by Jamie Smart
Dev remarked on the silver heart hanging around his mother’s neck, and she showed it off to everyone.
‘Bastor made it for me,’ she proudly said. ‘Sorry, I should say, Acting Mayor Bastor. Works rather well as a necklace, don’t you think?’
Dev replied that it did. Ventillo shrugged. Boja was staring wistfully at Santoro’s plate, having long since emptied his own, and Santoro was trying to ignore him. But, eventually, he relented and slid what was left of his dinner in front of the hungry bear.
‘Your brother invented something quite incredible.’ Ventillo waved her fork at Santoro. ‘Quite, quite miraculous. You finally saw it, didn’t you?’
‘It was … impressive.’ Santoro quietly nodded.
‘Impressive?’ Amy smiled. ‘When Boja lit up that tree like a firework? The sheer power of it. It was stunning!’
‘BWOOOOSCHHHH!’ Boja cheered through a mouthful of apple, raising his arms triumphantly in the air.
‘It was nice to see you two finally working together,’ Ventillo said, huddling closer to Santoro and sharing her shawl with him. That smile returned to his lips. He tried to stifle it, but Dev saw.
‘I did what Dad would have done,’ Santoro said.
‘That you did.’ Amy shuffled her chair up next to them, and beckoned for Dev to join in. ‘And you were right, he’d have been proud of you. Both of you.’
There they sat for some time, bundled together, one big mass of Everdews. And then Boja could hold back no more. He stood up and wrapped his huge arms around them all, dragging them into his pillowy soft belly, before losing his balance and crashing through the table.
‘FAM-LEE!’ he cheered, rolling around on the floor.
The Everdews shrieked and giggled.
So he squidged them tighter.
‘Family.’ Dev smiled, curling up into the bear’s fur like a baby in a rug.
An Ending
A Beginning
Dev’s workshop was just how he’d left it; absolutely destroyed.
Moonlight spilled down through the open ceiling, glinting off all the smashed glass on the floor. The collapsed furniture cast long, ominous shadows across endless fluttering scraps of paper, reaching all the way towards the back of the workshop, or at least, where the back had once been. Now it was just a massive, gaping hole.
And an extraordinary view of the stars
Dev pulled a couple of oil lamps out from the rubble, lit and hung them from the drooping rafters. He swept away the worst of the glass. Cleared a space in the middle of the floor. Then he pulled Boja through the doorway – first an arm, then an eyeball, and finally his huge, lumpy body.
Once Boja was upright and had stopped fidgeting, Dev set to work.
He shone torches up Boja’s nostrils, he stuck thermometers in his ears. He pulled on Boja’s fingers, one by one, until finally one of them produced a squeak from Boja’s bum. And then he pulled on it again, over and over, squeak after squeak, collapsing Boja into a giggling mess.
For over an hour he tested the big red bear. Seeing what Boja could do. Making notes. Endless notes. Trying to find something, anything, that could solve the problem that had been nagging at him all evening.
Bumblebuss had been right. The one person Dev hadn’t wanted to be right. He was so right.
The Eden Tree needed its flember back.
But how to do it? Its flember was keeping Boja alive, and the idea of Boja sacrificing himself … well, it was unthinkable. Boja was now a living thing, just like everyone else.
A loud snore rattled out from Boja’s nostrils. He had fallen asleep on his feet.
There would be no more testing tonight.
Dev, however, wasn’t tired. He walked towards the missing half of his workshop and sat down on the edge of the floorboards, dangling his legs into the night air. He took a deep breath. Listened to the spindletrees swaying gently in the wind, the bindlebugs chirping in the reeds.
And then, beneath his feet, he saw the distinct glow of flember.
‘The book!’ Dev exclaimed as, with the longest stretch, he was just able to haul it up with his fingertips. Once safe, he held his hand above the cover, watching as thin wisps of flember danced up from its golden F and lapped against his palm.
Dev read the book three more times that night. But he learnt nothing new, found no clues, no answers, and eventually his own eyes were too tired to focus on the words. He stretched, yawned and, clutching the book to his chest, turned around to go to bed.
Boja was standing behind him. No longer asleep, but quite, quite alert. In his paws he held a flower pot, or rather, the flower pot, the one from Dev’s first experiment. And inside the flower pot, the whitedrop. The beautiful, delicate whitedrop, as alive as it had ever been.
‘Shared.’ Boja beamed, his fingers sparkling with flember.
Dev smiled. ‘Feels good, doesn’t it?’
‘Smells good.’ Boja leant down and, before Dev could stop him, he took a great big sniff of the flower. It disappeared, soil and all, up inside his nostril, his whole face contorting with the shock.
‘AAA—’
‘Boja, no!’
‘—CHOOOOOOOOOO!’
Boja stumbled backwards, great globules of glowing blue snot flying scattershot across the walls. Instinctively, Dev opened the flember book up as a shield, and a huge sticky lump squelched against it.
He lowered the book back down. It had taken most of the blast, thankfully, but now both pages were soaked with snot. Dev grumbled. Cast Boja a frown.
And then he noticed the lines.
Right there, on the snot covered pages. Glowing out between the words. Lines travelling up, down and across the pages.
Dev’s own heart started to pound faster.
‘Boja, take the book.’
Boja resisted, unsure if he was in trouble or not.
‘Fire it up. R-run flember through it. The whole book.’
Still Boja hesitated.
‘Boja, SHARE.’ Dev thrust the book into his paws.
Instantly, sparks spun around Boja’s fingertips and into the book, through the pages, lighting each one in a brilliant glow. More lines appeared, along with symbols; strange geometric symbols, carving up the lines, splitting them in all directions. And markers too, distances, a network of measurements, all sparkling as if written in starlight.
Dev gasped …
Acknowledgements
Some stories take a while to tell, and that is definitely true of Flember. Along the way a great many people have helped me – too many names to list, but I hope you know who you are, and how much I appreciate it.
A special thanks to Catherine for your help at the start of this journey.
And an extra special thanks to David and Rosie, for your endless patience, and your enduring faith in Flember.
‘One of the best children’s comics of all time!’
Starburst Magazine
This is good vs evil. Science vs nature. This is BUNNY VS MONKEY!
If you go down to the woods today, you’re sure of a big – MECHANICAL MOLE TANK?! Wait, that doesn’t sound right …
Prepare for chicken zeppelins, the PIG-O-TRON 5000, the indestructable Action Beaver, a squirrel with a passion for baking and loads more!
‘Endlessly inventive, sublimely funny and outrageously addictive, Bunny vs Monkey is the kind of comic parents beg kids to read to them. Don’t miss out on the next big thing.’ Now Read This!
You may think that your cat is crazy, but they’ve got nothing on Looshkin. Leave him for just a moment and you’ll find that your house has flooded, a steam train has smashed into your living room and a portal to another dimension has opened in your loft. And everything is covered in bees. Looshkin, what have you done?!
About Jamie
Jamie Smart has been creating children’s comics for many years, with popular titles including Bunny vs Monkey, Looshkin, and Fish-Head Steve which became the first work of its sort to be shortlisted for the Roald Dahl Funn
y Prize. He also works on multimedia projects like Find Chaffy.
Jamie lives in the south-east of England, where he spends his time thinking up stories and getting lost on dog walks. This is his first novel.
Also by Jamie Smart:
Bunny vs Monkey 1:
Let the Mayhem Begin!
Bunny vs Monkey 2:
Journey to the Centre of the Eurg-th!
Bunny vs Monkey 3:
The Stench!
Bunny vs Monkey 4:
The Wobbles!
Bunny vs Monkey 5:
Destructo!
Looshkin
Copyright
FLEMBER - THE SECRET BOOK
First published in 2019
by David Fickling Books, 31 Beaumont Street, Oxford, OX1 2NP
This ebook edition first published in 2019
All rights reserved
Text and illustrations © JAMIE SMART, 2019
The right of JAMIE SMART to be identified as author and illustrator of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
ISBN 978–1–78845–102–4
