Greenwild, page 13
Chapter 28
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Daisy had never heard anything like it. Thunder rolled through the air, peal after peal, like a great bell tolling underwater. Rain lashed against the turreted roof and she could hear the wind howling outside the windows of the Roost.
“Storm!” came Miss Tufton’s voice from the landing. Daisy, who had been sneaking down the stairs, froze in place.
“Ah, Daisy! Good, there you are,” said the housekeeper, peering up at her. “You won’t want to miss this.”
She hurried away before Daisy could ask what was going on. She glanced at Napoleon, who twitched a whisker at her. Then, together, they hurried into the kitchen.
BOOM! The whole treehouse was swaying violently, and lightning flashed outside the window. According to the tulip clock, it was just after midnight. Miss Tufton was looking impatient and barely paused before bundling Daisy into a pair of fluorescent yellow wellies and a matching raincoat and sweeping her out through the door. Daisy tucked Napoleon inside her jumper, hoping that the waterproofs would keep him from getting too wet. She wasn’t sure where they were going, but it was clear that her trip to the hidden garden would have to wait.
Outside, the rain was driving sideways, icy and vicious. The wind whipped the trees and a thin moon cut through the racing clouds like a knife.
Miss Tufton had to roar over the noise of the storm. “THIS WAY.”
A bolt of lightning broke the sky, and three seconds later came the deafening rumble of thunder. Miss Tufton was hobbling toward the woods, into the heart of the storm. Dimly, Daisy could make out the shapes of other Botanists converging and could hear the uproar of shouts and calls and crashes. At the head of the crowd was the unmistakable form of Madame Gallitrop. Gradually, Daisy realized that the shouts weren’t panicked but highly organized.
“HELLO!” came a voice in her ear. She looked around and saw Indigo, soaking wet and grinning. Just behind him was Acorn, red hair bound back in two tight pigtails. The Prof stood by Acorn’s side, carefully ignoring Daisy.
“What’s going on?” Daisy shouted. Glittering snakes of lightning split the sky, sending out forked tongues of electricity.
“Lightning-seed harvest!” yelled Indigo, shoving a bucket into her hands. “Collect as many you can.”
Daisy saw that the gathered Botanists were sprinting in all directions, holding out buckets to catch thick showers of blue sparks as they fell. Madame Gallitrop was busy directing proceedings from halfway up a tree. In the brief lull after the thunder, she raised her voice.
“Three, two, one … Ready everyone … NOW!” As she yelled, the next fork of lightning thrashed down from above, blindingly white. The whole scene appeared frozen for a moment, and then everything was in motion again as the blue sparks rained down and the Botanists sprinted after them. A tall, long-haired man caught a seed and yelled in triumph. Daisy could see Indigo racing after another, skidding on his knees and catching it in his bucket just before it hit the ground.
“YES!”
Daisy looked about wildly as the sparks showered down like blue fireworks, fizzling out where they hit the earth. She saw one soaring over her head and ran after it, boots squelching, ears filled with the roar of the storm. She heard Napoleon’s furious meow in her ears and lifted the bucket over her head, hardly able to keep up with the skidding of her feet. And then: “Oof!” She felt something heavy hit the bucket and staggered to stay upright. There inside it, shining against the black rain, was a single seed of lightning, hissing and crackling with electricity. The next moment, someone knocked against her so hard that the seed leaped out like a fire opal against the darkness, and sputtered out on the earth.
“Oops, clumsy me!” It was Ivy Helix, caramel hair coiled sleekly beneath her hood. “Poor Ditzy Thistledown, can’t even catch a single seed.” She sighed tragically, and her voice was sugary when she spoke again. “You don’t belong here, Graysider. Go home.”
Then came the next lash of lightning, farther to the east this time, and she vanished into the dark as the Botanists scattered once more, slipping and whooping as they chased the storm.
Daisy was boiling with rage. Go home. The words echoed like thunder in her ears. She didn’t have a real home. Home was nowhere in the world except by Ma’s side, and that had been taken away.
A thought came to her unbidden: if she didn’t belong here, then it wouldn’t matter what she did next. She felt a rush like static through her bloodstream.
No one was watching. She could stick to her plan and go to the hidden garden. Or … She glanced around, thoughts racing. She wasn’t far from the Perilous Glasshouse. And what she wanted more than anything right now, with Ivy’s words stinging in her ears, was to take back her father’s paperweight: the one thing Ma had told her to keep safe.
She would never have a better chance.
Slowly, she put down her empty bucket and slipped away into the woods.
Daisy had never been to the Perilous Glasshouse, but she knew where it was—everyone did. It lay at the heart of the woods like a great glass castle, ringed by a battlement of thorny brambles that rose as high as a house. She paused, looking up at them. Then she took a breath, stepped forward—and jerked to a halt. Someone had grabbed the back of her jacket.
“Stop!” hissed a low voice. “Are you completely insane?” It was the Prof, dressed head to toe in waterproofs. Her curls were held back by a headband patterned with tiny acorns.
“What, are you following me now?” asked Daisy, outraged. “Keeping an eye on the spy?”
“I saw you slip away,” said the Prof. “Do you have any idea what those are?” She gestured toward the brambles, which glittered dimly with fat dark berries. “Carnivorous bloodberries. I knew you were stupid, but do you actually have a death wish?”
“Look,” said Daisy hotly. “I have to get the paperweight back. I can’t explain now, but it’s important.”
Acorn and Indigo appeared behind the Prof. “What’s going on?” asked Acorn in a small voice, glancing between them. “Are you fighting again?”
Daisy looked at the younger girl and saw that her eyes had filled with tears. Something inside her pinged, like a rubber band against her heart.
“We’re not fighting,” she said. The Prof snorted. “We’re, um, having a discussion about getting into the Perilous Glasshouse.”
Acorn gave a little gasp. “But it’s against the rules! The Perilous Glasshouse is—”
“Perilous. Yeah, I grasped that. But Sheldrake stole my paperweight, and I want it back. And I’ve been wondering why Craven wanted it so badly. If we know that, it could help us work out how he’s connected to the disappearances.”
She turned to the Prof, closing her eyes as she spoke. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about it sooner, but Ma made me promise to keep it secret, and I’d only just met you, and”—she hesitated—“I’m not very good at the whole friendship thing.” She looked away, cheeks burning. “Now, if you could go away and pretend you didn’t see me, I have a job to do. I can do it alone.”
“No!” said the Prof, looking furious. “I forbid you.”
Daisy prepared to push past her.
Then the Prof took a breath. “I forbid you … to go in there alone. If this paperweight is a clue, then I’m coming with you.”
“What?”
“You heard me. There’s no way you can break into the Perilous Glasshouse without my help. It would be like sending a bushbaby into a snake pit. You need me.”
Daisy stared at her, speechless.
Then: “I’m coming too,” said Indigo.
There was a tiny pause. “Me too,” said Acorn in a shaky voice.
“All right.” The Prof nodded and looked around. “I’d say we have an hour before the storm blows itself out, which means we need to move fast. First things first, we need a diversion. Something to distract the bloodberries.”
“Luckily, you have me,” said Indigo smugly. “It’s not for nothing they call me the Para-King.”
“Honestly, Ind,” the Prof said, rolling her eyes, “that is never going to catch on.”
“Just you wait.” Indigo whistled, and a flock of parakeets soared through the air and landed on the branches of a nearby tree like rustling green leaves. “I can ask them to create a distraction.”
The Prof gave a tiny smile and nodded. Then she looked around at them. “The glasshouse is called Perilous for a reason. We’ve all heard the stories. There are some seriously nasty things in there. We’ll need to get in, find the paperweight and get out as fast as we can.”
Daisy nodded shakily. Acorn tightened her pigtails, and together the four of them walked toward the brambles.
“Ready?”
Indigo whistled through his fingers and the parakeets soared above the bramble thicket. The bloodberries swarmed up toward them, searching for blood as the birds flew nimbly out of reach, unscathed.
“Go, go, GO!”
As one, they sprinted into the space left by the surging bloodberries. It took less than sixty seconds for the brambles to notice them, and then they were under attack, with thorns latching onto their limbs with tiny vampiric teeth. Daisy felt herself assaulted from a hundred different directions, felt thorn-fangs fastening onto her arms and legs, bouncing off her jacket, tangling in her hair. She stepped on a swollen berry and dark red liquid squelched out. She opened her mouth to scream and felt a thorn hook itself into the tender inside of her cheek. No, she thought. Get off. She yanked herself free as the thorns gave way around her and she half ran, half fell into empty space. Seconds later, the others came stumbling after her, blood-streaked and gasping.
They were through.
The Prof had a vicious scratch across one cheek. Indigo had a chunk of hair missing, and Acorn was fighting back tears. But they had done it.
“Right,” said Daisy, fighting for composure and wiping her bleeding palm against her leg. “Right.” She turned her back on the bloodberries and squared herself to face the glasshouse. It looked like a medieval fortress built from glass. Each of the clear walls was three feet thick and completely impenetrable. Daisy strode up to the door and pressed her hand against it. It was smooth as a mirror and cold to the touch.
There was a keyhole in the shape of a wolf’s mouth with snarling fangs. It was carved from pure white wood that glimmered so that the wolf’s eyes seemed to blink.
“What now?” Daisy glanced around.
The Prof drew in a deep breath. “It’s a blood-key door,” she said quietly, moving toward it. “It opens when it’s given blood.”
Daisy moved in front of the Prof before she could get any closer. “I’ll do it.”
Carefully, she angled her bleeding palm toward the lock so that three drops of blood splattered across the fangs of the wolf’s mouth. The miniature jaws widened, exposing a set of needle-like teeth that lunged for her hand. She leaped backward, but it seemed that her blood had been enough. With a snarling click and a sigh of cold air, the teeth retracted and the door swung open.
Chapter 29
Daisy wrapped her hand in her scarf, blinking against the pain. Then she glanced at the others. Indigo gave a small nod. Acorn was gripping onto the Prof’s wrist. Together, they stepped inside.
The Perilous Glasshouse was very beautiful, in the way a knife is beautiful and bright in the moment before it cuts you. The air was hushed and still, and all around were tall, knotted trees with leaves and flowers that glowed in the dark. The flowers were ravishingly lovely, fat silver magnolias that shone like starlight fallen to earth. They were giving off a scent that was like a Sunday afternoon in heaven. Daisy staggered. She blinked slowly, then listed to the side.
Blink. What was she doing here?
Blink. Where was she?
The smell was flooding through her, a sweet piercing shock that stole sensation and obliterated memory.
Blink. Daisy opened her eyes to see the Prof bending down and gesturing to her frantically. She was pushing some kind of putty into her nose, and trying to make Daisy do the same. At last, Daisy understood. She pressed the putty into her nostrils, blocking out the scent of the flowers. She breathed through her mouth. Slowly, her head cleared. She stood, staggered and looked around.
“Sobby about dat,” she said. It sounded like she had a nasty cold.
“Dob’t wubby,” said Indigo, who was already moving forward. “Reaby?”
Acorn wrinkled her plugged-up nose, looking determined. The Prof adjusted her spectacles. Daisy nodded, and the four of them moved forward into the glasshouse.
Beyond the magnolia grove was a beautiful knot garden laid out in an elegant geometric pattern, with hemlock hedges surrounding beds of herbs and flowers—some frothy and white like lace, some with flowers like bronze bells, others with big purple flowers like stars. Just as Daisy was thinking how pretty they all looked, the Prof lifted her chin. “Poison garben,” she said, her voice still indistinct. She pointed. “Deably nightshabe. Snakeroot. Hemlock. Each one’s enoub to kill you fibty times ober.”
On one side of the knot garden was a grove of giant cacti, each one twice the height of a man, spines bristling; on the other was a colony of enormous Venus flytraps, ten times the size of the one that had swallowed Daisy’s necklace, with huge fangs that opened and closed lazily.
And in the center of the knot garden, sitting in a silver cage, was a beautiful orchid with a hundred flowers.
Its petals were dark and shimmering, slicked with shifting, unsettling patterns that seemed to absorb all the light. The plaque on the outside of the cage read: GHOST-MOTH ORCHID, and a Botanist in the red and gold uniform of a Mallowmarshal stood beside it, leaning on a sharpened pitchfork. It was Corporal Smedley, the spotty young man who’d been in the guard house when Daisy had first arrived through the Mallow gate. He appeared to be dozing on his feet, his chin dipping dangerously close to the pitchfork as he snored, and then jerking up again as he caught himself, before beginning to nod once more.
Daisy and the others ducked down before he had the chance to wake and spot them.
“What now?” whispered Indigo as the guard shifted and coughed. They were far enough away from the magnolia trees to remove their nose plugs, and Daisy dug hers out with a finger before shaking her head despairingly.
“I didn’t realize there would be a guard. What’s a ghost-moth orchid anyway?”
The Prof glanced at her. “I’ll tell you later—if we ever get out of here. We need to focus on the paperweight, remember?”
“Right.” Daisy nodded. “If we go round that way”—she indicated the side of the knot garden—“we’ll be shielded from view by the cactuses.”
“The cacti,” said the Prof. They stared at her. “Cacti, not cactuses.”
“Are you serious?” Indigo looked incredulous. “That’s what you’re worried about right now?”
Daisy rolled her eyes—and that was when she spotted the dandelion paperweight. It was nestled in the fanged mouth of one of the gigantic Venus flytraps. She stared at it, mind racing. To get it out, she’d have to reach an arm right into its glistening jaws. Unless …
“Prof, can I borrow your headband?”
The Prof looked confused, but handed it over. Daisy hunted around until she found a Y-shaped stick among the tree litter and twisted the fabric around it to fashion a slingshot.
“I need something small and heavy,” she hissed. Indigo rummaged in his pocket and eventually extracted an enormous and slightly sticky gobstopper. “Will this do?”
“Ick! Indigo!” She paused. “All right, all right. Hand it over.”
Moving slowly and with infinite care, she placed the gobstopper in the slingshot and lined up the flytrap in her sights. She drew back the sling, breathed in, and—THWOK!
The gobstopper soared through the air and into the open jaws of the Venus flytrap. The plant gave a convulsive hiccup, shuddered—and then spat out the gobstopper in disgust. Along with it came the dandelion paperweight, covered in corrosive green slime. Using her sleeve, Daisy picked it up carefully and wiped it off. She grinned. “Got it.”
She lifted her hand and the paperweight shone out like a star, glinting off the Prof’s spectacles. Anyone watching from outside would have seen the whole glasshouse glowing like a silver lantern.
“I think I know what this is,” whispered the Prof. “There are illustrations in Grandfather’s books, but I never thought I’d see it in real life.” She reached out and touched it, eyes wide. “It’s a dandelight.”
The others looked blank, and the Prof sighed, exasperated. “The story goes that one of the Old Botanists made it from one of Mallowmarsh’s dandelions when they were first planted. The art was lost centuries ago, so this must be … really old.” She glanced at Daisy, still whispering so as not to wake the corporal. “According to the story, this Botanist—Sir Robert Chiveley, the man who built Chiveley Chase—fell madly in love with a Graysider and created the dandelight so she could visit him whenever she wanted. It works like a compass, you see, magnetized to the Greenwild—always leading you toward the door of the nearest pocket.”
Daisy nodded, remembering the way its beam had swung like a compass needle, leading her toward the entrance to Mallowmarsh.
Indigo frowned. “But no one without magic can get through the gates—or even see them.”
“That’s the point,” said the Prof quietly. “The dandelight is also a key: it allows the holder to cross the threshold, even if they don’t have magic themselves.”
Suddenly, there was an odd noise from behind them: something like a dog choking on a bread roll. Daisy turned and drew in a deep, shocked breath.
Slumped on the floor was the limp form of Corporal Smedley, with blood trickling out of his nose.
And the ghost-moth orchid was gone.
Without stopping to think, Daisy sprinted over to the guard’s body. His face was very pale, and when she shook him he didn’t respond.
“What do we do?” Indigo’s voice was panicky.
