Daisy Malone and the Blue Glowing Stone

by James O'Loghlin

  ‘They’re only nice and obedient because you’ve hypnotised them,’ said Blont sulkily.

  ‘True, but that makes it sound like I’m a cruel and mean person, and you don’t think that.’ Gamion stared so hard at him that Daisy thought Blont’s head might bruise. ‘Do you?’

  ‘N … no,’ said Blont slowly, in a way that made Daisy sure that what he really wanted to say was ‘Y … yes’.

  ‘So how do we find that stone?’ asked Gamion, still staring intently at Blont.

  ‘Well, perhaps we could …’ began Blont.

  Gamion raised his index finger and waved it from side to side. ‘Uh-uh. I’m the genius, remember, not you! My job is to have ideas and yours is to sit there and be impressed by how clever they are. We must just keep searching. Or at least,’ he gestured at the others in the chamber, ‘they must.’

  ‘By the way, your … er, helpers.’ Blont gestured at the six people who continued to sit on the floor. Not one of them had moved or reacted in any way during the conversation. ‘When you get the red stone, you will let them go, won’t you? Like you said you would.’

  There was a long pause and then Gamion smiled, but it was a dangerous smile. ‘My friend, do you think I would lie to you? Is that what you think?’

  ‘No … no, of course not.’

  Gamion looked hard at Blont. ‘That’s good, because if you did think that, then I would be very upset.’ He held the look a few moments longer and then turned back to the six others. ‘Let’s get them going again.’ He pulled a glowing blue stone from his pocket and held it up. ‘Up! Up! Up! Go searching, my pretties! Into those tunnels and look, look, look for the red stone. Remember, evil is fun! Go!’

  Slowly the six hypnotised people climbed to their feet and began to shuffle towards the corridors that led out of the chamber with the same slow-motion walk Daisy had seen in the people of Gloomy Gulch. As one of them passed close to the lantern Daisy put her hand to her mouth to stop herself crying out.

  It was her mum!

  Chapter 15

  SAD, NOT BAD

  Daisy returned to the others and they all retreated back to the small chamber where they had first entered the cave system. Daisy, still in shock at seeing her mother, shared what she had seen and heard.

  ‘Gamion!’ exclaimed Sinclair when she had finished.

  ‘You know him?’ asked Daisy.

  Sinclair shook his head. ‘I don’t know him, but everyone in the universe knows who he is.’

  ‘Even I know,’ added Dennis. ‘He’s a super big, bad criminal guy.’

  ‘He’s from the planet Landania,’ explained Sinclair. ‘A few years ago he stood for election to the intergalactic council. Basically, they run the universe. He lost. Soon after, he stole an intergalactic trading ship and became a space pirate, and gradually amassed weapons and wealth. Then he tried to take over the council by force. Eventually he was defeated, captured and sent to gaol. He must have escaped and from the sounds of it, he somehow got hold of a blue stone. They would have had one at the gaol to control the prisoners. Maybe it’s that one, or maybe he somehow had one smuggled into him. Anyway, once Gamion had one, he could have used it to travel here.’

  ‘Why would he want to come here?’ asked Dennis. ‘Is he interested in ants, too?’

  ‘I very much doubt it. It seems that he thinks there is a red stone somewhere in this cave system. Let me try and find out if he is right. Everyone be quiet for a moment.’ Sinclair closed his eyes.

  ‘What are you doing, boss?’ asked Dennis. ‘This is no time for a nap. Even I know that. And even if it was time for a nap, shouldn’t you at least lie down first? Sleeping standing up is hard. I think only cows can sleep standing up, boss, and you’re definitely not a cow. I thought you’d know that, being a scientist and all.’

  ‘Shhh. I’m concentrating!’

  ‘What’s “concentrating”?’ asked Dennis.

  ‘Be quiet!’ hissed Sinclair.

  Sinclair kept doing nothing as the others watched him. Then his eyes jumped open. ‘I can sense another stone down here, perhaps a red one. But, like Gamion, I am not sure exactly where it is.’ He pushed his hands together as if he had started to clap but had only got as far as the first one.

  ‘What will happen if Gamion gets it?’ asked Daisy.

  ‘Red stones are incredibly powerful,’ said Sinclair solemnly. ‘We use them to provide power to a whole planet, or to heal the sick. No individual is ever allowed to have one unsupervised. It’s too dangerous. If Gamion gets hold of one, he will be able to do almost anything he wants.’

  ‘He said he wanted to take over the intergalactic council,’ said Daisy.

  ‘With a red stone, he could,’ replied Sinclair. ‘And if he does, then the entire universe will be in danger.’

  ‘Which means, I’m guessing, that someone is about to say something dramatic like, “We must stop him”,’ said Ben softly.

  Sinclair rubbed his chin. ‘But why would there be a red stone here?’

  ‘Are you asking me that?’ asked Dennis uncertainly. ‘’Cos if you are, my answer is “Dunno”. And I’m pretty sure Daisy and Ben and Prawn don’t know either.’

  ‘What about my mum?’ asked Daisy. ‘How did she and all the others get hypnotised?’

  ‘Gamion must have done that with the blue stone,’ explained Sinclair.

  ‘So, how do we un-hypnotise them?’ asked Daisy.

  ‘If they have been hypnotised by a blue stone, then they can only be released by either a blue or a red stone,’ said Sinclair.

  Dennis rubbed his head. ‘Why do people like Gamion do bad things, boss?’

  ‘It’s a complex question. But we must stop him,’ said Sinclair.

  ‘Bingo,’ said Ben.

  Sinclair ignored him. ‘Our heartstones are running down, so we have to do it fast. Before …’ He looked at Dennis and trailed off.

  ‘Oh, yeah. Before we die,’ said Dennis.

  ‘Then let’s do it!’ exclaimed Prawn, leaping to his feet. ‘Let’s blast ’em! Let’s smash ’em! Where’s my doom gun and my laser grenades?’

  ‘Prawn,’ said Daisy gently. ‘They’re things from your game, aren’t they?’

  Prawn looked at Daisy. ‘Oh, yeah, like, that’s right. Sorry, it’s just sometimes I, like, get a bit mixed up.’

  ‘We need a plan,’ said Sinclair. ‘We need to be clever in working it out, and courageous and skilful in implementing it.’

  Dennis gulped. ‘I should leave then.’

  ‘No,’ said Daisy. ‘We need everyone.’

  ‘Even me?’ asked Dennis.

  Daisy smiled. ‘Especially you.’

  They approached the main chamber quietly. Daisy crawled forward to the end of the passage and looked over the edge. The only person in the chamber was Professor Blont. He was sitting in one of the chairs, dozing. Daisy retraced her steps to the others.

  ‘It’s just Blont. He’s half asleep. Go get him, Dennis.’

  Dennis licked his lips and then moved forward. He had practised the shuffling walk of the hypnotised until he was quite good at it, and of course the vacant facial expression came naturally to him. Making no attempt to hide himself, he emerged from the passage and climbed down the wall into the chamber. As Dennis reached the floor Blont stirred and twisted his neck to look at him. ‘Huh? Who are you? Oh, one of them. Well, off you go then, keep searching. Wait a minute. You couldn’t find me a few cream buns from somewhere, could you?’

  Dennis kept walking towards Blont.

  ‘Er, all right, no need to get too close.’ Blont, still sitting down, grabbed his cane and tried to fend Dennis off, but it was too late. Dennis leant forward and grabbed Blont’s shoulders from behind, pinning him to the chair.

  Blont squirmed. ‘Let me go!’

  As usual when someone says that, the pers
on holding them did not let them go.

  ‘Make as much noise as you can,’ said Dennis sternly to Blont.

  ‘No, Dennis,’ called Daisy from the passage above. ‘Tell him not to make any noise. Remember?’

  ‘Oh, rats!’ exclaimed Dennis. ‘I was going so well until then. Like she said. No noise!’

  Daisy hurried down to the floor of the chamber, followed by Ben and the others. They surrounded Blont.

  ‘Daisy! You are here,’ said Blont, stating the extremely obvious.

  ‘Where’s Gamion?’ demanded Daisy.

  Blont gestured towards the passages leading off the chamber. ‘Down there somewhere. By the way, you don’t happen to have a cream b–’

  ‘No, we don’t,’ interrupted Daisy. ‘We want you to tell us what’s going on.’

  Blont swallowed. ‘Going on? What do you mean?’ he said innocently, but in that way that sounds really guilty (like when you’re playing a computer game and your mum asks you if you have done all your homework and you say, ‘Yes, of course,’ even though the true answer is ‘No, none of it.’ That voice.)

  Daisy noticed that even though it was quite cool, Blont was sweating. She suspected Blont was about as brave as a mouse (no offence, mice, but you do run away every time a leaf falls off a tree) and that a little pressure may cause him to tell a bit more of the truth.

  Dennis was still standing behind Blont with his hands on his shoulders. ‘Dennis, why don’t you give Professor Blont’s ears a little tug?’ suggested Daisy.

  Dennis looked confused. ‘Why would I do that, Daisy?’

  ‘Because Professor Blont didn’t give a very good answer to the question I asked him. Maybe he didn’t hear it very well. So maybe if you grab his ears and pull them out from his head quite hard, he might hear it a bit better.’

  ‘But wouldn’t that hurt him?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Daisy, looking Blont in the eye. ‘It might hurt him quite a bit. Someone pulled my ears once and it hurt quite a bit.’

  It is important to understand at this point that Daisy was by no means a cruel person. In normal circumstances she would never willingly torture another living creature. But her mother was hypnotised, it was clear Gamion was up to something evil, and Daisy was hungry, tired, anxious and very eager to get whatever information Blont had out of him as quickly as possible. And she was pretty sure it wouldn’t take much for Blont to crack.

  Dennis looked questioningly at Sinclair, who nodded. Dennis grabbed Blont’s ears and began to pull them up and out from his body so that Blont started to look like a large, overweight elf.

  ‘Oww! Stop!’ cried Blont. ‘All right! I’ll tell you!’

  Daisy put her hand up. Dennis released Blont’s ears.

  ‘I’m not a cruel man,’ Dennis said, ‘but that was quite fun. Does that make me evil?’

  Daisy didn’t think there was time to get into a complicated discussion about the nature of evil, so she didn’t. Luckily, Dennis didn’t have the type of mind that would get stuck on the question of whether he was evil or not and have it whirl round and round his head for hours, days and weeks. In fact, it only took six and a half seconds for him to forget about it entirely and to instead start wondering about what they were going to have for lunch and when they were going to have it.

  ‘So, what’s going on?’ repeated Daisy.

  Blont swallowed. ‘You won’t tell him I told you?’

  Daisy shook her head, without thinking about whether she really meant it or not.

  ‘He came to my office a few weeks ago,’ said Blont. ‘He said he was looking for a red glowing stone and thought there might be one at our Gloomy Gulch archaeological site.’

  ‘And you’re helping him find it?’ accused Daisy angrily. ‘Why? My mum trusted you!’

  Blont looked at the ground. ‘He said he would fix my leg,’ he said softly.

  There was silence, and then Dennis said, ‘Huh?’

  Blont let out a long breath. ‘One evening when I was fourteen I was running home from soccer practice in the rain. A car sped around the corner and hit me.’ He gestured down at his right leg. ‘I’ve had seven operations on it, and it still doesn’t work properly.’

  ‘That’s so sad,’ said Dennis. ‘I’m sorry I pulled your ears.’

  Blont sighed. ‘Don’t be. He offered me all the usuals as well.’

  ‘What do you mean, “the usuals”?’ asked Daisy.

  ‘You know, power, money, space travel, unlimited cream buns … all that stuff. He said all I had to do was help him find the red stone and he would give me whatever I wanted.’ Blont looked at the ground. ‘I said yes.’

  ‘I feel a bit better about pulling your ears now,’ said Dennis.

  Blont balled his hands into fists. ‘I knew Gamion was up to no good, but I helped him. I told him all about this site and gave him maps and lots of other information. And when you came to me for help, Daisy, despite the fact that your mother has been a good and true friend to me for a long time, I … I tried to take the blue stone from you. I thought I might be able to use it myself to fix my leg. I’m sorry.’

  There was a pause as everyone except Dennis wondered whether they were supposed to feel sorry for Blont.

  ‘What’s for lunch?’ asked Dennis.

  They all stared at him.

  ‘What?’ he asked innocently, rubbing his tummy.

  ‘I still don’t understand why there’s a red stone down here,’ said Sinclair.

  ‘We mightn’t know the answers to all the “whys”,’ said Daisy, ‘but we know what we have to do if we want to help my mum and recharge your heartstones: we have to get at least one of the blue stones back from Gamion, or get the red stone before he does, or both. So, Professor Blont, which passage did Gamion go down?’

  Blont pointed towards the left-hand passage.

  ‘Let’s go,’ said Daisy. She turned to Blont. ‘As for you …’ Daisy paused. She had been about to tell him that he was a no-good dirty-tricking rotten-egg double-crossing meany, but he looked so wretchedly pitiful already that she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Blont wasn’t really bad. He was just sad.

  ‘Look, I’m sorry about your leg,’ she said, ‘but you did the wrong thing and now my mum is in trouble, and we have to help her. I think you should just get out of here as quickly as you can.’

  Blont looked down. ‘I’m sorry.’ He took a deep breath and heaved himself to his feet. ‘I really am.’

  ‘Good,’ said Daisy. ‘Now go.’

  ‘Wait!’ said Dennis. ‘Could I just pull his ears one more time? Pleeassse?’

  Chapter 16

  DEEPER DOWN

  Daisy, Ben, Sinclair, Dennis and Prawn made their way cautiously down the left-hand passage in search of Gamion. Daisy noticed that even though they were not walking fast, both Dennis and Sinclair were breathing heavily and struggling to keep up. Their bodies must be running out of energy. She wondered how long they had left.

  Daisy was pretty sure that Blont had told them everything he knew, and that now he just wanted to go home, lie in the bath and stuff himself full of as many cream buns as he could. (And that’s one reason baths are so much better than showers. You can’t stuff yourself full of cream buns in the shower. They go all soggy.)

  Soon they reached a junction where the passage divided into two. Ben sniffed about.

  ‘Gamion’s scent is down both passages. I’m not sure which is more recent.’

  ‘We’ll have to split up,’ said Sinclair.

  ‘You mean we should cut ourselves in half, boss?’ asked Dennis. ‘How’s that going to help?’

  Sinclair rolled his eyes. ‘No. We have to split into two groups.’

  Daisy didn’t like the idea. ‘If there are fewer of us, it’ll be more dangerous for whoever finds him.’

  ‘It’s already dangerous,’ repli
ed Sinclair. ‘And we need to find him as fast as we can.’ He glanced at Dennis. ‘Our power is diminishing. I won’t be able to think clearly for too much longer, and I don’t think Dennis ever does.’

  He looked around the group. ‘Dennis and I have lights so, Prawn, you come with me. Ben and Daisy, you go with Dennis.’

  Without anyone needing to say it, they all realised that it would not have been a good idea to team Dennis and Prawn up together. Even Prawn and Dennis realised that.

  ‘Good luck,’ said Sinclair, and without any further ado (because there had been far too much adoing already) he trudged off slowly down the right-hand passage, Prawn close behind him.

  Daisy, Ben and Dennis crept cautiously along the left-hand passage. It wound to the left and then back to the right, sloping gently downwards.

  After they had been going a few minutes Ben froze. ‘Shhh,’ he hissed, staring down the passageway, ears bent forward. ‘Footsteps coming this way.’

  ‘Let’s go back,’ said Daisy.

  ‘Wait,’ said Ben. ‘The footsteps are slow. It’s one of the hypnotised.’

  They pressed themselves against the side of the passage. Daisy turned to Dennis and patted her forehead, meaning for Dennis to turn off his head light.

  ‘Do you have a sore head, Daisy?’ asked Dennis loudly.

  ‘Shh!’ said Daisy. ‘Turn your light off. Something’s up ahead.’

  ‘Oh. Why didn’t you say so?’ Dennis turned off the light.

  A few moments later, a big man holding a torch walked slowly past, his eyes staring straight ahead.

  Soon, they came to a chamber that was about twice the size of Daisy’s bedroom. It also looked almost exactly like Daisy’s bedroom, except with all the furniture removed and the walls, ceiling and roof covered with bat poo. And with four hypnotised people with picks and shovels digging up the floor.

  The hypnotised people ignored them so, after checking to see that none of them had actually found the red stone, Daisy ignored them back and continued on. After a few minutes Ben again motioned them to be quiet, and pointed a paw ahead. Daisy motioned to Dennis to turn off his light, and this time he understood.