by Maz Evans
And this time, Elliot listened. For no sooner had the flask landed in Thanatos’s hand than his fist swung out, blasting a hole in the rock where Elliot’s head had been moments previously.
“You stupid boy,” drawled Thanatos, standing before him. “I showed you mercy. I spared your life. A mistake I will not make again.”
“You swore I’d leave the cave,” said Elliot quickly.
“I did,” said Thanatos, drawing his fist back. “But I never swore you’d do so alive. For the second and final time, Elliot—good-bye.”
Had Elliot ever wondered what it would be like to have his body obliterated by the supernatural strength of an immortal Death Daemon, he couldn’t have imagined the soul-wrenching pain he was about to suffer.
But two things prevented him from finding out.
As Thanatos launched his fist to smash Elliot, an invisible force violently repelled the Daemon, sending him tumbling onto the cave floor. Elliot didn’t understand—he hadn’t even touched him.
Then, before Thanatos could take another shot, Virgo threw her arms wide open, transformed into her constellation, whipped Elliot up into her warm glow, and whooshed him down the tunnel to safety in a shower of golden light.
Patricia Porshley-Plum always got what she wanted. When Patricia was eight, she’d wanted a puppy. Her father, who had inherited his vast wealth from his great-aunt, told her she needed to learn the value of a hard day’s work. So Patricia took all of Daddy’s designer suits to a flea market and sold them for ten pounds. Her father—a man who admired an enterprising spirit—happily bought her Bonnie the puppy.
When Patricia was thirteen, she’d wanted a pony. Her father, who phoned from the golf course to point out that we can’t always have what we want, told her to contribute half herself. So Patricia sold Bonnie, pushed Daddy’s red Ferrari off a cliff, and instructed him how to spend the insurance money if he wanted to keep his Bentley. Her father—a man who wasn’t sure about red anyway—nervously bought her Princess the pony.
When Patricia was twenty, she’d wanted a car. Her father, who’d retired at thirty-five, tried to tell her to get a job. But as his daughter produced a box of matches and a gas can in the drawing room, her father—a man who now feared for his life—simply handed over his credit card.
Now that Patricia was forty-something (but knew she could pass for thirty-seven), she wanted Home Farm. That vile farmhouse needed to be squished and the shed bulldozed, but it sat on a valuable piece of land that was ripe for development. Patricia could build dozens of overpriced houses on the plot and make a fortune. If only she could make Josie Hooper see sense. But that repugnant boy Elliot wouldn’t let her near his mother and Patricia was running out of patience. Patricia Porshley-Plum was not getting what she wanted. And this was unacceptable.
Like anyone who has too much, Patricia had no sympathy for those who didn’t have enough. She loathed poor people. Patricia treated poverty like most people treat a nasty stomach bug—a horribly catching affliction that necessitated plenty of hand washing. Besides, poor people only had themselves to blame. If you couldn’t look after your money, you didn’t deserve it. Which left plenty for her. And those ghastly Hoopers were poorer than unemployed church mice.
What made the situation even more intolerable was the fact that Patricia knew something fishy was going on. She didn’t believe Elliot’s excuses for one tax-efficient minute and she was determined to get her hands on Home Farm. And that twenty pounds the little sneak had stolen. Patricia Porshley-Plum might have deluded herself that she could pass for thirty-seven, but she wasn’t stupid. Something was up. She just needed to find out what.
Most normal people would have given up long ago—she had been told many times that Home Farm wasn’t for sale, and that should have been the end of it. But Patricia Porshley-Plum wasn’t most people. And she wasn’t especially normal. Giving up hadn’t won her the Pony Princess Rider of the Year—although giving all the other competitors food poisoning had helped—and she wasn’t about to give up now. Patricia Porshley-Plum had waited long enough.
So when Patricia saw Elliot leave Home Farm early that Saturday with a silver-haired girl—young people were so ridiculous with their hairstyles nowadays; a nice soft perm had done her perfectly well for years—she decided it was time to make her move.
“When opportunity knocks, answer the door” were her father’s last words before he died. Or at least she assumed he was dead—she hadn’t seen him since the day she claimed he’d gone crazy, stuck him in a home, and took all his money. There was no time like the present, especially since her electricity seemed to be playing up that morning. Patricia Porshley-Plum decided that today was the perfect opportunity to get what she wanted.
Armed with a homemade Victoria sponge cake—well, the label said that someone had made it at their home—the moment Elliot was out of sight, Patricia made her way up that stupid path to Home Farm. As she knocked gently on the door, she imagined destroying the path with a pickax.
“Why, hello! Josie-kins! It’s Patricia!” she chirped like a canary on cotton candy. “Fancy a cup of tea?”
The door opened a fraction and Josie Hooper’s delicate face peeked out.
“Hello, pumpkin!” gushed Patricia with her least sincere smile. “Shall we have some cakey?”
The mind is a complex machine and, although Josie’s day-to-day memory had been getting worse, her long-term memory was as clear as a spring morning. So despite Elliot’s warnings never to answer the door, Josie thought nothing of admitting her long-standing neighbor, like Grandma inviting the Big Bad Wolf in for a granny sandwich.
“Hello, Mrs. Horse’s-Bum,” she said cheerily. “Do come in.”
Even without the insult, Patricia thought Josie looked dreadful. She hadn’t seen her for months, but really, the woman was aging horribly. That’s what happened when you didn’t spend money on expensive beauty creams that were packed with dynoflavinemperorclotheazines to keep the skin firm. And Josie wasn’t even dressed! Shuffling around in her robe—had the woman no shame? Of course not. She was poor. Poor people were so very, very lazy.
Patricia entered the cozy sanctuary of Home Farm. As she looked around the cherished home, stuffed with joyful mementos of all the Hoopers who had lived there, she happily pictured the day her bulldozers would flatten it to the ground. She might even take the first swing herself.
“Can I get you a cup of tea?” Josie asked kindly, ushering her guest through to the kitchen.
“How lovely, dear,” said Patricia, offering Josie the sponge cake.
“Thank you,” said Josie as her neighbor sat warily at the kitchen table, wishing she could run an antibacterial wipe over the seat. Or that her house cleaner could do it for her. “Would you like a cup of tea?”
“Er … yes—thank you again,” laughed Patricia. “Just as it comes. Milk in first, only three dunks of the bag, two-and-a half sugars stirred counterclockwise, and a small teaspoon. Silver if you have one, but I’m not fussy.”
“Right,” said Josie, looking confused as she put the kettle on. “Thank you for the cake. Elly will be so pleased.”
“Isn’t he quite the … young man,” said Patricia through clenched jaws as she sprayed her palms with hand sanitizer under the table.
“Oh, he’s wonderful,” beamed Josie. “He takes such good care of me. He’s my gift.”
“Let’s hope you kept the receipt,” muttered Patricia as she looked out over the neglected fields. She could see it now. Rows upon rows of identical houses where these pointless acres now stood. “Dairy Mews”—that’s what she’d call her development. The idiots who bought her soulless houses liked a bit of character. Patricia felt richer just looking out of the window.
“Do you take sugar?” asked Josie, assembling the tea on a tray.
“Yes, please, two and a half,” said Patricia trying to keep the irritation from her voice. Not only was the woman poor and lazy, she was clearly stupid as well.
Josie set
the tea tray down and Patricia took in the chipped and mismatched crockery.
“I was so sorry about your father-in-law, poppet. He was such a … character.” Patricia grimaced, knowing perfectly well that he’d invented the Horse’s-Bum nickname that followed her around the village like one of those frightful charity collectors.
“Thank you,” said Josie, quietly pouring the tea. “It’s been a difficult year.”
Patricia reluctantly accepted the stained cup, making a mental note of a wilting plant that would be grateful for the drink when Josie’s back was turned.
“Shall we have some cake?” she said breezily, steeling herself at the prospect of another piece of Hooper crockery.
“You brought cake?” said Josie cheerfully. “How lovely—Elly will be so pleased.”
Under Patricia’s curious gaze, Josie stood up to fetch the cake she had put down moments earlier. Patricia had never spent much time with Josie before—why on earth would she? But she didn’t remember her being this slow.
“May I use your facilities?” she asked.
“Of course,” said Josie, rummaging around in a cutlery drawer for the big knives that Elliot had hidden. “The toilet’s just down the hall on the right.”
Patricia shuddered at the offensive word. Just because they existed, it didn’t mean that “toilets” needed to be mentioned out loud. Just like “famine victims.” Or “affordable houses.”
She left the kitchen and immediately headed for the front room. Patricia had no intention of going to the unmentionable in this house—heaven only knows what she’d catch from the unmentionable seat. No, she wanted to find out what was really going on at Home Farm.
She peered around the homely room, which was cluttered with photographs of happier times. In a faded golden frame were Wilfred and Audrey Hooper on their wedding day. A chipped wooden frame displayed a euphoric Josie cradling the newborn Elliot. On one wall were yearly photographs of Elliot, showing the baby growing into a boy—although Patricia observed that the most recent school photo was two years old. Patricia turned her nose up at this pointless tat. All the walls in Patricia’s own home were painted in “Essence of Penguin’s Belly Button” and hung with expensive paintings by artists who were so exclusive that no one had ever heard of them.
Papers littered every surface and, checking that Josie was still fiddling with the cutlery drawer, Patricia turned some of them over. They were all final reminders and they came from everywhere imaginable—gas, electricity, and water suppliers, phone companies, the local government—and on top of them all was the Really Scary Letter.
Poking her sizable nose around the corner once more, she picked up the letter by its corner and began to read. Patricia Porshley-Plum’s shriveled heart danced a tango as she scanned the letter threatening Elliot and Josie’s beloved family home. She held the letter from EasyDough! Ltd. like most people hold a winning lottery ticket. A lazy mother and that idiot child couldn’t possibly find twenty thousand pounds by next Friday. But nor could Patricia allow Home Farm to fall into someone else’s hands once those tiresome Hoopers had been thrown out onto the street and the farm repossessed. Home Farm was going to be hers.
Putting the letter back where she found it, Patricia skipped around to the unmentionable, took a deep breath, and flushed it with her hand inside her sleeve. That blouse would have to be burned. But it had been worth it. Now Josie would have no choice but to sell her Home Farm—and for a fraction of its value.
She swaggered back into the kitchen with a smile that could carve an ice sculpture. But Josie wasn’t there. Patricia peered out of the open back door to see Elliot’s mother in the vegetable garden pulling up weeds.
“Er—muffinpops? Your tea’s getting cold,” she trilled.
Josie looked up from her work and smiled warmly at her neighbor as she rose to her feet and brushed the soil off her robe.
“Oh, hello, Mrs. Porshley-Plum—how nice of you to drop by. Would you like some tea?”
Patricia leaned against the door frame. The penny finally dropped.
Josie Hooper wasn’t being lazy or stupid or slow. She was seriously unwell. This usually bright young woman had the mind of an old lady. So that’s why Elliot had been keeping her tucked away. Patricia realized that she was dealing with someone who wasn’t capable of making a sound judgment on her own. Josie now needed an adolescent boy to take care of her, to make important decisions, to keep her safe from harm. The woman was utterly defenseless. There was no way Patricia could buy Home Farm for a bargain price now.
It would be so much cheaper to steal it.
“A cup of tea would be lovely, sweetie pie,” said Patricia with a smile that almost reached her eyes. “And then after that, I thought the two of us might have a little outing … ”
Elliot had always dreamt of flying in an airplane. As his family couldn’t afford a vacation abroad, he had wondered what it would be like to view the world from thousands of feet up in the air.
But after five minutes of flying by constellation, Elliot swore his feet would never leave the ground again.
He knew Virgo had saved his life. But now Elliot worried he was in danger of losing it again as his body spun wildly, climbing ever higher in the blinding glare of Virgo’s constellation. He felt like a sock in a dryer. A sock that was about to throw up its breakfast.
Just as Elliot lost all sense of which end was up, his flight came to an abrupt halt.
“What you are trying to—?” he began, before being dumped on a pile of surprisingly firm cloud as Virgo’s constellation flowed elegantly down to re-form as her physical self. “Ow! You didn’t have to drop me.”
“You’re lucky I didn’t drop you halfway across the Aegean Sea,” said Virgo, running her fingers through her long silver hair. “You’re heavier than you look. And you’re welcome, by the way.”
“You too,” Elliot replied, trying dizzily to stand. “Where are we?”
“This is Elysium,” Virgo announced grandly. “Welcome to my home.”
His vision still a little blurred from the flight, Elliot took a moment to adjust to the sunlit scene. But when he did, he saw he was in the most perfectly beautiful place. The bright sunshine beamed down on the cloud meadow in which they stood, which was filled with fruit trees straining under laden branches. In the distance one way, Elliot could make out a flawless glass pyramid that sparkled on the horizon like a huge diamond. In the other direction, a river babbled along the edge of the clouds, dropping into a waterfall that shimmered with refracted rainbow light.
“Wow,” whispered Elliot as he took in the paradise before him. So there really were other worlds. He found the thought strangely comforting.
“I’d better get to the council chamber,” said Virgo, gesturing toward the pyramid. “They need to know what you did.”
“What I did!” Elliot exclaimed indignantly. “I saved your stupid shiny head!”
“Which wouldn’t have been in danger if you hadn’t set the prisoner free. I told you not to.”
Elliot knew that there was an excellent answer to that point. He just didn’t have it right then.
“Stay here,” Virgo commanded.
“You can’t tell me what to do,” said Elliot defiantly.
“No mortal has ever been to Elysium,” said Virgo. “I need to handle this delicate situation with my expert tact and diplomacy. So stay here or I’ll pick you up in my constellation and drop you on your curiously stubborn head.”
“What will they do?” Elliot conceded.
“Something incredible,” Virgo said breezily. “The Zodiac Council has been supporting the immortal community for two thousand years. This probably happens all the time. They’ll have a contingency plan. It’ll all be perfectly fine.”
“YOU DID WHAT?” Pisces shrieked over the commotion in the chamber as the Zodiac Council erupted in outrage.
“Well, it was all a bit of an accident,” Virgo began, every eye in the room making her feel only six hundred years old.
“You see, Elliot wasn’t supposed to be in the prison.”
“You weren’t supposed to be in the prison!” snapped Cancer. “You were supposed to be ordering paper clips!”
“I know, but—” Virgo couldn’t quite find the words. She was finding it unusually difficult to make herself sound completely right. This wasn’t going as perfectly as she’d hoped.
“You are a young, inexperienced councillor!” yelled Aries, his curled horns unfurling in fury. “In one day, you’ve disobeyed express orders not to visit Earth, released Prisoner Forty-Two, and missed the final stationery order deadline this month! Explain yourself!”
As Virgo tried to justify what had happened since she’d left Elysium, she spotted Elliot sneaking into the chamber and hiding behind a marble pillar. She had told him to wait outside. Was the mortal child incapable of following any rules?
“Whatever happened,” she started uncertainly, “I felt that the most sensible course of action was to return here immediately and file a full report. I used my initiative.”
“Shame you didn’t use your brain,” shouted Scorpio, accidentally squashing a banana into Leo’s eye with his pincers.
“Well, there’s only one thing for it,” said Pisces. “We have to follow protocol.”
There was a long pause as the council silently approved the decision.
“Deny all knowledge,” shouted Aquarius, raising his jug in salute.
“Precisely,” agreed Pisces. “Our official line is that we know nothing of Prisoner Forty-Two’s escape.”
“Excellent,” said Libra, weighing two muffins on her scales. “And I move that we deny all knowledge of denying all knowledge.”
“Seconded,” said Sagittarius, firing a pencil at a dartboard. “This council knows nothing.”
“Agreed,” barked Leo. “After all, we have a reputation to uphold as the council that knows nothing about anything.”
“Sounds like an excellent course of action,” said Virgo, relieved that the situation was back under control. “I’m sure it’s of no consequence. After all, how dangerous can this Thanatos be? Oooh—chocolate muffins … ”