A carpet of bones led into a room the height of a church, enclosing a landscape of human remains rising and falling in valleys and peaks. High above the spectacle hung jade green flames, illuminating the mountains of cartilage and lending them a sickly hue.

Harry and Logan looked at each other. Harry fastened the sickle handle in his trousers, ducked under the doorframe and took careful strides over the debris. It crackled below his feet and rose above his ankles.

'There's a firm layer just underneath,' said Harry, turning around. Logan paused in the opening, eyes wide, but his lips constricted with determination. He strode ahead with hurried steps – balancing on a cranium, leaping over the fangs of an upturned ribcage – and stood next to Harry, overlooking the grotesque tomb.

'I mean, really,' Logan said, his eyebrows in a knot. 'What's this supposed to be?'

'Scraps? Dead dreams? Who knows?'

'Look, up there!'

Something round and sunny-coloured hovered at level with the fire.

'A golden shield?' Harry guessed.

'Far too big. Looks more like a circle of stars, to me. See those gleaming points? Eight or nine of them.'

'Could be a picture of the sun. With rays emanating from it. Seems to shift a bit depending on where you stand.'

Logan shaded his eyes from the flames. 'Damned hard to tell from here. Why does everything have to be so far up?'

'At least the difficulty is a giveaway: that sun-shield is what we should get our hands on if we want to escape with our lives.'

'Well, you are the expert. Hmm, perhaps it's a massive wheel? That we have to turn? I wonder what Niall would've made of it.'

A loud bang came from behind. Niall had run into the house and smacked the door to one side, and was now storming through the armoire.

'Niall!' exclaimed Logan and Harry.

Crashing into scattering bones like a bowling ball, Niall landed right in front of them. He flailed and spluttered:

'They're – they're coming!'

'What happened?' said Harry as he and Logan pulled the man up.

'I – I took them to the tree,' Niall gasped between breaths. 'Made something up about an even – even greater treasure in the cave below. So – so I told them to have a closer look and I – I sort of – sort of shoved them into the hole and – and they fell all the way down. Bad idea. Bad. Idea. And – and now they're coming!'

Harry pushed through the rubble, thrusting his way to the opening.

'I'll bolt the front door and window,' he said. 'You work out how to get that thing down.' He disappeared into the cottage.

'Well, this is charming,' said Niall, facing the chamber. 'Explains a lot, doesn't it?'

He pressed his shoe onto a pubic bone, pushing up its headless skeleton and put his jacket around its shoulders. In chequered canary shirtsleeves and with his hands on his hips, Niall defiantly beheld the bonescape.

'Right,' he commanded, 'we must get that thing down. … What thing, exactly?'

'The starry wheel up there.'

'Ah. And how do we do that?'

'We have no idea! I was just now complaining that everything we need is so far above our heads. What's the point of that, anyway?'

Niall stood twining his moustache. 'The point, my good man, is that we should ever reach for the stars, even though we may tread in muck. It's abundantly clear what to do.'

'You don't mean …?'

Niall pulled out a seed from his waistcoat pocket.

'I most certainly do,' he said. 'That's the wisdom of these little nuggets.'

He flung the seed far ahead into the vista. With a hollow ploc, it hit a skullcap fifty yards away, then snapped and flashed. Within a couple of seconds came a rumble and, below the point of impact, the bones shook and clapped.

'Hold on to your posterior!' Niall cheered. 'Here comes the timber lift!'

A boom filled the chamber. From the jumble rose a thirty-foot tree that was only a tree in shape. The trunk was a nest of ribcages, with a cluster of skulls shrouding its top. From their jaws protruded two dozen spinal columns, forming an osseous crown under the glimmering circle.

'What the hell, Niall?'

'Well … it's a tree, isn't it? In a way.'

Fragmentary syllables spluttered from Logan's mouth, but he found no words in reply.

'Oh, who cares what it looks like?' said Niall. 'It's tall, it's climbable – that's all we require. Come along.'

He waded through the expanse of bones crunching underneath him.

Logan stayed put and pulled out the Teddy Baker book. He riffled through its many maritime engravings until something quite different showed up: an illustration of the bony tree that had just popped from the ground. Underneath it, a square of text in elegant handwriting:

The Beamok

Neither plant nor beast, yet sharing characteristics with both, the Beamok (ˈbiːmək) is usually found in large Skullmoors (chambers with human remains). They are especially likely to awaken in the presence of fear and ambition. Beamoks are territorial and jealous, but are rumoured to be loving and caring partners.

Looking up, Logan saw Niall kicking a hipbone out of his way. The Beamok's backbone crown started swaying.

'N-Niall!' Logan called. 'The tree!'

Niall whipped around. 'What are you doing back there?' he snapped, and continued onwards. 'I can't do everything myself, you know.' A swishing sound hissed in the room. 'In fact, I hear a bit of –'

Crack!

Niall tripped on a rib sticking up, just as a tree spine came thrashing, missing him by barely a foot.

He hoisted himself up on one leg – but got no further. His other shoe had stuck under a bone heap. He reached down, pulling at a femur, trying to loosen the grip on his shoe. Another swish came from above.

Crash!

The spine sliced the rubble's upper layer, splattering bone chips in the air. Niall lay a yard further away, with Harry sprawled next to him.

'Bravo, Harry!' Logan bellowed. 'Nick of time!'

Harry scrambled to his feet. He folded his arms around Niall's chest and pulled him up. Behind them, spines clobbered the ground like sticks beating a puddle, but Harry and Niall were already sprinting to safety.

They reached Logan and collapsed next to a pile of dislodged fibulas. Turning to Harry, Niall panted:

'Thanks, Harry. Much obliged. Hmph, silly tree. But I suppose it can't recognise me if it lacks eyes, eh?'

Logan scoffed. 'Recognise –? That's not one of your mates at the pub, Niall!'

'We only need patience,' Niall maintained. 'It's obviously here to help.'

'It's obviously not!' Logan said and showed him the illustration. 'We're in a Skullmoor, Niall, and that is a Beamok.'

Niall eyed the page and sneered:

'That, my deluded friend, is a very fine drawing of a masthead sloop. A nice little craft, but I don't see the relevance.'

Logan blinked at the page where the Beamok engraving used to be.

'I swear I saw … Ugh! There was a picture of … that thing,' he said, pointing at the tranquil Beamok. 'I have no reason to lie about it, do I?'

'Of course not,' came Niall's smooth voice.

'And it said they get quite aggressive. As we've seen.'

Niall rolled his eyes. 'In keeping with all oppressive gentry, I assume.'

'What's that got to do with – with anything? It's only an unhinged monstrosity and that's all it is!'

'Oh, I bet you would prefer staying in the cavern, then? We wouldn't even have come this far without the seeds.'

Logan pulled at his hair. 'My God! Your stubborn fixation on everything ancestral! You've actually gone insane!'

Niall stared at him for a second.

'I see,' he said. 'I see.'

He stood up, brushing off dust from his tie.

'I'm sorry, Niall,' Logan frowned, 'I didn't intend it like that, but –'

A bam came from the cottage. Harry scurried on his knees to get a view through the chamber opening.

'No one inside yet!' he called over another bang. 'But that door won't hold forever.'

'Heavens above!' Logan quivered as the bangs on the door came in mechanical intervals. 'And at the other end we have a skeletal bloody demon! Everything wants us dead!'

'Will you calm down?' Niall shouted at him. 'I'll handle it.'

Niall held the last seed between his fingers.

'Don't you dare use any more of those!' said Logan.

'It's the only way! And you can't reason with me in any case. I'm just an insane fool from what I've heard.'

Harry had scuttled back to them. He looked at Niall, then at the treelike thing standing far off awaiting their decision.

'How can you be sure it won't do away with you all the same?' he said.

Contemplating his palm, Niall spoke to the seed as much as to Logan and Harry:

'Because we look out for our own.'

Logan's eyes bulged. 'Oh, come on, Niall! Grow up!'

Niall eyed him, his lips curled, and murmured:

'Apt choice of words.'

He put the seed in his mouth and swallowed it whole.

'No!' Logan howled, lunging at Niall, but Harry held him back.

Niall stumbled across the tangle of bones, hyperventilating and clutching his throat. He writhed and squirmed like a bug on his back, then fell silent. With strands of hair coated to his damp forehead, he got to his knees.

His eyes popped. With a yelp and a creaking noise, Niall's torso expanded to the heavens, his clothes growing with it. And it stopped. Short-winded and quivering, Niall stood like a thirty-foot, two-legged caterpillar, dotted with three score buttons and almost as many pockets.

'N-Niall …' Logan trembled.

Another outcry and more grinding noise: Niall's arms swelled and new ones shot from his shoulders. They branched into ever smaller limbs until a thicket of yellow sleeves swayed above him, covered with fluttering hands and fingers. Next, his legs broadened and split, growing into a root system in the quagmire. It was a mess of long and short tweed legs, with dark, burgundy balmoral shoes poking out here and there, twitching their toe caps.

Niall's head grunted above.

'Niall!' Harry called up at him.

Arms and hands wiggled to make room for the head. With a final grunt, it puffed out between the shoulders, flanked by the familiar coal-black curtains.

'W-well,' Niall called back, a little dazed. 'I don't know what I was expecting. But I'm sure this works, too.'

'Oh, you fool,' Logan choked, his eyebrows' inner corners pushing creases in his forehead.

'A-are you all right?' Harry shouted.

'I … I'm fine! Could be worse. I mean … now I'm finally gent-tree, aren't I?' He guffawed out loud, pushing meandering ripples down his larva-like anatomy. 'Or perhaps only a vest-tree, I dunno.'

'We – we will find a cure!' Logan wailed. 'Just stay put!'

'No, no, no, you dunce!' Niall said, looming above the two men as far as possible without toppling over. 'This is the only chance we have at taking down that bony eyesore and getting a hold of the wheel-star.'

'It'll kill you, Niall!'

'Don't worry,' Niall proclaimed, whisking the limbs above him. 'I'm heavily armed!'

The banging from the door picked up the pace. Bam! Bam! Bam!

'No time to lose!' Niall yelled.

Logan's sweaty neck turned from the Beamok to the armoire and back again. He looked up.

'Good luck, Niall!'

Niall gave a pleased nod.

The balmoral legions started moving, turning Niall's mammoth frame in the manner of a battle tank. Facing the Beamok, which stood pale and placid under the flames, Niall snorted in anticipation, flexing every arm he had. As though revving up an engine, his feet pedalled in the clutter with a building clippety-clappety-cloppety.

Harry and Logan stood below, holding their breaths.

'Cartilage must be destroyed!' Niall bellowed, his voice bouncing between the hills. 'Charge!'

The legs and shoes thrashed ahead harvester-like through the boneyard, throwing shoulder blades and mandibles around, making a rumbling commotion. Niall's waistcoated body bent back from the speed, the crown like a cheering football crowd of flapping extremities. Niall himself, wind in his locks, was laughing like a madman.

The Beamok, stuck in place, was startled by the sudden offensive. Its spines presently relaxed, however, and curled in concentration as Niall advanced like a battleship over a skeletal ocean, getting closer and closer.

With the grace of a javelin thrower, the Beamok pulled one shoulder back and – once Niall had come within range – wheeled around, jabbing a spinal whip at him.

'Argh!' Niall yelled as the vertebrae snapped four arms and a dozen fingers, halting his rampage. 'You bloody …!'

Before the bone-tree jerked the spinal column back, Niall grabbed its joints and pulled. The Beamok heaved in the other direction, desperate to break away.

With a pop, the bone was ripped off its base, and the Beamok swung back.

'Hah!' Niall whooped in triumph, and threw the spine to the ground, where it coiled like a dying snake and was still.

'Go, Niall!' Logan squealed, jumping with excitement.

Niall threw himself over the Beamok. His hand-thicket grabbed spines left and right as the panicking bone-tree reeled to escape. Intermittently, the Beamok found an opening and struck its assailant, prompting howls of pain and obscenities. For every spine attacking, however, two were pulled off.

After minutes of cries, smacks and profanity, only the ribcage trunk remained. The skulls atop it gaped hollow. Letting the final spine fly, Niall turned his cumbersome body to face his friends. His appendaged crown had gaps where the Beamok had broken through, leaving arms hanging motionless, crooked and bleeding. But Niall's face – although flushed and clammy – was proud and elated.

'Yes!' Harry cried out, shaking his fist.

'Brilliant, Niall!' Logan laughed.

Niall smiled at them and gave a shaky bow.

'Th-thank you very much, indeed.'

'Now, the glowing thing above you, Niall. You're almost done!'

'Oh! R-right.'

Niall turned around again (his shoes clapping like a polite little audience) and looked up. There it was, mere feet above his hands.

He extended his body, a couple of buttons flying off, and held out a forest of fingers towards it.

A rushing sound cut the air.

Crack!

'Aaargh!'

A whipping spine broke Niall's out-stretched wrists like twigs. He turned his head.

Dozens of vertebral columns curled under the jade sheen. Every severed, bony branch had grown back.

'No, th-that's not fair,' Niall faltered, sweat glistening under his tired eyes. The noise from the house pounded like a drumbeat across the room.

Three spines hurtled down.

'Graaah!' Niall shrieked, his frame contorting in agony as bones splintered in his arms and fingers.

'Come back from there!' Logan screamed. 'For heaven's sake, come back!'

A fury overtook Niall – he was a wolf baring its fangs, nostrils flaring. His skin boiled red and his eyes burned black.

Roaring and spitting, he lunged at the plant – half of his arms limp, half of them crushing down with purpose.

His adversary was stunned for an instant, but then enveloped Niall in its branches. The two swayed back and forth, resembling a pair of bouquets embracing in a boxing match. Snaps and cracks jarred along to Niall's grunts.

'We've got to do something!' Logan pleaded, clutching his hair.

'What?' Harry said. 'What could we possibly do?'

Just then came a gurgling gasp from Niall. The Beamok was pressing him down, bending his torso like a willow. He was frothing through gritted teeth under the strain, his bloodshot eyes watering.

A crack echoed, followed by a whimpering choke, as Niall's back snapped at the base. Another crack, and it broke at the middle. The Beamok bent over Niall's body to a sickening crack – crack – crack, folding it together. Niall's limbs twitched and kicked in places, but soon became still.

Logan stood with his mouth open, his body paralysed. He slumped down, kneeling in the clutter, staring at the scene.

The Beamok leaned further onto Niall's mangled figure, and with a rumble, the two bizarre bodies pressed into the morass. The tangle of tweed cloth, spinal columns, ribcages and shirtsleeves was devoured by the sea of bones and cartilage.

A moment later, it lay calm and unmoving as though nothing had disturbed its peace.

Logan remained sitting, looking out over the chamber to where Niall had taken his last breaths. He gave no hint of hearing the pounding at the door, nor Harry's shouts. Not until something fell from his hand did Logan's eyes change focus.

Splayed open by his knees was the Teddy Baker novel, resting its covers on a chipped pelvis. Words covered the pages anew. Logan grabbed the book and looked down on the spread. He read to himself:

'Somehow – incredibly – he'd got the Apple.'

Smash!

Logan and Harry both turned to see the cottage front door partly broken. A woman's bloodstained hand poked through the hole, twitching like a pale, wounded insect.

From the house whistled a biting wind, pushing leaves and dust through the Skullmoor. Harry pulled an arm over his face. Logan was not as lucky: he winced and turned around, holding a palm to his left eye. Harry grabbed the sickle from his trousers and ran towards the chamber opening, brandishing his weapon.

Logan, meanwhile, removed his hand. The eye was red and watery, nudging tears down his cheek – the eyelid refused to open fully. With his one good eye, Logan observed the starry, golden circle. His jaw dropped. He screwed up his face as though seeing something new.

Hesitating, he held out his arms straight from his shoulders and the unscathed eye observed how his hands narrowed around the circle. His palms eventually closed on its golden outlines – and he held it in his hands.

Logan gasped and let go. The object hit a shinbone with a clanging noise, bounced in a sharp arc and flopped onto a cranium.

A golden crown. Its circlet was engraved with petals and leaves, and gilded spikes stood upright along its rim. The glimmering circle overhead was gone.

Wails and cries erupted from the cottage. Logan tucked the novel under his shirt and stumbled over to the skull. It grinned at him like a deranged prince, the crown askew.

'This is madness,' he groaned.

With quivering hands, Logan lifted the headdress from the scalp. He goggled at the dazzling thing as though trying to find the answer to a riddle. He shut his eyes, made a dismissive jerk and put the crown onto his head.

To a loud grumble and clatter, Logan fell straight down, yelping like a puppy, and landed on solid ground.

His open cardigan whipped around his body as he looked around. The skeletal remains had been pushed away and he stood as if in an empty circle, the width of a bus, fenced by a five-foot bone wall.

'Well, I'll be,' Logan said, pressing his brow up and his chin back.

He took a step forwards – bones were repelled in the front and filled in at the rear; the bone-cleared circle moved with him. Logan tittered to himself and stepped forwards and backwards, appraising his powers. The redness in his injured eye had cleared, and the iris moved around unperturbed.

Harry came running, curved blade in hand.

'Run!' he called as he rushed across the rubble. 'I can't hold them o–'

He fell into the newly formed hole in the Skullmoor. Somersaulting on the ground, he came to a halt in front of Logan.

'W-what on earth …' Harry panted, grimacing at the tidy surroundings. And at Logan, whose crown hung a bit loose on the balding head.

Just then, Logan noticed something moving in the house.

'No time to explain,' Logan breathed, pulling Harry by the arm. 'Royal express! Let's go!'

They ran straight into the chamber. Logan held his crown in place as if it were a bowler hat in a gale, while Harry ran behind him with the sickle. The Skullmoor opened like an ocean splitting in two, leaving a trail of rearranged debris.

A shriek pierced the room. Someone had burst through the opening. Logan turned his head as he ran, but Harry pushed him on.

'Don't look!' he yelled. 'Just run!'

They were nearing the outer edge of the light from above. Rather than meeting with a wall, the room extended further into darkness. The voice behind them was vicious and cold:

'Thieves!' it screeched, echoing over the sound of their steps and the rumbling bones. 'Deceivers!'

'Run!' Harry repeated as they raced ahead.

'You will pay!' came the scream, closer than before. 'Pay!'

Logan looked back again – and tripped on his shoes. He crashed to the floor, Harry stumbling over him. The crown rolled on its rim into the shadows, trailed by a dwindling tinkle.

'Your bones!' the voice howled. 'They're mine!'

Harry scurried to his knees. The blade had fallen from his hand and he was desperately rummaging in the darkness. Logan fought for breath, hair tresses dangling across his brow. He turned over and beheld the commotion at their heels.

An outright behemoth was hurtling towards them. It had the redheaded woman's face, but her hair had turned white and from her forehead protruded a long, twirling horn. Her stomach was swollen to an unnatural size under the dress and the yellow wool was sliced open at the bosom, revealing a breast as pale as the moon. Punctured in the middle, it bled black pus down the cloth.

Her left arm was short, spindly and leathery; the right one was muscular and covered in fur, its hand a paw with curling claws. From the monster's loins hung a bundle of chords, spread out in long, trailing ropes, each joined to something bulky ploughing through the bones behind her.

Under one side of her skirt galloped four hooves. On the other pounded gargantuan crab legs. They all crushed at the clutter underneath, spraying bones in their wake. As she closed in on Logan and Harry, her face broke into a grin that cracked bleeding clefts in her lips.

'I tried,' said Harry, looking pleadingly at Logan's terrified face.

As if woken from a dream, Logan wheeled around onto his shins and reached for the crown, which shone dully in the distance. He pinched at the air as though catching a fly, then hooked one arm around Harry's.

'Hold on tight!' he bellowed. The thundering deformity was so close its hooves and crab legs peppered them with cartilage.

Harry secured his grip on Logan's arm. The monster stretched its neck forward, shrieking through her gory mouth. Logan bent over his lap and made a movement with his hands.

'Whoa!' Harry exclaimed as he and Logan lifted from the floor as though falling skywards. Where they hunched together a moment earlier, the monstrous woman clutched at empty air.

'Why don't you go tend your fucking oven!' Logan yelled hysterically as they soared like balloons up and away from the ground.

Then he gulped. The creature was scaling the Skullmoor walls.

'Oh, why did I say that?' he moaned.

But a ribcage compressed beneath her weight and she stumbled down again. As Harry and Logan reached higher, the rubble began falling back. It rattled on all sides of the bemused fiend, like cereal filling a massive bowl. In seconds, it buried her up to the neck.

'Thieves …' she rasped at them.

Ascending still, Harry and Logan watched the creature's lurid face cackle until it could no longer be distinguished from the skulls crowded around her.

Soon, even the green flames were no larger than pinheads, and the entire chamber disappeared from view.

'Where – where are we headed?' Logan said, wriggling like a worm as he tried to turn around in the vacuum. 'There's no ceiling! We're climbing into nothing!'

'No,' Harry grunted, barely holding on to Logan's cardigan, 'something's there.'

Far above their heads, an orange light lit up a rough stone patch. It grew larger and larger, as though they were moving up a well.

Logan choked and flailed. 'It's the oven! It's the damned oven! They tricked us!'

'No, it isn't! Calm yourself!'

The well-like passage rippled and gurgled. It made a contracting movement, squeezing around Harry and Logan, and – with a great lurch – they sped upwards.

They hit the stone ceiling and were spat out through a cramped opening, crashing into a bright room.

Coughing and powdered with soot, Harry got up, squinting at a closed door at the opposite end of the room. As he brushed dust off his sleeves, he noticed he was soiling an impeccably clean surface, devoid of any furnishing. The fact was made all the more conspicuous by the lamp sitting an inch from his shoe-tips. It reflected as a shining blob on his right, where a bay window took up most of the wall. Outside, the sun had set.

A grunt came from above him. Logan lay sprawled next to an upside-down coffee table and sofa.

'Logan?' said Harry. 'What are you doing on the ceiling?'

Logan blinked at Harry with some confusion.

'Oh,' he said, wearily looking around. 'Hang on.'

He fiddled with something between his fingers – and plunged down. Harry was just in time to dampen the fall somewhat.

'Oof,' Logan wheezed as Harry supported him. 'Thanks, Harry.'

''S all right.'

Logan frowned at the barren floor where they stood, then at the ceiling furnished with capsized armchairs and sideboards.

'What is this place? Doesn't look right, does it?'

'Your lying down on a ceiling doesn't look right!' Harry blurted. 'What happened back there? Are you able to fly now? And what's with the crown you wore?'

'Um …' Logan began, a bit worn. 'There was something in the book, from the last chapter of my story. A hint, apparently. Gave me some, er … some perspective. So, somehow – incredibly – I seized the thing from where I sat. And I donned it as a crown to see what happened – and that bony jumble moved out of the way!'

'And we fled.'

'And we fled! And I slipped, like the clumsy git I am, and the crown fell off. When I picked it up again from a distance, it was tiny.'

Logan produced it in his palm and gave it to Harry. Harry narrowed his eyes at it.

'A ring?' he said with an astonished grimace and handed it back.

'That's what I figured. I had this feeling it would take us out of there. Worth a try, I thought. I attached myself to you, just in case, and – and I put it on.'

'Brilliant! Quick thinking in a tight spot.'

'Not quick enough,' Logan whispered, and collapsed against the wall by the window.

'Don't blame yourself, Logan.'

'That idiot!' he sobbed, sinking to the floor. 'If he could only have waited a little! I would've realised what we needed to do, I could've figured it out, I …'

'I'm not so sure, Logan. Seems the book only shows us what it wants to. When it wants to.'

'Maybe, maybe … Oh, that reckless, flamboyant idiot!'

Harry put a hand on Logan's shoulder. 'Yes, he was a brave man.'

'Unbelievably brave,' Logan sniffed.

'Come.'

Logan heaved himself up.

'Whose house could this be?' he said, wiping his eyes. 'And … the whole thing is overturned, isn't it?'

'Huh, that door's threshold did strike me as a bit on the high end. This would also explain why the fireplace hearth we came from is level with the ceiling – er, floor.'

'So, that's what it was? Basically an oven, you must admit. I'm guessing our amiable hostess from before won't get past, at least. Knock on w– Oh, my God.'

'Pardon?'

'The sky is a lawn.'

'The sky – what?'

'The sky,' Logan repeated, pointing at the bay window with an impatient index finger, 'is a lawn!'

Harry turned around. Even in the obscure contours and muted colours of nightfall, something was clearly not right. Where he expected a night sky was instead a neatly trimmed lawn, like an immense awning extending towards a low wall. Beyond the wall, lit windows hovered against the dark backdrop of a neighbouring house. Its slanting roof pointed downwards – from the faint hues on the horizon to a black pit dotted with stars.

'Great,' Harry said. 'It's not only the house – the whole world is upended.'

'Or maybe we are,' Logan suggested.

'Probably. In that case, the ring puts its wearer right again.'

'But we only have one of these trinkets,' Logan sighed, holding it between thumb and index finger.

'You wear it, Logan – I'll stay put.'

'Are you sure you don't prefer –'

'It'll be fun! Not every day I get this view of the world.'

Logan shrugged and put on the shining band.

Thud!

'Oh, Logan,' Harry said, looking up at the pitiful figure lying alongside the coffee table. 'Are you okay?'

'I'm foul,' Logan groaned and got to his feet, upside-down. He and Harry stood face to face, nose to nose – and eye to mouth.

'Foul?'

Logan chortled. 'No, I mean I'm foul … I mean – foul. Foul!'

They gawked at each other.

'Did you hurt yourself up there?' said Harry, concern in his voice.

Loud and clear, Logan protested:

'A cursed pot! I'm all kite and four-fifty foul! I –' Alarmed, he put a hand to his mouth. Harry struggled to keep a straight face while Logan's nostrils huffed with aggravation.

'Maybe you should come down?' said Harry.

'No, it's olé,' Logan muttered and walked to the sofa behind the table. 'I'll just slit gown for a ride and jest. It'll pus.'

Harry ventured a chuckle. 'I'm sure it will.'

'And what do you spleen by "come loud", alleyway? You're the porcelain walking on the feeling.'

'Er – yes.'

'Oh, puff glam it!' Logan snapped. 'Groom am I wedding? I'm faking and well off.'

'You're taking the ring off?'

'Intactly.'

Standing prepared and ready, Harry managed to make Logan's fall resemble a gymnastic flip, planting him on his feet.

'Here,' Logan grumbled and held out the ring. 'You take it.'

Harry snickered and let the jewellery fall into his left hand. In an instant, the golden band crumbled to dust, leaving a circular, grey heap on Harry's palm, covering his wound.

'Well,' said Logan, eyebrows knit.

Harry brushed the powdery ashes from his hand.

'Sorry, Logan.'

'I'm not,' Logan smiled. 'Glad to be rid of it.'

Bang!

The door was pushed open, hitting an armchair. From Harry and Logan's perspective, the intruding woman's feet pointed up, her head down. The forced entrance prompted surprise in Logan's face, but absolute shock in Harry's. In the doorway, snorting like a bull under her raven hair, stood Bellatrix Lestrange.

'I found you!' she panted in her harsh voice as she closed the door behind her.

Harry stepped back, shielding his companion with an arm. 'Watch out, Logan!'

'Watch out?' Bellatrix stuttered, her dark eyes bulging as much as her heavy lids allowed. 'Harry, it's me' – she pulled her mane back – 'don't you recognise me?'

'Your face is impossible to forget, Bellatrix. Even upside-down!'

'Yes, about that,' she hesitated and tilted her head, 'is there any particular reason you're standing on the ceiling?'

'Never you mind,' Harry spat.

'Um, Harry,' said Logan, 'who is this, again?'

'Oh, do forgive me,' Bellatrix twittered and held out a hand to greet Logan, 'I'm Bella, pleased to m–'

'Stay where you are!' Harry roared, making Bellatrix jump and pull back as though from a hot stove.

'I-I'm sorry,' she whimpered, clutching her hands over her chest. 'What did I do?'

Harry choked. 'What did you do? Sirius! Dobby! Lupin and Tonks!'

'Goodness, are they here as well?' she said with awe and excitement, sizing up the room as if expecting them to jump out at any second.

'What are you on about?' Harry scoffed, stomping his foot with frustration. 'And where's "here", exactly? Have we landed in some perverted afterlife of yours? Thought we'd finally got rid of you for good.'

Bellatrix gawked at him. With Harry following her every move, she stumbled to the oversized armchair on her right and flopped down.

'This – this is too much,' she sniffed, her brow twisting in thin creases. 'You think you know a man … You come to assist a dear friend …'

'Er, Harry,' Logan said at Harry's shoulder, 'there might be some misunderstanding here. I mean, you've noticed how – er – counterintuitive things have been, since … well, ever since we met, really.'

Harry shot a look at Logan, then back at Bellatrix. His eyebrows knitted and his lips pursed as he slanted his head to the side, scrutinising the woman in the armchair. He gave a sigh.

'So, we are … friends? You and I?'

'Well, I certainly hope so,' Bellatrix pouted. 'That's what I thought we were, anyway.'

'And you're here because …?'

'I'm here to save you, obviously! We don't have much time, and there's not a whole lot I know, but you need all the help you can get for what's to come.'

'And what, exactly, is to come?'

'Knell, there's the bride on the tart, for one. Er –' She gasped. 'Oh, toe! They don't front me to sell you! I need to sneak past before it wets shirts.'

'Yes!' Logan insisted, jumping with nerves. 'Speak fast! Before it gets worse!'

Harry hesitated for second, but then nodded to Bellatrix, who went on, fretting in her chair:

'You have to compose a melody where the spiral goes. Because it will disapprove rafts in a pile!'

'It – it will disappear after a while?' Logan guessed.

'Yet!' Bellatrix squealed, bouncing on the puffy seat.

'But the rest … Compose … Expose? Expose a melody when the spiral … blows?'

'Grows?' said Harry. 'Slows?'

Bellatrix violently shook her head at their suggestions.

'Toe, toe, toe!' she whined, tugging at her hair. 'There is a bath in September!'

'A ba– What?' Logan stammered, scratching his scalp.

With a frustrated grunt, Bellatrix jumped up from the chair. She hurried to a sideboard standing next to the door. On its top stood an ornamental cat and a golden scarab. Bellatrix scoured the drawers, pulling out one after another, causing the cat figurine to wobble precariously.

'Vah!' she trilled, holding up her unearthed treasure: a pen and a sheet of paper. She went over to the sofa, sat down behind the coffee table and started scribbling. Bulbous, sloping letters poured onto the paper to Bellatrix's rhythmic scrawls. Her features glowed with focus and satisfaction.

Halfway through, however, she stopped. A muscle spasmed in her jaw as she perused the writing.

'Puff glam it!' she blurted and crossed out every word. Logan nodded in silent recognition of her struggles.

Bellatrix flipped the sheet and began drawing instead. She whisked the pen in bold strokes and precise hatchings, filling the entire paper. From where he stood, Logan scrunched up his eyes at the sketch.

'Appears professional,' he whispered to Harry. 'Whatever it is.'

At last, Bellatrix straightened in her seat to inspect her creation – and frowned.

'It's snow goose,' she groaned and derisively pushed the sheet across the table. It included a depiction of a squirrel and a larger object resembling a cactus.

Logan held the paper to his eyes. 'Ms Bellatrix, this is some serious talent!'

'Imprison those apprehended,' she muttered, whipped the sheet from Logan's hands and crumpled it to a ball.

'Dear me.'

'What if we tried another room?' Harry suggested.

'Good bidet,' said Bellatrix, 'let's row upset!'

'Go upstairs?'

'Yet!'

She opened the door, allowing Logan and Harry to pass.

They entered a cramped hall. Straight ahead, a flight of stairs ascended to a landing by a window. Bellatrix hurried up the steps and disappeared to the first floor. Harry strode across the hall, hung from the staircase opening and fell upwards to the first-floor ceiling. Logan followed suit.

Across from the stairs, Bellatrix barged into a room and stood muttering when Harry and Logan came in. No furniture. From the ceiling hung only a plain lamp, reflecting like a moon in the dark window overlooking the back garden.

'Seems my speech has returned to normal!' Bellatrix rejoiced. Harry's face hardened into a baffled mask; her voice did not contain a hint of the sadism usually coupled to her excitement.

'How good to hear!' Logan beamed, while Harry gave her an awkward, tight-lipped smile. 'Believe you me, I endured the same situation a moment ago. I tried telling Harry I was doing fine, but I just kept crying "foul, foul, foul" over and over!'

Bellatrix burst into a hoarse giggle that intermixed with the chopped guffaws from Logan.

'Aren't we in a bit of a hurry?' said Harry, more cautious than intended.

'I think we're fine – see,' Logan laughed, 'I can't stop saying it now!'

Bellatrix smiled, but her eyes were on the alert and her fingers fidgeted over a tress of hair. Logan cleared his throat and said in a more serious tone:

'If I'm not mistaken, you were talking about a spiralling melody?'

She put a contemplative thumb to her chin. 'Melody? I honestly can't remember what I meant. But never mind, we'll get to that. In the meantime, we must consider something more important … but less clear, I'm afraid.'

'Go on,' Logan encouraged her, 'we're all ears.'

Her eyes bored into theirs, and after taking a deep, shaky breath, she said:

'I must impress on you the importance … of courage.'

'Courage!' said Logan. 'Certainly! As a matter of fact, we just lost someone very courageous who made our way here possible. We hope to be equal to his sacrifice, of course.'

'Sacrifice is good,' Bellatrix murmured to herself, 'sacrifice is good. But there was something about … oh, I don't know, I didn't understand it!' She paced the room and whispered in a small, scared voice. 'Something foul is hidden in it all.'

'But bravery is important?' Harry said.

'Yes!' Bellatrix nodded, her lip trembling. 'It is essential! But not … I don't – I don't think it's for someone else.'

'I barely understand half the things you're saying,' Logan said, the frustration tense in his voice. 'You make no more sense here than downstairs!'

Harry gripped Logan's arm. 'Easy, Logan.'

'Th-the passing may be unfamiliar,' Bellatrix breathed, her gaze shifting between them both, her whole body quivering, 'and too familiar!'

'Just tell us what to do!' Logan shouted.

'When the time comes,' she shivered, about to faint, 'you –'

A loud rumble from outside cut her off to a gasp. Harry flicked the light switch by the door, putting the room in complete darkness, while the backyard, made vague by twilight, became clearer.

Outside, flower beds and hedges surrounded a lawn. But in the hedge opposite the window was a wide gap, with leaves and twigs strewn around it. What had been a bench lay crushed into splintered sticks. Like a bleeding gash in the soil, a sharp furrow led up to the house, with thorns and weeds sprouting in its wake.

From below came a bam and a crash as of a door smashed to the floorboards. A booming voice declared:

'Fee-fi-fo-fum! I smell the blood of an English bum!'

Harry flicked the light back on. Bellatrix stood glued to the opposite wall, pale as a ghost, while Logan crouched on the ceiling and piped:

'What the dickens was th–'

'Shh-t-t-t!' Bellatrix hushed him, a finger to her lips, her entire face contracted with horror.

Heavy thuds pounded on the ground floor and stopped just underneath their room. The voice came again:

'Be it slow, or be it quick, I'll force my way to end your tricks!'

Tears filled Bellatrix's eyes as she looked at Harry, her gaze locked on him as though wanting to fill herself with his image. Then she took a shivering breath and leapt towards the door.

A deafening blast filled the room. A furiously rotating drill bit, as broad as a thigh, cracked open the floor and pierced Bellatrix's abdomen in mid-air, nailing her to the ceiling. Logan jumped back to the window with a reflexive jolt. The voice below was frantic:

'You cursed the earth! You can't get down!'

From the hole in the floor rose a rifle barrel the size of a bombard cannon. The muzzle's yawning depths were enough for a child to crawl into.

'Nix, nought, nothing! Plunge and drown!'

With a thunderous explosion, a projectile blasted from the rifle and shattered the glass. Thousands of glimmering pieces rained on the lawn below and a torrent of air rushed out into the night, sucking Logan through the window. Harry clutched the doorframe, his legs straightening out like a flag in the wind. Next second, his left hand lost its hold. Three fingers still clung to the frame by their end joints.

'B – Bellatrix,' he said through clenched jaws, squinting at the steel auger impaling her. Her limbs fluttered lifelessly in the storm, which drew long strings of blood from her guts.

Harry's fingers slid off, his nails ripping the doorframe, and he propelled across the ceiling and out the window.

Logan and Harry's yells resounded like sirens over the slumbering neighbourhood as they fell into the black sky.