The Crystal Caves Page 5

  ‘PRIEST!’ someone suddenly yelled from one of the windows. ‘Priest is coming!’

  Chairs scraped noisily across the floor. A few of the older miners disappeared into their tents. Nobbins tumbled from his table and scrambled to the double doors. A woman – tall, hunched, her own hair tucked beneath a buckled hat – ran to the other side.

  ‘Don’t look him in the eye, dear Elise.’ Nobbins stared at the floor.

  ‘I know,’ Elise spat back.

  They waited, in deathly silence.

  Until …

  Scuttle.

  Scuttle scuttle.

  It came from beneath them. An unsettling sound, like that of someone, or something, crawling around outside. A few clonks along the gangway. A few more, towards the door.

  CLONK.

  CLONK CLONK.

  Nobbins reached his trembling hand towards the handle, preparing to let whatever it was inside.

  A coldness seemed to descend upon the Village.

  And a shiver ran through Dev’s bones.

  12

  Priest

  ‘P … P … Priest.’ Nobbins and Elise creaked the doors open. ‘To what do we owe this – burp – p … p … pleasure?’

  A tall figure climbed in, all joints and elbows, like a gopplespider crawling out from behind a cupboard. Dev couldn’t tell which were limbs and which were shadows as both unfolded across the floor. A long, hooded black cloak, still glistening from the rain, concealed most of the face beneath it.

  But Dev could still see what was hanging around the figure’s neck.

  Flemberthyst crystals.

  And they were glowing.

  ‘The bear,’ a low voice drawled. ‘I want to see the bear.’

  A thin, withered arm stretched out from inside the cloak and shakily pushed the hood away. The face below was as white as a ghost. It looked uneven, mangled, as if half of it was missing.

  Priest had only one eye. It was cloudy, watering, and it peered out across the room. Upon seeing Boja, Priest scurried forwards in a flurry of robes, his terrifying face drawing up close to Boja’s shiny black nose.

  ‘Hello.’ Boja smiled.

  ‘There it issss …’ Priest hissed, a glistening trail of spittle escaping from his jagged black teeth and trickling down his pointed chin. ‘And what a fine monster you are.’

  Boja’s face scrunched up, and he snorted in disgust. ‘Not a monster.’

  ‘Not a monster, of course.’ Priest squeezed Boja’s belly between his pointed fingers. ‘But big. And fat. And strong. Full of flember, I’d bet.’

  Boja’s grumpy face started to soften. And a giggle escaped his lips.

  ‘B … Boja’s my friend,’ Dev stammered, reaching to pull Priest’s hand away but suddenly feeling woozy. He wasn’t sure if it was the lasting effects of falling down a mountain, or Priest’s stale, salty breath, but something was making his head swim again.

  ‘Your … friend?’ Priest let go of Boja’s belly. ‘Well, we are very, very grateful you brought your friend down to meet us.’

  Dev glanced at the nametag on Priest’s robes.

  ‘They just call me Priest,’ he whispered, patting a stool for Dev to sit on. ‘Tell me, lad … how long have you been in Darkwater?’

  ‘Not long,’ Dev replied. ‘Not even a day.’

  Priest brushed up close against him. ‘Have you seen … the sea?’

  The closer he leant in, the woozier Dev felt.

  ‘N … no,’ Dev replied.

  ‘Good,’ Priest whispered. ‘Gooood. You stay up here, in the Village, where it’s safe.’

  He paused, pulling his hand back to wipe a little more spittle from his chin. ‘And while you’re both here, enjoy Darkwater’s … hospitality.’ Priest grabbed an untouched bowl of stew and slid it along the bar, right in front of Boja’s nose. Before Dev could even say a word, Boja had flung the whole thing, metal bowl and all, into his wide-open mouth.

  ‘Mmf … mmf … mmf …’ He beamed, chomping and crunching in sheer delight. ‘DESHISCHUS!’

  Then Boja grabbed another bowl and crumpled it into his mouth too.

  And another.

  And another.

  ‘Boja, slow down!’ Dev cried, but there was no stopping him now. Boja had the scent of food, his nose pulling him to each and every table as he picked up all the half-finished bowls of stew and wolfed them down.

  And then Boja was dancing. Arms out, flapping like an alarmed goose and mumbling Nobbins’s song about stew (the words to which he only vaguely remembered). And then he was spinning. And spinning. And spinning so fast he became dizzy, before crashing loudly through a stack of tables.

  ‘WHSCH DEDGEISHUS SCHOOOO!’ he cheered, plucking great chunks of stew from his belly fur and slurping them into his mouth.

  Elise kicked at Boja’s waggling feet. ‘Stop – burp! – EATING all our STEW.’

  Nobbins hurriedly wiped the startled eyebrows from his forehead and redrew them scrunched down into a scowl. ‘It’s all we have to – burp! – EAT!’

  More would have raised their voices, had not a noise rumbled from deep inside Boja’s tummy. A noise so strange, so unsettling, it made everyone take a step back.

  B-O-I-L-K-K-K!

  Boja’s smile vanished. He sat alert, his blackened lips wobbling in fear. His eyes widened in panic.

  ‘Boja?’ Dev squeezed through the miners and edged towards the bear. ‘Boja, are you OK?’

  B-O-I-L-L-L-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K!

  Dev gulped nervously.

  Boja was clearly not OK.

  13

  Stinkflame

  Boja staggered to his feet. His big red stomach BOILK-ed and FIZZ-ed and GNURGGGGGLE-ed like a volcano ready to explode.

  ‘Dev!’ he whimpered. ‘DEVVVVV!’

  ‘It’s OK. Boja, it’s—’

  ‘Urp!’

  Boja’s tiny little burp surprised them both. As did the waft of grey smoke which followed out from his mouth.

  ‘Urp!’ he went again.

  ‘Urp! Urp! Urp!’

  ‘Stew gives us all the burps,’ Rebecca laughed, peeping out from behind the bar. ‘That’s the hibbicus. It’s quite normal.’

  ‘BU-U-U-U--URPPPPPPP!’ Boja suddenly boomed, a powerful blast of flame exploding out from his mouth and propelling him back against the wall.

  ‘BU-U-U-U-U-U-RPPPPPPPP!’ he repeated, belching fire above the heads of the crowd. It caught on their hats and ignited whatever stray hairs they had left.

  ‘That’s NOT NORMAL!’ Priest shouted.

  ‘BU-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-RRRPPPP! BURP! BURP BURP!’ Blast after blast of bright yellow flames spilled out from Boja’s mouth, catching the wallpaper, the pictures, the long, flowing curtains.

  ‘Our VILLAGE!’ Rebecca yelped, frantically slamming the flames with the remains of someone’s tent. ‘He’s destroying it!’

  Dev grabbed an empty stew bowl, holding it up as a shield. ‘Boja, go outside!’ he shouted. ‘Out through the doors, just until this passes!’

  Boja tried, but he was too disorientated by the thick black smoke now rolling through the Village and he only managed to crash into the wall. It looked like another burp was building inside of him. He put his paws over his mouth to hold it in, only for his cheeks to balloon out as a huge fiery HICC-URP somersaulted him backwards over the bar.

  Dev raced to help, but Boja was already up and away, stomping madly around the Village. He gibbered and shrieked, his arms waving, desperate to find a door, a window, any route out of there.

  And then he saw the hibbicannon.

  He leapt onto it, clawing his way to the top as if he were climbing a tree. It CRE-E-E-EAK-ed under his weight, then WR-E-E-ENCH-ed away from its pipes, its end nozzles rising up into the air and firing a splodge of stew across the Village. As Boja scrambled from one end of the hibbicannon to the other it swung upon its supports, oily goo splattering out across the tents, catching into flames before exploding into huge fires.

  Dev th
rew down his shield, ran up the stairs to the second-floor balcony, climbed over the railing and waited for the thin end of the hibbicannon to swing underneath him. Then he flung himself out towards it. He landed with a CLANG, struggling to grip on as he was swung high above the Village.

  ‘It’s OK!’ Dev shouted, slowly climbing towards the terrified bear. ‘Boja, it’s OK. I think you’ve stopped burping.’

  Boja wobbled to his feet as he tried to stand upon the hibbicannon’s wider end, and stared straight back at Dev. He had fear in his eyes. ‘Sohh-rry,’ he gulped, clutching his buttocks in panic before the loudest, most ground-shaking fart Dev had ever heard blasted out from between them.

  FFFR-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-RPPPPP!

  It rocketed Boja forwards upon a billowing black flame, along the full length of the hibbicannon and off the other end. He slammed face first into the wall or, more specifically, right through the painting of Albert Wilburforce hanging upon it.

  His huge, furry bottom dangled high above them all.

  The whole Village started to creak slowly under his weight. Suddenly the hibbicannon broke free of its supports and slammed down to the floor, tilting everything back the other way.

  The lanterns flickered. The dust settled.

  A hush fell.

  ‘Boja,’ Dev whispered to the huge red bear embedded in the painting. ‘Boja, are you OK?’

  Boja’s bottom heaved. One last little puff of smoke FRRP-ed out from between his buttocks. Then Dev heard a gentle snore coming from the other side of the wall.

  ‘I was right, there’s a whole LOT of flember in that monster!’ Priest wailed with delight.

  Rebecca’s head poked out from what was left of the bar. She stared at the remains of the Village, the burnt walls, the buckled floor, all the smashed and crumpled furniture. And a tear trickled down her pale cheek.

  ‘That BEAR …’ said Cled, as he angrily patted out the fire in his beard. ‘That bear just broke our HIBBICANNON! Now what will we do for FOOD?’

  ‘I … I can help,’ Dev stammered. ‘Maybe I can repair it. Yes! Let me repair the hibbicannon!’

  ‘YOU?’ Cled clenched his fists so tight his knuckles cracked. ‘You’re just a boy. What could you possibly know about a machine like this?’

  ‘I fix things,’ Dev replied with a nervous smile. ‘It’s what I do.’

  14

  The Hibbicannon

  The first step was to figure out what the hibbicannon was, and how it worked. Dev climbed around it, sticking his head inside its broken parts and trying to see what made it tick. At his best guess it worked like some kind of huge oven. The larger end was heavily insulated; this, presumably, was where the explosive hibbicus plants were mulched. This goop, or ‘stew’ as Rebecca insisted on calling it, could then be channelled through into different sections depending on what dish was being served. Concentrated into a paste, thinned into a sauce, or just FLUMP-ed out like the gross snot it was.

  By the time Dev had an understanding of how it worked, a realization dawned upon him.

  Why just fix the hibbicannon?

  When he could improve it.

  Dev squeezed through the crowd of miners and raced up the stairs. A few loud thuds later, and he was clomping back down, carrying all the broken tools he’d packed for his journey. They dropped to the floor with a thud, a clang, and a burst of sparks, which made everyone watching go ‘oooh!’

  ‘None of these things work any more,’ he proudly announced, pulling the Ripplybollop, the Optylopops and the spring-loaded Fisplestaw apart. He laid them alongside the Fibbulator, the Bimcockle and the Rassleclock. ‘But when you’re an inventor, you work with what you’ve got!’

  He stretched out his arms, rolled his head, and took a deep breath. ‘And I, Dev P. Everdew, can work with anything.’

  With an excited gurgle in his belly, Dev made a start. He reached into the hibbicannon and wrenched its insides out:, nobbles, flangules and strange twisty pipelets that didn’t seem to do anything, so he threw them away. He figured he could replace most of them with soggy Optylopops anyway, screwing the Bimcockle in between them. The Fibbulator could double up as a junction box, the Rassleclock a timer, and the Ripplybollop perfectly replaced the hibbicannon’s twisted nozzles. The spring-loaded Fisplestaw he just used to hammer it all together. It beeped and it sparked, but it seemed to do the job.

  ‘There!’ Dev wiped a smear of grease across his forehead. ‘Now let me show you how it works.’ He beamed at the crowd of hungry miners. ‘Rebecca, can I have a hibbicus plant, please?’

  Rebecca drew her eyes away from the machine, nodded, reached down inside her hatch and pulled up a withered black hibbicus. ‘Be careful,’ she whispered, handing it to Dev. ‘They’re not for playing around with.’

  ‘Oh, I know.’ Dev hopped to the far end of the hibbicannon, opened a small porthole, slid the hibbicus inside and closed it again. ‘This compartment can store up to thirty-eight hibbicus plants at once,’ he proclaimed. ‘So you won’t need to load it up too often!’

  He slammed his fist against the side of the hibbicannon. It rumbled, it clanked and it groaned as the hibbicus plant started to noisily rattle its way through.

  ‘I saw how much the stew made your stomachs hurt. You said it was because you were eating all the explosive power of the hibbicus, but that gave me an idea.’ A flame blasted out from one of the pipes, along with a rather unpleasant BU-U-U-URPPP! Then another flame, and another BU-U-U-U-U-URPPP from a pipe on the other side. Soon, flames were burping out all along the hibbicannon. ‘I made it so the hibbicannon explodes the hibbicus for you. I designed it like Boja’s stomach, so the explosions are released as flaming belches. Now your stew should be safe to eat!’

  A swell of excitement rose through Dev’s chest. He grabbed an empty stew bowl and held it beneath one of the thin nozzles.

  ‘Who’s first?’ He grinned.

  Nothing came out.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Dev muttered. ‘I thought I’d—’

  BANG! One of the Optylopops flew out from inside the hibbicannon, piercing the wall. BANG! BANG BANG! More of them, whizzing about like popcorn. The miners shrieked and ducked, scurrying for cover. The Bimcockle blasted out in a plume of smoke. The Rassleclock exploded, the Fibbulator spun a hole through the floor, the Ripplybollop started to bulge like Boja’s belly. And then – BOOM! – an almighty explosion burst out from underneath it all, flinging the hibbicannon up like a rocket.

  It crashed through the ceiling, before disappearing into the night sky.

  Dev stood beneath the new hole in the roof. He listened for the quiet CRUMP of a hibbicannon landing somewhere far in the distance, then he turned towards the wide-eyed miners.

  ‘I … I’m not sure what went wrong …’ he stuttered, the rain pattering down upon his head.

  ‘I do.’ Cled pulled an Optylopop out from the wall and flung it angrily to the ground. ‘You and your bear came to DARKWATER!’

  15

  Day Two

  After the hibbicannon’s impromptu flight across Darkwater, Dev was tasked with going outside to fix the hole in the roof. He was glad to. Even though the night was cold, even though it was raining, it was still preferable to staying inside the Village with all the angry miners. At least out here maybe he could fix something properly.

  He sighed, pulled his scarf over his nose, and followed the gangway round to where Boja’s head was still wedged through the wall. His big bulging eyes were closed now. His mouth whistled out a snore.

  Dev patted the bear reassuringly on the nose.

  ‘You sleep it off.’ He smiled.

  Dev carefully climbed down one of the rope ladders, walked across the soggy mud, and set to work searching for stray bits of metal. There was plenty piled up against the quarry wall. He pulled out a few thick, flat pieces, and dragged them back towards the Village.

  With no Boja to help him carry the metal back up to the roof, it took Dev a while, and using old bolts to nail them
in place took even longer. But eventually the job was done, and once he was satisfied the Village would be dry for the night, Dev used any leftover scraps to build a small canopy over Boja’s head. He snuggled in alongside the bear until he too was covered from the rain, resting his head into the dark, wet fur of Boja’s cheek.

  Dev’s whole body ached. His mind, however, wasn’t ready for sleep. It was far too busy wondering what might be happening back in Eden.

  ‘We’ve been gone for ages,’ he muttered. ‘Mum will be worried.’

  He felt a pang of guilt at the thought of it.

  ‘Maybe she told Acting Mayor Bastor to take a Guild search party out beyond the Wall. And maybe he did. Maybe they’re all making their way down the mountain right now. Maybe the Wildening is attacking them too!’

  Dev shuddered, running his fingers across the black scratches on his arm. ‘I hope they don’t come.’ He sighed. ‘Even though I’d do anything to see someone from Eden again, I hope they all stay where they are. Where it’s safe.’

  Boja snorted. It was a sleepy, snotty snort, followed by the delicate squeak of a fart from his bum still stuck inside the Village. Dev could hear muffled voices through the wall – they were mostly, from what he could work out, complaining about the smell.

  Boja giggled in his sleep.

  ‘We’ll just stay in Darkwater a little longer,’ Dev said, fishing around in his pocket for the food he’d salvaged from the Wildening. He pulled out an old cauliflower, a spricket, a few small peppers and a couple of flonions.