The Purple Emperor

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

This wasn't the palace. It had been the palace when he looked into the portal and it seemed like the palace when he threw himself through, but it wasn't the palace now. Henry was standing on a vast, level plain with really weird maroon-coloured grass growing up around his ankles. Henry kept thinking about Pyrgus, who had used one of Mr Fogarty's portal controls and ended up in Hell. Was this Hell? Henry looked around. It didn't seem hot enough, but what did he know? He'd never been in Hell before.

But he'd never been anywhere like this before either. The grass was freaky. It grew in tufts and each blade wasn't a blade at all, but a thin strand. And it was far tougher than ordinary grass. He couldn't uproot it or break it or anything. It didn't smell like grass either. If anything, it smelled like wool, which probably meant there had been sheep this way lately. Did sheep go to Hell?

The plain went on and on, but there was something wrong with the horizon. Henry found his distance vision wasn't too good – which was something else he didn't understand – but the plain didn't curve against the sky, it just sort of… stopped. Actually he wasn't sure he was looking at a horizon at all. It was almost like a sheer cliff, except huge. It was just about the highest cliff he'd ever seen, so high he couldn't really see the top.

The sky was weird as well. It was blue all right, but that was the only familiar thing about it. No clouds and, to be honest, it looked like a rigid dome, like those old medieval paintings of the vault of heaven. But that was probably his eyes as well. He just couldn't seem to get them to focus properly.

Which might account for the look of the trees. There were trees scattered across the plain, growing in oddly geometrical groups of four. Four here… four there… four over there… Nothing in between, no undergrowth, just straight, round trunks with not a branch or leaf. He'd never seen trees grow like that before. But then he'd never seen trees that sort of… sort of… sort of grew together at the top to make a wooden roof before. What was wrong with his eyes? Where on earth was he? This definitely, positively, was not the Purple Palace.

He glanced behind him, more in vague hope than any solid expectation. The portal was no longer there. Which was really how he'd thought it would be. It had started to collapse as he jumped through. Henry's heart suddenly started to race. What would have happened if it had collapsed exactly when he was passing through it? Would it have killed him? Would it have cut him in half, leaving his head and torso bleeding in the Faerie Realm while the bottom bit kicked and writhed in Mr Fogarty's back garden?

Henry took a couple of deep breaths to pull himself together. The fact was it hadn't killed him. He was alive and well and in one piece with nothing to worry about. Except he didn't have a portal control. The one he'd made was lying in another world now, probably burned out if all that sparking was anything to go by. Which was no big deal if he'd reached the Purple Palace, which had a portal of its own to get him back. But he hadn't reached the Purple Palace. He'd reached somewhere else with stupid-looking grass and he had no way back!

Don't panic, Henry told himself. There's no need to panic. All he had to do was walk until he found a village or a town. Or even a farmstead. This wasn't Hell – he was sure of that now. No heat, no demons, nobody with pitchforks. So it had to be just a peculiar area of the Faerie Realm. Once he found people, he'd just ask them to direct him to the Purple Palace. He might even cadge a lift, but if not he could walk there. Didn't matter how long it took. Well, it did – Blue would still be wondering what had happened to him -but that couldn't be helped. All he had to do was find some people. If he followed the sun he could be sure of always walking in the same direction. He wouldn't get lost. Nothing to it.

He couldn't see the sun.

He had to be able to see the sun. The vault of the sky was a cloudless blue, but there was no sun. There was light – it was like daylight – but he couldn't see the sun. This wasn't his eyes, although his eyes were still having trouble focusing – the sun simply wasn't there!

Henry pulled himself together with an effort. He didn't need to navigate. Since he didn't know where he was going, navigation didn't matter. He was as likely to find people in one direction as another. The thing to do was to stop wimping and get started.

Henry began to trudge across the open plain.

There was something on his back! The moment he moved, he could feel it. It was gripping him around the shoulder blades and flapping loosely in a truly horrible, awful, nightmarish way. Without thought he reached round and his hands gripped something ghastly and fragile and insectile and -

And ticklish.

In a moment of pure wonder, Henry discovered he'd grown wings.