The Crystal Caves

by Jamie Smart

  The whole room lurched again, sliding the table out bowl of black and green muck tumbled over and towards Boja’s wide-open mouth.

  ‘That stew is for DEV!’ Rebecca shouted so angrily it made Boja’s mouth snap shut. The bowl slapped between his eyes and slowly slid down onto his nose. From somewhere below, the rude words started again. Boja smiled sheepishly, disappearing from sight as the room rose back up into a horizontal position.

  Rebecca composed herself and patted down her overalls. ‘He wouldn’t eat until he knew you were OK.’ She tutted. ‘I guess he knows you’re OK now.’

  Dev carefully lifted himself back onto the bed. ‘What’s he doing out there?’

  Rebecca picked up Dev’s clothes, helmet and backpack from a chair on the other side of the room, and she placed them on the bed. ‘He’s helping. When you’re ready, get dressed, come downstairs, and see.’

  6

  The Village

  As soon as Rebecca had left the room, Dev shuffled over to his backpack and opened it up. He pulled out the flember book. Its cracked blue cover was muddy, but much to his relief the pages inside were still dry. He ran a finger across the large golden F on its cover.

  Flember prickled warmly against his skin.

  The tools he’d packed hadn’t fared so well. The Fibbulator sloshed full of dirty brown water. The Bimcockle too. The Rassleclock bipped once and then burst into flames, while the Ripplybollop, Optylopops and even the spring-loaded Fisplestaw had all been crumpled together into one big lump of junk.

  ‘Maybe my helmet still works.’ Dev lifted up his helmet and plopped it onto his head. He pulled the chinstraps. A little hatch opened at the top and more muddy water spilled out, followed by a groaning cluster of broken metal arms and a fizzing, popping light bulb.

  And then, a snail.

  Dev plucked it between his fingers and carefully placed it on the wall. He piled his broken tools beside the bed, slipped the book back inside his backpack, put on his trousers, vest and his boots, and finally he wrapped his scarf around his neck.

  ‘At least Boja’s here,’ he muttered, standing on two wobbly legs, pulling a soggy, withered pepper from his pocket and chewing on it as he staggered out of the room.

  Dev stepped onto a balcony overhanging a huge round hall. Its walls were covered with twisted pipes from floor to ceiling, all of them leading up and into a bulging stalactite of ovens, canisters and tubes which had been cobbled together and thinned into nozzles. Whatever this contraption was, it hung proudly down in the middle of everything, ropes trailing out from it like a spider’s web. Over each rope had been draped a tapestry of dirty, torn canvas sheets, hanging like makeshift tents.

  It felt to Dev as if he was looking down upon the weekend markets of Middle Eden.

  ‘We call this place the Village!’ Rebecca called out from behind a circular bar in the middle of the room, as she proudly arranged a bouquet of exhaust pipes in a vase. ‘We try our best to make it feel like home, and you are very, very welcome here.’

  Dev carefully descended the stairs, as an elderly man lurched up to meet him. ‘Y’ain’t got any gold, have yer?’ he snarled. He too wore overalls, most of his nametag ripped off to reveal only a surname. Grippins. His boots were torn at the tips, ten large blackened toes on show, and he wore a large floppy hat, which covered all but his mouth. ‘Carrying any rings, any trinkets?’

  ‘Any in yer teeth?’ Another man flanked Dev, this one even older, even more haggard. His nametag read Prickles. He gripped Dev’s jaw with one hand, forcing his mouth wide open with the other. ‘You must have somethin’ in there. Somethin’ fer Dahlia.’

  ‘Leave him alone.’ Rebecca batted them both away with a broom. ‘We finally have a child come to town and you miserable old skeletons want to scare him off!’ She squeezed Dev’s cheeks admiringly, then led him towards the bar. ‘Ignore them,’ she muttered under her breath. ‘They’re good people at heart. It’s just that things aren’t that easy around here, not any more.’

  Her eyes drifted to a large painting hanging from the wall.

  ‘Not since he’s been gone,’ she whispered, as if it was an unutterable secret.

  A huge, hulking figure stirred at the other end of the bar. She looked weathered. Her head was balding at the sides, her scalp pitted, with a bundle of knotted straw-coloured hair resting upon the top of it.

  ‘The big red one’ the figure grumbled. ‘What is he?’

  Her voice was strange, distorted, as if it was echoing through an old engine.

  ‘B-Boja’s a bear,’ Dev replied.

  The figure snorted. She turned and eyed Dev suspiciously. ‘I’ve never seen a bear like that before. I’ve never seen a bear talk so much. I’ve never seen a bear laugh at its own farts. I’ve never seen a bear so protective of a little boy like you.’

  A number of thick metal fingers poked out from beneath her shawls as she pushed herself up from her stool. Her whole body creaked and hissed as she moved. It reminded Dev of the noises the old generators made back in Eden.

  ‘Dev, this is Keeper,’ Rebecca said. ‘She’s the one who caught you both when you came rolling into town.’

  ‘Ah, I just stood in the way,’ Keeper grunted, pulling her tatty shawls down over her hands. ‘You might wish I’d not bothered. Not now you’re stuck in Darkwater like the rest of us.’

  Darkwater!

  The word spun around in Dev’s head before rattling down into his belly.

  ‘Darkwater?’ he cried with delight. ‘Darkwater’s the first place on the map! The first location of the Flember Stream! This is exactly where we wanted to be!’ He ran across the scuffed floor towards a large set of double doors marked ‘EXIT’ and flung them open. Daylight hit his eyes. A sharp, cold air filled his lungs. His legs gave way and he collapsed out onto a gangway.

  ‘Do be careful!’ Rebecca rushed to help him up. ‘I told you already, you need to take things slowly.’

  As Dev’s eyes adjusted he could see his surroundings a little more clearly. The Village, as Rebecca called it, was a curious structure: big and round, like a huge flattened bun riveted together from rusted metal and then perched upon a pile of scrap. The gangway running around it had been punched with open hatches, and through each of them hung rope ladders. Despite Rebecca’s protests Dev clambered towards the nearest hatch, tumbling, haphazardly, down towards the ground.

  ‘BOJA!’ he shouted. ‘Boja, we’ve found it! We found Darkwater!’

  ‘Hi, Dev! I’m helping!’ Boja stood in the shadow of a towering quarry wall, perched upon a pile of upturned mine carts. The bowl of black and green slop had long since left his nose, slid down his belly, and currently lay splattered across the ground.

  ‘I wouldn’t call it helping.’ A man hung from the gangway. He lifted his welding mask to reveal a face like a puffy red bottom, albeit one with a beard. ‘This … bear of yours keeps making the whole village dip! I can hardly weld the supports back together if he doesn’t hold it STEADY.’

  ‘Don’t worry about Cled,’ Rebecca called out, swinging down the rope ladder. ‘He’ll appreciate your friend’s help once it’s done. We all will.’

  ‘I’d appreciate him holding it STEADY!’ Cled pulled the mask down, and turned his blowtorch back towards the mound. With a face of intense concentration Boja held the Village as steady as he’d ever held anything, until all that concentration forced a tiny little fart from between his buttocks. This brought a chuckle from his lips, and, despite his best efforts, Boja’s wobbly arms started shaking the Village again.

  ‘Oh, fine. FINE! It’ll have to do,’ Cled shouted.

  Boja let go of the balcony and clumsily climbed down from his mine carts, throwing out his paws and wrapping Dev into the biggest hug ever hugged.

  ‘I’m so glad you’re OK,’ Dev whispered, closing his eyes and nuzzling into Boja’s red fur. The muffled sound of Boja’s golden heart reassuringly doompf-doompf-doompf-ed in his ear once again. ‘Wait, are you OK?’

 
; He ran some quick diagnostics. Poked a finger into Boja’s ear, his nose, his belly. Checked his eyes, his reflexes. Lifted one big red arm, then the other, one leg, then the other. Squeezed at where Boja’s organs should be. And for every test he ran, Boja ran the same on him. Poking him, lifting him, flipping him around and squeezing him until finally, succumbing to giggles, and upside down, Dev gave up.

  ‘You seem fine.’ Dev smiled with relief. ‘Nothing broken, nothing out of place. We fell down a mountain and here you are, still farting.’

  ‘I rolled!’ Boja chuckled. ‘I rolled and rolled and rolled and rolled!’

  ‘You rolled right across our Village roof,’ Cled huffed.

  ‘We rolled right through the Wildening!’ Excitement wobbled in Dev’s voice. He gazed up the quarry wall, up to where he could just about see the treetops of the Wildening beyond. ‘And you brought us right where we needed to be. First place on the map, Boja. We’re in Darkwater!’

  ‘DUCKWATER!’ Boja yelled.

  ‘WAHOOOO!’ Dev cheered.

  Rebecca watched the two of them dance wildly on the spot. ‘Oh, how lovely.’ She smiled wistfully. ‘Isn’t that lovely, Cled?’

  ‘Hmph,’ Cled grumbled. ‘You wait till they’ve seen the rest of Darkwater, see if they’re still dancing then.’

  7

  Darkwater

  ‘Can we take a look around?’ Dev asked once the dancing had come to its jiggly, booty-bumping close.

  Rebecca winced. ‘I’m not sure that’s a good idea, Dev. You’re not well – you’re still recovering from your journey.’

  ‘Ah, let them look,’ Cled sniffed. ‘It’ll keep the bear out of my beard for a little while.’

  ‘But they—’

  ‘Let them look.’ Cled cast her a pleading glance.

  Rebecca nervously straightened her overalls. ‘Well … OK. But don’t go too far, either of you. It’s already quite late in the day and I want you both back by dinner.’

  At the sound of the word dinner Boja started nodding enthusiastically. Dev shouted back in agreement. He had already started running ahead, excited to see where the map might have brought them.

  A drizzly mist obscured much beyond the Village, but the further Dev went, the more shapes started to emerge. Rusted abandoned vehicles. Half-buried bits of engine. Huge clumps of broken machinery. Pylons as tall as trees, their tops disappearing into the sky. Dev gazed up at the chains strung between them, the lights flashing upon them, the sheer size of everything stretching out around him.

  Then, suddenly, he was teetering upon a cliff edge. Boja screeched to a halt behind him, and together they stared down at a scene quite unlike anything they had ever seen before.

  The town of Darkwater sat in an enormous quarry, spiralling down through the rock as if it were a screw hole. Each ring was a walled level in itself, a step down to the next, decreasing in size as they descended deeper into the earth. Scattered across the rings, Dev could see a slew of broken machinery and collapsed buildings, masts and platforms left dangling from chains. An assault course of rusting metal, whistling its own eerie song as the wind breezed through its skeletal remains.

  What caught his eye most, however, was a tower of rock rising up through the middle of it all. Its sides had been clad with a spiral of platforms and scaffolding, all leading up to a dark, round, domed building.

  ‘Why’d your map bring you here then?’ Keeper’s metallic voice made Dev jump. ‘Look at this place. There’s nothing left of Darkwater but a load of old rusting junk.’

  ‘We’re looking for the Flember Stream.’ Dev grinned.

  Keeper raised a confused eyebrow.

  ‘The Flember Stream!’ Dev insisted. ‘It carries flember all around the island! The map says there’s a point in Darkwater where it comes close to the surface, close enough that you can see it!’

  ‘Your map brought you here to find flember? In Darkwater?’ Keeper’s whole body erupted into laughter. ‘Dev, have you looked AROUND you?’

  Dev pursed his lips and stared across the quarry, at the rust and the ruins, and the hard, dusty ground surrounding it all.

  He couldn’t see a single tree.

  Not even a few sprigs of grass.

  No birds were singing, no rivers were trickling, no ferns were rustling.

  ‘There’s barely any flember here at all,’ he gasped, a horribly familiar thought suddenly weighing down upon his shoulders. ‘Did … did I do this?’

  ‘You?’

  ‘Up in Eden, I … I did this experiment, and it worked, it really worked …’ Dev waggled his hands towards Boja. Boja waggled his paws back. ‘But it went really wrong too. It started taking all the flember out of our village, the trees died, the ponds dried up, and oh no, oh NO! It reached down here, didn’t it? I took all of Darkwater’s flember too!’

  Keeper stared at the boy in front of her. His eyes glistened. His bottom lip wobbled. ‘Dev—’ she started.

  ‘I fixed it, though. I put all the flember back in Eden!’ Dev sniffled. ‘Nearly all of it, I mean. Not the Eden Tree. That’s why we came here, looking for a bit more flember!’ He kicked at the dusty ground. ‘So maybe, while I’m here, I can find some way to fix Darkwater too.’

  Keeper stared at him with amusement. ‘Dev, Darkwater’s been like this for YEARS!’

  ‘Years?’ Dev puffed his cheeks out with relief. ‘So I didn’t cause all this? Oh! Oh, PHEW! Something that wasn’t my fault!’

  Keeper shook her head. ‘Come here looking for flember,’ she muttered, following a narrow path around the side of the cliff. ‘I think you must be holding your map upside down or something.’

  ‘Would you maybe show us around anyway?’ Dev called out. ‘Just so we can check?’

  ‘Show you around? I’m not a babysitter,’ Keeper grumped. ‘I’ve digging to do. I can hardly have you two getting in my way.’

  ‘We can help you dig!’ Dev chirped. ‘Boja’s really strong!’

  Keeper turned to look at Boja. Boja grinned back, holding his fists above his head and flexing his muscles.

  Keeper’s frown sunk even lower. ‘FINE,’ she snapped. ‘Come with me then.’

  ‘YES!’ Dev cheered.

  ‘But you mind where you step.’

  ‘We will!’

  ‘And no messing about!’

  ‘No messing about,’ Dev nodded. ‘We promise.’

  8

  Hibbicus

  Dev and Boja followed Keeper around the outer ring of the quarry. The ground became darker. The air became colder. They walked between a mesh of twisted wreckage and discarded machinery, pylons poking out like reeds from a pond, mine carts hanging from chains above them.

  A thick smell of grease filled Dev’s nostrils, a smell that reminded him of that one time Nonna had deep-fried hairweasels without shaving them first.

  ‘What are all these machines for?’ he asked, pinching his nose.

  ‘Mining,’ Keeper huffed as she helped pull Dev up and over the remains of a collapsed bridge. ‘Darkwater was a mining town.’

  ‘Mining for what?’

  ‘Rocks. Shiny rocks, if you held them in the right light. But would you look at these machines?’ Keeper slapped her metal hand against a huge, half-buried drill bit. ‘It’s been quite some time since anyone’s mined anything.’ She sighed. ‘Now all folk here do is salvage along the coast instead.’

  She walked on in a tired, mechanical manner, one side of her body lifting up as the other heaved back down. Each footstep clanked loudly in a succession of CLINKs, CLUNKs and ZZZZPs, rolls of steam billowing out from beneath her dragging shawls.

  Dev watched her closely. ‘Are you a robot?’ he finally asked.

  Keeper stopped. ‘Not a robot,’ she huffed, picking up a discarded oil can and swiping a metal finger around inside its cap. She pulled out a goop of thick brown oil and slurped it between her lips. Then she wiped her mouth with her sleeve. ‘Don’t be so ridiculous.’

  Boja looked on, envious at the s
ight of someone eating something he wasn’t.

  Soon they reached the outer wall of the quarry. The rock here was black, shiny, and had been weathered into jagged spikes. Something noisy lay beyond it. It hissed, and it roared, and it crashed up against the other side of the wall like a caged animal trying to get through.

  Dev and Boja clung nervously onto each other.

  ‘That’s just the sea,’ Keeper said.

  ‘The SEA?’ Dev’s heart leapt. He’d only ever seen the sea from high, high up on the mountain, and now here it was on the other side of these rocks. So close he could smell the salt on the breeze. He begged and he pleaded with Keeper to go even closer, but she wouldn’t budge.

  ‘You’re staying where I can see you,’ she replied, kneeling down into the marshy, wet ground and carefully gripping a ruffle of leaves.

  SCHLOPP!

  She pulled a dark green vegetable out of the mud and held it at arm’s length. ‘Dev, do you know what this is?’

  It looked to Dev a bit like a hibbicus plant. Back in Eden, the adults grew and fermented hibbicus plants to make hibbicus beer, a particularly fiery drink known for its strong, bitter taste, and its habit of catching fire in the glass.

  But this hibbicus looked different.

  Dev reached out to touch its brittle, withered skin. An oily black dew smeared between his fingers. ‘It’s a hibbicus,’ he said. ‘But they’re usually fat and green, with bright green leaves. This one—’