The Crystal Caves

by Jamie Smart

  ‘MINE!’ they both shrieked. ‘MIIIIINE!’

  More explosions sounded outside.

  The Sanctuary creaked loudly above them.

  Nobbins and Elise stared at each other in panic.

  ‘You have it!’ Nobbins suddenly squealed, scrambling away from the battered buttock, slipping and tumbling over the rubble.

  ‘No, you!’ Elise replied, chasing after him. ‘You stay here and eat it. Enjoy yourself!’ They pushed and shoved each other through the shadows of the Sanctuary. Nobbins got to the doors first, swiped his nametag for them to open, then squeezed out between them. Elise was right behind, calling Nobbins every rude name she could think of.

  Dev followed as fast as his shaking legs could manage. The doors had already started closing again, but then a rafter clattered down from above, wedging itself between them and leaving enough space for Dev to throw himself through.

  The explosions were getting closer. The coastline was being demolished. Sea water circled the outer ring, running a full lap around the quarry before spilling over the rocks and splashing down into the ring below.

  Where it dissolved everything it touched.

  Dev hoped upon hope that Boja had already made it back to the Village. That he might see the big red bear standing up on the cliff top, waving back at him. Or just face-down and asleep, that would be fine too.

  ‘Please please please.’ Dev gazed towards the cliff. ‘Oh, please, Boja, say you got back safely.’

  ‘HI, DEV!’ Boja yelled from behind him. Dev swung around, back towards the Sanctuary. There, through the crumpled metal doors, through the rubble and the dust, sitting upon a mound of collapsed roof, was Boja.

  Gleefully chomping into the last battered buttock.

  Dev opened his mouth to shout, just as more sparkling hibbicus plants sailed down from the sky, landing PLOMP-PLOMP-PLOMP around the grinning bear.

  And then …

  26

  Something Like a Plan

  The explosion raced through the doors in a cloud of dust. It flung Dev backwards, knocking the breath out of his lungs and slamming his body over the metal railings. He reached out just in time to grab the platform below, but in doing so pulled its bolts out from the rock – PING PING PING! – and it started sliding down the other platforms like a sledge.

  Suddenly a great screeching noise echoed around the quarry. Dev looked up to see the scaffolding above him start to buckle. The higher platforms tore free, crashing down behind him in a flurry of metal and dust.

  ‘Oh, FLIP!’ he yelped, gripping tighter onto his platform and willing it to slide faster. ‘Oh, FLIP FLIP FLIP!’

  With a loud CLANG and a spray of bright sparks, Dev’s platform finally bounced across solid ground. He breathed a huge sigh of relief, only to inhale sharply again as he skidded over a cluster of hibbicus leaves. They sparkled and fizzed, and before he could scramble free they exploded, throwing him from his platform and rolling him across the mud.

  Right into the burnt-out shell of the hibbicannon.

  He paused for a moment to catch his breath, as bits of rock TINK-TINK-TINK-ed down above him. And then, through the clouds of dust, he saw movement. Two figures, clambering up the higher rings of the quarry. Bickering and shoving each other as they went.

  ‘Nobbins! Elise!’ Dev crawled out from his shell. ‘Help me! I need to get back up to Boja!’

  ‘You’re on yer own!’ Nobbins yelled, just as the bridge he was climbing over started crumpling into the sea water.

  Elise did nothing to help, instead using Nobbins as a stepping stone to reach higher ground. ‘This is your mess, lad!’ she shouted. ‘You can help yourself out of it!’

  A loud explosion sounded behind Dev. He turned to see a tall metal tower, high upon the second ring, its foundations buckling as it splashed down into the water. Waves spilled down into the ring below. Only a few more and the sea would be flooding into the very bottom of the quarry.

  It would reach Dev.

  He hauled himself onto his feet, searching through the broken machinery around him. ‘I can get back up there,’ he muttered to himself. ‘I can use this stuff to get back up to Boja.’

  Invention ideas popped into his head. A rocket pack. Clambering metallic legs. A slingshot, to fire himself back into whatever was left of the Sanctuary. His mind started to run away with him. He imagined crawling through the rubble, a tuft of red fur poking out in front of him.

  He’d pull on it.

  And it would be Boja.

  And he’d still be asking about breakfast.

  Dev looked down at the few pieces he’d picked up. A rusted old pipe, and the bottom half of a flopperwodget.

  His heart sank.

  ‘Oh, who am I kidding?’ he cried, flinging them both to the ground. ‘This is all just useless junk! I can’t use it for anything!’ He kicked the side of the hibbicannon. ‘Even the things I do make don’t work. I flung this thing up into the sky. I drowned all the tools I brought with me. And you …’ He slammed his fist against the front hoop of his backpack straps to try and make the Portable Airbag inflate. It clanked, and it ground, but nothing came out. ‘You only seem to work when you WANT TO!’

  He collapsed to the ground, shaking. ‘I need to get to Boja,’ he sobbed, clawing at the wet mud. ‘I just don’t know HOW.’

  ‘Are you going to spend all night crying?’ a muffled voice called out. ‘Because if you are I might throw myself back into the sea.’

  Keeper, or at least, the top half of Keeper, tumbled over the lowest ring and crashed onto the ground.

  Dev stared at her in disbelief. ‘You … you SURVIVED!’

  Keeper didn’t look quite so cheerful. ‘Sea got my legs,’ she grumbled, clanging a fist against her hips. A nest of singed pipes poked out where her legs used to be. ‘Let’s hope it chokes on them.’

  Dev had never been so happy to see anyone in his life. He ran towards her, pulling her safely away from the spray of the sea. Her helmet was shattered, her red cheeks now blackened from the mud, and she looked utterly exhausted.

  ‘So, where’s your friend?’

  Tears welled in Dev’s eyes again. ‘He was in the Sanctuary, but it collapsed. Then everything around it collapsed. But I have to get to him, Keeper! I have to find Boja!’

  ‘The upper rings are flooded, Dev. Unless you have some brilliant idea to get us up there, to get us to any higher ground, we’re completely trapped.’

  ‘I’m working on it.’ Dev picked the flopperwodget back up and waggled it. ‘I’ll come up with something.’

  A sly smile cracked into Keeper’s cheek. ‘I think you already did.’ She pushed herself upright and leant onto her arms, walking on them as if they were legs. Then she stopped beside the remains of the hibbicannon.

  ‘The … the hibbicannon?’ Dev asked. ‘But that’s for making stew.’

  ‘How did it get all the way out here then?’

  ‘I … I blew it up!’

  Keeper’s smile widened.

  ‘I blew it up!’ Dev gasped. ‘Maybe I can do that again, but this time with us on it!’

  ‘It’ll be risky,’ Keeper said.

  ‘It’ll be FINE!’ Dev cheered, clearly forgetting all the times it had never been fine.

  27

  First Launch

  ‘The good news’ – Keeper lay beneath the huge hole in the hibbicannon’s main chamber – ‘is that most of its working parts are still, well, working.’

  ‘We need to aim the explosion,’ Dev nodded, pacing round in a circle. ‘Not just up, but forwards too.’

  ‘BOOSTERS!’ they both shouted at the same time.

  ‘We have the parts.’ Dev rushed around, picking up all the rusted bits of metal he could find. ‘We can make the most of what’s around us. Build the hibbicannon into some sort of …’

  ‘Hibbi … rocket?’

  ‘The Hibbirocket!’ Dev cried. ‘But this time we have to get it absolutely right. When I was rebuilding the hibbicannon I tr
ied to make it work like Boja’s belly; hibbicus goes in, flames comes out, but I missed something. I forgot something.’

  He stopped. His mouth fell open. And Dev P. Everdew realized the one thing the hibbicannon had been missing.

  ‘It needs a BOTTOM.’

  ‘A … oh, a what?’ Keeper looked a little disgusted.

  ‘Boja didn’t just belch flames, he farted them too. It’s the last explosion that comes out of him. But I didn’t build anything to release that explosion from the hibbicannon, that’s why it blew up!’ He clenched his fists with determination. ‘This time, I’ll make it FART.’

  There was a loud crash from further up the quarry. The sea had eaten its way through one of the carriages between the third and fourth rings, and was spilling down between them like a waterfall.

  Dev’s pulse quickened. ‘Although this would be a lot easier if I had some tools.’

  ‘What do you need?’ Keeper turned the brace around her neck, and every metal pocket on her body sprung open. All thirty-seven of them. She started pulling out tools. ‘Got a … clickwidget. A larpspoon. Nicklefidgets, ocklestops, oh, even a spindlefrump.’

  Dev stared at each tool like they were flavours of ice cream. He grabbed the ones he recognized, and a few of the ones he didn’t, dumped an armful of junk beside the hibbicannon and they both set to work. Keeper patched up the holes. Dev built a bottom.

  At first they worked in silence, but after a while Dev’s curiosity got the better of him. ‘Are you a robot?’ he asked.

  Keeper twisted a few more nicklefidgets inside the hibbicannon’s tighter compartments, before a smidgen of pride crept into her face. She reached into one of her open pockets and pulled out a crumpled square of cloth.

  ‘I’m as human as you are, Dev.’

  ‘But you drink oil!’ Dev protested. ‘And you clank-clank-clank around in a big metal body!’

  Keeper glanced nervously up to the fourth ring, watching the spray of the sea as it splashed over the edges. ‘I’ll tell you how it happened, Dev, but only if you hurry with that bottom.’

  Dev nodded, eagerly hammering rivets into each crumpled buttock.

  ‘Well, I followed Albert Wilburforce to Darkwater for the same reason any of us did,’ Keeper started. ‘We all wanted to work the mines. We were told we’d be hugely rewarded for it, and, at first, it was a happy enough life. Darkwater looked very different then, Dev. We had trees, actual trees, orchards filled with plums, oranges, even fuzzapples. Small plots of land for vegetables, goats, enough to keep us all fed. The machines dug away in the quarry. The miners worked away on the machines. With Wilburforce in charge we all lived happily. We became a community.’

  Her voice fell. A bitterness crept in.

  ‘That is until the food disappeared.’

  ‘Because you dug up the flemberthysts?’ Dev said.

  ‘I suppose that was the start of it, when the trees stopped bearing fruit. Then the trees themselves started to die. The ground gave us nothing but rotten vegetables. That would have been bad enough, but then what food we had in store started to go missing too.’

  Dev gasped. ‘Someone stole it?’

  A nicklefidget pinged out, hitting Keeper in the forehead. She clutched it, swearing, as a line of crimson trickled out between her metal fingers.

  ‘Helmut,’ she muttered. ‘Or Priest, as he calls himself. He looked different in those days. Bigger. Wider. Seemed to only be growing while we were all going hungry. Wilburforce realized it was Priest stealing all our food for himself so, while Priest was away, Wilburforce went into that cave of his and took the food back. Crates of the stuff. Then he hid it all where Priest wouldn’t find it.’

  Dev noticed a small, oily black tear wobbling in the corner of Keeper’s eye.

  ‘Wilburforce cornered Priest out on one of the jetties. He was furious. They both were. They argued, both of them getting angrier and angrier. One of them grabbed the other and then … well, then Wilburforce fell. He tumbled into the sea with an almighty splash. I was working the outer rings nearby, I was close enough to jump in after him – which I did, Dev. I did it without even thinking. Couple of seconds later I remembered why we don’t go in the water. It burns, Dev. It really, really burns.’

  More explosions made Dev jump. A line of rusted pylons crashed down above them. Black sea water raced around the fourth ring and then sploshed and bubbled its way over the edge, down to the fifth.

  Dev and Keeper both worked even faster. Keeper kept on talking, as if she was relieved someone was finally listening.

  ‘I couldn’t find Wilburforce, not a trace, the sea was too quick to claim him,’ Keeper continued. ‘I barely managed to pull myself out. I called to Priest for help but he was just standing there, terrified, shouting that the sea had taken flember – it had taken Wilburforce, and that now it would come for the rest of us. Well I had to get away. I dragged what was left of my body all the way back up to the Village – it gave Rebecca the shock of her life, I can tell you – and once I started to recover I did the only thing I could do. I rebuilt myself. All the bits of me the sea had taken, I replaced with scrap, junk, whatever I could find. Made myself a body that didn’t even need food any more, just runs on oil and fumes.’

  She slammed her compartment shut. ‘You work with what you’ve got,’ she puffed. ‘Isn’t that right?’

  Dev gazed at her, his mouth agape, his mind barely able to process the story he’d just heard. ‘You … built yourself?’ He gasped.

  Keeper reached past him, grabbing the large metal bottom from between his trembling fingers. ‘Is this done? DEV. IS THIS DONE?’

  Dev nodded silently, unable to stop staring at her.

  ‘Well then,’ Keeper huffed, tightening the bottom onto the base of the Hibbirocket. ‘I think we’re DONE!’

  With a loud SPLASH, sea water spilled over the lowest ring. Ominous black puddles widened across the ground, creeping towards them both. ‘FUEL!’ Dev cried, clonking his fist against his helmet. ‘The Hibbirocket still needs fuel!’

  Keeper grinned, reaching into a pocket on her shoulder and pulling out a smear of black and green mulch. ‘I told you, hibbicus is good for blowing things up,’ she said. ‘So I always keep a little of Rebecca’s disgusting stew on me, just in case I need it.’

  She slapped a glob down into the Hibbirocket’s mouth valve. Then, with Dev’s help, she wrapped a length of chain around herself, binding her upper half to its side.

  ‘It’s going to be a bumpy ride,’ Dev shouted, wrapping the end of the chain around his forearm and pulling it taut.

  ‘It’s the landing I’m more worried about.’ Keeper winked, clicking her metal fingers until a spark flew out. It sailed towards the valve and then down inside the Hibbirocket, bouncing across the stew. It sparkled and fizzed and then – BOOM! – the Hibbirocket’s main boosters fired, wrenching it up, dragging Dev off the ground before he’d had the chance to take a breath.

  28

  The Flight of the Hibbirocket

  Once it had cleared the Sanctuary, the Hibbirocket’s flames sputtered out. For a few terrifying moments Dev, Keeper and their hastily cobbled-together invention all hung in mid-air, as though they might tumble right back down into the quarry. Then, FFFFR-R-R-R-R-RPPPP! The Hibbirocket’s huge metal bottom shuddered into life, farting out a great blast of black fire and propelling them across the sky.

  Away from the Sanctuary.

  Over the Village.

  Towards the dark, bustling trees of the Wildening.

  Dev’s end of the chain started to unravel, his body swinging helplessly against the sides of the Hibbirocket. Then the black flame sputtered out too. Keeper shouted something, but it was garbled noise, muffled by the crash and crunch of treetops. By the time it came to a stop the Hibbirocket had been flipped around and was tangled in a mesh of branches, hanging high off the ground like a huge, gestating gumpworm.

  Dev dangled some distance below it, the tips of his boots skimming against soft, wet gr
ass.

  ‘We went too far!’ he gasped, finally getting his breath back.

  ‘I NOTICED!’ Keeper yelled. She struggled to get free from her chains, but they were wrapped too tight. ‘You’re going to have to climb up, Dev, work this thing out of the trees.’

  The black scratches across Dev’s arm started to throb. Memories of the Wildening came flooding back. The chase. The panic. The shrieking, the snarling, the thunderous crashing. The terrifying creatures slinking through the darkness.

  And then he realized he could hear it all now too.

  The sound of trees swaying, ripping, somewhere in the depths of the Wildening, as if something very large was making its way towards them.

  ‘Dev!’ Keeper cried. ‘Dev, get this thing DOWN!’

  ‘I can’t!’ Dev replied. ‘It’s too high. It’s too heavy!’

  The noises came again. Louder now. Closer.

  ‘Well, we can’t stay HERE!’

  ‘No, we can’t.’ Dev replied, just as a familiarly overambitious thought started to alight inside his brain. ‘But I might know a way out. Keeper! Do you have any more of Rebecca’s stew?’

  Keeper popped open her shoulder pocket and scraped out the last few globs.

  ‘We’re pointing in roughly the right direction,’ Dev replied. ‘We could always …’