The Crystal Caves Page 8

  ‘BOJA!’ Dev shouted, jumping to grab the bag. ‘Boja, what are you DOING?’

  Boja rolled one of his eyes down towards Dev, and possibly winked it. ‘Helping save ship,’ he mumbled, a mouthful of black and green pulp sparkling in the back of his throat.

  Then his grin disappeared.

  His ears pinned back.

  And both his eyes sprung wide open.

  A rumble sounded from deep inside his belly. Boja clamped his lips shut as if he could stop what was about to come out but it only ballooned into his cheeks, and when they could stretch no more it finally burst through his mouth.

  BU-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-R-P-P-P-P!

  A huge jet of flame billowed out from between his teeth. It danced high into the air above them, lighting up the mist, blotting the coves and the reef into bright, blistering view.

  ‘Hurrrrf!’ Boja wheezed, wiping a little hibbicus goop from his lips. Then BU-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-R-P! he went again, igniting the skies as if the sun itself was crashing in through the clouds.

  ‘I’ve never seen a bear do THAT.’ Keeper gazed out to sea, watching the ship as it rapidly changed course to avoid the rocks. Its lights flickered smaller, and smaller, and smaller.

  Eventually, even its PARPs faded away into the distance.

  She sighed with relief. ‘That’s one less meal for the sea. Oh, Dev, I could have done with you both being here before now.’ She turned and stared admiringly up at Boja. ‘I’ve seen what those waters do to a human. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.’

  Boja grinned inanely, his top teeth hanging over his bottom lip like a bear with no idea what’s going on.

  Then, suddenly, a new expression took over his face.

  An expression of deep, unrelenting dread.

  Dev recognized it instantly.

  ‘We should get inside for this bit,’ he said. ‘RIGHT NOW.’

  He pulled on Keeper’s shawls, dragging her down the metal planks and into the safety of the doorway. ‘Why are we hiding?’ she shouted.

  ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘Farts!’ Dev winced. ‘Farts farts farts f—’

  And then there came that sound. That terrible sound. It sounded like a million sheets of paper tearing, like an earthquake filled with jelly, like both those things happening at once while a herd of hufflepigs ploughed through a field of balloons.

  FFFFR-R-R-R-R-R-RPPPPPPP!

  A great plume of black fire jetted out from between Boja’s buttocks. It propelled him over to the far side of the tower. He grabbed onto the railings just in time, only for another fart to flip him back up and skid him through the metal pit.

  FFFR-R-R-R-R-RPPPPPPP!

  His huge, floppy body spun up into the air.

  FFFFR-R-R-R-RPPPPPP!

  He whizzed around like a Catherine Wheel.

  FRRPPP! FRRRPP!

  FFFFFFFFFR-R-R-R-R-R-RPPPPP!

  And then CRASH!

  Boja slammed down into, and through, the tower roof. A column of smoke billowed out in his wake. He clonked once, twice, three times against the staircase, the flames sputtering out as his huge, heavy body plummeted to the ground.

  Which it then hit, face first, with a sickening THUD.

  ‘Boja!’ Dev and Keeper scrambled down the stairs and over the crates as fast as they could. ‘Boja, are you OK?’

  Boja mumbled something in reply. Something about his nose being squashed.

  ‘Keeper, help me,’ Dev said, struggling to roll Boja upright.

  But Keeper was distracted. She was staring up to the top of the tower, or at least, where it used to be. Now only burning bits of ceiling remained. It broke away in pieces, little clumps of flaming brick tumbling down towards them.

  Clattering against the steps.

  Thunking against the ground.

  Keeper turned to Dev with a terrified look in her eyes.

  And suddenly Dev knew what was inside all the crates.

  23

  An Awful Fire

  The flames danced across the crates, jumping from one to the next, burning through the wood and catching the leaves of all the hibbicus plants stuffed inside.

  ‘You have to get out!’ Keeper yelled. She CLANK-CLANK-ed over to Boja and slipped her huge metal arms around his head, while Dev leant into his smoking, charred bottom, and together they heaved the dazed bear through the doorway and out into the mist.

  ‘Further!’ Keeper panted.

  ‘Break-faschttt …’ Boja mumbled, as his face smeared along the ground.

  Once they were at a safe distance, once they’d flumped Boja down onto the rocks, Keeper turned back towards the tower. She watched the thick smoke roll out through its doorway, through the cracks in its shutters, through the gaping great hole in its roof.

  And then she started CLANK-CLANK-CLANK-ing back towards it.

  ‘KEEPER!’ Dev shouted.

  ‘I have to at least try to put the flames out!’ Keeper yelled back. ‘I have to save the tower!’

  ‘BUT THE HIBBICUS WILL EXPLODE!’

  ‘I’ll be FINE!’ she replied, CLUNK-ing her frosted helmet over her head. ‘I’m a ROBOT, remember?’

  She bowled through the smoke just as – BOOM! – a loud explosion blew the wall out above her. The doorway collapsed beneath tumbling chunks of stone. BOOM! Another explosion. BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! One hibbicus-filled crate after another, tearing apart the walls and bringing the upper levels crumpling down like wet cardboard. What was once a tower swiftly became rubble, a hellish swirl of flame and smoke dancing upon it.

  Dev held his breath, staring into the fire for any sign of Keeper.

  But he saw nothing.

  ‘Oh, that’s nice!’ Nobbins stood, admiring the burning tower, his face illuminated in all of its bumpy, lumpy glory. He poked his tongue out to catch a few flakes of burning ash as they flittered down from the sky.

  Then he caught sight of Dev and flung his arms out in joy.

  ‘YOU?’ Nobbins cheered. ‘Did … did YOU blow up the tower?’

  ‘Nobbins!’ Elise staggered through the mist, her burnt boots FLIP-FLOPP-ing along behind her. ‘Nobbins, who is it?’

  ‘The boy.’ Nobbins ran towards Dev and gripped him roughly by the cheeks. ‘The troublesome boy finally did something good for Darkwater!’

  Tears glistened in Dev’s eyes. ‘Keeper was in the tower!’ he cried. ‘She … she ran back in!’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry about that old tin can,’ Elise laughed. ‘Better for us all if she’s gone. All that tower of hers did was warn all the ships away, all them ships with all their gold.’

  ‘Their lovely, shiny gold.’ Nobbins waggled Dev’s cheeks in glee.

  ‘Well, maybe now they’ll start sinking again,’ Elise snarled. ‘Maybe now the sea can chew on their flember and spit their gold out for the rest of us.’

  Nobbins dropped Dev to the ground and started to jig, his not inconsiderable frame bouncing around while Elise clapped alongside him. ‘What blessed souls are we,’ he puffed.

  ‘Catching gold right out of the SEA!’ Elise cheered.

  Dev stared up at them in utter bemusement.

  And his heart sank lower than ever before.

  How had he and Boja ever ended up in a place like Darkwater? There was barely a drop of flember here, no sign of the Flember Stream at all. Just exploding hibbicus plants, a cruel and hungry sea, and some weird gopplespider–like man stealing people’s flember. And now Keeper was gone. Nobbins and Elise were celebrating. And Boja, Dev’s best chance of getting through any of this, was collapsed beside him, thoroughly farted out.

  ‘Darkwater can’t be where we’re supposed to find the Flember Stream, it just can’t. It must be a mistake. There must be something I’m missing,’ he moaned.

  Dev huddled against Boja’s fur, pulled his backpack off, and lifted the flember book out from inside. Unable to ask Boja to spare any flember, he instead clawed his fingers around the glowing, golden F on the book’s cover and wrenched it out from its studs. Flem
ber crackled around his fingertips. It felt warm. He flipped open the book, placed the F down upon the pages of Chapter Two, and watched as the hidden, glowing lines of the map spread out beneath it.

  He traced back and forth along the lines, his eyes scanning for anything he might have missed. ‘The map must be wrong,’ he muttered. ‘It has to be wrong.’

  ‘Whassat?’ Nobbins’s huge face appeared over Dev’s shoulder. His bulbous nose snuffled like a pig hunting truffles.

  ‘Oh! It’s … it’s just a book.’ Dev slammed the covers shut.

  ‘Not that, THAT.’ Nobbins grabbed the golden F and held it up to the light of the burning tower. With a dirty finger he smeared thick black circles around his eyes, as if he was drawing on a pair of spectacles. ‘It … it looks like GOLD.’

  ‘Give it back.’ Dev leapt up, only for Nobbins to kick him to the ground.

  ‘You had GOLD all along!’ He bit his rotten teeth into it. ‘And it’s solid too.’

  Elise grabbed the F. ‘Every day we’re served that stew,’ she hissed. ‘That filthy mucky stew. It gets into your blood, you know. It eats away at you from the inside.’

  Nobbins snatched the golden F back and started staggering away from the coastline. ‘But gold …’ He beamed. ‘Gold buys us real food. Food the sea ain’t touched.’

  ‘Dahlia will be MOST pleased with us.’ Elise limped after him. ‘Most pleased INDEED!’

  Dev sprang back onto his feet and started shaking the sleepy bear behind him. ‘Boja, get up,’ he insisted. ‘Boja, please.’

  A large red eyelid heaved open. ‘Hungry,’ Boja whined.

  ‘Me too. And we’ll find food soon. Proper food.’ Dev slid the book inside his backpack and pulled it onto his shoulders. ‘Not just food, but the Flember Stream. You need its flember now as much as the Eden Tree does. We’ll find it all.’

  He glowered after Nobbins and Elise.

  ‘And those two are going to lead us right to it.’

  24

  The Sanctuary

  The rain across Darkwater eased, as if it were stepping aside to let the tower burn in peace.

  The winds calmed.

  The mists faded.

  With the vague promise of food now rumbling in his belly, Boja rolled himself onto his bottom, up onto his feet, and then trudged sleepily along behind Dev. Together they followed Nobbins and Elise around the outer ring and then down to the next. And again to the next. Down through the rings of the quarry, tiptoeing carefully between the hibbicus leaves, Boja moaning, grumbling and huffing all the way.

  Once at the deepest point of the quarry, where the thick column of rock rose up from its centre, Nobbins and Elise started the climb up towards the Sanctuary.

  They bickered and they chuckled, snatching the golden F from each other as they clambered from one platform to the next. Soon they were stepping out into the daylight, running towards the entrance to the mines.

  ‘Quickly,’ Elise hissed, bustling Nobbins against its doors. ‘Before the boy follows us in.’

  ‘Don’t worry, dear.’ Nobbins held his nametag up to the mysterious box on the wall. Its light flashed from red to green, and with a great rumble the doors started to slide apart. ‘I wouldn’t let a troublemaker like that anywhere near the Sanctuary.’

  Dev was already near. ‘The nametags.’ he gasped, crouching behind a pylon. ‘So that’s how they get inside the mines.’

  Once Nobbins and then Elise had slipped out of sight, and the doors had started closing again, Dev took his chance. He raced towards the building, skidding down onto his knees and sliding in through the thinnest of gaps.

  The doors loudly CLUNK-ed shut behind him.

  His scarf was trapped.

  As he was pulling it out, he heard sounds coming from the other side of the doors. Huffs. Puffs. Grumblings about breakfast. Dev pressed his face against the slit between the doors to see Boja staggering up the last of the platforms.

  ‘Boja!’ he squeaked. ‘Boja, stay where you are. I’ll find you a nametag, I’ll get you inside!’

  ‘Boo …’ Boja puffed. ‘BOOOO …’

  ‘What is it? What are you trying to say?’

  ‘BOOM!’ The exhausted bear flumped his bottom down into the wet mud. ‘Boom! Boom boom boom!’

  Now Dev could hear it too.

  BOOM!

  BOOM!

  BOOM!

  He followed the wall around, finding a thin crack through which he could look out towards the coastline. The tower was still burning. Dark flaming ash fell from the sky like snow. It was landing on the leaves of the hibbicus plants, lighting them, exploding them, and blowing wide holes in the rock. Dev watched as explosion after explosion flung out hot, flaming chunks of hibbicus, which then lit the other hibbicus nearby. Suddenly the jagged outer wall of the quarry crumbled away.

  And black sea water roared in through the hole.

  25

  Food

  Dev rushed back to the doors. ‘Change of plan. Get back to the Village!’ he shouted, trying to force them open. ‘Boja, can you hear me?’

  One of Boja’s eyes looked up, but the other looked all over the place.

  ‘The sea’s coming in! You have to get to safety! Get back to the Village and I’ll find you there!’

  Boja nodded, grunted, farted, stood up, then staggered back towards the platforms. For such a huge bear he now looked weak, and so utterly confused by everything.

  ‘And then we’ll find you some more flember,’ Dev sighed. ‘Somehow we will, I promise.’

  He turned back inside the Sanctuary. ‘Nobbins!’ he hissed through the darkness. ‘Elise! We have to get back to the Village too!’

  It was cold in there, a shadowy graveyard of once powerful mining machinery, rusting drills, spikes and clamps all poking out from the darkness. Dev tiptoed between them, heading towards a beam of murky daylight that shone in through the broken rafters of the ceiling.

  It fell upon a shallow pit in the ground.

  In the middle of which stood a small wooden hut.

  It seemed such an odd place for a hut to be. Its walls were wooden, its blue roof tiles missing in places, and the weathervane on top was bent and pointing all manner of wrong ways. It had been draped with lengths of split rope. Black, polished rocks inscribed with Dahlia’s name had been rolled around its base, with pile upon pile of scrap-metal flowers scattered between them.

  ‘Nobbins! Elise!’ Dev called down to the two figures huddled beside the hut. ‘WE HAVE TO GO!’

  Nobbins nearly jumped out of his skin, before stepping in front of Elise and waggling a chubby finger up towards Dev. ‘YOUUUU … you’re not ALLOWED in here!’

  Behind him, Elise hurriedly creaked the hut’s little wooden door open. She bent down, placed the golden F carefully inside, then closed the door again. ‘He won’t stop us now,’ she smirked, slamming her hand against a large red button on the wall. ‘The Foodbringer has been summoned.’

  The hut rumbled and shook, a great cacophony of noise rising up from beneath it as if the gears of the earth itself were grinding together.

  And then … PING!

  Elise gripped onto the door and swung it open. A high-pitched squeak of joy whistled from between her lips.

  For there, inside the hut, was a mine cart.

  With a single glass jar inside it.

  ‘BATTERED BEEF BUTTOCKS!’ Elise cried. She grabbed the jar, twisted its lid off, sank two fingers into its thick yellow oil and pulled out a glistening brown slice of meat.

  Nobbins forgot all about Dev, and spun around to see what she’d found. ‘Oh, blessed Dahlia!’ he whimpered, scrubbing off his glasses and redrawing his eyebrows higher than ever before.

  ‘Blessed Dahlia,’ Elise agreed, cramming the slice between her teeth and chewing as if she’d never eaten food before. Nobbins grabbed the jar, wedging his own pudgy fingers inside and slobbering an oily slice down his gullet. ‘MMMMM!’ he squealed, slumping down and rolling back and forth on his ample bot
tom. ‘I haven’t taschted beef buttocksch in scho, scho long!’

  ‘This isn’t the time to be eating!’ Dev shouted. ‘We have to GO!’

  They both stopped mid-chew, and stared up at the boy on the edge of the pit.

  ‘You DARE,’ Nobbins spluttered. ‘You dare schtep inschide the Schanctuary, and then INTERRUPT usch while we’re enjoying Dahlia’sch schweet FRUITSCH—’

  He didn’t get to finish his sentence. A stray hibbicus plant sailed in through the open ceiling, its leaves fizzing like a fuse. It DONK-DONK-DONK-ed across the roof of Dahlia’s hut and then PLOMP-ed right down in front of Nobbins.

  He stared at it, slowly redrawing a curious expression above his eyes.

  And then BOOM!

  The hibbicus exploded in a bright flash of light. It blew Dahlia’s hut into pieces, before bringing a midsection of the ceiling crashing down upon the pit.

  Dev was thrown backwards, rolling across the ground like a floppy sock. His head pounded. His limbs trembled. But still he slowly crawled toward the pit, looking to see if Nobbins and Elise were OK. Finally he spotted them pinned beneath a twisted metal rafter. The jar was in front of them, smashed, while one last battered beef buttock lay just out of reach.

  ‘MINE!’ Nobbins shouted. ‘It’s MINE MINE MINE!’

  ‘No, it’s MINE!’ Elise shouted back, her arm straining to claw at the buttock. ‘You could do with eatin’ less! This one’s MINE!’

  Nobbins called up to Dev. ‘Here, lad, you’re a good boy. Kick us that bit of food, would you? To me. It’s mine.’

  ‘Leave it behind,’ Dev said, sliding down into the pit. ‘We have to get out of here!’ It took all the strength he had left, but he managed, at least, to shift the rafter enough that they could both wiggle free. With not even a grunt of thanks, Nobbins scrambled like a cluttercrab towards the beef buttock. Elise was instantly upon him, sticking her fingers up his nostrils.