Page 53 of The Neverfear

‘I know what Irian meant to you,’ said Jacques. ‘To you, and to Anya. Motherless cubs. I know that you would have given everything you have for her – that you would have given your lives, all the treasure in the world, every golden apple in Glimouria.’

‘I would.’ Irian had the rare gift of making people feel they were cherished whenever they entered a room.

And then very slowly, as slowly as if his mind were moving through ice, a thought rose in Christopher. ‘Jacques?’

‘Yes?’

‘Did you just say – I would have given every golden apple in Glimouria?’

‘I did.’

And then not slowly at all but in a sudden volcano of molten thought – ‘Jacques! Wait! Are there other golden apples? Not in the garden, I mean – in the rest of the Archipelago?’

Jacques’s eyes began to widen. ‘You’re thinking—’

‘Hercules stole three apples! They’re not in the garden. What happened to them?’

‘Young man! Yes! There must be other apples!’

Christopher turned to Anya, curled in a ball next to him. ‘Wake up!’ He shook her, hard. ‘Anya! Wake up and listen!’

She sat bolt upright like a soldier at war. ‘What? Tell me.’

‘They didn’t say we had to pick the apple! The note just said “Bring”! It’s not over! We can still get a golden apple! We find out where the apples are that Hercules picked, we steal them, we bring them to the Astorians!’

Anya was scrambling to her feet, sudden hope flushing her white cheeks. ‘But we need time!’ She turned and shouted to the sky, desperate. ‘We demand more time!’

Christopher stared around the boat. ‘We need a mirror!’ He sprinted down to the bedroom, snatched the mirror from inside the cupboard, brought it out to the open air and unwrapped it so that all four of them could be seen in it. He roared at it: ‘I know you’re listening! Listen then! We will get you an apple! Just give us time!’

The Tiger came stalking into the mirror, orange and black in the dawn light. It pressed its face close to the glass. And then it spoke with a human voice, a voice that was not its own.

‘You have one last chance. But there is a cost. If you fail, not only Irian Guinne will die. You will all die together.’

Loquillan

‘How then do we find an apple?’ said Jacques. They sat on the deck off the coast of Polytemus, the anchor lowered, the tiller locked in place. They did not know where to go.

‘The apples have to be somewhere,’ said Christopher. He held his sword in both hands, spinning the hilt between his palms. ‘We could go back to the library.’

Ratwin shook her head. ‘It’s too much of a riskings, to go back so close to Glimt. You mights be seen. What if Nighthand was in town?’

‘We could go to Naravirala – to the Sphinx Peninsula? The sphinxes have ancient memories.’

‘But the clan would ask questions, and we can’t say why we want the apple.’

‘There has to be a way!’ Christopher carved a long line into the wood of the deck with the tip of his sword. ‘There has to be!’

‘Stop thats,’ said Ratwin sharply. ‘This-heres is Nighthand’s boat.’

Christopher dropped the sword on the deck. Anya flinched and her hand went to her mother’s necklace: it always did when she was uneasy. Then suddenly her face and eyes turned into open Os and she pulled the necklace out. It was a small silvery disc on a chain.

‘Christopher! There is a way.’

‘The loquillan!’ he cried. ‘It’ll show us the future! The future we want and how to make it happen!’

Jacques looked with dislike at the necklace. ‘It tells not the future, but a future, you know that – one possible, tricksy, uncertain future. And Anya swore not to use it again.’

Anya turned the disc over in her fingers. ‘My father says it’s not to be trusted – it leads people astray. It sends people to their death.’