Once again, I apologise for the slow progress. I have not stopped writing, as you can see.

5 – Chirp

Maddy perched on the strangely-shaped plant that could amplify noises. The three of them were convinced that this was the way to get into the next tower, whose door was located high up, out of reach. But they couldn't see how – even standing on the plant the door was too far away, and the only sounds they could hear through the plant were things like the groaning of the bridge, the wind whistling through the rock and the lake water lapping against the shore. She jumped down off the plant and scurried down the ladder set into the side of the cliff to meet Jordan and Rachel on the rocky beach.

"So... any ideas?" The three of them wandered slowly towards the other end of the beach.

"Not really." Jordan's optimism was not functioning correctly this morning. "How are we supposed to use that plant to get up to the door?"

Rachel, who was in front, stopped, causing Maddy to walk into her.

"Guys, what's that?" She pointed at a small structure on the beach just in front of them. It appeared to be a small tent. Very small – it barely came up to Rachel's knee. It also had a small button-like growth on the top of it.

"Looks like a shelter for an animal," Jordan said. "Like a mouse or something."

"Spacious for a mouse, don't you think?"

"Well, maybe it needs a lot of leg room."

"It's a mouse, Jordan, how much leg room could it need?"

"Maybe it's a family home."

Whilst Jordan and Rachel argued about what sort of animal would shelter in this tent, Maddy had walked past them and pressed down on the button-like thing on the top of the tent. As she did so, a small rabbit-like creature poked its head out, looked around and up at the three of them, before retreating back into the tent.

"...yes, but mice don't have any need for -"

"It's a rabbit." Maddy interrupted Jordan and Rachel, and they looked at her and down at the tent as she pressed the button again and the creature poked its head out again. At that point, something struck Maddy. She pressed down on a tall reed that stood in the middle of a small channel of water draining into the lake, allowing the rabbit a path from its tent to a small clump of moss growing on a rock across the channel. She pressed on the tent again. The rabbit scurried out, hopped across the channel and stood in front of the moss.

"Thought she might be hungry," Maddy said.

The rabbit chirped, a noise unlike any that an Earth rabbit would make. And as they watched, the moss grew, inflating like a balloon and allowing the rabbit to nibble on it, still chirping every now and again.

"Well..." said Jordan after a moment. "You don't see that every day."

Maddy nodded her agreement, but Rachel had cast her eyes up to the tusk. The door was suspended directly across from one of the cliff tops, and in between lay several large clumps of the same moss, stuck to the cliff face. Rachel walked over to the ladder and scaled it to the sound-amplifying plant. Grasping the thick stems, she pulled it down, hearing first the bridge, then the wind, then the water, and finally the chirps from the rabbit, amplified massively. She stepped back from the plant as the moss behind her inflated, bridging the gap between the cliff and the doorway into the tusk.

Rachel smiled sweetly at Jordan and Maddy as they joined her next to the plant. "Shall we?"

Oh, my old friend, I can just imagine you scurrying around down there. Can't remember how everything works? What a shame. Maybe that's because you forgot about us. Maybe that's because you didn't visit that stinking, pathetic little island for twenty years! Oh yes, you'll tell me that you were busy... busy with your own life. But what about me? I was busy being completely insane, and all because of you and your sons!

Ah, but then you came back. Back to the little island that you wrote to teach your two little boys how to write. Do you have any idea how they would have used that power if they had it? They told us, you know. They told us that they didn't come to fix our world – it was doomed, and they knew it. They pillaged us, destroyed our society by turning us against each other!

But why waste my breath? You'll see it all soon enough. Once you returned, I returned to sanity. The book that you left behind was solid. As terrified of it as I was, it protected me, because I knew it was real. It was there; I could touch it, feel its hard, leathery cover and soft, papery pages. And I knew it was real because I knew it was how I got here. I followed them – your two boys – to that place through the swirling panel of the book on Narayan, and then they left me there. So I knew what this book was. And I followed you. I read your journals. I read about the D'ni people. How you gave them new life. And I knew that if you could restore D'ni, you could restore Narayan.

You gave me back my sanity, old friend. But you have no idea what a mistake you made.

Seven o'clock on Tomahna, and the place was like a madhouse! Atrus was running back and forth between the lab and the study with armfuls of burnt books, whilst Catherine and Brittany busied themselves cleaning the ash out of the study. Jane and Yeesha sat back, talking at length in a language that only they could understand about how strange the adults were.

"Mum and Dad run around a lot recently," commented Yeesha. "The big fire must have caused a lot of damage."

"Your dad keeps a lot of books in there," Jane observed as Atrus hurried out of the study with more books in his arms.

"Well, yeah..." Yeesha smiled at Atrus, who smiled back. "All his linking books. But they're just copies. He keeps the originals on the cold island."

"Smart. You don't happen to know where Mum and Dad went, do you? Britt said they went after a man with crazy hair."

"I dunno. But Dad told me once about how they survived on the big crumply world. I'm sure they'll be fine."

"I haven't heard that story," said Jane.

"Well, Dad had to keep writing in the big book to keep the crumply world from falling apart..." Yeesha frowned as she dredged up the story from her memory. "So he asked your mum and dad, as well as Britt and Maddy, to go there, get Mum and capture the bad man. And they did, even though it was really dangerous."

Jane smiled. "Did the bad man have a gun?"

"I think so. And there were people living on the crumply world that thought he was their god, and there were rebels hiding on a secret world that fought against him and helped your mum and dad and Maddy and Britt."

"Cool. Did the crumply world get destroyed?"

"Yeah." This bit Yeesha remembered. "After everyone got off it."

"And they all survived?"

"Yep."

Atrus ran past again for another armful of books. Jane and Yeesha observed him quietly for a while.

"I'm hungry," Jane said after a while. "You?"

"Now that you mention it, yeah." The two of them conveyed this to Catherine and Brittany inside, who immediately started to work out whose turn it was to feed them.

The inside of this tusk was basically the same as the last one they'd gone into, except that it was decorated in green instead of orange. Jordan moved the marbles on the pedestal into place and pressed on the button. The cage above them clattered down into place, displaying to them a green-covered book bearing a bird-like symbol and the word "Edanna".

"Just like old times, isn't it?" commented Maddy as they stepped up to the book.

"Not really," Jordan replied, "this time there's more than just our lives at stake."