He snorted, wondering at the Argonaut’s desperation.
Until he heard a low, curious grunt.
Twisting his head back, Aries was startled to see the stirrer flip out what appeared to be two metal wings and flap over the rock, looping and diving, stitching the night with a fizzle of orange. It dipped and twirled, fluttering in circles and spiralling down and around the Guardian’s head. Fascinated, the giant caiman forgot all about Aries and Jason and began chasing it, lurching up and snapping at it, like the world’s ugliest kitten chasing a dazzling dragonfly.
Paddle,
Whir,
Snap!
Paddle,
Whir,
Snap!
Aries lifted his head up from the creeper. ‘About my statue at the zoo,’ he said, one eye on the Guardian as it flapped a webbed-foot after the stirrer.
‘What about it?’ demanded Jason, tearing uselessly at the creeper around his other foot.
Paddle,
Whir,
Snap!
‘I want you to stop drawing moustaches on it and hanging targets from its rump.’
‘All right,’ gasped Jason. ‘Just hurry up.’
‘And no more funny hats?’
‘No more,’ said Jason.
Aries chewed again.
Paddle,
Whir,
Snap!
Paddle,
Whir,
Snap!
‘And,’ said Aries, spitting out the greenery, ‘you promise to tell the truth about what happened on this quest?’
For a moment Jason hesitated and Aries took a step backwards.
‘Yes,’ spluttered Jason, hopelessly yanking at the creeper on his foot. ‘Anything!’
Aries chewed again.
They were nearly there.
In just a few short seconds they’d be able to get down from this terrible place, before the Guardian noticed.
Paddle,
Whir,
Snap!
Paddle,
Whir,
CRUNCH
Tinkle tinkle …
Duh?
Aries’ ears shot up.
Beside him, Jason straightened up, hopping unsteadily, still tied by one ankle to the boulder.
Together, they stared down the slope.
The stirrer lay in a mangled heap on the rock. Its wings were buckled, its emerald glass shattered. The Guardian snuffled dismally at it, prodding it with its snout, trying to make it fly again. Then, dejected, it swiped the scatter of green glass with its foot and looked up sulkily at Aries and Jason. A flash of moonlight twinkled in the depths of its glassy, disappointed eyes. Just before it shot up on to its legs and thundered up the slope towards them.
Oh dear.
I suppose you’ve arrived down here on the lagoon shore hoping for some cheers and celebration about Alex having dispatched Medea to the Underworld.
So, this is going to be a shock.
But you see, that huge flash of light wasn’t the Erinyes blasting out of the statue at all.
And the high-pitched yell wasn’t even remotely triumphant.
In fact, well, perhaps it’s best if you simply read on.
Surprise, they say, is the best form of attack. And so it was a great pity that as far as surprise went, Alex’s and Wat’s attack didn’t have enough to cover a gnat’s ankles. As soon as Aries had turned towards the bluff, they’d sprinted heads-down across the shore towards the sorceress, aiming to topple her like a poisonous skittle. But as they were closing in on her, just as they were in tantalising statue-slamming distance, she’d spotted Aries clattering up the rock face and, immediately realising that she was under attack, she’d spun round. In her hand she held what looked like a golden eagle, the first piece of El Dorado gold that the lead caiman had brought her. And as Alex and Wat ran towards her, she glimpsed the Nemesis statue, eyes narrowing as if understanding the danger (which, thanks to Jason, she did). Raising the eagle high over her head, she’d unleashed its terrifying power.
A brilliant flash of bone-grey light shot through the air, sending Alex stumbling backwards. He yelled – yes, I’m afraid that was the high-pitched cry Aries had heard – and dived out of the way as what seemed to be an octopus of streaming light loomed up in front of them, crackling and spitting, wreathing its ghostly legs out into the darkness around them. Its tendrils unfurled to curl around his neck, chest and arms. They coiled around Wat’s mallet-wielding arm. Growing longer, they tangled about their ankles and, with a ferocious yank, sent them both spluttering to the ground. Alex crash-landed, sending the Nemesis statue flying out of his grasp and slap into the mud. Throwing out his arm, he brushed the tip of its base with his fingertips as the quavering light changed around him, thickening into what appeared to be a gelatinous wall. A split second later, it slid backwards, scooping him up like a snowplough. His fingers dragged through the mud as he was slammed back against Wat, and the quivering wall engulfed them, sealing them together into a giant rubbery bubble, which lifted into the air to float a couple of metres above the ground.
Alex punched, he kicked, he jabbed, he tore. Wat pounded the walls with the mallet handle, desperately trying to tear a hole, but each time he struck the sides, they stretched out like bubblegum. Hissing wildly, the snakes tried to pierce it with their fangs.
But it was hopeless.
The walls were unbreakable.
Beneath them, Medea watched, spider-eyed and triumphant, being careful to step quickly away from the Nemesis statute, lying upended in the mud.
Alex stared at it through the bubble. He could still see its base sticking out of the mud and his head hammered with frustration that it was so, so close and yet absolutely unreachable. Doubling over, snatching his breath, he pushed his face up against the clammy wall and watched the glints of red, orange and blue, bright beneath its mud-spattered veneer. For a few seconds more they twisted and bounced, and then, as if knowing what had happened to the Nemesis statue, they faded away to nothing.
Out on the water, Rose was far too horrified to scream.
Dimly aware of the Guardian playfully snapping at something on the rock high above, she gaped at Alex’s and Wat’s terrified faces as they pummelled from the inside of the trap, feeling sick in the pit of her stomach.
‘That’s better,’ cried Medea, dusting off her hands. She looked across the lagoon at Rose, shaking her head in disappointment. ‘C’mon, we have work to finish!’
‘You must be joking!’ shouted Rose. ‘I’ll never do another thing you ask. And I know about the gold, Medea. It’s not cherished. It’s disgusting and poisoned and can never ever help my father!’
‘Oh my,’ sighed the sorceress. ‘I wonder who’s been filling your head with such rubbish? As if I didn’t know!’
She jabbed the golden eagle into the bubble and it instantly started to shrink.
‘Still,’ she added, stifling a giggle as the snakes stabbed at the approaching walls with their snouts, ‘it’ll be the last time they ever interfere. In a few minutes that bubble will be so small, so airless … well, you can imagine.’
‘Let them go!’ shouted Rose, scooping up the vials from the bottom of the canoe. ‘Otherwise I’ll throw these over the side and you’ll never get the rest of the gold!’
Medea sighed. ‘Oh, Rose. Why spoil things now when you’ve been such a marvellous partner?’ She smiled spitefully. ‘You do realise that I could never have got this far without you? I couldn’t have raised Wat and I’d never have found the lagoon. I certainly couldn’t have distracted the Lake Guardian and fetched the gold up at the same time. And I wouldn’t have this.’ She kissed the eagle statuette like a footballer with a trophy. ‘Meaning,’ she sneered, nodding at the bubble, ‘I could hardly have done that!’
Rose felt her words like punches.
‘Of course,’ continued Medea coldly, ‘it would have been quicker and easier, not to mention safer –’ she glanced up at the Lake Guardian – ‘without your ridiculous change
of heart. And if you’d kept your end of the deal, we could have been finished by now. But,’ she added, raising the golden eagle high over her head, ‘needs must!’
Tilting her face up, she began to turn anti-clockwise, chanting rapidly, her words spilling dark and uneven into the night. Rose noticed the sorceress’s face, pinched and furrowed with effort, and felt a spark of hope behind her ribs, knowing that Medea was finding it harder without her help. Perhaps – she tried to think over the wild hammering of her heart in her ears – perhaps, even with the golden eagle she wouldn’t be able to raise the gold all on her own? Feeling her eyes grow wide, she stared at the dark water around her, hardly daring to breathe as she willed the sorceress to fail.
And then she heard Medea’s shrill squeal of delight.
Looking up, she gasped as the sorceress flung out her arm like a flamboyant orchestra conductor to unleash a sweep of caramel light, the colour of rotting apples. Squirming with glowing tendrils, it shot over the lagoon before exploding like hailstones into the water.
Rose felt her stomach flip over as the water instantly began to boil around her. Now, staring down into its depths, she caught a glimpse of something golden, rising like a shoal of glittering fish. She clutched the sides of the canoe, staring in grim fascination, groaning as a clatter of goblets erupted from surface. Behind them, plates, knives and boxes, fashioned from gold, leaped like salmon and splashed back on the swell.
Suddenly a super-sized wave slammed the canoe, throwing Rose backwards on to the floor. For a moment, she stared up, stunned by a rainbow of gold-headed spears that arced over her. Then, struggling to sit upright again, she gaped at the water around her, gleaming with gold figurines and medallions and cups and snake-shaped buckles. A throne with a back carved into a leaping jaguar bobbed madly. Torques and breastplates lolled like flotsam. Pendants the size of ostrich eggs sped over the waves like skimmed pebbles. And everywhere, caimans dived, snapping and grunting after the treasure, snatching it from one another’s jaws to return to Medea with it.
‘To think of all those years I spent fiddling with wisps of Fleece,’ cried Medea, pausing from her chanting to wipe her brow with the back of her arm. ‘And now, look at the power I have!’
She scooped up a handful of ancient coins and threw them over the nearest couple of caimans at her feet.
There was a deafening bang, making Rose jump, and she blinked hard as a cloud of bruise-purple smoke enfolded the reptiles. Sneezing against the stench of sulphur that drifted in clouds towards her, she heard a thick, rustling sound, reminding her of umbrellas, giant ones, being opened, and gasped as two huge pairs of wings, long, green and silver-tipped, sprang up through the haze. Flames blasted through the fug as two shimmering dragons stalked out. Each was bridled with a silver harness and snorted fire from their massive nostrils.
But behind them the bubble was shrinking smaller and smaller, and dragging her eyes away from the astonishing creatures, Rose realised that now she could only just make out the pink of Wat’s hands, still inside their floppy cuffs, pressed uselessly against the glittering walls as Alex fought on, kicking and punching, jabbing the sides with the shield, stabbing them with the sword. Meanwhile, high on the bluff, the Guardian had stopped swatting at whatever had distracted it and was glowering up the rock at Aries and Jason.
Amused by her horrified face, Medea flicked another bolt of energy from her makeshift eagle wand across the water and sent the canoe torpedoing backwards towards the opposite bank.
Rose sprawled forwards and clung on as the canoe sliced through the water, gasping at the wrongness of everything.
The Nemesis statue was lost.
Alex, Wat, the Gorgon and snakes were trapped in a prison that would crush them out of existence in a few more minutes.
And high on the cliff, the Lake Guardian was thundering towards Aries again.
There had to be something she could do.
Crawling to the end of the speeding canoe, she stuck her nose over the edge and saw the sorceress growing smaller in the distance, tickling the dragons under their chins. In desperation, she reached back and unbuttoned the pocket of her shorts and pulled out her own flask of Reversal Potion.
She stared at it, dull purple in the moonlight, biting her lip at the memory of Alex’s horrified expression when she’d used it against the conquistadors, his face twisted in fury.
When have you truly seen her magic do anything good?
She scrunched her eyes closed, bewildered. Beneath her, the canoe lurched, bumping faster over the churning, gilded water and for a moment she sank her face against its cool wood in absolute despair. Around her, the waves slapped the boat’s sides, bumping it with their flotsam of misery-stuffed trinkets, clattering against its flimsy wood, but as a particularly hefty shield walloped the tip of the canoe, Rose jerked up, blinking. Holding the flask in front of her, she stared at the potion as it slopped and swirled, and suddenly realised something important, something she’d been too worried and frightened and confused to see before now: that this wasn’t Medea’s magic at all.
It was hers.
There was no pharaoh’s bangle here, no Fleece, no gold of El Dorado. Only magic powered by a birthday locket, made from a nugget beloved of the Yanomani people and given as a good wish to her mother.
Gold steeped in love right from the start.
Truly cherished gold.
Not bloated with hatred and suffering.
Which must surely mean that it could not possibly be poisonous?
Energised now, she ripped what remained of the locket from her neck and stuffed it into the flask, gladdened by the answering swirl of blue smoke, spangled with stars that shot up into the night.
Then corking the flask tightly, she took a deep breath.
And dived into the water.
CROC AND ROLL
High up on the rock, Aries flew backwards through the air and landed, sprawled like a starfish, the godly gifts he’d carried exploding into the darkness around him. A couple of metres away, the Guardian leered, triumphantly enjoying the ram’s breathlessness, and, clearly confident that it had almost won, snatched up a nearby swatch of Penelope’s tapestry – Ithaca at sunset – and chewed. Behind it, the smashed tinderbox spluttered and wheezed, spitting out its last sparks like a spent Catherine Wheel.
Slowly, painfully, Aries drew himself up onto his hooves, as behind him Jason feverishly tore at the remaining creeper, tied fast around his left ankle. His back felt bruised, his leg tendons trembled. His muzzle was swollen and his left haunch throbbed where the Guardian’s foot had sliced off the harness only seconds before. Worse still, he was just beginning to wonder what had happened to Alex and Wat. After all, that flash of light had been several minutes ago now, which surely meant they should be up on the bluff with him. So why weren’t they? And why was the canoe zipping the wrong way over the water, sending up a glittering trail of foam behind it?
Trying to tamp down the bad feeling that plaited his stomachs, Aries watched as the Guardian spat out the tattered remains of the sewing and braced himself for its next attack.
Which is when he noticed the lyre.
Tilted on the rock, it spangled in the moonlight and despite the way the Guardian had tried to chew it, and the drool that now dribbled down its strings, it remained perfectly intact. Unbreakable, able to withstand the roughest voyage, just like Euterpe had said.
Suddenly the gloom filled with the sound of skittering shale and Aries looked up to see the Guardian lurching forward. Seizing hold of the lyre, the ram charged forward and slammed it over the toothy tip of the Guardian’s snout. He thrust hard, hard, harder still, forcing it high on to the creature’s bumpy nose to jam its frame tight over its jaws.
The Guardian grunted in appalled surprise. Crossing its eyes, it stared down at the strange trap and a moment later began tossing its head, left, right, up, down, snarl, mutter – twing, twang, twong – trying to shake the lyre free. But it was stuck fast. The monster slumped down
and tried to bat the lyre off with legs that were far too short and stumpy and, panicked, tried to prise its jaws open. Its neck muscles throbbed. Its cobbled shoulders strained. Muscles bulged fiercely beneath its chin whilst its body rumbled like an earth tremor, quivering and shaking as it strained hopelessly against the instrument’s unbreakable frame.
Aries stepped back, cringing as the lyre of Orpheus, famed for its honey-toned melodies, wailed like Scylla with the stomach ache, accompanying the monster’s frustrated yowls as it struggled desperately to wrench its mouth free.
But it couldn’t.
Whoopee-doo!
Way to go, Aries!
Croc-bopper supreme!
Even Jason was struck silent with grudging admiration as now, thoroughly confused and blazing mad, the Guardian flipped itself up into the air and began its death roll.60 You see, deep down in his foggy, primitive brain, the Guardian knew that such a move had always led to good things. Except that death rolls in water are one thing and death rolls on a high terrace of rock quite another. Especially when there’s a ram standing close by, desperate to find his friends on the shore below, and in possession of the most ferocious kick, which he uses to send a wildly spinning stone caiman tumbling down the slope.
All of which goes to show that gifts from the gods really do what they say on the tin. Well, sort of. After all, the lyre had withstood an epic journey, managed to calm a raging beast and even if it hadn’t quite brought the team together in harmony, at least for once Jason had nothing to say. And indeed, how delightful that would all have been, if everyone, and particularly my charming self, could have sat down to a delightful cup of tea and a Custard Cream at that point.
Except that as the Guardian flew off the ledge
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Rampage! Page 27