Beyond the Deepwoods (27 page)

At first, what he saw made no sense. A fire in front of him. Charred bones and patches of grease in the dust. The dense canopy above, with stripes of bright early morning sunlight lancing the air.

Twig sat bolt upright. Suddenly, the events of the previous night came back to him. The storm. The sky ship. Stumbling across the flight-rock. Eating with the sky pirates. Finding his father … So where were they all now?

They had gone without him. Twig howled with pain and loss and desolation. Tears streamed down his face, turning the stripy sunlight to star-shaped rainbows. They had left him behind! His choking sobs filled the air. ‘Why, my father, why?’ he cried out. ‘Why have you abandoned me? Again!’

His words faded away, and with them his hopes of ever finding his way beyond the Deepwoods. He hung his head. The forest seemed quieter than usual. No coughing fromps, no squealing quarms, no screeching razorflits. Not only had the sky pirates gone, but it was as if they had taken all the woodland creatures with them.

Yet the air was not completely silent. There was a low roaring sound, a hissing sound, a crackling sound
which, even as Twig sat there with his head in his hands, grew in volume. The heat at his back became more intense. The hammelhornskin waistcoat began to prickle ominously. Twig spun round.

‘Yaaaiii!’ he screamed. It wasn't sunlight he had seen. It was fire. The Deepwoods were ablaze.

A piece of burning oakwood which had floated away from the sky pirates’ slapdash fire had become lodged in the branches of a lullabee tree. The lullabee had smouldered and smoked; hours later it burst into flames. Fanned on by the stiff breeze, the fire had rapidly spread. Now, from the forest floor to the tips of the canopy leaves, a solid wall of red and orange flames was advancing across the forest.

The heat was overwhelming. Twig swooned as he stumbled to his feet. A blazing branch crashed down beside him, the sparks exploding like droplets of gold. Twig took to his heels and ran.

And he ran and he ran – with the wind at his side – trying desperately to reach the end of the fiery wall before the flames consumed him. He ran as he had never run before, yet not fast enough. At both ends, the wall of fire was curling round. Soon, he would be surrounded.

The burning air scorched the fur on his jacket, sweat poured over his face and streamed down his back, his head throbbed with the relentless blast of molten air. The curving ends of the wall closed in further.

‘Faster,’ Twig said, urging himself on. ‘
FASTER
!’

He sped past a halitoad, whose short stubby front legs had slowed its escape, fatally. A hover worm, bewildered by the heat and smoke, flew round and round in circles before disappearing into the flames in an explosion of fetid steam. To his right, Twig caught sight of the writhing green of a tarry-vine trying in vain to dodge the advancing fire: the bloodoak it was attached to screamed and squalled as the first of the orange tongues lapped at the base of its trunk.

On and on Twig ran. The two ends of the wall of fire had almost come together now. He was all but encircled. His only hope of escape lay in the narrow gap remaining between the towering flames. Like two curtains hooked to the sky, they were being drawn across. Twig made a dash for the opening. His lungs burned with heat and acrid smoke; his head swam. As if in a dream, he watched the shimmering curtains of fire close.

Twig stopped and looked about him. He was slapbang in the middle of the burning circle. He was done for.

All round him, bushes and branches were smoking. Flames broke out, guttered and burst into life once again. Giant woodsucculents hissed and steamed as the water within their fat angular limbs began to boil. Fatter and fatter they grew, until –
BANG, BANG, BA-BA-BA-BANG
– they exploded. Like corks from bottles of woodfizz, their seeds shot through the air in a jet of frothing liquid.

The water doused the flames. But only for a second. Twig backed away from the advancing fire. He looked over his shoulder. It was getting closer there, too. To his left, to his right, the fire was closing in. Twig looked up
into the sky. ‘Oh, Gloamglozer,’ he whispered. ‘Help.’

All at once, a tremendous noise cut through the roar of the fire. Twig spun round. The purple flames of a burning lufwood tree were dancing not twenty yards away. The creaking, cracking noise came again. Twig saw the whole tree tremble. It was about to fall on top of him. He glanced this way, that way. There was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, and nothing to protect himself with. Again the noise echoed round about him – rasping, jarring, like the rotten tooth Twig had pulled from the banderbear's swollen jaw.

‘
NO
!’ Twig screamed as the tree wobbled and shook. For a second it remained suspended in the air. Twig fell to the ground and rolled into a ball. A blast of blistering air battered his body. He clamped his eyes shut and
waited, petrified, for the tree to come crashing down on him.

Nothing happened. He waited some more. Still nothing. But how? Why? Twig lifted his head, opened his eyes – and gasped in amazement.

The massive lufwood tree – now a blazing purple inferno – was hovering above the ground. The wood, so buoyant when alight, had dragged the very roots from the earth and was rising slowly up towards the sky. On either side were two more lufwoods whose anchoring roots were, even now, being torn out of the ground. The melancholy voice of a lullabee filled the air as it, too, rose up above the blazing forest. The sky itself seemed to be on fire.

Where the burning trees had been, now there was darkness. It looked like a gappy smile. Twig seized his chance and made a headlong dash towards the sudden opening. He had to get there before it closed again.

‘Near-ly … near-ly…’ he panted.

The fire was on both sides of him. He ducked his head and lifted the collar of his jacket against the shimmering heat as he ran the gauntlet of flames. Just a few steps more … Just a little bit further…

He raised his arm to shield his eyes, and sprinted through the enclosing flames. His throat stung, his skin prickled, his nostrils caught the whiff of his own scorched hair.

All at once, the heat grew less intense. Twig was outside the circle of fire. He ran on a little more. The wind had dropped; the smoke was thickening. He stopped and turned and watched for a moment, as the great balls of purple and turquoise rose, ablaze and airborne, majestically into the darkening sky.

He'd done it. He'd escaped the forest fire!

Yet there was no time for congratulating himself. Not yet, at least. The coils of smoke were winding themselves around him; filling his eyes and mouth. Blinding him. Choking him.

On and on, Twig stumbled, breathing through his scarf which he held tightly against his face. Further and further. His head throbbed, his lungs ached, his eyes smarted and streamed. ‘I can't go on,’ Twig spluttered. ‘I
must
go on.’

He kept walking till the roaring of the forest fire was just a memory, till the acrid smoke was replaced with a cold grey mist which – though as blindingly thick as the smoke – was wonderfully refreshing; he kept on to the very edge of the Deepwoods. And still he did not stop.

The mist thickened and thinned.

There were no more trees. No bushes, no shrubs, no plants or flowers. Beneath Twig's feet, the ground became hard, as the spongy earth of the Deepwoods gave way to a pavement of pitted rock, slippery from the thick greasy mist. He picked his way carefully over the treacherous slabs. One slip, and his foot would become wedged in the deep fissures between.

The mist thinned and thickened, as it always did. For these were the Edgelands, that narrow stretch of barren rock which separated the Deepwoods from the Edge itself. Beyond lay the unknown, the uncharted, the
unexplored; a place of seething craters and swirling fogs – a place into which even the sky pirates never ventured intentionally.

The gathering breeze blew in from over the Edge. It brought with it the whiff of sulphur as broad tongues of fog lolled over the top of the cliff and lapped at the rock. The air was filled with the moans and groans of an eternity of mournful lost souls. Or was it only the rising wind softly howling?

Twig trembled. Was this the place the caterbird had meant when he told him his destiny lay beyond the Deepwoods? He wiped the beads of water away from his face and leaped over a wide crack in the rock. As he landed, his ankle buckled under him. He yelped, collapsed and rubbed at the throbbing joint tenderly. Gradually, the pain grew less acute. He hobbled to his feet and tentatively placed his weight down.

‘I think it's all right,’ he muttered with relief.

Out of the sulphurous mist came a reply. ‘I am glad to hear it, Master Twig,’ it said.

Twig gasped. This was definitely not the wind playing tricks. It was a voice. A real voice. More than that, it was a
familiar
voice.

‘You have travelled far since you strayed from the woodtroll path,’ it continued, lilting, slightly mocking. ‘So very, very far. And I have tracked you every step of the way.’

‘Wh … who are you?’ stammered Twig, peering into the grey swirling mists. ‘Why can't I see you?’

‘Oh, but you have seen me often enough, Master Twig,’ the wheedling voice continued. ‘In the sleepy morning of the slaughterers’ camp, in the sticky corridors of the gyle goblin colony, in the underground cavern of the termagant trogs … I was there. I was always with you.’