But, determined to win back his crown, Jason sailed valiantly with fifty of Greece’s noblest heroes, as captain of the Argo, and after an eventful and terribly dangerous voyage presented himself at King Aetes’ palace.
Of course, Aetes had no intention of giving up his precious Fleece, but since it would not be kingly to flatly refuse, he agreed that if Jason could yoke the fire-breathing bulls and plough a field with special seeds, then the Fleece would be his. Aetes laughed secretly to himself, certain that Jason would perish in the attempt.
However, the king had reckoned without his daughter, the beautiful Medea, who was a sorceress. Falling deeply in love with Jason, she set out to protect him with her magic.
The next day, Jason stepped into the field with the fire-breathing bulls, furious beasts that blasted jets of flames at anyone who stepped near them. Aetes smiled to himself, confident that Jason would be scorched to a crisp in trying to put on their iron harness. However, Medea had given Jason a magical salve to protect his skin from the searing heat, and whilst everyone else ran away from the fire and the smoke and the fierce clattering of bronze hooves, he bravely yoked the bulls without harm. Then he stepped behind the plough and began guiding the terrible beasts across the field without injury or fear.
The king was horribly frustrated, but smiled and handed Jason a bag of seeds to sow across the new furrows. But the seed was no ordinary seed. Each seed was a dragon’s tooth and as they fell on to the freshly turned soil, an army of bone soldiers leaped up and raced towards Jason, swinging their swords. But Jason cleverly thought to pick up a stone and throw it amongst them. The soldier it hit immediately thought his neighbour had attacked him and fought him instead, and in the following chaos every soldier smashed one another to pieces.
The king was secretly furious at Jason’s cleverness and courage, but to keep up appearances he promised him and the Argonauts a feast to celebrate Jason’s success in winning the Fleece. But that night Medea warned Jason that her father really intended to kill him and his men, and led him to the sacred oak, where she sent the snake to sleep so that Jason could clamber fearlessly up its slithering, terrible coils to collect his prize.
Triumphant, and a true hero of Greece, Jason carried the Fleece back down through the branches of the tree and returned to the Argo, and with his men and his new bride, Medea, sailed home to be crowned King of Iolkos.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Those of you who like a good snootle through a history book will discover that whilst Wat was indeed shot by Spanish soldiers as he quested for El Dorado, he was not shot in the Amazon in Brazil, but in Venezuela, which is another country in South America. Tweaking the truth like this is called ‘artistic licence’ and is where writers, who spend all their time making things up, decide to make up a little bit more.
AND FINALLY, A NOTE ON THE AMAZON RAINFOREST
You might be surprised to discover that the Amazon gets its name from the fabby old Greek myths and the Amazons, who were a tribe of ferocious women-warriors. These feisty females spent their days bashing up anyone that annoyed them, such as Herakles, who had run off with their queen’s girdle as one of his Twelve Labours. However, it wasn’t until hundreds of years later, long after the fall of old Greece, that the tribe’s name became linked to the river. This happened in the late sixteenth century, when some Spanish explorers searching for – you’ve guessed it – El Dorado, ended up sick, hungry and horribly lost in the jungle. Worse, just to top off their disastrous trip, a tribe of wild women who, the Spaniards said, looked exactly like the Amazons they’d read about at school, ran squealing from the trees and clobbered them. The Spaniards’ tale spread far into South America and beyond, and the river quickly became known as Rio Amazonas, the River of the Amazons. Nowadays, it is simply called The Amazon.
The biggest river in the world, and the second longest after the Nile,65 it is about four thousand miles long. It rises in the Andes Mountains of Peru and flows through Venezuela, Ecuador, Columbia, Guyana, Bolivia and Brazil. It carries more water than any other river on Earth and flows up to six miles wide, stretching to thirty miles across in the rainy season. Its mouth (where it flows into the Atlantic Ocean) is around one hundred and fifty miles across. This is why the Amazon is sometimes called ‘the River Sea’.
Around it, the rainforest is one of the most spectacular places on Earth, and brims with thousands and thousands of plants. It home to sloths, vampire bats, jaguars, caimans, monkeys, armadillos, poison frogs, boa constrictors and anaconda. More than 1,500 species of birds, including Mr Potoo, live there, together with over two million species of insects and more than two thousand species of fish. Over half of all the creatures on Earth live in rainforests.
According to Greenpeace, one hectare of Amazon jungle can contain three hundred species of tree, compared to a measly old ten in a hectare in England. And just one tree can house more species of ant than can be found in the entire United Kingdom. However, we are not going to talk about that, because I’ve had quite enough of ants in this book, thank you very much.
The Amazon rainforest is called ‘the lungs of the planet’ because it gives us one-fifth of the world’s oxygen by processing carbon dioxide with its billions of leaves. These plants have also given us more than a quarter of all the medicines we take in the West. In fact, seventy per cent of the plants that we use to treat cancer grow there, yet scientists have so far only investigated a teensy little bit of the jungle.
So, who knows what other wonderful cures might be found?
Well, unfortunately, probably not us, if the rainforest continues to be chopped down at the rate of three football pitches a minute. That’s right. Sky Forest Rescue and the World Wildlife Fund have calculated that that’s the area being hacked away every minute of every day for furniture, paper, doors, windows and fences, and even fancy coffins. Some land is used to farm or graze animals, but with the poor soil of the Amazon, the ground soon becomes nothing more than a dusty wasteland. Meaning that in roughly the time it’s taken you to read this far through my note on the Amazon rainforest, another patch of jungle about ten football fields big has vanished for good, taking with it all the thousands of animals, birds and insects that thrive there, some of whom will be lost for ever, together with the ancient homelands of tribes who have lived there for hundreds of years in harmony with the jungle.
Losing the rainforest would be utterly disastrous for the world. That’s why governments and conservation organisations are trying hard to save them, for us and for all our future generations, before it’s too late. But it’s a tough battle. You can find out more about the work they are doing, and what you too could do to help the rainforest, at:
www.rainforestrescue.sky.com
www.greenpeace.org.uk/forests/amazon
www.savetherainforest.com
64 Being a poet rather than a sailor, Apollonius didn’t witness any of the events he described but just wrote down exactly what Jason told him to. This probably explains why the earliest copies of his best-selling Scroll were found with strange, ram-shaped bites taken out of them, and his name scribbled over, to read, ‘Claptrap-ollonius’ instead.
65 Scientists are still arguing about which river really is the longest, and flinging their tape measures at each other in a most unpleasant manner.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Tilda Johnson, Debbie Hatfield and the team at Piccadilly Press. Thank you, too, to Helen Boyle from Templar, and to my agent, Jo Williamson, who together first unleashed Aries, snorting, into bookshops and classrooms across the world. A great big round of applause is due to my partner, Jim Chandler, who, with Stephanie Clifford and David Allen, read through the final draft; to Professor Armand D’Angour of Jesus College, Oxford, who put my Latin straight; and to my dear friend Helen Gee, for her historical insights. Thank you to my aunt, Yvonne Bird, for her encouragement, and, of course thank you to my sister, Jennifer, for all the support and chocolate brownies through the post. Last, but certainly not l
east, an Aries-sized thank you to Melissa Hyder, my super-talented editor on both Fleeced! and Rampage! for her wisdom, constancy and rammy-cheerleading throughout – not to mention a comprehensive knowledge of The Muppets and cake.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Julia was born in Stafford, has lived in Australia, Stockport and Oxford and now lives in Warwickshire with her partner Jim and Bosworth the dog, who is half-cocker-spaniel, half-poodle (and all teddy bear). She has had lots of jobs, including keeping a photographic library of petrol stations for an oil company, deciding what colour packets sausages look best in and teaching history to eight-year-olds, which was when she and the children first discovered the Ancient Greeks, their fabulous monsters and the problem with wearing a chiton on a windy day.
Also available:
FLEECED!
COPYRIGHT
First published in Great Britain in 2015
by Piccadilly Press
Northburgh House, 10 Northburgh Street, London EC1V 0AT
Copyright © Julia Wills, 2015
The moral rights of the author have been asserted.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978–1–848–12477–6
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