Clearheart (17 page)

For the second time in as many days, Charlie found himself in the company of a Giant. Not the same Giant, mind you, but a Giant nonetheless. Only this time he was clearly underground and finding breathing overwhelmingly painful. It was as though every breath he took was being sucked through a wet sponge full of shards of rock. Charlie turned his head to look around. It turned so slowly and stiffly that he thought his neck might break. Everything was dark, grainy, muffled and slow. He felt trapped. He felt panicky. He felt truly scared for the first time during this whole adventure. He tried to move his arm to the pocket of his anorak. It was agony to do so. With every inch of movement he felt as if the hard, cold darkness was tightening about him. Squeezing the air out of him, pinching his skin. But he had to check. Harold was in there, thank Magic, but he was cold and hard and motionless.

‘Hello,' said the Giant. He sounded as if he were underwater. He peered at Charlie closely. Bolgus wasn't sure what to do. He had smashed the underside of the ice and was just closing
the fissure, as instructed, so the children wouldn't fall through, when Charlie
did
fall through. The effort of smashing the ice had tired him, but he knew the boy would die if he were to be trapped. So he had instinctively grabbed the boy and Solidified him before he could be crushed.

‘I'm Bolgus,' said the Giant sleepily, ‘and I have Solidified you.'

Charlie stared at the Giant. ‘You've whatified me?' he asked, his voice echoey and thick, his jaw aching. He tried to stay calm. ‘Am I going to die?' he asked.

‘Oh no,' said the Giant. ‘You can breath and stuff. It gets easier with time.' He yawned, wiping his eyes. ‘I think.'

‘O-O-Okay,' Charlie stuttered, his head feeling crushed. He wanted to scream. His stutter made the Giant laugh. Charlie wanted to cry. But he had to stay calm. He had to survive. He had to get to Ella. He tried to take a deep breath, but it made his lungs feel like the air was being sucked out of them. The rocks about him were squeezing him mercilessly. Bolgus looked very much like Thomas. Except Thomas was bald and this Giant had a rich head of red hair and equally red eyebrows. Without this contrast in the darkness, Charlie would have doubted the Giant was real.

Bolgus looked at the freckly boy. The Flitterwig looked
terrified, which made him sad. What had he done?

‘What the?' said the Duke, staring into the Waters at Charlie. The Flitterwig was alive. Underground. Had Bolgus Solidified him? Why? He stepped back from the dais and scratched his head.

Ella moved swiftly. She didn't know how long she would have before the Duke came back over to her. She regurgitated her Candlefloss (she didn't know how) and, cowering in a ball around it, laid it on the snowy floor. She began to shiver at once, but her anorak still offered protection.

‘Don't touch the girl,' the Duke hissed, without turning. The Troggles, moving in on her, froze. One shuffled forward still. The Duke shot a spray of dust at him without even looking, reducing the Troggle to sludge. He turned back to the Waters at once.

Ella could see the ice melting beneath her. She popped the Candlefloss back in her mouth and swallowed. She peered through her hands into the space she had created in the ice. She couldn't see anything. A Troggle poked her with a pincer. She swung around and shot the Troggle such a warning look that the creature fairly shrivelled in the green light of her eyes. She
reached her hand into the space and felt around. She felt something. It was a leg, or at least she thought it was. It was thinner than a splintered toothpick. She could not feel a spark of heat in what was left of the pixie's flesh.

Ella's heart broke in half then and there. Rushes of energy coursed through her body, guilt and anger and sorrow. Tears streamed down her face, melting the ice with their heat. Ella beat the ground with her fist.

‘What in all that is under Earth was that?' said Bolgus from under the earth. A series of reverberations coming from the vicinity of the Duke's lair pounded through the ice and the rocks. Bolgus had been just about to take a snooze, but there was something about the reverberations that worried him. They were like the ripples of an earthquake coming, or the rumbles that precede eruptions.

Charlie felt them too, and he knew it was Ella. He knew it in every fibre of his body. She must have found Dixon, and it had to be bad for her vibes to be so strong. He had to protect Ella! What was he to do? He had to pull it together. He was a Flitterwig Protector, after all. He had magical powers, didn't he? The boy tried to shut out the trapped feeling he had, the same
feeling he imagined being locked in a horrible, dark, cramped box would give him. He was going to have to see if he could make this Giant trust him.

‘Mr Booolgus,' he said, struggling to move his mouth and fighting the pain. ‘Thaaat's Ella. Sheee's the Cleeearheart.' The effort of talking was crushing his jaw and he sounded like some sort of zombie.

‘The Clearheart is dead!' Bolgus roared. ‘How dare you mention her name to me.'

‘The laaast one iiis,' said Charlie with a whimper as rock pressed against his face. ‘But thaaat was yeeears ago. Ella is theee next one. She's ooonly eleven. She liiived all alooone with her graaandparents after her mother and brothers were kiiilled in an aaaccident and her faaather refuuused to have aaanything to dooo with her beeecause of iiit.'

Bolgus, who wasn't a bad Giant at heart, felt a stab of pity. He knew only too well how horrible it felt to be held unfairly responsible by a loved one, and he could see that the effort of talking was murderously painful for the boy. Magic knows the Giant hated being above ground for too long. Made him feel so ill. It must be like that for the boy, but the other way around.

Charlie struggled on. ‘A liiittle while agooo the Magicals
aaasked her to help get the Deeewdrops baaack after the Duuuke stooole them. Which she diiid. And now her best frieeend, a pixie called Diiixon, has been kidnaaapped by the Duuuke. Don Posiiiblemeeente said that the Giiiants would help us find him, and Thooomas diiid. And nooow sheee's in daaanger. Yooou can dooo whatever you liiike with meee once we heeelp her, but dooo you thiiink you cooould trust meee for now and help us tooo?'

Charlie's eyes rolled back in his head and his eyeballs scraped against his eyelids like knives. Tears coursed down Bolgus's cheeks. The boy was being so brave. Bolgus was confused. What had he done? The Duke hadn't told him any of this. The Giant berated himself for being too dim to even ask. What was he to do? Perhaps if he helped the little children, his brother would see that he was a good Giant. He leaned forward and, with the tip of his fat finger, tried to clear a little of the grit and earth and rock from the boy's mouth.

Ella prised Dixon from his icy prison and gathered him in her hands. Still curled up around him in a ball, she did what her instincts bid her do. She blew the heat from inside her onto his broken body. A Troggle, spotting the pixie, snarled and dribbled
and grunted, jumping up and down and pointing at the child.

The Duke, without so much as turning again, pointed his finger at the Troggle and zapped him to sludge too. While he watched Bolgus in one bowl of Water, he spoke to Saul in the other. ‘I have the Clearheart. She is suitably distraught. She can smell the pixie. That should be enough to stir the emotions. Get me some tears to strengthen me. We will begin Shrinkification of munitions tomorrow. We will Shrinkify you and the child after that.' The Duke let out a low, guttural laugh. ‘We've done it, Saul. We have her at last.'

At the other end of the Waterway, the bound and gagged Saul tried desperately to send the Duke a message with his eyes. All was not well at the Ulnus estate. Indeed, a long, spiky branch was pointed directly at Saul's skull. A long, spiky branch growing straight out of Mrs Ulnus's fingertip, to be precise. Gloria's parents had been suspicious ever since the Duke had Possessified their daughter, and they weren't taking any chances. They intended to hold Saul prisoner until the Duke returned to Magus and changed the Magical Hierarchy. Saul would not be freed until dryads were given their official place in the Royal Court, and the Dryad Flitterwigs their rightful seat in the Rooniun.

Ella blew on the pixie with all her might. But he was
lifeless—she had arrived too late. She blew and blew anyway, her breath heating his body, frail as frozen matchsticks. Ella held the pixie to her chest, her hair swirling about her wildly, her eyes burning with a fury that sent each emerald beneath the Earth's surface into a blazing frenzy.

Such loss had been inconceivable to the Clearheart until now. Her grandparents, her mother, her brothers—all those losses had been out of her control. But Charlie. And Dixon. Dixon had come to her, unbound by any ties of blood. Only a clear, true love for life. An obedience to a Queen who asked only for the Natural Balance to be restored.

The pixie in her hand remained motionless.

She opened her palm one more time, to look at the mere speck that was once her dearest friend. Tears fell from her eyes. She tried to dry the pixie, to wipe away the tears that fell like dewdrops on his tiny frame. Unaware of the ice cracking beneath her, Ella paused.

Her hair wrapped around her like a cloak and she leaned in close to her hand. Was it possible? There it was again. She was sure she had seen the pixie's chest heave. She leaned in even closer. Closer still. She could hear a sound. She put her ear up to the pixie's mouth.

‘Oh, oh,' quieter than a whisper. She thought she heard it, and it made her cry all the more. He was alive!

‘Oh, oh.' Now she was almost sure.

‘He's breathing!' Ella whispered. And then the pixie said something else. Ella leaned in closer. She couldn't quite hear him. Was he saying ‘groove'? What did that mean? And then she got it.

‘Move,' the tiny man was whispering. ‘Move.'

Samantha and Humphrey stood in the poppy field at Hedgeberry, calling out to they knew not what or who.

‘Yoohoo, Spirit Tree,' Samantha called. ‘Are you here?'