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‘Enough to turn the day into night,’ Twigleg translated. It sounded extremely disturbing.
Me-Rah chattered something else even faster.
‘And they have many servants? What kind of servants?’
Even Ben could tell that Me-Rah was enumerating many different creatures. Twigleg didn’t go to the trouble of translating the entire list. It sounded as if Me-Rah’s whole island was in the service of the griffins!
‘Master,’ he said in a voice he had difficulty in controlling, ‘I think it’s about time we weighed up the ratio of risks to advantages on this expedition!’
‘My dear Twigleg, we only have to let the griffins know we come with peaceful intentions!’ Barnabas reassured the homunculus. ‘As you’ve heard, they do business with poachers. So why not with us?’
Twigleg thought this line of argument as unconvincing as Ben’s, but he stopped himself reminding them of the poachers who had been eaten.
‘All this is extraordinarily helpful, Me-Rah!’ said Barnabas. ‘I’m so glad you’ve already said you’re prepared to help us! Could you maybe look at our map and say which of the islands drawn on it is most like the shape of your own home?’
In some confusion, the parrot looked at the patches of green that Gilbert Greytail had painted on the apparently endless surface of the sea surrounding the islands of Indonesia. Finally she pecked the largest of them.
‘So there we are!’ cried Barnabas, but he fell silent when Me-Rah pecked five more islands. She obviously thought that Gilbert’s cartography was edible.
‘Well, I suppose that would have been rather too easy!’ murmured Barnabas, making a brave effort to hide his disappointment. ‘Maybe there’s another way to approach it. Judging by the fruits and animals that Me-Rah has described, our destination must be in the north-eastern climatic zone of Indonesia. So let’s begin here.’ And he put his finger on the most eastern island that Gilbert had drawn. ‘And then we’ll reconnoitre all the uninhabited islands within a radius of fifty miles. If that doesn’t bring any results, we’ll extend our search to a radius of a hundred miles, and so on and so on…’
He was trying hard to sound optimistic, but it wasn’t difficult to see that he was worried. That morning, they had finally been in touch with Vita and Guinevere, and had heard that keeping the eggs warm presented no problems, but Ànemos still wasn’t eating.
Ben looked down at the endless sea over which they had been flying for hours, and tried to think only of the Pegasi. He summoned up his memory of the despair in the eyes of Ànemos, and took the photo of the eggs that Guinevere had given him out of his pocket, but all he saw in his mind’s eye was the dragon. His heart was still so heavy with longing for Firedrake that it wouldn’t have surprised Ben if the weight of it had brought Hothbrodd’s plane down. What was a dragon rider without his dragon?
He sighed, sensing Twigleg’s sympathetic look turned on him. As usual when they were flying, the homunculus was sitting on Ben’s knee, with a belt around his stick-thin body and attached to Ben’s own seat belt – not the safest of methods. In turbulence, Ben had often had to pluck Twigleg down from the air, but the homunculus preferred to be close to his master so high above the ground, although Hothbrodd had made him a seat specially for someone his own size.
‘You’ll soon be seeing Firedrake again, master!’ he said encouragingly.
Ben could hide his troubles even from Barnabas more easily than from the homunculus. Barnabas had so many things to worry about, but Twigleg had made Ben the centre of his world, and shared every one of his feelings and anxieties. Ben would very much have liked to tell him about his decision to join the dragon when this mission was over, but it would have felt like treachery to share his plan with the homunculus and not Barnabas.
As usual, Twigleg had his notebook with him, and he had written down everything Me-Rah said about her island. It was impossible for human tongues to pronounce the name that the chattering lory gave it, but she also knew its human name: Pulau Bulu, the Feathered Island. Twigleg had noted, No active volcano!, adding several more exclamation marks. In the course of his research, he had found out that volcanic eruptions were as common in Indonesia as the Northern Lights in Norway.
‘Right. If I’ve translated Me-Rah’s descriptions correctly, there are orchid trees and umbrella trees on her island, teak and golden rain, elephant apples, melati, orchids, and the carnivorous Rafflesia arnoldii, or corpse flower.’ The homunculus lowered his pen. ‘That means we can already rule out several groups of islands.’ He looked enquiringly at the parrot. ‘Can you describe any other plants that grow on Pulau Bulu? The rarer the better!’
Me-Rah cleaned her red breast feathers. She already looked less rumpled than before. Barnabas had fed her crushed oyster shells, and
given her a dish of water to bathe in, even though Hothbrodd had told him disapprovingly that water was not a good idea on board an aircraft.
‘Did I mention the Singing Flowers?’ Me-Rah plucked a feather that always insisted on sticking out at an angle away from her wing.
Barnabas raised his head.
‘The seeds are as large as nuts, and they taste as sweet as coconut flesh, but you have to get right into the cup of the flower to eat them,’ the parrot went on. ‘That can be difficult, because the scent of a Singing Flower can make you unconscious within seconds, and if you don’t get out again quickly enough, the flower will close and digest you, feathers and bones and all.’
Shuddering, Me-Rah fluffed herself up, but Barnabas let out such a cry of delight that Hothbrodd looped the loop in alarm, and Me-Rah flew down under the seat.
‘Excuse my loss of self-control, honoured and ever-helpful Me-Rah.’ Barnabas knelt down between the seats and remorsefully held out the palm of his hand to the parrot. ‘But singing flowers! This is fantastic!’
Hesitantly, Me-Rah climbed up on his hand – and cooed in alarm when, in his gratitude, Barnabas kissed her on the beak.
‘I’m sure they must be the extremely rare Lupina cantanda, also known as the Singing Plant-Wolf !’ he announced triumphantly. ‘As far as I know, it occurs only on this island group!’
Barnabas leaned over Gilbert’s map, which was lying on the seat beside Ben, and tapped a few tiny long green marks.
‘Per-hi-a-san,’ read Twigleg. ‘That means jewellery in Indonesian!’
‘A good name,’ said Ben. ‘The islands really do look like a pearl necklace.’
