“Granny is up there. She found something. A trail of crystals. They stopped at the end of the forest.”
“A trail of them?”
Ivy nodded. “Like someone put them there on purpose.”
“How do you know?”
“Granny talks to herself. Out loud. She’s going back to the village to get help.”
Angus waited, not quite understanding.
“She thinks Bonnie left them.”
“Did you see her footprints up there?”
“Snowshoe prints.”
“They can’t be from her.” He motioned to the snowshoes strapped to his back. “She didn’t steal my snowshoes and she doesn’t have her own pair. I made those prints yesterday. Anything else?”
“Lion.”
“So she can’t be up there. It’s not possible.”
“What are you carrying in your coat?” asked Ivy.
“My toolbelt. The World Jumper.”
“Anything else?” Ivy pressed.
“Do you mean the lion cub?”
The teratorn looked grave. Angus stared. “Are you saying you think the mother lion carried Bonnie all the way up there the same way I’m carrying her cub?”
“I don’t know why she wouldn’t have eaten her right away, but yes, that’s what I think.”
Angus felt sick. He collapsed against the side of the hill. “Poor kid.” He sat motionless for a few minutes, and then he stood. He grabbed the jutting stone and pulled his body up.
“Where are you going, Angus? What can you possibly do?”
“Granny doesn’t know how to get into the cave. She doesn’t even know there is a cave. It could be an hour at the very least before she’s back from the village with help. If Bonnie has any chance at all it will be because her big brother is brave enough to face a lion.”
Chapter Thirty: The Crystal Lair
With a final, exhausted groan, Angus pulled himself to the top of the cliff. He rolled on to his back in the snow and sucked air. A fuzzy brown head poked out the top of his coat and nuzzled his chin with a wet nose. He stroked it until the lion cub began to purr.
“I’ve scanned the area and can’t find the lion.” The teratorn swooped down beside him. “Maybe she’s under cover of the trees in the forest.”
Ivy didn’t say the lion could also be in the cave. That was understood by both of them. There would be no way to know the truth until Angus was inside. It would be too late then.
“I have to go into the cave. If the lion is gone and Bonnie is there, I can help her escape.”
“And if the lion’s there?”
“Can’t you jump into its body?”
Ivy thought about this. “I have to see the animal to body jump. I can’t go into the cave as a teratorn. If the lion is in the cave—wait a second.”
The hideous bird took to the sky and flew toward the forest. Angus watched it depart. He became alarmed when it continued on without stopping. It became smaller and smaller in the distance until it was only a gray speck on the horizon.
“Where is she going?” Angus asked the amber eyes.
“She’s right here,” squeaked the lion cub. “Take me out of your coat as soon as you reach the cave entrance. If the mother lion is there, I’ll body jump right away.”
“And we can rescue Bonnie.” He didn’t say: If she’s still alive. He felt in his heart that she must be. He didn’t want to consider the alternative. He pushed Ivy down snugly into his coat.
Angus slapped on his snowshoes and hurried across the plateau. He reached the boulders that hid the cave entrance. He was pulling off the snowshoes when he heard a high-pitched snarl. His head whipped around to face that of an aggressive lion just leaving the cave.
“Let me out! I can’t jump if I can’t see her!” Ivy’s voice was muffled.
Angus fumbled with his coat but the mother lion was on him in seconds. She made a soft, snorting sound. She mouthed his fur coat gently and began tugging him into the cave opening. Ivy nudged hard at the top of his coat. Her head poked through into the open air and the mother lion released Angus.
“I’m here,” said the cave lion.
“That was close,” said Angus. He stood up in the crystal cave and brushed snow and dirt from his clothes.
“No. I don’t think it was,” said Ivy. “Go ahead and let the cub out.”
As Angus released the little animal from his coat, Ivy explained. “Those vocalizations she made weren’t aggressive. They were friendly sounds. Like she knew you and was welcoming you to her lair.”
“Pet!” yelled a familiar voice. Angus looked toward the rear of the cave. Bonnie scooped up the cub and cradled it in her arms.
Angus ran to the little girl and wrapped his arms around her. “Bonnie! You’re safe!”
She pushed him away. “Of course I’m safe.”
“You’re in a lion’s den. Its lair.” Angus spread his arms wide. “This is the crystal lair of the monster. Do you know how worried everyone is? Granny is on her way up here with a group of villagers to rescue you.”
“Rescue? I don’t need to be rescued.” Bonnie cooed at the cub and petted its head.
“You went off without telling anyone. You’re lucky you weren’t killed!”
“You sound like Granny and Mommy.”
“I do not!” Okay, maybe he did, a little. But when you love someone, you worry about them. He shook his head to get that awful thought out of there. Love the little pest? No way! “Why didn’t you tell me you had found a lion cub?”
“You have a pet. I want my own pet.”
“Bonnie, the animal you chose for a pet was someone else’s baby,” said Ivy. “The lion cub has a mother, and when you took it, you upset her.”
“Whoa! The lion mommy can talk!” said Bonnie. She reached out a hand and stroked Ivy’s head.
Angus scowled. “Aren’t you afraid of her?”
Bonnie ignored him and skipped around the cave, chattering and pointing out bright crystals to the purring lion cub.
Angus shook his head and watched the silly little girl. “I don’t get it.”
“Angus, I can’t see.”
He looked at the cave lion. “What?”
“I can see shapes and dim lights but nothing is clear. I can sort of make out that you’re standing there but I can’t tell that you’re Angus. Not with my eyes. And you smell like cat. Probably because you’ve been carrying that lion cub all day.”
“Can you see Bonnie or the lion cub? They’re over there.” He pointed to the right side of the cave.
“Moving blurs. That’s all I see. I can smell them. But I can’t tell them apart by smell.”
Angus began pacing. He traipsed back and forth while he considered what Ivy had told him.
“When you’re in an animal’s body, you experience everything that animal feels, right?”
“Yes.”
“So tell me everything. What is your body feeling?”
“Hungry. My stomach is empty. Weak. Lack of energy. A little achy, like I got punched everywhere.”
“Ivy, when you were a dire wolf you thought something was wrong with the lion. That was the reason you were able to survive your fight with it. It was weak and thin. Now that you’re in the lion body, you say you can’t see. Do you think that’s why this lion was hunting the corralled sloths? They were easy to find and to kill?”
“That definitely makes sense,” said Ivy. “A half-blind lion can’t hunt fast moving animals. And with a lion cub to feed, she would have been desperate for food.”
“But how do you explain her not killing and eating Bonnie? If she’s so hungry, a small child would have been an easy meal.”
“If she realized Bonnie was human.”
“What do you mean?”
“Angus, I told you I can’t see. The blind have to rely on their other senses. Taste, touch, smell, hearing. Bonnie smells like a lion cub. With her fur coat, she feels like a lion cub. If I think she might be a lion cub, I’m not going to taste her.”
<
br /> “What about hearing? The minute she speaks, she’s no longer a lion cub.”
“Are you Gus?”
“No. I’m Angus.”
“But Mother doesn’t know that. You look like Gus. Your voice sounds like his. But you’re not Gus. Bonnie noticed right away. Probably some part of Mother knows you’re not Gus, but she needs to love a boy, and you’re enough like her son that she accepts you as him. The mother lion needs to love her cub. Bonnie is close enough, so she took her.”
Angus nodded. “It’s an interesting theory. That would explain why Bonnie’s not afraid. The mother lion took her and Bonnie thought she was another pet. It’s a big game to her. She’s playing with cats. But now it’s time to leave. I have to get Bonnie out of here, and then you have to jump into another animal.”
“You can’t leave the lion like this!” protested Ivy. “She has a baby to care for and she can barely feed herself. They’ll both die if we do nothing. And don’t forget Granny is on her way with her new eyeglasses and an army. The cave lion doesn’t stand a chance.”
“What do you suggest?” asked Angus.
“Eyeglasses.”
“Excuse me?”
“Eyeglasses for the lion.”
“You’re joking. That’s ridiculous,” said Angus.
“Why not? Think about it. We’re surrounded by crystal. If the lion can see, there will be no reason for her to stay here and eat stinky sloth. She can follow the mastodon, hunt camels. She’ll have options. You’ll be doing her, the cub, and the village a service.”
Angus stared into space. Then he moved to one of the sparkling walls. He adjusted his safety goggles, and rifled through his toolbelt and pulled out a hammer and chisel. He pried several clear crystals from the wall. He knelt and spread the crystals over the cave floor. He checked them for size and aberrations. The World Jumper tucked into his waistband was uncomfortable, so he set it on the ground too. He tucked the hammer and chisel away and began searching through his toolbelt.
“I’m sure I put some in here,” he said to himself.
“What are you looking for?” asked Ivy.
“I know I put some of the sneaker rubber in here. But there’s so much other stuff in here now.” He felt the cold, hard surface of the large crystal and pulled it out. He put it on the ground and continued looking for the rubber. “Here it is! I knew I’d find it!”
He held the rubber strips to the cave lion’s head. “This isn’t going to work, Ivy. Your head is wider than a human head. And your ears aren’t on the side of your face. They’re on the top of your head.”
“Think Angus, fast. Granny’s on her way, remember?”
Angus stood up and began pacing.
“Where are you going, Angus?”
“Nowhere. Moving helps me think.” He paced to the other side of the cave, ran his fingers along the wall, and then he turned and walked back to the original side where the cave lion waited. He turned again and had walked half the distance to the other side of the cave before he started bouncing. “That’s it! I’ll finally have a chance to make the Cat Muffler! Well, part of it anyhow.”
“What’s that?” asked Ivy.
Angus hurried back to her, stripped off his coat, thick wool sweater, and hand-woven undershirt. He shivered, and quickly put the sweater and coat back on. He talked the entire time.
“It’s an invention I designed in my lab. My cat, Sir Schnortle, makes terrible noises at night. I designed the Cat Muffler to, well, muffle him. We won’t need the entire thing, because we’re not trying to muffle you, the lion. We only need the head gear, and only part of that. It doesn’t need to cover your entire head, just your eyes.
“The problem is that I don’t have a piece of rubber large enough. All I have is this shirt and it won’t last forever. I mean, Ivy, this isn’t a zoo. Whatever I make for the lion is going to fall apart at some point, that is, if the lion even tolerates it. My cat won’t let me put anything on his head.”
“I know. But we have to at least try.”
“So my idea is that I put the crystals into the rubber like I did for Granny. I cut my shirt to fit over your ears and wrap around your head. Like a cap. Then I attach the rubber eyeglass piece to the bottom of that.”
“How are you going to keep it from falling off when the lion runs? A shirt will be loose and billowy.”
“I already used the shoelaces for Granny’s glasses,” said Angus. He looked at the leather straps wrapped around his boots. He unstrung them, wrapped them lightly around Ivy’s head, and pronounced them adequate.
He was glad he had cut the rubber strips at Billy’s house. One was barely long enough to stretch between the lion’s eyes. Now he only needed to make the X’s for the crystals to rest in. A few slashes with the stolen knife made short work of the job.
Next out of his toolbelt was a book of matches that he had “forgotten” to return to his father after helping him to start a campfire last summer. He lit one after another and held them to the rubber as long as he could. He only singed his fingers twice. With only two matches to spare, he assessed the violet glowing crystals to be sufficiently glued.
Next, he turned his attention to the undershirt. He draped it on top of the cave lion’s head, measured the distance from ear to ear, and then cut earholes with the knife. He shortened the head covering to lie right below the eyes and cut a long opening for the rubber strip. He slipstitched the rubber strip to the shirt—thanks to Mom for teaching him to sew that winter he explored taxidermy as a possible career.
“Are you ready to try it on?” he asked the uncharacteristically motionless Ivy crouching beside him. He was reminded of Sir Schnortle who would wait patiently until his chase toy was directly over his nose before reaching out a lazy paw to catch it.
“Yes.”
He put the covering over the cave lion’s head, one ear through each hole, the crystals perfectly aligned over each eye. A contented motor rumbled to life. “Much better,” purred Ivy.
“Now to secure it so it won’t fall off,” said Angus, wrapping the leather ties around the base of her ears, over the top of her head, and along the ridgeline of her jaw. “Tight enough? Or too tight?”
“A little tighter on the head, a little looser on my face.”
When Ivy pronounced the eyeglasses a comfortable fit, she bounded around the cave, shook her head, and swiped at the head covering with a large paw.
“What are you doing? You’ll break it!” said Angus.
“What do you think the lion is going to do once she gets her body back? I want to be sure she can’t get it off. Hey, Angus. I’m not sure these eyeglasses are totally working.”
“What do you mean? Is your vision blurry?”
“No. But I’m not sure about the color distortion.”
“That violet glow will fade once the energy in the rock dissipates.”
“No, that doesn’t bother me. But it looks like the large crystal, the one on the floor next to your World Jumper, is green. Nothing else has a green glow, so I’m just wondering—“
Angus looked at his World Jumper. He hadn’t realized he’d put it right next to the crystal again. This time, rather than violet, the crystal was glowing green. Angus grabbed the World Jumper off the floor and the crystal became clear again. Angus touched the World Jumper to the crystal once more. Green.
“I have to check this out,” said Angus. He pointed the scanner at the large crystal chunk and pulled the trigger. The display read 2BE01B.
“What does it say?” asked Ivy.
“A different code from the other two we had.” He pointed the World Jumper at the cave wall and pulled the trigger. The display read 9F48C2. Those were the coordinates of this world. Violet.
“The energy isn’t coming from the cave. I think it’s from another world.”
“But doesn’t fluorite pick up energy from its surroundings?”
“Yes.”
“So how did that piece of fluorite pick up energy from a green world if we�
��re still in the violet one?”
“I don’t know.” Angus picked up the crystal and juggled it in his hand. He stuck it back into his toolbelt.
“Wait a minute! Did you have that crystal in your toolbelt this whole time?”
“Yeah. It’s a lot more comfortable carrying it in there than jamming it into my pocket.”
“Is that toolbelt from your home world?”
“You know it is. Why are you asking? Oh.” Angus was silent. He stared at Ivy, and then slumped against the crystal wall.
Could it really be that easy? His toolbelt was from home. Could the crystal have picked up that energy? If he merely programmed the World Jumper with those coordinates, could he finally return home?
“Bonnie! Where are you? Bonnie!” The faint sound of voices drifted into the cave.
Ivy looked toward the cave entrance through her new eyeglasses. “They’re here.”
Chapter Thirty-One: Green
“Bonnie, you need to go. Quickly,” said Angus.
Bonnie gripped the lion cub tightly. The little animal squeaked against her chest and squirmed away. It ran to the cave lion and rubbed its body up against its mother, purring loudly.
“I want to take my pet.”
“Bonnie, it’s not your pet. It’s a wild lion cub. It needs its mother. It needs to learn to be a lion. It will grow into a large predator, too big and too dangerous to live with you in the village. Besides, Granny and the others will kill it.”
“No!” wailed the little girl. “Pet is my friend!”
Ivy spoke. “Bonnie, Pet’s mother will be killed if the villagers see her. And Pet wants to be with her mother. Do you want your friend’s mother to die?”
“No.” Bonnie kicked at the ground.
“If you love Pet, you need to leave her with her mother,” said Angus. “You need to go so Granny and the others don’t find the cave. This cave is our secret, right? No one else can know about it.”
Bonnie nodded silently. She reached out and stroked the cub. “Bye, Pet.” She walked to the cave opening, peered out, and scrambled through.
Angus exhaled loudly. “Now what? Should we try this new code? See where it takes us?”
The Crystal Lair (Inventor-in-Training) Page 14