The Island of Destiny (23 page)

‘I can't dig this time,' he said in agitation. ‘The ground is solid rock.' He looked back at the entrance passage, perplexed. ‘There's one way in and one way out … or is there?'

He recalled something Mr Tribble had said on the opposite mountain.

‘I may be looking,' Whisker thought aloud, ‘but am I actually seeing?'

He considered the facts. ‘I'm in a circular room. My instructions are to turn something clockwise. There is no wheel so what else is there?'

‘Me!' he exclaimed.

He took another look at the symbols.

‘The twisting arrow on the key appears to turn 270 degrees clockwise,' he considered. ‘If I face the door and spin my body the required three-quarters of a revolution I end up – there!'

He pointed to a spot on the wall with his finger. Without taking his eyes off the wall, he hurried over and began rapping on the rock with his knuckles, searching for a hollow spot or a hidden lever. He reached up high, he bent down low, he banged and he kicked, but couldn't locate anything.

‘Ok,' he said, catching his breath. ‘Am I still missing something?'

‘Of course!' he exclaimed, slapping himself in the forehead. ‘The symbols need to be reversed. It's 270 degrees anticlockwise.'

Whisker returned to the centre of the room and repeated the process, turning the opposite direction. He walked over to the correct side of the wall and studied the rocks with his eyes.

In the light of the glow worm, he saw what he was looking for. An almost-invisible crack surrounded a small circle of rock halfway up the wall.

Brimming with excitement, Whisker placed both paws on the circle and pushed as hard as he could. The rock slowly moved into the wall.

Whisker heard a rumbling sound and looked over his shoulder. The walls and the floor of the cave were motionless. He kept pushing and the grinding sound continued.

He looked again, this time directing his eyes beyond the cave to the passage through which he had entered. A rough rock door swung open in the wall near the top step.

Clever move,
Whisker thought.
No one would think to look there.

The door ground to a halt, fully open. Whisker removed his paws from the circle of stone. The door immediately began to close.

‘Drat!' Whisker cried, jumping back from the wall.

The door appeared to be closing quicker than it had opened. Whisker spun on his heel and sprinted from the cave. Without giving it a second thought, he took a flying leap and threw himself through the narrow gap – barely scraping through.

With an echoing
THUD …
D…
D …
the door slammed behind him, the rumbling echo of the door reverberating through the stones of the mountain.

Whisker stood up and checked on the health of his passenger. The glow worm flickered on and off several times before resuming its steady glow.

Relieved he hadn't caused any permanent light-damage to the little creature, Whisker felt the sides of the door, searching for a release lever or another stone button. He found nothing – he was a captive in the treasure chamber.

It took Whisker a moment to slow his pounding heart as the reality of the situation sank in. Trying to remain calm, he turned his back on the door and slowly looked around him.

In the pale blue light, he made out a long wall stretching to his left. To his right, he saw nothing but blackness. Curious, he took a step closer and realised he was standing on the edge of a deep precipice. The faint sound of running water far below told him it was a long way to fall.

He pulled himself away from the edge and moved to the safety of the wall, running his eye along its rough surface. Several paces ahead of him, a dark shape jutted out of the rock.

Could it be?
he thought excitedly.

He tiptoed along the wall. The echo of the stone door still rang in his ears, but his mind was focused on one thing: the object in front of him.

He drew closer and the shape became clearer. It had semi-circular sides and a curved top. Its surface resembled rusted metal. Whisker reached the strange object and realised it was the lid of a mighty chest, built into the stone wall of the cavern. In the centre of the lid was a small keyhole.

A myriad of thoughts, feelings and memories surged through Whisker's mind. His tail danced in delight. He had done it. He had located the fabled treasure. One turn of the key and the treasure would be his, his destiny would be defined – his questions would be answered. He almost imagined his parents and sister jumping out of the chest the moment he opened it. He would finally have his life back. There would be no more fighting, no more narrow escapes and no more cats.

He removed the key from his pocket, moving closer to the chest – and stopped. Something held him back. It wasn't doubt, or uncertainty, or even fear – it was the rumbling sound in his ears.

Echoes don't last that long,
he thought.

The sound grew louder and clearer. Whisker looked further along the wall to where a huge stone archway stood at the end of the chamber. A deep growling sound resonated from the blackness beyond and with it came the terrible stench of rotting fish. Whisker knew he wasn't alone.

He raised his startled eyes to the top of the archway. Carved into the uppermost stone was the symbol of a paw. It wasn't the right paw of royalty; it was the left paw of the great brown bear.

Whisker's tail froze in fear. The rest of his body didn't. Frantically, he wedged the King's Key into the keyhole.

My only place to hide,
he thought desperately.

The key slid past the first tooth and stopped.

‘What?' he gasped.

He tried jiggling the key. It didn't move. By now, the growls of the bear had risen to a volume that rivalled thunder.

Whisker removed the key and peered into the hole. A small shard of stone lay wedged beneath the surface. He tried to prise it out with his finger but the rock stuck fast.

The growling suddenly stopped and Whisker looked up. The huge furry shape of a bear filled the archway, its broad shoulders almost touching the stones on either side. It sniffed the air and tilted its head to face the terrified treasure thief.

Whisker knew the time to hide had come and gone – the bear had caught his scent.

‘Cursed onions,' he hissed under his breath.

The bear lowered itself onto all fours and cautiously crept towards Whisker, continuing to sniff the dank air of the cavern. Whisker slipped the key into his pocket and inched away from the metal lid.

‘I-I-I w-w-was just leaving, Mr Bear,' he stammered. ‘S-s-see, y-y-your treasure is still h-h-here. I haven't t-t-touched a thing. I s-s-swear.'

The bear either couldn't understand his language or took offense to Whisker's stammering excuses. It raised itself onto two powerful legs and, bearing its huge canine teeth, let out an almighty
GRRRR.

Whisker was sprayed with fishy slobber.

‘AAAAAR!' he cried as the bear slashed his claws through the air.

The brown beast advanced, taking wild swipes at the petrified rat. Whisker stumbled back, struggling to stay out of paw's reach.

He tried to imagine the bear as a giant koala, in need of a friendly hug, but the positive thinking didn't work. The bear drew closer, one growling step at a time, herding Whisker into a corner.

With a desperate look over his shoulder, Whisker realised he had nowhere to go. There was a solid wall to his left, a sheer drop to his right, a door that wouldn't open behind him and the biggest of all bears towering above him. The only thing Whisker had in his favour was his size. He kept his small frame low to the ground and the bear's powerful paws swept harmlessly over the back of his head.

The bear was a quick learner. It abandoned swiping and turned to thumping. Hammer-like blows pounded the ground around Whisker. He frantically darted and weaved between huge paws, escaping crushing blows by mere millimetres.

Fear fuelled his mind and he knew he must act quickly if he was ever going to survive.

Good offense is the best defence,
he recalled.
You must attack.

With the bear's next blow, Whisker scurried to the very edge of the precipice. The bear took a step to its left, spreading its legs, and raised its paw for the knock-out blow.

Whisker seized his opportunity and charged at the bear. He didn't need a weapon; all he needed was size and speed. Before the bear knew what was happening, Whisker had squeezed his tiny body between its legs and was racing along the wall towards the giant archway.

The bear roared in fury as Whisker bounded through the archway and sprinted down a rough passage, with the glow worm clinging on for dear life.

There's got to be another way out,
he thought, increasing his pace.

He came to a fork in the passage. A steep tunnel descended sharply to the left, the other rose gently to the right. There were no markings to indicate which direction he should take.

Whisker took a guess and chose right. He took one step into the tunnel and stopped. Directly ahead of him, the tunnel divided into three.

‘We're about to get hopelessly lost,' he groaned.

He could hear the bear on his tail and knew he had to keep moving. He also needed to find his way back to the treasure.

‘The pencil lead,' he gasped.

He reached into his bag and pulled out Pete's broken red lead. It was stuck to something squishy and smelly: Fred's mouldy cheese.

No wonder the bear can smell me,
he thought.

He drew a rough arrow on the wall with the lead, then unwrapped the cheese from its cloth and hurled it down the left tunnel. Hoping the bear would take his bait, he sprinted up the right tunnel to where the passage split into three.

He caught a waft of the foul fish smell from the centre passage and followed it through, marking the wall with the lead as he went.

The fish had to get in here somehow,
he reasoned.
Maybe the smell will lead me out of the mountain?

The sound of the bear grew fainter as he continued. Whisker knew his own onion odour would at least be masked by the fishy smell, which seemed to be growing worse by the minute.

He followed several more passages and stumbled into a small cave, its floor littered with a pile of dried bones, decomposing fish heads and the bodies of half-chewed salmon.

‘The bear's lair,' Whisker mumbled in horror, covering his mouth to block the atrocious smell.

He frantically scanned the walls of the cave, hoping to discover a passage to the outside world. The walls were a seamless curve of solid rock. There were no visible openings and no narrow cracks to squeeze through. It was clear he had reached a dead end.

He turned to leave, hoping another tunnel would lead him out of the mountain, when a large growl rumbled down the passage.

Whisker's fur stood on end, his tail twisted into a knot. The bear was right outside the cave and he was trapped.

Salmon Stew

Whisker stared at the rotting carcasses of salmon, trout and other unfortunate river dwellers strewn across the floor. Eyeballs stared back at him, dead, cold, expressionless. Whisker knew he might soon be joining them. He could take his last stand as a noble warrior and face the bear with his paws raised and head held high … or …

A desperate idea entered Whisker's head. No self-respecting warrior would even consider it, but Whisker wasn't a warrior, he was a Pie Rat and Pie Rats did things the sneaky way.

Whispering ‘lights out,' to the glow worm, he grabbed his nose and dived, headfirst, into the salmon stew.

He wriggled his body under a fin, stuck his foot in an open mouth and covered his head and shoulders with dried scales. The light of the glow worm dimmed and Whisker laid perfectly still, waiting in utter darkness.

The bear entered the room, shuffling slowly over the stones, its huge, black nose sniffing the air.

CRUNCH!
With a casual step to its right, it crushed a salmon skull with its paw.

Whisker tried not to squirm, desperately hoping his skull wasn't next.

The bear stepped further into the pile of fish scraps, examining a salmon head near Whisker's tail.

Don't twitch,
Whisker silently pleaded.
Don't move …

His tail, for once, stayed as still as a cobra in a coma.

The bear lingered near him a moment longer, then, taking one last look at its horrid horde, let out an annoyed grunt and headed out of the cave.

Whisker remained motionless, listening to the sounds of the bear descending a side tunnel. He waited until the scuffles and growls had faded completely and dragged himself from the rotting heap.

‘What is it with me and bad smells?' he muttered, plucking a salmon scale from his black bandanna.

The glow worm responded by switching itself on again.

Whisker tiptoed from the cave, continuing along the passage, until he reached the side tunnel the bear had taken. For a moment, he considered following it down – on the off chance it would lead him to freedom – but in the end, he decided that pursuing his pursuer was hardly the wisest of moves and opted to take the next tunnel instead.