Return to Roar, page 3
“Well, this one got washed back in again,” he says, laughing at his good luck. “I found it on the beach last week.”
“On the beach?” says Rose, looking up. “Did you see any mermaids down there?”
“Loads,” says Win. “They were all lying around sunbathing. I was practically tripping over them.”
Rose’s eyes light up. “Did you see Mitch?”
Win shakes his head. “No, I’ve not seen her anywhere. I’ve been to her hut a few times, but it’s always deserted. Sorry, Rose.”
Rose’s shoulders sag a little, but she does a determined smile. “You haven’t been to her hut today, have you? She could be arriving back this very minute!”
“Yeah, I guess so,” says Win, although he doesn’t sound convinced. Then he turns his attention to his booby trap, twanging the trip wire with his foot, making the bucket tip over again. “So what do you think of this bad boy?” he asks proudly. “I rigged it up in case Crowky found my cave. If you’d come a couple of weeks ago, Arthur would be dead by apples right now. There were hundreds in there!”
I pick up the lone apple that hit me on the head. “You ate the rest, didn’t you?”
“Yep,” he says with a grin. “Waiting, and doing an intensive daily regime of kicks, punches, and awesome magic made me hungry.”
And I have to laugh, because I’m so happy to be back in Roar looking at Win’s wonky wizard’s hat and wonky smile and listening to him boast.
“What do you want to do first?” asks Win. “It’s going to be dark soon, but if we’re quick we could go down to the river and have a swim. Loads of tadpoles have hatched and they glow in the dark.” Suddenly his eyes light up. “Or we could find a unicorn! There aren’t many around, but if we go to the Tangled Forest we might be able to persuade one to give us a ride.”
I look beyond the forest and across Roar. The setting sun is giving everything a golden glow, and I feel giddy with the thought of all the time we’ve got in Roar and the amazing things we can do . . . But there is one thing stopping me from running off to hunt for tadpoles and unicorns.
“What about Crowky and his scarecrow army?” I say. “Is it really safe to go wandering about in the dark?”
Win strides to the edge of the rock and throws his arms out wide. “CROWKY’S GONE, MATE!” he shouts, making a fuzzy fall out of a tree. It bounces to the ground, where it stares up at us, wings trembling.
“Told you,” says Rose, giving me a smug look.
“Win, are you sure?” I say. “Crowky’s definitely gone?”
“No one has seen him, the Raven, or his scarecrows since you left,” says Win.
“But he could be hiding in the Archie Playgo,” I say. “There are hundreds of islands out there.”
Rose does an exasperated sigh. “Yeah, he could be, Arthur, but the important thing is that Roar is ours again, so stop being such a funge and let’s start enjoying ourselves.”
“What’s a funge?” says Win.
“A fun sponge,” says Rose. “Someone who sucks the fun out of a situation. Basically a funge is Arthur.”
“Yeah, stop being such a FUNGE, Arthur!” cries Win.
“I’m not a funge. I’m just sensible.”
Rose grins. “Said the funge.”
And then they’re both laughing at me, and even the fuzzy seems to be laughing because it’s thrown itself back on the ground and is rolling around from side to side.
“Fine, Crowky’s gone.” Just saying the words out loud makes me feel good. “Let’s go to the river. We can find a unicorn tomorrow.”
“You two can do whatever you like,” says Rose. “I’m going to Mitch’s hut.”
“We’ll come with you,” I say, remembering that Grandad wants us to stick together.
Rose shakes her head. “No thanks. If Mitch is there, we’re going to have loads to talk about. We won’t want you two annoying us.”
“But what if something happens to you?”
Rose rolls her eyes. “Arthur, relax. I’m either going to be chatting to my best merfriend in the world or lying in her hammock. I’m not going to do anything dangerous.” Then she stands on the edge of the rock, puts two fingers to her lips, and does a long, low whistle.
Except riding a dragon, I think.
The sound slips through the trees, and fades away. I can’t hear it, but I know it’s floating across Roar, and it won’t stop until it finds the ears of a dragon. Perhaps even now a huge, scaly body is heaving itself to its feet and its hot heart is beating a little bit faster because it knows that Rose Trout, Master of Roar, is back.
Together, the three of us stand on the rock, staring toward the Bottomless Ocean.
“There!” cries Rose, pointing at a black dot on the horizon.
The shape moves toward us, growing bigger and bigger until we can see two huge wings silhouetted against the orange sky.
“Bad Dragon,” whispers Rose.
She’s bigger than I remember, and even from this distance I can see smoke rolling from her gaping mouth and her glowing eyes.
Rose turns to me and grins. She’s standing tall with her shoulders back and her head held high. “I’ll probably see you tomorrow,” she says, “or the day after.”
It’s obvious that Rose is getting on that dragon and there’s nothing I can do to stop her.
“Be careful,” I say, but already she’s jumping off the rock and running into the forest.
Win and I watch as Bad Dragon glides closer, her mighty head swinging from side to side as she looks for Rose. Each flap of her wings sends air rushing toward us, flattening the tops of the trees. I fight the instinct to run and hide, and soon she’s soaring over our heads and I’m staring at the strange sight of her belly. Her scales are paler and smoother here and fire glimmers between the cracks.
“Look out!” Win shoves me to the ground just as Bad Dragon’s tail slices past my face. We huddle together as she turns and flies back over the forest before swooping out of sight below the trees. Next there is a colossal thud that makes the rock beneath us tremble. She’s landed.
Win laughs as he helps me to my feet. “I saved your life!”
And the scary thing is, I think he might be right.
Soon Bad Dragon is rising back up in the air and Rose is a tiny figure on her back. I shade my eyes and see Rose wave. Then Bad Dragon thrusts her wings down and they fly toward the setting sun.
“So . . . ,” says Win, turning to me with a grin, “ready to swim with glow-in-the-dark tadpoles?”
It must be past midnight when we get back to Win’s cave and curl up in sleeping bags by the fire.
I’m so exhausted that I fall asleep straight away and I barely think about Rose and what she’s doing on Mitch’s island. But the next morning, as we’re getting ready to go to the Tangled Forest, I wish that she was with us. I know that she’d love what we’re about to do—go looking for unicorns—so I write her a note telling her where we’re going and I leave it under a stone by the entrance to Win’s cave.
If she comes back, she’ll know where to find us.
Win and I walk along past the river, then through a meadow. I use the map to trace our route while Win dashes ahead of me, pushing flowers out of our way and surprising fuzzies and the odd monkey. I can’t wait to see my first unicorn, but I still find myself hanging back to look at things. I breathe in the minty smell of a Roar sunflower and let a ladybug crawl over my arm. Its spots are a dazzling gold one moment, pink the next.
“Hurry up!” shouts Win, and I run to catch up with him.
“This is so different from last time,” I say.
“I know.” He shakes his head bitterly. “No bikes.”
This morning when I told Win that there was no point taking one bike, it didn’t go down well.
“No,” I say, “I mean Roar’s back to how it used to be, full of creatures and flowers, and there are no massive sinkholes to fall into.”
“Or scarecrows waiting to grab us,” adds Win.
“Exactly!”
We leave the meadow and walk in the shadow of the Tangled Forest. The trees are huge and their fat trunks tower over us. Branches twist together, forming a thick wall that seems impossible to get through.
“How do we get in?” I say, looking for a gap between the trees.
“I know a special way,” says Win. He has an excited gleam in his eye, but won’t say any more. Win’s always loved surprises.
As we walk alongside the forest, Win tells me what he’s been up to since we left. A lot of practicing “mind-blowing” magic, it seems, and hanging out with the Lost Girls. “Obviously Stella didn’t want me to,” says Win, “and she kept trying to get rid of me and telling me to go away, but the little ones nagged her to let me stay until she gave in.”
He explains that the Lost Girls found a boat in the caves below the Crow’s Nest and used this to sail to and from the mainland until Stella discovered that she gets seasick. “That’s when they made a bridge,” he says. “It goes all the way from the Crow’s Nest to the cliffs on the Bad Side, and I helped them build it!” Proudly he pulls up the sleeve of his robes to show me a yellow loom-band bracelet. “They gave me this to say thank you. We had a ceremony and everything!”
He comes to a stop by two big rocks. We’ve climbed above the Tangled Forest and it sits below us, a swaying mass of green. “We’re here,” he says.
I pull out the map and try to work out where we are. There are rocks everywhere and jungly-looking trees and vines. “I can’t see this place on the map,” I say.
“That’s because we never put it on there. We wanted to keep it a secret. Don’t you recognize it?”
I peer between the two rocks. I can see boulders piled on top of each other and hear running water. Mist hangs in the air. Something about the sound of the water and the mist tugs at my memory. “Is this . . . Boulders and Waterfalls?” I say.
Win smiles and nods. “Yes it is, my friend!”
A shiver of excitement runs through me. Win and I used to love hanging out here because, well, there are loads of boulders and waterfalls. What’s not to like? I step between the rocks and lean forward. Below me is a round pool. Turquoise water spills into another pool directly below it, and more and more pools stretch into the distance like a chain of blue beads. They’re connected by gushing waterfalls that run so fast that they’ve polished the rock into smooth water chutes. Sun shines through the mist and jet-black butterflies hover over the water.
Unable to contain himself, Win pushes past me, shouts, “HEAR ME ROAR!” and leaps fully clothed into the first pool. Straight away he’s caught in a current that spins him around and around before tugging him toward the next waterfall. He howls with laughter as he shoots out of sight.
I hear a splash followed by, “COME ON, ARTHUR!”
Happiness rushes through me. Crowky is gone, Grandad is safe, and I’m about to go on the coolest waterslide in the world, and possibly ride a unicorn.
“Wait for me!” I yell, and I throw myself off the rock.
Win and I have a brilliant time slipping and sliding between the pools and jumping off rocks.
Eventually we find ourselves in a small river running toward the Tangled Forest. We pile giant leaves on top of each other to make a raft, then climb on and let the current carry us into the forest.
We lie back on our leaky raft. The canopy of leaves is high above us, blocking out the sun, and the only light comes from buds that burst from vines. These buds glow and flicker all around us as our raft drifts deeper into the dark forest.
“I’m glad you’re back, mate,” says Win, punching me on the arm.
“Me too,” I say, punching him back, but only gently because our raft is very unstable.
When we get caught in a root we get out and start to walk.
We wander between the thick trunks. It’s so hot that our clothes dry quickly, and we keep ourselves going by munching on the biggest blueberries I’ve ever seen. At least, I think they’re blueberries . . . they’re more purple than blue and they taste like doughnuts.
“We need to be quiet now,” whispers Win. “This is where the unicorns hang out.”
He stops in front of a line of tree trunks. At first I think they’ve grown close together, like the ones at the edge of the forest, but then I realize that these trees have been deliberately tied together with vines. I push a knot of ivy to one side and see words scratched into one of the trunks:
“Is this the Lost Girls camp?” I say.
Win nods and puts a finger to his lips, and I follow him to the entrance of Treetops. At least, it was the entrance to Treetops. Once a huge wooden door stood here, but now it’s lying smashed on the ground with plants growing through the cracked wood.
It was Crowky who did this. Last time we were here Stella told us that he’d set fire to their camp and forced them to abandon it. It’s only now that I’m standing here that I understand how total the destruction was.
“Horrible, isn’t it?” says Win.
I nod, a painful lump forming in my chest. I can’t believe we stopped visiting Roar for so long. We didn’t come for three whole years, and that’s why Crowky was able to take over and do this to Treetops. We can never let him do something like this again.
Treetops used to be amazing. A higgledy-piggledy collection of tree houses linked by rope bridges and ladders, it was a playground in the sky. Stella’s hut was best of all, of course. It was built so high in the canopy that I never went up there, but I remember watching as Rose climbed the wobbling ladder and disappeared into the leaves.
Now all that’s left are the burnt skeletons of tree houses.
“It’s all gone,” I say.
“Not completely,” says Win. “I’ll show you.”
He runs to a tree, finds a sooty rope ladder, and starts to climb. Soon we’re pulling ourselves onto blackened planks. It’s the floor of a tree house. The walls are gone, but the plank floor seems solid enough. Win drops to his stomach and I lie next to him. We peer at the ground below. “This is the best unicorn-spotting platform in Roar,” he whispers.
We keep as still as possible, listening to insects and watching spots of light dance across the forest floor. We don’t have to wait long. Soon we hear twigs snapping and leaves being pushed aside. “Are you sure it’s a unicorn?” I ask, my heart speeding up. “I mean, how can you tell that’s a unicorn and not a scarecrow?”
“Because scarecrows don’t have horns,” says Win.
And just then a large blue unicorn steps out of the trees. It’s got a scattering of silver spots over its coat, large milky eyes, and a ridiculously shaggy mane. It’s beautiful, but its horn is spectacular. It’s silvery and sharp and glows as bright as the moon. I watch, hardly daring to breathe, as the unicorn bends its head and starts crunching something off the forest floor.
Still chewing, it raises its head and fixes its pale eyes on us.
“I think it knows we’re here,” I whisper.
Win scoffs. “Course he knows we’re here! He would have sniffed us out from miles away. Unicorns are super good at smelling.”
“Can we get closer?” I ask.
“We can try.”
I follow Win’s lead and slowly we make our way back down the ladder to the ground. The unicorn watches us the whole time. I reach out my hand in what I hope is a friendly gesture. “Here, unicorn,” I say, wriggling my fingers.
“He’s not a cat, Arthur,” scoffs Win. “If you want him to come closer, then you’ll need to give him something he likes. I’ll try to find some apples.” Then Win darts off and out of the camp, leaving me alone with the very majestic and slightly scary unicorn.
Still munching, he stares at me.
“Hello,” I say, taking a step closer. “I’m Arthur Trout.” Then, thinking it might impress him, I add, “Master of Roar.”
It doesn’t impress him. In fact, he rolls his eyes.
In case I sounded too cocky, I kneel down on the ground to show I’m subservient to him.
Then something amazing happens. The unicorn kneels down too, like he’s copying me! To see if I’m right, I dip my head. The unicorn dips his head too. Slowly I get up, but the unicorn stays where he is, his nose buried in the long grass, his broad back low to the ground. Does he want me to sit on him?
Suddenly I think how brilliant it would be if Win came back and found me trotting around the camp on a unicorn . . . Also, Rose thinks she’s it galloping across Roar on Orion, but what if I had a unicorn as my personal form of transport? In seconds I’ve imagined it all. The unicorn and I have become friends. He’s called Ronaldo and he only eats from my hand.
I step closer. Ronaldo doesn’t move, so I step around his side and gently settle myself on his beautiful silky back.
“Arthur . . . what are you doing?!” Win has come back clutching an armful of apples. But he doesn’t look impressed: he looks horrified.
Just then the unicorn swivels his head around and glares at me.
“He wanted me to ride him,” I say, wondering if this wasn’t such a great idea. “I knelt down and so did he. Then he tucked his head in and waited for me to climb on his back!”
“Are you sure he wasn’t just pulling that juicy worm out of the ground?”
I draw in a sharp breath. Win’s right. Hanging out of the corner of Ronaldo’s mouth is a fat wriggling worm.
“I didn’t know unicorns ate worms. Anyway, yesterday you said if we found one we could ride it!”
“A female unicorn. They’re really friendly, but male unicorns are massively aggressive so if I were you, I’d get off his back right now, nice and slow.”
I nod. I don’t need telling twice. The unicorn has started to growl and is glaring at me. Also, from up here I can see that his horn is very sharp indeed—kind of pointed, like a spear. I go to get off him, but, in a flash, he lets out a whinny of outrage and leaps to his feet, lifting me up in the air with him.
To stop myself from falling I grab hold of the closest solid object: his horn.
This does not go down well.
