Chimera Book One

Chapter Seventeen

‘Slow down!’ whispered Jamie.

‘There’s no time,’ Kyp whispered back, leading the other boy onwards and upwards through more dank passageways.  The dried mud covering their skin was starting to flake, rays of Elsewhere Light flashing from their hands and faces. Desperate metamorphs pursued them.

Kyp had another reason for hurrying.  How long now until he forgot all about his promise to Atticus to reunite the Bean twins?  How long before he looked upon Jamie with confusion?  How long before he became a lacunatic, a stranger even to himself?

On and on the two boys continued, passing through tunnels so cramped, they had to crawl on their hands and knees. 

‘Where now?’ asked Jamie, as they arrived at a dead end. 

Kyp pointed at the honeycomb of junk above their heads.

‘This time we go up.’

The two boys hadn’t been climbing long, when the whole heap began to quake.   They heard the roar of shovelisks coming from above.  The old wooden sledge on which Kyp was balancing fell away suddenly as a rift opened below, leaving him hanging from a length of hosepipe.  For one heart-stopping moment, Kyp thought Jamie was going to fall, as the ladder he was climbing tipped backwards into the rift.  Fortunately, the ladder wedged across the fissure, Jamie dangling from one of its rungs.  Above, the shovelisks continued their assault on the rubbish heap, the walls of the rift heaving and shedding debris.  Kyp looked up and saw something that made his blood run cold; suspended precariously in a net of cabling was a rusted washing machine.  With each new tremor, the washing machine slipped a little further from its harness.  In a matter of seconds it would come crashing down, smashing the ladder into matchsticks, and Jamie with it.

‘Hold on!’ said Kyp, lowering himself as fast as he dared down the length of hosepipe.  Jamie had seen the washing machine too.

Ping!

The sound of cables snapping.   

Ping! Ping! Ping!

Kyp waited for the terrible rush of air, the awful smashing sound.

When nothing happened, he risked an upward glance to see the washing machine dangling from a single cable.  Kyp reached his hand out.

‘Take it!’

Jamie shook his head.

‘Take my hand, now!’

‘I can’t!’

‘You must!’

‘I can’t reach!’

‘Stretch your fingers! You have to -’

Ping!

The washing machine dropped, the ladder in splinters, but Jamie was alive, swinging from Kyp’s arm, the washing machine missing them both and clattering to destruction below.

The two boys began to rise, the hosepipe drawn upwards in a series of jerks until they were reeled onto an outcrop of compacted rubbish.  Kyp and Jamie stared up at their rescuer.

‘Sir Regulus!’ gasped Kyp. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Coming with you,’ he replied, stepping out from the coils of hosepipe he’d been anchoring between his hand and his feet.  Hanging from his waist was a long metal scabbard, his sword inside it.  He helped the two boys to their feet.  ‘If you stand any chance of getting out of here, you’re going to need my help.’

An unexpected clattering noise made everyone jump, as Bertram tumbled from his hiding place.

‘Kyp and Jamie are going to need our help,’ he said.