by Adam Cece
‘We’re trapped,’ Cymphany wailed.
Copernicus gulped again. Another super-cute, television-ad-style gulp. But this time it wasn’t because he was scared, but because he was chewing a mouthful of playing cards and he needed to swallow them to shout, ‘Quick, out the side door. It’s straight down that passageway.’ He pointed a stylish hoof. ‘It’s really a very convenient way to get outside and we never use it. I forget why.’
Kipp, Tobias and Cymphany turned and saw a door. It had a little window in it and outside they could see the sun shining and a grassy park. It looked like the perfect escape door, into a safe-looking space without any of the usual things you would expect to find in Mrs Turgan’s yard, like carnivorous plants.
‘Copernicus is right,’ Kipp said. ‘That is the perfect escape route.’ And he sprinted down the passageway, closely followed by Cymphany and Tobias.
Behind them they heard Mrs Turgan say, ‘Oh, hello…ah, I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten your name again. What is it…Bal? I didn’t see you there, Bal. Excuse me for a moment while I turn these children into belly-button fluff, and then we’ll sit down and have a cup of tea—wait a moment, what’s that you’ve got in that case there? Wow, that is…that’s…that’s…actually I don’t quite know how to describe it but… Copernicus, pack your bags. We’re moving to Near Huggabie Falls.’
Actually, goats don’t have bags. Or if Copernicus ever did, he would have eaten them long ago. But Kipp, Tobias and Cymphany didn’t really have time to think about the conversation taking place behind them, because they were focused on reaching the door in front of them, before they got turned into moths or convinced to move to Near Huggabie Falls, or both.
But just as they reached the door, the floor disappeared under their feet and suddenly Mrs Turgan’s house was above them, and getting further and further above them as they fell.
Kipp, Tobias and Cymphany could hear Copernicus saying, ‘Oh, I remember now why we don’t use that door. It’s because that’s the door with the trapdoor in front of it. Oh, dear, I think I may have given you some bad advice. Sorry about that, children.’
Kipp, Tobias and Cymphany didn’t have a chance to accept or reject Copernicus’s apology, because they were plummeting. They didn’t know where they were plummeting to, but considering they’d just fallen through a trapdoor in Mrs Turgan’s house, odds were it wasn’t to somewhere good.
Kipp, Tobias and Cymphany had learnt some very important lessons in Mrs Turgan’s house that day. The first lesson was that goats, even super-cute ones, and even ones that were once sixteenth-century astronomers, don’t have very good memories. The second lesson they learnt is that if something looks too good to be true, then it probably is too good to be true. The door that looked like the perfect escape route to a safe grassy field beyond was actually a trap. I mean, this was the house with an alligator-filled moat in front of it and a forest of electrified thorn bushes around the back, so it would be very unlikely it had a nice clear side door completely unprotected.
‘I’m sorry,’ Kipp said over the rushing air as they plummeted through darkness.
‘It’s not your fault,’ Cymphany yelled. ‘It’s nobody’s fault. Actually, it’s Mrs Turgan’s fault mostly, and Copernicus’s. I mean, who knew goats had such bad memories?’
‘It’s a shame we’re going to die,’ Tobias howled. ‘Without ever finding out what the utterly indescribable thing is?’
‘Tobias!’ Kipp and Cymphany screamed, in a way that indicated they thought that the utterly indescribable thing was the least of their worries right then. And then Cymphany stopped suddenly. ‘Wait…can you guys hear me?’
Kipp and Tobias eyeballed her. ‘Of course we can hear you,’ Tobias said.
‘We have ears,’ Kipp added.
‘But that’s just it,’ Cymphany said. ‘I’m not yelling anymore. I’m just talking, which means there’s no more—’
‘Rushing air,’ Kipp said.
They weren’t falling anymore. Instead they were in the middle of a large area, full of translucent, white strands that formed a massive soft mesh.
Tobias’s eyes spread wide. ‘It’s a giant web.’ He twisted and turned, but he couldn’t get to his feet as the web’s sticky strands seemed to be attached to him.
‘Don’t freak out, Tobias,’ Cymphany said, as she also tried to wriggle and twist free.
‘Yeah,’ said Kipp. ‘This web just saved our lives.’
Tobias was getting more and more tangled, and he was desperately trying to claw a hole in the web. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘but what makes webs?’
Cymphany shrugged. ‘Spiders.’
‘And,’ Tobias said, ‘what makes giant webs?’
Kipp laughed. ‘I don’t know, um, giant spiders.’ And then he stopped talking because he started frantically tearing at the strands, just like Cymphany, who had been a bit quicker in catching on to what Tobias had been worried about: which was that if there is a giant spider about, the last place you want to be is in its web.
‘Don’t worry,’ said a voice from right beside them, and they all screamed in alarm.
The thing was not a spider. It was about the same size as them, and was long and blobby and had lots of tiny legs, and was wearing a fedora.
‘What is that?’ Kipp squawked.
‘That,’ said a voice from the other side of them, ‘is my twin sister.’ It was another long and blobby, many-legged thing. ‘We are—’
‘Silkworms?’ Cymphany said, confused.
The two long, blobby things nodded.
‘You made this web?’ Kipp said. ‘Not a spider?’
The two silkworms laughed, and their whole bodies jiggled like jelly. ‘No, not spiders,’ said the first silkworm.
Tobias frowned. ‘But you also talk.’
The first silkworm smiled a wide grin. ‘We always dreamed of being able to talk, like humans. And then the magic asteroid landed and gave us the ability.’ The silkworm gestured to its left, with one of its many legs.
Kipp, Tobias and Cymphany saw, tangled up in the web, a black asteroid-looking object—with handles.
‘It’s one of Mrs Turgan’s cauldrons,’ Tobias said.
Cymphany nodded. ‘It must have been full of one of her magic potions.’
The silkworms began using their many legs, seemingly in an effort to free Kipp, Tobias and Cymphany from the web, but in a few moments Cymphany, Tobias and Kipp were completely wrapped in silk cocoons, so tightly they couldn’t move.
‘Wait,’ Kipp said, wriggling in his cocoon. ‘You’re not freeing us?’
The silkworms jiggled. ‘Who said we were doing that? We’re collecting you.’
‘Collecting us!’ Tobias yelped.
And with that the silkworms gripped a strand each of web in their mouths, and shuffled backwards pulling the strands so they hoisted Kipp and Cymphany into the air.
Kipp and Cymphany dangled like light globes in their cocoons with their heads poking out the top. They struggled and wriggled, and, down on the web, Tobias thrashed about, but none of them seemed to be able to get an arm free.
‘All hail the queen,’ called the silkworms and they stood their long bodies up straight and still. Across the web a larger silkworm came into view, wearing a golden crown and carrying a very long piece of paper. The paper had many things written on it, like a list. In fact it wasn’t like a list, it was a list—a very long list.
‘Welcome, new collectibles,’ the queen said.
‘What does she mean collectibles?’ Kipp whispered to Cymphany.
‘Look around,’ Cymphany said.
It was only now that Kipp observed their surroundings. As well as Mrs Turgan’s cauldron there were many other things caught up in the silk webs: discarded toys, mattresses, washing machines, fully-inflated bouncy castles, a school bus, a giant two-level carousel, a basketball ring, a movie screen and about two hundred discarded movie seats, a remote control with no batteries in it, an old rollercoaster with one of Pidge Priestl
y’s old houses on it (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, please refer to The Extremely Weird Thing that Happened in Huggabie Falls), a whistle, a grandfather clock, a slice of pizza, a rocking chair with a cat asleep in it, a half-knitted scarf, a space shuttle with a confused-looking astronaut peering out the window, a scare ball, a jar of jam, and lots, lots more.
‘I don’t get it,’ Tobias said from below. ‘What is all this stuff doing here?’
‘This is the Under,’ the silkworm queen announced. ‘And this is all the treasure the people from above have thrown away.’
‘What are you going to do with us?’ Cymphany asked, and at the same time she tried to motion with her eyes to Tobias. But Tobias just frowned.
The queen chuckled. ‘Collect you, of course. We haven’t had a human boy child or a human girl child till now.’ She fed the list through two of her legs. ‘Ah ha,’ she said, and she used a pencil she held in another leg to cross two items off her list.
‘Yes,’ said Cymphany, still trying to motion with her eyes to an area of the web near Tobias, ‘but what are you going to do with us apart from collect us.’
The queen looked confused. ‘What do you mean? We just collect you. We collect everything.’
‘But how long are you going to collect us for?’ Cymphany asked.
The queen blinked and shook her head. ‘Forever, obviously. And don’t bother trying to come up with an escape plan. We’ll be watching you.’
The other silkworms nodded.
‘It’s a shame,’ Cymphany said. ‘I’m guessing you’ve already got a solid-gold clothes peg.’
The queen’s eyes went wide. ‘A solid-gold clothes peg?’ She fed the list through two of her legs again, and then she stopped and gasped. ‘We certainly do not have one of those.’
Cymphany shrugged. ‘Well I guess you don’t want one. It doesn’t really matter what a peg is made of, it’s still just a peg.’
‘But I don’t have one,’ the queen said. ‘And I want one. Do you have one?’
‘I did have,’ Cymphany said. ‘But I lost it as we were falling. I think I can see it, all the way over there.’ Cymphany jerked her head up and to the left, indicating a spot behind the queen.
The queen followed Cymphany’s head jerk, turning slightly, but then she turned back, suspicious. ‘Wait a second,’ she said. ‘You’re not trying to distract me, are you? So you can escape?’
‘We will get it, your majesty,’ one of the other silkworms said. ‘So you can keep an eye on our new collectibles.’
Cymphany’s face fell, and the queen must have noticed, because her suspicious look turned to a triumphant smile. ‘Excellent suggestion,’ she said, and she watched as the other silkworms crawled across the web.
The queen grinned at Cymphany. ‘Nice try,’ she said. ‘But we’re too smart for you.’
Cymphany blinked. ‘Too smart for me!’
‘Much too smart,’ the queen said.
‘Of course,’ Cymphany said, thoughtfully. ‘But it’s very trusting of you.’
The queen scrunched up her blobby face. ‘What is?’
‘Well,’ Cymphany said, attempting to shrug her shoulders inside the tight silk cocoon. ‘I think it’s nice that you trust those silkworms not to take the solid-gold clothes peg for themselves.’ The queen looked at Cymphany, and then crawled off in the direction the other silkworms had gone. ‘Don’t touch my solid-gold clothes peg,’ she ordered. ‘Hands off. It’s mine.’
Cymphany turned back to Kipp and Tobias, beaming. ‘At last, we got rid of them.’
‘Cymphany,’ Tobias said, still lying on the webbing, in his silk cocoon, ‘were you really holding a solid-gold clothes peg when we fell?’
Cymphany rolled her eyes. ‘No, Tobias. That was just to make them all leave us so we could escape.’
‘But how?’ asked Kipp. ‘In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re wrapped in cocoons, and we can’t move.’
‘That’s why I was trying to gesture to Tobias before,’ Cymphany explained. ‘My satchel fell on the web right beside him there. And there is a pair of scissors just inside the top.’
‘But how?’ Tobias asked.
‘Like this,’ Cymphany said, as she wriggled her fingers through the webbing of her cocoon until they were poking out.
Tobias wriggled his fingers until he could just reach inside Cymphany’s satchel. He pulled out a chocolate chip cookie.
‘Tobias!’ Cymphany said. ‘Focus.’
‘Okay,’ Tobias said, disappointed, and he fumbled around and got his fingertips on the scissors and cut himself out of his silk cocoon. Then he crawled up the webbing and cut Cymphany and Kipp out of theirs too.
‘Good work, Tobias,’ Cymphany said, and they ran away before the silkworms could discover they had been tricked.
Now Kipp, Tobias and Cymphany’s escape from the talking silkworms was brilliant, and the children were quite excited about it, but after about three hours of wandering across silkworm webs through hundreds, or maybe thousands of giant web caves, they realised they hadn’t escaped at all. They were still stuck deep underground, in a place the queen had referred to as the Under. The Under was a maze of caves and silkworm webs, and, as they wandered, Kipp, Tobias and Cymphany could hear the cries of the queen silkworm in the distance.
‘Find those collectibles. I must have them,’ the queen’s voice wailed. ‘They are mine, mine, mine. And as soon as we find them we will continue searching for the solid-gold clothes peg.’
The silkworms certainly had a lot of collectibles stuck in their webs: there were entire caves overflowing with parking tickets, one cave crammed with thousands of pieces of lint, and another cave entirely dedicated to sporks.
If you’ve never heard of a spork, then you have lived an incomplete and unnecessarily complicated life. The spork is a combination of a spoon and a fork. It has the liquid capturing supremacy of a spoon combined with the food skewering magnificence of a fork.
Kipp, Tobias and Cymphany continued making their way across spongy webs, which was like bounding across a thousand enormous trampolines, moving further away from the queen’s wails, until they found themselves in the spork cave for the tenth time.
Cymphany put her hands on her hips and sighed. ‘It’s hopeless. We’ve searched the entire Under—the only way out is straight up, and unfortunately those silkworms never collected a helicopter or a two-kilometre-long ladder.’
Kipp looked about. ‘Even if they had a helicopter, it probably wouldn’t help us. Everything down here is broken. That’s probably why people threw it all away in the first place. I wonder why the silkworms bother collecting it.’
Cymphany scoured the cave edges. Perhaps she was wondering if there was another exit from this cave they hadn’t seen the last nine times they’d been in there. ‘Usually,’ she said, ‘people collect things because they think they are going to come in useful one day. But I don’t know what silkworms are going to do with a thousand sporks.’
‘Are you kidding,’ Tobias said, bending down and plucking a spork off the web. ‘These things are amazing. Why do we even use spoons and forks anymore?’
‘Sporks might be amazing,’ Cymphany said. ‘But they are not going to help us get out of here. In fact, we haven’t found one single thing that could help us escape.’
‘What about this?’ Tobias said, removing a small metal item from his pocket. ‘I picked it up when we first landed in the web.’
He passed it to Kipp, who rolled it over in his gloved hand, before passing it to Cymphany. Both Kipp and Cymphany were easily able to contain their excitement, as there was only a minimal amount of excitement to contain.
‘It’s a whistle,’ Cymphany said, handing it back to Tobias.
‘It sure is.’ Tobias grinned. ‘Maybe we can use it to whistle for help.’ He took a deep breath and blew into it, but no sound came out.
Cymphany looked relieved. ‘I’m actually quite glad that whistle doesn’t work, because it’s unlikely anyone e
xcept the silkworms would hear it.’
Tobias grimaced. ‘I didn’t think of that,’ he said.
‘Maybe it’s a dog whistle,’ Cymphany said. ‘Dog whistles make a high-pitched sound that only dogs can hear.’
‘That would explain,’ Tobias spluttered, ‘why it’s full of spiky hard bits of fur.’
Tobias threw the whistle over his shoulder. A whistle didn’t really belong in the spork cave, but he wasn’t too fussed about that. ‘I knew I should’ve picked up that space shuttle instead,’ he mumbled.
It was only then that Tobias and Cymphany noticed that Kipp was gone. They bounded around, looking for him and shouting his name.
Before long they heard a noise from the cave next door, which was full of lolly wrappers. Not a single one of them contained a lolly—they all knew this because when Kipp, Tobias and Cymphany had been in this cave earlier Tobias had checked all 4877 of them. Tobias was getting pretty hungry—they all were—and they’d eaten all the chocolate-chip cookies from Cymphany’s satchel many caves ago.
They found Kipp sitting in the corner of this huge cave, looking downcast.
‘What’s wrong, Kipp?’ Tobias asked. ‘I mean, apart from the fact that we’re stuck in a deep, endless, and slightly smelly silkworm web, being hunted by silkworms who want to collect us, and apart from sporks there’s absolutely nothing of interest down here at all, or anything to help us escape.’ Tobias paused. ‘Okay, I might have just worked out what’s wrong.’
Kipp hung his head and took a deep breath. ‘Plus, I’m turning more and more invisible by the hour. My legs are becoming invisible now.’
Tobias and Cymphany looked down and saw it was true. They could see nothing between the bottom of Kipp’s shorts and the tops of his socks.
‘Pretty soon I’ll be completely gone,’ Kipp sighed. ‘Invisible and forgotten.’
‘On the plus side,’ Tobias smiled. ‘At least we have a lifetime’s supply of sporks.’
But Tobias stopped smiling when Kipp looked up with a ferocious glare. ‘This is not a joke, Tobias. Why do you always have to make a joke about everything?’