|
 It
was as dark as midnight. Josie was lying on the ground. All she could
hear was a steady drip, drip. She stretched out her hands and found she
was in a tunnel with slimy walls.
"Where
are you, Peter?" she called. Her voice echoed round her. Peter tried to
stand up and banged his head on the low ceiling. "Ouch!"
"Zip
zap zee!" Zzaap buzzed. "What’s this? Humans? How did they get this side
of the glass? That’s all I need!" He buzzed down the tunnels, lighting
the way for Peter. "Crouch, not ouch!" Then he lit the way for Josie.
"Crouch and touch!"
He led them to a deep, beautiful chamber. Green eyes hung from the walls.
The roof and the floor were spiked with rock-like icicles.
 "Where
are we?" Peter asked.
"We’re in the game!" Josie said. We’re actually in it!"
"So this must be the Dream Cave that Francis told us about! But how do
we get out?"
Victor Virus watched them from his lair.
"You won’t, not if I have anything to do with it."
"Zip zap zee," buzzed Zzaap to himself. "Before I zap this virus I’m going
to have to get these humans out of here. Trust me to get stuck in a word
game when I can’t even read!"
Three tunnels opened up in the cave. "Which way do we go?" asked Josie.
"Hmm, a gritty problem!" said a gravelly voice. A face appeared in the
rock, with eyes like green moss, and spiky brown teeth. "Rock Face, that’s
me," he chuckled. "You have to meet the Word Master before you can get
out. There are no short cuts!"
He yawned. Pebbles fell out of his mouth like loose teeth. "I need another
thousand years sleep," he said, and his face disappeared into cracks.
It was very confusing. All the tunnels looked the same. "Try this one,"
said Peter. He put a little mound of Rock Face’s pebbles at the mouth
of the nearest one and ran down it. A fall of rocks blocked the way.
 Victor
Virus was watching them from his lair. He laughed as they stumbled and
slipped in the darkness. He made bats swoop at them.
"This way, this way, my dears," he whispered, as he lured them to his
lair.
"There’s a big cave here. Let’s try it," Peter said. As they ran in, the
wall sealed up behind them.
"It’s like a hall," said Josie, gazing around. "A place for a ball."
"We’re trapped. Help! Let us out!"
"Don’t
shout," Josie said. "They’ll never hear us through these stones."
"We’ll die in here. Two heaps of bones." Peter stared at Josie. "Hey!
I talked in rhyme!"
"You seem to be doing it all the time!" Josie clapped her hand to her
mouth. "I did it too!"
A
blue light flashed and Zzaap swooped round the cave, humming and grinning
in his usual annoying way. "It’s not that bad," he buzzed. "You must find
a word that doesn’t have a rhyme."
They looked at each other, puzzled.
Zzaap buzzed again. "It really won’t take much detection, you’ll find
it in your own reflection."
With that he flew away again in search of Victor Virus.
"Our own reflection?" Josie wondered. "It must be a pool or a mirror -"
and then she saw a large mirror on the wall. "A mirror!" she said. "Peter,
does anything rhyme with mirror?"
They put out their hands to touch the reflection of their own faces and
walked right through.
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