The Troublemakers, page 16
‘They’re vertebrae,’ Never told her.
Cordelia stopped to stare.
‘This entire island is made of the skeleton of a prehistoric Sea Dragon,’ continued Never. ‘We think it might be an ancient ancestor of our own Sea Dragon.’
Never turned to point back the way they had come, and Cordelia saw that the rocks they’d just clambered up were not a random jumble of boulders. In fact, they made the shape of an enormous reptilian foot, half buried in the white sand. Rockpools glistened between the long ridges of foot bones, and the toes were shaggy with seaweed, claws crusted with barnacles. A creature with a foot this huge must have been enormous – probably as long as the City of London from end to end. It could have swallowed the Tower and drunk the Thames.
Cordelia gaped dizzily, until Never pulled her onwards. ‘Up the tail!’
The white rocks became narrower as they went further into the jungle. An arch of green leaves closed over them and soon they were scaling large boulders that led steadily uphill in a smooth sweeping curve. A rushing river splashed and tumbled beside them in a deep green gully. Each boulder was as tall as Cordelia, so the pirates had to haul her up, helped by vines.
Cordelia had to whisper the words that echoed through her mind, because they seemed too incredible to speak aloud: ‘We’re climbing up a spine!’
As Cordelia and the pirates made their way up the gully, climbing a spine that was thousands of years old, Cordelia noticed more and more plants and animals, insects and birds that she had never seen before.
She imagined the slow congregation of endangered species arriving at this island over the past thousand years: from plant and animal kingdoms alike, seeking refuge on the bones of an ancient creature. She pictured seeds floating through the night; birds drawn across the sky, following the purple wink of the star like thread following a needle. She imagined trees, the marrow of their wood humming with desire to be safe from the bite of the axe; and the urgent flick of insect wings in the starlight as they flitted for safety.
All had come here for sanctuary.
Cordelia ran her hands over rough tree trunks and smooth rocks, stroked strange flower petals and the iridescent shells of beetles, and she realized she had been wrong about the island. When she’d first arrived, she had felt violent magic all around her. The place had been an assault on her sensitive magical senses.
Now she understood: there had been so many new magical things crowding in on her that she’d been overwhelmed, like listening to seven thousand symphonies at once.
She tuned her ear to the quiet music of a single flower. It sang its magic, a tender song of hope in darkness.
‘Those flowers glow at night,’ Never said, watching her as she cupped the blossom gently in her hand. ‘D’you know what they’re called?’
Cordelia shook her head.
‘I don’t know their name,’ she said. ‘But I can tell they’re very precious.’
Further up the gully, on what Annie proudly told Cordelia was a prehistoric leg bone, they found Billy Bones and Vinegar Jim racing tumbling shrubs along the high white rock, speeding close to the edge and roaring with laughter.
‘Come down!’ Tabitha yelled. ‘We’re showing our teacher the island!’
As Billy and Jim clambered down from the leg bone, Cordelia watched several snails with orange shells the size of carriage wheels inch slowly upwards past them, leaving bright trails.
‘D’you know what tree that is?’ Annie asked, pointing up to a majestic tree taller than a cathedral spire, with branches like wide-open arms and bright green, heart-shaped leaves.
Cordelia did not recognize the leaves or the bark, but she carefully laid her hands on the tree trunk. Hope surged through her palms with the sonorous power of whale song.
She did recognize this magic! But it was like recognizing a song she’d once heard somebody humming, except now it was being played by a full orchestra.
Cordelia remembered – when she was very small, one quiet afternoon in the Alchemy Parlour – her Great-aunt Petronella unwinding her silver hair and handing Cordelia her ancient wooden hatpin. As her hand closed over it, Cordelia had felt a thread of faint hope humming in her hand.
‘This is made from a branch of the last Soulhope Tree,’ Great-aunt Petronella had told her. ‘When I was a young girl, that last Soulhope Tree was felled in the Ashdown Forest: the king had it cut down for his warship. On hearing this terrible news, my father went to try to save some seeds from the fallen tree. He begged the king for just one pod, but the king laughed at him and threw him a bare broken branch. My father turned that slim stick of Soulhope wood into a hatpin for me, because hope is the most important thing to keep in your head. Soulhope Trees could grow higher than any tree in the world, because they had the deepest roots. They should never be cut down or burned. When the king’s warship caught fire in the channel, his men despaired, and that is how the war was lost.’
Cordelia pressed her forehead to the vast trunk, thinking of her great-aunt, and whispered, ‘There is one still living. If I ever get home, I’ll have to tell her.’
She turned from the tree, wiping hopeful tears from her eyes, to find the pirates looking at her curiously.
‘It’s a Soulhope Tree,’ she sniffed, smiling. ‘Your island is extremely magical.’
‘It’s not our island,’ Jim corrected her. ‘It doesn’t belong to us; we belong to it.’
Before Cordelia could quite grasp this logic, the pirates pulled her through a narrow tunnel in the bone-rock to emerge in a wide forest glade that appeared to be draped with giant lace tablecloths. The tablecloths were each as wide as a galleon’s sails, swagged above her head. They hung in intricate patterns from all the trees, with frilly white rosettes in their centres.
‘This is Tablecloth Glade,’ Tabitha announced.
With a jolt in her belly, Cordelia realized that the white rosettes in the middles of the huge tablecloths were spiders. And the tablecloths were, in fact, enormous spiderwebs.
Cordelia staggered backwards as a spider the size of a dinner plate descended silently on a thread of web, to peer at her with eight eyes.
‘They won’t hurt you,’ Never told her. ‘The worst they’ll do is try to decorate you.’
He indicated Billy, who giggled and wriggled as a white spider spun an elaborate silken cape around his shoulders.
Cordelia studied the creature as it worked. Its legs were covered in snowy hairs and its eight bright eyes frilled with corkscrew ringlets. It was somehow neat and flamboyant at the same time, its legs busy and clever, its movements quick and trim.
They found Smokestack sitting on a boulder halfway up the glade. His grey hair had been embellished with an ornate hat made entirely of spider silk.
‘Thought we’d find you here, Smokestack!’ Tabitha called.
‘I just love to sit here and watch them spin,’ he said with a contented sigh. ‘They make yarns of such beauty; I don’t know how I could ever spin a yarn to match theirs.’
‘Maybe our teacher will teach you?’ Jim suggested.
But the teacher in question hardly heard this suggestion. Cordelia watched as Shelly carefully laid some frilly flowers on a rock. Several spiders scuttled enthusiastically down from their webs and began eating the dripping nectar.
Cordelia was reminded of her father. He always gave thank-you gifts to nature when collecting ingredients and never took more than was needed. Prospero Hatmaker believed that nature deserved the utmost gentleness and respect. Rivers should always be called by name, clouds should be bowed to (whatever mood they were in), birds should be addressed Sir or My Lady, and even trails of ants snaking across pavements should be given right of way.
He would love this island, Cordelia thought. Every leaf and petal contained enchantment, every bird call was a song of wonder, every insect a living glyph of mystery. Every breath of air carried magic on it.
‘We should show her the lagoon,’ whispered Annie.
With sudden enthusiastic howls of ‘LAGOON!’ the Troublemakers surged away up the white-veiled glade.
The lagoon was a deep, still pool surrounded by flowers that glowed like fallen stars. A waterfall tumbled down over smooth white vertebrate rocks at one end. Huge lilac boulders lay half submerged and vines trailed into the water, which was so clear Cordelia could see the bottom, shining brightly.
‘It’s solid silver down there. We think it’s from centuries of moonlight falling on the ancient Sea Dragon’s pelvis bones,’ Never said. ‘We call it Moonstruck Lagoon.’
The Troublemakers had already shed most of their clothes and were huddled together holding a whispered conference in the shallows. Shelly nudged the others as Cordelia approached. They turned, smiling shiftily, all looking rather absurd in their underclothes and enormous barnacled hats.
‘Why don’t you take your hats off?’ Cordelia asked.
The wildness in her wits was telling her something was wrong.
Then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw a figure flash through the trees above the waterfall.
It was a girl, running fast.
This was no pirate; this person was too small. It must be –
‘PRUDENCE!’ Cordelia yelled.
Startled eyes flashed before the girl turned and fled.
Without even removing her boots, Cordelia dived into the lagoon, taking the most direct route in pursuit.
Never dived after her but she was too quick for him.
She splashed through the water, pirates bellowing at her to stop, and scrambled up the knobbly stones of the waterfall.
‘Prudence!’ she panted. ‘Wait! I’m a friend! Wait!’
At the top, she sloshed along the shallow river to find footprints – child-sized ones – that led through the deep mud of the opposite bank, into the glade beyond.
She could hear crashing in the jungle ahead of her. She shouldered her way through dense shrubs and pushed aside curtains of vines.
‘Prudence!’
Cordelia stumbled into a small glade and skidded to a stop.
Thorn Lawless stood in the yawning mouth of a cave, on the verge of being swallowed whole by the darkness. The pirate queen wore a mean grin.
‘She’s in there, isn’t she!’ Cordelia panted. ‘You’re keeping her in that cave! Prudence!’
Thorn hurled a sharp laugh at Cordelia, like a knife. ‘You want to look for Prudence in the Belly? Go ahead!’
Thorn stood aside and Cordelia was suddenly wary. This was too easy – the way some traps are too easy.
She walked slowly towards the yawning mouth and saw that the cave had once been the hollow ribcage of the prehistoric Sea Dragon. The huge struts of its ribs, arching above her, were overgrown with vines. The dripping deep-green air smelled of ancient secrets and primordial time.
Cordelia stood on the threshold, poised between the light and the dark.
‘Prudence?’ she whispered.
The only answer was a soft snicker from Thorn.
Cordelia stepped into the underworld.
As her eyes grew accustomed to the dark, she began to see wonders in it.
Crystals in the cave glowed; stalagmites like galaxies stretched up from the floor. Luminous rocks bulged on the ceiling like planets blooming in a night sky. It was extraordinarily strange and beautiful.
But she couldn’t get distracted. That was what Thorn wanted. Where had Prudence gone?
Cordelia noticed the tingle in her fingertips. There was something powerfully magic close by; she could feel it throbbing in the still air. It was something troubled and heavy – jagged enough to cut herself on – just out of reach.
She looked over her shoulder at Thorn, whose eyes flashed, daring her to brave it, to venture further in.
Suddenly a thought struck Cordelia.
In fact, her fingers knew before her brain did.
She took three quick steps, reached up and knocked the pirate queen’s hat off.
‘NO!’
Thorn Lawless’s face changed. It was like the tide rolling sand smooth on a beach.
Thorn’s craggy features softened and grew youthful. Without her hat, she was barely older than Cordelia. Even her teeth became less jagged, though her growl was just as deadly as before and her eyes blazed.
She might be younger, but she was still as dangerous as wildfire.
‘I’ll make you sorry now, Maker!’ Thorn snarled, and tackled Cordelia in a tangle of hair and fists and fury.
Cordelia hit the ground, fighting, and managed to shove the girl off her. She scrambled, panting, to her feet, her mind whirling. Thorn Lawless had been in disguise all this time! She was really –
‘Prudence Oglethorne,’ Cordelia whispered. ‘It’s you!’
Thorn’s claim that Prudence was not dead but would never be seen again now made perfect sense. Because Thorn was Prudence.
‘You’ve discovered my secret,’ she hissed, voice harsh even though it had lost its gravelly rasp. ‘Pity you’ll never get off this island to tell everybody how clever you’ve been.’
‘Pru–’ Cordelia began.
‘Don’t call me that!’ Thorn interrupted viciously. ‘That’s not my name any more! My friends have always called me Thorn. It’s the only part of my real name that I like: Oglethorne. And now I’m an outlaw, Lawless is my surname.’
Cordelia nodded. ‘All right – Thorn. Your father is worried about you! He thinks you’ve been –’
‘My father!’ Thorn’s scornful bark didn’t match the sudden fear in her eyes. ‘My father has only ever worried that I’ll bring disgrace on the family! He can’t find me. He – he mustn’t.’
Cordelia shook her head, sure there were pieces missing from this puzzle. ‘But your father is the one who wants you to be found – when you were kidnapped by the Trouble–’ She hesitated, frowning. ‘Were you really kidnapped by the Troublemakers? Or …’
Cordelia trailed off as Thorn stared at her with wildfire eyes.
‘We’re not that different, are we, Hatmaker?’ Thorn murmured. ‘There’s just one thing that makes all the difference between us.’
Cordelia frowned. She could not guess what the one thing might be.
‘Permission,’ Thorn said, her voice quiet as a cut-throat’s knife. ‘You were born into a Maker family. You’re talented at it but – more importantly – you’re allowed to Make. I am not; I’ve never been allowed to Make. But I couldn’t help myself. From the day I could crawl, to pick daisies from the lawn, I’ve been a Maker.’
Cordelia must have stared for a moment too long, because Thorn suddenly snapped, ‘Rainbow! Dinner!’
The air became charged, the way it does before a lightning strike, and a piece of living darkness surged out of the cave.
It was as long as a warship, nose to tail, with jaws big enough to crunch the king’s carriage. Its tail, flicking menacingly behind it, was a fiery fork large enough to spear the king’s best horse. Cordelia had seen that tail flashing in the boiling water – this was the fearfully strong monster that had pulled the Trouble across the seas at lightning speed!
Leathery wings unfurled like black sails, and its eyes were dreadful dark pools, deep enough to drown in. It wore a jackanapes’ grin as it stalked forward, claws clicking like scimitars on the rock.
The Sea Dragon.
7. Leathery wings unfurled like black sails, and its eyes were dreadful dark pools, deep enough to drown in.
Cordelia knew she should run – but she was caught in those terrible whirlpool eyes.
‘Devour her!’ Thorn demanded.
Cordelia had found out too much: she knew Thorn’s secret and now she was going to be eaten.
The creature opened its jaws, revealing a row of glinting teeth, sharp as swords.
Cordelia couldn’t move. She couldn’t speak. She could only squeeze her eyes shut and hold her breath and think of her family, her father, her friends –
There was a hideous tearing sound: the sickening chomp and mash of jaws.
But Cordelia didn’t feel like she was being eaten.
She opened one eye. A tangle of green guts was jiggling in front of her face.
She opened the other eye and realized they weren’t guts at all.
The Sea Dragon was chomping Turbidus Vines with great relish. Apparently they were so delicious they were causing the Sea Dragon to change colour: its dark scales rippled from snout to tail, becoming a contented sort of lilac. Not the colour of imminent guzzling.
The Sea Dragon, entirely lilac now, swallowed its mouthful of vines, then nudged Cordelia aside with its wide snout to nibble a vine hanging behind her.
This nudge was enough to send the feeling surging back to Cordelia’s legs. She bounded away to the edge of the clearing – ready to flee into the jungle if the Sea Dragon changed its mind about eating her.
She heard Thorn mutter resentfully to the Sea Dragon: ‘Whoever heard of a vegetarian sea monster?’
‘A vegetarian!’ Cordelia burst out indignantly, whirling round. ‘You’ve threatened me with being eaten at least a dozen times!’
‘You’re braver than I thought you’d be,’ Thorn observed. ‘You didn’t even cry. Impressive for a wishy-washy Maker.’
‘I thought you said you were a Maker,’ countered Cordelia.
Thorn looked sharply at her. But the Sea Dragon turned its giant head to the pirate queen and gazed at her benignly, its scales changing from lilac to a friendly pink.
Cordelia was amazed as she took in the scaly creature that was turning rosy from its ridged snout to its splayed claws and flickering tail. It was indeed shaped like a miniature version of the island. Perhaps what Never had said was true: it was a descendant of the creature whose bones began this island. But that wasn’t the most wondrous thing about it. The Sea Dragon seemed to be encouraging Thorn to talk.
But what followed was a long moment of silence. Thorn’s face became a strange mixture of sun and cloud, like the sky deciding whether to storm.
‘I am a Maker. Or … I was,’ she whispered eventually. ‘I made all sorts of treasures, using things I found growing in the garden, or dusty scraps of light that gathered in corners around the house. Birds shed feathers for me, and I’d make bits of ribbon from grass and find special pearls dropped from ladies’ dresses. I made such wonderful things. I felt like I had magic living in my hands.’
Cordelia stopped to stare.
‘This entire island is made of the skeleton of a prehistoric Sea Dragon,’ continued Never. ‘We think it might be an ancient ancestor of our own Sea Dragon.’
Never turned to point back the way they had come, and Cordelia saw that the rocks they’d just clambered up were not a random jumble of boulders. In fact, they made the shape of an enormous reptilian foot, half buried in the white sand. Rockpools glistened between the long ridges of foot bones, and the toes were shaggy with seaweed, claws crusted with barnacles. A creature with a foot this huge must have been enormous – probably as long as the City of London from end to end. It could have swallowed the Tower and drunk the Thames.
Cordelia gaped dizzily, until Never pulled her onwards. ‘Up the tail!’
The white rocks became narrower as they went further into the jungle. An arch of green leaves closed over them and soon they were scaling large boulders that led steadily uphill in a smooth sweeping curve. A rushing river splashed and tumbled beside them in a deep green gully. Each boulder was as tall as Cordelia, so the pirates had to haul her up, helped by vines.
Cordelia had to whisper the words that echoed through her mind, because they seemed too incredible to speak aloud: ‘We’re climbing up a spine!’
As Cordelia and the pirates made their way up the gully, climbing a spine that was thousands of years old, Cordelia noticed more and more plants and animals, insects and birds that she had never seen before.
She imagined the slow congregation of endangered species arriving at this island over the past thousand years: from plant and animal kingdoms alike, seeking refuge on the bones of an ancient creature. She pictured seeds floating through the night; birds drawn across the sky, following the purple wink of the star like thread following a needle. She imagined trees, the marrow of their wood humming with desire to be safe from the bite of the axe; and the urgent flick of insect wings in the starlight as they flitted for safety.
All had come here for sanctuary.
Cordelia ran her hands over rough tree trunks and smooth rocks, stroked strange flower petals and the iridescent shells of beetles, and she realized she had been wrong about the island. When she’d first arrived, she had felt violent magic all around her. The place had been an assault on her sensitive magical senses.
Now she understood: there had been so many new magical things crowding in on her that she’d been overwhelmed, like listening to seven thousand symphonies at once.
She tuned her ear to the quiet music of a single flower. It sang its magic, a tender song of hope in darkness.
‘Those flowers glow at night,’ Never said, watching her as she cupped the blossom gently in her hand. ‘D’you know what they’re called?’
Cordelia shook her head.
‘I don’t know their name,’ she said. ‘But I can tell they’re very precious.’
Further up the gully, on what Annie proudly told Cordelia was a prehistoric leg bone, they found Billy Bones and Vinegar Jim racing tumbling shrubs along the high white rock, speeding close to the edge and roaring with laughter.
‘Come down!’ Tabitha yelled. ‘We’re showing our teacher the island!’
As Billy and Jim clambered down from the leg bone, Cordelia watched several snails with orange shells the size of carriage wheels inch slowly upwards past them, leaving bright trails.
‘D’you know what tree that is?’ Annie asked, pointing up to a majestic tree taller than a cathedral spire, with branches like wide-open arms and bright green, heart-shaped leaves.
Cordelia did not recognize the leaves or the bark, but she carefully laid her hands on the tree trunk. Hope surged through her palms with the sonorous power of whale song.
She did recognize this magic! But it was like recognizing a song she’d once heard somebody humming, except now it was being played by a full orchestra.
Cordelia remembered – when she was very small, one quiet afternoon in the Alchemy Parlour – her Great-aunt Petronella unwinding her silver hair and handing Cordelia her ancient wooden hatpin. As her hand closed over it, Cordelia had felt a thread of faint hope humming in her hand.
‘This is made from a branch of the last Soulhope Tree,’ Great-aunt Petronella had told her. ‘When I was a young girl, that last Soulhope Tree was felled in the Ashdown Forest: the king had it cut down for his warship. On hearing this terrible news, my father went to try to save some seeds from the fallen tree. He begged the king for just one pod, but the king laughed at him and threw him a bare broken branch. My father turned that slim stick of Soulhope wood into a hatpin for me, because hope is the most important thing to keep in your head. Soulhope Trees could grow higher than any tree in the world, because they had the deepest roots. They should never be cut down or burned. When the king’s warship caught fire in the channel, his men despaired, and that is how the war was lost.’
Cordelia pressed her forehead to the vast trunk, thinking of her great-aunt, and whispered, ‘There is one still living. If I ever get home, I’ll have to tell her.’
She turned from the tree, wiping hopeful tears from her eyes, to find the pirates looking at her curiously.
‘It’s a Soulhope Tree,’ she sniffed, smiling. ‘Your island is extremely magical.’
‘It’s not our island,’ Jim corrected her. ‘It doesn’t belong to us; we belong to it.’
Before Cordelia could quite grasp this logic, the pirates pulled her through a narrow tunnel in the bone-rock to emerge in a wide forest glade that appeared to be draped with giant lace tablecloths. The tablecloths were each as wide as a galleon’s sails, swagged above her head. They hung in intricate patterns from all the trees, with frilly white rosettes in their centres.
‘This is Tablecloth Glade,’ Tabitha announced.
With a jolt in her belly, Cordelia realized that the white rosettes in the middles of the huge tablecloths were spiders. And the tablecloths were, in fact, enormous spiderwebs.
Cordelia staggered backwards as a spider the size of a dinner plate descended silently on a thread of web, to peer at her with eight eyes.
‘They won’t hurt you,’ Never told her. ‘The worst they’ll do is try to decorate you.’
He indicated Billy, who giggled and wriggled as a white spider spun an elaborate silken cape around his shoulders.
Cordelia studied the creature as it worked. Its legs were covered in snowy hairs and its eight bright eyes frilled with corkscrew ringlets. It was somehow neat and flamboyant at the same time, its legs busy and clever, its movements quick and trim.
They found Smokestack sitting on a boulder halfway up the glade. His grey hair had been embellished with an ornate hat made entirely of spider silk.
‘Thought we’d find you here, Smokestack!’ Tabitha called.
‘I just love to sit here and watch them spin,’ he said with a contented sigh. ‘They make yarns of such beauty; I don’t know how I could ever spin a yarn to match theirs.’
‘Maybe our teacher will teach you?’ Jim suggested.
But the teacher in question hardly heard this suggestion. Cordelia watched as Shelly carefully laid some frilly flowers on a rock. Several spiders scuttled enthusiastically down from their webs and began eating the dripping nectar.
Cordelia was reminded of her father. He always gave thank-you gifts to nature when collecting ingredients and never took more than was needed. Prospero Hatmaker believed that nature deserved the utmost gentleness and respect. Rivers should always be called by name, clouds should be bowed to (whatever mood they were in), birds should be addressed Sir or My Lady, and even trails of ants snaking across pavements should be given right of way.
He would love this island, Cordelia thought. Every leaf and petal contained enchantment, every bird call was a song of wonder, every insect a living glyph of mystery. Every breath of air carried magic on it.
‘We should show her the lagoon,’ whispered Annie.
With sudden enthusiastic howls of ‘LAGOON!’ the Troublemakers surged away up the white-veiled glade.
The lagoon was a deep, still pool surrounded by flowers that glowed like fallen stars. A waterfall tumbled down over smooth white vertebrate rocks at one end. Huge lilac boulders lay half submerged and vines trailed into the water, which was so clear Cordelia could see the bottom, shining brightly.
‘It’s solid silver down there. We think it’s from centuries of moonlight falling on the ancient Sea Dragon’s pelvis bones,’ Never said. ‘We call it Moonstruck Lagoon.’
The Troublemakers had already shed most of their clothes and were huddled together holding a whispered conference in the shallows. Shelly nudged the others as Cordelia approached. They turned, smiling shiftily, all looking rather absurd in their underclothes and enormous barnacled hats.
‘Why don’t you take your hats off?’ Cordelia asked.
The wildness in her wits was telling her something was wrong.
Then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw a figure flash through the trees above the waterfall.
It was a girl, running fast.
This was no pirate; this person was too small. It must be –
‘PRUDENCE!’ Cordelia yelled.
Startled eyes flashed before the girl turned and fled.
Without even removing her boots, Cordelia dived into the lagoon, taking the most direct route in pursuit.
Never dived after her but she was too quick for him.
She splashed through the water, pirates bellowing at her to stop, and scrambled up the knobbly stones of the waterfall.
‘Prudence!’ she panted. ‘Wait! I’m a friend! Wait!’
At the top, she sloshed along the shallow river to find footprints – child-sized ones – that led through the deep mud of the opposite bank, into the glade beyond.
She could hear crashing in the jungle ahead of her. She shouldered her way through dense shrubs and pushed aside curtains of vines.
‘Prudence!’
Cordelia stumbled into a small glade and skidded to a stop.
Thorn Lawless stood in the yawning mouth of a cave, on the verge of being swallowed whole by the darkness. The pirate queen wore a mean grin.
‘She’s in there, isn’t she!’ Cordelia panted. ‘You’re keeping her in that cave! Prudence!’
Thorn hurled a sharp laugh at Cordelia, like a knife. ‘You want to look for Prudence in the Belly? Go ahead!’
Thorn stood aside and Cordelia was suddenly wary. This was too easy – the way some traps are too easy.
She walked slowly towards the yawning mouth and saw that the cave had once been the hollow ribcage of the prehistoric Sea Dragon. The huge struts of its ribs, arching above her, were overgrown with vines. The dripping deep-green air smelled of ancient secrets and primordial time.
Cordelia stood on the threshold, poised between the light and the dark.
‘Prudence?’ she whispered.
The only answer was a soft snicker from Thorn.
Cordelia stepped into the underworld.
As her eyes grew accustomed to the dark, she began to see wonders in it.
Crystals in the cave glowed; stalagmites like galaxies stretched up from the floor. Luminous rocks bulged on the ceiling like planets blooming in a night sky. It was extraordinarily strange and beautiful.
But she couldn’t get distracted. That was what Thorn wanted. Where had Prudence gone?
Cordelia noticed the tingle in her fingertips. There was something powerfully magic close by; she could feel it throbbing in the still air. It was something troubled and heavy – jagged enough to cut herself on – just out of reach.
She looked over her shoulder at Thorn, whose eyes flashed, daring her to brave it, to venture further in.
Suddenly a thought struck Cordelia.
In fact, her fingers knew before her brain did.
She took three quick steps, reached up and knocked the pirate queen’s hat off.
‘NO!’
Thorn Lawless’s face changed. It was like the tide rolling sand smooth on a beach.
Thorn’s craggy features softened and grew youthful. Without her hat, she was barely older than Cordelia. Even her teeth became less jagged, though her growl was just as deadly as before and her eyes blazed.
She might be younger, but she was still as dangerous as wildfire.
‘I’ll make you sorry now, Maker!’ Thorn snarled, and tackled Cordelia in a tangle of hair and fists and fury.
Cordelia hit the ground, fighting, and managed to shove the girl off her. She scrambled, panting, to her feet, her mind whirling. Thorn Lawless had been in disguise all this time! She was really –
‘Prudence Oglethorne,’ Cordelia whispered. ‘It’s you!’
Thorn’s claim that Prudence was not dead but would never be seen again now made perfect sense. Because Thorn was Prudence.
‘You’ve discovered my secret,’ she hissed, voice harsh even though it had lost its gravelly rasp. ‘Pity you’ll never get off this island to tell everybody how clever you’ve been.’
‘Pru–’ Cordelia began.
‘Don’t call me that!’ Thorn interrupted viciously. ‘That’s not my name any more! My friends have always called me Thorn. It’s the only part of my real name that I like: Oglethorne. And now I’m an outlaw, Lawless is my surname.’
Cordelia nodded. ‘All right – Thorn. Your father is worried about you! He thinks you’ve been –’
‘My father!’ Thorn’s scornful bark didn’t match the sudden fear in her eyes. ‘My father has only ever worried that I’ll bring disgrace on the family! He can’t find me. He – he mustn’t.’
Cordelia shook her head, sure there were pieces missing from this puzzle. ‘But your father is the one who wants you to be found – when you were kidnapped by the Trouble–’ She hesitated, frowning. ‘Were you really kidnapped by the Troublemakers? Or …’
Cordelia trailed off as Thorn stared at her with wildfire eyes.
‘We’re not that different, are we, Hatmaker?’ Thorn murmured. ‘There’s just one thing that makes all the difference between us.’
Cordelia frowned. She could not guess what the one thing might be.
‘Permission,’ Thorn said, her voice quiet as a cut-throat’s knife. ‘You were born into a Maker family. You’re talented at it but – more importantly – you’re allowed to Make. I am not; I’ve never been allowed to Make. But I couldn’t help myself. From the day I could crawl, to pick daisies from the lawn, I’ve been a Maker.’
Cordelia must have stared for a moment too long, because Thorn suddenly snapped, ‘Rainbow! Dinner!’
The air became charged, the way it does before a lightning strike, and a piece of living darkness surged out of the cave.
It was as long as a warship, nose to tail, with jaws big enough to crunch the king’s carriage. Its tail, flicking menacingly behind it, was a fiery fork large enough to spear the king’s best horse. Cordelia had seen that tail flashing in the boiling water – this was the fearfully strong monster that had pulled the Trouble across the seas at lightning speed!
Leathery wings unfurled like black sails, and its eyes were dreadful dark pools, deep enough to drown in. It wore a jackanapes’ grin as it stalked forward, claws clicking like scimitars on the rock.
The Sea Dragon.
7. Leathery wings unfurled like black sails, and its eyes were dreadful dark pools, deep enough to drown in.
Cordelia knew she should run – but she was caught in those terrible whirlpool eyes.
‘Devour her!’ Thorn demanded.
Cordelia had found out too much: she knew Thorn’s secret and now she was going to be eaten.
The creature opened its jaws, revealing a row of glinting teeth, sharp as swords.
Cordelia couldn’t move. She couldn’t speak. She could only squeeze her eyes shut and hold her breath and think of her family, her father, her friends –
There was a hideous tearing sound: the sickening chomp and mash of jaws.
But Cordelia didn’t feel like she was being eaten.
She opened one eye. A tangle of green guts was jiggling in front of her face.
She opened the other eye and realized they weren’t guts at all.
The Sea Dragon was chomping Turbidus Vines with great relish. Apparently they were so delicious they were causing the Sea Dragon to change colour: its dark scales rippled from snout to tail, becoming a contented sort of lilac. Not the colour of imminent guzzling.
The Sea Dragon, entirely lilac now, swallowed its mouthful of vines, then nudged Cordelia aside with its wide snout to nibble a vine hanging behind her.
This nudge was enough to send the feeling surging back to Cordelia’s legs. She bounded away to the edge of the clearing – ready to flee into the jungle if the Sea Dragon changed its mind about eating her.
She heard Thorn mutter resentfully to the Sea Dragon: ‘Whoever heard of a vegetarian sea monster?’
‘A vegetarian!’ Cordelia burst out indignantly, whirling round. ‘You’ve threatened me with being eaten at least a dozen times!’
‘You’re braver than I thought you’d be,’ Thorn observed. ‘You didn’t even cry. Impressive for a wishy-washy Maker.’
‘I thought you said you were a Maker,’ countered Cordelia.
Thorn looked sharply at her. But the Sea Dragon turned its giant head to the pirate queen and gazed at her benignly, its scales changing from lilac to a friendly pink.
Cordelia was amazed as she took in the scaly creature that was turning rosy from its ridged snout to its splayed claws and flickering tail. It was indeed shaped like a miniature version of the island. Perhaps what Never had said was true: it was a descendant of the creature whose bones began this island. But that wasn’t the most wondrous thing about it. The Sea Dragon seemed to be encouraging Thorn to talk.
But what followed was a long moment of silence. Thorn’s face became a strange mixture of sun and cloud, like the sky deciding whether to storm.
‘I am a Maker. Or … I was,’ she whispered eventually. ‘I made all sorts of treasures, using things I found growing in the garden, or dusty scraps of light that gathered in corners around the house. Birds shed feathers for me, and I’d make bits of ribbon from grass and find special pearls dropped from ladies’ dresses. I made such wonderful things. I felt like I had magic living in my hands.’
