Page 32 of The Heart and the Hawthorn

The Nuckelavee reared, blood-red flesh and needle point fangs, coal-flaming eyes rolling, sprays of spittle exploding. She, Grace and the monkeys plunged down into the valley where sand and honeyed rock rippled for as far as she could see, but whatever hope she’d felt died as she gathered the monkeys to her and Grace gave a final devastating splutter.

Behind them, the Nuckelavee howled in victory.

.

Chapter Twenty

Frida heard a smoky voice cutting through the certainty of imminent death.

‘Alright, that’s enough now coral eater. You’ve had your fun.’

A couple of heartbeats more and the Nuckelavee’s teeth would have been around Frida’s neck. But at the sound of that throaty voice, he froze. They all froze. As one, Frida, the Jellies, and the Nuckelavee turned to look to their left, mouths hanging open in what might have been farcical, if anyone else had been there to witness it.

Anyone, that is, apart from the wrinkled terracotta miracle, waiting quite impatiently on the other side of the gigantic fence.

Frida had spent her entire life, all two and a bit decades of it, dreaming about that miracle. ‘Fireheart?’ she whispered.

‘What did I tell you?’ the old dragon snapped at the Nuckelavee, ignoring Frida entirely. Her voice was that of someone who’d spent their whole long life smoking twenty packets a day. ‘Find the silly girl, bring her here. Don’t eat her, I said. Don’t.’

The demonic sea creature gave a low repentant whine.

Frida choked in disbelief. Fireheart swung her great head around, her inky indigo eyes half blind with cataracts, yet sharp enough to feel like a wire wool brush was scouring Frida’s soul. ‘You!’ the dragon snapped. ‘Stop swaying, azizam, dear. It would be most tiresome if you fainted. It would waste so much time.’ Her smoker’s cough rattled. ‘And our supply is woefully limited. So come now, hmm, extract yourself from that contraption. Let’s go.’

Frida’s jaw dropped. ‘Me?’ she squeaked.

Fireheart’s scales rippled as she swung her wrinkled snout back to pierce the Nuckelavee with a devastating scowl. ‘You – move back, give her some room.’

He’d deflated to the size of a pony. Frida blinked incredulously at the once colossal beast. To be fair, Frida wanted to shrink too. The storm monkeys in her lap trembled like plucked strings as the Nuckelavee beat a hasty retreat, almost tripping over his clip-clopping hooves in his haste. His protrusion trembled as he hissed a string of incoherent grievances miserably to himself. But as he disappeared into the shadows, Frida gave a yelp.

‘Where’s he going?’

Fireheart leaned back on her haunches, whipping her tail. ‘The coral eater?’

‘Yes!’ Frida suddenly thought of her friends spread out around the zoo like anchovies on a pizza, ready to be picked off one by one. ‘The Nuckelavee,’ she said under her breath, his very name filling her with fear.

Fireheart huffed out a puff of irritable steam. ‘That’s not his name.’

Frida blinked in surprise.

‘You speak a human name,’ she elaborated, her bark as sharp as her red talons. ‘It is not his, and all he wants is to go home! You fear him? Admittedly, he was a bit overzealous.’ Fireheart’s belly seemed to sizzle, as if this was greatly amusing to her. ‘I asked him to bring you here, because he’s a good tracker when he’s not in a mood, and you have to admit it was rather funny.’ She chuckled, but seeing Frida’s face, leached entirely of colour, the old dragon gave a sigh which sounded exactly like an eyeroll. ‘Don’t look at me like that, girl. He will just go and pool somewhere quietly now until it’s time.’

‘Time for . . . what?’ Frida managed to ask.

Fireheart didn’t answer. She just gave Frida a look, scathing and indecipherable, her eyes glowing red. Unlike Lucky, who was more of an overgrown London bus, Fireheart was a sinuous cat-shaped beast the size of a Lamborghini. She had a frail whiskered snout, slender tail and sharp bony paws. It was said she’d come originally from the Ottoman Empire – now Syria. Her scales were a network of scars, and her wings had been half-sawn off by hunters before being rescued by the LEZ. She carried them tucked into her body as if they still pained her, the angular lines marring what must have once been a flowing silhouette. Her wrinkled, weather-beaten body was the colour of baked bricks, except in her belly, where the fire burned scarlet.

‘Come,’ Fireheart said dourly.

Then the old dragon whipped around with a speed Frida didn’t think she possessed. In one sharp burst, a lance of flame belted out of the dragon’s throat and seared into the fence. Frida screamed, her hands flying to protect the monkeys, and they squealed, half of them almost squashed between her chest and Grace’s wheel.

When she lifted her head, there was a gigantic, smouldering hole in the fence.

‘It is best you come to terms with this: the world as you know it is gone,’ Fireheart said shortly, coughing up a blob of smoky charred phlegm and spitting it between her claws.

Frida felt herself blanch.

‘The wards,’ she whispered, blinking up at the gleamingly metallic, impenetrable fencing that Fireheart had just combusted like it was butter and she was a blow torch. Frida had known the infrastructure was failing in Ocean, but to see it here, now, terrifyingly real . . .

‘Yes, azizam.’