The Crystal Lair (Inventor-in-Training)

by D. M. Darroch

  “What do we need? Spinach, bacon, red onion, I think I have vinegar at home.” The old woman recited a list of items while entering the highway. She let go of the steering wheel with one hand and fiddled with a knob. A loud voice boomed through the car.

  Gus threw his hands over his ears and tried to turn to see who was talking. The seat belt dug into his shoulder. He was as motionless as that small monster he’d snared in his room last night.

  He still didn’t understand why Mother had been so angry with him. He had found the offspring of the monster that had been killing their sloths sleeping in his room. It had hissed and growled at him, spit in his face, and tried to scratch him. He had tied it up before heading off for sentry duty. He hadn’t wanted the vicious creature to attack any member of the family while he was away so he had incapacitated it.

  He could have understood if she’d been angry with him for keeping it alive. But she had insisted he “leave the cat alone.” She’d even gone so far as to name the wretched thing. She called it Sir Schnortle.

  Both Mother and Father were harboring it in the family home. Imagine! The monster finally slain and his parents fostering its young. What were they thinking? The animal needed to grow only a little larger and Bonnie would be in danger.

  Gus missed his little sister. He missed her following him around, repeating everything he said, copying everything he did. Gus was her hero, even more than their father who was away on the hunt so often, and Gus knew it. She would do anything he asked, and consequently, he would do anything for her.

  When Gus had finished his bath, and what a glorious bath it had been, water pouring hot from the tap, no need to melt snow or haul water from the well, what a wonderful dream, Granny had been waiting for him in the kitchen. No Bonnie.

  Granny had given him a strange look when he’d asked about his sister. Mother had said that Bonnie was safe with Granny. So where was she? He had seen the look pass between Mother and Father. They were keeping something from him, he knew. But when he’d pressed them, Mother insisted that Bonnie was fine and told him he shouldn’t worry about it. She hustled him into Granny’s car.

  Drums beat in his ears: Strange and various sounds, animal voices perhaps, combined with a man’s voice. The man was keening and wailing, complaining about a woman, a lost love.

  “What is that?” asked Gus. He felt the drums thumping in his back, vibrating his feet on the floor.

  “Oh, do I have the radio turned up too loud? Sorry, I like this song.” Granny twisted a knob and the drums subsided but the wailing continued.

  “What is that?” repeated Gus. “Who is it?”

  “You don’t like this song? Or don’t you feel like country music today?” Granny glanced at him quickly before turning her eyes back to the road. “Change the station if you want. But no rap. My old ears can’t take that.”

  Gus hesitated, unsure what she was telling him to do. “Go ahead. Second dial on the right.”

  Gus twisted the knob as he’d seen her do. The sounds grew louder. “That’s the volume, Angus. Second dial.”

  He twisted the first dial back and touched the second dial. As he rotated the knob, symbols lit up on a display and the sounds changed. Sometimes he heard a nondescript buzzing, sometimes speaking voices, sometimes strange sounds combined with voices … music.

  When he had turned the knob all the way to the left, he heard it. Beautiful, mellifluous tones filled the car. He needed to hear more. He turned the left knob and the music got louder. He settled back into the seat and closed his eyes. The music crashed over him. For a few moments he forgot he was racing over a highway in a transparent animal and still unsure whether his little sister was dead or alive.

  “Mozart? Now I’ve seen everything.” Granny leaned on the horn and shouted out the window, “What are you thinking? Share the road! Maniac!”

  Chapter Eighteen: Thievery

  The dire wolf’s ears pricked to attention as footsteps crunched in the snow. She winked open one eye and watched a furry Bonnie exit the hut in the early morning light. She was clutching a chunk of dried meat in one hand.

  Ivy raised her head from her paws and asked, “Where are you going so early?”

  Bonnie gasped. When she realized it was Ivy’s voice that had startled her, concern replaced the fear in her eyes. “Oh, poor Pet. Did Mommy make you sleep out here all night?”

  “It’s okay. I have thick fur.”

  “But it’s so cold. And your family is inside. You shouldn’t sleep all by yourself out here. Come on, I’ll let you in.”

  “Your mother is worried about the fleas.”

  “We get more fleas from these fur coats and the stinky beasts than from you. That’s no reason,” said Bonnie.

  Ivy rose stiffly to her feet. “Really, it’s okay.”

  “Mommy treats you so badly. You are such a help to us. And not just to our family. To all of us in the village. She shouldn’t make you sleep outside.”

  Ivy growled deeply in her throat. The little girl was absolutely correct. There was no reason she shouldn’t sleep indoors.

  “Come on inside. You can curl up in front of the nice warm fire before Mommy wakes up.” Bonnie held the curtain open. Ivy thought she wouldn’t mind thawing her bones before breakfast. The dire wolf entered the hut quickly before the girl could change her mind.

  “Shhh.” Bonnie lay her index finger across her small, rosy lips. “Don’t wake up Mother.” She closed the door.

  Ivy grunted and settled down in front of the smoldering coals. It occurred to her that Bonnie hadn’t told her where she was going, but it was early so the sentries would still be on duty and the gates to the village would be closed. Ivy had been up all night tracking rodents and didn’t want to wake up yet. She assured herself that Bonnie couldn’t get into too much trouble. But as she lay there lazily dozing, she thought of the lion she’d smelled on Bonnie’s clothes last night and later when she’d been outside. She groaned, reluctantly rose from the cozy fireside, and approached the pallet where Angus was sleeping.

  “Pssst, Angus,” she whispered, not wanting to wake Mother. He pulled the woven blanket over his head and let out a snort.

  She nudged his body with her head. “Angus, wake up.” He rolled to his side, faced away from her, and farted loudly. Ivy sneezed and pawed at her nose. “Yuck! Angus!”

  She nipped at the blanket and pulled it from his body. He flailed out an arm and nearly struck her across the nose. He was still sound asleep.

  “This calls for drastic action,” sighed Ivy. She stepped on to the pallet and licked his face from top to bottom. Angus sat bolt upright and wiped frantically at his face. Ivy dragged her tongue across the blanket to get the taste out of her mouth. They looked at each other in disgust.

  “What’d you do that for?” he asked accusingly.

  “Shhh! Don’t wake Gus’s mom. Bonnie’s outside. I don’t know what she’s doing. I think you should go check.”

  “What do I care what she’s doing? I’m not responsible for her.” Angus grabbed the blanket from Ivy, shook it out, and wrapped it around himself.

  “Remember the lion smell? I smelled it again last night. Outside.”

  “What does that mean? The lion’s in the village?”

  “Can’t be. The sentries would have sounded the alarm. It’s not exactly the kind of thing they’d miss. I don’t know what Bonnie’s up to, but she is your sister, or your alter’s sister anyway. She could get into all sorts of trouble.”

  “True.” Angus stood and grabbed his blue jeans. Mother had folded them and placed them neatly beside his pallet after they had dried. The dire wolf left the room to give him privacy while he dressed.

  He put his legs into the jeans and pulled. The denim had shrunk and wrinkled as it dried. Angus jumped and tugged at the waistband to pull the jeans on. He heard something hard jangling in his pockets. He buttoned and zipped the jeans and shoved his hands into the pockets. He’d forgotten all about the crystals he’d stuffed in t
here the first day he’d arrived.

  Angus strode to the table in the main room and spread out the collection from his pocket on the table. He sorted them by color. There were several large, clear stones.

  “Angus? Could you hurry up? Who knows where Bonnie’s gone.”

  “Huh? Oh, I got distracted. Sorry.” Angus left the crystals on the table and walked to the doorway. The curtain flapped open and Bonnie entered the hut. She ignored Angus, took off her coat and boots, and returned to bed. Ivy detected a sharp, sweet smell as she passed.

  Breakfast was a stew of nettles and some grain that resembled barley. Angus had trouble getting it down and once it was, he had trouble keeping it there. Gus’s mother had little sympathy for him.

  “I had planned to make chipped meat and gravy, but your pet ate our last piece of dried meat. I don’t know who let it in after I went to bed.” Her accusing eyes bored into the dire wolf.

  Even though Ivy knew she was innocent of the theft, she couldn’t help but stare miserably at the ground. From time to time she peeked up at Bonnie who sat innocently slurping her breakfast.

  A blast of cold air ruffled Ivy’s fur as the door opened and Granny entered. “Good morning, all!” she called cheerfully.

  “You’re in a good mood this morning,” said Mother, ladling a helping of stew into a bowl.

  “Quiet night, deep sleep, great weather today. What’s not to be happy about?” said Granny.

  “No monster last night?”

  “No. Strange though. We thought it would be back to finish the job it started. Because Gus’s pet prevented it from making off with our beast, we figured it would be back to hunt again. The sentries heard it in the forest, but it never approached the village.”

  “Maybe it’s afraid of Ivy,” suggested Angus. He grinned at the dire wolf. She was still sulking about Mother’s false accusation and ignored him.

  Bonnie finished her meal before the others. She put her dirty bowl on the table for Mother to clean. Nobody saw her scoop Angus’s carefully sorted crystals from the table into her pocket.

  Chapter Nineteen: The Hunters

  “So where are we really going, Angus?” Angus and Ivy were climbing the hill through the forest. After breakfast Angus had told Mother that he and Ivy were going to hunt squirrels, yet Angus had neglected to bring a weapon.

  “To get the World Jumper.”

  “Do you remember where you lost it?”

  “I need to retrace my steps. I came into this world on a plateau beyond the forest. I noticed it was missing when I was up there. It must still be up there.”

  “Sounds simple enough.”

  “One thing you should know. When Granny found me up there, she kept mentioning the so-called monster.”

  “Do you think the lion lives up there?”

  “Or hunts up there. In any case, we need to be alert.”

  Angus and Ivy walked up the trail. Ivy trotted along nose to the ground, crisscrossing the trail like a nervous bloodhound.

  “I’m sure I didn’t drop it in the forest. You don’t honestly think you can smell a barcode scanner all the way from here, do you?” Angus asked incredulously.

  “Of course not. I’m hoping to find a squirrel for lunch.”

  The two reached the grove of trees at the top of the ridge. Ivy gazed forlornly at the expansive windswept plateau. The wind played with the snow, blowing it in whirling eddies, scraping it from the frozen ground in one place and piling it in great drifts in another place.

  “That’s a vast area. How are we ever going to find the World Jumper?” she whined.

  “Let’s check out the cave first,” said Angus.

  “Cave?” asked Ivy.

  “I think I dropped it in there. When Bonnie knocked me down.”

  “Cave?” she repeated.

  “If it’s not in the cave we’ll have no choice but to wander over the bluffs searching snow drifts.”

  “What cave?” yelled Ivy.

  “Oh, I didn’t tell you about the cave I found?”

  Ivy lifted a lip in a silent snarl.

  “So, I found a cave.”

  “Don’t think I won’t take a bite out of your leg.”

  “Come on, I’ll show you.”

  They had reached the plateau. Angus lifted his knees high and jogged across the top of the snow. He barreled headlong into the rough wind and was glad for his snowshoes. He crossed the snow-covered expanse quickly, reached the outcropping, and walked northward searching for the gap in the rocks. Snow lay piled on top of the logs he had gathered two days ago.

  “Right here, Ivy!” He waved his hand and she scrambled over the rocks and followed him through the opening.

  Angus clicked on his penlight and shone it around the cave.

  “Wow!” Ivy breathed as she took in the illuminated interior and sparkling, polychromatic walls.

  “It’s awesome, isn’t it?” Angus spun around happily spreading his arms wide in a grand, proud gesture. “Do you like my cave?”

  “Your cave?” Ivy lifted her nose into the air, took several small whiffs, and then inhaled once, deeply. “This is her cave!”

  “Whose cave?” asked a perplexed Angus dropping his arms to his side.

  “The lion’s cave. This must be her lair. She was here recently. I don’t know how long we’ve got until she returns.”

  “How do you know she’s not here?”

  “Easy. We’re still alive.”

  Angus gulped. “We’d better search quickly.”

  “What are these?” asked Ivy, peering through a particularly large clear crystal jutting from the wall.

  Angus giggled. “Your nose looks huge!”

  Ivy growled. “All the better to smell you with, my dear.”

  “No, I mean it’s bigger than usual. The crystal magnifies it. Look!” Angus pulled a small hammer from his toolbelt and tapped gently at the crystal until it broke free from the wall. He held it to his eye. The dire wolf snorted.

  “It looks like you have one giant eye,” she said. She sniffed the wall and touched a blue crystal with her tongue. “This one makes everything seem blue.”

  “It’s fluorite,” explained Angus chipping the blue crystal from the wall. “It’s a colorful mineral often used for jewelry. It can be purple, blue, green, yellow, orange, pretty much any color of the spectrum.” He trained his flashlight on a green, and then a purple, crystal before chiseling them from the wall and popping them into his coat.

  “But that first one was clear.”

  “Yes. That’s also a possibility. In my world, scientists have used transparent fluorite for microscope and telescope optics.” He held the large, clear crystal to his eye and peered through it. “This one is special though. It has a tiny defect deep inside the crystal. It seems to be something metallic. That’s very unusual.”

  “Explain,” demanded the impatient dire wolf.

  Angus wandered around the cave’s perimeter while telling Ivy about the crystals. “Lenses made from fluorite tend to exhibit less chromatic aberration than those made from glass. Chromatic aberration is what you see when light passes through a glass prism and sheds a rainbow of colors. There are different wavelengths of light and when they shine through glass, you sometimes see weird colors at the edges. Fluorite is special because it doesn’t break down the light as much as glass does.”

  He edged toward the rear of the cave. “There are two interesting things about this cave. First of all, in my world you don’t typically find so many different colorations of fluorite in one place. Secondly, fluorite crystals without optical defects are not that big. That’s why our scientists only use them for tiny optical elements like those in microscopes.

  “This one is special.” He rotated the large stone in his hand. “There’s something about that piece of metal.” He tucked the large piece of fluorite securely into his coat.

  “This is all very interesting, but let’s not forget what we came here for,” urged Ivy.

  “Oh, ye
ah. Distracted again. Sorry.”

  Angus thought about where he’d been when Bonnie had shoved him. He focused the penlight on the floor and moved it slowly from side to side until he reached the rear of the cave. He saw a dark mass not far from where he’d stumbled.

  “There! There it is! Got it!” yelled Angus, stuffing the World Jumper into his fur coat beside the large piece of fluorite. “What’s this?”

  The dire wolf glanced up from the rose crystal she was regarding. She loped toward him. “What do you see?”

  “It’s hard to tell. It’s shoved into a dark crevice. It almost looks like—a nest. Ivy, why would a lion have a nest?”

  The penlight flickered and went out. Angus whacked it against the heel of his hand. “Great. Battery’s dead.” He shoved the flashlight back into his toolbelt. If not for the glimmer from the cave opening penetrating the gloom, Angus and Ivy would have been plunged into total darkness.

  Ivy sniffed the air again. “Funny. That smells faintly of, hmmm.”

  Angus inhaled deeply but was thwarted by the gamey odor of his own sloth coat. “What do you smell?”

  “Something was in here. There’s a sweet smell.” Ivy began to drool and licked her chops. “A yummy, young smell.” In the gloom, her eyes glinted alarmingly.

  Suddenly, the cavern went completely dark and a high-pitched, screeching yowl pierced the air. Angus and Ivy spun toward the cave entrance. The light sprang through as the lion cleared the aperture. The dire wolf’s hackles raised, tail extended straight upward. Ivy snarled menacingly at the approaching lion.

  “Run!” she barked at Angus. He scooped a handful of crystals and stones from the cave floor and raced toward the opening.

  The sounds of a fierce battle reverberated off the hard, cold, crystal walls. Angus had one leg outside the cave when he heard a blood stopping yelp. He squeezed to the side to allow some light to enter and saw that the lion held the dire wolf by the throat.