Clearheart (13 page)

On the stand by his side the Flitterwig Files lay open, a permanent reminder to Don Posiblemente of why he was acting single-handedly, without consulting the Rooniun, when he knew those who loved and cared for Ella would be worried by now.

The Clearheart must act alone, with only her Protector as guide, if the Great Divide is to be bridged. For only the purity of guilelessness, faith, goodwill and a veritably clear heart can find the truth and heal the wounds of mistrust.

Don Posiblemente read and re-read this line to keep his conviction strong. The Clearheart must act alone, he had to remember that. He was sure now that the second part of the Prophecy was in play. For one thing, Ella would have contacted him by now if she had not managed to raise the Giants and for another, the Gigantometer on his bookshelf, which had never so much as shimmered with more than a faint orange glow in all the years he had owned it, was sparkling and spitting busily, like a firework or the heart of a flame.

A mere hundred metres away, Samuel Happenstance shook his head and launched himself into the air, heading home.

Had Ella and Charlie not been wearing their striped, oversized anoraks, they would surely have frozen on the spot as they popped up out of the ice in Antarctica. And had Charlie not thought at once to make them both swallow their Candleflosses, they would certainly never have dried out as fast as they did. The Candleflosses lit up the children's bodies from inside and dried them out as surely as socks are soon dried when settled close before an open fire.

The puffy rings in both anoraks were warm as hot-water bottles and their boots seemed to radiate heat from within. Indeed, so warm were they that the ice beneath them began to melt a little.

The children stared across the continent they had just entered. A foreverness of cobalt-tinged ice stretched out in every direction as far as their eyes could see. A white sun lit up the snowy icecaps and the crisp air seemed alive with frosty colour. A strong breeze blew across the land.

‘Now what?' said Charlie, checking under his collar to make
sure that Harold had made it there in one piece. Travelling through water is quite freaky, to say the least. It wouldn't have surprised Charlie at all to find his friend legless and skinned.

‘I'm fine thank you, dear chap,' said Harold, tucking himself up deep inside Charlie's hood, under the boy's ear. Although, truth be known, Harold was feeling a little worn by all the excitement. Indeed, the Giant had scared him so much that he had been unable to croak or move the entire time they had been in Australia. He had wanted to be part of the boy's tutelage at Hedgeberry, and had cherished the idea of adventure. But first a Giant in a desert, and now alone in the wilds of Antarctica? The little amphibian took a deep breath and reminded himself how lucky he was to experience the world so far from the monotony of pond life.

‘I'm not sure,' said Ella, rather wishing now that she could get a message to her grandmothers to let them know she was okay. But even if she could, what would she say? Particularly to her fully human grandmother. ‘Hi Granny, just want to let you know I'm fine. In Antarctica with Charlie and his frog and no food. Sent here by a Giant called Thomas. Looking for a pixie. Nothing to worry about.' Ella laughed. She had to laugh. Or she'd cry. She looked around her. East, south, north and west, all she could see was a bluey-white expanse of ice and snow
that met the azure sky and stretched the world out forever. The breeze whipped snow up into their faces. It stung.

Ella wanted to set off at once in search of Dixon, but her instincts told her that this breeze was not about to abate. She was tired too, having missed a night's sleep, and while the majesty of their surroundings filled her with something she would have called joy if she were in a better state of mind, her bones felt battered from journeying through Water so fast and so much in one day. And she was hungry. She hadn't had more than a milkshake to keep her going for hours. ‘Are you hungry, Charlie?' she asked.

‘Absolutely starving,' said Charlie, who was crouched down on the ground unpacking the bits of tree Thomas had given them. It was hard to hold them still in the bluster of the breeze. He nibbled at a bit of bark and then spat it out. That wasn't going to do the trick. He tried a little bit of root, but that just tasted of bitter rubber. What he wouldn't give for a bowl of hot macaroni cheese right now. And a mug of hot chocolate… He was about to have a chew on the leaf, but as soon as he picked it up, it flew up into the air above him, as if caught by the breeze, and unfolded at once.

Ella's eyes followed its trajectory. Her hair began to billow
and her shoulders itched like mad. She rubbed them and then touched her ears. They were boiling. She looked away from the leaf to Charlie, sucking on a lump of snow. Her ears cooled immediately. She looked back at the leaf. They warmed up again.

Was her body, were her instincts, trying to tell her something? Something about the leaf?

Ella tried to remember the spell that Miss Patchouli wrote on the board at the beginning of every Transmogrification lesson. Maybe she could Personify the leaf and send it off to find Dixon. That didn't seem right, and anyway, she couldn't Personify anything yet. But the Giant had said the bits of the tree he had given them would help them out. As Ella thought these thoughts, her hair fell loosely about her shoulders. Didn't he? she thought. No, she realised. He hadn't said ‘help'. He had said that the bits would ‘protect' them. Ella's hair billowed under her hood again, and not in the same direction that the building breeze was blowing. Charlie peered at her suspiciously.

‘What's going on with your hair?' he asked.

‘Not really sure,' said Ella. ‘Seems it's responding to my thoughts.'

Charlie tried to remember any lesson that had mentioned anything about this. He couldn't, and he'd been concentrating
hard for the last few months. Then he remembered something from Essentials of Magic.

‘Hey, remember how we've been learning to listen to ourselves in order to tap in to our magic?' he said, forgetting his hunger for the moment.

‘Of course I do,' said Ella. ‘Don't you think I've been trying to do that every time I try to fly!' She looked at the leaf again. Her hair flared up around her in a trice and her ears tingled.

‘So what's your body telling you?' he asked.

‘I don't know!' said Ella gruffly. ‘If I did, I'd be doing something.'

‘Well what do we need right now?' asked Charlie, trying to be sensible.

‘Something to eat and somewhere to shelter, I suppose.' As Ella said the word ‘shelter,' her ears blazed. ‘Shelter,' she repeated. Ouch! Her ears were veritably burning! She grabbed some snow to cool them, her long sleeves protecting her hands from the cold. The breeze was building to a wind now.

Charlie, noticing what she was doing, thought hard. ‘Shelter,' he said to himself. ‘Hmmm.' He scratched his snubby nose. ‘Maybe the leaf's supposed to provide us with shelter!' he declared, looking at Ella hopefully.

Ella looked at the leaf. Her ears burned. She looked at
Charlie. They kept burning. He was onto something. But how on Earth was the leaf, however large, supposed to shelter them?

‘Perhaps we need to Personify it so we can sleep underneath it,' said Charlie, racking his brain for the spell for Personification. Harold tapped him on the cheek.

‘What?' said Charlie impatiently. ‘I'm thinking.'

‘Remember I took the liberty of putting your spell chart in your back pocket before we left, old chap?' said Harold, sounding rather pleased with himself. Charlie beamed.

‘So you did,' he said, patting the frog on the back. Pulling it out, he scanned the parchment for the spell they might need. Finding it, he tweaked his ear and mouthed the words, staring hard at the leaf. The leaf froze, startled, and stretched itself full length upon the snow. It was soon covered in a white film as the building breeze blew snow across it. Its stem wagged a little, like a tail. Charlie was delighted. He knew he was getting ahead in Transmogrification classes, but here he was, out in the wilderness, Transmogrifying something without a single teacher to help him!

Ella looked at him kindly. ‘Not bad,' she said, ‘but what are we supposed to do? Tuck ourselves up underneath it?'

Charlie chewed on his lower lip and scratched his head.

Ella decided to give it a try. Taking the parchment from
Charlie, she recited the spell, stared hard at the leaf, tweaked her ear and pointed her forefinger with as much determination as she could muster. The leaf's veins bulged.

‘Cool,' said Ella, impressed. The breeze that had been nipping at the children's noses and stinging their eyes was becoming rather determined, to say the least. They needed to do better than this if they were to turn the leaf into anything that might provide them with shelter. A sharp gust caught in Ella's throat, stinging her face under its hood and making her eyes water. Her shoulders tingled wildly all of a sudden and her ears, she was almost sure, were about to burst into flames.

‘Let's use my tears!' said Ella at once, remembering. They had learnt in Essentials of Magic that almost anything was easier for a Flitterwig to produce than powerful tears. But that rule did not seem to apply to Ella. For her tears got her into all sorts of trouble. Visions of a Stretchified pencil sped through her mind. Stretchification. Impossible for Flitterwigs. But not for Ella. She wiped her eyes and spread a little of the salty liquid on the leaf. Together the children repeated the spell for Personification, tweaking their ears together. Ella closed her eyes and asked the leaf to do her bidding and shelter them for the night.

In an instant, the leaf blew up to twice its size and the veins inside it began to stretch and poke their ends out into arms and
legs. Wide eyes blinked on its shiny green back. The stem down its middle started to bend and then the leaf lay itself back down on the ground, pulling this way and that. Its limbs embedded themselves in the ice, transforming the leaf into a great, verdant, rubbery tent.

Ella and Charlie high-fived one another and leapt about in the billowing snow. This was brilliant!

Thomas the Giant opened an eye deep inside his earthbound shelter, many miles under the ground. He had set a Tingle Alert in his pinkie to rouse him should the children do anything out of the ordinary out there in Antarctica. He spat into his hand and conjured an image of the children.

‘Yes indeed, the child's tears really are remarkable,' he said to himself. ‘Well that is a sign, if ever there was one, of Clearheartedness.' The Giant yawned. Perhaps she is the Clearheart, he thought. He hoped to himself that he would not have to hold the Flitterwig to her word, not have to keep her with him, beholden until she proved the truth. For there is nothing pleasant about living underground unless one is a giant, or a mole! Thomas sighed as sleep overtook him again and he began to snore.

It smelt lovely inside their tent of green. A little like eucalyptus and a little like grass and a bit lemony. The sounds of a storm whipping up outside made them grateful for their shelter.

‘Cool!' said Charlie, sliding about on the floor.

‘Don Posiblemente,' cried Ella, remembering the scholar and her promise to keep in touch. ‘He will be so worried,' she said. ‘We'd better let him know we're okay.'

‘You get thinking then,' said Charlie. ‘I'll get some ice from outside and put it in the bark to make a Waterway.'

Don Posiblemente was grateful indeed for the child's thoughts. He settled back in his armchair once he had seen a murky reflection of them both in the Waters. The children were sheltered for the night. That was a hopeful sign, for the weather sounded treacherous out there.

Ella sat down. She was starving. She scooped up the globule of sap Thomas had given them, a thought forming in her mind. A useful thought, it would seem, for her hair flared and her shoulders itched again. The tent filled with the familiar smell of cinnamon and rain.

‘If you're going to try to eat that, I wouldn't bother,' said Charlie. ‘I tried the other bits and they're disgusting.'

‘But don't the Giants live off sap?' said Ella.

‘I suppose they do,' said Charlie, impressed at the girl's thoughtfulness. ‘I suppose you might as well try.' He slid into a sitting position next to her. Ella giggled at the ridiculousness of it but, Magic above, what she would give for a bowl of Granny's
pumpkin soup right now. She poked her tongue delicately into the sap.

‘Wooow,' she said as the heat of warm, sweet soup poured down her throat, accented with a hint of freshly dipped bread and butter. ‘This sticky goo tastes like pumpkin soup!'

Charlie grabbed it out of her hand and had a little lick.

‘No it does not!' he said. ‘It tastes like macaroni cheese and hot chocolate.' Ella looked at Charlie and Charlie looked at her.

‘Is that what you'd eat if you could eat anything?' she asked him.

‘Yup,' said Charlie, taking another lick. Catching her drift, this time he thought of hot apple pie with custard. What do you know! That was exactly what the sap tasted of.

‘I fancy chocolate cake and vanilla ice-cream,' Ella said out loud, snatching the sap from Charlie's hand. It was delicious. Chocolate mud cake, just what she'd hoped for. And the ice-cream had just a hint of cinnamon to it. Perfect.

‘Beans on toast,' yelled Charlie, grabbing the sap and dipping his tongue in it. The taste was just right.

‘Scrambled eggs and bacon,' Ella contested, taking the sap from her friend and supping greedily.

‘Children!' croaked Harold, feeling very at home on the leafy floor. Only Charlie understood him. ‘It would be only polite to
offer me a little taste, don't you think? And I wouldn't be demolishing the whole globule in one go if I were you. Who knows how long we are going to be here in this Magicforsaken place.'

Charlie translated for Ella, who apologised and, looking a little abashed, passed the sap to Harold.

‘You are quite right,' she said to the frog. He winked at her. Lucky for her he understood English.

‘One mosquito and one fly,' he croaked. Delicious.

Satiated and nearly asleep on their knees, the children cuddled up together in their emerald tent to get some rest.

As she drifted off, Ella silently thanked the Giant and Don Posiblemente for protecting them. She hadn't stopped to think about the practicalities of their mission for a moment. She had just acted with absolute trust in everyone and everything about her. Was that a bad thing, she wondered, as sleep took her.

Thomas's pinkie tingled again. He opened one eye. It was going to be tiring keeping an eye on this child, he could tell. He spat into his palm and looked sleepily into the waters. ‘Hmmm,' he said to himself.

‘The child is insightful, mindful of others and naïve. Able to think on her feet, trusting and unafraid—all good signs.' He
rolled over and rubbed his eyes. ‘I like her,' he said to himself, nodding off again almost before he had finished his thoughts.

In Spain, Don Posiblemente sat quietly by his water bowl. He rubbed his eyes, heavy with sleep, and took a sip from a tumbler of golden elixir to keep himself awake.

‘I hope I have done the right thing,' he said to Carmen as she placed a cheese sandwich on the table by his tumbler. She tucked her arm up into his and settled beside him to keep him company during his vigil.

‘Don't ju worry, my deeear,' she said to him in her thick Spanish accent. ‘All weell bee as eet should bee.'