The Golden Anchor

by Cameron Stelzer

  No spider made this web, he concluded.

  Then what is it here for?

  A decoy? A barricade? To force us down the other passage …

  Realisation hit him like a shovel-blow to the head.

  ‘The leaves!’ he shouted, spinning to face his companions. ‘Don’t step on the leaves!’

  Nasty Things

  One foot frozen in mid-air, Benny stared wide-eyed at the pile of leaves in front of him.

  ‘Yuh mean dese leaves, mon?’ he gulped.

  ‘I mean every leaf,’ Whisker called from the opposite side of the tunnel. ‘Don’t move a muscle. And that includes you, Horace.’

  ‘Okay. I’m a statue,’ Horace said, pulling a ridiculous pose.

  ‘Now move backwards very carefully,’ Whisker instructed. ‘But make sure your feet only touch the rocks. Is that understood?’

  ‘What about the dirt?’ Horace asked.

  ‘If you don’t know what’s under it, don’t stand on it,’ Whisker implored.

  ‘Right,’ Horace said. ‘No leaves and no dirt.’

  One by one, the three companions began their delicate dance backwards into the main tunnel. Smudge hovered overhead, buzzing loudly whenever any of them came within an inch of a leaf.

  ‘Would you mind explaining what that was all about?’ Ruby asked when they were all back on solid ground.

  ‘For a start, the web is fake,’ Whisker said.

  ‘Like everything else in this place,’ Horace snorted.

  ‘Not everything,’ Whisker said, pointing into the tunnel. ‘Those leaves are real enough. They simply don’t belong down here.’

  ‘Oh,’ Horace said. ‘I hadn’t thought that through. Where there are leaves, there ought to be trees.’

  ‘So you’re saying that someone put these leaves here for a purpose, Whisker,’ Ruby said.

  ‘I’m saying we should check what’s under them before we stand on them,’ Whisker clarified.

  ‘Okay,’ Ruby said, removing her longbow from her shoulder. Holding one end of the bow in two paws, she reached across to the closest patch of leaves and began flicking the top leaves aside. She persisted with the next layer of leaves to reveal a latticework of thick white thread, covering a round hole.

  Benny let out a gasp of alarm.

  ‘Will you look at that,’ Horace exclaimed. ‘More stinking spider’s web.’

  ‘I think it’s actually silk string,’ Whisker said, drawing the lantern closer. ‘But our real concern is what lies underneath it.’

  With a nod from Whisker, Ruby jabbed the centre of the string with her bow and the entire section pulled away from its surrounds and dropped into the hole.

  Four-and-a-half sets of eyes peered over the edge.

  ‘Rotten pies to booby traps!’ Horace gasped, staring at the collection of rusty spikes covering the bottom of the hole. ‘There’s an entire bed of nails down there.’

  ‘And I thought sleeping in a hammock was uncomfortable,’ Ruby said, pulling away with a shudder. She locked eyes with Whisker on her way past. ‘Thanks, spider boy. It appears you’ve saved our hides yet again.’

  ‘Don’t mention it,’ he said humbly, drawing the lantern away from the hole. ‘I’m sure you’ll return the favour before we’re out of this labyrinth. Come on. Let’s investigate the other passage.’

  The tired companions stood in a line at the foot of the web, trying to decide what to do next. The thick silk string was covered in a sticky glue-like substance and the rats had no desire to repeat their mishap from the pine forest by hurling themselves face-first into it.

  ‘Why don’t I cut a small hole in the corner of the web so we can crawl through to the other side?’ Ruby suggested.

  ‘Alright, but do it gently,’ Horace whispered. ‘None of your usual slash and bash nonsense. The whole thing could be booby trapped and I don’t want to end up with a stalactite through my skull.’

  ‘I can be gentle,’ Ruby said, drawing a scissor sword.

  ‘With a weapon in your paw?’ Horace questioned.

  Ruby rolled her eye and began the delicate process of removing a section of sticky string without disturbing the entire web. The strength of the string made it extremely difficult to slice through and Ruby couldn’t stop all the vibrations from travelling upwards. Unwilling to stand in the firing line of any potential booby traps, her companions took a few cautious steps backwards whenever she had her back turned to them.

  ‘There,’ she said when her work was done and a gaping hole stood waiting for them. ‘Gentle and efficient.’

  Horace continued to look warily at the web.

  ‘Well?’ Ruby prompted, returning her sword to her belt. ‘Are you just going to stand there?’

  Horace gestured his hook towards the narrow gap. ‘Ladies first.’

  Ruby rolled her eye a second time and then whistled to Smudge. ‘Be a dear and see if I’m about to fall into a pit of lava or something.’

  Smudge took off through the gap and Ruby lowered herself onto her hands and knees.

  When Smudge had returned to give her the all-clear, Ruby led the procession through the web. Reaching the other side, the animals rose to their feet, and continued along the passage to where Smudge was busily unearthing a pot of glue from behind a large rock.

  ‘So much for a giant spider,’ Horace said, picking up the glue. ‘It must have taken the meerkats hours to coat that web.’ He removed the cork stopper from the rim of the pot and dipped in his hook. ‘Ooogh, gross. Since when did they start turning boogers into glue?’

  ‘Quit fooling around,’ Ruby hissed, wedging the cork back into the pot. ‘You’ll spill it all over yourself. And find a pocket to carry that thing. Who knows when a bit of glue will come in handy down here?’

  ‘Here, you’d better carry this,’ Horace said, hurriedly passing the glue pot to Benny. ‘I have enough to worry about with holes in the floor and those scary looking stalactites hanging from the roof. I swear one of them just moved.’

  Whisker looked up. The ceiling of the tunnel was covered with the same shark tooth stalactites as the entrance tunnel, black, still and ominous.

  ‘There!’ Horace hissed, grabbing Whisker by the sleeve. ‘It moved again.’

  ‘Where?’ Whisker said, raising his flickering lantern above his head.

  ‘Over your left shoulder, in the centre of the ceiling,’ Horace whispered.

  ‘I can’t see any –’ Whisker began. ‘Wait. What’s that noise?’

  The companions fell silent, listening attentively as a high-pitched chirruping sound echoed through the tunnel. Barely audible to their ears, it seemed to be coming from the stalactites themselves.

  ‘I’ve got a horrible feeling about this tunnel,’ Ruby hissed as the roof above her began to move.

  Like treacle oozing through cracks in a jar, dark shapes emerged from the spaces between stalactites.

  Wriggling and twisting into the dim light, they clawed their way downwards until they hung suspended from the very ends of the stalactites.

  Their black eyes stared vacantly at the intruders. Their garish, flattened noses sniffed the air. Rooted to the spot, Whisker watched in horror as they opened their mouths to reveal razor-sharp incisor teeth and piercing fangs.

  They were the stuff of legends – monsters of the night. And yet unlike the mythical creatures they inspired in ghost stories, these winged beasts were as real as the terrified animals standing beneath them.

  ‘V-v-vampire b-b-bats,’ Horace stammered. ‘C-c-coming to s-s-suck our b-b-blood.’

  ‘They don’t suck blood,’ Ruby hissed, drawing her two scissor swords at once. ‘They lap it up with those ghastly long tongues of theirs.’

  ‘Who cares?’ Horace gulped. ‘We’ll still be sh-sh-shrivelled corpses when they’ve f-f-finished with us.’

  ‘Yuh can say dat again, mon,’ Benny said, holding up his own lantern for a clearer look. ‘Dere’s an entire colony of hungry critters up dere and only four of us.’


  Smudge raised five limbs into the air as if to say, five including the fly.

  ‘So what are they waiting for?’ Horace muttered, his eyes fixed on the ceiling.

  ‘I think it’s the lanterns,’ Ruby said warily. ‘There’s too much light for them to attack.’

  ‘Not for much longer,’ Whisker gulped as Benny’s lantern began to flicker like his own.

  With a chorus of echoing screeches, the first bats launched themselves off the stalactites and came hurtling down towards the companions.

  ‘Run!’ Whisker shouted as his lantern flickered out completely. ‘Back to the web!’

  He spun to face the direction he had come to see the air surrounding the web now teeming with bats.

  ‘Not that way!’ Ruby yelled, fending off the first wave of attackers with her swords. ‘Up the tunnel. Hurry!’

  Whisker hurled the empty oil lantern at the closest vampire bat and took off after Benny and Horace.

  ‘Come on,’ he hissed, grabbing Ruby by the arm. ‘We have to stay with the light.’

  The bats came thick and fast, honing in on the animals as they tried to escape. It was as if the entire ceiling had fallen at once. Whisker and Ruby were forced to run backwards, slashing at the air with their scissor swords in an attempt to stop the black wave that threatened to engulf them. The sound was almost deafening – a hundred shrill voices, echoing around the tight space.

  Whisker didn’t hear Horace’s cries of alarm until he reversed right into the small rat.

  ‘Keep going!’ Whisker shouted, almost losing his balance. ‘We can’t stop now.’

  ‘But there’s nowhere to go,’ Horace exclaimed, walloping a large bat with his hook hand.

  Whisker spun around to see a solid wall of volcanic rock blocking the entire tunnel. They had reached a dead end.

  ‘Ratbeard be kind,’ he hissed. ‘We’re trapped.’

  Before he had time to face his attackers, he felt a sudden impact in the centre of his back and he was thrown to the ground. In the same motion, the tip of his scissor sword collided with the wall and it spun out of his paw.

  Winded and without a weapon, he lay pinned to the floor as the bat on his back crawled slowly up his body, searching for the veins on the side of his neck. In panic, he forced his head around to see its hideous open mouth preparing to sink its teeth into his flesh.

  Acting instinctually, Whisker wrapped his tail around the creature’s neck and jerked its head backwards. The bat’s jaws snapped shut around thin air and it squealed in anger.

  Seizing his opportunity, Whisker dragged himself off the ground and, with the bat still clinging to his shoulders, slammed himself, back-first, against the wall. The bat let out a pitiful whimper and collapsed in a daze on the ground.

  It was only then that Whisker realised just how dark it had become. Benny’s lantern was nothing more than a tiny flame and Whisker knew that in a few short seconds the oil would be gone and the entire tunnel would be plunged into blackness.

  ‘One of your cunning plans would be good about now, Whisker,’ Horace shouted as the stunned bat tried to haul itself up Ruby’s leg.

  Ruby let out a high-pitched scream and, for a moment, the advancing bats seemed to falter in the air. They quickly recovered their senses and resumed their wild attack as Ruby battered the bat free with the hilt of her sword.

  ‘Noise!’ Whisker shouted, pulling Ruby back to the wall. ‘We can confuse them with noise. They’re using echolocation to find us. If we make enough noise, they’ll become disoriented.’

  ‘Echo what?’ Horace said in confusion.

  ‘Oh, for Ratbeard’s sake, forget the science!’ Ruby screeched. ‘Just be yourself and make a racket!’

  ‘That I can do,’ Horace said, raising his sword. He began clanging his scissor sword against the wall, and at the same time dragging his hook across the surface of the rock to create a bone-chilling screeching sound. Ruby joined in with her two swords, while Benny shook his chains and made raucous chimp noises with his mouth. Smudge hid behind a rock, vibrating his wings and trying to stay out of everyone’s way.

  The bats went berserk, crashing into one another in mid-air and colliding with the tunnel walls.

  ‘Keep it up,’ Whisker shouted, picking up his fallen sword and clanging it against the wall. ‘It’s working.’

  But not all the bats were fooled by the chaos. Some, after finding themselves sprawled on the ground, began crawling towards the companions, using their keen sense of smell to guide them. Moving purposefully on four legs, they advanced in a line as the lantern light finally gave up its fight and the darkness of the tunnel became absolute.

  Almost absolute, Whisker realised.

  He hadn’t noticed it when the lanterns were alight, but a pale blue glow spilled across the floor of the tunnel halfway to the spider’s web.

  ‘I see a way out,’ he yelled over the clatter of the weapons.

  ‘We must have missed it on our way past,’ Ruby said, shuffling closer to Whisker for a clearer look. ‘It could be a low passage or an opening in the wall.’

  ‘Can we fit through it?’ Horace asked, still scraping his hook against the wall.

  ‘There’s no time to investigate,’ Whisker shouted, as the first of the crawling bats made a lunge for his foot. He battered it away with a sweeping motion of his scissor sword but another one instantly took its place. This one he took care of with a toe-poke to the nose.

  ‘If we don’t go now, we’re done for, anyway,’ he cried as more shadowy forms appeared around him. Stick to the wall and run on my command. Ready?’

  There was a final crescendo of metal on stone.

  ‘Now!’

  Swords slashing wildly like sickles in a wheat field, the rats burst through the front line of bats. Behind them, Benny swung his chain from side to side, taking care of any bats that dared to follow.

  Nearing the narrow opening, Whisker saw flashes of white fangs above him and raised his sword to fend off a fresh aerial attack. ‘Keep going!’ he shouted to Benny as Ruby and Horace disappeared into the narrow opening in the wall. ‘I’ll hold them off.’

  He looked down to see Smudge hovering just inside the escape passage, urging the chimp forward.

  Let’s hope Benny fits through that gap, Whisker thought, gripping his sword tightly in two paws.

  The bats came from every direction – flying, crawling and scrambling down the walls of the tunnel. Driven to madness by their thirst for blood, they clambered over one another in their quest to reach Whisker.

  If it wasn’t for the green-handled scissor sword in his grasp, Whisker would have certainly been overrun. As it was, he needed every fighting move he knew just to keep them at bay – strike, block, lunge, deflect. When, at last, he heard his name being called from the passage, he felt like his arms were about to fall off.

  Head first, he dived into the hole with the screeches of bats in his ears. He was exhausted, bone weary and sore, but somehow he found a new strength, moving purposefully towards the pale blue light. The passage was low and he scrambled on his paws and knees, not daring to look behind him.

  You’re nearly there. Keep moving, he repeated to himself.

  With his head lowered and his shoulders hunched, he didn’t realise he had reached the end of the passage until one-and-a-half sets of paws had grabbed his sleeves and were dragging him into the eerie light.

  ‘Bats,’ he panted in a hoarse voice, ‘– right behind me – have to stop them.’

  ‘Relax, mon,’ Benny said with a sly smile, removing the cork from the glue pot. ‘I have a sticky surprise in store for dem.’

  The Crossing

  While Whisker lay on the ground, trying to catch his breath, Benny began dribbling the sticky liquid in a ring inside the escape passage.

  ‘Come on,’ Ruby hissed, dragging Whisker to his feet. ‘We’re not safe here.’

  ‘Where is here?’ Whisker asked, his eyes still adjusting to the light.

  Ruby poin
ted to a large pile of leaves beside them. ‘I think our little escape route has led us to the end of the booby-trapped tunnel.’

  ‘Charming,’ Whisker said, shuffling back a pace.

  ‘Yeah, and that means the only thing standing between us and the bats is a fake spider’s web with a hole in it,’ Horace chimed in.

  ‘And that’s not our only problem,’ Ruby said, walking past the leaves. ‘Take a look out there.’

  Shielding his eyes, Whisker turned around to see the lava tube opening out into a wide cavern. Pale, morning light filtered through a hole in the roof, illuminating a subterranean lake below. Leafy plants and sprawling vines spilled over the edges of the hole, revealing a lush jungle landscape above.

  The inky black surface of the water stretched the entire length and breadth of the cavern, reflecting the distant sky like a mirror. A cluster of rocks protruded from the water in the centre of the lake to form a large island.

  A few feet from Whisker lay the broken remains of a wooden arch bridge which had once spanned the lake. Now all that remained of the structure were a few wooden planks and support beams at either end of the lake and some hacked-up pylons in the centre. Judging by the splintered chunks of wood floating in the water, Whisker guessed it had been demolished recently.

  ‘Do you recognise this lake, Horace?’ Ruby asked.

  ‘Um, well, there’s more than one lake down here,’ Horace said, avoiding a definitive answer. ‘Though I can’t recall seeing a bridge before.’

  ‘It’s possible the meerkats built the bridge, then destroyed it when they blocked the tunnel,’ Whisker said, gesturing at two empty carts further along the rocky shore.

  ‘Supply carts from da village,’ Benny said, joining the rats with his empty pot of glue. ‘I think we’re on da right track.’

  ‘The problem is the track ends here,’ Ruby said, stepping onto the first plank of the bridge.

  ‘Not if you’re a competent swimmer,’ Whisker said, peering into the water.