The Crystal Caves

by Jamie Smart

  ‘… ride it out. Oh, Dev, I DO like how your mind works!’ Keeper stretched as far as she could, dripping the stew into the Hibbirocket’s mouth valve. Then she clicked her metal fingers above it. Once. Twice. A third time.

  ‘Quicklyyyy!’ Dev called up, as the trees around them started swaying, groaning, creaking, a great rush of wind blasting through the branches. ‘QUICKLYYYY!’

  SKKKK! Sparks lit from Keeper’s fingers down to the stew, instantly igniting it. BOOM! Fire blasted through the Hibbirocket’s boosters, wrenching it out from the trees and skidding it along the ground. Dev had precious few seconds to clamber on board before the rocket’s oversized bottom rattled and shook and then FFRR-R-R-R-R-R-R-RPPPPP! Another mighty black fire blasted out, speeding them through the Wildening.

  Dev dragged himself up towards the thinner nozzles of the Hibbirocket, clinging onto its outlet pipes as if he was riding a hufflepig. Tears streamed from his eyes as they rocketed faster, and faster, until suddenly he could see the edge of the quarry wall.

  And then PUTT!

  The flames sputtered out into thick bulges of grey smoke.

  Dev gritted his teeth, clenching his fists tight around the pipes.

  ‘WE’RE GOING OVER!’ he yelled as the Wildening disappeared behind them.

  Then CLANG! The Hibbirocket hit the Village roof, a bright shower of sparks trailing out behind it. It skipped like a stone before spinning back into the air, sailing between two pylons and scraping down along their chains.

  Then the chains ran out.

  Dev could see nothing below them but the quarry. Or at least, where the quarry had once been. Now it looked more like a lake, filled almost to the top with the crashing, bubbling waters of the pitch-black sea. Dev clung to the Hibbirocket even tighter. The idea of plunging into the waves filled him with dread, but he quickly realized they weren’t falling at all, they were still very much speeding through the air, the Hibbirocket’s bottom having farted out such a blast that its momentum was carrying them all the way towards the Sanctuary. It caught against the outstretched pylons, circling its collapsed roof before spinning down inside. Then it CLANG-ed and DONK-ed off the buckled supports before finally embedding itself, nozzle-first, in a huge mound of rubble.

  Everything fell deathly still.

  After a little while, Dev unscrunched his eyes. After a little while longer, he unclenched his fingers. His body slid down to the ground, his heart pounding, his lungs gasping, his legs shaking.

  No, it wasn’t just his legs.

  The rubble was shaking too.

  A deafening rumble filled the air, and suddenly the Hibbirocket was sinking at speed, swallowed into the ground and dragging everything, and everyone, with it. Dev scrambled for safety, but anything he could hold onto was sliding down with him. He grabbed at the front hoop of his backpack straps, praying this time the Portable Airbag might kick in just when he needed it.

  But no, still nothing.

  Instead, his flimsy body disappeared inside a cloud of dust.

  Down through the floor of the Sanctuary.

  Down, into Darkwater’s mines.

  29

  The Mines

  When Dev opened his eyes again everything had quietened. Grit pattered down around him. Dust billowed gently by. A huge open cavern stretched high above, its rocky walls pockmarked with dark hollows from which railway tracks, or at least the remains of them, wilted down like tree roots. And between them all hung the Hibbirocket, its battered body wrapped up in cables and suspended four or five storeys from the ground.

  ‘HOOOOOOOO!’ Keeper, still strapped to its side, gasped herself awake. As she did the Hibbirocket suddenly shunted down another level, bringing with it a flurry of rocks and mud.

  Dev slid down a sloping pile of rubble and ran beneath the Hibbirocket. ‘Keeper!’ His voice echoed around them both. ‘Keeper, are you OK?’

  ‘Your bear, Dev!’ Keeper coughed. ‘You might want to hurry up and find him before this whole place comes down.’

  Another rumble through the cavern.

  Dev nodded and backed away from the Hibbirocket, cautiously feeling his way across the uneven ground. He peered into the shadowy holes, the crevices, the hollows.

  ‘Boja? Are you down here?’

  Suddenly he spotted an eye staring back at him.

  A glassy, watering eye.

  ‘You hear it too now, don’t you?’ Priest’s spindly limbs unfolded out from the darkness. ‘The ssssea. It cries out in hunger. It pleads. It ROARS.’

  Another rumble. A CRA-A-A-ACK in the rocky wall. A spray of black water gushed through, pooling behind Priest and burning the hem of his robes.

  ‘PRIEST! YOU KEEP AWAY FROM DEV!’ Keeper shouted, swinging helplessly above them. ‘I’ll not lose anyone else to the sea like I did with Wilburforce!’

  Priest recoiled at the name. ‘W … Wilburforce,’ he replied, his bottom lip trembling. ‘Wilburforce fell. His foot slipped, then the sea just took him, took him for his flember. I couldn’t do anything, I couldn’t reach him!’ He turned to Dev, his cruel face now suddenly etched with worry. ‘I’ve tried to keep us safe ever since, lad, really I have. I used the crystals, same as I did with you, I used them on everyone, like I said. Took some of their flember away – small amounts, TINY amounts. They didn’t miss it. They got a bit tired, that’s all.’

  He backed Dev against the wall. ‘Then I fed that flember to the sea. It’s flember the sea wants. I told you, it’s hungry for flember. I thought that if I kept feeding it morsels then it wouldn’t have to take anyone else like it took Wilburforce!’

  ‘DEV, RUN!’ Keeper shouted. ‘Get AWAY from him!’

  Another rumble.

  The crack widened.

  The spray of water became like a jet,

  Dev tried to move but Priest was instantly upon him, grabbing his scarf and hauling him back against the wall. ‘Please,’ Dev cried. ‘I didn’t want any of this! I only came to Darkwater looking for the Flember Stream. I only came down here looking for Boja!’

  ‘The sea’s already had a taste of your monster’s flember.’ Priest grimaced. ‘I thought that would be enough, but it’s just hungry for more.’

  Another rumble. The jet widened. Bubbling black sea water trickled around the edges of the cavern, hissing against Dev’s boots. The sound sent a cold panic prickling across his skin. He slammed his hand against the front hoop of his backpack straps, again and again, hoping, pleading with the Portable Airbag to start working again.

  ‘There’s no use fighting it, lad.’ Priest whispered. ‘I failed. I didn’t feed the sea enough of our flember, and now it’s coming for us all.’

  ‘Not me,’ Dev growled, punching his fist so hard against his chest it smashed the hoop. With a great FW-P-P-P-P-P the Portable Airbag inflated around him, flinging Priest back across the cavern and spinning the flember book out into the air.

  And then down again, right into Dev’s open hands.

  Priest staggered below the tip of the Hibbirocket, his robes trailing along the water’s edge. He paused, just for a moment, lifting his head and staring at Dev with a curious admiration.

  His thin black lips stretched into a grin.

  ‘Your flember’s strong, lad,’ Priest said, wrenching the flemberthyst crystals from around his neck. ‘I took a little of it, but you still have so much left.’

  He held the crystals into the jet of water and watched as they hissed and cracked, the faint glow of his own flember fading from inside them. Soon they had dissolved away into nothing. He sighed, slumping down to the ground. His breathing slowed. His head bowed.

  ‘Maybe you’ll find a better way to save this town than me.’

  Then there came the loudest rumble of all.

  The crack in the wall widened.

  And what looked like an entire ocean roared in on top of Helmut J. Priest.

  30

  Tunnels

  Dev, still clutching the flember book, quickly clambered up the roc
ky walls. It wasn’t easy with one airbag wobbling out in front of him, another dragging behind, and the sea crashing around his heels, but he managed to roll inside a wide gap in the rocks before kneeling, exhausted, upon some buckled railway tracks.

  ‘You’re in one of the access tunnels!’ Keeper shouted over the roar of the waves. ‘They run through the whole mine. If your bear’s still in here, that’ll be how you find him!’

  Dev stuffed the airbags back down inside his backpack, squeezed the book between them, and crawled to the edge. The cavern below was flooding, the tip of the Hibbirocket suspended just a metre or so above the swirling waters.

  ‘Keeper! I can’t just leave you here!’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry about me! If the sea tries to chew this rusted body up again, then I’ll just rebuild it.’ Keeper winked. ‘As long as it leaves me an arm to work with.’

  A loud cracking sound rippled around the cavern. The walls heaved under the weight of the water behind them. Dev tried to think of an idea, any idea, something ingenious to save Keeper.

  But he couldn’t focus.

  Everything was so noisy.

  ‘Dev, you have to GO!’

  ‘I’ll find Boja,’ Dev replied. ‘Then we’ll come back for you. He’ll be able to get you free from the Hibbirocket!’

  ‘Sure, SURE!’ Keeper shouted over the roar of the waters. ‘Just GO!’

  ‘We’ll come back for you!’ Dev yelled, spinning upon his heels and feeling his way into the tunnel.

  Dev stumbled on through the dark, trailing his fingertips along the cold, wet rock, tripping over discarded pickaxes and lanterns and bumping into upturned mine carts. Soon he couldn’t even hear the sea any more, only the sound of his own breathing and the pounding of his nervous heart.

  Suddenly he saw a wisp of light.

  Just a sliver.

  It moved across the wall like a glint of moonlight.

  Dev reached out his hand, and it crawled across his fingers.

  ‘Silverfish,’ he gasped. He knew silverfish from Eden. He’d find them slithering around in the darker, damper corners of his cupboards. They were tiny little creatures with with tiny little bodies and tiny little legs, and they glowed with their own shimmering light. As he placed it back onto the wall, other silverfish flowed along with it, until soon a whole cluster of thin glowing lights guided the way.

  Then, suddenly, Dev came to a halt. A pile of boulders was stacked from ground to ceiling and completely blocking his path.

  There came another rumble.

  The sound of waves echoed behind him.

  ‘The sea’s inside the tunnels,’ he cried, watching as the silverfish frantically scattered between the boulders. He tried to follow, hauling the smaller rocks away before clambering onto the larger ones, desperate to squeeze between them, when suddenly, they all dislodged at once.

  With a scream Dev rolled forwards, tumbling into a cave just seconds before a torrent of loud, hissing sea water gushed in behind him. He scrambled up and out of the way just in time, clambering onto a ledge and huddling into a ball.

  By the low light of the silverfish he could just make out his surroundings. The path had given way to a collection of sharp, rocky clusters, each falling away into gaping great chasms. One such chasm claimed the sea. What were once rolling, crashing waves had now become a black waterfall tumbling down into the gloom.

  Dev huddled tighter.

  And he started shivering.

  He wished, more than ever before, that he was back in Eden. Back in the warm, familiar surroundings of his workshop, tinkering with some ridiculous new invention that would inevitably collapse, blow up, or try to fly towards the sun. Then, when the evening drew in, his mum would knock on his door and leave a plate of fried duck eggs and wildertoast for him to eat.

  His stomach groaned hungrily at the thought of it.

  ‘I never should have left,’ Dev whimpered. ‘I never should have even set foot in the Wildening. I got so excited about chasing the Flember Stream, about saving the Eden Tree, I didn’t think how hard it might be.’

  He wiped at a tear with the heel of his hand. ‘I’m sorry, Boja,’ he sniffed. ‘I’m sorry I ever dragged you into this.’

  The light from the silverfish started to wane. They were moving. With tears still glistening in his eyes Dev watched them swarm across the ceiling, bustling between the stalactites. And slowly, carefully, he started crawling along below them. The rocks were slippery, the chasms either side were endlessly deep, but right now he’d risk all of that rather than stay here, alone, in the darkness.

  And it wasn’t long before he saw what they were heading towards.

  There was a faint glow up ahead. It spilled out from a crack in the rocks, a crack just wide enough for Dev to squeeze through.

  The glow brightened around him.

  ‘Flemberthyst crystals!’ he gasped.

  They studded the walls, the ground, the ceiling. A mist of beautiful blue flember wisped between them, an ebb and flow of light, drifting, dancing and sparkling through the air. Dev lifted his hand and felt it shimmer around his fingers. It felt warm. It felt healing. And the further he crawled, the brighter the flember shone, until he reached a hole filled with a light so brilliant that it almost hurt his eyes to look.

  But that didn’t stop him.

  He poked his head right through it.

  Dev squinted. He could see something red. Something lumpy.

  Excitement swelled inside his chest.

  ‘BOJA!’ he yelled.

  The red lump waved back.

  ‘HI, DEV!’

  Dev rubbed his eyes, blinking furiously against the light to try and work out where they both were.

  And slowly, very slowly, things faded into view.

  Laid out before him was an enormous underground chamber. Huge chunks of flemberthyst hung from the ceiling like chandeliers, flember swirling, swaying, swishing between them, humming through the crystals as if they were singing. Rich, green, dew-soaked grass covered the ground, with hedges, bushes, ferns and flowers, the most beautiful flowers, scattered out across them. And rising out from the middle of it all Dev saw a cluster of flemberthysts arranged in a ring, holding a pool of clear, shimmering water.

  In which sat Boja.

  With a very healthy grin on his face.

  31

  Dahlia

  Two loudspeakers crackled into life.

  ‘ALL HAIL,’ came a voice. ‘DAHLIA, THE FOODBRINGER, IS UPON YOU.’

  Dev instinctively ducked down as music started playing through the chamber. Weird, plinky-plunky music. A metal gate in the far wall rattled open, and a dinky little train puff-puff-puffed its way along a set of tracks. It circled the floor of the cavern, a chain of mine carts dragging along behind it.

  ‘All hail, Dahli-a-a-a-a!’ the train driver sang along with the music. ‘She is so great, so wise, and so beautiful, and so bri-i-i-lliant …’

  The train screeched to a halt. The driver stumbled out from the cab, and stepped into the light of the flemberthysts.

  She arranged her gown.

  She stood tall.

  At least, as tall as a little girl could stand.

  She looked younger than Dev, with large blue eyes, wide rosy cheeks, and bundle upon bundle of light blonde hair curled around her face. Her elaborate gown, stitched from a number of different colourful fabrics and then lavishly decorated with feathers, was clearly way too big for her, but she wore it with an intense pride.

  And then there was the gold.

  From where he was crouched Dev could see a crown upon her head – no, wait, three crowns, stacked upon each other. Gold necklaces draped from her neck, gold bracelets around her wrists, gold rings upon her fingers and all manner of gold brooches pinned to her gown. Her pockets jangled with every step she took.

  ‘BIG SILLY BEAR! I, GRACIOUS, BEAUTIFUL DAHLIA, SHALL BRING YOU HIGH TEA.’ Dahlia pulled out a golden tray and walked to the crates against the wall. The crates. In all the
splendour of the flemberthysts, all the joy of seeing Boja again, Dev had barely even noticed the crates. Loads of them, maybe a hundred, each packed full of glass jars.

  ‘MMMMM.’ Dahlia thought for a moment, then headed towards the crate marked Pastries. ‘Let’s see, you look like a bear who would appreciate’ – she pulled out a jar, unscrewed its lid and tipped a plump, current-studded bun onto her tray – ‘a FUDDLEBUN.’

  Boja’s tongue lolloped down, and a long string of drool dipped into the water.

  Dahlia pulled out more jars, piling their contents high upon her tray. Ramblepounds, lippincakes and fluffy pink bufflechips. Marshmallow-topped cornets. Chocolate-covered thicks, flups, flips, raspberry chomps and peach delights. And then there were the biscuits. Oh, the biscuits. Lemon puffs, garibaldis and pifflesweats, knock-cheese flats and a seemingly endless stream of pistachio-rippled snuckleflomps.

  While Dahlia was distracted Dev took his chance to climb down. He leant through the gap, as discreetly as he could, only for the rock he was leaning on to suddenly dislodge beneath his hands. Without warning his entire body slipped forwards, and with an almighty yell he tumbled all the way down the wall, finally coming to rest in a crate marked Mixed Pickles.

  He pulled himself out. Brushed himself down. And put a few jars of jellied sausage and minced fidgets back into their crate as he stood back up.

  Dahlia, her tray heaving with pastries, stared at Dev like one might stare at a gallumping snotworm.