Urchin and the Heartstone (15 page)

Something had woken her. Something was moving. She opened her eyes and sat up, shivering, wrapping herself in the cloak and trying to ask who was there, but found she was too frightened to do more than squeak. By the time she could falter a few words, all was silent again. She sat, wide awake, telling herself not to be silly. Hadn’t she been hoping Fingal and Hope would come back, shaking their wet fur and gabbling about all their adventures? She whispered their names in a voice that sounded strangely thin. There was no answer. She lay down in a tight, unhappy huddle, still listening.

Sunlight falling through the hole in the cliffside woke her, and she jumped up and shook herself. Were they back? But the cave was reproachfully silent. Fingal and Hope had not come back. They might have found another way out. They were probably playing by the shore already. They might have emerged into the cave and gone home, not knowing that she was asleep in the corner.

Look for paw prints.
She followed the scuffed trails from the previous day, and at the sight of fresh ones her heart lifted with joy, then fell again. She could see hedgehog prints, but these were too big for Hope. That explained what she heard last night. Hedgehogs must have been sheltering in here.

No Fingal, no Hope.
I
should never had stayed here. I should have gone straight to the tower. They could have drowned, they could be lost underground, they’ll be cold, they’ll be starving, they could be trapped, they could be hurt, they might have become separated. If anything happens to Fingal, little Hope will be all alone in a strange place, he might be crying…

Furious with herself, she left her cloak and sprang through the caves until the sound of the waterfall grew louder. She swung herself onto an ash tree growing out of the rock, and was about to scramble up the rocks, when she saw Sluggen and Crammen of the Hedgehog Host on the shore below.

“Can you come up here, please?” she called down, and waited impatiently while they looked past her and from side to side before catching sight of her. “Will you look out for an otter and a hedgehog? I’ll explain later. Thanks.” Sluggen shouted something about the caves not being a safe place for youngsters, but Sepia was already leaping away.

With weary paws, Needle watched dawn spread through the sky. It should have looked beautiful, touching the wave tips with pink, shedding a soft gray light on the boats as they waited patiently by the mists, their lights pale and steady in the dawning. But Needle was too agitated to care about anything but Hope and Fingal. She had expected Sepia to have caught up with her by now to tell her that they were safe, but it hadn’t happened and, running through the wood alone at night, she had imagined the worst. Drowning, an injury underground…
Oh, please, please, Heart keep them, please, and I’m sorry for all the times I’ve been snappy with Fingal, oh, please keep them safe, please look after them…

Would Crispin be awake yet? Clambering onto a rock by the spring that ran down from the castle to the shore, she remembered too late that Padra lived at the Spring Gate. Just as she was thinking of him, Padra glided through the water, saw her, and scrambled up.

“Needle! How’s the treasure hunt going?” And when she hunched her back and turned her face away, he asked in concern, “What’s the matter, Needle?”

She tried to find the right words, but there weren’t any. Finally, she managed a hoarse whisper. “Please, Captain Padra, sir, you’re going to be very angry.”

“I doubt it,” he said, and leaned over to see her face. “Angry with
you
?”

She nodded miserably.

“But you’re going to tell me what it is anyway?”

She nodded again.

“Then you’re a brave hedgehog,” he said. “And I’ll try not to be angry. What have you done?”

Looking down at her paws, she told him everything, her voice quavering, stopping now and again to dry her eyes when she thought of Fingal and Hope alone in the dark. When she finished, she felt a warm and comforting otter hug.

“Ouch,” said Padra. “I’d forgotten how sharp you are. Needle, you mustn’t blame yourself. You and Sepia did exactly the right thing.”

“It wasn’t Fingal’s fault, sir,” she said. “We were all there, and Hope just jumped or something, and Fingal tried to get to him in time, and went straight in after him.”

“Fingal comes out of most things all right,” said Padra. “And as for Hope, I think the Heart takes special care of that one. I’ll send a search party, and I’m taking you to Crispin. He won’t be angry either, but he should know. Oh,” he added with a frown, “and Docken’s on guard at the Throne Room.”

“Hope’s daddy!” cried Needle in dismay.

“Could be awkward,” admitted Padra. “Leave it to me.” He waved at a passing otter. “Get a search party of moles and otters together and report to me outside the Throne Room, sharpish.”

Needle trotted upstairs and through corridors after him. Normally she enjoyed the sight of the Threadings she had helped to make, but this morning she couldn’t enjoy anything, and after her long journey, she struggled to keep up with Padra. As they turned along the corridor to the Throne Room, she stopped with something between a gasp and a squeak.

Hope was standing on his hind legs, his paws on his father’s knees, his little shortsighted face turned up, his nose twitching as he gabbled his adventures. Docken, bending over him, was occasionally saying, “Did you?” and “That was brave,” as Hope rattled through his story. It was all too much for Needle. She rushed past Padra and hugged Hope so hard that his hind paws were left kicking in the air.

“Hope, you’re all right!” she cried. “Where’s Fingal?”

“Yes, thank you, he’s with the king, thank you, please will you put me down now?” gasped Hope. “Thank you. Have you got the Heartstone?”

Padra had already swept past her to the Throne Room door. It was opened by Fingal, wiping butter from his whiskers with a broad grin on his face.

“Oh, it’s you,” said Fingal brightly, and stood back to let him in. “Hello, Needle, what are you doing here? May as well come in. And you, little Hope. I mean,” he said, looking over his shoulder, “is that all right, Your Majesty?”

“I do apologize for him, Crispin,” sighed Padra.

The Throne Room smelled pleasantly of fresh bread, and Crispin himself buttered a roll for Needle. She bowed as she thanked him, noticing that he looked happy for the first time since Urchin had been taken away.

Padra took Fingal’s shoulders in both paws while he looked him up and down, and finally said, “You seem to be in one piece, and so’s the little one. Before we leave, and if His Majesty permits, I’ll teach you the correct way to answer the door of the Throne Room. Crispin, who’s going to tell the story, you or Fingal?”

“Go on, Fingal,” said Crispin.

“It was like this,” said Fingal, nearly sitting down then standing up again as Padra raised his eyebrows, “we went to look for the Heartstone—didn’t find it, by the way—”

“I know what happened until you and Hope vanished down the waterslide,” said Padra.

“Ah,” said Fingal. “Well, when Hope fell down the waterslide, he curled up, being a hedgehog, and the water swept him all the way down; and by the time I caught up with him he was bobbing about in the underground lake like a chestnut shell. I swam out and got him, but there was no way he could climb back up. Tried it. Too hard. I tried carrying him on my back, but he fell off. I told him to hang on tight, but either he fell off or he knocked me off balance, and we both fell down, and he wasn’t going to let go of his bag of pebbles, so I looked for another way. He rode on my back, or on my chest, depending on which way up I was, and I swam across the lake.”

“Didn’t he fall in?” asked Padra.

“Oh, yes,” said Fingal. “I just scooped him up and told him to hang on a bit tighter.”

Padra turned Fingal around. There were two rows of gashes on his shoulders that made Needle flinch to see them.

“Go on,” said Padra quietly.

“It was a long swim,” said Fingal. “And it brought us to a tight, squeezy place through the rocks and a cave and another squeeze, and then we were so dead tired, we had a sleep. When we woke up we went on, because we knew we’d find tunnels sooner or later, and we did—at least, Hope did. That little hedgehog was off and into that tunnel like a squirrel up a nut tree. I couldn’t keep up.”

“Excuse me?” said Hope.

“Yes, Hope?” said Crispin.

“I slowed down for him,” said Hope. “And I looked after him in the tunnels, Captain Padra, sir.”

“Thank you very much, Hope,” said Padra. “He needs looking after. Go on, Fingal.”

“It was a long, straight tunnel,” said Fingal. “Dead boring. It sloped uphill a long way and widened out, and then we heard voices.”

“Whose voices?” asked Padra. “Saying what?”

“Something about ‘chuck the water out and scrub those pans,’” said Fingal. “We were under the tower scullery! There was a winding stairway farther on so we went up it—we thought it must go halfway to the moon, there must have been miles of it. We could smell breakfast, too, and we were starving, weren’t we, Hope? We thought the stairway must lead to the main kitchens, so we followed it, but after all that, it only led to the door of a tight little chamber with a ladder leading to an opening above it. Not much of an opening, but we squeezed through—an awfully tight squeeze for an otter, just as well I hadn’t had any breakfast, really. And when we got through there, we were in a narrow slit of a gap between the ceiling of the lower room and the floor of the one above. This one, in fact.”

“This one!” Padra looked at Crispin in horror. “The Throne Room!”

“Yes, but I didn’t know that at the time,” said Fingal. “It was dusty and I sneezed and hit my head on the floorboards, and ouched, and then I heard the king ask who was there…”

“…and I got the floorboards up with my sword and got them out,” said Crispin, smiling. “They’ve had a wash and breakfast.”

“Nice breakfast, thanks,” said Fingal.

“But, Crispin,” said Padra, “anybody could have got under the Throne Room!”

“Good thing it was only us,” said Fingal.

“And a good thing they did,” said Crispin. “I’ll tell Gorsen to get it sealed.”

“It might be useful to keep it open, Your Majesty,” said Needle, “in case you ever need an escape route.”

“I’d rather His Majesty jumped out of the window and ran down the walls as usual,” said Padra. “Your Majesty, I think Fingal could do with a swim.”

“Yes, please,” said Fingal.

“Well done, Fingal,” said Crispin. “You’ve looked after Hope commendably.”

“Is that good?” asked Fingal.

“It’s very good,” said Crispin. “You may go.”

“And if the salt water doesn’t ease those gashes,” said Padra, “go and ask Arran to put something on them.”

“What gashes?” Fingal beamed. He bowed and left the Throne Room.

“He seems to have muddled through,” said Padra. “Needle, find someone to get a message to Sepia. Her brother may be about.”

“And go down to the kitchens for something to eat,” said Crispin.

“What’s happened to you?” said Padra to Crispin as Needle hurried away. “You look a lot better than you did. Is that just because of Fingal and Hope?”

“The moles,” said Crispin. “They should reach Whitewings tonight.”