The dust cleared to reveal the figure of a boy. He was a little older than Kyp and wearing a school uniform, his white shirt untucked and the knot of his navy-blue tie pulled tight. The boy’s face was pale and streaked with dirt, his thick blonde hair clinging to his forehead in clumps.

The cavern above the ankle-snatchers’ prison was dominated by a series of huge stalactites. In the soft light given out by the toadstool lamps, they glimmered with different colours. As Kyp and Atticus neared the first of them, Kyp became aware of their peculiar smell, a curious mixed-up fragrance of cheese and onion crisps, tangerines, and chocolate. He was amazed to find the jewel-like objects studding its surface were chocolates in foil twists. Also embedded were spirals of dry, wrinkled orange peel, clusters of nuts and countless one penny and two pence pieces.

For a long time, neither Kyp nor Atticus spoke.

‘Say something, Kyp,’ said Atticus finally. ‘Please.’

But Kyp didn’t know what to say.

‘What are the ankle-snatchers going to do with us?’ he asked instead.

‘We’re of little interest to them now. They’re hoarders, nothing more. Look at the walls. See how they’re ripped where others have tried to escape? Do you see what covers the floor? When a metamorph reaches the end of its life it becomes an object again, nothing more.’

Kyp awakened with a start.

He leapt up and pawed at his clothes. Scanning his surroundings, he found no sign of either toe-biters or ankle-snatchers – or Atticus. Kyp noted the snake’s absence without surprise. He wondered how long it would be before Madame Chartreuse came to collect him.  Kyp had no intention of being here when she arrived.

Kyp opened his eyes to near darkness. He’d dropped into a tunnel, his fall broken by something springy and soft. Ahead of him there was faint yellow light, little brighter than a candle.

He shook his head, as if clearing his ears of water. The green light was gone, but not quite yet the happiness it had given him, which persisted just long enough for Kyp to feel more lost and alone than ever.

Atticus had lied to him.

His keepsakes back in his pocket, Kyp walked in the direction of the voice.

The miasma floated in thick, smelly ribbons, and out of it a figure materialised. Judging by its height, Kyp concluded it was another child. He hurried towards it, but as the mist thinned, he saw it was the top half of a shop window mannequin. The mannequin was bald, with rouged cheeks, blue eye shadow and red lips. It wore a tightly buttoned tweed jacket.

‘Awfully sorry to trouble you,’ it said, ‘only it really is the silliestthing. You see, I can’t seem to feel my legs.’

Kyp and Atticus hurried through the Lumen Arboretum. Twigs snapped and baubles shattered as things unseen crept alongside them. Was the fugue creeping too, Kyp wondered, spreading inside him like ink into paper?

Only Kyp didn’t fall.

The tentacle that attacked him in the labyrinth encircled his waist. It shook Kyp violently then yanked him up out of the chasm and stood him back on his feet.

‘Promise me you won’t run away again,’ said a cross-sounding voice...

‘Good riddance,’ muttered Kyp, as he crept away into the shadows of the junk shop. He should have been shocked or upset, but all he really felt was relief. That was that then.

Kyp went further this time, deeper, pushing through racks of old clothes that smelled of perfume and pipe-smoke, and picking his way across causeways of boxes. He ducked beneath dangles of dusty chandeliers and inched past steeples of leather-bound books, ignoring how the hairs on his neck stood up as unseen things creaked and shifted in the gloom. He was soon lost, but Kyp didn’t care...

Kyp Finnegan glowered at the two grown-ups sitting in the front of the car. With his creased blue shirt and bald-spot, his dad looked like his dad, and his mum smelled of soap like always, but they weren’t his parents...