by Lucy Coats
CHAPTER 6
THE BRONZE BIRDS
All was quiet for a week or so. The Nemean Lion was getting used to its strange skin and had recovered enough to begin some playful chasing of Artemis’s five golden-horned deer (though it promised Demon it wouldn’t hurt them). Once the rest of the beasts in the Stables had seen what Demon had done for the Nemean Lion, they accepted the animal totally—with the exception of the giant scorpion.
Then the carved head began to squawk again. “Incoming wounded. Incoming wounded. Lots of incoming wounded,” it shouted.
Demon rushed for the wagon. This time he remembered to lock the cage door behind him. No one would have been happy if the giant scorpion had escaped. It hated everybody and liked nothing better than stabbing its huge stinger into the gentler beasts and dangling them up in the air over its pincers. Demon didn’t trust it an inch after he’d found that out for himself, and now he usually approached the scary creature with a long, pointy fending-off stick when he fed it.
When he got to the Iris Express, there was a whole flock of large, almost featherless birds scattered all over the ground. “Heracles?” he asked. The birds nodded and clacked their beaks. What remained of their feathers rattled as he lifted each one carefully onto his mobile stretcher.
“Careful,” said one. “Don’t cut yourself.”
When Demon looked more closely, he noticed that the feathers were made of pure, shiny bronze. He also noticed that all the birds had razor-sharp teeth inside their beaks.
“You’re the Stymphalian Birds, aren’t you?” he asked as he trundled them into the hospital shed. “Do you want to tell me what happened?”
“We were just finishing off this tasty maiden we’d found washing some horrid dirty clothes in our nice clean lake—very juicy and tender she was, too—when there was this horrible noise,” squawked the bird who had spoken before. It seemed to be the leader of the flock. “Sort of a rattly racket that got into our ears and made us fly up in the air. Next thing we knew, there were arrows coming at us from the other side of the water. We saw that horrible hero Heracles, with that huge bow of his, shooting away at us. Poor Boneyfeet over there copped an arrow right in the head—blood everywhere. Very nasty—we nearly had to leave him behind for the fishes to nibble.
“Well, we fired our bronze feathers right back at him, same as we always do—only he wouldn’t stop. We called up to Ares when we realized we were going to be in trouble if we carried on firing—and he sent the Iris Express down for us.” The bird looked at Demon with a bright orange eye. “Can you fix us up? Ares says there’s a nice island we can go to in the Black Sea. We don’t like it up here on Olympus much—not enough flesh, too much ambrosia, if you know what I mean.” The bird ran a pink pointy tongue around its teeth.
“I’ll give it a go,” said Demon, opening Hephaestus’s magic medical box for the very first time. Soft blue symbols glowed underneath the lid.
“State the nature of your beast’s emergency medical problem,” said a metallic voice.
“Um . . . ,” said Demon.
“‘Um’ not a recognized problem of an emergency medical nature,” said the box. “Does not compute with data program. Please restate.” Demon took a deep breath. He wasn’t used to boxes talking to him.
“Er . . . ,” he said, stopping.
“‘Er’ not a recognized problem of an emergency medical nature,” said the box. “Does not compute with data program. Please restate.”
“Let me do it,” said the head bird, hopping off the table and giving the box a peck. “I’m a Stymphalian Bird. My feathers have fallen out. I need new ones. Does that compute, you stupid square object?”
The letters under the lid glowed a sullen kind of green. “All right, all right,” said the metallic voice sulkily. “Just having my little joke. Feather medicine coming right up, and I hope they itch terribly while they’re regrowing.” Immediately, a vial of bronze-colored liquid popped up in the center of the box. “Give ’em all one drop,” said the box. “And mind those teeth. Should be fixed in about an hour.”
Demon undid the vial and dripped a single drop into each bird’s beak, careful to avoid slicing his fingers open. Sure enough, an hour later, all their bronze feathers had grown back.
“Thanks, Demon,” they said as they flew off to catch the Iris Express down to their new home in the Black Sea. “We’ve left you a few old feathers on the side. They’re useful for cutting stuff up. Or stabbing that Heracles if he shows his face up here.”
Demon put the feathers away carefully in a drawer. “If that Heracles comes anywhere near my beasts again, I will stab him,” he said. “Even if he does have muscles like tree roots.”
“You’re all right for a half-god human, really, Pan’s scrawny kid,” the griffin said to him. “At least you do seem to hate that horrible Heracles as much as we do.”
Demon stroked its feathers.
“One day I’ll give him what he deserves,” he said. “No one treats my beasts like that.” The griffin pecked him gently, only drawing a little blood this time.
“Your beasts now, are we? I wonder what Zeus will have to say about that, stable boy!”
But Demon found out just how empty his brave words were when Poseidon sent yet another one of Heracles’s victims up to Olympus. The Cretan Bull had been stabbed in the heart, and its fire had gone out completely. If it hadn’t been immortal, it would have been dead.
“HERACLES!” Demon yelled down the Iris Express as he hauled the bull onto his wagon with his silver rope. “I’m warning you! ONE more, just ONE more, and I’m coming down to sort you out.”
There was no answer, but suddenly Demon felt as if a hundred god and goddess ears were listening to him. It was not a comfortable sensation at all, and Demon had the feeling that once again, his big mouth might have gotten him into trouble. Nothing happened immediately, though, and Demon soon forgot about it in the commotion of treating his new patient.
CHAPTER 7
THE ETERNAL FLAME
Restarting the Cretan Bull’s fire took Demon nearly a week. Back and forth, back and forth he went to Hephaestus’s mountain, carrying load after load of hot coals from the forge. The poor creature was beside itself with rage, and if he hadn’t had his magic silver rope to keep it tied down, it would have gored him at least a hundred times with its golden horns. It was not a cooperative patient at all.
“C’mon, bull,” he pleaded as he tipped yet another scoop of hot coals carefully down its throat.
It was no good. The bull’s thrashing and tossing were gradually becoming weaker and weaker. All that was coming from its normally fiery fifth stomach was a wet sloshing sound. Demon couldn’t think what to do. The magic box had mended the stab wound easily enough and had told him to fetch the hot coals—but the treatment wasn’t working. He opened the box once again.
“State the nature of your beast’s emergency medical problem,” said the now-familiar metallic voice.
“Same as before,” said Demon. “I can’t restart the Cretan Bull’s fire. The coals aren’t working. What else can I do?”
The box was silent for a moment, then the symbols under the lid began to flash orange, and there was a series of short beeps. A thin wavering tube appeared out of the box. It had a flat silver disk on the end. The tube swayed toward the bull, elongating as it went, and then the silver disk laid itself against the bull’s fifth stomach.
“Diagnostics in progress,” said the box. “Please wait.” After a moment the tube whipped back into the box.
“Well?” asked Demon anxiously. “What did you find out?” And why do you have to use stupid long words like “diagnostics”? he thought, but didn’t say because by now he’d found out that the box could be a bit temperamental if he wasn’t polite to it.
“Diagnostics have detected a case of bovine pentagastric marine pyrosaturitis,” said the bo
x proudly. It sounded very smug. Demon bit his tongue to keep himself from shouting at it. He needed help too badly to annoy the stupid thing.
“Could you please explain what that is?” he said in his politest voice.
The box made a purring sound. “It means you’ve got loads of seawater in the creature’s fire-making equipment,” it said.
“Do you have a cure?” Demon asked.
There was a whirring noise as a small silver cauldron rose out of the lid and floated into Demon’s lap.
“Beast patient will be cured by eternal flame. Service does not provide eternal flame at present.” The box snapped shut. It was a very final sort of sound.
Demon stood up, holding the silver cauldron. What he wanted to do was kick the magic medicine box, but curing his patient came first. Only he still didn’t know how.
What do I do now? he thought as he fluffed up the silver straw around the Cretan Bull and made it as comfortable as he could. He decided to go and ask Hephaestus. Eternal flame sounded like the smith god’s kind of thing. But when he got to the forge under the mountain, Hephaestus wasn’t there.
“Gone to deliver two of my brothers to some mortal queen,” said the gold-and-silver automaton robot that was keeping the fire going.
Demon’s stomach slid down to somewhere near his feet.
“You, er, you don’t have any eternal flame in here, do you?” he asked, all in a rush. Demon still wasn’t used to talking to Hephaestus’s metal people.
“Nope,” it said, and it turned back to the fire. Hephaestus was right—the forge robot definitely wasn’t one for talking much. Demon trudged back to the Stables. Perhaps the griffin would know.
“Eternal flame?” asked the griffin. “That’s the stuff on Hestia’s hearth. Why do you want to know? Do you need some or something?”
Demon explained about the Cretan Bull’s waterlogged fifth stomach. The griffin just opened its beak wide and cackled. “Good luck with that. The last one to steal some was Prometheus—and as you know, he’s currently strapped to a mountain having his liver pecked on a daily basis by our friend the Caucasian Eagle.”
By now, Demon’s stomach was past his feet and well on its way back down to earth. He went to check on the bull to see if, by some miracle, it was better. But it wasn’t. He was going to have to go and visit a goddess he didn’t know and ask her for a favor.
Goddesses weren’t known for doing favors for anyone—let alone a stable boy. She’d definitely want something in return. Or maybe she’d be so grateful he’d gotten rid of the cow–poo smell that she’d give him the flame for free. He patted the bull. Too weak to do anything else, it groaned pathetically.
“I’ll be back soon,” he promised, keeping his fingers crossed. He just hoped it was true.
Althea the nymph agreed to show Demon the way to Hestia’s palace. He felt very conspicuous and very small as he walked past the huge front doors of the other immortals. Althea was chattering away as normal, telling him who lived where, but he was too nervous to listen properly. Hestia’s palace turned out to be right in the middle of all the other gods’ dwellings.
“Will you come in with me, Althea?” he asked.
The nymph just giggled and shook her head, tossing her long, floaty hair.
“Nymphs are not allowed in the dwellings unless invited,” she said. “And anyway, I’ve got some sunflowers to polish for Helios.”
She flitted away, leaving Demon standing in front of a door carved with cooking pots and kitchen utensils. He raised his hand to knock, but the door creaked open before he could get his knuckles to it.
“Come in, little stable boy,” said a deep voice. It sounded like cream and honey dripping onto hot rocks.
Demon forced his feet to walk forward. He clutched his silver cauldron tightly as he went into a huge dark room. There was a fire right in the middle of it. Standing over it was a huge silver cauldron—an exact copy of the one he was carrying—hanging from a hook. There was a long-handled spoon in the cauldron, stirring all by itself. On the other side of the fire stood a figure. He fell to his knees.
“Oh, do get up and tell me what you want, Pandemonius,” said the voice. “I’m not going to cook you. Yet.”
Hestia laughed as a trembling Demon got up. “Only joking about the cooking,” said the goddess.
Demon didn’t believe her. But he couldn’t think about that. He wasn’t here for himself, so he cleared his throat and put on a brave face for the Cretan Bull’s sake.
“I’m sorry to bother you, Your Goddessness,” he said. “But would it be possible to have a tiny bit of your eternal flame? It’s needed to cure one of the beasts in the Stables.” He squeezed his eyes shut and crossed his fingers, hoping.
There was a rustle in front of him and a smell of loukoumades, the small honey cakes that were his very favorite thing to eat in the whole world. He thought of his mom mixing cakes and giving him the bowl to lick. A sudden rush of homesickness came over him. Why did he have to be up here with the stupid gods? Why couldn’t he just go back to how it was before? Why couldn’t his father have just left them alone?
Demon felt the little silver cauldron being plucked from his fingers. He cautiously opened one eye, blinked hurriedly, and opened the other eye. Then he remembered that he was standing in front of a scary cooking goddess. Hestia was examining the cauldron.
She was very tall and quite plump, and she was wearing an apron embroidered with pots and pans. She turned the cauldron around and around in her long, flour-dusted fingers.
“Hmm,” she said. “You seem to have brought the right thing to carry the eternal flame, so I suppose I’ll have to give you some. But there’s something I want you to do first.”
Demon’s brain immediately went into a panic as he wondered what awful thing Hestia might be going to make him do. The smell of honey cakes was very strong in his nostrils now, and his mouth was beginning to water. He saw that Hestia was holding something small and golden out to him.
“I want you to try this and tell me if it’s any good,” she said. “It’s a new recipe for the feast next week. Open up.”
Demon opened his mouth in relief that his task was so easy, and Hestia popped the small golden thing inside. There was a sort of explosion of sweet deliciousness on his tongue. It was the best honey cake he’d ever tasted in his life. He opened his mouth again. “More!” he demanded greedily, without thinking that it might be a bit rude to give a goddess orders. Luckily it was exactly what Hestia wanted to hear.
“Oh goody,” she said, clapping her hands. “You like them.”
Sometime later he left Hestia’s palace, full to the brim and clutching the cauldron to his chest (plus a box of spare honey cakes). Hestia had given him a lid for the cauldron, to keep the eternal flame covered.
“Just don’t let Zeus or any of the others see you with that flame,” she said. “I got into terrible trouble the last time some of it went missing. I’m not supposed to let it out of the palace.”
Demon promised. He tiptoed very carefully past all the palaces, trying hard to be invisible.
Upon returning to the Stables, Demon tipped the eternal flame carefully down the bull’s throat. Just then he heard an appalling shriek. It went on and on and on, rising louder and louder and louder until it sounded like all the Furies rolled into one. The bull struggled to its feet as its fifth stomach caught light and started to roar like a furnace. He and Demon both realized that the shrieking sound was heading straight for the Stables.
CHAPTER 8
THE PEACOCK CHARIOT
Oh no, thought Demon. Someone’s found out I took the flame out of Hestia’s palace.
He ran up to the loft, hid under his blanket, and waited, shivering, to be turned into a little pile of ash. The shrieking stopped. He could hear banging and crashing noises below. Then there was silence.
“STABLE BO
Y! COME HERE!” said a voice.
It wasn’t a nice creamy voice like Hestia’s. It sounded like a thousand rusty knife blades clashing in a dark alley. Demon clenched his teeth to stop them from chattering and crawled out from under his blanket. He stiffened his jelly legs and made them climb down the wooden ladder. He could smell the fragrant breath of the unicorns floating up to him like a cloud of sweetness, and he wondered if it would be the last thing he ever smelled. Then he reached the ground and fell to his knees, mostly because his legs had turned to jelly again.
In front of him stood six peacocks, their jeweled tails spread out to hide the chariot behind. Demon’s heart started to beat its way out of his chest. He didn’t even have to see who was in the chariot behind the peacock tails, because he already knew. Everyone had told him to keep out of Hera’s way, and now here she was in his Stables. The peacocks hissed and bent their long necks toward him. Demon scooted backward hurriedly.
“W-w-what c-c-can I d-d-do for you, Y-y-your G-r-reat G-g-goddessness M-m-majesty?” he asked, just managing to get the words out. He couldn’t believe he was still alive. Maybe she hadn’t found out he’d taken the flame from Hestia’s palace. Maybe her peacocks were just sick or something.
Hera climbed down from her chariot and walked around the birds to stand in front of him. Demon didn’t dare to look up. He stared at her sandals instead. They were made of what looked like real gold rats’ tails, and they had little onyx-and-ruby scorpions for buckles. Hera walked around him slowly. Demon felt her eyes pass over him like hot lava. Then she poked him in the ribs with her staff.
“Come with me, stable boy,” she said. “I’ve got a job for you.”