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Me-Rah obediently began telling him. It was a very long list.
‘Ah, look at this.’ Lola picked something up from the leaves. ‘Yes, we’re on their trail!’
Twigleg groaned when he saw Barnabas’s empty backpack.
‘No need to panic, humklumpus,’ said Lola firmly. ‘No bloodstains. If there was a fight here, it didn’t last long. But there were griffins involved. These,’ she added pointing to deep furrows on the ground, ‘are the same marks as we found in the ruined nests. Made by paws and claws. And the creatures who left them are large. Even Firedrake doesn’t have bigger paws!’
She pulled two feathers out of the leaves on the ground. They were both longer than she was tall. One was grey-brown, but the other was as green as the jungle surrounding them.
‘What’s this, Me-Rah?’ Lola held up the green feather with an enquiring look. ‘I thought griffins were the same sandy colour as the deserts that they come from?’
Rain was beginning to fall again outside. It sounded ghostly in the gathering dusk – like thousands of feet scurrying through the trees.
Me-Rah fluttered to Lola’s side.
‘I knew it! It comes from Shrii!’ she squawked. ‘The griffin who has bathed in the rainbow. Apparently he’s as brightly coloured as the forest itself. He was born on Pulau Bulu! Shrii…’ said Me-Rah, lowering her voice almost reverently, ‘Shrii is said to want to protect the animals on this island from Kraa. That’s why he turned against him! Oh, I do hope he isn‘t in the same difficulties as fully-grown Greenbloom and still-growing Greenbloom!’
‘I’m afraid there’s no doubt about that.’ Lola too
k another green feather out of the leaves. ‘What have we gone and landed ourselves in? No offence meant, Me-Rah, but I really don’t fancy staying on this island for any length of time. This humid heat of yours isn’t good for either my plane or me. Okay, okay, humpelklus!’ she said in response to Twigleg’s reproachful glance. ‘No, we’re not flying home without the rest of the team! What kind of rat do you take me for?’
Lola was right. Twigleg knew she would do everything she could to help the others. And he was very grateful to Me-Rah for standing by them, even though she was fluffed up like a feather pillow with fright. But the fact that a rat and a parrot were the only hope of freeing his master from the griffins’ prison really wasn’t particularly encouraging.
Lola went over to the opening in the tree and looked at the gathering dusk. ‘Right,’ she murmured. ‘I think we ought to try to get some sleep. We’ll set off again at first light.’
‘But there are hours to go until then, Lola!’ cried Twigleg. ‘What if…’
Yes, what if…? He didn’t like even thinking to the end of that sentence.
Lola put an arm around his slumped shoulders. ‘Humklupus,’ she said in an unusually gentle voice, ‘I’m worried about Ben too. And Barnabas. And that dratted troll who thinks he knows more about aircraft than I do! But we won’t be much use to them if we’re feeding our remains to all the maggots in this jungle after crashing.’
A typical rat remark if ever there was one. But unfortunately Lola was right.
Me-Rah couldn’t refrain from enumerating all the beasts of prey that were out and about in the trees, even at this height. As a result, Lola suggested sleeping in the plane, so that they could get away fast if they were attacked. To this, Me-Rah pointed out that to binturongs and masked palm civets (whatever those might be), animals about the size of Lola’s plane were easy pickings, never mind rats and homunculi.
All the same Twigleg climbed into the plane, while Me-Rah perched in the roots of a liana above them. The hollow tree was full of a ghostly green light cast by the fluorescent fungi growing everywhere inside the wooden walls. It reminded Twigleg horribly of a ghost-train ride that Ben had once persuaded him to take. All those soft noises of rustling, scurrying, fluttering, scrabbling… and he thought he saw one of the pit vipers that Me-Rah kept on squawking about in every shadow. He was very glad when she finally tucked one leg under herself and went to sleep.
Lola had made herself comfortable in the pilot’s seat. ‘Don’t worry, humklumpupus,’ she said as she put a spanner and the signal pistol on her lap. ‘I’ll wake you if a masked Someone or a bintuwhatsit turns up. I can easily go for a week without sleep anyway.’
The yawn that she hid behind her grey paw made that assurance a little less credible, but as usual, Lola’s confident manner finally made Twigleg close his eyes.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Night is Long in the Jungle
Waiting is uncanny when you are
waiting for something uncanny.
Astrid Lindgren, The Brothers Lionheart
It was a dreadful dream! One of the worst that Twigleg had ever had. They were pulling his master to pieces the way children take an insect apart! Crowds of monkeys, screeching and baring their teeth, and he was kneeling in front of the parts trying to put them together again, but he simply couldn’t remember what Ben had looked like. How was that possible?
Twigleg was hugely relieved when Lola shook him awake and the dream images dissolved in green twilight. But his relief didn’t last for long.
‘At last!’ hissed Lola. ‘Heavens, you’re a sound sleeper. That bird would wake me even if I was dead!’
Me-Rah was fluttering above them among the phosphorescent fungi, screeching, ‘Binturong! Binturong!’
