The Shark-Headed Bear-Thing Read online

  And on.

  And on.

  The passageway twisted and split off into dozens of different tunnels. Paradise guided them through the maze, barely pausing at each junction they came to.

  “This way,” she said, as they took yet another left along yet another corridor.

  “I’m hungry,” Ben said. “Is anyone else hungry?”

  Without taking his eyes off his book, Wesley produced an apple from up his sleeve and passed it forwards.

  “Thanks,” said Ben. He raised the fruit to his mouth, but Paradise caught his arm and held it. She stopped walking and pressed a finger to her lips. With a tilt of her head she gestured towards the corner just ahead of them.

  “We’re almost there,” she said. “He’s just up ahead. We should stay quiet.”

  “Why?” asked Ben, taking a big crunchy bite of the apple. “I took care of the monster, remember? The Shark-Headed Bear-Thing is history. We don’t have to worry about it any more,” he said, and he stepped around the corner, holding the sun in a jar out in front of him.

  He stopped again almost immediately. The grin fell from his face and his apple fell to the floor. He thought about taking a backwards step, but he knew it was already too late.

  Behind him, he heard Paradise and Wesley both gasp.

  Ahead of him, a whole gang of Shark-Headed Bear-Things turned their black eyes in his direction.

  “But,” he mumbled, “we should probably start worrying about these ones.”

  The Shark-Headed Bear-Things moved slowly. They advanced along the passageway towards the children, drool dangling from their jagged teeth. Some crawled on four legs, while others walked on two.

  Ben counted the monsters. There were twelve of them, and not a lava river in sight. There was no choice – they had to run.

  “P-Paradise?” stumbled a voice from somewhere in the shadows beyond the beasts. Ben held up the jar and the darkness was pushed aside. A dishevelled figure hunched a little further along the tunnel, his face caked with dirt. “Paradise, is that you?”

  “Mayor!” Paradise yelped. She darted towards him, but Ben caught her by the arm and pulled her back, just as the Bear-Things began to growl.

  “No!” he said. “Stay back. We can’t get to him.”

  “Let me go!” Paradise protested, but Ben kept his grip. He drew back as the monsters took another step closer.

  “Wesley, can you do anything?”

  Wesley hesitated. “Soil myself, possibly,” he whispered.

  “Come on,” Ben urged. “Even a level one wizard must know some spells!”

  “I … I’m not sure,” Wesley stammered. “I d-don’t know.”

  Paradise rounded on him, desperation blazing in her eyes. “Do it! Whatever you can do, just do it! Please!”

  Briefly, it looked like Wesley might burst into tears, but then he nodded. Ben and Paradise took another shuffled step back, but Wesley stayed where he was. He raised his hands and shot a nervous glance over his shoulder.

  “You can do it,” said Ben.

  Wesley gave a cautious nod. “I … I can do it.”

  His fingers began to dance as the shadows of the Bear-Things drew in around him. He could hear their breathing ringing loudly in the narrow space. He tried to ignore it, to push down his fears and remember his training.

  “Oyammi … what was it now?” he muttered. The growling of the monsters rolled off the walls on either side of him. “Oyammi kerus … something … diddimus beyo… thingy!”

  Tiny yellow sparks spun like Catherine Wheels from the tips of his fingers. There was a bang and a puff of smoke. Ben and Paradise gazed on in wonder as a small amount of warm custard appeared in the air between Wesley and the Bear-Things. It seemed to hang there in empty space for a few seconds, then it fell with a splat to the floor.

  Wesley stared down at the yellow puddle. He swallowed nervously. “Or was it diddimus bezo thingy?” he wondered, before Ben shoved him out of the way.

  “Cover your eyes!” Ben instructed. “You too, Mayor!”

  Ben hurled the glass jar towards the monsters, then screwed his eyes shut and raised his arms in front of his face. There was a smash, then a whoosh, then the Shark-Headed Bear-Things began to squeal in shock.

  Ben raced forwards. Even with his eyes closed, the light blazed through his eyelids and made his head throb. “Mayor,” he called. “Where are you?”

  “Over here!” cried the mayor, and Ben made for the direction of the sound.

  “This way, follow my voice,” he shouted to the others, pushing through the heaving mass of squealing Bear-Things. He expected them to grab for him, but they were obviously too busy with problems of their own. They writhed and thrashed and howled in pain. Their eyes, so used to the darkness of their underground tunnels, were burning in the blinding brightness.

  Ben collided hard with the mayor, who immediately let out a high-pitched scream of fright. “Don’t eat me! Don’t eat me! I chew my own earwax!”

  “It’s me, Mr Mayor,” Ben said. “I’m here to rescue you.”

  “We’re here to rescue you,” Paradise corrected, as she and Wesley stumbled through the thrashing knot of monsters.

  “Oh, that’s wonderful news!” the Mayor yelped. He fumbled for Paradise and hugged her tightly.

  “Hooray for daring rescues! You’re not hurt, are you, dear?”

  “No, I’m fine. I’m fine.”

  The dazzle of the lights through Ben’s eyelids had begun to fade a little, and the squeals of the Bear-Things were becoming more and more like growls again.

  “Paradise!” said Ben. “Hate to break up the reunion, but we need a way out.”

  “On it,” she replied. Even with her eyes shut, she could find the way. She could find anything.

  “Take my hand,” she told the mayor. “Ben, Wesley, take his other arm. Make a chain. Stay together.”

  The boys grasped around until they found the mayor. They hung on as Paradise led them the first few faltering steps away from the Bear-Things.

  The light was still fading. It had almost dimmed enough for them to open their eyes. Any second now, the monsters might recover.

  “Quickly!” Wesley urged.

  “If we run we might fall,” Paradise said.

  “If we don’t run we’ll definitely get eaten!” Wesley replied.

  “I know which one I’d prefer,” the mayor whimpered.

  Paradise picked up the pace, but only a little. The monsters were no longer squealing and hissing in pain. They would still be dazzled, but that wouldn’t last. Ben tried to open his eyes, but the fading glow of the tiny sun forced them shut again.

  A moment later, Paradise pulled them round a corner and the shadows crept up to meet them. They blinked in the cool darkness, and patterns of light swirled across their vision.

  Freshly dug soil and chunks of rock lay piled up in mounds around them. This tunnel looked brand new, as if it had only been dug within the last few hours. It opened out into a tall, cylinder-like cave that stretched up into blackness somewhere far above them.

  Only it wasn’t a cave, exactly. The walls weren’t made of stone. They were made of packed dirt and tangled roots, and Ben shuddered when he saw a small army of bugs squirming across them. From where he was standing, there didn’t appear to be any other passageways leading away from the room.

  “Well?” said Ben. “I thought you were taking us to the way out.”

  Paradise closed her eyes again, but only for a moment this time. She looked upwards. “There,” she said. “The way out’s up there.”

  “Great!” sighed Ben. “What are we supposed to do? Fly up?”

  “Well, you’re the big hero,” Paradise replied. “You figure something out!”

  “The stairs, perhaps?” suggested Wesley, squeezing between them. He pointed to a set of rough stone steps that had been cut into the curved wall.

  The mayor made a run for it, racing towards the steps as fast as his legs would carry him. “Come on!
” he yelped. “Before those things come back!”

  The others set off after him, but Ben hung back. He frowned. “Stairs?” he muttered, and he found his eyes creeping over to a spot where the floor met the wall.

  There was just enough light coming from the fading miniature sun to pick out the details of a small wooden chest, and a lump of rock with a piece of cloth draped over it.

  Ben stared at the open chest.

  He stared at his glove.

  “Tavish’s basement,” he realised, looking up to the ceiling of shadow above him. “This is Tavish’s basement. This is my house!”

  Ben slowly approached the chest and the boulder with the blade buried in it.

  “This way, hurry!” yelped Paradise, but he was still too shocked to hear her. It wasn’t until the mayor let out a high-pitched scream of terror that he remembered what was happening. A monstrous shape came lumbering in from the tunnel. It staggered towards Ben, and he braced himself for the fury of its attack.

  But it kept stumbling past him until its nose crunched against the far wall. It lashed out then, slashing at the wall with its claws and letting out a growl of frustration.

  “It’s still blinded,” Ben realised, then he clamped his hand over his mouth as the Bear-Thing’s head whipped around in his direction.

  Ben looked up to where Paradise and the others were just visible halfway up the stairs. They were all gesturing in the direction of the tunnel mouth. Before he even turned, Ben knew what he would see. More of the monsters had found their way in. They shuffled around like the other one, their paws grasping at nothing.

  Meanwhile, the first monster was making its way towards him, its huge head cocked to one side, listening for the sound of his voice. Ben knew better, and was keeping his mouth firmly shut.

  Paradise and Wesley beckoned for him to follow them up the stairs. Before he did, though, there was something he had to do.

  As quietly as he could, he removed the cloth that was covering the hilt of the sword. He felt a jolt of excitement spread through him from the tips of his fingers to the ends of his toes as he wrapped his hand around the sword’s handle.

  This was it. He was ready. After everything he’d gone through, he knew he was ready!

  He pulled.

  The sword didn’t budge.

  He wasn’t ready.

  There was a clunk from somewhere in the shadows above him, followed by the loud creak of an old door being opened. Light trickled in, and Ben heard a familiar voice calling, “Hello? Is there someone down there?”

  “Uncle Tavish,” he said, then he immediately realised his mistake as a chorus of frenzied roars erupted around him. The Bear-Things lunged, clawing and swiping blindly in the direction the sound had come from.

  Ben threw himself to the floor and used his elbows to crawl past them. The Bear-Things crashed together at the spot where he had stood, and lashed out at each other in blind rage.

  Up above, the door closed with a squeak and a slam. “Uncle Tavish!” Ben bellowed, taking the stairs two at a time. “Open the door, open the door!”

  The four of them bounded up the steps just as the rest of the Shark-Headed Bear-Things swarmed into the basement. The slapping of shoes on stone told the monsters all they needed to know. They charged up the stairs in pursuit, falling over one another in their race to the top.

  “Uncle Tavish, it’s me, open up!” Ben shouted. There was no point being quiet now. The shark-jaws were snapping at their heels, clack-clack, clack-clack. Any moment now Ben, Paradise and the others would be nothing more than a tasty between-meals snack.

  The door was just five or six steps above them. It was still closed. Even if Tavish heard them now, there was no time for him to unlock and open it. Ben clenched the gloved hand into a fist, and this time he felt the metal quiver like it had done back at the bridge. A jolt of power tingled along his arm.

  “OK, double-blooper,” he said. “Let’s see what you can do!”

  Ben swung his fist at the door, hoping he could somehow punch it open. Instead, a split-second before the gauntlet touched the wood, the door exploded into matchsticks. They all stumbled up the final few steps and out of the basement. Tavish was there, staring at them, his jaw hanging open and a cloud of sawdust slowly settling on top of his head.

  “Ben?” he said. “How did you get down there? What did you do to my door? Why is there a massive monster running up the stairs?”

  Tavish’s eyes went wide. “Massive monster!” he yelped. “Running up the stairs!”

  “You smashed the door!” Paradise cried. “Why did you smash the door?”

  “It wasn’t my fault, it was the glove!” Ben protested.

  “Monsters! Monsters!” wept the mayor. He spotted Tavish looking at him, and hurriedly shook his hand. “The mayor of Loosh. Nice to meet you.”

  “Um … you too,” Tavish murmured.

  The mayor flashed him a quick smile, then went back to screaming. “Monsters! Monsters! Don’t let them eat me!”

  “The glove,” said Wesley below his breath.

  With a hiss of hydraulics, Tavish’s robotic arm scooped up a nearby workbench and pushed it in front of the doorway. He braced himself against it just as the first of the Bear-Things began to pound on the opposite side.

  “I’m just going to watch, you said!” Tavish cried. “I won’t be in danger, I’m just going to watch!”

  Ben shuffled awkwardly. “Um, yeah. That didn’t quite go to plan.”

  “I noticed! This won’t hold them for long,” Tavish said. “Ben, get everyone to safety. Quickly!”

  “I’m not going to leave you,” Ben replied.

  “Don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine,” Tavish said. A monstrous paw splintered through the wood of the workbench, the claws swishing by just a few centimetres from his nose. “Oh no, my mistake. I’ll be horribly killed, won’t I?” Tavish realised. “This was a terrible plan!”

  “The glove,” said Wesley again, more loudly this time. “I know where I’ve seen the glove!”

  He fumbled up his sleeve. “In here!” he cried, then he pulled out a pair of slippers shaped like cuddly kittens. “No, not in there,” he sighed, shoving the slippers back up the sleeve. He pulled out a small notebook. “Here, the Journal of Thrugmud the Mad.”

  Wesley flipped through the pages. “I knew I’d seen it before. It first looked familiar back on the bridge when you grabbed me by the—”

  “Hurry up!” bellowed everyone in the room, as the workbench continued to splinter and break.

  “Yes. Sorry,” said Wesley. He held up a double-page spread on which someone had sketched Ben’s gauntlet in quite amazing detail. Hundreds of words were scribbled around the picture, but they were too jumbled and messy for Ben to make out.

  “But what does it do?” Ben asked, but before Wesley could answer, the workbench was torn in two. Tavish swung with his robotic arm. His fist clanked against the first of the monsters, but this seemed only to make it angry. It pounced on the blacksmith, who barely had time to throw the arm up for protection.

  Tavish clattered to the ground, the snarling Bear-Thing on top of him, pinning him down. The rest of the creatures poured out from the basement, snapping and growling, their black eyes now focused once more.

  “Wesley, the glove!” Ben bellowed. “Tell me what it does!”

  Wesley stepped up beside him. “This,” he said, and he jabbed a thumb against a spot on the back of the gauntlet.

  Ben’s arm went numb. His whole skeleton began to vibrate. He clamped his teeth together, and as a buzzing filled his skull he heard Wesley shout at Paradise and the mayor to find something to hold on to.

  His fingers tingled.

  His skin crawled.

  And something in the gauntlet went WHOOSH!

  Five beams of magical energy streamed from Ben’s fingertips. They met at a point halfway across the room and suddenly there was a doorway there – a rectangular hole in the air itself, filled with a crackling purp
le light.

  A wind whipped around the room. Ben’s boots began to slip on the flagstone floor and he found himself sliding towards the hole. A hand snagged him before the doorway could pull him through.

  “I’ve got you,” said Paradise, shouting to make herself heard over the roaring wind. She, Wesley and the mayor were clinging to the Automated Breakfast Producing Device. Wesley helped Paradise heave Ben over to the contraption, and they all clung tightly to it as the hole in space became a swirling purple whirlpool.

  “It’s a portal!” Wesley bellowed. “The glove opens portals!”

  “To where?” shouted Ben.

  “I have no idea,” Wesley admitted. “But not here, that’s the main thing!”

  They watched as, with a furious roar, the monster closest to the portal was dragged through it. They saw its jaws gnash and its claws slash, and then it was gone.

  Swords and hammers and horseshoes came spinning across the room and were sucked into the swirling vortex. The splintered remains of the workbench went next, followed by another of the Bear-Things. And another, and another.

  “It’s working!” Paradise cried, as the remaining Shark-Headed brutes were dragged through one by one. “It’s actually working!”

  Down on the floor, Tavish was still wrestling with one of the creatures. The weight of his metal arm kept him safe from the portal’s pull, but his shoulder was pinned and no matter how he tried to twist, he couldn’t shove the Bear-Thing off.

  With fumbling fingers, Tavish flicked a switch near the arm’s elbow. “You’re in trouble now,” he announced, as the arm began to fold in on itself and transform. With a hiss of hydraulics, the arm turned into a small umbrella, which immediately turned inside out in the wind.

  “No, hang on, not that one,” said Tavish, searching for a different switch.

  Bellowing with rage, the monster reared up. A paw swatted the umbrella arm out of the way. The Bear-Thing’s jaws opened wide, and then—