Page 30 of The Heart and the Hawthorn

She could also see that the silver spotlights had gone out. This realisation came at her in a rush, a heady oh fuck oh fuck oh fuuuuuuck of understanding.

‘Jelly,’ she gasped, scrambling back towards Grace. ‘Where have the lights gone?’

‘Gone!’ he squealed. ‘Gone!’ With a rumble of thunder, he started jumping on the seat and pointing at the steering wheel while the other monkeys cheeped urgently from the back. She only spared a second to glance over her shoulder to where the New Library should have been sitting in a pool of golden light. But the library, like the whole of Ocean, had gone dark.

She strained to hear any hint of the wards, but the noise was overwhelming – the crash of waves against the causeway, the magnified sounds of the groaning wood. After a few seconds though, she thought she felt it: the low hum that had always been her touchstone. The whirring wards lapped at her skin, then vanished. Lapped, then vanished. Her headache flared, a sudden sharp pressure behind her temples. Flared, then died. Flared, then died. As if in sync with the coming apocalypse.

‘Bad water!’ Jellybean screeched.

Quickly she set Grace in motion, but as they sped down the causeway, Frida couldn’t help glancing left, fully expecting to see a shrimp’s tongue whip over the edge. She was reminding herself, not for the first time, that full-body boils was not a good way to die when suddenly the kraken surged upwards, her dark blue octopus-like head appearing on her right, massive fishy eyeballs floating in the gloom. Tentacles swirled, sending mini tsunamis against the causeway.

‘Oh my GOD!’ Frida cried.

But the massive coral-encrusted arches that signalled the end of Ocean had appeared in the distance, and the monkeys’ triumphant trills resounded through the buggy. All apart from Jellybean, who maintained a vigil staring through the flimsy back plastic window, his little claws digging in where he clung onto her shoulder.

‘Jelly, look! We’re almost at the end.’

Jelly cheeped an ominously sceptical ‘Ree,’ along with a number of pops and crackles that were too fast for her brain to sort through. The lights had come back on though, and she was focusing on their salvation. For the next few minutes, they drove from one silver pool of lamplight to another, the hum of the wards blissfully steady. Maybe she’d imagined the whole thing, or maybe whatever tree root had thrust its way through the mainframe had decided to retract itself.

‘Nearly there, Grace,’ she said determinedly. ‘Nearly there, Jelly!’ She could almost taste the old chocolate bar that had been in Hamish’s locker since 2017 that she was going to treat herself to as those coral arches drew closer. She was about to point them out to Jellybean again, when the sparks in his fur erupted, and suddenly a mini lightning storm the size of a golf ball was churning between his two heads. The faux leather beneath his paws smouldered.

‘No good!’ he shrieked, racing back and forth along the seats. ‘Bad water! Ree, Reee, Ree! Angry water!’

Frida’s muscles went rigid, her guts flipping end over end. The other monkeys were shrieking too, and Ocean’s lamps were suddenly flaming like a disco ball. Frida swerved, almost crashing Grace into the glass barrier that separated the causeway from the ocean below. She slammed her foot on the brake just in time and panted in horror at the glass, barely inches away from Grace’s front wheels.

The lights went out entirely.

Grace’s headlights were a lone blade, spearing through the gloom. Frida put Grace into reverse, Jellybean gesticulating passionately in the direction of the arches, which suddenly seemed much further away than they had two seconds ago. She couldn’t see anything out there, but she’d watched enough Jurassic Park films to know that there’s always nothing there until a velociraptor explodes out of the bushes.

There were sixteen urgent backflips telling her they were all going to die.

She’d just been about to put her foot on the accelerator when the stench of old salt and seaweed ripped the breath from her lungs and Grace, with immaculate timing, stalled.

The monkeys, as one, went deathly silent.

Chapter Nineteen

Clip clop.

She seemed to hear the noise in her guts before it registered in her brain. She’d heard noises like this before, in her nightmares. All extraordinary zookeepers had.

Clip clop.

Somewhere, she knew Jellybean was trying to send sparks of lightning down the ignition, his shrieking now loud enough to wake the deepest sleeping shrimp. She inhaled the sea and the tang of iron. She urgently scanned the causeway, but the lights were spasming like a strobe disco, her eyelids flashing imprints of storm monkeys. She couldn’t see anything.

Clip clop, clip clop.

She tried to think. Neither a shrimp nor a kraken had hooves. That was good. Baby unicorns had hooves. Maybe this was just Princess Issy, coming to nuzzle her to death?

The hoofbeats grew louder.

This definitely wasn’t Issy.

In less than a heartbeat she searched her inner map of the LEZ. A kelpie, perhaps? Lu-Lu, Skeletor and Darth Vader were menaces, sure, but she’d stand a chance. Or the hippocamp? He was a Level 6 but went to sleep the moment you sang him a lullaby.

She turned around in the seat as a huge shape finally came into view, dragging his back leg slowly along the causeway after them.

This wasn’t Issy, Skeletor or Helion.