Chimera Book One

Chapter Fifteen

The metamorphs turned and ran from the cave into a tunnel.  The two boys sprinted after them, dodging debris and geysers of stinking water. The tunnel came down behind them, driving them onwards. 

At last, the violent vibrations ceased and slowing finally, the carousel stallion waited for Kyp and Jamie to catch up.    

‘Nobody wants you here,’ it told them, as exhausted, the two boys flopped to their knees. ‘At the very least disguise your Elsewhere Lights.  You won’t be safe otherwise.’

Kyp watched the carousel stallion gallop away.   He looked at Jamie and saw he was close to tears.  Kyp dug his fingers into the tunnel wall and pulled from it a moist chunk, which he rubbed between his palms to make a soft, sticky paste.

‘Here,’ he said, daubing Jamie’s cheeks with it, using the paste to cover up the bright golden chinks of his Elsewhere Light.

‘What about you?’ asked Jamie and for a moment Kyp was puzzled, but then he remembered his own Elsewhere Light, which he couldn’t see but others assured him was there.

Their camouflage completed, the two boys continued along the tunnel until they found themselves on a curving pathway overlooking a circular quarry, home to what looked like a series of giant anthills, vast cones of junk formed into high-rise dwellings.

Kyp and Jamie looked at each other.  They didn’t recognise themselves.  With their faces caked in mud, they looked like camouflaged soldiers preparing for battle.

 ‘I don’t want to,’ said Jamie, looking down at the city, his eyes huge and fearful in their mask of dirt.

Kyp nodded, but what choice did they have?

When at last they reached the quarry floor, the two boys sneaked through the narrow network of streets running between the bases of the great cones.   They kept to the shadows, unnerved by the silence of the city. Nothing chattered or laughed.  Everything was a dismal grey-brown colour, the atmosphere humid and thin.  Kyp craved fresh air and fluffy white clouds.   His hand went to his pocket to find the scrap of blue wallpaper.  He tried to see the sky, the garden with its sunflowers, the view from the branches of the climbing tree.  He waited for the magician to take his place on the stage and produce silken reams of sunlit moments from his pockets, but the magician didn’t come.  This dark, desolate city seemed to make imagining such things impossible, or was it the fugue, sifting darkness over his memories like soot?

The two boys walked in silence, their mood despondent. They found a deserted alleyway in which to rest.  Kyp remembered the chocolates he’d picked from the settement stalactite in the Bedrock Catacombs.  He presented them to Jamie. 

‘They’re a bit squashed,’ he apologised.

Jamie looked longingly at the chocolates, but shook his head.

‘Go on.  We need to keep our strength up.’

Jamie put his head in his hands and gave a small, desperate sigh.

‘I know you’re worried about your brother, but I don’t think he’s in danger exactly. Atticus said Madame Chartreuse takes children because they’re special to her, special like treasure.  You might lock treasure up, but you keep it safe.’

Jamie thought about this. Kyp thought about it too, only he was thinking about the old silver locket he’d lost in the garden and how everything that happened after that was his own stupid fault, and now he gave a small, desperate sigh of his own.

Jamie took a chocolate finally and unwrapped it, eyeing it with relish.  He popped it in his mouth and chewed.  He made a mmming sound, followed quickly by a startled gasp, as a small, sturdy-looking pig appeared suddenly through a concealed trapdoor at the boys’ feet.  The pig was baby blue, decorated with white and yellow daisies.  It had big, round eyes, long eyelashes, a neat button-like snout and a spiralling tail, which twitched as the pig sniffed out the remaining chocolates in Kyp’s hand. With quick, wet licks of its tongue, the pig proceeded to gobble them out of his palm.  The sensation made Kyp snort with laughter, until Jamie said, ‘Kyp! Your Elsewhere Light!’