The Crystal Lair (Inventor-in-Training)

by D. M. Darroch

A high pitched caterwaul raised goose bumps along his skin and he woke to an urgent, hushed argument between Granny and Gus’s mother.

  “I have to go help those boys in the corral.”

  “You’ve trained them well. They know what to do.”

  “They can’t face the monster alone. Give me my bow and arrows.”

  “You can’t kill it with an arrow. All you’ll do is anger it!”

  “Those boys need my help.”

  “They’re probably long gone by now. They know when to fight and when to flee.”

  “Give me my weapon. I’m going.”

  “You are not going! What good will it do?”

  “You mean, what good will an old woman do, don’t you? Say it!”

  “Come on, Mom. You know that’s not what I mean.”

  “I know exactly what you mean. I can’t hit anything anymore. The quarry is never where I see it. What use is an old, blind huntress?”

  Another screech pierced the morning air. A low, guttural moan soon followed.

  “Sounds like it’s made a kill,” Granny sighed. “It’s all over now.” She slumped down on some furs by the fireside.

  Angus heard a series of deep warning barks.

  “What’s that?” asked Gus’s mother.

  Angus threw the furs off his body and jumped out of bed. Bonnie, newly awake, blinked at him sleepily. He ran to the door, shoved his feet into boots, and yanked his coat off its hook.

  “Where are you going?” demanded Granny.

  “Gus, it’s not safe out there,” said Mother.

  “Ivy’s out there. I’ve got to help her!” His words were punctuated by a piercing yowl.

  “Who is Ivy?” asked Granny.

  “His pet,” explained Mother. “The wolf can take care of itself.” A loud yelp contradicted her.

  Angus grabbed a spear and pushed his way past the women to the outdoors. The noise of a fierce battle echoed through the deserted village streets. The sentries were long gone. Angus stumbled over the loose ties of his boots, paused to wrap them about his ankles, and set off again toward the sloth corral at a run. The low moan of a dying animal ran a bass line under the snarls, barks, hisses, and screams of the monster and the dire wolf.

  Angus had nearly reached the pen when he heard a sharp squeal. Adrenaline surged through him and he hurled his body over the gate. The corral was empty. Piles of leaves sat untouched where he and Billy had hauled them the previous evening. Large heaps of fresh dung were scattered over the trampled snow. Where had all the ground sloths gone?

  The far side of the mammoth bone enclosure was missing. Angus hurried to it. The uprooted bones lay in the snow outside of the enclosure. They had fallen outward, indicating that they had been pushed from the inside. The sloths must have panicked when they sensed the predator approaching. They knocked down the fence that could have protected them!

  Beyond the fence line the snow was stained crimson. Whatever animal had been injured there must have perished. The amount of red snow was evidence that a mega animal had bled to death. He prayed it was not Ivy. A red trail extended from the pool of blood toward the forest. Angus stepped closer and examined it. He could see sizeable tracks in the snow. They faced in the direction of the corral, and the front paw prints had sunk deeper into the snow than the back prints. A large predator must have dragged its kill away from the village. His eyes followed the trail. It stopped abruptly at the carcass of a large sloth pup and the body of an enormous wolf.

  “Oh no!” Angus gasped. He tripped over his loose boots and stumbled. He regained his balance and plowed his way through the snow toward Ivy, carefully avoiding the compressed red trail. The dire wolf and the sloth lay side by side, covered in blood.

  Angus dropped to his knees beside Ivy. Her tired brown eyes met his anxious blue ones. She lay panting on her side, blood dripping down her face.

  “Ivy, are you … ?” Angus choked back tears and reminded himself that if an animal died while Ivy was in its body, her consciousness would depart the animal and enter another living creature.

  “Relax,” she panted. “I’m fine. Just a little tired.”

  “But all the blood!”

  “Most of it belongs to that poor sloth. Its throat is ripped open. I took a few hits. The one across my nose really hurt.”

  Angus examined the dire wolf’s muzzle. The soft, fleshy top was slashed open and bled freely. Angus washed it with a handful of snow.

  “Ow! Careful, that stings,” complained Ivy.

  “So this is your pet, is it?” Angus looked up and was startled to see Granny bustling toward him in the early morning light.

  “Yes, Granny. This is Ivy.”

  “Well, Ivy. You’ve earned your keep. The monster killed one of our beasts but you scared it off before it could make off with the meat. We’ll eat well tonight. Gus, why don’t you take your pet back to the hut, and get her cleaned up and fed?” She yelled toward the corral where a group of boys stood uncertainly. “What are you bunch waiting for? A personal invitation? Get over here and haul this meat to the village!”

  Angus coaxed Ivy to her feet. The canine limped along beside him in the snow. “What was it?” he asked. “What is the monster exactly?”

  “It’s a lion.”

  “A lion?” Angus thought for a moment. “You mean a saber-toothed cat? With those long canine teeth?”

  “No. I mean a lion. A really, really big lion with some nasty sharp claws.”

  “Like a lion at the zoo?”

  “Similar, but much bigger. I think it might be the Panthera leo atrox.”

  “The panther what?”

  “The Panthera leo atrox. The American cave lion. In my world their remains were discovered in the La Brea tar pits. Do you have tar pits in your world?”

  Angus answered, “Yes. My parents took me there once. I don’t remember a lion though.”

  “You were probably only paying attention to the Smilodon fatalis.”

  “English, please.” The dire wolf was beginning to get on his nerves, just like the Ivy in his home world.

  “The saber-toothed cat. There were many more of those than American lions found in the tar pits, which suggests that awesome fangs, while looking fierce, didn’t make them as smart as the lions.” She padded through the snow in silence and then said, “It is confusing though.”

  Angus waited. She obviously wanted him to ask her, so he did. “What is confusing?”

  “In all the studies I’ve read, the Panthera leo atrox preferred open habitats, not forests. The species preyed on North American camels and tapirs.”

  “There were camels in North America?”

  The dire wolf rolled its eyes. “Of course. What do they teach at school in your world? The curious thing is that this lion has chosen a forested area for its territory. And it’s prowling around a human village.”

  “So? The sloths are easy hunting.”

  “Yes, but remember, I just fought off this lion. A Panthera leo atrox is about four times the weight of a Canis dirus.”

  “A can of what?”

  “Oh, Angus. Try to keep up. A Canis dirus is a dire wolf, remember? What I was saying is the lion should have overpowered me easily. It was strong, true, but I’m still alive with only a few scrapes and bruises. That lion was severely malnourished. There is something wrong with it.”

  “The sooner we can figure out what that is, the sooner we can rid the village of its threat,” said Angus.

  Chapter Eleven: The Driveway Sentry

  Mrs. Clark’s eyes shot open. Something had wakened her from a black, deep sleep. She looked at the slumbering form of Mr. Clark lying beside her. In an instant her nocturnal senses were on full alert, honed to precision during the nights of Angus’s baby and toddlerhood. Though it had been years since she’d needed to rouse herself from her warm bed to feed him or help him to the toilet, her mothering instincts were a red siren in her brain. Something was wrong. Her baby needed her.

  She jumped from he
r bed and sprinted down the hall to Angus’s bedroom. His door was slightly ajar but no soft light drifted through the opening. His nightlight had been extinguished. It was quiet. Too quiet. Her heart was in her throat as she ventured into the room. The shades were drawn tightly over the windows where she’d pulled them that afternoon when her son had fallen asleep. He’d slept straight through dinner. She couldn’t bring herself to wake the feverish boy and had tucked him in tightly before going to bed herself a little past ten.

  His room was as dark as if she were walking into it with her eyes clamped shut. She felt her way into his bedroom. Her fingers grazed the light switch on the wall. If she turned it on, she might wake him and what if it was nothing? It probably was nothing; she was most certainly overreacting. Anxiety about his strange behavior over the past week was making her act crazy.

  She took a careful step. Her foot sank into something soft and fuzzy. She bent slowly and picked up a heavy piece of fur. Angus’s costume. She laid it to the side and groped her way to the dresser top. She felt for his nightlight, a tall lava lamp he’d received for a recent birthday present. It had been knocked over and the glass bottle that held the lava material rolled back and forth on the dresser. She flicked the on switch with a finger and placed the glass bottle on to the base. She looked back at Angus’s bed. It was empty.

  Mrs. Clark exited the room and crept down the stairs. Pale light from the street lamp outside illuminated the hallway and lengthened the shadow she cast as she tiptoed across the floorboards. A settling board creaked when she stepped on it and she winced. No matter. Angus was already awake somewhere in the house, and a marching band parading through the living room wouldn’t awaken Mr. Clark.

  “Angus,” she whispered. “Where are you?”

  She peeked into the living room. Perhaps he’d gotten up to use the bathroom and crawled on to the sofa and fallen asleep. A lap blanket lay across the back of the sofa where she’d thrown it before heading to bed. She picked up a pillow off the floor, arranged it on the sofa, and folded the blanket neatly. Nothing out of place.

  She looked for Sir Schnortle. He liked to curl up on Mr. Clark’s armchair at night. Mr. Clark was always complaining about the tufts of fur he found there in the morning. The chair was empty tonight. Mrs. Clark walked into the kitchen. The sink held signs of one of Mr. Clark’s late night snacks, but there were no bread crumbs on the floor, peanut butter smeared on the refrigerator handle, or juice spilled on the floor. In other words, there were no indications that her son had gotten up to make himself a sandwich.

  Next, Mrs. Clark checked the bathroom. The door was open, the lights were off, and the towel was dry and neatly hanging where it had been earlier in the day. Angus was not in his bed or on the couch. He had gotten up neither to eat nor to use the facilities. Where was he?

  She walked to the hall, the center of the house. She closed her eyes and stood very still. She ratcheted up the level of her supermother powers and listened. The kitchen clock ticked. The refrigerator hummed and the freezer dropped three cubes into the ice tray. The toilet gurgled. Mr. Clark snorted once from the bedroom. A distant vehicle rumbled down the street, squealed its tires, and rumbled away. A muffled Sir Schnortle yowled.

  “Sir Schnortle?”

  An answering meow came from above. Mrs. Clark jogged up the stairs and called the cat again. Sir Schnortle responded from Angus’s bedroom. Mrs. Clark switched on the light and looked around the room. She kneeled on the floor and peered under the bed, and then under the dresser.

  “Sir Schnortle? Where are you sweet kitty?”

  “Maauuu.”

  “Are you in the closet? How did you get yourself stuck in there? Silly boy.”

  Mrs. Clark pushed the sliding door along its track. She raised her eyebrows in surprise when she saw her much-loved and pleasantly plump orange cat lying immobilized on the floor of her son’s closet. Part of the reason he could not move was that his front and back legs had been tied together with some sort of leather rope. The fur boot into which his chubby body was stuffed didn’t help his situation either.

  “Oh! My poor, poor baby! What did the nasty boy do to you?”

  She quickly extracted him from the offending footwear and removed the leather ties from his legs. As soon as his front paws were free, she received a sharp scratch for her trouble. Sir Schnortle sprinted out the door. When he was a safe distance away, he turned and glared amber eyes at her.

  Mrs. Clark stood and brushed her hand across the angry welt on her forearm. “You don’t have to take it out on me! Where is the boy, Sir Schnortle?”

  She swatted the light switch on Angus’s wall, pulled open the window shades, and gazed vacantly out at the sleeping street. Her eyes focused into narrow slits as they took in the sight of her pajama-clad son pacing back and forth at the end of the driveway, spear in hand.

  Chapter Twelve: Some Job

  The dire wolf sprawled languorously in front of the peat fire. Gus’s mother had reluctantly allowed Ivy to enter the hut. Angus thought he had made a convincing case for her acceptance to the family: She had scared away the lion so that no human sentries were harmed and she had prevented meat from being stolen. Good reasons, both, but Bonnie’s incessant, “Please Mommy, please, please, please, let us keep Pet! Pleeeeeease!” had probably been the reason Mother had finally thrown her hands in the air and said, “Fine! But you two are responsible for her. I’ve got enough to do around here.”

  Ivy looked ridiculous. Bonnie had ransacked her family’s homemade medicine supply and doctored all of Ivy’s wounds. She had scampered around the dire wolf, bandaging every wound with fine hand-woven strips. Ivy pawed at the wrapping around her muzzle.

  “You look like a mummy,” said Angus.

  Ivy snorted. “Hey, at least I’m warm and my stomach’s full.” She kept her voice low so Mother didn’t hear.

  The door banged open. “Gus, we need you. We’ve got to fix the pen and get the beasts back in before we get another hard snow.”

  “He was up half the night. Can’t one of the other boys take his place?” Mother asked Granny from her seat in front of the loom where she was weaving fabric.

  “The entire village was up half the night. We need everyone to help before the beasts are lost. I don’t need to tell you what could happen if the men don’t bring meat home from the hunt and we have no beasts.”

  “Okay,” Mother nodded. “Gus, go help your grandmother.”

  Angus put on his outerwear. Ivy lumbered to her feet. “Where’s the pet going?” asked Granny hoisting her bow over her shoulder.

  Angus and Ivy looked at each other. “With me. She goes with me.”

  Bonnie grabbed her coat and boots. “Me, too!”

  “No, Bonnie. You’re too little. You stay with me,” said Mother.

  “Am not! I wanna go, too! If Pet gets to go, why do I have to stay?”

  “You’ll get in the way, Bonnie,” said Granny.

  “You never let me do anything!” yelled Bonnie. “I can help, too! I’m almost as big as Gus!”

  Angus and Ivy quickly exited the hut behind Granny as Mother tried to appease Bonnie with offers to use the spinning wheel. They hurried to the corral where teams of boys worked to replace the huge mammoth bones that had been knocked down during the previous night’s raid. Ralph and Billy held a vertical rib steady while a lanky dark-haired boy lashed it to the one standing directly beside it.

  “Hey, Gus!” yelled Billy, letting go of the bone to wave a cheerful hand at Angus.

  “Don’t let go!” shouted Ralph. “I can’t balance this by myself! Now we’ve got to start all over again!”

  “Where you going?” Billy ignored the complaining boy.

  “Not sure,” answered Angus. “Granny’s got some job for me.”

  “Here, why don’t you take over for me? I’ve been fixing this pen since the crack of dawn,” said Billy.

  “That’s a lie, and you know it!” whined Ralph. “You just got here.”

&n
bsp; “We were actually working faster before you got here,” said the tall boy to Billy. “Gus would do a better job.” This last to Ralph.

  “Oh, no you don’t. I’ve got plans for Gus,” said Granny. “Maybe you can help him, Ivy.” Ivy cocked her head and watched Granny with bright brown eyes. “Back to work, Billy, or you’ll have dung duty for the next week!”

  Granny hurried through the snow. His real grandmother wore purple velour tracksuits and running sneakers, not sloth fur coats and weapons. She was the leader of a book club, not the leader of the guards. But they were both energetic and agile, real spitfires. Angus ran to keep up with her. She pointed into the forest. “Up there, in the trees. I need you to head up there and bring the sloths back down.”

  Angus’s jaw gaped. “How?”

  “The way you always do. Maybe that pet of yours can help.” She tightened the quarrel of arrows fastened around her hips and scurried back to the corral, hollering orders as she went.

  “Now what?” Angus asked Ivy.

  “You heard the lady. Let’s go get some sloths.” The wolf trotted up the hill into the forest.

  Chapter Thirteen: Carnage in the Kitchen

  Mrs. Clark pulled on her bathrobe, brushed her hair, and stepped into her sherbet green slippers. Angus and Mr. Clark looked forward to their weekend pancakes and she was not about to disappoint them. Not even this morning following a middle-of-the-night search for her son.

  Angus had been a sleepwalker when he was a young boy. Many times she had opened her eyes in the wee hours of the morning to see him standing motionless in her room. Often, she would awaken to the sound of cereal being poured into a bowl at two in the morning only to find little Angus eating cheerios in his footy pajamas. It had been several years since his last episode of sleep eating.

  She had been a bit startled to see him standing outside last night, but that wasn’t the first time his nightly excursions had taken him out of doors.

  The summer Angus was five, Mrs. Clark had taken him to the local park every afternoon. He had wobbled back and forth on his small two-wheeled bike with the training wheels while she followed behind on the bumpy sidewalk. One day, he had watched a group of older kids race each other through the park on their bicycles. He had immediately insisted his training wheels be removed.