Oliver and the Sea Monkeys by Philip Reeve

Author:Philip Reeve
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2016-07-12T04:00:00+00:00

As the Thurlstone vanished, all Cliff’s newfound hopefulness drained away. The fight went out of him. Iris and Oliver felt him slump. They couldn’t blame him. Poor old giant! So much of his golden sand and drifts of flotsam had been washed away when he stooped to fetch the Water Mole. Now that it was gone, his stony head was even barer than before.

“Now what shall we do?” asked Iris.

“Go after that Thurlstone, of course!” shouted Oliver. “Quick, Cliff! Follow him!”

Cliff lifted his cave mouth out of the waves to say, “What’s the point? He’s beaten me.” Then he subsided again.

“You can’t just let him win!” said Oliver. “Is he the sort of island who deserves to win the Night of the Seawigs? And as for that Stacey de Lacey…! Go after them, and get the Water Mole back!”

“How?” rumbled Cliff. “They have an army of monkeys.”

“He’s got a point,” said Iris.

“Then go to the Hallowed Shallows!” insisted Oliver. “Tell everyone what Stacey and his Thurlstone did….”

“They won’t listen to me,” said Cliff wearily. “They’ll be too busy admiring the Thurlstone’s marvelous seawig and laughing at me.”

“So what are you going to do?” Iris asked.

Cliff sighed. “I’m going to settle,” he decided.

“No!” yelled Oliver.

“I should have done it years ago,” Cliff went on. “What’s the point of all this tramping around, collecting stuff? I’m going to stand here and grow roots and forget I ever was a rambler. I’ll become just an island. That’s all I’m good for. I’m useless. Finished. Washed up.” He sank back slowly into the sea.

“No!” shouted Oliver again. He did a dance of frustration, shin-deep in the wavelets that washed Cliff’s shores. But no amount of stamping or shouting would make Cliff come up again. Oliver remembered the sad, lifeless, settled isles that Iris had shown him on the way to the Sarcastic Sea. He imagined the sand and silt slowly piling up around Cliff’s feet.

“Oh dear,” said Iris, with salt tears dripping off her chin. “I think he means it.”

“Now look what you’ve done,” sniffed Mr. Culpeper, fussily rearranging his nest, which had been terribly knocked about by those swarming sea monkeys. “If you hadn’t dragged us here in search of that stupid wreck, this would never have happened. It’s all your fault.”

“Well, I’m not going to let Stacey de Lacey win,” said Oliver. Years of exploring had taught him that you don’t solve problems by sitting around complaining about them. You have to do something. That’s how his mom and dad had saved him from that Komodo dragon. That’s how they’d escaped from the dungeons of M’bumbi M’bumbi. He struck an explorer-ish pose on the shore and said, “I’m going to go after that Thurlstone and show it that it can’t just go around snitching other people’s shipwrecks and kidnapping moms and dads!”

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