by Jamie Smart
‘WHAT ARE YOU?’ she cried.
‘My name’s—’
‘I DON’T CARE!’ she screamed again. ‘You are NOT allowed down here. This is the house of the FOODBRINGER!’ She reached up to her tray and threw a ramblepound, which clonked off Dev’s helmet. ‘THAT’S ME! I AM THE BLESSED FOODBRINGER!’
Whizz! A pifflesweat.
‘BEAUTIFUL …’
A bittlecrunch.
‘AMAZING …’
An oat plopping.
‘DAHLIA!’
Dev batted his way past, defending himself as best he could against the onslaught of pastries. Once he had climbed up and into the flemberthyst pool, he splashed through the water, wading towards Boja and slamming his face into the bear’s soggy fur.
‘I thought I’d lost you,’ he whispered, a lump in his throat. ‘Boja, I was so scared.’
Boja gulped down a stray lemon puff and wrapped his big furry arms around Dev. Tighter he squeezed, and tighter. Bright, beautiful blue flember circled around them both, prickling Boja’s fur on end, crackling across Dev’s skin and sinking down, right down into his bones.
The most blissful feeling rushed through his whole body.
And all his aches gently ebbed away.
‘And you look so much better than when I last saw you,’ Dev smiled. ‘You’re full of flember again! You’ve refilled!’
Bubbles popped up around Boja’s bottom.
‘Yeah, you’re definitely back to normal!’ Dev laughed.
‘Not me!’ Boja protested. More bubbles rippled up. Dev peered into the clear water and there, underneath Boja’s buttocks, he saw a crack in the flemberthysts.
A crack from which the brightest light of all was shining.
‘You’ve found it,’ he gasped. ‘Boja, you’ve found the Flember Stream!’
Before either of them could get too excited, however, a great cracking sound echoed through the chamber. Dev looked up just in time to see the Hibbirocket spear down through the flemberthyst ceiling. ‘Boja—’ he started, but Boja’s arm was already around his waist, hauling him out of the pool just as a calamitous avalanche of dust, rocks and crystals splashed into its waters. The pointy end of the Hibbirocket followed, stopping just centimetres above the pool, its entire weight suspended by a mass of tangled cables.
Keeper, what was left of her body now even more battered than before, finally wrestled free from her chains and tumbled down into what remained of the pool. ‘Ohhhh, that’s better,’ she sighed, sweeping her hair from her eyes. Then a thin trickle of sea water spilled down through the Hibbirocket.
And the beautiful clear water around her started to turn black.
32
Darkwater’s Last Hope
Keeper splashed and flailed and crawled out of the pool just as the Hibbirocket finally broke free of its cables, crashing down behind her. It brought with it half of the ceiling, an almighty roar of crystal and rock that buried the pool, buried the crack in the flemberthysts, and buried the Flember Stream underneath.
‘We were so close!’ Dev cried from the safety of Boja’s arms. ‘We found the Flember Stream. We could have gone home!’
He watched as poisonous black sea water gushed in through the ceiling, dissolving the flemberthysts as if they were sugar lumps.
‘We could have gone home,’ he sighed.
‘WHO’S THIS NOW?’ Dahlia screamed, waggling an angry finger towards a wheezing, exhausted Keeper. ‘SHE’S not allowed down here EITHER!’
Dev slipped out from Boja’s hold and the two of them ran to help Keeper, dragging her upper half away from the waters while Dahlia angrily hopped along beside. They rolled her crumpled metal body up onto higher rocks and there she lay, staring at the flickering lights above them.
‘So you found what was left of Darkwater’s flember, did you?’ She coughed. ‘Buried all the way down here? And here we all are, just in time to watch it all be swallowed up by the sea.’
Dahlia started flicking her in the head, as if she wasn’t sure Keeper was real ‘YOU,’ she demanded. ‘You’re in the presence of DAHLIA THE FOODBRINGER, and you are NOT WELCOME.’
Keeper gazed up, blinked, and blinked again. ‘I must have fallen harder than I thought, Dev. I swear I can see a little girl saying her name is Dahlia.’
Dev was busy in his own thoughts. ‘There must be a way to save the flember,’ he muttered. ‘We can’t let the sea take it all.’
He stopped, and triumphantly clonked his fist against his helmet.
‘So we’ll just have to take the flember FIRST!’
He swung around towards Boja. Boja, however, had been preoccupied. He had found a jar of lippincakes and pulled one out, but after sticking his paw in for another it had become stuck. He was frantically trying to shake it off before anyone noticed, but upon seeing Dev’s excited expression, he froze, his arm in the air, a half-chewed lippincake spilling from his mouth.
‘Gmphuh?’ he replied.
‘Boja, you have just enough flember to keep you alive, but on the day I made you I accidentally filled you with the flember from a whole mountaintop! Do you remember? When you were all bright and sparkly? And then you tried to put it all back into the Eden Tree?’
Boja’s mouth rose and fell through a succession of smiles and frowns as he remembered what had happened. ‘FWOOOOSH!’ he finally cheered, raising both arms triumphantly above his head.
‘Fwoosh exactly!’ Dev grinned. ‘And then we came all this way to borrow a bit more …’
‘Flember!’ Boja cheered.
‘From the …’
‘Flember Stream!’
Dev clapped with joy. ‘YEAH! And you were going to carry that flember back to Eden, remember? Well, we can’t reach the Flember Stream now, but there’s still flember you can carry. Up there, in the flemberthysts. Can you take it, Boja? Take the flember and hold onto it, keep it safe until we can find our way back to the surface?’
‘He … he can do that?’ Keeper asked.
‘Boja’s pretty amazing.’ Dev beamed with pride.
The cavern shook again. The glistening black waterfall bulged, splashing out across the grass. The bushes, the flowers, all of them crinkled away before Dev’s eyes. ‘Boja!’ An urgency filled Dev’s voice. ‘Boja, we don’t have long!’
‘CAN DO IT!’ Boja yelled, excited to be helping out. He clenched his paw so tightly the glass jar shattered around it. He slammed another fistful of lippincakes into his mouth, and thrust both his sticky paws up again towards the ceiling. ‘HNNNNNGHHHH!’ he growled, furiously waggling his fingers.
A beautiful blue glow smoked out from the flemberthysts. It sparkled and it shimmered, then swirled into a cloud, a sparkling river of lights trailing down towards Boja. It wrapped itself around his paws, up his arms, until soon his whole body was cracking and flowing with Darkwater’s flember.
The cavern grew darker, and darker, as the grinning bear grew brighter, and brighter.
Dahlia broke the silence. ‘YOU! YOU … SAVAGES!’ she screamed. ‘You come here UNINVITED, you tear down the ceiling, you RUIN my high tea! And now you STEAL ALL MY PRETTY LIGHTS!’
She stormed away, carefully avoiding the sea water as she climbed back inside the cabin of her little train. ‘Well, you can all just STAY here and clean up your MESS,’ she said sulkily, yanking on the levers in front of her.
The train PHEEP-ed loudly.
Puffs of steam chuff-chuffed out from its chimney.
‘Dahlia must know a way out of here,’ Dev said. ‘Boja! Grab Keeper!’
Boja, still glowing with bright, crackling flember, hauled Keeper’s top half over his shoulder and followed Dev towards the train. Dahlia yelped in panic. ‘Come ON!’ she snarled, the train sl-o-w-l-y shuffling forwards. ‘COME ONNNNN!’
Dev caught up, bundling into the cart behind her. Boja ran alongside, dropping Keeper into the next cart, before tumbling into the last. He had, somehow, also found the time to scoop up a few more jars of food, which he hugged proudly.
‘GET OUT!’ Dahlia shouted, as the train trundled a lap around the sea water. ‘THIS IS NOT FOR YOU! YOU CAN’T COME!’
‘Dahlia, if you know how to get back above ground then we need to come too!’ Dev shouted. ‘The mines are FLOODING!’
As if to prove his point a loud CR-A-A-ACK echoed throughout the cavern. Dev looked up in horror to see the ceiling bulge, then give way completely, all the faded flemberthyst crystals crashing to the ground as a torrent of dark black water burnt through them. It roared like a wild beast, swirling, raging, racing towards the train.
Dahlia’s sweet little train.
‘PHEEEP!’ it whistled again, merrily puff-puffing back through its gate, and deeper into the mines.
33
The Bridge
The train clattered along, lurching and swaying and even, at one point, spinning round in a loop-the-loop. And then the tracks started to climb. A slow, rattly, nerve-racking climb, the train wobbling and clattering as it puff-puffed its way through narrow tunnels of rock. Dev clung onto the sides of his cart, his teeth clenched, his heart pounding.
The sound of the sea echoing in his ears. It crashed and swirled behind them, lashing against the tunnel walls and throwing a sharp spray out from the darkness.
If they stopped, even for a moment, it would catch up with them. It would consume them, cart by cart, just like it had most of Darkwater.
Dahlia, however, didn’t seem all that bothered. She was having the time of her life. She sang her song about how gracious and brilliant she was, PARP PARP-ing the horn in time to the words. Boja, glowing wildly from all his excess flember, joined in from the back, stopping only occasionally to cough on a mouthful of bufflechips.
Suddenly, as the passage opened out into a wide cavern, there came a loud scraping from the train’s back end. The sea had lapped against Boja’s cart, burning away its back wheels and leaving it to drag along the tracks. Its weight, combined with the huge red bear sitting inside it, was enough to drag the whole train to a halt.
Perched, rather precariously, upon a very long bridge.
‘YOU’RE ALL SLOWING ME DOWN!’ Dahlia screamed, shuffling her bum back and forth as she urged the train on. It puffed and it whined. It whined and it puffed. Suddenly the hook connecting Boja’s cart to the next pinged itself loose, giving the train an unexpected burst of speed. The engine lurched forwards. Its wheels locked. It twisted across the tracks. And then, in an instant, it was tipping over the edge.
‘DAHLIA!’ Dev grabbed the neck of Dahlia’s gown, pulling her into his cart just as the engine disappeared off the bridge. It dragged his cart along with it. Without taking a breath he flung Dahlia towards Keeper and he leapt from his cart into theirs just as it started to shunt along too. Keeper was quick to roll herself and Dahlia out the back, but Dev was too far behind. As the second cart was dragged over, all he could do was throw himself out and into the air.
‘HOOOOF!’ he yelled, his fingers grabbing onto the tracks. A fire blazed through his muscles as he hauled himself up, his body rolling alongside the one remaining cart. Boja was sat inside it, his ears pinned back, his cheeks filled with marshmallow-topped cornets.
‘Devvv?’ Boja coughed.
‘I’m OK, Boja.’ Dev laughed with relief. ‘Just give me a minute to catch my breath.’
‘I don’t think we have a minute.’ Keeper pointed back to the tunnel they had come in by, to the sea water gushing through. It spilled down into the cavern below them, bubbling and hissing across the uneven ground. It chewed at the wooden legs of the bridge until – CRA-A-A-ACK! – the first leg gave way, pulling the tracks behind them down into a slump.
‘NO!’ Dahlia screamed, wrenching free from Keeper’s arms. ‘I’m not STAYING here with any of YOU! I’m getting out of here by MYSELF.’ She turned away from the cart and started stomping further along the bridge. Arms out, fingers waggling, heading towards an archway at the far end.
‘Dahlia, be careful!’ Dev rose to his knees. ‘It’d be safer if we leave together.’
‘HA! As IF! You losers can stay ri-i-i-ight HERE!’ Dahlia yelled back. ‘Everything was just FINE until you showed up!’
She raised her nose haughtily in the air just as the bridge’s second leg gave way behind them all. Sleepers clattered away behind Boja’s cart. They splashed loudly into the water, then disappeared down into the darkness.
Dahlia shrieked, then waddled even faster along the tracks.
‘This bridge won’t stay standing for long.’ Dev grabbed onto Boja’s paw. ‘Boja, grab Keeper, we’ll follow Dahlia!’
‘Wait wait wait, maybe there’s a quicker way out.’ Keeper turned the brace around her neck, and all her pockets flipped open. She pulled out the contents. Nicklefidgets, screwdrivers, bolts, wires, cogs. Small buzzing, whirring contraptions. Ocklestops. A clicky-widget. Magnifying lenses, bulbs, oil canisters, a couple of metal fingers (spares, Dev assumed). Folded scraps of paper. A locket. A bundle of hair.
She grumbled and swore, flinging each item down into the water.
And then, from the largest pocket on her back, she pulled out a tiny, withered, rather mouldy-looking hibbicus plant.
‘I always kept a spare for the tower.’ She grinned. ‘May as well use it for something.’
Dev instantly knew what she was thinking.
‘We can’t,’ he gasped.
‘We have to,’ she replied, holding the hibbicus up in front of Boja’s nose.
34
An Escape
‘Boja, I need you to listen,’ Dev started. ‘I know when you ate hibbicus before it made you feel really bad, but—’
Boja didn’t wait to be talked into it. He CHOMP-ed his teeth down around Keeper’s fingers, gulping both the hibbicus – and three of her metal fingers – down without hesitation.
He patted his belly. A puff of grey smoke wisped out from his nostrils.
‘QUICKLY!’ Dev shouted, just as more of the bridge’s legs started to crack and creak below them. ‘We’ll have to grab Dahlia on the way!’ He heaved Keeper up inside Boja’s cart, then tumbled in alongside her, listening nervously as the hibbicus bubbled and gurgled inside Boja’s stomach.
‘Turn round, Boja. Face the other WAY!’
Boja did as he was told, turning around in the minecart and gripping onto the back of it. And yet, even as its fiery heat rose up into Boja’s throat, even as his eyes bulged with panic, the big red bear couldn’t help but giggle.
‘Hee-hee-hee-OOO-U-U-U-U-U-R-R-R-R-R-P-P-P-P!’
A great blast of fire billowed out from his mouth. Their cart may have only had a front set of wheels but still it rocketed along the tracks at an almighty speed, bright sparks spraying out from behind it, and at least two of its occupants screaming with terror.
‘DAHLIA!’ Dev yelled as they clattered towards the little girl. ‘DAHLIA, GET READY!’
‘B-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-R-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P!’ Boja belched again, propelling them even faster. Dahlia turned round just as Dev grabbed her, lifting her from the tracks and handing her back to Keeper.
‘PUT ME DOWN!’ Dahlia screamed, kicking Keeper in the nose. Then she stared up at Boja, and she giggled. ‘Why … why’s the bear pulling that face?’
Dev turned his head to see what she was laughing at. Boja, facing forward now, looked pained. Unsure. One of his eyelids was fluttering. He chewed on his lower lip, gripped tightly onto either side of the cart, and stuck his bottom out behind him.
‘Here it comes,’ Dev winced.
FFFFRR-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-RPPPPPPP!
It was a bigger fart than Dev had ever heard before, echoing around the cavern as if it was cheering them on. A column of black flame tumbled out from between Boja’s buttocks, powering their cart across the tracks and flinging it through the archway just as the entire bridge collapsed away behind them.
35
Whatever is Left
The skies above Darkwater were calm. There were no storms rolling in. No mist. No rain. Just the early light
of dawn, quietly breaking the clouds into a beautiful array of pinks and yellows.
What had once been a quarry was now just a cove. All the towers, the pylons, even the Sanctuary itself had been lost to the pitch-black seas. In fact, the only part of Darkwater left standing was the Village, the large, metallic bun perched upon its mound of rusted scrap. It tilted, a Hibbirocket having bounced off its roof during the night, and now its highest gangway served as a viewing platform for all the miners to stand on.
They stood, in silence, and stared across where Darkwater used to be.
Suddenly the gangway started to wobble. Panicked, the miners scrambled back inside, only for the metal bun itself to crack free of its supports and slide down the mound. The mound, too, trembled, then collapsed, its pieces scattering across the ground as two large metal doors opened up from beneath it.
And a mine cart skidded out.
Even though he was actually delighted to see daylight again, Dev’s face had been frozen into a look of sheer terror. His eyes were wide, his cheeks stretched back, and Boja, meanwhile, was frowning. His nose was scrunched up. His bottom lip poked out. He looked like he was concentrating really, really hard.
And then …
FRRP!
One last, tiny bumsqueak rolled the cart a few centimetres further.
‘ALL DONE!’ Boja grinned, reaching forwards to squeeze Dev up into a hug. Instantly the warm, crackling glow of Boja’s flember brought life back into Dev’s limbs. He took a deep breath and curled into Boja’s fur.