ‘That’s how she controls the Tasmanian tigers. They get that in their system and they do whatever she wants.’
‘That’s how she’s been keeping them alive this whole time?’ Leeuie asked.
‘I don’t think she’s exactly keeping them alive,’ Alex said, slowly. Kiala was the spirit of destruction, after all. ‘I think they’re probably in some kind of … in-between state. Not alive, not dead. And she controls if they deteriorate or not.’
‘But that means she’s kept them hidden for over eighty years,’ Leeuie said. ‘What’s she been waiting for?’
With a shake of her head, Alex dismissed the question. That didn’t matter. In a few minutes, after she had performed the binding ritual, Mum would get better and life would go back to the way it was. Kiala would once again be rendered powerless.
A deep growl from the forest made Alex whip around. Scores of glowing eyes shone through the darkness as the Tasmanian tigers surrounded the clearing. Every single hair on Alex’s body sprung to attention, and she leaped from the ground, grabbing her backpack close.
‘I thought we’d lost them,’ Ollin said. He backed slowly away. ‘I thought we’d managed to get away.’
The tigers stalked forward, slow and purposeful, shepherding the group closer together. Closer to the tree. The alpacas huddled around Alex and Leeuie, tails flicking, eyes darting from one tiger to the next.
Leeuie blanched. ‘I don’t think we were ever running away from them,’ he said in a hoarse voice. ‘I think they were herding us.’