But that still didn’t stop his mind from fizzing with suspicion as he pondered what exactly could have triggered the sudden change in Jason. Despite the Argonaut’s bluster back in the Underworld, Aries was sure that Jason would have been anything but keen to track down Medea. After all, he snorted, just look at the number of wretched gifts he’d insisted on bringing with them. Questions tumbled in his head. Why had he taken so long to find them? What had suddenly made him so keen to return to the quest when he arrived at the hotel? And just why was he being so nice to Alex, who Aries knew he’d seen as only a boy, a humble potter, a zoo-hand?
Up ahead, Jason was chopping down yet another thicket of prickle ferns with a bold flourish of Achilles’s sword. Aries frowned, barely recognising the let-someone-else-do-it, is-it-over-yet? knee-knocking fraud that he’d come to know and loathe over the centuries. Because ever since Jason had stepped, green-faced, from the plane, he’d thrashed through thickets like a formidable, one-man mashing machine, swishing and bragging in equal measure.
Clearly he was Up To Something. But what? And worse, thought Aries, swallowing hard, what sort of danger did that mean for him and Alex?
Aries paused, lifting up each front hoof in turn for a scatter of scorpions to scuttle over the newly hacked path, and stared as Jason ripped more broken branches out of his way.
‘I feel like Sisyphus,’ he announced. ‘Each time I cut down one swathe, there’s another, twice as tough behind it. Of course, he was an old man. Luckily, I’m young and fit and strong.’
‘And modest,’ muttered Aries, clomping on again hotly.
In front of him, Alex followed Jason, holding the GPS in one hand, the shield in the other. And in case you’re wondering, unlike everyone else, who was either swishing (Jason), map reading (Alex), scowling (Aries) or crumpling up her nose and moaning about the mouldering smell of the place (the Gorgon), the snakes were in their element. Clearly thrilled by what appeared to them to be an Eat-As-Much-As-You-Can-Serpent-Canteen, they lolled out blissfully, snapping up moths and fire ants, commenting like chefs judging a cookery contest.
Aries sighed.
Either side of them, trunks of tall trees festooned with lianas rose in dizzying green walls, their branches closing over their heads like a roof, as tall and shadowy as being inside the old Parthenon.
Except a lot smellier, greener and hotter.
Oh, and livelier, of course.
Having stayed up most of the night to read Hazel’s book from cover to cover, Alex was rapidly becoming something of an expert about the rainforest. He’d already pointed out a bird-eating tarantula crawling up a tree like a furry glove towards a small red finch, and a rotted tree-hollow filled with velvety fruit bats. Five minutes ago, he’d been raving about a hulking great snake, wallowing in a slick of muddy water, that looked just like Drako’s grand-nephew but that Alex said was actually an anaconda, capable of dislocating its jaw and eating Aries whole, making the ram certain that this Amazon place was even worse than the stinky old forest back at Kolkis where his Fleece had hung in the Sacred Oak. Sure, it had been a miserable, squelching smog-bog, but at least nothing there was likely to sting, bite or wrestle you to death for looking at it the wrong way. Better still, he’d only had to endure Jason’s company for one, albeit dreadful, night there. Not like now. He grunted, feeling his heart sink faster than one of the coconuts that every so often plunged from the trees into the river below as Jason began yet another recollection.
‘Reminds me of the time I fought the bone men!’ he declared.
SWOOSH!
‘Aiming for the knees, the neck, the ribs!’
SWISH!
‘Alex!’ yelled Aries, certain that a large and rather rubbery millipede had just landed on his forehead. ‘Something’s got me!’ He jerked his horns backwards to fling it off.
Turning back, Alex waded back through the hip-high undergrowth to take a look. ‘I can’t see anything,’ he said gently. ‘Perhaps you shouldn’t have eaten the hat I made you.’
SLICE!
‘Clatter, clatter! Exploding bones!’ cried Jason.
‘Will you make me another?’ asked Aries, glancing at Jason swiping down another thicket of green. ‘With ear plugs?’
‘Oh, Aries,’ said Alex, rubbing the ram’s head. He reached out and broke off a nearby palm leaf and began twisting it deftly. ‘I thought you’d be pleased! Look at him – he’s really into his stride now! We could never have made this sort of progress without him, could we?’
Aries shrugged glumly as Alex dropped the cone-shaped hat between his horns and set it straight. Jason was certainly strong, he couldn’t argue with that. After all, he was made of muscles, wasn’t he? They ran down his arms, his legs, between his ears …
Alex looked Aries in the eyes.
‘I know it’s hard for you but we have to think of ourselves as a team now.’
‘A team?’ spluttered Aries. He shook his head furiously.
‘Alex, Jason doesn’t do teams!’
‘Aries!’ sighed Alex.
‘I mean it,’ said Aries, peering along the path to where the Argonaut had stopped chopping and was looking back at him. ‘I know you don’t believe anything I say about him, but he doesn’t! He only does looking after Jason.’
‘Is there a problem?’ called Jason.
Giving Aries one last exasperated look, Alex stood up, shook his head and ran back to the Argonaut. Aries watched him, feeling his spirits sink even lower as Jason slapped the boy cheerfully on the back and looked at the map with him. The sight of the boy’s dark head leaning close to the Argonaut’s blond one as they nodded together, discussing the route, felt like a jag of glass in his side.
‘Hurry up, Aries!’ shouted Alex, disappearing behind Jason through the latest hole in the undergrowth.
Aries thumped on, unhappiness weighing him down even more than the ridiculous lyre and the thunderbolt as Jason started gabbling about yet another episode from his past.
‘“Ooh, Atalanta!”’ Jason’s voice floated back to him, about as welcome as a bott fly. ‘“Don’t be worrying yourself with the Stymphalian Birds,” I told her. “Let me have the arrows!” P-tow! Kerchow! Should have seen me …!’
‘Ooh, Atalanta!’ mimicked Aries, trying to cheer himself up by swinging his bottom and fluttering his eyelashes and ears for good measure. ‘You’d better fire the arrows! You know my aim is rubbish. Last time I tried, Herakles was hopping around holding his backside for a week!’
Which is when he realised that Jason had stopped and was now glaring back at him, framed by a hole in a screen of prickle figs. Sweat slicked his long hair against his neck and glistened over his face.
‘What’s that, Aries?’ He walked towards him holding out the sword teasingly. ‘Did I hear you say you wanted to take over? Only you seem a bit ragged to me. And I’m not sure that hat is doing anything for you. Perhaps you’re finding a real quest harder than that little stroll you took round Britannia back in the summer?’
‘Why?’ replied Aries, stomping up the path towards him and feeling anger curdle in every one of his four stomachs. ‘Are you finding it harder than that pleasure cruise you took on the Argo?’
‘Aries!’ hissed Alex, shaking his head angrily.
The Argonaut stuck his hands on his hips. ‘That was an epic voyage!’
‘Really?’ said Aries. ‘Let’s see … An enchanted vessel made of magical wood and rowed by a crew of fifty strong Greeks. Sounds pretty cushy to me.’
‘Not now!’ growled Alex, walking back towards Aries.
Except that Aries wasn’t to be stopped. ‘Not to mention the protection of several goddesses,’ continued Aries, booting a rather large scorpion off the path. ‘Athena and Hera clucking round Olympus like a pair of mother hens. Even Aphrodite telling her little boy Eros to fire a love arrow into Medea’s heart so that she’d do everything for you, all topped off with big wet witchy kisses! And wasn’t she useful, eh? Stealing into the glade and––’
>
‘And what?’ interrupted Jason quickly. His ant-bitten face flared. ‘Your trouble is that you’re jealous. Rams don’t get to be heroes in Greece, do they? They don’t get the help of the gods, or the fame and the glory and, let me see, the statues. You know, there’s a reason for that. It’s because they’re stupid farm animals!’
‘Stop it!’ shouted Alex, wincing at the Argonaut’s florid face as Aries drew himself up to his full height, tilting his horns defiantly in the air.
Jason ignored him. ‘Just smelly old windbags that get sacrificed to celebrate the real heroes’ victories!’
‘How dare you!’ spat Aries, ready to charge as a sudden chord of music rippled through the trees and he felt a shiver chill his skin.
‘Or wh––?’
Jason stopped abruptly and listened. Around them, the forest seemed to shimmer. Now, as the music floated into the trees, the monkeys high above ceased their chattering, and the frogs’ incessant hoots, whoops and burps melted into a trembling harmony. Scarlet birds swooped from their airy reaches into the unfamiliar gloom of the forest floor, to settle on spindly branches and tilt their heads, curious at the strange and wonderful sound. For a moment, even Aries felt as though he’d been magicked to a sunny Greek meadow dotted with trees bowed down by luscious ripe olives.
‘We’re in this together!’ said Alex, immediately whisking Aries’ imagined countryside and, worst of all, olives away. He thumped past him and buckled the lyre back on to the harness. ‘And we have to start acting like one. We need to forget our differences and start to trust one another. Don’t we, Aries?’
Aries curled his lip, choosing to fix his attention on a rather dizzy-looking snake lolling from a nearby branch, its tongue dangling, clearly mesmerized by the memory of the sound. Despite being yet another creature that could probably kill him six different ways before breakfast, it still made him feel less uneasy than the prospect of ever relying on Jason.
‘Jason?’ said Alex.
The Argonaut shrugged lightly. ‘First rule of being on a quest,’ he said. ‘Stick together.’ He turned back and began to hack away at the next thicket.
‘I know it’s hard, Aries,’ whispered Alex, as the sound of toppling bamboo filled the understory. ‘But you have to try.’ Lifting the harness briefly from the ram’s back, he wiped the sweat away with one of Penelope’s embroideries and glanced through the trail of broken plants at Jason, whose sword was a silvery blur, arcing against the green. Alex’s face glowed with admiration. ‘Just think, the rate Jason’s going we should be there by this time tomorrow. Then we can get Rose to safety, help Jason deliver the statue to Medea and ––’ Suddenly, he gasped and his eyes widened in alarm. ‘Jason! No!’
Alex’s yell exploded the jungle around them as he turned and raced down the hacked path. Parrots screeched from the treetops, monkeys clattered away through the branches.
Aries blinked. Ahead of them, Jason was swinging the sword towards something white and oval, tucked out of his sight behind a bower of red flowers. The ram gaped as the boy threw himself forwards and grabbed Jason’s arm, tackling him to the ground, sending them both sprawling sideways into a bank of ferns.
‘What the ––?’ demanded Jason furiously.
‘That!’ said Alex, pointing above them.
In the eerie silence that now enveloped the jungle, Aries clopped through the undergrowth to join them. For a moment all three of them regarded what appeared to be a gigantic paper lantern hanging overhead. It reminded Aries of the ones the ancient Athenians used to carry through the city streets to celebrate Athena’s birthday, only bigger. Its walls gleamed in the fading light, but unlike the goddess’s lamps it pulsed with dark shapes squirming inside. Now, in the stillness, Aries’ ears twitched anxiously, hearing a low angry buzzing from inside.
‘Killer wasps,’ said Alex, his voice thin with shock as he sat up and brushed the leaf litter off his shoulders. ‘I saw pictures of them in Hazel’s book.’
Aries felt a shiver of fear, watching as a single copper-coloured wasp, as long as a finger, landed on the skin of the nest and skittered around the rim.
‘They can sting a man to death in seconds,’ said Alex, reaching up to lace his hand around Aries’ neck. ‘Or a ram.’
Jason wiped his brow, visibly shaken.
‘That’s why we can’t keep arguing,’ said Alex, clambering back to his feet. ‘We have to start looking out for each other. Right?’
Behind him, Jason scowled, irritably shaking the leaf litter from his hair. At least until Alex turned round to face him, whereupon he switched on his dazzling smile and nodded in agreement.
‘Like a team,’ he said, playfully punching Alex on the shoulder.
37 Daedalus’s flying machines comprised pairs of giant wings, made of wax and feathers, which you strapped to your arms while you ran round flapping in an effort to take off. Going too near the sun and having the wax melt was rarely a problem. Looking like an oversized turkey with windy indigestion was.
MAGIC MOMENTS
Magic is much more exciting than sewing a superhero outfit for your dog, juggling eggs or making a pet dragon out of a toilet roll. And it’s way more thrilling than stringing one clay bead after another onto a piece of wire. Which Rose might have told you, if she hadn’t been, well, so busy stringing one clay bead after another onto a piece of wire.
A couple of hours after her lesson with Medea, she was sitting cross-legged, hot and horribly frustrated, surrounded by the other women from the village, in the molucca, trying to make Fair Trade necklaces. Snatching a glance out through the doorway, where she’d chosen to sit so that she could still see her father slumped beneath the tree, she blew her sticky fringe off her forehead and tried again to jab at the tiny red ball, only for it to slip through her fingers and shoot on to the floor to lie dismally with all the others. Next to her, a young woman in a printed shift dress looked up and smiled sympathetically, the sun glowing against her coffee-coloured skin as she handed the bead back again.
Rose forced a smile.
It was all very well, she grumbled inwardly, squinting at the minute hole in the bead, for Medea and Eduardo to agree with the chief that she’d help make Fair Trade earrings in return for staying in the village until she was stronger, but how on earth was she supposed to concentrate on something so dull and annoying after what she’d achieved that morning? Dazzled by her own magic, every bone in her body had ached to practise more, to use the remaining potion to try and turn Medea’s stuffed toad into one that would hop around the hut, or zap an iguana back into an egg. All of which made it feel like a punch in the stomach when the sorceress had then flatly refused to let Rose try anything else, because she said she had things of her own to do. Worse, she’d then promptly marched Rose over to the molucca, sorted a bowl of fish stew for her breakfast, sat her down with the other women in the jewellery workshop and then, half an hour later, stomped out of her hut, pink-faced, into the jungle.
Leaving Rose fretful and impatient, her mind crammed with squirming caterpillars and blue butterflies, with Egyptian bangles and tales of ancient Amazon chiefs dusted in gold and flipping over and again back to her last glimpse of the Reversal Potion, abandoned and glowing darkly in its clay bowl at the end of the bench, twinkling like an oasis in the desert.
Lifting her head, she sighed, watching her father trace patterns in the dust with his finger.
Then she focused her attention on the sorceress’s empty hut.
‘Rose Pottersby-Weir!’ She could almost hear her mother’s disgusted voice scolding her for even thinking of sneaking into someone else’s house when they were out.
She turned back to the beads, feeling more annoyed than ever, certain that trainee sorceresses didn’t follow the same rules as everyone else. For a moment, she wondered what Medea would have been like at her age. She couldn’t imagine her stringing necklaces patiently if her Aunt Circe had just shown her how to turn sailors into pigs. Sorceresses, she was sure, were never he
ld back by nice manners and doing as they were told.38 Not when they were able to do far more spectacular things. Like sneaking in and using the leftover potion on their fathers.
Rose felt a jolt of pure excitement at the idea. Dare she? Actually creep into the deserted hut and steal it, together with the bangle, and go down to the creek? A sharp thrill of fear swept through her, jangling her nerves, and yet the idea remained, fizzing like a sparkler in her mind. Wasn’t it worth any risk to see her father’s smile, even if only for a few moments? Exhilarated and shocked, she could hardly believe that she was even thinking of such an awesome thing to do. But she still found herself flinging the beads into the pot and standing up anyway. Then, rubbing her hands, damp with nervous sweat, on her shorts, she picked her way through the other women, stepped out of the hut and walked quickly over the dusty plaza towards Medea’s hut.
Thanks to the understanding spell, Medea’s obscurity charm, routinely flicked back on like a house alarm when she’d left the hut that morning, no longer worked on Rose. Now, stepping through the door, the pot was the first thing she saw, standing exactly where they’d left it earlier that day.
Me, I’d have noticed the scrunching noise, crumpling and crushing, like someone screwing up a big sheet of brown paper. Which is what Rose heard next, and discovered that it was coming from the branch, newly sprung from the table that morning, or, more accurately, the termites that now engulfed it. For a moment, she felt her stomach lurch at the sight of the squirming insects, thick as treacle, pouring over the fresh wood, the leaves and the glistening sap. Then she recalled Eduardo telling her that termites were kings of the rainforest, feasting daily on the leaf litter and wood, and felt her shock melt away, realising that it was hardly surprising that they’d been drawn indoors by a delicacy as rare as English oak.
Rampage! Page 16