‘Wow!’ gasped Willow.
‘It’s like another world at night,’ breathed Essential, the lights reflecting in her glasses.
Willow sat beside the fountain and unscrewed the lid of the jam jar. The purple mimic plant glowed slightly under the garden lights. At that moment, the town clock chimed twelve times, and at the final stroke she dipped the jar in the fountain until water submerged the plant’s long blue roots.
The others waited as she brought it out of the water and replaced the lid. Nothing seemed to happen at first. The plant turned into glittery purple smoke, forming a miniature version of Willow as she held the jar. Then, very slowly, it began to change into a brighter, electric shade of purple, transforming itself until it resembled an enormous tree surrounded by clouds, with exposed roots that swam in a swirling, smoky blue mist.
Willow brought it up to her eye level and frowned. She recognised it. They all did. ‘It’s the Great Wisperia Tree.’
‘Yew means ter tell me the other one was there all this time?’ said Oswin with a groan, an orange paw coming up to cover his eyes. The kobold had dared to venture outside the bag under cover of darkness.
Willow stared. There was even a tiny house at the top.
She sighed in despair. Had this all been for nothing?
‘It’s not Wisperia,’ said Feathering. The iris in his golden eye whirred as he stared, but he wasn’t focusing on the jar. ‘Look.’
Willow turned from him to the topiary children. They were pointing and seemed scared, their leaves rustling as they trembled. A small one was hiding behind its taller friend. As Willow frowned, they shifted, merging to form the tree, except they did it upside down, so that the roots were exposed to the air, long and enormous. Dotted among these roots were strange figures, whose hands reached up into the sky.
What were the mischief topiaries trying to tell them?
Willow frowned and looked back at the jar. She upturned it to match the upside-down version of the tree the topiaries were showing her, and peered at the miniature, mist-shrouded roots. As she did so, she gasped. There among them were tiny, ghostly figures, with hands reaching out from the mist and shadows, like they were desperately trying to reach up towards something …
She stared, then swallowed. All at once, Willow understood. She gasped and dropped the mimic plant. Essential raised both hands, freezing the jar in midair, and she caught it safely. Willow was too freaked out by what she’d discovered to thank her. ‘It can’t mea—’ she breathed, turning deathly pale.
‘What?’ asked Essential, turning the jar in her hands and pulling a face as she noticed the little figures crawling between the roots and reaching up towards her. Essential’s eyes widened in a mixture of fear and disgust.
Willow looked from Essential to the others and found it hard to say the words.
Feathering gasped. ‘That’s what mirali meant. I couldn’t put my talon on just what the forest-touched people were saying in the old language, but that’s what it was. Mirali means the other side – the abyss. The mimic plant is not showing us Wisperia, but the ghostly echo of the Great Wisperia Tree down in Netherfell. The forest people must have meant that it was forbidden for them to send someone alive there – because you will lose your soul. That’s why they wouldn’t help us, and why they believed it was too late. Nolin Sometimes must have been taken by Umbellifer, or her subjects at least … That’s why the treetop community was up in arms. It is very irregular for her or her wraiths – her undead followers – to come up here, to Starfell …’
Umbellifer, the Queen of the Undead.
She was the stuff of nightmares and myth. It was said that she waited in the Mists to snatch souls away to her queendom below: Netherfell, the waiting room where all souls were judged before they were sent to their final resting place. The unlucky, however – the lost souls – were doomed to be with her forever as her subjects.
Willow thought of what Holloway had said about people who had gone through the Mists. ‘They haven’t really come back, have they? Just their bodies.’
Her eyes were bright with fear. ‘We have to find the Queen of the Undead if we’re to get him back?’
Feathering nodded.
‘You can’t mean …?’ she asked.
‘Yes, I’m afraid I do,’ he whispered. ‘We’re going to have to cross the Mists … and enter Netherfell.’
19
The Mists of Mitlaire
The blood drained from Essential’s face. ‘Enter Netherfell?’
‘Oh, Wol, no!’ cried Oswin. ‘Oh, me greedy aunt, why’d yew curse us kobolds? I don’ wanna go find the soul-snatching harpy-hag of the underworld!’
Willow couldn’t help but agree. ‘But … HOW? Even … even if we wanted to, we can’t. Not without losing our souls.’
She looked at Sprig, waiting for him to confirm this. The only person they knew who could cross the Mists was him – but, like he’d said, that was because he was partly born there.
‘Is there another way?’ she asked.
‘I can help you,’ said Sprig. ‘It’s complicated – as I told you, I can cross the Mists safely. But I can also extend this protection to those who travel with me. If you’re in contact with me in some way, you can pass through – and, more importantly, return – with your soul intact.’
The dragon looked at Sprig, his golden eye turning dark, suspicious. ‘This is what I feared when I met you. That you would take her there …’
‘I know,’ said Sprig, ‘but if I did she’d be safe with me.’
The dragon snorted. ‘So long as you didn’t leave.’
Sprig nodded. It was true.
Willow swallowed. That was scary.
Sprig looked at them. ‘We have other things to worry about, though. Like how we’re all going to get there. I can spread my magic, but we can’t all fly on Feathering, not without risking his life.’
‘What? Why?’ cried Willow.
‘The Mists are tricky. They are designed to make the traveller weary, and the bigger the beast the worse the effects will feel and the longer it will take to cross. In the Mists, the smaller you are, the quicker you pass. It could take days for Feathering, and exhaust him to the point that he wouldn’t be able to make the journey back.’
‘Oh no!’ cried Essential.
‘How will we manage then?’ asked Willow. ‘On foot, so long as we form a chain and keep hold of you?’
‘I think that would be incredibly risky. You’d all be exhausted too – I mean, you aren’t Feathering’s size, but you’re not as small as me when I’m a raven. Besides, we can’t walk across the lake.’
They all shared a worried look. Once you were through the Mists, you reached the Lake of the Undead, the gateway to Netherfell.
Willow blinked. ‘So travelling on a large creature won’t work. But what if the thing that carries you isn’t alive … like, say, a boat? Is there a waterway through the Mists?’
‘Yes, there’s a stream that runs all the way to the lake,’ said Sprig. ‘I think a boat would work.’
‘But Willow, how are we going to find a boat?’ asked Essential.